Shadows on the Nile

by Kate Furnivall

  You say ‘I’m well,’ but you do not look well. I cannot say why I think that, but I do. I know I am no good at understanding facial expressions but I am better with feet. Today your feet are heavy. I want to take your shoes off to make them lighter for you. They clump across my floor and scuff against my skirting-board while you stare out at the garden. At least that is preferable to your staring at me the way you do sometimes, as though you would turn me inside out, my skin on the inside and my workings on the outside. Or is that how you see me anyway? With all the cogs and bloody bits on view. I don’t know and I am too frightened to ask, in case you say Yes.

  So I stare at your back. It is a perfect triangle. Broad straight shoulders, muscular from the years of sport and the Indian club exercises we do together. I am catching up with you. From the back we could be real brothers, you tell me, and I like that. I like it a lot.

  ‘Georgie.’ You are talking to the window-pane. ‘I have to go to Egypt. On a dig at Medinet Habu, working with a team from the University of Chicago.’

  I start to shake.

  ‘I will be gone three weeks.’

  I am moaning.

  ‘It will be over quickly and then I’ll come back to visit …’

  ‘No, no, no, no, no!’

  ‘Stop it, Georgie.’

  ‘No, no, no, no, no!’

  You turn to face me and your mouth is all clenched and strange. I hear you sigh as I hurl myself on my bed and start to howl. You pull up a chair next to the bed and you talk to me in a quiet firm voice that I don’t want to listen to but which hammers away at my eardrums. I cry. You give me your handkerchief, a pristine square of whiteness that you always bring especially for me. I clamp it over my nose and mouth, but some of your words slide into my head through the pathways of my tears.

  ‘It’s a great opportunity for my career,’ you say. ‘Imagine it, Georgie, seeing Ramses the Third’s great temple and fortress with my own eyes. The carvings of his violent wars against the Libyans and the Sea Peoples …

  ‘The colossal statue of Ramses as the god Osiris.

  ‘On the west bank of the Nile at Luxor …

  ‘I’ll bring you pictures of the colonnade of broken osiriform figures with …’

  Your voice is drooling like a starving dog at a banquet. I pull my pillow over my head and howl into it. Time stops. My world stops because you are leaving it.

  ‘All right, you’ve got that straight?’

  I nod. What else can I do?

  ‘I’ll be back.’

  I nod again. You keep saying that. For the last three Saturdays we have had the same conversation. You are going, no matter how many times I beg you not to. It is important, you say. How can you become an Egyptologist if you don’t go to Egypt? I tell you to study Anglo Saxon archaeology instead, so that you never have to leave the country, but you shake your head, your mouth tight. We both are victims of the spell cast by Egypt and we both know there is no choice for you.

  ‘You have my itinerary?’

  I nod.

  ‘I have written out for you an advance diary of what I hope to do each day in Luxor.’

  I nod.

  ‘You must picture me on my knees with my brushes and trowels in the sand and dirt, folding back time as I excavate the trace of a hand or the curve of a shabti at Medinet Habu.’

  ‘Or the crown of a king.’

  You smile at me. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘To look a god in the face will be huge.’

  Especially Osiris, green god of the afterlife with his mummy-wrapped legs and huge distinctive atef crown with ostrich feathers. I would like a crown like that, one that demands respect. He is always depicted holding a crook and flail, as though his existence depended on them. Like mine does on you. Osiris had a brother too – Set, the god of storms and the desert – but the rivalry between them was intense. It is said to be symbolic of the eternal war between the fertile green lands of the Nile Valley and the barren desert lands just beyond, but I think it more likely that Set just got sick of his tall brother throwing his weight around. You don’t do that to me. I know I must listen to your words and I must let you go. But I cannot.

  ‘Here is the calendar,’ you say. ‘You know what to do.’

  I nod.

  ‘You must tick off the days, Georgie.’

  I know.

