by Anne Rice
"You don't know what you're saying."
He bent forward, his voice dropping to the most intimate whisper. "I love you, Julie. Everything else in my life I take for granted. But not you. And you're more precious to me than all the rest put together. Julie, I mean to fight for you, if that's what must be done."
What could she possibly say to him that would not wound him? He looked up suddenly. Ramses and Samir were here.
For a moment, she was speechless. Ramses was a vision in her father's white boiled shirt and beautifully cut tailcoat. As he took his seat, his every gesture seemed more graceful and more decorous than those of the Englishmen around him. He veritably glistened with vigor and well-being. The smile he flashed was like a light.
Then something happened. He stared at Julie's bare shoulders, at the plunging neck of her gown. He stared in particular at the tiny shadow between her half-naked breasts. And Alex stared at Ramses hi polite outrage. And Samir, taking a seat to the left of the Earl, was obviously already alarmed.
She must do something. Still staring at her, as if he'd never laid eyes on a woman before, Ramses took the chair on her left.
Quickly, she opened his napkin for him, whispering:
"Here, in your lap. And stop staring at me. It's a ball gown, quite proper!" She turned at once to Samir opposite. "Samir, I'm so glad you could make this journey with us."
"Yes, and here we are," Elliott said immediately, filling the silence. "All having dinner together exactly as I'd planned. Isn't mat marvelous! Seems I got my way after ah1."
"So you did." Julie laughed. She was relieved suddenly that Elliott was there. He would smooth over one awkward moment after another; he did it instinctively. In fact, he probably couldn't stop himself. It was this buoyant charm among other things which kept him perpetually in demand.
She dared not look directly at Henry, but she could see he was hopelessly uneasy. He was already drinking. His glass was half full.
The waiters brought the sherry now, and the soup. Ramses had already reached for the bread. He had torn off a very large piece from the small loaf and eaten it whole.
"And tell me, Mr. Ramsey," Elliott continued, "how did you enjoy your stay in London? You weren't with us very long."
Why the hell was Ramses smiling?
"I found it an overwhelming place," he said with immediate enthusiasm. "A curious blending of fierce wealth and inexplicable poverty. I do not understand how so many machines can produce so much for so few, and so little for so many. . . ."
"Sir, you're questioning the entire Industrial Revolution," Alex said, laughing nervously, which for him was most certainly a symptom of ill ease. "Don't tell me you're a Marxist. It's rather seldom that we encounter radicals in our circle."
"What is a Marxist! I am an Egyptian," Ramses said.
"Of course you are, Mr. Ramsey," said Elliott smoothly. "And you're no Marxist. How perfectly ridiculous. You knew our Lawrence in Cairo?"
"Our Lawrence. Briefly I knew him." Ramses was staring at Henry. Julie quickly lifted her soup spoon and, giving him a gentle nudge with her elbow, demonstrated how the soup was to be eaten. He didn't so much as glance at her. He picked up his bread, dipped it in the soup and began eating it, glaring at Henry again.
"Lawrence's death came as a shock to me, as I'm sure it did to everyone," he said, dipping another enormous piece of bread. "A Marxist is a type of philosopher? I do remember a Karl Marx. I discovered this person in Lawrence's library. A fool."
Henry had not touched his soup. He drank another deep gulp of his Scotch and motioned for the waiter.
"It's unimportant," Julie said quickly.
"Yes, Lawrence's death was a terrible shock," Elliott said soberly. "I was sure he had another good ten years. Maybe twenty.''
Ramses was dipping yet another enormous piece of the bread into the soup. And Henry was now staring at him with veiled horror, careful to avoid his eyes. Everyone was more or less quietly watching Ramses, who wiped up the very last of the soup now with another chunk of bread, and then downed the sherry, and wiped his lips with the napkin and sat back.
"More food," he whispered. "It's coming?"
"Yes, it is, but slow down," Julie whispered.
"You were a true friend of Lawrence?" Ramses said to Elliott.
"Absolutely," said Elliott.
"Yes, well, if he were here, he'd be talking about his beloved mummy," said Alex with that same nervous laugh. "As a matter of fact, why are you taking this trip, Julie? Why go back to Egypt when the mummy lies there in London waiting for examination? You know, I don't really understand. ..."
"The collection's opened several avenues of research," Julie said. "We want to go to Alexandria and then perhaps Cairo. . . ."
"Yes, of course," Elliott said. He was clearly watching Ramses' reaction as the waiter set down the fish before him, a small portion in a delicate cream sauce. "Cleopatra," he went on, ' 'your mysterious Ramses the Second claimed to have loved and lost her. And that happened in Alexandria, did it not?"
Julie had not seen this coming. Neither had Ramses, who had laid down his bread and was staring at the Earl with a blank expression on his face. There came those dancing points of color beneath the smooth skin of his cheeks.
"Well, yes, there is that aspect of it," Julie struggled. "And then we're going to Luxor, and to Abu Simbel. I hope you're all in fine form for an arduous journey. Of course if you don't want to continue ..."
"Abu Simbel," Alex said. "Isn't that where the colossal statues are of Ramses the Second?''
