3    The Tombs at Beni Hassan

YES INDEED, MY LITTLE PRINCESS—our life is a chase that never ends, breathless and relentless. And the wolves are not the only hunters. The wolves show their faces occasionally, but are hidden behind masks most of the time.

I had gone to great lengths to escape, to get far away, to hide, even before I encountered the wolf for the first time. By the time I saw it standing there, watchfully, beside the entrance to the tomb, I had already trembled to hear it howling in the silence of the night. It had banished sleep and robbed me of my peace of mind. But when it stood before me I was calm, as if I had come to know it and to expect its arrival. It gazed at me with luminous eyes and open mouth. Startled, I stared at it: a dusty wild dog, only bigger and sleeker than a dog, with a tapered muzzle and prominent fangs. It stared back at me, surprised by my youth and small stature, and the harshness of my isolation. It didn’t seem capable of mauling me, at least in that moment, as I sat beside the blazing campfire, which I had fed with enough firewood to keep it burning all night. This was the reason the wolf was watching me from outside the tomb, without setting foot inside.

Newberry had warned me about the danger of spending the night in that place. He was my oldest and most experienced leader, and he knew the secrets of this primitive region. He wanted me to work only in the daytime, then take the ferry and return to the eastern shore, but I was bewitched by the place, its sullen rocks whose fissures sprout thorns, and those black crevasses intersecting with the ridges of the mountain. He said, “I don’t mean to underestimate your abilities, but I hadn’t imagined they would send me a youth of eighteen years.”

I didn’t feel slighted by his words, for I was still a few months shy of that age. I didn’t tell him that I had actually embarked upon my first sexual experiences, here upon the hot sands of this strange country, but I felt that this tomb in which I was to work was my gateway to the adult world. The wind was still hot, even after midnight, the river opaque as a riddle, the sky close and rich with stars. I had never before seen a sky packed with so many stars, and I was intoxicated with the space and the silence—until that wolf turned up. He stretched his paws, then sat near the opening of the tomb. I didn’t know whether he was there to guard me from attack by the other wolves or whether he was waiting for the fire to die down so as to launch an attack himself. I rose cautiously, gathered up all the bits of kindling and tree limbs that I had, and began tossing them onto the flames. My only hope was for the fire not to die out before daybreak—and when would that be?

Nothing broke the silence but the crackling of the wood fire—could it be that this was where the hunt would come to an end? It was Newberry who had brought me from Cairo to Minya onboard an old sailing vessel. I preferred to travel by water, so that bad luck would lose my trail; the ship traveled against the current, and the water bore particles of dark-colored mud. I had spent my childhood at the edge of a dark-green river full of algae and bits of melting ice. I contemplated the flat green expanse that covered the bank on the east side, while the west side was hemmed in by desolate hills, and the desert was as close as could be.

We disembarked together and joined the crowd at Minya. The colors of the faces, the suntanned complexions, amazed me. We rested for one night at the only hotel in the station square, and the next morning crossed to the opposite bank thanks to an old and very small boat. We climbed the arid hills to the tombs of Beni Hassan.

There were deep trenches amidst the rocks. Newberry pointed to one of them and said, “Here is your palace, the one you’ve been seeking.”

I noted the veiled sarcasm, but I was busy exploring the place, studying the walls of the first tomb I entered. Its paintings were faded, covered with a layer of fine dust, but they were real and authentic, full of ancient spirits in their natural abode, no embellishments or artificial gloss. Although pale, as if about to fade away altogether, they were protected from the effects of time by this patina of dust. They were not stiff or mummified, the way I had seen them for the first time at Lord Amherst’s mansion. I wanted to reach out and touch them, but I was afraid they would vanish like a dream.

“Our team is made up of two others,” said Newberry. “You’ll meet them in the morning. Mr. Fraser and Mr. Blackden. They have undertaken to copy the paintings in the other tombs. We shall all cooperate in finishing up this area.”

“Where are they now?” I asked.

“They’ll turn up in good time. The important thing is for you to know the scope of your work, so that you don’t interfere with theirs.”

I arranged my things—my small case, scrolls of paper, colored pencils, and a little food. I did this in such a deliberate way as to suggest that the place had become my own, and that I was staying here.

“You’re not in Swaffham, you know,” Newberry cautioned me. “This place is full of vipers and wolves and hyenas. It’s not a picnic.”

The wolf got to his feet and turned in a circle, sensing, perhaps, that the blaze had subsided. I grasped a flaming stick and brandished it, making a loud noise. I wanted him to move off a bit, but he saw through my childish ploy. He kept staring at me with his piercing eyes, and then he began to howl. His voice split the silence of the mountain, and from afar dozens of other voices responded. Was he summoning them? Or was it a farewell? He wagged his tail and threw me a final glance before he left. I was sure he would return some other night, when there was no fire lit.

I commenced work in the morning, even though I was tired from my night’s vigil, and from the stifling weather. A small dinghy came, and in it were some supplies which an elderly boatman named Idris brought. I didn’t go to the other tombs to make the acquaintance of those who worked there. I wanted to be alone for a while, to contemplate these cryptic paintings and try to decode their messages. I paused for a long time before a depiction of a bird. It was standing on the branch of a tree that was not visible in the picture, folding one wing and spreading the other, as if it were half-still, while the other half was poised to take flight. I stood there unable to believe what I saw—I expected it to come to life and burst from the shadowy tomb. I opened my case with a trembling hand and drew from it my papers and watercolors. There was a small table with a low chair, at which I seated myself and got to work at once. I felt as though it was essential that I rescue this bird from its silent death, to shower it with my watercolors and infuse it with a new spirit—perhaps it would find its way to the other world.

I remembered the first time I stood before these paintings, the shiver that ran all through me as with my eyes I traced their details—a shiver of fear and amazement, and a strange kind of hunger. I was young, but the chase had begun. Yes indeed . . . it started years ago, elsewhere, on a rainy night in Kensington, our first home, when we all left, fleeing the darkness: seven siblings, seven hungry mouths, and in our mother’s arms the eighth, who was still suckling. My father was in flight from his creditors and the announcement of his ruin. We left our old house and most of our clothes and other belongings, each of us taking only what he could carry. We took shelter from the pouring rain under the station roof, until morning came, and with it the first train that would carry us to another town, far from all the memories of childhood, of brick houses and cobblestone streets. The train didn’t tarry: it raced across the fogbound flat countryside, severing us from everything that had any connection with the past. My mother cried, and so did the baby. She tried to quiet it by offering it her breast, but that didn’t seem to satisfy it. For many a long day this feeling would cling to all of us: there was never enough food to fill all those stomachs. My father was puffing on his pipe, pretending nothing had happened. At that moment his smoke was turning our stomachs, nauseating us. Next to his seat was a small number of his things, which he had been determined to bring along and keep by him: a roll of canvases, a bundle of different-sized brushes, and a quantity of half-empty paint tubes. My father was seeking a new start, and we had no choice but to go to the old family home in Swaffham—to my paternal aunt, who most particularly hated my mother.

