Pharaoh's Wife Read online

  The depths of the excavation had already reached one and a half meters. Still nothing.

  Finally, the iron head of the Reïs’s spade rang on a hard flat surface. Its disengagement revealed a flat stone more than a meter square. Driving in levers and combining the efforts of their biceps, the three men—for the chauffeur had also been set to work—finally lifted up that mass and, with a superb effort, tipped it over.

  A gaping hole was offered to their view.

  They took a light rope-ladder from the trunk of the auto and attached it securely to the enclosing block.

  Adsum went down first, with his pocket torch, whose radiance he projected ahead of him. The others, following his every movement from the top of the shaft, saw him disappear into a corridor. Air impregnated with a bituminous odor had emerged from the opening to begin with, but a current must have been established, for the sir coming up the shaft now was warm but perfectly respirable.

  A considerable time went by. Finally, a little gleam reappeared, and the old mage emerged from the corridor.

  “You can come down,” he shouted, “but bring the headlamps from the vehicle.”

  “Stay here and guard the auto,” said the Duchess. “We’re going down alone.” And, going first, she leaned into the hole, seized the rope-ladder and went down. Adsum pulled the rope from below in order to tighten it, for greater ease, but the young woman, accustomed to all manner of sports, had no need of any help.

  Ormus followed her.

  “There’s a fissure in the mountain,” said Adsum. “That’s what’s causing the air-flow. Go on. I’ve seen…go! I’ll wait for you here.”

  The Pharaoh’s wife was grateful to the old man for leaving them alone to confront those that had been themselves.

  The narrow corridor was just wide enough for two people to walk abreast, very close together. They were so emotional that an inexpressible anguish gripped their throats.

  The corridor was a hundred meters long, and evidently extended underneath the mountain. Suddenly, there was a right-angled turn and a rather steep downward slope. Twenty meters further on, they found themselves at the door of a tomb.

  To either side, the door-posts were statues carved in the rock, and when they went inside, they saw that the statues were doubled. The two external ones were Qebehsenuef and Duamutef; the two interior ones Imsety and Hapi: the four sons of Horus the Sun; his sons, the four seasons: proof at the very entrance, that the Pharaoh had practiced the worship of Helios.

  That door gave access to a rectangular room whose ceiling, in large slabs of black marble studded with golden stars, was supported by four enormous lotiform pillars, painted and gilded. Two large bands, on which were represented scenes from the life of the Pharaoh and his wife, extended around the walls, which were, like the ceiling, made of black granite constellated with golden stars.

  Stone tables and gilded seats, all laden with objects of every sort: wooden, bronze and limestone statuettes, cases and trays charged with fruits and pastries reduced to dust by desiccation, weapons, garments and simulacra of every sort, for the destruction of the aliments had been foreseen and simulacra provided to replace them. An indefinable perfume was disengaged by all these venerable things. One vase looked as if it had been placed there the day before, but when Diana put out her hand to touch it, it crumbled into impalpable dust.

  Holding hands, they walked toward the redoubtable location. At the back, an opening was half-masked by a bronze statue of the goddess Sekhmet, with the head of a lioness. They went around the statue and moved fearfully into the middle of the ultra-secret chamber. The double sarcophagus of the Pharaoh and his wife, on two enormous granite coffins, surged into the beams of the two headlamps. They illuminated the painted and gilded boxes enclosing the royal mummies.

  Ormus leaned over the Pharaoh’s tomb and raised the lid.

  Tut-Ankh-Amun, his face entirely gilded, with irises of black diamond set in topaz eyes, was strangely alive, and that metalized face emitted something diabolically ironic.

  Ormus, recoiling backwards, could not take his eyes off the Pharaoh, in whose yellow eyes the black diamonds seemed to animate a gaze.

  Diana was also contemplating the mummy.

  “And me?” she said.

  Leaning over the smaller sarcophagus of the Pharaoh’s wife, she too lifted the lid. An exclamation! The queen’s mask was even more lifelike than that of the king. Coated with a thick layer of wax, painted and powdered, one might have thought that the young queen was asleep. Only the eyes were sunken, and the artificial irises, fallen into the depths of the orbits, glittered strangely.

