Pharaoh's Wife Read online

  In her adolescence, Diana, like all girls, had followed the program of physical education practiced in the New World. Scarcely sensual then, her amorous fantasies had been rare. The Duke had certainly not had the same temperament, but in the United States, gallant life is rather limited. It required the Great War for male youth to acquire a taste for pleasure in Europe and bring back more dissolute mores.

  When she was not traveling—and she traveled a great deal, having two yachts and a number of automobiles—the Duchess lived in her mansion on Long Island, Redge House. On the fifth of September 1927, however, she had gone to New York, attracted by the arrival in the city of the Mage Ormus, who was all the rage among the city’s female population—and in her small drawing-room with authentic Louis XV furniture, there were five pretty female visitors in animated conversation with the Duchess.

  “The Mage is astonishing,” said Ame Love, the daughter of Mordant Love. For one thing, he’s too handsome. He reminds me of a god. A contemporary of anterior lives, which he remembers, he talks about the past with a disconcerting authority.”

  “Has he been in New York long?” asked the Duchess.

  “Only three weeks. It’s Countess Olivani-Sforza who knew him. It was at her house that I saw him for the first time, four days ago. He’s an amazing thought-reader.”

  “Really?” exclaimed Betty Herald, a magnificent blonde, the wife of the celebrated engineering genius Pall Herald, the constructor of the Great Lakes ferry. “What was he able to tell you? I didn’t think you were very sensitive to suggestion.”

  “I’d like to see you resist, when his great yellow eyes stare you in the face.”

  “And he told you what you were thinking?”

  “Exactly—me and the others.”

  “It’s diabolical,” said Mary O’Brien, crossing herself. She was an extremely Catholic Irishwoman who lived in Diana’s house. “This Ormus is an incarnation of the Evil Spirit.”

  “Shut up, Mary,” said the Duchess. “You’re being silly, my dear.”

  Her situation in Diana’s house put Mary O’Brien completely under the Duchess’s domination, and in spite of her revolutionary spirit, the Irishwoman, an exile without resources, was obliged to submit to her meekly. She dared not make any reply.

  Mary was a very unusual individual: the last descendant of a family of Irish patriots, her extreme feminism had, in a way, had her ostracized from all the small political groups, and since Ireland had become independent she had left the country in order to travel the world preaching female emancipation. Unfortunately, she had no money and could only support herself on the fruits of her efforts, political pamphlets bringing in very little and lectures not much more. She had been lucky enough to meet Diana in Canada. The latter had been enthused by the young evangelist’s ideas, had offered her a refuge in her home and gave her funds for an active propaganda.

  Mary was a tall, thin woman twenty-five years of age, with strongly-accentuated masculine features, black hair cut very short, a round face, and keen and luminous eyes. Her great charm was her clear, definite and seductive voice. The five women visiting Diana were all converts to her cause and gave her the aid of their considerable influence—and the five women gathered at that moment in the Duchess of Rutland’s home were incontestably among the richest and most beautiful in America.

  The Duchess was in the splendor of maturity. Tall and admirably composed, only a slight creasing in the corners of her eyes denounced the wrinkles to come. Bright chestnut-colored hair framed a face slightly sun-bronzed by habitual traveling, firm and full and a trifle highly-colored, illuminated by magnificent jet-black eyes.

  By contrast, Ame Love was a dainty blonde; her hair surrounded her face, like that of a little eighteenth-century doll, with a fleecy cloud. Her eyes were periwinkle blue. She was as lively as a bird, a delicate little thing, a Greuze of the prettiest sort.5

  Kate Souvermann, the daughter of the multimillionaire Karl Souvermann, the director of the Old Silver Bank, retained from her German origins the slightly exaggerated plenitude of the daughters of that nation, but she was certainly one of its finest specimens. Tall, with superb arms and shoulders, perhaps a little too muscular, but very pale, blue eyes, and a complexion, not of lilies and roses but strawberries and cream, she had a beauty that created an appetite—for kisses and caresses, that is.