We crowded into the basement of the small house, the mice having fled on our account. My elder brother soon left us to seek his fortune in London. My aunt tried to get me to attend the school that was affiliated with her church, but my father refused; she persisted in her efforts to give me spelling lessons through the use of the New Testament. For the first time my father took me with him to look for work at the nearby estates, for he was afraid to face rejection on his own. Together we rode in a hay wagon that jogged along monotonously. He had brought examples of his paintings: short-tailed dogs, wide-eyed cats, and stray foxes—paintings our fugitive state had prevented him from finishing.

“Of course,” he was telling me as we rode along, “I prefer to paint animals. They are sincere—they don’t know how to dissimulate. Likewise they have no objection to their own looks, as can be plainly seen in my paintings.”

Our destination was the stately homes of the nobility, those accursed Englishmen who loved their spoiled pets more than they loved their wives, according to my father. Together we climbed Didlington Hill, where Lord Amherst’s estate was: an old fortress with moss growing upon its stones, ivy and fern surrounding the window frames. The butler looked us over haughtily, but he admitted us into the presence of Lady Amherst. The dim corridors exuded the scent of wood varnish and old spices. We trod upon carpeting so soft it seemed to me that if I should trip and fall I would get lost in its dense pile. We entered a hall whose walls were covered in portraits of glowering faces and uniforms adorned with medals—lords, generals, and captains. My father looked at me, feeling diminished and wishing he could retreat. But the lady came, carrying a blindingly white Persian cat. My father talked to her about how he specialized in painting domestic animals, and had gone into a number of stately homes and painted all the creatures they housed, from birds to dogs and cats to racehorses, even snakes, and animals that had been stuffed and mounted. It appeared that despite all this the lady did not need his services, especially since his Lordship, her husband, was away on a long hunting trip. But then the Persian cat, taking her unawares, leapt onto my lap, where it subsided in a heap, settling itself comfortably. The lady looked at me in amazement. She agreed to have my father begin painting her cat and to bring me along whenever he came. At last we smiled at each other, he and I. We’d see some bread and butter and eggs on our table; perhaps we could have a little peace of mind and a fresh start.

It would be absurd to say that the cat’s leap changed my life—it wasn’t so random as all that. The incident was no more than a chance occurrence, but it was the reason behind our regular trips to Didlington. My aunt was angry, exasperated with my father for not giving her a chance to instruct me.

The animals began to change as new portrait subjects were introduced, and the paintings were replaced, one for another. The lady owned a menagerie of tame beasts in her back garden—monkeys from Africa, small Bengal tigers, colorful equatorial birds. I, too, brought a small tablet and some pencils. I would follow his brushstrokes and perhaps the course of his life, as a wandering artist passing through estates and manors to paint the animals they housed. Surely I would be like him.

One day my father was painting an ill-mannered monkey. It would eat the fruit of a banana and fling the peel, while the lady smiled and my father tried to feign pleasure in this teasing. It was a foolish scene. I pulled out my chair and wandered away from them, through the long corridor, over the plush carpet. I saw the mirrors, the paintings, the carpets, and the elaborate silver candlesticks, as well as the swords, daggers, and hunting rifles.

Eventually the corridor took me to a dimly lit hall, with faint light filtering in through narrow openings in lowered blinds. The air was stale—there was neither a source of heat nor any ventilation. When my eyes had adjusted to the shadows, I discerned wondrous things such as I had never seen before. There was a statue of black stone: a slender woman, her nose broken but still held high, her full lips pressed together, her eyes wide and deep set; in her hand she held what looked like a flower bending forward on its stem and resting on her fingers, and she stood as if she was just about to step out of the shadows. In the middle of the hall was a massive stone sarcophagus, with exotic figures incised and painted on it, including an image of the flower that the woman held. Next to this was an old wooden box whose colors deeply penetrated its texture—outlandish images, such as staring eyes, open hands, serpent heads and jackals, strange faces decorated with jewelry that was stranger still. Everything was oddly positioned. There was another statue representing a cat standing poised on its hind legs for a savage attack, possessing nothing of the docility of the animals my father painted. Next to this was a glass case, under which were many ancient artifacts, some of them broken and incomplete—pieces of stone, wood, and greenish brass; huge vessels of pottery, marble, and granite, with extraordinary designs etched upon them; paintings hung upon the walls. There were fragments of ancient linen, worn and frayed, resting behind panes of glass. There was a picture of a warrior holding a bow and nocking an arrow as he stood upon a two-wheeled horse-drawn chariot. The hall was filled with remarkable pictures of brown-faced people with wide eyes and long, curling lashes—they belonged to another world, a different era. I knew nothing about them, and yet I moved among them, feverish, wanting to reach out my hand and touch them, to make sure they were really there. I was afraid, though—they looked like talismans for wizards, followers of Merlin.

Could I draw these, rather than the cats and other pets? Could I get at the life behind the faded, stiff façade? They must be connected in some obscure way to this peripatetic lord, to those foreign countries he frequented. They were not to be found in our world, that much was certain. No one in Kensington or Swaffham, or even London, could fashion such totems.

I retreated to a corner of the room, breathing hard, trying to regain my composure. I opened my tablet and began to sketch what I saw onto the paper. I tried to solve the riddle of the faint smiles and fixed stares. The heavy atmosphere of the hall began to constrict my breath and enter my bones, arousing in me awe and fear and pain. I kept sketching until the light faded and darkness descended.

No one saw me pass through the corridor. My father was still seated before the unfinished painting of the monkey, banana peels strewn all around him. He looked at me, puzzled, and said, “Where did you run off to?”

“I don’t like monkeys,” I said ambiguously.

We went down the hill together, but found no wagon to take us to the house, so we walked a long way under squalls of fine drizzle. In the basement, after everyone had gone to sleep, I lit a small candle and turned over the pages I had filled with sketches. Where could these things have come from? And what did they stand for?

