Voices from the Other World (4 page)

The thief was an unmixed Upper Egyptian, marked by the looks of the ancients themselves. It was clear from his dress that he was wretchedly poor. The Pasha fixed him with a vicious stare, interrogating him gruffly, “Whatever induced you to violate the sanctity of my home?”

The man replied in fervent entreaty, panting from his efforts to fight off the servants, “I was starving, Your Excellency, when I saw the cooked meat scattered on the grass. My resistance failed me—I haven't tasted meat since the Feast of the Sacrifice!”

Turning to me, the Pasha exclaimed, “Do you see the difference between your unfortunates and ours? Your poor are propelled by hunger into stealing baguettes, while ours will settle for nothing less than cooked meat.”

Then, raising his cane in the air, he wheeled back upon the thief and struck him hard on the shoulder, shouting to the servants, “Take him to the watchman!”

As the man was handed over, Dr. Pierre laughed, inquiring of the Pasha, “What will you do tomorrow if the natives get a whiff of the heaps of gold in the treasure of Shaykh Jadallah?”

The Pasha replied instantly, “I'll surround it with a wall of sentries, like the Maginot Line!”

We—the Pasha and I—bade the others farewell, and I followed him silently to where Shaykh Jadallah seemed about to transform himself into a great archaeologist. He was a man completely absorbed in his work—he and his helpers alike. They hacked at the earth with their hoes, lifting the dirt with baskets and throwing it aside. Shaykh Jadallah—his eyes flashing with a sharp gleam of hope and resolve, his scrawny arms charged with an unnatural strength—was nearing his goal, to which his divine insight had guided him. To me, his anomalous person represented Man in his activity, in his belief, and in his illusions—for the truth is that we create for ourselves gods and hallucinations, yet we believe in them in an extraordinary fashion. Our belief makes worlds for us of extreme beauty and creativity. Did not the ancestors of Shaykh Jadallah—whose face reminds me of the famous statue of an ancient Egyptian scribe—make humanity's first civilization? Did they not create loveliness equally on the surface of the earth, and beneath it? Were they not inspired in their work and their thought by Osiris and Amon? And what is Osiris, and what is Amon? Nothing much, on the whole. As for their civilization, it could be compared with—indeed, it is—our own civilization today.

We stood about watching the devout old shaykh. The Pasha smiled derisively, while I was sunk in my dreams. Neither us knew what Fate had concealed from us under those piles of dust. The labor appeared fruitless, and the Pasha grew bored. He suggested that we sit on the veranda—I followed him quietly. But we had hardly reached the stairs when Shaykh Jadallah ran up to intercept us, gasping from his gap-toothed mouth, “My lord . . . my lord . . . come and look!”

We turned toward him automatically. My heart was beating queerly from the shaykh's appeal. He reminded me of his old counterpart who had cleaved my life between failure and success, between despair and hope. We hurried down the stairs, because the man had gone back the way he came—we both followed him, fighting our wish to run.

We found the three men moving a huge stone, approximately a square meter in size. As we drew nearer to them, we saw that the stone covered an opening of similar dimensions. I glanced at the Pasha, and he looked at me with eyes filled with astonishment and stupefaction. We then looked into the opening and saw a small staircase that ended in a corridor that led to the interior, parallel to the surface of the ground. The sun was about to go down, so I said to the Pasha, “Let's have a lantern.” He sent a servant to fetch one. The man returned with the lantern, and I ordered him to walk before us. But he balked; I considered seizing the lamp from him. Shaykh Jadallah, however, reached him before me. He seized the man by the hand, reciting verses from the Qur'an and strange incantations. Then, sure-footedly, the shaykh went down; I followed him, and the two restive servants followed behind.

We found ourselves in an underground passage no more than ten meters in length. Its ceiling hung several inches over our heads. The ground was simply soil, but the walls were granite. We advanced in slow steps until we met a stone door that blocked the path to intruders. Its appearance was not unfamiliar to me, nor were the symbols carved in its center. I ran my eyes over it, then glanced at the Pasha—whom I told in a shaking voice:

“Your Excellency, you have discovered an ancient tomb—for here lies General Hor, one of the most powerful figures in the Eighteenth Dynasty.”

