by John Coyne
She stepped outside, thankful at least that she hadn’t turned her rage on him.
“Would you tell me something else?” Jennifer asked, standing on the snowy sidewalk. “Do you know Phoebe Fisher?” He nodded. “Is she who she says she is?”
The question seemed to surprise him. He stared at her for a moment, as if deciding how to respond, and then he said simply, “Yes,” and closed the door.
Jennifer turned and walked toward the subway. She had gone nearly a whole block before she realized her right hand was still clutched around the small, clear, single-terminated quartz crystal. It was small and warm in her hand, as if it were a tiny bird, lovely and alive. With her fingers nestled around it gently, she tucked it into the safety of her deep coat pocket. She should return it, she knew. She should walk back and give the man money for it, but she didn’t. She continued on her way toward the subway. Later, she would send a check to the Crystal Connection. Now the crystal belonged to her. It felt warm and snug in her pocket, and for the first time in days, she felt secure.
As she walked the several snowy blocks to the station, lost in her own thoughts, she never saw the solitary hunter limping along behind her, never heard the steel-tipped cane digging deep into the snow as she was followed from the Crystal Connection.
This hunter had spotted her first in front of the Ice Age hut built of mammoth bones and tusks twenty thousand years ago.
The hunter rode the subway out to Brooklyn Heights, got off with Jennifer, and moving ahead when she stopped to buy a small bouquet of flowers, limped off into the gathering darkness of early evening to await her arrival home.
Jennifer never bought flowers at the small subway shop, but seeing the cluster of fresh bright bouquets near the newspaper stand, she had acted on impulse and paid an exorbitant five dollars and forty cents for a half-dozen carnations. It was something, she thought, to brighten up her spirits on a dreary day.
Out on the street, she thought briefly about buying some groceries before going home, but she was suddenly afraid again of being spotted, of somehow being recognized as the “ape killer,” so instead, she buried her head in the deep collar of her fur coat and hurried home.
Also, Tom was coming over later, and she had so much to think about. He had come to accept her knowledge of David Engle’s guilt as an instinct on her part; while he still didn’t buy her story of seeing Margit, he was willing to believe that in some vaguely spiritual way, her close friendship with Margit had given her some special insight. But Jennifer wondered what he would do if she told him about Dance.
She was too tired to think about it. The fresh air was making her feel better, though. She was glad to be back in Brooklyn, and the thought of being safely inside her apartment made her smile in anticipation. She was away from the busy streets, going downhill toward the water, where the streets were darker and less congested.
She stepped between two parked cars and dug deep into her pockets, hunting with her fingers for her apartment keys, and then she stopped and stared ahead at the empty sidewalk. There was no one approaching. The dark sidewalk was shadowy but deserted. She heard nothing but the cold wind. A car passed, its tires crunching in the new snow.
Something was wrong, but she did not know what. The feeling she had was vague and unfocused, like a tiny nag at her subconscious. She was being paranoid, she told herself.
She stepped ahead, forced herself to continue down the street, still wary from her premonitions.
She walked slowly, edging away from the buildings, keeping some distance between herself and the dark front steps of the brownstones, with their small gated stoops. She kept away from the garbage cans, glanced to see that no one was crouched behind them, hiding until she got within reach.
She felt her fear. It pumped through her body, making her sweat under her layers of clothes. She loosened her fur collar and took a deep breath. She was damp under her arms, between her legs.
Then she smelled the hunter. She caught a scent in the swirling wind, and she raised her head and sniffed the air. Someone was here, somewhere in the darkness, behind a car perhaps, hidden in the shadows next to a building.
She spun around. Her primal rage swept through her, pumped rage and fear into her veins. In the gathering darkness, she dropped her fresh flowers and crouched down, growling and baring her teeth. She backed away from where she sensed the hunter was, hiding behind a cluster of metal garbage cans. She would not attack unless she was attacked. She kept moving backward, watching the dark corners of the buildings, the hidden doorways of basement apartments, the shadowy hedges. There were now, she knew by instinct, dozens of places where a person might hide from sight until ready to strike.
Snow blew against her face and blurred her vision, but she could see better now in the darkness, and she cocked her head, listening for sounds, the deep steady breathing of some animal waiting to pounce, the sudden motion of a hunter as he got her within range.
She heard the cane before it struck. She heard the thin walnut stick slice the winter air, caught a glimpse of the silver knob, and she tried to duck, but the hunter had surprised her, leaped down from the low branches of a sidewalk sycamore, and struck her in the back of the head. Jennifer was dead before her knees buckled and hit the ground.
When Amenhotep returned from Abu Simbel, Roudidit had already crossed to the other side. Amenhotep went immediately into mourning for his wife, spending the long days as custom required, in idleness, waiting for her body to be prepared for the tomb. He kept himself from thinking what the embalmers were doing to her beautiful body, how they were cutting out her brains and organs, wrapping them up in jars for burial, then filling the body with spices. It took all of three months before Roudidit was properly wrapped in bandages for burial and the funerary furniture was ready.
Amenhotep insisted on adorning her, though the first sight of her terrified him as nothing had ever frightened him in battle. Her beautiful face had shriveled and sunk, and her lips were wizened.