The following day I was already waiting for my father before he awoke. I pilfered another of his tablets and stuffed more pencils into my pocket. I saw my aunt clutching her Gospel, but I hid behind my father. I rode the hay wagon with him.

He sat before the monkey, trying to persuade it to hold still. I waited a little, until he was preoccupied, then crept off to the dim hall. I raised the blinds a bit, to admit more light, then began tremblingly to draw. I had acquainted myself somewhat with these strange forms, and I could tell that if I continued drawing like this the moment would come in which they would disclose all their secrets to me.

Was it the largest statue talking to me? Had it been transformed into this enormous man blocking my light and wearing an impressive uniform and holding a pair of gloves in his hand, which he slapped impatiently against the other hand? Frightened, I got to my feet, the papers and pencils falling from my lap. I darted away in front of him, my feet scarcely touching the floor as I made for the door. I heard his voice behind me as he bellowed, “Wait, you little thief!”

I ran into the butler as he passed through the corridor. My father was sitting, irritably eating a banana, while the monkey watched him in amazement. I was already sprinting over the lawn and heading down the hill as black clouds began to gather. I heard angry rumblings, but I didn’t know whether they came from the house or from the sky. I looked behind me, but saw no hunting dogs—maybe they couldn’t pursue me yet, or perhaps they were taking my father hostage in my stead.

I didn’t go to the table to partake of our dinner of potatoes. I stayed by myself, quaking, down in the basement, listening to the sounds of their utensils clattering against the plates. I didn’t know whether my father had come home or not. Then I heard the sound of his heavy footsteps coming down the stairs. I couldn’t lock the door from the inside. He was extraordinarily angry. I realized that he had lost his job at the manor, and perhaps he would not be able to get work at the nearby estates, either. Through clenched teeth he said. “I’d like to break your neck—but not tonight, because Lord Amherst wants to see you in the morning.”

I didn’t sleep at all that night. I was sure he would drag me into the manor’s cellar and leave me to rot. But there was no escape—I had to go. The following day we climbed the hill, while I repeated the words of apology that my father dictated to me. I must confirm my guilt, then apologize fervently and sincerely, and then retreat, but without turning my back to anyone. But at the door the butler made a clear sign to my father, saying, “You wait outside.”

I looked at him pleadingly, but my father hastily withdrew. The butler pushed me, and I went along in front of him. The corridor seemed silent, and gloomier than usual. I closed my eyes, but the scent of the old hall was slowly taking possession of me. The butler stopped and left me to go in by myself. It was crowded as ever with all its artifacts. My interrogators awaited me—they fell silent on seeing me. The lady turned a kind face to me. A tiny shaft of light fell upon her features, making them appear to radiate more good will than those of the others. Lord Amherst was sitting beside the black basalt statue. He wasn’t angry or agitated, the way he had appeared the day before. Beside the coffin embellished with paintings was a third person—a man, sitting stiffly upright, elegant, with sheets of paper spread out upon his knees. I could tell from the first, swift glance that they were the pages that bore my drawings. I continued to stand there in silence; I had forgotten all the words of apology. They kept staring at me in amazement—I didn’t know why.

The lady said languidly, “Come forward, Howard. Let Sir Percy Newberry have a good look at you.”

I took a small step forward, so that I was in the middle of a patch of light. I was uneasy. The man raised his head and studied me. He was slender, with piercing eyes, an aquiline nose, and a thick moustache that covered his upper lip entirely. He drew a sharp breath and said, “Good Lord! He’s younger than I expected—skinnier and hungrier, too.”

I didn’t know what game it was these gentlemen were playing. He raised the hand that held my drawing sheets, and peered at them once more. Then he stared at me superciliously, and said, “Are you sure you’re the one who made these drawings?”

I couldn’t keep silent. “Indeed, sir,” I said.

Sir Percy turned to address Lord Amherst, who had caught me yesterday. “My dear Amherst,” he said, “he doesn’t merely replicate all the details precisely, he invests them with new life. How did you manage to infuse life into these exanimate artifacts?”

He directed the latter question to me, but I didn’t know how to respond. I didn’t know what he meant, but he wasn’t waiting for an answer from me, either. He went back to examining the drawings. He spoke to me again. “Do you know where these things came from—the paintings and statues and sarcophagi and other relics that fill this hall?”

My throat was dry. The situation was becoming increasingly awkward for me. I shook my head. Trying to take the measure of me, he asked, “And how far have you got with your instruction?”

“Not far,” I said.

Her Ladyship spoke again, as languidly as before. “The dear boy!” she said. “His talent’s inborn!”

Newberry said, “They are from Egypt—it is a small piece of our vast empire, but it is packed with these objects.”

I couldn’t keep still. I didn’t believe it possible that such objects as these could exist somewhere in profusion. I wanted to sit down, or lean against something. I said in astonishment, “Other things like these? I can’t imagine it!”

“What may be found there surpasses anything you could imagine: dozens of temples, hundreds of statues and obelisks, the walls of the crypts decked out with paintings. Don’t bother to look around you—the things that are here are nothing by comparison with what is in Egypt. The astonishing thing is that the peasants who live amidst these splendid objects don’t know their worth.”

At last Lord Amherst raised his voice in protest. “But, my dear Newberry, this collection was chosen with immense care.”

I couldn’t understand what the discussion was about. I said breathlessly, “But if Egypt is a small part of our empire, why do we leave all these beautiful things to them? Why don’t we bring them all here?”

All three of them glanced at one another and then burst out laughing. Even the scowling Lord Amherst joined in the hilarity. I looked on in confusion. I was certain of only one thing: that I was not going to be punished, and there was no need for me to recite those apologies.

“It’s a fine idea, really,” said Lord Newberry. “But it’s impossible to carry out. Those people didn’t grasp the value of what they had—it was we who informed them of it—and now it has become difficult to appropriate the objects from them. This is in addition to there being a number of things it would be impossible to transport.”

In an attempt to be more serious than the others, her Ladyship fixed her gaze upon me, making me aware of her radiant beauty. She said, “Would you like to go to Egypt, my dear Howard?”

“Would my father go with me?” I said foolishly.

Lord Newberry turned himself altogether toward me. He made no reference to my stupidity, but spoke seriously. “No,” he said, “of course not. Your father can’t go with you everywhere. This is employment—a job—at which you will earn money, while at the same time drawing the objects you love. There is funding from the British Society for the Preservation of Egyptian Antiquities. You will go to the important sites and record all that you see. Then, even if some disaster should occur, natural or unnatural—an earthquake, flooding, a fire—and all these things should be lost, your pictures will remain; you will be the eyewitness who surveyed and saw and recorded them.”