Ramses broke off half the fish with his fingers and ate it. Then he ate the second half. A curious smile had broken out on Elliott's face, but Ramses didn't see it. He was staring at Henry again. Julie was going to start screaming.
"Statues of Ramses the Great are everywhere, actually," Elliott said, watching Ramses mop up the sauce with the bread. "Ramses left more monuments to himself than any other Pharaoh."
"Ah, that's the one. I knew it," said Alex. "The egomaniac of Egyptian history. I remember now, from school."
"Egomaniac!" Ramses said with a grimace. "More bread!" he said to the waiter. Then to Alex: "What is an egomaniac? If you please?"
"Aspirin, Marxism, egomania," Elliott said. "These are all new ideas to you, Mr. Ramsey?"
Henry was becoming positively agitated. He had drunk the second glass of Scotch and now sat plastered to the back of his chair, merely staring at Ramses' hands as he ate.
"Oh, you know," Alex said blithely. "The fellow was a great braggart. He built monuments to himself all over the place. He bragged endlessly about his victories, his wives and his sons! So that's the mummy, and all this time I didn't realize."
"What in the world are you talking about!" Julie said suddenly.
"Is there any other Egyptian King in history who won so many victories," Ramses said heatedly, "and pleasured so many wives, and fathered so many sons? And surely you understand that in erecting so many statues, the Pharaoh was giving to his people exactly what they wanted."
"Now, that's a novel view!" Alex said sarcastically, laying down his knife and fork. "You don't mean the slaves enjoyed being flogged to death in the burning sun to build all those temples and colossal statues?"
"Slaves, flogged to death in the hot sun?" Ramses asked. "What are you saying! This did not happen!" He turned to Julie.
"Alex, that's merely one theory of how the monuments were completed," she said. "No one really knows ..."
"Well, I know," Ramses said.
"Everyone has his theory!" Julie said, raising her voice slightly and glaring at Ramses.
"Well, for heaven's sake," Alex said, "the man built enormous statues of himself from one end of Egypt to another. You can't tell me the people wouldn't have been a lot happier tending their flowerbeds. ..."
"Young man, you are most strange!" said Ramses. "What do you know about the people of Egypt? Slaves, you speak of slaves when your slums are filled with starving children. The people wante
d the monuments. They took pride in their temples. When the Nile overflowed its banks there could be no work in the fields; and the monuments became the passion of the nation. Labor wasn't forced. It didn't have to be. The Pharaoh was as a god, and he had to do what his people expected of him."
"Surely you're sentimentalizing it a bit," said Elliott, but he was plainly fascinated.
Henry had turned white. He was no longer moving at all. His fresh glass of Scotch stood untouched.
"Not in the least," Ramses argued. "The people of Egypt were proud of Ramses the Great. He drove back the enemies; he conquered the Hittites; he maintained the peace in Upper and Lower Egypt for sixty-four years of his reign! What other Pharaoh ever brought such tranquility to the land of the great river! You know what happened afterwards, don't you?"
"Reginald," Julie said under her breath, "does this really matter so much!"
"Well, apparently it matters to your father's friend," said Elliott. "I suspect the ancient Kings were perfect tyrants. I suspect they beat their subjects to death if they didn't work on those absurd monuments. The pyramids, how for example-"
"You are not so stupid, Lord Rutherford," said Ramses. "You are ... how do you say ... baiting me. Were Englishmen whipped in the streets when they built your St. Paul's or Westminster Abbey? The Tower of London, this is the work of slaves?"
"No one knows these answers," Samir said meekly. "Perhaps we should attempt to-"
"There's a great deal of truth in what you say," Elliott said, ignoring Samir. "But with regard to the great Ramses, you must admit, he was an exceptionally immodest ruler. The stele which brag of his accomplishments are laughable."
"Sir, really," Samir said.
"They are nothing of the sort," said Ramses. "This was the style of the times, the way the people wanted their ruler to represent himself. Don't you understand? The ruler was the people. For the people to be great, the ruler had to be great! The ruler was the slave of the people when it came to their wishes, then-needs, their welfare."
"Oh, surely you don't mean the old fellow was a martyr!" Alex scoffed. Never had Julie seen him so aggressive.
"Perhaps it's not possible for a modern mind to comprehend an ancient mind so easily," Elliott conceded. "I wonder if the opposite is true. Whether a man of ancient times, brought to life again, in this era, could understand our values."
"You're not so difficult to understand," Ramses said. "You've learned to express yourselves too well for anything to remain veiled or mysterious. Your newspapers and books tell everything. Yet you are not so different from your ancient ancestors. You want love, you want comfort; you want justice. That is what the Egyptian farmer wanted when he went out to till his fields. That is what the laborers of London want. And as always the rich are jealous of what they possess. And greed leads to high crimes as it always has."
He turned his eyes mercilessly on Henry, who was now staring back at him directly. Julie looked in desperation to Samir.
' 'Why, you speak of this era as if you have nothing to do with it!" Alex said.
"So what you're saying," Elliott said, "is that we're no better and no worse than the ancient Egyptian.''
