by Anne Rice
He had always liked his wife; and now in the middle of his life, he had discovered that he loved her. A woman of impeccable grooming and subtle charm, she looked ageless to him, perhaps because he was not erotically attracted to her. But he knew that she was twelve years his senior, and therefore old, and this disturbed him only because he feared age himself, and he feared losing her.
He had always admired her, enjoyed her company; and he needed her money desperately. She had never minded that. She appreciated his charm, his social connections, and forgave him his secret eccentricities.
She had always known something was wrong with him philosophically, that he was "the tainted wether of the flock," wholly out of sympathy with his peers and his friends and enemies. But she never made an issue of it. Her happiness did not depend upon his happiness, it seemed; and she was eternally grateful that he went through the motions of social life, and had not run off like Lawrence Stratford to live in Egypt.
He was too crippled now with arthritis to be unfaithful to her any longer, and he wondered sometimes whether this was a relief to her, or whether it saddened her. He could not make up his mind. They still shared the marriage bed, and probably always would, though there was never any urgency or real need, except that of late, he'd been keenly aware that he depended upon her and loved her deeply.
He was glad she was home. It lessened the pain of Lawrence's death. But of course he'd have to recover her diamond necklace very soon, and that Randolph had promised to pay him tomorrow morning for the money he had borrowed against the thing was a great relief to him.
Edith looked especially pretty to him now, in her new Paris suit of green wool. She had a tailored look about her, except for her bouffant silver hair, which looked all the more lovely because of the severity of her clothes and the absence of any jewelry. She never wore the diamonds he had borrowed against, except to attend balls. He took pride in the fact that she was a handsome woman in her old age, and invariably impressive. People liked her, more even than they liked him, which was as it should be.
"I'm going out fora while," he said to her. "Little errand. You shan't miss me. I'll be back in good time for lunch."
She didn't answer. She sat down on the tufted ottoman beside him, and slipped her hand over his. How light it felt. Her hands were the only pan of her which revealed age without question.
"Elliott, you've borrowed again against my necklace," she said.
He was ashamed. He said nothing.
"I know you did it for Randolph. Henry's debts again. Always the same story."
He looked at the coals in front of him. He didn't answer. After all, what was there to say? She knew it was safe in the hands of a jeweller trusted by both of them, that the advance had been relatively small-easy for her to manage, even if Randolph did not come through.
"Why didn't you come to me and tell me you needed money?" she asked him.
"It's never been easy to do that, my dear. Besides, Henry has made things so difficult for Randolph."
"I know. And I know you meant well, as usual."
"As vulgar as it may sound, a loan against a diamond necklace is a small price to pay for the Stratford millions. And that's where we are, my dear, trying to make a good marriage, as they say, for our son."
"Randolph cannot persuade his niece to marry Alex. He has no influence with her at all. You lent the money because you felt sorry for Randolph. Because he's your old friend."
"Perhaps that's true."
He sighed. He wouldn't look at her. "Perhaps, in some way, I feel responsible," he said.
"How could you be responsible? What have you to do with Henry, and what's become of him?" she asked.
He didn't answer. He thought of the hotel room in Paris, and the look of dull misery in Henry's eyes when his attempt at extortion had failed. Strange how clear it all was to him, the furnishings of that room. Later, when he had discovered the theft of the cigarette case and the money, he had sat thinking: I must remember this; I must remember .all of it. This mustn't happen to me again.
"I'm sorry about the necklace, Edith," he whispered, suddenly stung to think that he had stolen from his wife as Henry had stolen from him. He found himself smiling at her, even winking, flirting a little as he always did. He gave her a little shrug.
She acknowledged all this with a wicked little smile of her own. Years ago she would have said, Don't play the bad boy with me. The fact that she didn't say it anymore didn't mean she didn't find him charming.
'' Randolph has the money now to cover the loan," he assured her, more seriously.
"Not necessary," she whispered. "Leave it to me." And now she rose slowly and waited. She knew that he could use her help to get up and on his feet. And much as it humiliated him, he knew it too.
"Where are you going?" she asked as she held out her hands.
"Samir Ibrahaim at the museum."
"This mummy again."
"Henry's come up with the strangest story. ..."
ALEX, MY darling," she said, taking both his hands in hers. "Mr. Ramsey was a good friend of Father's. It's quite all right his being here."
"But you're alone. . . ." He looked disapprovingly at her white peignoir, as well he might.
"Alex, I'm a modern girl. Don't question me! Now off you go and let me take care of my guest. In a few days, we'll have lunch, and I'll explain the entire thing-"
"Julie, a few days!"
She kissed him quickly on the lips. She pressed him towards the front door. He gave another one of those determined glances back down the hall towards the conservatory.
"Alex, go now. The man's from Egypt; I'm to show him London. And I'm rushed. Please, darling dear, do as I ask you."