I didn’t understand a word of what was being said. I didn’t know why they were trying to send me to this distant land, instead of locking me up in the cellar. To rescue me from my confusion, her Ladyship said, “There is no need to answer right away, Howard. Go and talk it over with your father. Take your time.”

How distant this moment seems, as if it belonged to some other realm. And how strange my father’s face seems, like the face of a relief carved in the wall—stiff and sad, yet unable to refuse an offer that would relieve him of one of those hungry mouths.

At noon, I felt a man’s shadow fall on me as I was absorbed in my drawing. I thought it was Idris, bringing the day’s provisions, but it was Newberry himself, dressed in khaki. He wore short pants and on his head was an enormous hat. He was staring red-faced at my work.

“For Christ’s sake!” he exclaimed. “What do you think you’re doing?”

Before I could utter a syllable, he had snatched the drawing I had before me and held it up to examine it more closely. He looked at the wall to see how well my handiwork conformed to the original. Then he stared at me in consternation and said angrily, “This is certainly not what you came here for. I thought Fraser and Blackden had explained to you the procedure you are to follow for this job!”

I had not yet met those two men, nor had it felt to me, during the preceding days, as though there was anyone but me in these tombs. But he went to a corner, picked up the roll of tracing paper and a bundle of black pencils he found there, and held them up. “What do you suppose these are for?” he said.

“I don’t know,” I said.

“The point is that you can see through them to the painting on the wall, so as to trace it exactly, retaining the same proportions and all the details. You must place the tracing paper over it and trace it directly. This is what we do with all the artwork, whatever the surface—whether concave or convex, smooth or grainy, colored or not. The important thing is to replicate them just as they are.”

What he wanted was entirely different from what I had thought. Rapidly folding up a sheet of tracing paper, he continued, “Then we fold the paper like this before sending it to London. There they will undertake to sketch the paintings in ink and prepare them for printing. What is crucial is that your tracings be exact.”

Listening to him, I was astounded. I had not imagined that these paintings would be handled in such a primitive fashion, or that someone I’d never seen would be inking them in—someone who hadn’t touched their soul. Why had they brought me here, then? This work didn’t require talent or passion.

Newberry must have noted the look of despair on my face. “No need to feel disappointed,” he said. “We have before us a tremendous labor. This tomb is one of dozens that have been discovered and are yet to be discovered. We must complete them all, and if one of us were to sit here all day drawing a single bird, we’d need more than a century to finish the job.”

Knowing discussion was futile, I said, “But at least we’d attain something of the beauty found on these walls.”

“You’re still young and inexperienced. It is financial considerations that constrain our activities. We must complete this task before the grant money runs out. Those funds were specially earmarked for us to gather all these paintings into special volumes and preserve them within the Egypt Exploration Society. We are in a race against time, my boy.”

I didn’t know at the time that he was a man of antiquated ideas, or that it was he who had devised this method, managed to persuade the London office, and on this basis selected all those who would work with him. He wasn’t about to let an upstart like me overturn all his convictions. He wanted to finish, in only five years, the recording of all the paintings to be found far and wide throughout Egypt, and to impress this scheme of his upon everyone with the utmost rigor.

He left me and went to check on the other tombs, but I was hamstrung. My colored bird lay where it had been tossed upon the floor, and I felt it was worthless. I took some sheets of tracing paper, affixed them to the wall, and began outlining the paintings strictly, stripping them of life. And the dream I had cherished and for whose sake I had come to this desolate place became a nightmare.

Working away bitterly, I was unaware of time passing. Whenever I finished with one of the tracing sheets I hung another in its place. I wanted to get this over with as quickly as possible, so that I might have time left over to do what I loved. I stopped only when I heard the sound of raucous laughter coming from the entrance to the tomb. Two men were standing there, smoking and gesticulating in my direction. I knew them at once: George Willoughby Fraser and Marcus Blackden, my two colleagues, whose acquaintance I was late in making. I stood up from my work. They tossed their cigarettes outside the tomb, laughing. They were rather large men. The sun had burned their faces and lent them a reddish tan. They offered their rough hands for a handshake.

Fraser, the taller and bulkier of the two, pointed to the tracing paper sheets full of sketches and said, “Evidently Newberry’s lecture made a great impression on you—you keep working even after the light fades. Do you want to lose your eyesight just to satisfy him?”

Blackden put his hand on my shoulder and drew me outside the tomb. I must have looked like a hollow reed under his arm. The two of them sat me down between them on the riverbank amid the wild esparto plants. Blackden said, “You mustn’t waste this enchanted moment when the colors of the river change with the sunset—a thing of life and beauty in this dead place. Come, let’s enjoy it together, before the dreary darkness descends upon the land.”

From his pocket he extracted a metal box full of tobacco and began rolling some into slender cigarettes. He did this quickly and adroitly, then offered one to me, but I politely shook my head. The sun began to sink behind the mountain upon whose flank we were sitting, and the water changed color, taking on a faint yellow tint, then the reddish purple of the cherries in Swaffham Wood, and finally a grayish hue crept in upon it. The birds, ever present above the river, soared in arrowhead formation, and on the other bank clouds of fine mist rose up among the crowns of the palm trees. I was enraptured by the sight, but I heard Fraser mutter as he puffed on his hand-rolled cigarette, “We deserve a better fate than this. We all came here to escape personal misfortunes we couldn’t endure. Each of us was dreaming of great discoveries—and look where we’ve fetched up.”

I didn’t know how to reply. It had been a crushing day, and these words added to my despondency. The sun set quickly among the rocks, and the river lost its splendid colors.

“Enough of this self-pity,” Blackden cried. “We’ll take the young man with us and go spend the evening on the other side of the river. We’ll go to Saft al-Khamar.”

I said in a subdued voice, “I’m accustomed to spending the night in this place.”

“Nonsense. You’ll end up being eaten by wolves, or losing your mind. These walls aren’t going anywhere—they’ve been here for thousands of years, and they’re staying put.”