Violently piqued, Shaykh Jadallah declared, “Behind this door are riches—so says the book that does not lie!”

I shrugged my shoulders, “Call it what you will, the important thing is to open it.”

“Opening the treasure is hard,” the shaykh rejoined. “The only way to smash down the door and make it yield is by long recitation, which I will start doing now. That will take until dawn—are you ritually clean?”

His speech greatly affected the two servants, who looked at their master with embarrassment. They believed that they were soon to find themselves in the presence of the hidden power—but there was no time for ablution and the incantation of prayer. I reproved the shaykh firmly, “We didn't reach this door through recitation, so it seems more fitting to open it by force, as we did the one that came before it.”

The shaykh was about to object, but could find no basis to do so, while the Pasha upbraided him. I kept quiet, as the shaykh looked at me askance. They resumed work once more: I snapped out of my reverie and set to work with them, until the insurmountable obstacle was sundered—and we found before us an opening into Hor's place of eternal rest.

As I was an expert at this sort of work, I directed them to stay in their places awhile until the air had recirculated. For all of us together, it was a tense hour of waiting. The Pasha was silent and confused like one caught in a powerful dream, while the two servants looked on earnestly at the man in whom they placed their faith. The shaykh was warning me of what might befall us because of my contempt for his beliefs. As for myself, I was perhaps imagining what my eyes would behold. “Do you conceive what could happen if you acquire such a great antiquity, one that would become the highlight of the immortal museum in Paris?” I mused.

Then I went inside. Behind me entered al-Arna'uti Pasha, followed by Shaykh Jadallah; the servants deemed it wiser to remain in the outer corridor. But when the light of the lamp vanished, and the place plunged into darkness, they both leapt inside and cowered in a corner.

The burial chamber was just as its exterior indicated—I have seen its like numerous times in the past. The sarcophagus was in its customary place: on its surface was an image of its owner in gold. Next to it were three life-sized statues, one of them of a man—most probably Hor himself. Another was of a woman; from its position next to the man, this was undoubtedly his wife. In front of them both was a statue of a young boy.

Across from them were some sealed boxes, plus a number of colored vessels, chairs, tables, and military tackle. The walls were covered with paintings, signs, and inscriptions.

I shot a quick, awed glance over that now-resurrected world, but the Pasha did not leave me to my musings. He said to me—in what I did not know would be his last spoken words in this life, “The most appropriate thing, Professor Dorian, would be to inform the government about this matter immediately.”

I sensed the defeat of my hopes, as I replied, “Wait a little, Pasha, while I make a quick appraisal.”

With the Pasha to my right, I approached the boxes and furnishings, continuing to scrutinize them with expert, covetous eyes. My soul urged me to open them and to see their contents. I believed that they were filled with food, clothes, and jewelry, but it was very difficult for someone like me to control his will in the presence of those majestic artifacts that overwhelmed my heart with passion and emotion. And let us not forget the sarcophagus and the statues and the mummy—how bewitching was their allure!

I was awakened again from my fantasies when I heard the crude voice of Shaykh Jadallah shouting “Hush!” I turned toward him, hopping with rage—the least whisper at that time gravely affected my nerves. But then the shaykh blurted idiotically, “A sparrow!”

“What sparrow is this, O shaykh! Is this the time for jokes?” I rebuked him.

“I saw a sparrow fluttering its wings over the sarcophagus,” he insisted.

We looked at the sarcophagus but saw nothing there. It would have been ludicrous to question the servants, so I told the obsolete holy man, “Spare us your delusions, Shaykh Jadallah.”

Then I laughed, exclaiming to the Pasha in French, “Perhaps it was the
ka
—the soul of the deceased—come to pay him a visit with us.”

I returned to perusing the boxes and the walls, which conversed with my heart in a silent language that only I could comprehend. Yet I could not give them my complete attention—for I soon heard the voices of the servants shrieking in terror, “Your Excellency—Pasha!”

