by Anthology
"Do you still live in, you know ... " Mr. Fox hardly knew how to say the name of the place without sounding vulgar, but his niece came to his rescue. "Babylon? Only for another month. We're moving to Deer Park as soon as my divorce is final."
"I'm so glad," said Mr. Fox. "Deer Park sounds much nicer for the child."
"Can I buy Anthony a good-bye present?" Clare asked. Mr. Fox gave her some English money (even though the shops were all taking American) and she bought a paper of chips and fed them to the dog one by one. Mr. Fox knew Anthony would be flatulent for days, but it seemed hardly the sort of thing one mentioned. The ferry had pulled in and the tourists who had visited America for the day were streaming off, loaded with cheap gifts. Mr. Fox looked for Harrison, but if he was among them, he missed him. The whistle blew two warning toots. "It was kind of you to come," he said.
Emily smiled. "No big deal," she said. "It was mostly your doing anyway. I could never have made it all the way to England if England hadn't come here first. I don't fly."
"Nor do I." Mr. Fox held out his hand but Emily gave him a hug, and then a kiss, and insisted that Clare give him both as well. When that was over, she pulled off the watch (it was fitted with an expandable band) and slipped it over his thin, sticklike wrist. "It has a compass built in," she said. "I'm sure it was your father's. And Mother always ... "
The final boarding whistle swallowed her last words. "You can be certain I'll take good care of it," Mr. Fox called out. He couldn't think of anything else to say. "Mother, is he crying," said Clare. It was a statement and not a question. "Let's you and me watch our steps," said Emily.
"Woof," said Anthony, and mother and daughter ran down (for the pier was high, and the boat was low) the gangplank. Mr. Fox waved until the ferry had backed out and turned, and everyone on board had gone inside, out of the rain, for it had started to rain in earnest. That night after dinner he was disappointed to find the bar unattended. "Anyone seen Harrison?" he asked. He had been looking forward to showing him the watch.
"I can get you a drink as well as him," said the Finn. She carried her broom with her and leaned it against the bar. She poured a whisky and said, "Just indicate if you need another." She thought indicate meant ask. The King was on the telly, getting into a long car with the President. Armed men stood all around them. Mr. Fox went to bed.
The next morning, Mr. Fox got up before Anthony. The family visit had been pleasant; indeed, wonderful; but he felt a need to get back to normal. While taking his constitutional, he watched the first ferry come in, hoping (somewhat to his surprise) that he might see Harrison in it; but no such luck. There were no English, and few Americans. The fog rolled in and out, like the same page on a book being turned over and over. At tea, Mr. Fox found Lizzie confessing (just as he had known she someday must) that the jewels had been in her possession all along. Now that they were truly gone, everyone seemed relieved, even the Eustace family lawyer. It seemed a better world without the diamonds.
"Did you hear that?"
"Beg your pardon?" Mr. Fox looked up from his book.
Mrs. Oldenshield pointed at his teacup, which was rattling in its saucer. Outside, in the distance, a bell was ringing. Mr. Fox wiped off the book himself and put it on the high shelf, then pulled on his coat, picked up his dog, and ducked through the low door into the street. Somewhere across town, a horn was honking. "Woof," said Anthony. There was a breeze for the first time in days. Knowing, or at least suspecting what he would find, Mr. Fox hurried to the Boardwalk. The waves on the beach were flattened, as if the water were being sucked away from the shore. The ferry was just pulling out with the last of the Americans who had come to spend the day. They looked irritated. On the way back to the Pig & Thistle Mr. Fox stopped by the cricket ground, but the boys were nowhere to be seen, the breeze being still too light for kiting, he supposed. "Perhaps tomorrow," he said to Anthony. The dog was silent, lacking the capacity for looking ahead.
That evening, Mr. Fox had his whisky alone again. He had hoped that Harrison might have shown up, but there was no one behind the bar but the Finn and her broom. King Charles came on the telly, breathless, having just landed in a helicopter direct from the Autumn White House. He promised to send for anyone who had been left behind, then commanded (or rather, urged) his subjects to secure the kingdom for the Atlantic. England was underway again. The next morning the breeze was brisk. When Mr. Fox and Anthony arrived at the Boardwalk, he checked the compass on his watch and saw that England had turned during the night, and Brighton had assumed its proper position, at the bow. A stout headwind was blowing and the seawall was washed by a steady two-foot curl. Long Island was a low, dark blur to the north, far off the port (or left).