  Fascinated, Diana gazed at her Double, and in her emotion thought that she saw it come to life; that dead gaze drew her toward it.

  Feeling that she was about to faint, she threw herself violently backwards. She would have fallen on to the stone slabs, but Ormus caught her in his arms.

  He had placed the headlamp on the ground, and the glare illuminating their two silhouettes cast gigantic shadows on the ceiling.

  Diana, tensed, her head tilted backwards, saw the Mage’s face above her, his beautiful golden eyes plunging into her like a double jet of flame. She felt that she was skirting madness. Was it Ormus or the Pharaoh who as holding her in his arms?

  In those two dormant royal mummies their other life revived, in the magnificence of youth. But no, they were other mores, other beliefs, as intransigent as the present ones: the same excesses, the same ambitions…they were human, after all! And what is five thousand years? Nothing: a moment. A second in a day, not even a century in eternity. What is five thousand years, in space and time? Nothing. Life recommences, as mysterious and as futile as before, yesterday, which is today.

  Those who had been the most powerful among the powerful, and their remains, protected by the artifice of priests, and perhaps by magic, were finally about to see the light again, having not had the dispersal and the liberty of the ashes of the least of fellahs.

  Those appearances, however, had had their dolors and their joys.

  Hypnotized by the mummies, who had been two young and beautiful beings, Diana said aloud, replying to Ormus’ thought: “I have inhabited that queen, and I have loved that Pharaoh!”

  Ormus smiled. “Let’s leave the past, which is still the present. We are young and beautiful. Let’s love one another.

  And their lips met.

  They found that they were narrowly entwined, between the two granite sarcophagi.

  The black marble ceiling, constellated like the night, sent the reflections of its stars down upon the two tombs, and in that indecisive light, the two mummies seemed to be laughing, while Diana swooned in the grip if the male, for which she had been waiting for such a long time.

  Crazed with love, crazed with pleasure, and the satisfaction of a goal attained, after a stated gasp, crazed with sacrilege, Diana, drunk with joy, uttered a long burst of laughter, which flew and echoed through the subterranean tunnel. And for some invisible satyr,24 it seemed that all those painted faces, the lioness Sekhmet and the four sons of Horus, joined in a chorus, and writhed.

  XVII. The Joyful Necropolis

  As Ormus and Diana were united in the true tomb of Tut-Ankh-Amun, a mail-coach made a noisy entrance into the Valley of the Kings, to the clarion sound of a long trumpet blown by a white-gloved gentleman perched alongside the driver. There were twenty people inside: the flower of London fashion, touring Egypt. A few English-based foreigners were accompanying them.

  First of all, there was George Manners, Duke of Rutland, and his inseparable companion William Shakespeare, both accompanied by pretty girls who had consented to leave Paris to visit the land of the mummies. They were, for the duke, the music-hall singer Marcelle Peticha, and for William Shakespeare, the Indian dancer Rana, born in Batignolles. Then there was Lord Alan Jertwery, in the company of the poet Edgard Blody, very artistic and very witty but of uncertain morals. There was Bertrand Gasllrod, a rich manufacturer from Manchester, with his
niece Deborah; Oscar Plantarebourg of Rotterdam, led on a leash by a dancer who had hung up her shoes, Lise Flapy. There was also Jack Mettinons, who had just inherited an annual income of fifty thousand pounds from his father, along with a little capital, in company with three girls from the London Alhambra, whose troupe he had broken up, and a lymphatic and misanthropic old man, a multimillionaire answering to the name of Melvil Pétouard. Also to be noted were two intrepid female “globetrotters,” ugly and entirely clad in tweed and leather, prudish and affected, but who gladly lingered in solitary locations with donkey-drivers and camel-drivers. The younger, who was over forty, was named Grace Edhiformotching, and the older Bell Gosie; they were both rabid feminists.

  Behind the mail-coach came a truck loaded with everything necessary for a nocturnal feast among the hypogeas, organized by the agency of Thomas Cook & Son, Ltd.

  In the blink of an eye, the employees had erected a large pink and white striped tent, set a table, brought out hampers of food and baskets full of bottles. “Olé! Olé!” cried Marcelle, a radiant peroxide blonde, climbing down from the coach alongside the melancholy Melvil, who was still blowing gravely into his long trumpet. She had difficulty getting down; Rutland offered her his arm and she leapt down lightly.