She all but shoved him out the door. He was too much of a gentleman to protest further. He gave her that innocent, baffled look, and then said softly that he would call her this evening on the telephone if that was all right.
"Of course," she said. "You're a sweetheart." Blowing him a little kiss off the tips of her fingers, she shut the door immediately.
She turned and leaned against the wall for a moment, staring back down the hall herself at the glass doors. She saw Rita dash by. She heard the sound of the kettle in the kitchen. The house was full of warm pungent fragrances of cooking food.
Her heart was pounding again; thoughts did drift through her brain, but they had no immediate emotional impact. What mattered for this moment, this absolutely extraordinary moment, was that Ramses was there. The immortal maji was there. He was in the conservatory.
She made her way back down the hall and stood in the doorway looking at him. He wore Father's robe still, though he had removed the shirt with a faint look of distaste for the stiff starched fabric. And his hair had reached its fullness now, a great glossy mane of soft waves that hung down just below the lobes of his ears, with a deep full lock falling again and again on his forehead.
The white wicker table was covered with plates of steaming food. As he read the copy of Punch propped before his plate, he ate delicately with his right hand from the meat here, and the fruit there, and the bread to his left, and the bits of roasted fowl in front of him. It was quite a miracle, in fact, the fastidiousness with which he ate, not touching the knives and forks, though he had loved the ornate designs in the old silver.
He had been reading and eating steadily for the last two hours. He had devoured quantities of food beyond her wild imaginings. It was like fuel to him, it seemed. He had drunk four bottles of wine, two bottles of seltzer, all the milk in the house, and now he was taking occasional gulps of brandy.
He was not drunk; on the contrary, he seemed extraordinarily sober. He had gone through her English/Egyptian dictionary so rapidly that his scanning and turning the pages had made her almost dizzy. The English/Latin dictionary had taken him no more time. The system of Arabic numbers side by side with Roman numerals he apparently absorbed within minutes. The full concept of zero she could not explain, but she had certainly been able to demon
strate it. Then he'd gone through the Oxford English Dictionary with the same haste, turning back and forth, running his finger down column after column.
Of course he was not reading every word. He was getting the gist, the roots, the fundamental scheme of the language; that she understood as he made her name every object in sight and repeated the words rapidly with perfect inflection. He had memorized the names of every plant in the room-ferns, banana trees, orchids, begonias, daisies, bougainvillea. It had thrilled her to hear his rapid inventories repeated moments later without a mistake: fountain, table, plates, china plates, silver, floor tiles, Rita!
Now he was working his way through purely English texts, finishing off the Punch as he had already finished two issues of the Strand magazine, the Harper's Weekly from America, and every issue of The Times in the house,
He scanned the pages with great care, fingers touching words, pictures, even designs as if he were a blind man somehow miraculously able to see through touch. With the same loving attention, he fingered the Wedgwood plates and the Waterford crystal.
He looked up excitedly now as Rita brought him a glass of beer.
"I've got nothing else, miss," she said with a little shrug, standing well back of him as she held out the glass.
He snatched it from her and drained it immediately. He gave her a nod and smile.
"Egyptians love beer, Rita. Get some more, hurry."
Keeping Rita on the go was keeping Rita from losing her mind.
Julie made her way through the ferns and potted trees and took her place at the table opposite Ramses. He glanced up, then pointed to a picture of "the Gibson girl" before him. Julie nodded.
"American," she said.
"United States," he responded.
She was stunned. "Yes," she said.
He quickly devoured a sausage whole, and folded another thin slice of bread and ate it in two bites, as he turned the pages with his left hand, scanning a picture of a man on a bicycle. This made him laugh out loud.
"Bicycle," she said.
"Yes!" he said, precisely as she had said it a moment ago. Then he said something softly in Latin.
Oh, she had to take him out, show him everything.
The telephone sounded suddenly, a shrill ring from Father's desk in the Egyptian room. He was immediately on his feet. He followed her into the Egyptian room and stood quite close, looking down at her as she answered it.
"Hello? Yes, this is Julie Stratford." She covered the mouthpiece. "Telephone," she whispered. "Talking machine." She held the receiver so that he might hear the voice on the other end. Henry's club calling; they would come round for Henry's trunk. Could she have it ready?
"It's ready now. You'll need two men, I should think. Please do hurry."
She clasped the wire and held it up to Ramses' attention. "The voice goes through the wire," she whispered. She hung up the telephone, looked about. Taking his hand, she led him back into the conservatory, and pointed to the wires outside, which ran from the house to the telegraph pole at the far end of the garden.
He studied all this with keen concentration. Then she took an empty glass from the table and approached the wall that divided the far end of the conservatory from the kitchen. She placed the mouth of the glass against the wall and pressed her ear to the bottom of the glass, and listened. It amplified the sound of Rita moving about. Then she invited him to do it. He heard the amplification just as she had heard it.