It was no use putting up resistance. They were overpowering, seething with boredom. I felt, too, that a part of my spirit had been torn away. They brought me down to where Idris sat waiting for them. He calmly guided the boat over the dark ripples as the wind grew cooler. The night was less oppressive on the other shore, the mud-brick houses and the little shops illuminated by torches and lamps, and the farmers returning from the fields with their beasts in tow, weariness in their faces and their feet conspicuously bare. They stared at us without resentment, but they took care at all times to keep well out of our way. The darkness of the place was alleviated by a bonfire from which emanated the smell of manure. Children circled the fire, shouting, and women concealed their faces behind veils or velvety shawls. My companions knew their way; they must have traversed it every night.

We proceeded to a square filled with sugarcane merchants. A row of donkeys were eating the coarse leaves. The two wandered for a long time among the unassuming creatures, until they came across three strong ones. I despaired as a young muleteer helped me climb onto the donkey he had selected for me.

We followed Fraser’s lead as he hurried along in front. The muleteer panted with the effort to keep up with him. We set ourselves upon a route that wound through damp fields, from which rose the croaking of frogs mixed with the noise of dogs. The sky receded a little, but still teemed with stars. I was breathing hard, as if heading out on a journey with no return. All at once Blackden began to sing, an Egyptian song, surely, for its words had no meaning and its rhythm was strange. We crossed a worn wooden bridge over one of the canals, and entered fields full of cornstalks, the rustle of whose leaves sounded like hoarse muttering. I had given up, having lost my confidence since leaving the tomb. It was strange that it was the tomb I longed for, not my home so far away.

A stand of palm trees came once more into view, from which we could deduce that a town or village must lie beneath them. “At last,” Blackden exclaimed joyfully, “Saft al-Khamar!” He was pleased, giddy as if all his happy memories reposed in this shadowy place. We didn’t enter the village streets; we steered the donkeys around them via a network of canals and ditches that surrounded them. The village didn’t detect our presence—even its dogs stayed quiet. Then, gradually, noise could be heard, increasing in volume. A stone structure appeared, light emanating from its wooden shutters. The voices kept getting louder as we got down off our donkeys. The muleteer made haste to tie them to a stake and sit down beside them.

Blackden pushed me toward the entrance of the building, exhorting me, “Go ahead, boy. You’ll be the first to venture into Christo’s tavern tonight.”

The place was more crowded than I had expected, brimming with the odors of tobacco, alcohol, and urine. The crowd was a peculiar assortment, transformed by the dimness into an indistinguishable mass, despite their various origins: Europeans, city folk in tarbushes, thick-bodied farmers different from those I had seen outside, Gypsy women with coal-black hair and full lips, women flushed or pale, all of them hiding their faces behind masks of heavy cosmetics. In the middle of all this an obese woman gyrated while everyone clapped.

From behind the bar a fat Greek man called out, waving the bottles he was holding, “Welcome, my best customers! I’ve been waiting for you!”

Feeling suffocated, I wanted to escape, but Blackden had his hand on my back and pushed me until I was face-to-face with the corpulent Greek. “We have here,” Blackden said loudly, “a fresh virgin. We need you to help him forget about this country’s pitiless nights.”

The Greek bared his crooked teeth. “God bless the foreigners, the wretches, and the virgins!” he said. “You’ve brought him to the right place.”

I only just moistened my lips with the glass of wine he handed to me, but my stomach contracted immediately. The other two drained their glasses in one go. The Greek kept refilling them. The others shouted as the dancing woman jiggled her belly and swung her hips.

Fraser said, “The only way you’ll be able to stand Newberry is if you come here every night.”

In one respect, he was right. Newberry had let me down, and no doubt he had let them down as well. “He promised us,” Fraser continued, “that we’d have a part in the excavations and the archaeological discoveries that would get all the newspapers in Europe talking about us. And here we are instead, copyists of wall art in some remote, desolate tomb.”

Surprised, I said, “I thought the excavations were taking place far to the south.”

“You really are green,” he said. “Just a few miles from here is Tel al-Amarna. That’s where the madman Petrie is searching for Akhenaten’s tomb. Every day Newberry creeps along behind him to eavesdrop on his findings. It wouldn’t surprise me if one day he killed the man before he could achieve any results.”

They went on drinking, and I saw that I had no alternative but to stay and be a spectator. I moistened my lips some more with the nasty wine—perhaps I’d get used to the taste. By listening to other people’s conversations, I slowly familiarized myself with the mixture of faces that filled the room. There were regional administrators, government employees, cotton magnates, and mayors of nearby villages. How did this portly Greek manage to bring them all together here in this dim cavern so far from the city, and immerse them in rural nightlife?

“He’s the king in these parts,” said Blackden. “Every farmer in this village and the surrounding villages owes him money, and no matter how good their harvest, it’s never enough to pay off their debts. But there’s another, more important reason he can get them all to come here . . .”

Suddenly the place fell silent. From some obscure part of the establishment came a beautiful young girl. Her face was not masked with cosmetics, unlike the others. All eyes turned toward her as she calmly and self-assuredly made her way among them. The Greek smiled, observing the reaction to her appearance, like a breath of fresh air in the stifling fug of the tavern.

I stared at her in amazement. This wasn’t a fit place for her, but Fraser raised his glass to her and said, “She’s come at last, Helen of Troy, whose honor the Greeks took more trouble to defend than she herself did.”

She merely smiled, and sat down by the bar, while the crowd formed a semicircle around her and stared. I could see that she was the real attraction that drew all those customers to this godforsaken place.

“My precious girl is pleased with you tonight,” said the Greek with relish, “and she’s going to sing for you.”

I looked at Blackden. He was staring mutely at her, enchanted, while her gaze wandered the room without fixing upon anyone in particular. She began to sing, her melodious voice issuing from her throat to fill the space and enliven it a little. I didn’t understand the words, but the modulations of her voice took me back to the flat country I had left behind, the undulating sea beneath my feet, the faces of my seven siblings, crowding around me and vying to carry my case as I prepared to set out, my mother’s tears, and my father’s expression, set and impassive.

Then I remembered the fragrance of the first body I had known.

The ship that bore me from Liverpool had covered many miles, and when the city called Alexandria came into view, the ship grew feeble as an old woman. I was holding onto the iron rail, as the city and its white buildings drew ever nearer to me, an African bird sitting on an egg, breathing out heat. There was no fog to muddy my view of it, nor did the sun seem to hide from it. I stepped onto the quay and was overwhelmed by the crowds and the cacophony on all sides. I was surrounded by brown faces indistinguishable from one another, all shouting to one another at close range, gesticulating, and moving in all directions. Their clothing looked more like rags than garments; flies and dust swirled around them. Was it possible that these were the people who had fashioned the objects preserved in Lord Amherst’s hall?

