A Cloudy Day on the Western Shore Read online

  “What is this?” I asked, dismayed. “Was there an explosion here?”

  “It’s one of the fortresses that were demolished,” she said gloomily. “There were about thirty of them, all of them razed to the ground. None but this one remained to bear witness to what happened.”

  I circled the fort, and saw the moss and other creeping plants that grew upon its walls, the remains of rusted-out cannons, in which birds had built their nests.

  “Who did all this?” I asked.

  “Infidels,” she replied. “Infidels from your country—perhaps your father was among them.”

  “My father wasn’t a soldier,” I said defensively, “just a painter of tame animals.”

  I sensed that she had suddenly grown angry with me. All at once the traces our bodies bore of our earlier passion dissipated.

  I moved away from her and busied myself with walking among the remaining stones. The sun continued on its course, dropping behind the edge of the horizon. It seemed that darkness would fall more quickly than I had imagined. They had sent me from Swaffham to paint this country’s antiquities and preserve them. Why, then, had they treated them with such savagery—assuming this girl spoke the truth? The winds grew colder, finding their way in among the ruins. She muttered angrily, sitting and shivering on one of the stones. I was afraid to touch her. All that was between us had been dispelled in an instant.

  I heard her say in a quavering voice, “I was young, eleven years old. So everything is burned into my memory. We had a little house in Mex, and a small boat in which my father went out to fish. I thought the sun hid inside this fort, which was close by, because every night it disappeared into its turrets. My mother was one month pregnant, and she wanted some fish to eat. My father couldn’t go out in his boat—he was afraid of the huge ships that filled the horizon, afraid of their monstrous cannons pointed at the city, at our houses. We were all trembling. I heard my father talking to the other fishermen. The British commander of these ships had issued a warning for the city to surrender all its forts and guns and matériel, or else they would destroy them with their mighty cannons. We were quaking with fear, but we didn’t realize that we were poised on the brink of a catastrophe. My mother and I went to the nearby market, but there was not a fish or a piece of fruit to be found—the place was deserted. Those who were able had fled in a panic.

  “The hours until the deadline slipped away like grains of sand. No one knew the real reason behind all this agitation, or why all these ships had congregated off the coast. There was a big fight in which people had died—a foreigner from a distant island had killed an Egyptian at the donkey market, and this had set off the dispute between the two sides: something that could happen in any city. But the infidels’ ships had seized the opportunity and had come. Maybe they had been there already, concealed just over the horizon.

  “At midday all hell broke loose. The first missile landed in the heart of our house in Mex and killed my father instantly. He was the first to pay the price in the city’s downfall. We had nothing to do with this al-Makari who had died or the foreigner who had killed him, but the whole city was in flames. The few cannons in the forts were trying to return fire, but their missiles were weak and fell into the sea before reaching the ships. The forts began to fall, one after another, and all the people took to their heels. But we wanted to go back to our burning house, where my father’s body was. We stayed on, sitting terrified amid the desolation of a city in flames and waiting for the missile that would release us from this calamity, but it never came. The whole city raised its white flags, and the fires raged on.

  “We buried what remained of my father’s bones. We lived in this shack on the beach, until my mother also left me, and went to join my father.”

  She allowed me to support her and help her to walk. The mule-drawn cart proceeded slowly; there was no light, but we found our way to where the shack stood. I lay down beside her—we felt a killing cold, and clung together seeking heat, but I didn’t dare make love to her. I wish I had—perhaps that would have alleviated our feelings of bitterness. In the morning, I had to continue my journey. She wasn’t angry with me. I was simply an experience for her, unrelated to the war. I felt melancholy.

  At the railway station, which looked like a Roman structure, I found the train waiting for me.

  Helen sang on, while I lived in those moments that seemed so distant, there on the beach at Alexandria. Helen’s voice was unfamiliar and fresh, and it seemed inappropriate that it should be released into the air of this corrupt establishment, amid these bleary faces. Her musical phrases entered my very depths, reminding me of that brief relationship with an ephemeral young woman, which seemed destined never to be repeated.