  Betty Herald was a very American beauty: sturdy, molded in the flesh of a Greek goddess, coiffed in bronze-red, with fiery green eyes beneath her marble forehead. Athletic, skilled in all sports, she was capable of carrying her husband, the engineer of the Great Lakes, with her arms at full stretch.

  The Margrave Oswald von Weringen was also a pure-blooded American, but from the South, born in New Orleans. She had the litheness of her native land and a Spanish slenderness, with profound dark eyes and dark hair that almost had a tint of blue. Always smiling, amiable and cordial, one sensed a pure descendant of the Latin race in her. She had married Von Weringen, a Viennese resident in North America for twenty years, initially as a Klondike gold-prospector; he had founded a fur company with the precious metal recovered from placers, which had made him a millionaire several times over, and he was still working. At present, he had a monopoly on all the large reserves of furs and was centralizing his stocks.

  The conversation continued.

  “Mary’s not entirely wrong,” said Ame Love. “A man like that scares me. Anything out of the ordinary makes me shiver. Isn’t it enough to live our lives?”

  What’s the point of living,” Kate, exclaimed, “if we can’t understand the enigma of life? Do we have an afterlife? That would be interesting to know. Must we disappear without that hope?”

  “Kate’s right,” said Diana. “Have we arrived at the summit of civilization only for our intelligence to expire like a blown-out match? Is that possible? So, I’m passionate about everything that touches on matters of the beyond. There’s an impenetrable mystery in death, and it’s necessary to search for the key by any means possible. I want to see this Mage Ormus.”

  “He’ll astonish you,” said Ame Love. “He didn’t say a word about the future life, but for the transmigration of souls in the past he’s astonishing. Listen to this! People were talking about the excavations undertaken in Egypt by Lord Carnarvon, and he smiled ironically. ‘Lord Carnarvon,’ he said, ‘was on the wrong track. The tombs he excavated had already been visited. In 942 B.C.—which is to say, in 4223 of the Memphic era, I was a servant of a priest of Helios6 named Phi-Zouma. Hating the rites of the priests of Amon, he took a malign pleasure—which was also very fruitful—in excavating and robbing the tombs erected under the old religion. It was at his instigation, and on his orders, that I, the humble Levite Omsrah, visited the tomb excavated by Lord Carnarvon five thousand years ago. I can, in consequence, assure you that he has only found what I left for him to find.’

  “‘You’ve lived in those fabulous epochs, then?’ I asked. ‘Life then must have had a grandeur and a majesty far above that of our vulgar epoch?’

  “‘That depends on the manner in which one understands human existence and antiquity,’ Ormus replied. ‘The Pharaoh was forced, in public life, always to maintain a hieratic attitude and a grandiose appearance, making him seem like a god to the populace—immobile, his eyes fixed in an impassive stare, indifferently—which demanded an attitude and behavior that had nothing agreeable about it for the sovereign. We priests, who were the principal scene-dressers of those absolute despots, were able to laugh at them in private. Worshipers of Helios, we were scornful of those fanatical idolaters, the priests of Amon,7 who, after having banished our master Osiris, had instituted the cult of Pharaoh as man and god by means of base flattery. But away from the external pomp, he became simply human again. How many times have I heard Pharaoh Amaris III, who was then our sovereign, laughing and joking with Phi-Zouma, and even, with me, the poor Levite? He was only a man then, and very glad to dispose of his mask of quasi-divinity.’

  “‘It�
��s necessary to conserve our illusions,’ someone put in. ‘I picture the men of ancient Egypt in accordance the scale and grandeur of their monuments.’

  “‘They had the nobility, at least, if not the height,’ the Mage replied. ‘The costumes and traditions of that epoch imposed a certain majesty of gesture and language.’

  “Then, for more than an hour, ladies, Ormus told us mummified anecdotes, like memories of yesterday, describing the customs of very remote times in the manner of a man who had lived in them—times so ancient that they’ve fallen into eternal dust.”