  “So this is the Valley of the Kings?” said Rana. “From a distance, they look like public toilets.”

  “Horror!” cried Grace Edhiformotching. “Those are hypogea, young lady.”

  “Hypogea yourself!” croaked Rana. “Say, Marcelle, are you enjoying yourself here? It might be very chic to be in Egypt, in the Valley of the Kings, but I prefer Père-Lachaise.”

  Was Grace Edhiformotching thinking about recruiting Rana to feminism? She saw something exotic and captivating in the allure of the fake dancer. “Certainly, Miss, that Parisian cemetery is very interesting, but for you, a daughter of the sun, the hypogea are more…”

  “Eh! What? Daughter of the sun? You must be loony, to tell me such tall stories!”

  “I don’t understand,” stammered Grace. “Do you, Miss Bell?”

  Miss Bell had noticed among the servants a vigorous Maltese with fiery eyes, and she turned round, rolling her eyes like a goat.

  The agency guide had climbed up on a crate. “Ladies and gentlemen, the most favorable moment for visiting the hypogea at this time of year is when the moon is low enough in the sky to light the tombs full on. That will be about four o’clock in the morning.”

  “So we’re going to be cooling our heels here waiting for the moon?” said Marcelle.

  “Oh,” sighed Grace Edhiformotching, “the joy and poetry of moonlight in the desert is unforgettable.”

  “Yes,” said Bell Gosie. “A beautiful picture.”

  “Certainly, the moon rising in the sky is a splendid sight,” said Shakespeare, “but it gives me a thirst.”

  He majority of the excursionists had dined too well in Luxor, and for most of them, the landscape was undulating strangely. William’s appeal was very welcome, and they all precipitated into the tent set up by the employees of the Winter Palace and the Cook Agency, accustomed to these picnics in the desert. On three trestles there were four large planks and a tablecloth, surrounded by folding chairs, four torches, each one flanked by numerous candles, which made the porcelain crockery gleam and the crystal glassware sparkle. The champagne-bottles displayed their gilded necks above the ice-buckets.

  It was improvised but luxurious; without giving a thought to the illustrious mummies, they emptied glasses and plates with gusto. Only the poet Edgard Blody became increasingly morose as he ate and drank.

  “What can you be thinking about to pull such a long face?” cried Bertrand Gasllrod across the table. “You’re not dead yet, I hope?”

  “A proposition!” cried Lord Jertwery. “What if we were to shut him up in a pyramid?”

  “Alas,” replied the individual addressed, lugubriously, “we’re like rats hurling themselves on their poison, pursuing the evil for which they’re thirsty.” He declaimed: “Of my cold and empty heart, I have made a ciborium of pure gold, decorated with amethyst and enamel.”

  “Pass me a bit!” cried Rana. “I’ll gobble you up, man with a heart of gold!”

  “Georgie, Georgie!” called Marcelle Peticha. “Come and sit with me, and leave Mettinons to his girls.”

  “Marcelle, you’ll never guess the proposition that Mettinons has just put to me.”

  “It can only be a dishonest one.”

  “He’s offered to swap me his three girls for Marcelle Peticha.”

  “Three angels for one demon? You’d lose on the deal, my lad.”

  Shakespeare got to his feet. “Savor these aphorisms, all of you. One: women are angels, so long as one doesn’t possess them. Two: the soul of happiness expires in enjoyment. Three: No one has ever found love satisfied as sweet as desire on its knees. Four: Possession makes masters, resistance beggars. Friends, meditate on all that…and pour me a drink!”

  “William, I’ll make you a cuckold if your slander women—pig!”

  “No,” Shakespeare replied. “I don’t care—and that, brown Rana, takes all the pleasure out of deception.”

  “Gentlemen,” said Lise Flapy, emptying her glass, I’ll offer my favors almost gratis to anyone who can say make Master Plantarebourg of Rotterdam, here present, say something witty.”

  Oscar laughed loudly, but without proffering a word.

  “I accept,” said Gasllrod. “Go on, Deborah, Go on, niece!”