  You let a silence into the room. I am hunched on the floor in my favourite corner, hugging my knees and bouncing my chin on them to make my teeth click like a clock, counting away the seconds of my life. You are leaning against my wardrobe, smoking a cigarette, as if you just happen to have come to rest there. But I know and you know that you are blocking my retreat into the dark.

  ‘Say something, Georgie. Anything.’

  Maybe the silence has stretched longer than I know.

  ‘You will read hieroglyphs carved in stone,’ I say, ‘and see the marks of the masons’ chisels. You will touch a Ramses cartouche, the sign of a royal name, that is three thousand years old. It is unbelievable.’

  ‘Jealous?’

  I do something for you then. Something big.

  I nod. ‘Yes.’

  But it is not true. I say it for you. I lie. I shoot a quick glance at your face and see that your mouth is still tight, but your eyes are shining. The sun of Egypt is already inside you.

  ‘I’ll bring you back something ancient,’ you promise.

  I remember my manners. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘You’ll be all right.’

  ‘No, I won’t.’

  ‘You won’t like it maybe, but you’ll survive, Georgie. It’s only three weeks and it might even do you good.’

  ‘No, it won’t.’

  ‘Let’s play a last game of chess.’

  ‘No.’

  You come closer. You squat down on your haunches and I can feel the energy billowing off you.

  ‘Be happy for me, Georgie. Please.’

  ‘I am.’ Another lie. ‘But I am sad for me.’

  ‘So am I.’

  ‘What if I die while you are gone?’

  ‘You won’t.’

  ‘I might.’ Another thought strikes like a hammer to my brain. ‘What if you die in Egypt? There are poisonous snakes – cobras and horned vipers. There are scorpions. Suffocating sandstorms and mosquitoes carrying malaria. What if you go out there and your plane crashes on landing or you fall out of a boat into the Nile and drown? What if …?’

  ‘Georgie, stop shouting!’

  For the first time I take your hand in mine and hold it tight.

  ‘Don’t go,’ I plead. ‘Don’t leave me.’

  ‘Oh, Georgie. I must.’

  I hate you at that moment. I am sick with terror and I hate you.

  I cannot speak of it. Those three weeks. Nothing you imagine can come close to how bad they are.

  In the end I put my hand in the coal fire to lessen the pain, but they bandage it up and so I have no choice but to break a window and use the glass. I cut deep. My stomach, my thigh, my throat. I do not want to die but I have to let out the pain, and it is the only way. There is so much blood, so much seething redness, that what is left of my mind splinters into a thousand pieces. Dr Churchward is screaming like a child.

  You come to see me in hospital. I am alone in a private room that is all white which I like, but I am only a breath from death. You come to my bedside and you cry. You bring me an ancient bronze ankh, the looped cross that is the Egyptian hieroglyph for life. You tie it to my bed-head.

  32

  ‘It is awesome.’ Monty was studying the exhibits. Before him stood the magnificent throne, gleaming with sheet gold and richly adorned with lions’ heads, winged serpents and the king’s cartouches. ‘Truly awesome. There is no other word.’

  Jessie stared fixedly at the great solid gold death mask of Tutankhamen that was decorated with lapis blue. It weighed twenty-four pounds. No wonder it was heavy in her dream. It possessed a pharaoh’s long ceremonial false beard and black eyes of obsidi
an and quartz that gazed back at her with cold indifference.

  Speak to me. Make me hear.

  Around her a throng of tourists, eager to see the boy king’s glorious funerary equipment, jostled against her but she didn’t move. She had already examined the delicate Hathor couch with its golden horns and sun-disk, and admired the beauty of the statuettes and rings, especially the elaborate scarab pectoral necklace. But nothing prepared her for the canopic shrine which stood almost as tall as a man and was fashioned from solid gold. The ornate decorations and carvings of gods and goddesses on it touched a nerve inside her, that someone could care so much for the dead that they created a work of art so sublime. One that would beguile the gods themselves.

  But it was in the canopic jars sitting in their alabaster canopic chest that the objects of unparalleled importance lay: the viscera of the king. Carved images of the sons of Horus watched over each jar – Imesti guarded the royal liver, Qebehsenuef protected the intestines, Duamutef the stomach, and the all-important lungs were kept safe by Hapi, with his ape’s head. Breathtaking works of art. Fit for a king.