"Nice chop."
"Beg pardon?" Mr. Fox turned and was glad to see a big man in a tweed coat, standing at the rail. He realized he had feared the African might have jumped ship like Harrison.
"Looks like we're making our four knots and more, this time."
Mr. Fox nodded. He didn't want to seem rude, but he knew if he said anything the girl would chime in. It was a dilemma.
"Trade winds," said the African. His collar was turned up, and his dreadlocks spilled over and around it like vines. "We'll make better time going back. If indeed we're going back. I say, is that a new watch?"
"Civil Defense chronometer," Mr. Fox said. "Has a compass built in. My father left it to me when he died."
"You bloody wish," said the girl.
"Should prove useful," said the African.
"I should think so," said Mr. Fox, smiling into the fresh salt wind; then, saluting the African (and the girl), he tucked Anthony under his arm and left the Boardwalk in their command. England was steady, heading south by southeast, and it was twenty past four, almost time for tea.
DEATH ON THE NILE
Connie Willis
CHAPTER ONE:
PREPARING FOR YOUR TRIP — WHAT TO TAKE
“ ‘To the ancient Egyptians,’ ” Zoe reads, “ ‘Death was a separate country to the west—’ ” The plane lurches. “ ‘—the west to which the deceased person journeyed.’ ”
We are on the plane to Egypt. The flight is so rough the flight attendants have strapped themselves into the nearest empty seats, looking scared, and the rest of us have subsided into a nervous window-watching silence. Except Zoe, across the aisle, who is reading aloud from a travel guide.
This one is Somebody or Other’s Egypt Made Easy. In the seat pocket in front of her are Fodor’s Cairo and Cooke’s Touring Guide to Egypt’s Antiquities, and there are half a dozen others in her luggage. Not to mention Frommer’s Greece on $35 a Day and the Savvy Traveler’s Guide to Austria and the three or four hundred other guidebooks she’s already read out loud to us on this trip. I toy briefly with the idea that it’s their combined weight that’s causing the plane to yaw and careen and will shortly send us plummeting to our deaths.
“ ‘Food, furniture, and weapons were placed in the tomb,’ ” Zoe reads, “ ‘as provi—’ ” The plane pitches sideways. “ ‘—sions for the journey.’”
The plane lurches again, so violently Zoe nearly drops the book, but she doesn’t miss a beat. “ ‘When King Tutankhamun’s tomb was opened,’ ” she reads, “ ‘it contained trunks full of clothing, jars of wine, a golden boat, and a pair of sandals for walking in the sands of the afterworld.’”
My husband Neil leans over me to look out the window, but there is nothing to see. The sky is clear and cloudless, and below us there aren’t even any waves on the water.
“ ‘In the afterworld the deceased was judged by Anubis, a god with the head of a jackal,’ ” Zoe reads, “ ‘and his soul was weighed on a pair of golden scales.’ ”
I am the only one listening to her. Lissa, on the aisle, is whispering to Neil, her hand almost touching his on the armrest. Across the aisle, next to Zoe and Egypt Made Easy, Zoe’s husband is asleep and Lissa’s husband is staring out the other window and trying to keep his drink from spilling.
>
“Are you doing all right?” Neil asks Lissa solicitously.
“It’ll be exciting going with two other couples,” Neil said when he came up with the idea of our all going to Europe together. “Lissa and her husband are lots of fun, and Zoe knows everything. It’ll be like having our own tour guide.”
It is. Zoe herds us from country to country, reciting historical facts and exchange rates. In the Louvre, a French tourist asked her where the Mona Lisa was. She was thrilled. “He thought we were a tour group!” she said. “Imagine that!” Imagine that.
“ ‘Before being judged, the deceased recited his confession,’ ” Zoe reads, “ ‘a list of sins he had not committed, such as, I have not snared the birds of the gods, I have not told lies, I have not committed adultery.’”