We looked over at them quickly with wrath and exasperation—but only to find them in a bizarre state of horror, each grabbing onto the other. Their eyes widened and bulged wildly out of their heads, gazing stiff as the dead in the direction of the sarcophagus. Shaykh Jadallah was frozen where he stood, his hand trembling on the lamp, his eyes never moving from the same object. I looked at the sarcophagus and forgot my ire—for I saw its lid rising, and the mummy lying before us in its wrappings . . .

What is this? How was the sarcophagus opened? Have I been so influenced by my long residence in the Orient that my eye has been traduced—to this absurd degree—by its illusions and sleight of hand?

But what sleight of hand is this? I see the mummy in front of me—and I am not the only one to see it. And how the Pasha has turned into a statue! And how these three men seem about to die with extreme fear and fright! What hallucination is this?

The truth is that I feel shame each time that circumstances compel me to tell what happened next—for I normally recount it to rational, well-educated people who have studied Taylor and Levy-Bruhl and Durkheim. But what can I do? Descartes himself, if he were then in my place, would not have dared to dismiss his own senses.

What did I see?

I saw the mummy stir and sit up in his sarcophagus with a swift, nimble movement that would be impossible for a drunken man or one heavy from sleep, to say nothing of a corpse just roused from the world of the Dead. Then he bounded with a smoothly athletic motion—and stood erect facing us before the coffin.

My back was to the servants and Shaykh Jadallah, so I did not observe what was happening to them. But the light that illuminated the room was shaking with the hand that held it, while I fell into a state that beggars all description. I confess that my limbs rattled in a manner that I cannot convey—prey to a fear that I had never in my life experienced. Next to it, I cannot even recall the terror I felt in those harrowing days I spent on the Eastern Front and at the Battle of the Marne. How astonishing! Is that not a mummy there ahead? Or is that a corpse to which life has been restored by mysterious means? Or is that an Egyptian general who quivered with awe and submissiveness whenever he crossed the threshold of Pharaoh's palace?

Is it possible that such thoughts possessed me at that time? Nevertheless, I resisted this possession with all my might—for how can one be rightly guided by terror? I was mortally afraid. Yet my eyes were able to see even as my memory was able to preserve what my eyes saw.

I did not find before me a mere mummy, but a whole living man—complete in his manliness and vitality. His form reminded me of those images that one sees on so many temple walls. He was garbed in a white robe and a short loincloth, his great head covered with an elegant cowl. His broad chest was hung with many glittering honors. He was dignified, dreadful, of an imposing height. But, with all of his daunting splendor, it seemed to me that I had seen him before. I remembered the Sa‘idi that the servants dragged to the Pasha and accused of stealing the dog Beamish's food. The resemblance was unnerving, but it was confined to his stature and color, not to his spirit and liveliness. Yet if this being right before me did not display such majesty and nobility, then perhaps I would be seized by doubts.

All the while, Hor fixed the Pasha in a cruel glare that he did not lift from him, as though he saw nothing but him.

What should I say, gentlemen? Yet I heard him speak—my God, Hor
spoke
after a silence of three thousand years. But he spoke in that ancient language that Death had enfolded for more than a millennium. I will forget everything in the world before I forget a single word of what his tongue uttered.

He said to my luckless friend, the Pasha, in a voice whose equal in augustness I had never heard before—for I have not yet had the honor of conversing with kings:

“Do you not know me, slave? Why are you not falling
on your knees before me?”

From the Pasha, I heard not a sound, nor could I shift my rigid stare toward him. But I heard the Mighty One, possessor of the overpowering voice, speak once more:

“I did not feel the troubling captivity of Death until
my soul saw the astounding things that take place in this
world, while I was bound with the shackles of Eternity,
unable to move. Nor could I go to you, because my life
had ended, as Osiris had decreed. But you came to me
on your own two feet. I am bewildered at how you
could seduce yourself into doing this foolish thing. Madness and vanity have overtaken you. Do you not praise
the gods that Death had intervened between us? What
did you come to do here, servant? You aren't satisfied
with robbing my sons—so you have come to plunder my
tomb, as well? Speak, you slave!”