  His guardians.

  Jessie had felt the power of them. As fresh and strong as when they left their maker’s hands. They pulled her in, obliterating her thoughts. Instead of the chatter of the voices in the museum, she heard the sigh of sand whipped over the tomb by the wind, the howl of the desert jackals at night, the cry of the red-tailed kite high in the blinding blue sky watching over the hidden entrance. She closed her eyes and the murmurs grew louder in her head, spiralling inside her skull, spinning in ever tighter twists and turns. She felt dizzy … put out a hand … Warm firm flesh grasped it.

  ‘Jessie, are you all right?’ It was Monty’s voice. Close and concerned.

  She’d forced open her eyes. The room felt dim and oppressive. She could smell something, some strange unfamiliar incense that teased her nostrils …

  ‘I’m fine.’

  But she waited for her heart to slow its drumbeat. Gently he led her away from the display of objects destined for the pharaoh’s use in the afterlife, and the strange smell faded, the noises in her head fluttered and died.

  ‘I think you are too anxious,’ he’d murmured, ‘for your brother. And for those hurt in the explosion last night. You need to sit down and rest a moment.’

  ‘No, but thank you.’ He still held her arm. ‘I need to examine the mask.’

  So she was now standing in front of King Tutankhamen, and Monty was studying the golden throne fit for a god.

  ‘It is awesome,’ she agreed. ‘There is no other word.’

  Speak to me. Make me hear.

  When she heard the hiss, her heart slammed into her throat. A king cobra rose out of the darkness with its hood flared, ready to strike with a speed beyond mortal eye. It swayed its head, numbing her mind, and though she wanted to run, to shout a warning to Monty, she couldn’t move. Couldn’t speak. Couldn’t breathe.

  ‘You’ve had enough,’ Monty said casually at her side. ‘If you can see nothing out of the ordinary,’ he slid an arm around her waist, ‘I think we should move on, don’t you?’

  Jessie blinked and let her hand touch his. The hissing slid into silence and the cobra became once again the symbol of royalty standing proud on the front of the golden mask. The uraeus. The protector.

  Timothy told me that you are his uraeus. That’s what Anippe Kalim had told her in the British Museum.

  His protector.

  So why wasn’t she protecting him?

  They moved quickly through the rest of the halls. Jessie was unwilling to linger.

  ‘It’s an astonishing collection,’ Monty commented as they passed a slab of ancient hieroglyphics. ‘Very impressive. Who set it up, do you know?’

  ‘It was the Egyptian Antiquities Service. The collection was started by Auguste Mariette, the French archaeologist. Ismail Pasha was determined to stop the looting of his country’s priceless artefacts, and quite right too. So he retained Mariette to create a home for them and introduced laws to punish thieves of antiquities.’

  ‘So this place was built specially for the collection, I assume.’ They were heading back downstairs towards the entrance to meet with Maisie once more. ‘They made a good job of it.’

  ‘Yes.’ She had herself back under control now and had organised a smile on her face. ‘Though it’s a bit of a maze, isn’t it?’

  There were so many gigantic statues, carefully transported and preserved from the ruins of temples and fortresses in the Nile Valley that it was like walking through a gloomy forest of stone. The scale of everything was so vast, yet the detail of workmanship was immensely skilled and imaginative. Jessie stopped for a moment to inspect more closely a relief of the head of Amun-Ra, depicted with his tall feathered crown cut deep into the stone and a mystifying array of hieroglyphs behind him.

  Out of the corner of her eye she saw a flicker of movement. Not the general slow milling around of the tourist crowd, nor the rhythmic whisk of the feather-dusters wielded by the cleaning women shrouded head to toe in black, but a quick flash of bright blue. There one moment, then gone. Quick as a kingfisher. A bright blue and gold headscarf. The last time she had seen a blue and gold scarf was in the British Museum, around the neck of Anippe Kalim.