He stood looking down at his dear wife, wrapped in linen, with beeswax covering her eyes and ears, and whispered his farewell.
“I was a young man when I married you, and I spent my life with you. I rose to the highest rank but I never deserted you. I never caused you unhappiness. I never deserted you, from my youth to the time when I was holding all manner of important posts for Pharaoh. Nay, rather, I always said to myself, ‘She has always been my companion.’ Tell me now, what do I do?”
Amenhotep stood a moment longer, and then slowly, gently, he adorned the mummy. He covered the incision where they had removed her organs with a thick gold sheet inlaid with the oudja, the sacred eye with the power to heal wounds. Then he placed a copy of the Book of
the Dead, the guide to the underworld, between her legs, and dressed her with necklaces and amulets, as well as finger stalls for each finger and toe, rings and sandals, all for her long journey to the other bank of life. All of this was new jewelry that he had had made after her death. He had a winged scarab with the goddesses Isis and Nephthys carved as the supporters, and then engraved the back with the words, “O my heart, heart of my mother, heart of my forms, set not thyself up to bear witness against me, speak not against me in the presence of the judges, cast not thy weight against me before the Lord of the Scales. Thou are my ka in my breast, the Khnoum which gives wholeness to my limb. Speak no falsehood against me in the presence of the god!” He added other engraved scarabs, not mounted, but with hearts of lapis lazuli, and all carrying his dead wife’s name.
He had amulets and statuettes of the gods Anubis and Thoth, which he hung around her neck and attached to the pectoral. Besides the ornaments, he placed tiny reproductions of walking sticks, scepters, weapons, for he left nothing to chance in his wife’s house of eternity. The next world, he knew, was no place of peace and quiet. It was full of hidden traps and dangers, and Roudidit must be prepared for her journey.
When he was done, he stepped back and let the embalmers wrap her again in li
nen bands and place a gold mask over her face. Then, turning to him, they nodded. She was ready for the cortege.
His servants went first, carrying cakes and flowers, pottery and stone vases. Behind them came the furniture: beds and chests, cupboards, and the chariot, everything that Roudidit would need in the other world. Behind them came his wife’s jewelry, all Roudidit’s necklaces and jewels, carved human-headed birds and other valuables, displayed on dishes so the crowds would see her wealth, the wealth he had given Roudidit and which would travel now with her to the other side.
The idlers watching the procession could not see Roudidit herself. The stone sarcophagus containing her body was hidden beneath a catafalque drawn by cows and men, all of it mounted on a boat and flanked by statues of Isis and Nephthys.
The women followed, his sisters and relatives, and all the hired mourners, who had smeared their faces with mud and bared their breasts as they wailed and rent their garments, lamenting Roudidit’s departure.
At the Nile they were met by a priest with a panther’s skin draped over his shoulders. He carried with him burning incense, and the bare-breasted mourners bowed and stood back, letting the boat bearing the catafalque be lowered into the water.
Amenhotep, too, stood aside, and watched in silence as the catafalque was launched into the Nile River. He stood thinking of his wife, of when they were young and first in love. She had been promised to an Ethiopian monarch, and he to Tamit, the daughter of Nenoferkaptak. He had beseeched Pharaoh, and the gods had said he could marry Roudidit if he won her in battle, if he defeated the Ethiopian and brought the kingdom of Kush as ransom. He had gone off to do battle with an army of Nubians fully armed with coats of mail, swords, and chariots. And when he reached Egypt again, he drafted the Nubians into his army, gave them command of the archers and leaders of their people, and branded them all slaves under the seal of his name. And Pharaoh, seeing the wealth he had gathered, gave him Roudidit to wed.
He had never loved another woman in his life, and he knew now he would never love another, though already he had been offered the young sister of his brother’s wife. He was too old, Amenhotep knew, to let another come into his heart.
As the boat bearing the catafalque slipped away from shore, he and the mourners stepped into a second vessel to follow close behind, accompanied by two boats full of Roudidit’s possessions. The women went at once to the roof of the cabin and continued to cry, sobbing in the direction of the catafalque. Their dirge carried across the wide river:
Let Roudidit go swiftly to the west, to the land of truth.
The women of the Byblite boat weep sorely, sorely.
In peace, in peace, O praised one, fare westward in peace.
If it please the god, when the day changes to
eternity,
we shall see thee that goest now to the land where
all men are one.
From the eastern shore came the reply from others, wishing their farewells, their voices carrying clearly over the calm Nile:
To the west, to the west, the land of the just.
The place thou didst love groans and laments.
Amenhotep stepped to the bow of the boat, into the hot Nile sun, and shouted in the direction of the catafalque, to where his lost wife lay wrapped in her scented linens:
O my sister, o my wife, o my friend!
Stay, rest in thy place, leave not the place where thou dost abide.
Alas, thou goest hence to cross the Nile.
O you sailors, hasten not, let her be:
Ye shall return to your houses,
but Roudidit is going to the land of eternity.