Bewildered, I stood still, not knowing where to go. An elderly porter went past, his back bent, carrying a wooden box. I saw his face for a brief instant, wide-eyed with a large nose and prominent cheekbones. He was one of them, one of the faces carved in the worn wooden panel in Lord Amherst’s hall. I made my way very slowly through the crowd, and discovered that these were the selfsame beings, that they had climbed down from the temple walls, had stepped from their paintings and the illumined papyrus sheets. They were the ones, the very same, but they were more wretched, not so dignified, all of them milling about aimlessly, uncertainly, under this burning sun, as if they were living in a time not their own. I stopped abruptly, transfixed.

All the passengers who had accompanied me on the ship’s passage had gone their way. I turned to see whether anyone was waiting for me, but found no one: I was alone and forlorn, not even eighteen years old, in short pants, with my case of reinforced cardboard, and tweed cap. I was not supposed to linger in this place—from what they had told me I had assumed that someone from the Department of Antiquities would be waiting for me, to help me board the train for Cairo, so that I might present myself to the director, Gaston Maspero. But after a long wait I realized that no one would come.

There was nothing for it but to leave the port on my own and use the few Egyptian liras I had with me to find my way to the railway station. At the entrance, a guard inspected my passport, and on determining that I was British he raised his hands in salute, snapping his heels on the ground. I perceived that, despite my youth, I enjoyed all the benefits of the empire. The street outside the port was crowded with people and carts drawn by horses and donkeys. On the other side stood a number of military trucks draped with the British flag. I felt secure, for there were people who would take it upon themselves to look after me on this strange turf. An elderly porter pressed upon me his offer to take my case and conduct me to one of the hotels. I signaled my refusal. He was of lowly appearance and spoke broken English. I wanted to walk until I was tired, for after long days of traveling by ship I was longing for the solidity of dry land.

“One piaster,” the man said desperately. “I’m at your service.”

I didn’t answer him. I walked along Gomruk Street, among shops, warehouses, agencies. There were people wearing dusty cloths on their heads—where had those come from? And why had they substituted them for the striped head coverings that appeared in the paintings? What were these garments? Where was the cloth they used to wrap around their waists, showing off the beauty of their bare chests? Why did they now show themselves in such ugly trappings? What happened to the wide eyes of the women, outlined in shades of kohl? Perhaps this was a temporary phenomenon, for ports always draw mixtures of all kinds of people. Inside, perhaps, they were still as they had always been, beneath all this dust.

I heard hoofbeats right behind me, so I stepped aside to allow the horse to pass, but the vehicle the beast was pulling stopped beside me. There was a black carriage—later I learned that it was called a hantour—drawn by a skinny horse. The driver sat erect, with a long switch in his hand.

I heard a hoarse voice calling to me, “Hey—you! Foreign boy!”

The voice was calling to me in halting English. Seated within the carriage was an unveiled woman, wrapped in a black abaya, a little older than I was, wide-eyed with curling eyelashes, her nose a little prominent, lips painted a vivid red that went well with her copper complexion. On her head was a kerchief in similarly bold colors, looking a little like the head cloths found in the paintings. Surely I had seen her before, in a carving or a picture, or in one of Lord Amherst’s books. I stood stock-still, while she went on whispering her broken phrases.

“Come—get in quickly.”

I stood frozen in place, but she held out her hand and pulled me toward her. She didn’t need much strength to prevail over me: I was dazzled, in shock, incapable of resistance. She seated me beside her, and signaled to the driver to proceed, so he flicked his switch over the back of the skinny horse. The carriage rolled on, leaving behind the port and its dun-colored establishments. I saw a sign shaped like an arrow, bearing the words “To the city center,” but she didn’t go in that direction. She did not speak, but merely held onto my arm, as if she was afraid I might hop out and escape. The wind grew a little less hot. I was going back toward the sea, but from a different direction. I didn’t look at her, but her body kept bumping against mine with each lurch of the carriage. Suddenly the sorry buildings disappeared, and the sea came into view, green and open and sparkling with whitecaps.

The carriage came to a stop, and the girl leapt down gracefully. She beckoned me to get out. Seeing my fearfulness, she said, “Don’t be afraid. I won’t eat you!”

I picked up my suitcase and joined her. The carriage drew away all at once, and I stood there listening to the horse’s hoofbeats until they faded away, leaving only the murmur of the surf. She took off the wooden shoes she was wearing, drew the black garment about her, and walked barefoot in the sand. I felt drained, and a sensation of seasickness upset my stomach, but I followed her. A wooden structure appeared before us, a small dilapidated building. It was amazing that the hut could withstand all that wind. She pushed open the door and went in, while I stood outside, irresolute. She extended her hand once more and pulled me inside. I smelled the aroma of wood permeated with salt and iodine. There was nothing in the hut but a small bed woven from palm fronds and a window giving onto a faded sky in which there was only a single bird. She seated me on the edge of the bed and took off her head covering. Then she sat before me and gazed intently into my face.

“How young you look!” she said. “Your moustache is nothing but yellow fuzz, like a chick’s down.”

She fell silent for a bit, then reached out and wiped the perspiration from my brow. She spoke again. “Tell me the truth. Have you ever touched a woman?”

“My mother,” I said.

Laughing, she said, “I know that, silly! I don’t mean that kind of touching. I mean touching an actual woman, who can really give you something—something that’s not like what you get from your mother.”

She knelt upon the ground and unfastened the straps of my sandals. Examining my reddened toes, she exclaimed, “What rosy little toes you have, just like goldfish. Are you a soldier? But no, you’re too young and mild-mannered. What do you do?”

I found my voice and managed to say, “I’m an artist.”

“Are you really?” she said. “Do you do portraits of children or of adults? It doesn’t matter. You must have money. Isn’t that right?”

I was barefoot, inside a tumbledown shack, with an exceedingly bold woman, and I didn’t know what awaited me outside. I took out all the liras in my pocket and showed them to her: twenty pounds, an advance sum I had obtained in Liverpool, before I boarded the ship. I had wanted to give some of it to my father, but I’d had no opportunity. She looked at me, and at the picture of King George V depicted on the coins.

“That’s a lot of money,” she exclaimed in surprise. “I won’t take more than I’m entitled to.”

She took exactly five pounds. She could have taken the entire sum, but she returned the rest to my pocket. Then she got up and began to undress. Her copper-colored body seemed warm and familiar.