  Jessie darted quickly off to the side where the movement had come from, dodging between exhibits. Squeezing between visitors and checking around corners. The halls flowed confusingly one into another and it was when she was finally standing cursing herself for being too slow, too blind, too plain crazy to believe she would bump into Tim’s girlfriend in a museum in Cairo, that Jessie caught another sighting of the elusive blue.

  But this time it paused. It was over in a far corner, about to vanish through a half-open door. This time the scarf turned, as if its owner could not resist one final look behind her. Their eyes met. It was Anippe Kalim. The same proud face and dark round eyes, but this time the face was marred by a deep scowl.

  ‘Anippe!’ Jessie shouted. ‘Wait, I need to …’

  The headscarf vanished. The door slammed. Anippe Kalim was gone.

  Jessie ran. Like a dog runs. A bloodhound on a trail. Without thought, without distraction. Blind, deaf and dumb to all else except the scent. She burst through the door marked PRIVATE. STAFF ONLY, behind which Anippe had disappeared, and into a warren of corridors. She didn’t even see the people who accosted her or hear the members of staff who questioned her right to be there. She just ran.

  The blue scarf bobbed and wove, disappearing and reappearing, coming closer, moving further away. It changed direction. Struck out first one way, then another. Jessie gained ground.

  It vanished.

  For no more than half a second did Jessie feel disgust at her failure before she smelt the warm gust of air from outside with its scent of ripe fruit and animal dung. A back door hung open. She threw herself through it, blinded for a moment by the fierce glare of the sun, and she squinted. At the far end of the street Anippe was running, hampered by her long brown gown and her innate courtesy to others on the pavement. Jessie had no such compunction.

  She raced after her. But Anippe knew these streets. Just when Jessie was gaining ground, Anippe would dodge down a scarcely visible side-alley and Jessie would overshoot, forced to backtrack to find the entrance. Time and again she lost Anippe completely. But at one point she drew so close that she saw the look of shock on the Egyptian woman’s face when she glanced over her shoulder. Jessie had no idea how far she ran. Or how long. But slowly she became conscious of the streets growing narrower, of the buildings becoming short, squat, and flat-roofed, the roads turning to dust-paths under her feet. White faces vanished. Instead women in black dress, carrying water jugs on their heads and children on their hips, stopped to stare at her from suspicious eyes as she shot past.

  ‘Anippe!’ she called out, gasping for breath.

  This time the young woman paused at a corner. She glanced back at her pursuer and slowly shook her head fro
m side to side. In rebuke or in astonishment, Jessie had no idea, but she could see Anippe’s chest heaving with effort and knew neither could keep this up much longer. So she stopped running. She stood where she was and beckoned to Anippe, thirty yards away. Why she thought the woman would come towards her when she had just spent the last age running away from her, Jessie had no idea. But it suddenly seemed a good alternative, like tempting a nervous young horse to you instead of flailing around after it.

  ‘Anippe,’ she called again, along the length of the small street, ‘is Tim in Cairo?’

  Did she hear? Was her shake of her head a refusal to answer? Or was it the answer itself?

  Jessie realised she would never know, because Anippe ducked around the corner and by the time Jessie reached it, she had vanished from the face of the earth. Only then did Jessie sag exhausted against a wall, dragging woodsmoke into her lungs, and come to her senses.

  She was lost. Somewhere deep in the old part of Cairo. Her hat had gone and her hair was plastered to her neck with sweat, attracting the fat glossy flies that pestered unbearably. Blood dripped from her palm onto her shoe and she had a recollection of tearing it while squeezing past a fruit stall during the chase. Her mouth was parched as desert sand and her throat felt raw.

  She thought of Monty and knew he would be frantic. Monty, I’m sorry. But …

  But what? How to explain what she’d done? She felt a cold rush of shame. What had possessed her? She ran her undamaged hand over her forehead and felt the burning heat of it. It was as though she had gone mad in there, the exhibits in the museum taking over, invading her mind with their war-chariots and their scarab beetles, driving all reason out before them.