Henry reached for his drink and suddenly knocked it over. Then he reached for the wine and drank it down. His white face was now moist all over. His lower lip was trembling. He looked for all the world like a man about to be seriously ill.
"No, that is not what I'm saying," Ramses said thoughtfully. "You are better. Better in a thousand ways. And yet you're still human. You haven't found all the answers yet. Electricity, telephones, these are lovely magic. But the poor go unfed. Men kill for what they cannot gain by their own labor. How to share the magic, the riches, the secrets, that is still the problem."
"Ah, there you have it. Marxism, 1 told you," Alex said. "Well, at Oxford they told us Ramses the Second was a bloody tyrant."
"Be quiet, Alex," said Elliott dismissively. He turned to Ramses. "Why does this concern you so, these questions of greed and power?"
"Oxford? What is Oxford?" Ramses asked, glancing at Alex. Then he stared again at Henry, and Henry moved his chair abruptly backwards. He appeared to be hanging on to the table as if to steady himself. The waiters, meantime, had taken the fish away and were setting down the roast chicken and potatoes. Someone poured another drink for Henry, which he emptied at once.
"You're going to be ill," Elliott said to him under his breath.
"Wait a minute," Alex said. "You've never heard of Oxford!"
"No, what is it?" Ramses asked.
"Oxford, egomania, aspirin, Marxism," Elliott said. "Your head is in the clouds, Mr. Ramsey."
"Yes, like that of a colossal statue!" Ramses smiled.
"But you're still a Marxist," Alex said.
"Alex, Mr. Ramsey is not a Marxist!" Julie said, unable any longer to contain her rage.' 'And as I recall, your favorite subject at Oxford was sports, wasn't it? Boat races and football? You've never studied Egyptian history or Marxism, am I right?"
"Yes, darling. I don't know a thing about ancient Egypt," he conceded, a bit crestfallen. "But there is that poem, Mr. Ramsey, that poem about Ramses the Great by Shelley. You have heard it, have you not? Let's see, some damnable old teacher made me memorize it."
"Perhaps we should return to the question of the journey," Samir said, "It shall be very hot in Luxor. Perhaps you will want to go only as far as-"
"Yes, and the reasons for the journey," Elliott said. "Are you investigating the claims made by 'the mummy'?"
"What claims? " Julie asked weakly. "I don't know what you mean specifically. ..."
"You know. You told me yourself," Elliott answered. "And then there was your father's notebook, which I read, at your behest. The mummy's claim to be immortal, to have lived and loved Cleopatra."
Ramses looked down at his plate. Deftly he broke off a joint of the chicken and ate half of it in two quick, delicate bites.
"The museum will have to examine those texts," Samir said. "It's too early to draw conclusions."
"And is the museum content that you've left the collection locked up in Mayfair?" asked Elliott,
"Frankly," Alex said, "the whole thing sounded perfectly absurd to me. Romantic twaddle. An immortal being, living for a thousand years and then falling tragically in love with Cleopatra. Cleopatra!"
"I beg your pardon," Ramses said. He devoured the remaining chicken and wiped his fingers again. "At your famous Oxford, they said mean things about Cleopatra as well."
Alex laughed frankly and cheerfully.
"You don't have to go to Oxford to hear mean things about Cleopatra. Why, she was the trollop of the ancient world, a spendthrift, a temptress and an hysterical woman."
"Alex, I don't want to hear any more of this schoolboy history!" Julie said.
"You have many opinions, young man," Ramses said with a chilling smile. "What is your passion now? What interests you?"
There was a silence. Julie couldn't help but notice the curious expression on Elliott's face.
"Well," Alex said. "If you were an immortal-an immortal who'd once been a great King, would you have fallen in love with a woman like Cleopatra?"
"Answer the question, Alex," Julie said. "What is your passion? It's not history, not Egyptology, not government. What would you say it is that makes you want to wake up in the morning?" She could feel the blood rising in her face.
"Yes, I would have fallen in love with Cleopatra," said Ramses. "She could have charmed a god. Read between the lines of your Plutarch. The truth is there."
"And what is the truth?" Elliott asked.
"That she was a brilliant mind; she had a gift for languages and for governing which defied reason. The greatest men of the time paid court to her. Hers was a royal soul in every sense of the word. Why do you think your Shakespeare wrote about her? Why do your schoolchildren know her name?"
"Oh, come now. Divine right?" said Alex. "You sound much better when you are talking Marxist theory."
&nbs
p; "Which is what, precisely?"
"Alex," Julie said sharply. "You wouldn't know a Marxist if one punched you in the face."
"You must understand, my lord," Samir said to Alex. "We Egyptians take our history rather seriously. Cleopatra was by any standards a formidable Queen."
"Yes, well said," Ramses said. "And Egypt could use a Cleopatra now to rid it of British domination. She'd send your soldiers packing, you can be sure."
'Ah, there you see, a revolutionary. And what about the Suez Canal? I suppose she'd say 'No, thank you' for that? You do know what the Suez Canal is, don't you! Well, it was British financing that accomplished that little miracle, my friend, I hope you understand."