  A man had come into the room a few moments before, and, in order not to interrupt the speaker, had remained near the door. He came forward and bowed, shook some hands and kissed others, and sat down with the lovely women. It was Lord Rutland. Short, slim, elegant to the point of affectation, he had more natural wit than education. A good conversationalist, rather skeptical and mocking, he was a trifle arrogant but avoided insolence. The proud possessor of a long line of ancestors, he glorified himself in numbering among them the illustrious supposed author of the works of William Shakespeare, and when his intellect was clouded by slight intoxication he would start reminiscing about the works of his ancestor Roger Manners, Earl of Rutland, born at Belvoir Castle in Leicestershire in 1576.8

  The Duchess’s vanity had latched on to that idea and she had sponsored research by an erudite bibliomaniac on the origin of the famous dramatist’s works. He had battled with many contradictory texts, after which he had given birth to an enormous volume concluding that William Shakespeare of Stratford-on-Avon, who had held gentlemen’s horses at theater doors in his youth, was merely a man of straw, paid and maintained to mask Roger Manners, Lord Rutland, a gentleman of the court, whose satirical portraits of the great might have won him many enemies, especially the disfavor of Queen Elizabeth.

  The present Duke, whom literary polemics and that legend decorated with a certain distinction, had met a fifth-year student at the Harvard University named William Shakespeare; in order to give the legend even more vigor and further emphasis, it had amused him to befriend that Bohemian, who corresponded well enough to the character of one of Shakespeare’s heroes, Sir John Falstaff. Since then, William had gone everywhere with Lord Rutland, lived largely at his expense, without a care in the world and with complete freedom of speech. People even made jokes behind their backs about their uncertain amity. Diana liked the buffoon well enough, and helped him to personify her husband’s illustrious ancestry. Furthermore, the Duke, in his aristocratic pride, shared his wife’s ideas regarding survival after death. Can one, when one is a Duke, disappear like some obscure manual laborer or animal? In other matters, George Manners, Duke of Rutland was a philosopher and a mocker, but without overmuch acidity.

  “Astonishing, astonishing, what you just said, my dear Lady Love! I think there’s a lot of charlatanry in it, but this Mage Ormus must be amusing to listen to. We must have him. He’ll give us a rest from all this spiritualist nonsense, which has given us a veritable indigestion.”

  “At the Duchess’s instigation,” said the Margrave von Weringen, “I’ve read all the occult authors: Allan Kardec, Colonel Rochas, Stanislas de Guaita, Léon Denis, Thomas Lake Harris, Madame Blavatsky, D. D. Home, Henry Slade and others, but I’m confused by all their theories, which are totally lacking in detail. At least Mage Ormus has the advantage of being precise—and then again, one can see him.”

  “One might perhaps even be able to touch him,” sniggered the Duke. “Women need prophets who are palpable, who need to eat, drink and...”

  “Duke, Duke!” said Mary O’Brien, scandalized.

  “Forgive me, Miss Ireland! I forgot that your democratic feminism is coupled with a rather old-fashioned severity.”

  “Why are you always teasing poor Mary?” said the Duchess.

  “Let’s not get off the subject,” said Kate Souvermann. “Mage Ormus has promised to come to my soirée tomorrow. Would you all like to come?”

  “Are men admitted?” asked the Duke.

  “Certainly. Bring your husbands and admirers. After the sorcerer, there’ll be dancing.”

  “Bravo! There’ll be resistance to suggestion, then.”

  “On which note I’ll leave you,” Kate said. “I have preparations to make.”

  “Can I bring Shakespeare?” asked the Duke.

  “Yes—what would you do without your Double? You’d be like a body without a soul.”

  II. The Incantation

  The banker Souvermann’s town house was also on Fifth Avenue. It was a house in the Cubist style: uncomfortable furniture, but modern. In Karl Souvermann’s house everything was modern: the decoration, the paintings, everything. A vast library, also very modern, contained modern books, large folios in richly decorated morocco bindings: books that one does not read, the pages uncut, by famous and tedious authors whom no one reads but are much admired. Souvermann was very proud of his library. He had manuscripts by Valéry, Proust and Cucu.9 In that vast room he had gathered his privileged friends for the reception of the Mage Ormus. The latter had said that he would arrive at ten o’clock; people were expectant.

