The Book of the Dead (21 page)

I no longer saw a visionary. I saw nothing but a tired old man, deluded and afraid of death. “Listen to me, Nikolai Fyodorovich – Iskander the Giant
ate people’s bone
s. Don’t you see? Whatever Iskander has become, he is
feeding
on us. Perhaps the more he can feed, the further he can venture from the garden. Perhaps the force you’re seeking is not in the garden, but in Iskander – in whatever his touch infects. Think if he makes it to Ashkabad! Kazan! Even Moscow! It would be a plague like nothing mankind has ever seen – with Iskander at its head. We must leave this monster to its prison!”

In Tiflis I had considered my life stale and unprofitable, myself a person born out of his time, doomed to a pointless and superficial existence and a meaningless death. But I had not appreciated by what a thin thread all that I considered solid and wholesome truly hung – and how easily it could be dashed away. Now I had something to fight for – a world in which I had the luxury of mooning around like a spleen-stricken Russian hero, rather than this nightmarish existence as a hunted beast, fearing death at every turn.

I held my hand out to Fyodorov, feeling his old gnarled fingers locking into mine, and hauled him to his feet.

My arm was still painful from where I had wrenched it from Iskander’s icy grasp, yet I shouldered a pack of what weapons I could, and gave one to Fyodorov with enough provisions to carry us from the glacier. I had intended to leave everything else, but at the last moment I opened the small case of dynamite Krepkin had carried with him, and withdrew two sticks. Perhaps some presentiment of what was to come steered my hand, I do not know.

Fyodorov needed furs, having given his to Iskander, and there was now only one source. In the quarantine tent, as Fyodorov robed himself, we stared in horror at our two erstwhile comrades.

“Poor devils,” said Fyodorov, making the sign of the cross.

“I do not think it is them any more,” I replied, seeing the feral glimmer in Arkady’s eyes, bound to the cot next to the now unconscious Krepkin. “The contagion has robbed them of their humanity, yet will not let them die. Even you would have difficulty persuading the world the path to resurrection and eternal life lay on that path, Nikolai Fyodorovich.”

Fyodorov said nothing, shrinking into his voluminous furs. His face had lost its child-like luminosity, and now looked old, as though its hope too had died.

As we climbed the vertiginous cliff to the ice cave, I beheld an unmistakable figure stride out from the woodland below us and begin its ascent.

“In God’s name... he is following us.” Fyodorov stared down the drop, his face hollow with fear.

I knew then what instinct had made me pause by Krepkin’s armoury in the camp. It had not been an accident.

“Come, Nikolai Fyodorovich,” I said. “We haven’t much time.”

“The storm seems to be abating!” I shouted, from the far side of the ice caves an hour or more later. “I think we can make it down!” The snow had eased, though the eternal wind blew as chill as ever, and a roseate haze brushed the lower reaches of the glacier with a promise of shelter.

Fyodorov had remained behind in the cave, in a flurry of wind-driven snowflakes, shapeless and small in his furs. I realised then he was watching me, making up his mind.

“Don’t be a fool, Nikolai Fyodorovich,” I called from the mouth of the cave. “The dynamite will blow any minute – this whole place could collapse. Iskander is behind us!”

Still he vacillated. “What if we’re wrong, Dmitry Mikhailovich? I can’t leave him! I can’t turn my back on all this! What keeps him alive? This is too precious to run from...” He threw the backpack of food to me across the cavern floor.

“Fyodorov!” I shouted. “He will kill you – or worse!”

Fyodorov shook his head. “Think of all the people who have ever lived, Dmitry Mikhailovich! Buried, underground. What if they are still alive, in some unspeakable way, like Iskander was in the sarcophagus? Lying in dark empty silence, waiting for some sacrifice...”

A huge shadow loomed out of the blizzard behind him. But Fyodorov did not see it, instead looking horrified in my direction. “Dmitry Mikhailovich – your arm!” he cried – then the shadow engulfed him.

There was a scream, broken off by a thunderous explosion.

I was found, half-mad and covered in blood, wandering on the windswept pamir below the glaciers. I do not know how many days had passed. A Kirghiz shepherd took pity on me, and delivered me to the Badakhshani tribes who inhabit the villages on the Panj, the native name for the headwaters of the Oxus, here at the roof of the world.

It was many days again before I could think of what had happened.

How I wish now I had not given in to my eternal curiosity! How I wish we had left unsleeping that which should never awaken.

My mind wanders. There are periods of time where I have no memory – yet I have moved, eaten, acted, as though controlled by a baser brain. The wound on my arm which Fyodorov saw has healed, yet there is a greyness about the scar, a necrotic nigrescence which leaves me in little doubt.