  Deborah was a magnificent Jewess, with jet-black eyes and hair. Without raising an eyebrow, she went to pick up a champagne-bucket from which four bottles were sticking out, and went to sit down facing Plantarebourg. The Dutchman laughed even louder, but did not say a word. The impassive Jewess popped the cork of one bottle and set it down in front of him. Then, uncorking a second, she clinked the two together. “Bottoms up!” she said—and, tipping her head back, she drank straight from the bottle. Plantarebourg did the same, but with less avidity.

  Deborah uncorked the other two bottles.

  “Bottoms up!”

  The Dutchman drank, but went as red as a brick.

  “Bring some more bottles,” said the Jewess.

  “He’ll drink, but he’ll stay mute!” cried Lidde.

  “Bottoms up!” said Deborah.

  “Bravo!” said Shakespeare. “There’s a mettlesome lass!”

  “She’s my niece,” said Bertrand, proudly.

  “Gott ver drin!” groaned the Dutchman. “I’m drowning.”

  “He spoke!” howled the company.

  “That’s true, but it wasn’t very witty.”

  “Bottoms up!”

  The Dutchman got up, hanging on to the table.

  “I’ll speak,” he said. “Even if I have to lie, I’ll speak. Yes, Bertrand, your niece is the most beautiful, and anyone who says otherwise is a fool. That frog takes me for an imbecile because I prefer to stay silent rather than reply to her silly prattle. Uncle Bertrand, your niece is a pearl, a diamond. Give her to me! I’ll marry her!”

  “Bravo!” cried the choir. “Hurrah for Deborah and Bertrand!”

  Why did that scene, instead of cheering the poet up, put the lid on his sadness? Edgard dissolved in tears.

  “Deborah!” called Bertrand.

  The beautiful Jewess uncorked a bottle and looked at her uncle. The latter pointed to the deplorable rhymer. “Console that poor soul.”

  The Jewess got up, went to the despairing man and, picking him up under her arm, sat him down on her knee. Edgard embraced her recklessly and inundated her with tears. Tranquilly, Deborah seized a napkin, wiped the lamentable visage, then grabbed a bottle and put the neck between his teeth. “Go on, down the hatch!” she said.

  General hilarity.

  “That one’s a hoot!” cried Rana, ecstatically. “She’s not a woman, she’s a sponge.”

  “She’s my niece,” said Bertrand again, proudly.

  “Oo la la!” said Marcelle Peti
cha. “I’ve got a tummy-ache. Rub me, Georgie!”

  There was an extraordinary animation under the tent. Rutland massaged Marcelle Peticha, who, tickled, waved her arms and legs. Jack Mettinons made his three girls dance, and Miss Bell, disdaining Grace’s conversation, gave the handsome Maltese a nudge every time his duties as a waiter brought him within range.

  At that moment, an automobile horn resounded in the valley, and a superb limousine stopped in front of the excursionists’ tent. Three men got down and came inside.

  “Milords and ladies,” said the one who appeared to be the master, “I have the honor of saluting you.”

  The Duke of Rutland got to his feet. “What! Your Majesty deigns...”

  “Leave my majesty out of it, my dear Rutland. I know that wherever you are, it’s never boring, and my word, I’ll permit myself to join you. Sit down, I beg you, and make room for me at our table.”

  At the title “Majesty” everyone had got up, striving to strike a correct attitude—even Deborah, who, having put the poet down, straightened up while the Duke of Rutland made the introduction.

  “His Majesty Fuad I, our venerated King of Egypt.”

  The king started laughing. “No, Rutland, anything else you wish, but no veneration—and allow me to explain my presence here, Gentlemen. While you are digging up the tombs of my ancestors, I’m striving, as the reigning Pharaoh, to draw the natural resources from beneath the ground of my old Egypt—which, I hope, will be as prodigious as its surface. Accompanied by these gentlemen, I’m prospecting my kingdom, in order to extract a return from it, more prosaic than that of thousand-year-old mummies, but adapted to our epoch. I, Gentlemen, care little about my Double, and I beg you to believe that I shall build no pyramids. Do you think I’m in the right, pretty lady?”

  He was addressing Marcelle Peticha.

  Very proud of having attracted the attention of a king, the actress shot him an incendiary gaze with her lovely eyes. “Of course you’re right, Sire…Majesty.”