  The Duke and Duchess of Rutland had arrived first, accompanied by Mary O’Brien and the inseparable William Shakespeare. Marc Pytor, the journalist, was surrounded. He read out a dispatch from Alexandria, and the elite gathered at the Souvermann residence, lovers of the more-or-less occult sciences, were very interested in the research of the British mission.

  “It’s exciting,” said Diana.

  “Do you know,” said Marc Pytor, “that the Egyptians don’t look kindly on these excavations? They say that the Pharaohs will avenge themselves for having been reawakened before time, for mummies need to wait five thousand years before quitting their Double to reenter the bosom of Osiris. If so, I one wouldn’t want to be in the skin of Lord Carnarvon’s successors.”

  “Me neither,” said Shakespeare. “The robbers of the Pharaohs’ tombs all paid with their lives for that sacrilege. Why shouldn’t the imitators of the late Carnarvon suffer the same fate as their predecessors? Lords and fellahs are equal before death. It only requires the bite of a fly.”

  “Let’s not disturb mysterious Egypt,” said the engineer Pall Herald, “and leave these troubling adventures to the unemployed of the Old World.”

  “We have equally interesting research to carry out here. The cradle of the two Americas has scarcely been glimpsed. Peruvian relics also indicate a very ancient civilization on our own continent.”

  “If the Bible mentioned it, perhaps we might concern ourselves with it—but Jehovah completely forgot about the New World. In his time, obviously, America hadn’t been discovered.”

  “You’re impious, Mr. Shakespeare!” exclaimed the Irishwoman.

  Finally, a lackey announced: “Sir Antal Fodor.” Antal Fodor was the secular name of the Mage Ormus.

  At the sight of the newcomer, everyone had the impression of a dominator. The Mage Ormus was tall, and beneath his impeccable suit one divined an admirably-proportioned body. His face, its pallor ocher-tinted, was that of an Indian Bacchus, illuminated by splendid golden yellow eyes; his hair and eyebrows were blue-black, thick and smooth, framing an admirably monumental forehead. He came forward casually and bowed slightly. Instinctively, everyone got to their feet to return that gesture.

  Kate Souvermann extended her hand to him, which he gallantly raised to his lips. Kate introduced him, this time saying: “The Mage Ormus.”

  “Do you know what we were talking about when you arrived?” she asked.

  The thought-reader did not hesitate. “The honorable John Flatsbury was regretting that America is neglecting to dig into its ground, as the English are doing in that of ancient Egypt.”

  “You’re a marvelous diviner,” exclaimed Diana. “Can you explain that astonishing faculty to us?”

  “Everyone can acquire it, Milady. It’s a question of study—rather specialized, it’s true, but which I’ll try to enabl
e you to understand. Until recent years, the people who have concerned themselves with physical and chemical sciences have only been concerned, so to speak, with palpable forces. However, we utilize fluidic forces that we produce without ever having analyzed them—electricity and magnetism, for example. Then another force was discovered, which combines the two, and has revealed to us the force and subdivision of waves. The electromagnetic waves utilized by people as a means of telegraphy and telephony are only a beginning. Our brains can also become receivers of waves vibrating around us. For someone initiated into that invisible language, nothing can remain unknown. By means of a kind of internal vibration, he can hear all the sounds and see all the images emitted around him, within a radius that has no limit other than his own will-power.”

  “But what is it necessary to do to acquire that knowledge and that gift?”

  “Study—study incessantly. One obtains that goal by means of a kind of isolation of one’s psychic ‘self,’ which is the component of our personality that does not die…any more, in fact, than our material fraction, which is also transformed. But that material part is only our ‘self’ during a lifetime, while the psychic part remains, for a certain number, their ‘self’ forever. A person who, by means of study, is sufficiently detached from matter to recover his ‘memory,’ can thus revive the past and see its different incarnations again.”