Pharaoh

by Valerio Massimo Manfredi

  The next day, since his master had not returned, he turned back across the desert, heading towards Beersheba and then Hebron. He entered Jerusalem the same way he had left it.

  The city was empty!

  All of the inhabitants had been torn from their homes and taken away by the Babylonians. The Temple had been burned to the ground, the royal palace demolished, the mighty walls of the ancient Jebusite fortress dismantled stone by stone.

  He waited, nonetheless, counting the days that the prophet had been missing and trying to calculate how long it might take him to find his way back, until one day he reappeared, thin and ragged, at the bean vendor’s house.

  Baruch approached him and grasped at his tattered robe. ‘Rabbi,’ he cried, ‘we have seen the destruction of Zion! The city once so full of people is empty, its princes gone!’

  The prophet turned to face him and Baruch was shocked. His face was scorched, his hands cut and wounded. He had a crazed look in his eyes, as though he had been hurled into the depths of Sheol alive. It was not the sight of the annihilation of Jerusalem – a consequence of the Lord’s will, after all – that had plunged him into such grim desperation; it was something else, something that he had seen up there on the mountain. Something so terrible that the destruction of their entire nation, the uprooting and exile of its people, the slaughter of its princes, no longer mattered.

  ‘Rabbi, what did you see in the desert? What has driven you into this state?’

  The prophet turned towards the night advancing from the north. ‘It all comes to . . . nothing,’ he muttered. ‘I know now that we are alone. Complete solitude without beginning and without end, without place, without purpose or cause

  He tried to walk off, but Baruch was still holding him by his sleeve. ‘Rabbi, I beg of you, tell me where you have hidden the Ark of the Lord! I know that one day He will call his people from their exile in Babylon. I obeyed your orders, Rabbi, and I did not follow your steps, but tell me now where you’ve hidden it, I beg of you . . .’

  The prophet’s eyes were full of darkness and tears. ‘It’s all useless. But if one day the Lord shall call someone, he must walk beyond the pyramid and beyond the sphinx, he must cross wind, earthquake and fire until the Lord shows him where it is hidden. But it will not be you, Baruch. And perhaps no one. Ever. I have seen what no one was ever meant to see.’

  The prophet pulled free of Baruch’s grasp and walked off, soon disappearing behind a heap of rubble. Baruch watched him in the distance and noted his strange rolling gait. One of the prophet’s feet was bare! He ran after him, but when he reached the other side of the ruin the prophet had vanished, and as long and as hard as he looked, Baruch could not find him.

  He never saw him again.

  2

  Chicago

  United States of America, 24 December 1998

  WILLIAM BLAKE COULD barely get his eyes open. The acid taste in his mouth was familiar, the result of another restless night of tranquillizer-induced sleep and poor digestion. He dragged himself into the bathroom. The harsh neon light above the mirror revealed a greenish complexion, sunken eyes and tousled hair. He stuck out his tongue. It was coated with a white fur and he closed his mouth with a grimace of disgust. He felt like crying.

  A hot shower eased the cramps in his stomach and muscles, but washed away his remaining energy. He slipped down to the floor nearly unconscious, and lay under the steaming downpour for long minutes. Then, with a supreme effort, he reached up towards the tap and turned it to cold. The water spurted out in a freezing stream and he was jerked to his feet as if he had been whipped; he tried to bear it for long enough to regain a lucid mind, an upright position and an awareness of the misery he had been plunged into.

  He dried himself vigorously with a bath towel, then turned back to the mirror. He carefully lathered his face, shaved and applied an expensive lotion, one of the few reminders of his past lifestyle. Then, like a warrior putting on his armour, he chose a jacket and trousers, a shirt and tie, socks and shoes, considering a number of combinations before he settled on what he would wear.

  He had nothing in his stomach when he poured a shot of bourbon into his boiling black coffee and gulped down a few mouthfuls. This potion would have to do instead of his usual Prozac this morning; he was determined to face the last stations of his own personal cross-carrying expedition, scheduled for today, on willpower alone: the session with the judge that would confirm his divorce from Judy O’Neil, then his afternoon appointment with the rector and dean of the Oriental Institute, who were expecting his resignation.