When he had sung the dirge, he moved again into the shade of the cabin and out of the blazing sun. The cries and laments of the female mourners rose up, filling the air, but he turned toward the western shore and saw that a group had already gathered on the sand bank. A number of little stalls had been set up to sell goods, food, and devotional objects.
Everyone profits from the crossing over, Amenhotep thought, everyone but myself. I am the one who has lost his world.
She had almost died once, in childbearing when they were first married, and he had prayed to the goddess Hathor, the Lady of Imaou and of the Sycamore, to save Roudidit’s life and that of his newborn son. And then the baby had cried “Mbi” and turned his face to the earth, and Amenhotep knew then that nothing but evil would prevail. And he had taken his son out then, and without naming the boy, without entering it in the House of Life, killed the infant, before more harm could come to his family.
She had never given birth to another child.
The four boats were docked and unloaded, and the procession was gradually reformed. They moved up the bank and away from the booths, following behind the catafalque, which, across the flat, cultivated land, was being hauled on a sledge by two cows. Ahead of them all was the priest, sprinkling water from a ewer.
There was only the funeral procession now, all the elders had fallen away, left behind at the bank. Amenhotep moved ahead to greet the goddess Hathor, who, in the shape of a cow, emerged from a clump of papyrus at the entrance of the tomb.
The catafalque was brought to the entrance and the sarcophagus removed. He stepped to the sarcophagus and placed a scented cone on its head, as if greeting a guest in his own home. Behind him, the female mourners began again to weep and beat their heads in anguish. There were more priests now, coming forward with bread and jugs of beer, as well as an adze, the curved knife shaped like an ostrich feather, and a palette ending in two scrolls.
All these, he knew, were objects to empower the priests to counteract the effects of the embalming, to restore his dead wife on the other side so she could use her limbs and her missing organs, so she could see, could open her mouth and speak, could eat and move once again.
The long months of mourning, of suffering his losses, were over.
Amenhotep cried out, “O my sister, it is thy husband, Amenhotep, that speaks. Leave me not! Dost thou wish that I should be parted from thee? If I depart thou wilt be alone, and none will be left to follow thee. Though thou wast wont to be merry with me, now thou art silent and speakest not.”
He turned away from the women and stepped down into the tomb, down to the square stone receptacle that had been carved out, and watched as his servants carried his wife and lowered her into place. He placed Roudidit’s amulets beside her, then moved away so that the heavy stone lid could be set in place. The jars containing her organs had been put in a chest, and this chest was set down in the tomb by the priests; the funeral furniture had been arranged, and then boxes of oushebtiou, the small statuettes of all her loved ones, were placed in the vault.
He moved out of the tomb, back into the brilliant sunlight of midday. The priests came out, still sprinkling water, and the masons moved to wall up the entrance of the tomb.
Before him, in the sunlight, Amenhotep could see that food for the mourners had been placed out in the courtyard of the building that he had constructed, years before, above the tomb.
He walked through a small garden of sycamores and palm trees and sat in one of the newly decorated rooms of the building. He had always thought that Roudidit would be the one to sit there when he crossed over to the other world. He had never thought that he would be the one left behind on earth.
A harpist came forward from the entrance and thanked all of the mourners for coming, singing that Roudidit was happy in the world beyond. Another harpist picked up the melancholy strain, and sang:
Men’s bodies have gone to the grave
since the beginning of time and a new generation
taketh their place.
As long as Re shall rise in the morning and Atum
shall set in the west, man shall beget and woman
conceive and breath shall be in men’s nostrils.
Yet each that is bom returns at the last to his
appointed place.
The song was not meant for Roudidit, Amenhotep knew, but for hi
m. The gods were telling him that he must go on with his life, that his lovely wife was safe and happy in the land of the west, and that he must turn to human concerns.
He smiled and motioned his servant to pour him wine, to bring him food, and he noticed that his sisters smiled at his sudden enthusiasm. Then he stood and raised his cup to his lips, and over the cool rim, he studied one woman, a maidservant, who had come to beat her breast, rend her garments, and mourn the passing over of his wife to the other side.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
JENNIFER SAW HERSELF FLOATING above her body. She was dead, she realized, but the thought caused her no pain or fear. She felt only free and oddly happy. All her guilt was gone. She regretted nothing. She missed no one. Not Tom. She would have liked to have said good-bye, but that was all.
How wonderful death was. Why did people fear it? She watched the team of doctors hovering over her body, inserting tubes and needles. She felt nothing. She had always been so afraid of injections, but now she smiled, and her smile bubbled up into a laugh. It was as if she had drunk too much and was losing control. But now there was no control to lose.
The doctors were blocking the view of her face, and she moved into a different position. It seemed as if she were hang gliding, surrounded by the silence of the wind. Doctors and nurses were shouting to each other. She was aware of their urgency, but she didn’t listen. The details they were discussing no longer mattered to her. It was so much easier to have died this way, without any pain, without any long illness, without having to see her life slip away year after year as she grew older. She had died young, that’s all. It was no big deal.
And then she felt pain. A wedge of excruciating pain took her breath away. She saw her face on the table reflect it.
“It’s not time, Jennifer,” a voice said, a voice that she recognized although it had been years since she heard it.