  While we were riding back on our donkeys, Blackden exclaimed confidently, “She was singing for me.” Perhaps it was so, or perhaps she was singing for herself, and not for anyone else in the room. I despaired—all I wanted was to get back to the tomb . . . but that was impossible in such darkness, and with wolves about.

  I got up early, before the others. I had had a troubled sleep in the archaeologists’ rest house. I couldn’t stand to wait until my companions awoke; even Idris was sleeping. He got up in an ill humor and took me across the water to the tomb. I got started immediately on finishing up the required tracings. I was hoping to get them out of the way as quickly as possible, so that I would still have time to create a record with my own drawings as well, without Newberry looking over my shoulder. I was unconscious of time passing, but at noon he came and stood, with his towering height, at the entrance to the tomb. I rolled up the sheets of tracing paper and presented them to him, but he was angry.

  “You went with those two to the tavern at Saft al-Khamar!” he exclaimed. “Did you not?”

  I felt guilty. He reminded me of my father when he scolded me. Abject, I hung my head meekly. He shouted once more, “They’ll destroy you—they’re a pair of useless scoundrels. Copying the paintings from these walls is the most they can manage, but you—you’re still young, and this country is uncharted, it lies open before you. You can explore it if you wish, rather than waste yourself in it.”

  I didn’t entirely understand the purport of his words, but I felt that he quite reciprocated their dislike of him. There was some tacit struggle being waged among the three of them, which I could sense, without knowing the reasons for it.

  I wasn’t aware that the Christmas season had arrived until I received a letter from my father. No snowflakes had fallen, no evergreens had been set up, and no caroling voices had been heard: Christmas was dusty and hot, and even the few churches that lay in our vicinity observed the festival on a different date. Fraser and Blackden were preparing to go to Minya. They were invited to a huge party at the home of the irrigation supervisor, who was a willful Irishman with twin daughters who could dance and play the piano very well. I wanted to go along, but Newberry gave me an exasperated look, so I excused myself from accompanying the two others.

  Fraser looked at us suspiciously. “What folly is this?” he demanded. “You two are going to spend Christmas Eve in the darkness of this tomb?”

  He got no answer from us, so he left us and went down to the river with his friend. Midday passed in silence, both of us pretending to work, but Newberry would frequently go off and leave me. He would stand contemplating the Nile, smoking distractedly. Some unnatural air hung over him, and in the end he found it necessary to break his silence.

  “Gather your things,” he called brusquely to me. “We’re going.”

  “To the irrigation supervisor’s party?” I answered in surprise.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” he said. “We’re going rather a longer way than that. We’re going to Tel al-Amarna.”

  I hadn’t imagined that he himself would take me to the excavation site, where Petrie was—Petrie, about whom I had heard so much. I organized my rucksack, careful to put my art supplies in it. Newberry was waiting for me at the entrance to the tomb. It was clear that h
e had arranged everything so as to be rid of the other two; that he preferred, rather, to take me with him. This would be a remarkable Christmas indeed.

  We crossed the river and took a mule-drawn cart, which jostled us up and down. We traveled such a long way it seemed to me that my bottom wore out. The dig was some distance from the village in which the farmers dwelt, but it was certain that the subterranean city here extended beneath their houses. We approached the site slowly; I held my breath. Newberry gestured toward a white-bearded man who stood haughtily upright, and I realized that I was looking at Sir William Petrie. His physical stature matched his reputation, earned by his dozens of discoveries, his learned papers, and the scholarly posts he had held. We went to him, Newberry shook his hand, and they exchanged a few words. It seemed Petrie hadn’t noticed me—I was there by chance, between these two great men.

  “I’ve come to congratulate you,” declared Newberry hoarsely, “on your new discovery.”

  Petrie was unable to conceal his irritation. With a sigh, he replied, “We’ve not nearly completed it. I’m surprised the news has got out so quickly.”