  The telephone rang as he was about to leave and Blake lifted the receiver.

  ‘Will,’ said the voice on the other end. It was Bob Olsen, one of the few friends he had left since fate had turned her back on him.

  ‘Hi, Bob. Nice of you to call.’

  ‘I was just leaving, but I couldn’t go without saying goodbye. I’m having lunch with my old man in Evanston to wish him a merry Christmas and then I’m off to Cairo.’

  ‘Lucky you,’ said Blake in a lifeless voice.

  ‘Don’t take it so hard. We’ll let a few months go by, things will quieten down on their own and we’ll talk about the whole thing again. The board will have to re-examine your case. They’ll have to listen to your reasoning.’

  ‘What reasoning? There are no reasons. I have no witnesses, nothing.’

  ‘Listen, you have to get back on your feet again. You have to fight this. You can do it. You know, in Egypt I should be completely free to move around. I’ll try to get some information. Whenever I’m not working I’ll find out whatever I can. If I meet someone who can testify that it wasn’t your doing, I’ll bring him back here, even if I have to pay their fare myself.’

  ‘Thanks, Bob, but I don’t think there’s much you can do. Still, thanks anyway. Have a good trip.’

  ‘So – I can leave without worrying about you?’

  ‘Oh, sure. You don’t have to worry about me . . .’ He hung up, took his cup of coffee and walked out onto the street.

  A bell-ringing Santa Claus greeted him on the snowy pavement, along with a gust of bitterly cold wind that must have licked the entire icy surface of the lake from north to south. He reached his car, which was parked a couple of blocks down, still holding the steaming cup of coffee in his hand, got in and headed downtown. The shopping district was splendidly decked out for the holidays: the bare trees had been covered with thousands of tiny lights, looking like a miraculous out-of-season blossoming. He lit a cigarette and enjoyed the warmth as the car began to heat up, the music on the radio and the scent of tobacco, whisky and coffee.

  These modest pleasures gave him a little courage; made him think that his luck would have to change. After all, once you hit bottom, there’s nowhere to go but up. And somehow, doing things that his health-fanatic wife had prohibited all those years all at once – like drinking on an empty stomach and smoking in the car – made the terrible regret he felt at losing both the woman he still loved so intensely and the work he couldn’t imagine living without seem just about bearable.

  HIS WIFE, Judy, was looking very elegant, perfectly made up and coifed, just like when he used to take her out to dinner at Charlie Trotter’s, her favourite restaurant, or to a concert at Orchestra Hall. In a sudden flush of anger, he thought that in just a week or two – or a couple of days, for hell’s sake – she’d be using her wiles – her low necklines, her voice, that way she had of crossing her legs – to entice someone else, to get herself invited out to dinner and to bed.

  And he couldn’t help but imagine what she’d do in bed, with this someone else, and imagining it, thought that she’d be better than she had ever been with him. All this while the judge told them to be seated and asked whether there was any chance of reconciling the differences that had led to their separation.

  He would have liked to say yes, that for him nothing had changed, that he loved her as much as the first time he’d seen her, that his life would be loaths
ome without her, that he missed her dreadfully, that he would have thrown himself at her feet and begged her not to leave him, that the night before he had found, forgotten at the back of a drawer, one of her slips and that he had gathered it to his face to breathe in her scent, that he couldn’t give a shit about his dignity, that he would let her walk all over him if only she came back.

  Instead he said, ‘The terms of the separation have been duly considered and accepted by each one of us, Your Honour. Both of us agree in requesting this divorce.’

  Judy nodded, and then each of them signed the divorce papers and the alimony agreement, which was completely unrealistic as he hadn’t worked in months and his resignation would be officially accepted in a few hours’ time.