He stared at her, thoughtful, dazzled, excited.
"The wire of the telephone conducts sound," she said. "It's a mechanical invention." That's what she must do, show him what machines were! Explain the great leap forward which machines had accomplished; the complete transformation of thinking about how to do things.
"Conducts sound," he repeatedly thoughtfully. He moved to the table and lifted the magazine he'd been reading. He made a gesture as if to say Read aloud. Quickly, she read a paragraph of commentary on home affairs. Too dense with abstractions, but he was merely listening to the syllables, wasn't he? Impatiently he took the magazine from her, and then answered:
"Thank you."
"Very good," she said. "You're learning with amazing speed."
Then, he made a curious little series of gestures. He touched his temple, his forehead, as though making some reference to his brain. And then he touched his hair, and his skin. What was he trying to tell her? That the organ of thought responded as quickly as his hair and body had responded to the sunlight?
He turned to the table. "Sausages," he said. "Beef. Roast chicken. Beer. Milk. Wine. Fork. Knife. Napkin. Beer. More beer."
"Yes," she said. "Rita, bring him some more beer. He likes
beer." She lifted a fold of her peignoir. "Lace," she said. "Silk."
He made a little buzzing noise.
"Bees!" she said. "Exactly. Oh, you are so wonderfully clever."
He laughed. "Say again," he said.
"Wonderfully clever." Now she pointed to her head, tap, tap, tap. The brain, thought.
He nodded. He glanced down at the silver-handled paring knife on the table. He picked it up, as if asking her permission, and slipped it into his pocket. Then beckoning for her to follow, he went into the Egyptian room. He approached an old dim map of the world behind a dusty glass in a heavy frame and he pointed carefully to England.
"Yes, England. Britannia," she said. She pointed to America. "The United States," she said. Then she identified continents, oceans. Finally she identified Egypt, and the Nile River, a tiny line on this small map. "Ramses, King of Egypt," she said. She pointed to him.
He nodded. But he wanted to know something else. Very carefully he articulated the question:
"Twentieth century? What means anno Domini?"
She was speechless, looking at him. He had slept through the birth of Christ! Of course he had no way to grasp how long that sleep had lasted. That he was a pure pagan did not disturb her so much as it fascinated her. But she feared the shock she would give him now when she answered his question.
Roman numerals, where was that book? She took down Plutarch's Lives from her father's shelves and found the date of publication in Roman numerals, only three years before, perfect.
Taking a sheet of notepaper from her father's desk, and dipping his pen, she hastily wrote out the correct date. But how to make it known to him the beginning of the system?
Cleopatra was close enough, but she feared to use Cleopatra's name, for all the obvious reasons. Then the clearest example came to her.
She wrote out in hand, printed letters the name Octavius Caesar. He nodded. She made a Roman numeral one beneath it. Then she drew a long horizontal line, moving to the very right edge of the page, and she wrote her own name Julie, and the full date in Roman numerals. And after that the Latin word: annum.
He blanched. He looked at the paper for a long time, and then the color appeared to dance in his cheeks. There was no doubt he understood her. His expression became grave, then curiously philosophical. He seemed to be pondering rather than absorbing a shock. She wrote the word century, and then the Roman numeral for one hundred, and the word annus. He nodded a little impatiently, yes, yes, he understood.
Then he folded his arms and walked slowly around the room. She could not guess what he was thinking.
"A long time," she whispered. "Tempus . . . tempus fugit!" She was embarrassed suddenly. Time flies? But it was all the Latin she could think of. He was smiling at her. Was it a clich6 two thousand years ago?
He approached the desk, and leaning over her gently, he took the pen and carefully drew the Egyptian cartouche which spelled his name in hieroglyphs, Ramses the Great. Then he too drew a horizontal line stretching across the page almost to the edge, where he wrote Cleopatra. In the very middle of that line he wrote the Roman numeral M meaning one thousand years; and then the Arabic numbers for it which she had only taught him an hour ago.
He gave her a moment to read this. And then he wrote beneath his cartouche the Arabic n
umerals 3000.
"Ramses is three thousand years old," she said, pointing to him, "and Ramses knows it."
He nodded again, and smiled. What was his expression? Sad, resigned, merely thoughtful? There was a great dark flicker of pain in his eyes. The smile did not break, but she saw it, and she saw a subtle puckering of the lids beneath his eyes as he pondered this himself, and apparently moved back from it emotionally. He looked about the room now as if he were seeing it for the first time. He looked at the ceiling, and then at the floor, and then directly at the bust of Cleopatra. His eyes were as wide as before, his smile as soft and agreeable, but the something was gone from his face. The vigour. It had completely vanished.
When he looked at her again, there was a thin glaze of tears in his eyes. She couldn't bear it. She reached out and clasped his left hand. His fingers curled around hers, squeezing them tenderly.