“If you’re an artist,” she said, “then why not begin with me? Do you like my body?”

But artwork would come later. Meanwhile, I was shy and didn’t know what to do. She had me stretch out on my back, and then she took over completely. The heat of her body transmitted itself to mine, which had known only the coolness of childhood. Her movements matched the rhythms of the surf, the flow tide filled with desire, the ebb tide a respite in which to catch the breath. Prodding me, she said, “You’re as shy and tender as a girl. Don’t close your eyes—this is your first time, and you must experience it fully, in every way.” I tried to do as she said. Her face had changed color and seemed alien, but it was the rest of her that was doing all the work. I found myself trembling, quivering in every cell of my being. A part of my soul left me and inhabited her body.

She fell deeply asleep, still pressed up against me. Her face resumed its normal color and she appeared much younger than I had thought. Feeling warm and languorous and sad, I lay staring at the ceiling, whose timbers seemed about to scatter with the wind. It was as if the world had suddenly changed, and everything I undertook upon this strange terrain would be different. I clung to her.

When she stirred, I asked her about her mother. She laughed and said, “What do you think? Cleopatra, of course.” I couldn’t tell whether she was joking or serious. Then I slept.

I woke in alarm. There had been a knock upon the door, and at first I imagined it was my father, or my aunt with her Gospel in her hand, or Lord Amherst himself. But the girl covered herself, her coppery skin, and sprang nimbly from the bed. My back was hurting, and the palm fronds had left marks on my skin. The girl, though, went out through the door, closing it behind her so that no one would see me. I heard the sound of her talking to some man, their voices rising and falling. The man’s was rough, but hers was strong and commanding. I thought they must be quarreling. I heard her make a harsh, hawking noise in her throat, and then all was still. It seemed that the man had gone away. The door of the shack opened and she appeared, holding a huge silvery fish still fighting for its life.

She smiled and said, “That was a fisherman, bringing us this fish—you must be dying of hunger.”

She went to a corner of the hut, where there was a tin receptacle filled with ash, on which were laid some sticks of firewood. She did no more than to drag it outside and light a fire in it, blowing on it a little and then leaving the rest to the sea breeze. I got up and watched her as she washed the fish in seawater, then sat down on the beach. With her hand she scraped together some moist sand and, with some salt, heaped it up all around the fish, as if she was performing an ancient rite, in which the fish was no more or less than a small sacrifice. The wind could just about have plucked off the light robe with which she cloaked her body; even this nakedness was part of the ritual. As gulls began to circle around her like a nimbus, she placed the fish, with the wet sand encasing it, upon the crackling fire. A trail of smoke rose, and she blew resolutely on the fire until little tongues of flame issued forth once more. She pushed aside strands of her hair each time they fell and got in her way. What was happening around me was unreal—I was walking in a dream. I opened my small case, took out my tablet and pencils, and began to sketch upon the white paper, making a drawing of the first pharaonic ritual I had seen. I stopped after a little while. Her face was flushed and she was out of breath. She came over to me and studied my sketch.

“You’re drawing me,” she said. “What did you see in me that you liked?”

“Go back!” I cried. “Keep blowing on the fire!”

Laughing, she went back to the fire. “You like fish Alexandrian style, then!” she said.

The fish was done before I had finished the picture. She picked it up carelessly, hot as it was, and split it open. The exposed white belly divided in two, the spine extended like an Eastern landscape. She reached over and began feeding me the still-hot pieces, while I kept working on the picture. Her image was imprinted on my mind, so that I had no need to ask her to resume blowing on the fire. I was surprised by the flavor of the fish. I had come from the island of fish—it was the staple diet—and yet I had never tasted such delicious fish as this. Together we finished it off, leaving the spiny bones scattered on the ground beside us while we made love for the second time, this time gently and slowly. She whispered to me that I was a quick learner.

“Day is almost done,” she said. “We’d better go out for a little so that we don’t get bored with each other too soon.”

We bathed in the sea, put on our clothes, and walked through the sand. We rode a small, colorful wooden cart with an awning, drawn by a mule. The water took on a violet color, the sun crimson: a world painted in watercolors, which had not yet lost the imprint of the divine. The tracks left in the sand by the mule were the only thing in creation that had just been born. The cart stopped before a vast stone building—an old fortress, half-collapsed, its stones dark with a dusty coating of gunpowder. A great portion of the stones had been torn away and lay broken and scattered about the ruined walls. All that remained standing were turrets riddled with gaps, also ringed with gunpowder. The whole place gave off an odor of conflagration and death.

“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 he 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?”

I was much struck by the words I was hearing. I understood at last why the paintings were different in this place from what I had seen elsewhere: in these paintings the gods had been thrown over, the priests had gone into hiding, and the kings and other leaders had disappeared; ordinary people had instead risen and become visible, people to whom no one had paid any attention. “But can we possibly discover a tomb of such importance?” I said. “We are merely artists!”

“This is the key to our strength,” Newberry replied. “We can read the paintings, discern the signs, and follow the guideposts. Believe me, my boy, I’ve worked with these people for a long time—Petrie being perhaps the most knowledgeable of them. They’ve been digging and digging, but in the end they are led by blind chance. This earth has been keeping its secrets for thousands of years—do you think a handful of Europeans can properly explore it in just a few years?”

He fell silent, trying to catch his breath, while the mules kept struggling onward, the soft sand slipping beneath their hooves. Then a bell pealed. The sound gripped the desert and echoed across the silent blankness. More bells began to ring, and Newberry said confidently, “They’ve seen us.”

“Who?” I asked, startled.

“The monks at the monastery. They keep constant watch over the desert from their high tower. When they see any travelers they ring the bell for them, fearing that perhaps they are lost in the desert, or are about to be.”

The walls of the monastery appeared suddenly, like something wrought from the landscape, solid and impregnable, absorbing the violence of the sandstorms, its stones bonded by the action of the sun’s heat. The pealing of the bells grew more impressive the closer we came to its source.

“This is Dayr al-Barsha,” said Newberry, “one of the oldest monasteries in the world. The monks built it upon the footprints left by Christ when he passed through here fleeing from Palestine.”

This land! Everyone had passed through here. Again Newberry had mentioned a prophet, a second one, and perhaps Akhenaten was a third, of a different sort. Why had God placed our island at such a remove?

We dismounted before the vast gate. The muleteer was to leave with his beasts and come back for us at the end of the following day, according to Newberry’s request. The man agreed, demanding no payment.