  They took the elevator together and descended for two unnerving minutes. Blake would have liked to say something fitting, something important. Something that she would never be able to forget. As the floor numbers followed each other relentlessly on the panel, he realized that he could not think of any memorable phrase and that, anyway, it wouldn’t have made any difference. But when she left the elevator and walked into the lobby without even saying goodbye, he followed her and said, ‘But . . . why, Judy? Bad things happen to everyone, you know, a string of negative coincidences, that can happen . . . Now that it’s all over, at least tell me why.’

  Judy looked at him for an instant without showing any emotion, not even indifference. ‘There is no why, Bill.’ He hated it when she called him Bill. ‘The fall follows the summer and then comes winter. Without a why. Good luck.’

  She left him standing in front of the building’s glass doors, still as a toy soldier in the midst of the snow that was still falling in big flakes.

  On the pavement, sitting on a piece of cardboard propped against the wall, was a man bundled up in an army jacket, with a long beard and greasy hair, begging. ‘Anything to spare for me, brother? I’m a Vietnam vet. Give me a few coins so I can put something warm in my stomach on Christmas Eve.’

  ‘Well, I’m a Vietnam vet too,’ he lied, ‘so don’t break my balls.’ But when he looked at him briefly, he saw that there was more dignity in the eyes of even this poor devil than there was in his own. He found a dollar in his jacket pocket. ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to be offensive,’ he said, throwing the money into the hat in front of the man. ‘It’s been a really bad day.’

  ‘Merry Christmas,’ replied the man, but Blake didn’t hear him, because he was already too far away and because he too, in that moment, was drifting through the freezing air like one snowflake among many, weightless and without a destination.

  He walked on and on without being able to think of anywhere he’d like to be or anyone he’d like to be with, apart from his old friend Bob Olsen, who had supported and encouraged him through all these ups and downs. Bob might have been able to think up some merciful lie that would have helped him through today. But he was leaving for Egypt, warm sun and work. What luck.

  Blake stopped when his legs refused to hold him up any more, when he realized that if he fell into the snowy slush that muddied the street, the cars would run right over him. He imagined that the judge was probably just then leaving the courtroom and the empty building to go back home, where he had a wife cooking, kids sitting in front of the TV, a dog, definitely a dog, and a Christmas tree covered with balls.

  And yet, despite all this – the snow, the judge, his wife, the cars, the balls on the Christmas tree, the divorce and the whisky in his black coffee – despite all of it, his instinct had guided him – like an old horse returning to the stables – to the university. The Oriental Institute library was just a few blocks over on his right.

  What time was it? Two thirty. He wasn’t even late. All he had to do was go up those stairs to the second floor, knock on the door of the rector’s office, say hello to the old mummy and the dean, and stand there like an imbecile and listen to their bullshit, then offer up his resignation, which they, given the circumstances, would have no choice but to accept. And then shoot himself in the balls, or the mouth, what difference did it make? No difference at all.

  ‘WHAT ARE YOU doing here at this late hour, William Blake?’

  It was all over. He’d lost his job, the only job on earth that had any meaning for him, and he would probably never get it back. And someone had the gall to ask him, ‘What are you doing here at this late hour, William Blake?’ ‘Why, what time is it?’

  ‘It’s six in the evening. It’s freezing cold and you’re blue. You look like someone on the verge of death.’

  ‘Leave me alone. Just forget you saw me, Professor Husseini.’ ‘No, sorry. Come on, get up. I live just a couple of blocks away. We’ll have a cup of hot coffee.’

  Blake tried to refuse, but the man insisted. ‘If you’d rather, I’ll call an ambulance and have them take you to Cook County, since you’re out of insurance. Come on, don’t be an idiot. Thank your lucky star that only a servant of Allah could be out at this hour instead of at home with his family around the Christmas tree.’

  OMAR AL HUSSEINI’S apartment was warm and had a good, somehow familiar, smell.

  ‘Take off your shoes,’ Husseini said.

  Blake did so, then dropped onto the cushions placed around the living room, while his host went into the kitchen.

  Husseini mixed a handful of coffee beans with some cloves and a bit of cinnamon and the room filled with a penetrating fragrance. He began to crush the coffee in a mortar with a changing, drum-like beat, accompanying this musical pounding with the motion of his head.