Neil pats Lissa’s hand and leans over to me. “Can you trade places with Lissa?” Neil whispers to me.
I already have, I think. “We’re not supposed to,” I say, pointing at the lights above the seats. “The seat-belt sign is on.” He looks at her anxiously. “She’s feeling nauseated.” So am I, I want to say, but I am afraid that’s what this trip is all about, to get me to say something. “Okay,” I say, and unbuckle my seat belt and change places with her. While she is crawling over Neil, the plane pitches again, and she half-falls into his arms. He steadies her. Their eyes lock.
“ I have not taken another’s belongings,‘ ” Zoe reads. “ T have not murdered another.’”
I can’t take any more of this. I reach for my bag, which is still under the window seat, and pull out my paperback of Agatha Christie’s Death on the Nile. I bought it in Athens.
“About like death anywhere,” Zoe’s husband said when I got back to our hotel in Athens with it. “What?” I said.
“Your book,” he said, pointing at the paperback and smiling as if he’d made a joke. “The title. I’d imagine death on the Nile is the same as death anywhere.” “Which is what?” I asked.
“The Egyptians believed death was very similar to life,” Zoe cut in. She had bought Egypt Made Easy at the same bookstore. “To the ancient Egyptians the afterworld was a place much like the world they inhabited. It was presided over by Anubis, who judged the deceased and determined their fates. Our concepts of heaven and hell and of the Day of Judgment are nothing more than modern refinements of Egyptian ideas,” she said, and began reading out loud from Egypt Made Easy, which pretty much put an end to our conversation,
and I still don’t know what Zoe’s husband thought death would be like, on the Nile or elsewhere.
I open Death on the Nile and try to read, thinking maybe Hercule Poirot knows, but the flight is too bumpy. I feel almost immediately queasy, and after half a page and three more lurches I put it in the seat pocket, close my eyes, and toy with the idea of murdering another. It’s a perfect Agatha Christie setting. She always has a few people in a country house or on an island. In Death on the Nile they were on a Nile steamer, but the plane is even better. The only other people on it are the flight attendants and a Japanese tour group who apparently do not speak English or they would be clustered around Zoe, asking directions to the Sphinx.
The turbulence lessens a little, and I open my eyes and reach for my book again. Lissa has it.
She’s holding it open, but she isn’t reading it. She is watching me, waiting for me to notice, waiting for me to say something. Neil looks nervous.
“You were done with this, weren’t you?” she says, smiling. “You weren’t reading it.”
Everyone has a motive for murder in an Agatha Christie. And Lissa’s husband has been drinking steadily since Paris, and Zoe’s husband never gets to finish a sentence. The police might think he had snapped suddenly. Or that it was Zoe he had tried to kill and shot Lissa by mistake. And there is no Hercule Poirot on board to tell them who really committed the murder, to solve the mystery and explain all the strange happenings.
The plane pitches suddenly, so hard Zoe drops her guidebook, and we plunge a good five thousand feet before it recovers. The guidebook has slid forward several rows, and Zoe tries to reach for it with her foot, fails, and looks up at the seat-belt sign as if she expects it to go off so she can get out of her seat to retrieve it.
Not after that drop, I think, but the seat-belt sign pings almost immediately and goes off.
Lissa’s husband instantly calls for the flight attendant and demands another drink, but they have already gone scurrying back to the rear of the plane, still looking pale and scared, as if they expected the turbulence to start up again before they make it. Zoe’s husband wakes up at the noise and then goes back to sleep. Zoe retrieves Egypt Made Easy from the floor, reads a few more riveting facts from it, then puts it facedown on the seat and goes back to the rear of the plane.
I lean across Neil and look out the window, wondering what’s happened, but I can’t see anything. We are flying through a flat whiteness.
Lissa is rubbing her head. “I cracked my head on the window,” she says to Neil. “Is it bleeding?”
He leans over her solicitously to see.
I unsnap my seat belt and start to the back of the plane, but both bathrooms are occupied, and Zoe is perched on the arm of an aisle seat, enlightening the Japanese tour group. “The currency is in Egyptian pounds,” she says. “There are one hundred piasters in a pound.” I sit back down.
Neil is gently massaging Lissa’s temple. “Is that better?” he asks.
