The Mummy or Ramses the Damned (27 page)

T WAS a sumptuous first-class dining room, crowded already with gentlemen in white tie and tails and ladies in low-cut dresses. When Julie came in and took her chair, Alex rose to assist her. Henry and Elliott, already seated opposite, also rose, and though Julie nodded to Elliott, she found herself incapable of looking at her cousin.

She turned to Alex, and placed her hand on his. Unfortunately she could not help overhearing Henry continuing to talk angrily in Elliott’s ear. Something about Alex being a fool that he could not have stopped Julie from taking this trip.

Alex, staring down at the plate before him, seemed somewhat at a loss. Was this the time or place for truth? She felt she must be honest from the beginning, or matters would only become worse for Alex, and she must see that they did not.

“Alex,” she said in a low voice, “I may stay in Egypt. I don’t know what my plans are. You know sometimes, my darling, I think you need someone as good as you are.”

He wasn’t surprised by her words. He thought for only a moment before answering. “But how could I want anyone better than you? I’ll follow you into the jungles of the Sudan if that’s where you want to go.”

“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 vigour 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 in 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 that marvellous! Seems I got my way after all.”

“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 … 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 colour 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 flower beds.…”

“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 wanted 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. Labour 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 tranquillity 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, their 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 labourers 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 labour. How to share the magic, the riches, the secrets, that is still the problem.”

“Ah, there you have it. Marxism, I told you,” Alex said. “Well, at Oxford they told us Ramses the Second was a bloody tyrant.”