  ‘Do you know what this rhythm is? It’s a call. When a Bedouin crushes coffee in his mortar, the sound that he makes travels for great distances and anyone who is passing, anyone wandering through the solitude and immensity of the desert, knows that a cup of coffee and a friendly word are waiting for him in this tent.’

  ‘Nice.’ Blake nodded, slowly beginning to recover. ‘Moving. The noble servant of Allah sounds his wooden mortar in the urban desert and saves from certain death the stupid loser abandoned by the cynical and decadent Western civilization.’

  ‘Don’t be an idiot,’ said Husseini. ‘Some coffee will make you feel better and put a little blood in your veins. I swear you were about to die of exposure when I found you. You probably didn’t even notice, but at least two of your old colleagues passed right in front of you without even condescending to saying hello. They saw you looking dazed and half dead from the cold, sitting on a slab of frozen stone, stiff as a piece of dried cod, and they didn’t even ask you if you needed any help.’

  Well, maybe they were in a hurry. It is Christmas Eve. Maybe they hadn’t finished their shopping – the presents for the kids, the cheesecake for dessert. You know how it is . . .’

  Yes,’ said Husseini. ‘It is Christmas Eve.’

  He took the coffee that he had crushed in the mortar with the spices and poured it into the pot of water that was boiling on the stove. The aroma immediately became more intense, but softer and more penetrating. Blake realized that it was the smell of the spices and coffee that permeated the carpets on the floor, along with that of incense.

  Husseini handed him a steaming cup and offered him a Turkish cigarette. He sat on his heels in front of Blake, smoking in silence and sipping the strong, aromatic coffee.

  ‘Is this what it’s like in your tent in the desert?’ asked Blake.

  ‘Oh, no. In my tent there are beautiful women and luscious dates. There’s a wind from the east that carries the fragrance of flowers from the high plain and you can hear the bleating of lambs. And when I walk out I see the columns of Apamea in front of me, pale at dawn and red at dusk. When the wind picks up, they sound like the organ pipes in your churches.’

  Blake nodded, then took another sip of coffee and a drag on his cigarette. ‘So,’ he said, ‘why didn’t you stay in your fucking tent in the desert? What are you here for if you hate it so much?’

  ‘I didn’t say that I hate it here. I said it’s different. And I said so
because you asked me. And if you want to know the truth, the only place I lived after the age of five was a refugee camp in southern Lebanon: a filthy, stinking sewer where we played among rats and garbage.’

  ‘But . . . what about the columns of Apamea, pale at dawn and red at dusk, that chime in the wind like organ pipes?’

  ‘Those I only dreamed about. That was how my grandfather – Abdallah al Husseini, may Allah preserve him – described them to me, but I’ve never seen them.’

  They sat in silence for a long time.

  ‘I don’t understand why you were kicked out,’ said Husseini eventually. ‘I’d heard that you were one of the best in your field.’

  ‘You can say that again,’ answered Blake, holding out his cup for more coffee.

  Husseini filled it, then said, ‘There was nothing I could do about it, because I’m not a full professor, but what about your friend Olsen? He could have cast a vote in your favour.’

  ‘Olsen had to leave for Egypt and so he couldn’t be there, but he sent in a note protesting the decision. Only him. No one else stood up for me. Anyway, if you really want to know how it went, I’ll tell you. But it’s a long story.’

  ‘It’s Christmas Eve and we both have time on our hands, I’d say.’

  Blake lowered his head into his hands, overcome by a sudden wave of memories and anxiety. Maybe it would help to talk about it; who knows, maybe he’d get a handle on how to extricate himself from the whole mess, regain credibility.

  ‘It was about a year ago,’ he began. ‘I was examining some microfilms with texts from the New Kingdom which had been transcribed by James Henry Breasted just before World War One broke out. Stuff from the period of Ramses II or Merenptah, and there was something about a possible connection with the biblical Exodus. On the edge of the sheet, next to the transcription, there was a note scribbled in the margin. I’m sure you’ve seen samples of Breasted’s handwriting . . .’