  He himself conducted us to a place above the excavation on which he was working, where the outlines of the buried city were clearly visible, as if they were borne of the sand and pebbles. He thought that these were the remains of the city whose construction the Pharaoh Akhenaten had ordered when he became angry with his old capital, Thebes, and defected from it. The new city flourished for about twenty years, until the Pharaoh died, and then its inhabitants left it to return once more to Thebes. We saw the remains of small houses crowded together, looking more like sunken pits, with mud-brick walls missing their roofs.

  “This is where the workers lived,” said Petrie, “the ones who built this city. They erected the temples and palaces and grand houses and the tombs of the nobles, while they occupied these cramped rooms—the way it’s always been.”

  Fragments of statues appeared, as well as a fallen obelisk, rendered impotent by the surrounding debris, unable to stand erect. In the middle of the city was a high hill of sand. Here Petrie stopped and fingered his beard. He stood meditatively for a moment, then said in a low voice, “It’s the eternal hill—the ancient Egyptians always built one. Out of this the form of the pyramids evolved. This was an attempt on their part to stand up in the face of the void, for creation is a bottomless sea, and this hill is what would remain after the floodwaters of the Nile receded. It embodies the resurrection after death. Here dwells the god.”

  Newberry was shaking, lifting his feet from the ground only with difficulty, as if expecting the worst. I didn’t know what it was that frightened him and made him so very hesitant. Perhaps this was the reason he hadn’t dared to come by himself. When Petrie had asked him how he knew about the discovery, he’d offered no plausible explanation. Did he have a pair of eyes inside the site? Petrie didn’t make much of this, nor had he any will to prevent Newberry from paying the visit for which he’d come.

  We all descended into the vast hole. Columns of dust were still rising—it seemed as if the earth was breathing, now its shoulders had been relieved of this load. One of the men brought a blazing torch, and we entered a tomb that was situated behind the hill. The greater part of it was roofed; the paintings, the faded colors, were gradually revealed before us. Once more the magic manifested itself and a new surprise was unveiled to me.

  I don’t know from what depths these outlines emerged, what visions had hung in the mind as they took shape upon this wall. How had it been possible to distill all those customs and rituals into these small, ordered pictures? I stood contemplating them until the light faded. I felt that I was memorizing these outlines and storing them in my mind, knowing what the ancient artist would do in his next painting—I was thinking according to the same method as he. I understood how he would make his transition smoothly to the next image: farmers carrying sheaves of wheat heavy with grain; fishermen hauling up fish with the water still dripping from them; young girls clad in diaphanous robes, playing music and dancing; all watched over from on high by the disc of the sun, its rays transformed into outstretched hands. There were no cartouches displaying illustrious names, nor references to venerable kings or sacred gods. I was dazzled, following the glow of the torch upon the wall, on the point of weeping.

  Newberry reached out and with his fingers delicately brushed away some of the dust. Breathing hard, he gazed for a long time at the figure that appeared. He was standing at his full height, altogether silent, like an ancient god. He drew a sharp breath, then burst out all at once in a voice from which he was unable to eliminate traces of schadenfreude, “This is not a royal tomb!”

  “I am aware of that,” Petrie replied.

  Newberry gave a sigh of relief, and his breathing at last grew regular. It was not the discovery he had feared it was. At once the atmosphere of the tomb was full of tension, and I felt afraid. Petrie gave us a nasty look—he seemed to wish most urgently to evict us from the tomb as quickly as possible, but Newberry took the torch from the man who was holding it and began almost to skip about, elated, exclaiming insincerely, “splendid,” and “magnificent,” and “astonishing.”

  We left the tomb together, all of us perspiring heavily. “Thank you, sir,” Newberry said in a rush. “We should have liked to stay longer, but we have an engagement.”

  We had no such thing, but Petrie didn’t press us. We walked through the desolation surrounding the site. Newberry was silent, but still stepping lightly as a little child. The mud-brick houses of the village came into view, and voices rose, belonging to sellers of cane and grapes, and men with donkeys for hire.