I wonder if endless days of animal mindlessness await me? Perhaps I too will flee to the heights, to be the savage
almas
, the snowman of legend? Krepkin’s revolver lies on the table before me, but I do not know if I shall have the courage – or if some power will prevent me. I put this down as a warning; even if they entomb me alive in their forbidding fanes on the windswept glaciers –
do not follow
!

We have left the Garden, and are not meant to return.

***

AUTHOR’S NOTE: Nikolai Fyodorov, the modest founder of the Cosmist school and now widely regarded as the father of transhumanism, frequently visited his friend and colleague Nikolai Pavlovich Peterson during his tenure as district judge in Ashkabad. He enthusiastically proposed an expedition to the distant Pamir Mountains to seek “ancestral dust” in what he believed was the lost Garden of Eden, although he never made the journey himself. He died in 1903.

The crinkle around her eyes that cracks your heart each time you see it, when she smiles and the lines that appear around her mouth turn up, but you can’t tell her about them because, not that she’s vain, but she wouldn’t want to be reminded. Your wedding, the long lost friends there, the toast to your dead father that had you in tears. The Birthright trip to Israel. The politics that you couldn’t agree with, hiding the suffering and the wall. The sight of the scuffle at the border, four armed guards taking down one man, protesting an Arabic you could not speak, but his body language and tone of voice clear, begging “What have I done?”

The first time you held her hand, electricity across your fingertips. She liked Ghostbusters. The first time you saw her, all the assumptions, carefully deconstructed over the rest of term. Economics didn’t mean that she was looking to trade junk bonds after all. The crushing loneliness of your arrival in New Haven, colder in October than San Francisco in February. Everyone so self-assured in khaki and navy, new cars and coded words about sailing, lacrosse, golf. You want to tell yourself: She won’t be like that. Give her a chance, but it’s too late, and you’re sliding back into school and the friendships cemented there. And there’s you, but you’re not you, you’re there, so who are you? A funeral, with you there next to you. The images are moving quickly now. A dog, suffering, playing in the park, top marks again – well done – and the burning shame of having wet your pants and stomping in puddles to try to hide it but when it dried you could still feel it on you. A puppy, crawling over you, mommy warning you off.

Your life in crumbs, revealed, advertisements coming at you hard and fast, crackling like lightning across your fingers: ads for condoms rise towards you, stall, are replaced with ads for pregnancy tests and prenatal vitamins. You sneer and the blue lightning rising up your arms, wrapping holding seeking purchase finding orifices and eyes and sneaking in mind body soul.

5AM on the clock, and the phone was ringing.

“Tom.” Elizabeth. She could barely speak, just whispers down a bad international line. “I just got a call. Henry’s dead.”

Shit.

Henry. The smart guy – but never lording it over you. The nice guy – dropping everything to come help, whenever called, however trivial. He’d bailed people out of jail, no questions asked, even though they’d stolen his comic collection from him to sell for drug money. He loved those comic books, but he loved people more. They were humans, unique and irreplaceable. Stuff was just stuff.

One night in college I phoned him freaking out about a paper on constructionist theory. He dropped everything, came over and helped me out with it. The paper wasn’t really the thing, though: I just couldn’t focus on it. I was freaking out because this girl I’d finally worked up the courage to ask out had turned me down. Very gently, but that was worse. She’d said that she’d just started dating someone. She’d said it like she’d been waiting for me.

Henry, though, wasn’t bothered. He came over, untangled my thoughts on the paper then pulled out a flask of bourbon and poured it into the old coffee.

Didn’t say anything. He just sat there, and the whole thing just came out. I was a bit blubbery and horrible, but he didn’t patronise, he just cared.

I never did enough to show him that I cared too.

“Liz, I’ll do whatever you need, OK? You don’t need to worry about it. How can I help?”

“He’s in Egypt. Cairo. His body. Can you go?”

“Of course, but... what’s he doing in Cairo?”

“He... I don’t know. I... I’m just... The phone...”

Stupid question, Thomas. Idiot. Your friend is dead and you’re winding up his widow. She’s probably just heard.

“Oh, god, sorry, of course it’s no bother, Liz. Christ, I’m 10 hours closer than you. I’m on my way to Heathrow now, OK? I’ll sort out whatever needs sorting.”

He was a friend. He was my friend. He was a good friend. The best. And now he was gone.

OK, maybe no one’s that good. Maybe I’m making more out of him than he really was. Showing respect for the dead. He was still a good man, and he didn’t deserve to die, alone in Cairo, his wife ten thousand miles away.

