Read Online The Egyptologist by Arthur Phillips - Free Book Online
Authors: Arthur Phillips
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ruling appetite—at the waitresses' trays or their buttocks, while other, alco¬ holically calmer revellers wandered down to the duck pond to com• mandeer the public pedal boats shaped as gigantic swans, or—in rolled shirtsleeves and sheer slip dresses—waded into the cool water, falling into each other's slick, goose-pimpled arms.
I stood aside, content in my natural role as an observant explorer, released, for the moment, from my duties as guest of honour, and I was happy, so very happy, when from my left, in the shadow between low- drooping willows that swayed like giant, green jellyfish, I heard my
name gruffly called. Under a dome of willow branches, as fully en• closed as if we were circus dwarves waiting for a cue to emerge from under the bearded lady's close, musty hoopskirt, I found myself pleas• antly hypnotised by the perfect, pulsing orange circle of Finneran's cigar end, illuminating at its brightest a few filaments of blue smoke (and presumably my own face), but nothing else. "Wanted to wish you good luck," said my invisible patron, and the orange circle faded to a coiled spring of dully glowing grey. "We've all taken our measure of you. Don't let us down." Orange circle swells and recedes, swells and recedes. "I never will, CC." "I'll always do what's best for my Margaret, you know, father and mother both to that little girl." "Of course, CC, of course." "Happy to have you in the family." "Many thanks." "She picked you and I approved. I picked you and she approved. Doesn't matter which, you know." "Of course, CC." Orange circle glows bright and fades. "Don't know about you English gentry, but family in our country's a serious issue." "Of course, CC." Orange circle. Pause. "Keep that in mind is all." "Of course, CC." "People counting on you, Ralph. Lot of people. Lot riding on you. Lot of trust in you." All of which was CCF's shy preamble to presenting me with this large wooden humidor inlaid with swirling black ornamentation and filled with cigars, each chosen specially by Boston's finest tobacconist and banded with the black label with silver monogram: CCF. And the
orange circle of his cigar end fades and grows, fades and grows . . .
. . . just as this morning, this dawn of 12 October, an orange light is now appearing over the Nile's eastern bank. I have spent the night working here on my balcony, sustained by gin-lemonades and sweet mint tea in glass tumblers painted gold, tracing my finger over the in• laid ebony swirls of my humidor, now containing a set of fine brushes and inks to copy the wall illustrations I hope to find in Atum-hadu's tomb. (I do not smoke cigars, but they should make fine baksheesh, and the box is lovely.) I sit on the still-warm balcony, watch my sun rise, and examine the lump of sugar half-dissolved in my tea, for all the world like the crumbling foundation stone of a temple ruin.
I shall be, in some six weeks, thirty years old, an age I have long hoped to celebrate in this, the country of my dreams, achieving, by that milestone age, the necessary unparalleled victory to justify thirty years of life. And, as I consider the party for my departure from Boston, as I consider the king who has rested undiscovered some 3500 years, I could almost wish that this moment—here on the fast-brightening bal• cony of my Cairo hotel — might never end.
I mean something more by this than merely blurting out that I do not wish to grow older, that I would prefer to be excused from blunder• ing into corpulent middle age and bleary post-prime. I mean, rather, that here, in the early summer of one's life, with preparatory glory still thrumming behind one and seismic triumph perhaps mere weeks
ahead, one desires to hear the soprano of this one particular mosquito singing in one's ear forever, to see these precise midges waver forever in their nervous indecision, hypnotised by the very sun which will soon scorch them, to feel the pinprick heat of this glass of mint tea, warming
I stood aside, content in my natural role as an observant explorer, released, for the moment, from my duties as guest of honour, and I was happy, so very happy, when from my left, in the shadow between low- drooping willows that swayed like giant, green jellyfish, I heard my
name gruffly called. Under a dome of willow branches, as fully en• closed as if we were circus dwarves waiting for a cue to emerge from under the bearded lady's close, musty hoopskirt, I found myself pleas• antly hypnotised by the perfect, pulsing orange circle of Finneran's cigar end, illuminating at its brightest a few filaments of blue smoke (and presumably my own face), but nothing else. "Wanted to wish you good luck," said my invisible patron, and the orange circle faded to a coiled spring of dully glowing grey. "We've all taken our measure of you. Don't let us down." Orange circle swells and recedes, swells and recedes. "I never will, CC." "I'll always do what's best for my Margaret, you know, father and mother both to that little girl." "Of course, CC, of course." "Happy to have you in the family." "Many thanks." "She picked you and I approved. I picked you and she approved. Doesn't matter which, you know." "Of course, CC." Orange circle glows bright and fades. "Don't know about you English gentry, but family in our country's a serious issue." "Of course, CC." Orange circle. Pause. "Keep that in mind is all." "Of course, CC." "People counting on you, Ralph. Lot of people. Lot riding on you. Lot of trust in you." All of which was CCF's shy preamble to presenting me with this large wooden humidor inlaid with swirling black ornamentation and filled with cigars, each chosen specially by Boston's finest tobacconist and banded with the black label with silver monogram: CCF. And the
orange circle of his cigar end fades and grows, fades and grows . . .
. . . just as this morning, this dawn of 12 October, an orange light is now appearing over the Nile's eastern bank. I have spent the night working here on my balcony, sustained by gin-lemonades and sweet mint tea in glass tumblers painted gold, tracing my finger over the in• laid ebony swirls of my humidor, now containing a set of fine brushes and inks to copy the wall illustrations I hope to find in Atum-hadu's tomb. (I do not smoke cigars, but they should make fine baksheesh, and the box is lovely.) I sit on the still-warm balcony, watch my sun rise, and examine the lump of sugar half-dissolved in my tea, for all the world like the crumbling foundation stone of a temple ruin.
I shall be, in some six weeks, thirty years old, an age I have long hoped to celebrate in this, the country of my dreams, achieving, by that milestone age, the necessary unparalleled victory to justify thirty years of life. And, as I consider the party for my departure from Boston, as I consider the king who has rested undiscovered some 3500 years, I could almost wish that this moment—here on the fast-brightening bal• cony of my Cairo hotel — might never end.
I mean something more by this than merely blurting out that I do not wish to grow older, that I would prefer to be excused from blunder• ing into corpulent middle age and bleary post-prime. I mean, rather, that here, in the early summer of one's life, with preparatory glory still thrumming behind one and seismic triumph perhaps mere weeks
ahead, one desires to hear the soprano of this one particular mosquito singing in one's ear forever, to see these precise midges waver forever in their nervous indecision, hypnotised by the very sun which will soon scorch them, to feel the pinprick heat of this glass of mint tea, warming
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