  In a faint voice I asked, “Are we going to return to the tombs of Beni Hassan?”

  “By no means,” he exclaimed merrily. “We deserve to celebrate. I shall take you to an amazing place.”

  I stopped walking. I was tired of his vagueness and his treating me as if I was a small child. “Sir,” I said, “I need to know what is going on. You can’t keep dragging me about blindfolded.”

  “Have you still not understood?” he cried, exultant. “Petrie hasn’t found the tomb of whose discovery he has been dreaming, the tomb of the king I was afraid he would reach before I did.”

  We found ourselves once more in the middle of the donkey market. Newberry examined the animals for hire, repeating his indistinct mutters, then stopped in front of two strong mules. He turned to me and said, “I think these two will do.”

  I protested again. “I still don’t understand.”

  Leaping astride one of the beasts, he gestured to me. “Come along, let’s be off. Enough stalling. We’ve got a long road ahead of us, and I shall explain all.”

  I saw nothing for it but to climb astride the other mule. Newberry leaned over to speak to the muleteer. “I wish you to take us to Dayr al-Barsha,” he said.

  The man tried to haggle, although he was already preparing to mount his own beast. “Sir,” he said, “the road there is rugged, and we’ll have to cross the Yousefi River.”

  “Do try not to drown us in it,” replied Newberry calmly.

  The man went ahead of us. We entered a warren-like vortex of mud houses, and proceeded to cross canals, using whatever there was in the way of rickety bridges. The Yousefi River stretched before us like a glittering knife, slicing the green fields. Its current was swift, and flowed more strongly than the other more ordinary rivers, as if its waters felt choked between its two banks. The muleteer searched until he found a dilapidated bridge, full of gaps. At every moment I was afraid the mule’s foot might slip into one of these. In front of us the man proceeded on a tortuous trajectory with his little donkey, navigating a labyrinth of treacherous holes. I was terrified, hearing the sound of the rushing water beneath me.

  “This current,” Newberry remarked conversationally, “carries the largest number of drowned bodies in Egypt. The ancient tales tell of Joseph, that prophet of the Old Testament—you know him, of course. They say that it was he
who carved out this river in only a thousand days: alf-i-youm in Arabic. Thus he undertook to breathe life into the arid oasis known as al-Fayoum, and the name of this oasis was inspired by those thousand days.”

  I was too frightened to listen very closely to his words. At last we reached the other side. All at once our field of vision admitted a vast desert; I hadn’t thought it was so close. We now took an old, sandy path. On the far horizon a chain of pale blue mountains appeared, seemingly unattainable. I heard Newberry speaking in a strained voice.

  “I was afraid when I came here,” he said. “I feared that he would discover before I did what I always dreamed of finding, the burial site of Akhenaten, the heretic king. His tomb is located in this region, perhaps in the center of Tel al-Amarna, or perhaps beneath the sand upon which we are now treading. It’s a strange country, not subject to any order that we know of. When you live in it it torments you, and yet suddenly it will bestow upon you an undreamed-of opportunity. I am certain that after all this perseverance I will receive my bounty, and discover the location of this tomb.”

  I stared at him, amazed. I had thought making a record of the paintings on all of Egypt’s ancient walls was the extent of his ambition, whereas explorers were people of an altogether different sort, possessing hidden powers that enabled them to burrow down through the earth’s layers and read its secrets.

  “Why is it,” I questioned him, “that this heretic king seems so important?”

  “There was no one like him,” he said, bemused, as if the dust of the desert had rendered the ghost of Akhenaten incarnate before us, and we were pursuing it. “No one else did as he did, renouncing all the ancient deities and choosing a single god. Why did he do that? It’s still a mystery. He rebelled against the priesthood of old, and conceived a religion that was simple and clear, in the form of sun worship: no need for the temples with their gloomy interiors, or the priests with their arcana—rather a god you can see plainly as he shines upon you each morning. At a stroke he did away with mysteries and rituals and those who claimed ownership of the gods’ secrets. Can you imagine such a deed?”