Firm hands take you, arrange you, order you, flow over your body with water and soap, wine and fragrant oils that you cannot smell, reach into orifices, draining, cleaning anus, mouth, nose.

Hammering at the back of the nose and reading, flashing memories, frozen, static, never to be removed, edited, rewritten, facts – textures scents feelings doubts erased and forced out.

Suction at the nose, sucking out life experience learning expression opinion thought word deed – a riot of colour and information: birthdays – the Millennium Falcon you played with ‘til it fell apart; presents loved and unloved – a wooden train you only now remember, your teeth marks on the red smokestacks.

You cling to these memories, praying they don’t leave.

A jolt drags you back, cold air blowing in your face, men in suits around you, men in uniforms with guns awaiting you. “Welcome to Egypt” across the intercom.

Last minute flights to Egypt are cheaper than you’d expect. £400. 5 hours. The cost of making Henry’s death real.

The first flight to Egypt left in the afternoon. The departure lounge at Heathrow had nothing but a four-year-old backpacker’s guide. I bought it anyway.

Henry’d died somewhere in Cairo. I didn’t know anything about the city. I didn’t even know how to get a taxi, or if taxis worked in these revolutionary times.

My phone took on a life of its own in the crazy series of queues for passport control – emails, Facebook messages, tweets, and texts flooded it. It was frozen for a good ten minutes while I tapped my foot, impatient in the face of revolutionary bureaucracy. I managed to extract the most important bits of information from my struggling phone. Henry’d been at the City View hotel, which apparently was right on Tahrir Square. Typical Henry, wanting to be right in the middle of things. The guidebook described it as a down-at-heel older hotel, fairly backpacker- and journalist-friendly. Good value for money, and right on Tahrir, with easy access to Mubarak Station, for those willing to brave the Metro (watch your wallet, etc.). Surely that had changed now.

I let a tout usher me into a taxi and had it take me straight there. I assumed that I’d overpay for the taxi, the hotel, for everything, but that I would get a room there. Maybe get a sense of where Henry’s mind had been.

Flushing in and out, digging to find the deepest memories. Diapers overflowing at the sight of a fire truck. Mother and father fighting. Playing in a cardboard box at Christmas. Ma ma ma – smile. Eight men surround you with a bright light and a sharp pain. Susie Richards asking you to dance, in your orange plaid trousers; you turned her down and now you remember the burning regret that night, the next night, and how you buried it behind your shame.

The text messages, taken together, made no sense:

“City View Hotel, Tahrir Square. Details & address in email. Will email reservation”.

“Police aware of situation, but won’t give case number”.

“Something’s gone funny with Henry’s Facebook. If there’s a hacker I’m going to find him and kill him. Slowly.”

“Seriously. Check out Henry’s Facebook. As soon as you get this. Call me. Please. With any information.”

I made a valiant attempt to get on Facebook while the taxi alternated between blistering speed and near-total stasis, punctuated with little creeps to the right and left, desperate for any advantage. It was ridiculous.

No proper access to Facebook. Was it the dry heat? Problems with the revolution? Screw it. Email? Some messages of condolences from work, a somehow nice-yet-rude message from HR suggesting a discussion “regarding your paid time off in this unusual situation on your return”, details of Henry’s hotel; the name and number of an English-speaking contact at the police, along with the address of the station; he would almost certainly not be in until the morning.

Then there were the Facebook notifications. God, you turn them off and then they add them back with each new feature. I both love and hate Facebook. It’s been useful – Henry and I were separated for years, but we’d reconnected. The envy of people from high school and college – living in London, working for various “cool” companies, no kids. I got to see all theirs, though. Depressing. Even Gabrielle, my unrequited-except-for-one-drunken-kiss crush. She’d squeezed out a few kids, with her grey-haired perfectly ordinary husband. A cardigan would have added character to him.

A bunch of Henry’s photos had me freshly tagged. That was weird.

The back of this taxi was completely non-conducive to actual browsing – it kept timing out. I shuffled on to Henry’s page, and there were hundreds of “Going to miss you, bro” posts. Testimonials. People giving real accounts about how Henry had saved them. Late night lifts, all-hours commiserations, and the inevitable bail stories.

“Sir, my friend,” the driver was saying “Protest today, but look, ahead, you can see the hotel. Protest is safe, yes? No army here. Just get to hotel, you see? 100 metres, no further.” The taxi had been snarled in the traffic jam leading to the same Tahrir I’d seen on the television so many times, blue hoardings surrounding some government ministry building that the revolution had burned on the left.