I reach across the aisle for Zoe’s guidebook. “Must-See Attractions,” the chapter is headed, and the first one on the list is the Pyramids.
“Giza, Pyramids of. West bank of Nile, 9 mi. (15 km.) SW of Cairo. Accessible by taxi, bus, rental car. Admission L.E.3. Comments: You can’t skip the Pyramids, but be prepared to be disappointed. They don’t look at all like you expect, the traffic’s terrible, and the view’s completely ruined by the hordes of tourists, refreshment stands, and souvenir vendors. Open daily.”
I wonder how Zoe stands this stuff. I turn the page to Attraction Number Two. It’s King Tut’s tomb, and whoever wrote the guidebook wasn’t thrilled with it either. “Tutankhamun, Tomb of. Valley of the Kings, Luxor, 400 mi. (668 km.) south of Cairo. Three unimpressive rooms. Inferior wall paintings.”
There is a map showing a long, straight corridor (labeled Corridor) and the three unimpressive rooms opening one onto the other in a row—Anteroom, Burial Chamber, Hall of Judgment.
I close the book and put it back on Zoe’s seat. Zoe’s husband is still asleep. Lissa’s is peering back over his seat. “Where’d the flight attendants go?” he asks. “I want another drink.”
“Are you sure it’s not bleeding? I can feel a bump,” Lissa says to Neil, rubbing her head. “Do you think I have a concussion?”
“No,” Neil says, turning her face toward his. “Your pupils aren’t dilated.” He gazes deeply into her eyes.
“Stewardess!” Lissa’s husband shouts. “What do you have to do to get a drink around here?”
Zoe comes back, elated. “They thought I was a professional guide,” she says, sitting down and fastening her seat belt. “They asked if they could join our tour.” She opens the guidebook. “ The afterworld was full of monsters and demigods in the form of crocodiles and baboons and snakes. These monsters could destroy the deceased before he reached the Hall of Judgment.‘ ”
Neil touches my hand. “Do you have any aspirin?” he asks. “Lissa’s head hurts.”
I fish in my bag for it, and Neil gets up and goes back to get her a glass of water.
“Neil’s so thoughtful,” Lissa says, watching me, her eyes bright. “ To protect against these monsters and demigods, the deceased was given The Book of the Dead,‘ ” Zoe reads. “ ’More properly translated as The Book of What Is in the Afterworld, The Book of the Dead was a collection of directions for the journey and magic spells to protect the deceased.‘ ”
I think about how I am going to get through the rest of the trip without magic spells to protect me. Six days in Egyp
t and then three in Israel, and there is still the trip home on a plane like this and nothing to do for fifteen hours but watch Lissa and Neil and listen to Zoe.
I consider cheerier possibilities. “What if we’re not going to Cairo?” I say. “What if we’re dead?”
Zoe looks up from her guidebook, irritated. “There’ve been a lot of terrorist bombings lately, and this is the Middle East,” I go on. “What if that last air pocket was really a bomb? What if it blew us apart, and right now we’re drifting down over the Aegean Sea in little pieces?”
“Mediterranean,” Zoe says. “We’ve already flown over Crete.” “How do you know that?” I ask. “Look out the window.” I point out Lissa’s window at the white flatness beyond. “You can’t see the water. We could be anywhere. Or nowhere.”
Neil comes back with the water. He hands it and my aspirin to Lissa.
“They check the planes for bombs, don’t they?” Lissa asks him. “Don’t they use metal detectors and things?”
“I saw this movie once,” I say, “where the people were all dead, only they didn’t know it. They were on a ship, and they thought they were going to America. There was so much fog they couldn’t see the water.“
Lissa looks anxiously out the window.
“It looked just like a real ship, but little by little they began to notice little things that weren’t quite right. There were hardly any people on board, and no crew at all.”
“Stewardess!” Lissa’s husband calls, leaning over Zoe into the aisle. “I need another ouzo.”
His shouting wakes Zoe’s husband up. He blinks at Zoe, confused that she is not reading from her guidebook. “What’s going on?” he asks.
“We’re all dead,” I say. “We were killed by Arab terrorists. We think we’re going to Cairo, but we’re really going to heaven. Or hell.”