200 Egyptian pounds to the driver, surely overpaying. I wheeled my single bag down past the colourful hopeful young faces - their chanting Arabic echoing across the square that held the world’s attention for the last two years. Ornate colonial architecture on the other side, all lying under a layer of tan dust. The sand that covered everything.

I still didn’t even know how Henry had died.

A stabbing, a small pain down your left side. You know rationally that it should hurt but it doesn’t, doesn’t disturb the mind, though you feel it should. Juices leak, leaving trails to be washed again and again, but you don’t move. Probing fingers, spreading, gently, exploring your insides, finding liver, intestines, stomach, lungs, heart, exploring friendships, relationships, protection. Late at night with peaty whisky, smoke curling from your fingertips, epistemology dripping from your lips, exposing the fakes with withering sarcasm. Tom and you clasping hands afterwards, despite your having taken him down. Respect.

“Good evening, Sir. Welcome to Cairo. How can I help you?”

“Hello there. My name is Thomas O’Connell. I’m here about Henry Blodgett. He was a guest here but...” My throat caught on the word “died”.

“Yes, sir, your wife has emailed and we have booked you into a room. We can have Mr. Blodgett’s bags brought to your room if you would like?”

Not my wife. Henry’s wife. He doesn’t have bags any more. I do. He doesn’t. A bit much, me, handling Liz, handling Henry’s bag, handling... too much. “Sure. Bring them round.”

Sitting in my hotel room at the rudimentary desk, pressboard with wood-grain stickers on it, trying to ignore the monolith of Henry’s bags looming behind me in the corner.

I pulled up Facebook and looked at the tribute wall for Henry, on his profile, and then it all hit me. I had no comments to make. No photos to post. Nothing to answer the question “What’s on your mind?” except “I miss my friend”. A child’s plaintive voice in my head, refusing to accept the idea of death.

Some part of me thought about photographing Henry’s luggage looming behind me, post it in memoriam, join the conversation, but I just couldn’t. It didn’t seem right. What I was supposed to do? How was I was supposed to react? What to do, but sit there, hitting refresh, not posting anything, but watching tributes pile up.

I crawled into bed with the sounds of revolution outside, the chanting, counterpoint to my sobbing, lulling me to sleep.

Exploration. Removal. Analysis. Cleaning. Spreading of the self. Wine and water, wine and water, again and again, and packed under, inside, outside with stinging solids.

The bite of a lip, eyes averted across the room. The smell of a new puppy, all brown and wriggling and wet kisses. Stiffness and cold awakening on grass, all drifting into the distance, joining, catalogued, indexed.

Awake, again, to my phone ringing. Nearly seven.

“Hello?”

“Tom. It’s Liz. Is everything OK?”

“Liz. Jesus. Sorry, it took an age to get here, and I’d no information to share, and then it just all... it hit me, and I...”

“Tom. Listen.” Her voice was really anxious, and deep, like when you’ve cried all the colour out of it. “Get on Facebook. Do it.”

“I’m already on it – I was reading Henry’s wall when...”

“Listen to me.” I could hear her biting her nails as she spoke to me, finding any bit that wasn’t torn off. Probably bleeding from some fingertips. “Go to his photo albums.”

“Sure, Liz. Slow internet here, it’ll just take a second.” I was worried about her. “Have you slept at all, Liz? Everything OK?”

“Tom. Listen to me. My husband is dead, no one can tell me why, and weird shit is going on, OK? No, I am not OK. I am both as OK and not OK as I can be. Yes, I’m biting my nails, and no, I’m not drinking. Not yet. I will soon. I’m sure there will be some Xanax or something in my near future, and therapy in the mid-term, but just help me out here, will you?”

“You got it, Liz.” That was Liz. She worked really well with Henry. She’d let him bail folks out of jail, but not too many, and wouldn’t let him spend all their money. If she was freaked out, something was up.

“Look at his albums. Everything’s been rearranged. There’s are four new albums, with most of his photos are in them. They’re all there, but it’s weird. I got a slew of those emails saying I’d been tagged in them, and it’s all over the place.”

“Liz, you don’t think... look, I work in tech, right? Could it be a coincidence? There’s some sort of face-recognition thing going on. Maybe it was a new feature, or a badly timed test?”

“Just look, will you?”

It was like she’d said – there were four new albums. Kebenshef, some kind of bird of prey; Dumtef, a scrawny dog, like a German Shepherd, but scrawny, without the power; Hapy, a scraggly monkey; and Mesti, a picture of someone in kitschy “Egyptian” costume as their cover photo. What on earth was going on?