The monastery gate was fashioned out of the trunks of palm trees, which still retained their natural shape, having simply been split down the middle. An iron ring hung from it, on which ancient crosses were incised. Before Newberry could lift it the gate opened, its rusty hinges squeaking shrilly. From behind it a gray-haired monk emerged and went to him, greeting him by name. A reddish beard encircled his pale jaw. His features didn’t look Egyptian in the least—perhaps his long sojourn within the dark cells had given him this sallow complexion.

We followed him inside, and he turned to welcome me, saying, “I am Brother George.” Newberry insisted upon maintaining his air of mystery, but I was overcome by the place. I followed the two of them without a word, studying the domed structures that surrounded the courtyard and the doves that had alighted in the center and were plucking their food from the sand. We arrived at a long corridor, on either side of which were low doors leading to small rooms. I learned later that they were the cells in which the monks lived, but that some of them were designated for guests of the monastery.

“You’ll spend the night with us,” said the monk. “Our beds are rough and our food is humble, but we have good wine.”

My cell was small, with nothing in it but a modest bed, a huge cross hanging on the wall, and a window overlooking the expanse of desert. I stared at the sand dunes, which spread out before me as far as the eye could see. I wondered how Jesus found his way through such a maze. Darkness fell, and the bells rang for evening prayers. I stayed in my room until prayers were over, and no one pressed us. We sat with the monks at a long wooden table, eating bread, cheese, and dates, and I drank a little of the wine. They spoke Arabic, English, Greek, and other languages, moving about the hall in their black cassocks. They drank a lot of wine; no doubt the cellars of the monastery were well stocked with it. Newberry was also imbibing with less than his usual restraint. Brother George put his hand upon his arm. “Don’t worry,” he said reassuringly, “They’ll be here tomorrow.” I didn’t care to ask what he meant—I wouldn’t get a straight answer in any case.

I spent the night half-awake—the wind never stopped stirring the bells; I missed the sound of the river and the wolves’ desolation. At dawn I saw lines of monks, who had spread out all about the desert that surrounded the monastery, gathering firewood and looking for the heads of mushrooms buried in the sand. I went out into the courtyard. Monks were at work there as well, cleaning, making bread in a small oven, and tending the little farm adjacent to the monastery. They put as much energy into performing their tasks as they did into drinking wine.

Newberry had awoken as well. He was standing and talking to Brother George, seeming anxious and tense. The higher the sun rose in the sky, the more uneasy he grew.

The bells rang, and I realized that other travelers had appeared on the horizon. Newberry went with Brother George to the gate—it seemed as if they were waiting to identify the visitors. The rusty hinges creaked and the gate swung open. There were three Bedouins astride their camels, leading an additional camel with no rider.

Turning to Newberry, Brother George said, “Didn’t I tell you? They’ve come on time.”

They stood before the gate, shaking their legs pointedly; obediently, the camels folded their own legs and settled on the ground. The three men leapt from their backs and approached the entrance to the monastery, led by an old sheikh with a white turban and a thick beard, and clad in a heavy abaya of sheep’s wool in various shades. He shook hands with no one, merely placing his hand on each of our shoulders—it wasn’t a greeting so much as a demonstration of his good intentions. The other two stood respectfully behind him.

“Welcome,” said Brother George. “Welcome, Sheikh Qindil. Welcome, men. Allow me to introduce my English friends.”

He went ahead of all of us to a little hall in a corner of the courtyard. It was furnished with mats, and scattered to one side of these were small cushions in glowing desert colors. He began pouring tea into tiny pottery cups. I studied the face of the sheikh, who looked as though he had just stepped out of the Bible. He spoke a strong dialect of Arabic, answering Newberry’s persistent questions. Brother George kept reminding them of the agreement that had been contracted between them. I didn’t grasp the terminology very well, but I knew that they were talking about an undiscovered tomb in an unknown place. The more they talked, the more Newberry’s face brightened. At last Sheikh Qindil stood up. He looked at Brother George and said, “We’ll go now. We must get there before the daylight is gone.”

Indicating us, Brother George said, “You are responsible for their welfare, Sheikh Qindil.”

The sheikh put his hand upon his own neck and inclined his head, responding with a few rapid words. Brother George shook hands with the men, clapped me amiably on the shoulder, and bade me visit him again. We went out of the monastery gate. The camels were still crouched upon the ground, their jaws moving lazily. They gazed at us with their sad eyes. Newberry took me by the arm. Pointing to one of the beasts, he said, “You’ll ride this camel, Howard.”

I took a step back in alarm. I had never before ridden such a strange animal. It seemed wild and untrustworthy. “Never fear,” said Newberry reassuringly. “In the desert children ride camels from the time they’re born.

In a strained voice I replied, “I was not born in the desert.”

“Riding a camel doesn’t require practice the way riding horseback does. Horses move their front legs and then their hind legs, and they go very quickly. Camels don’t do that. They put one foot forward, then follow it with the hind foot. Only one leg at a time is in motion, and they don’t have hooves—their feet are soft, which makes them proceed with a slow and measured gait across the sand. Believe me, camels don’t sway a great deal, or give anyone much opportunity to fall off of them.”

This exchange was conducted in English, but the Bedouins were smiling, as if they were following the gist of it. I wasn’t convinced, and each time the camels moved their jaws I felt more afraid. “First of all,” I insisted, “I want to know where we are going.”

“Perhaps,” said Newberry, “to the greatest discovery of my life and yours. Come along; climb aboard, before the day is lost.”

He went over to the other camel, raised his leg, and confidently straddled the creature’s raised back. The camel extended a foreleg and then a hind leg, and leaned a little to one side. It seemed to me that Newberry would roll off onto the ground on the other side, but the camel quickly stood up, lifting him high up on its back. Newberry stroked his thick beard and gestured silently to me that I should do as he had done. My heart was in my mouth as the camel lifted me up. I felt as though I was hanging suspended all alone in space. The Bedouin men laughed and pointed at me. From the monastery gate, Brother George called out, “May God bless all of you!”

The camel began to walk slowly, while I rocked back and forth on it until my spine was all but dislocated. I needed to loosen my tensed muscles a little, and hold onto the wooden halter in front of me. Sheikh Qindil was leading us on the back of his own camel. The wind filled his abaya as if he was about to take flight. My clenched stomach began to relax, and the camel proceeded smoothly as if it was floating above the sand. I felt as though we might continue on a never-ending journey. A distant chain of mountains appeared and blocked the horizon, its colors shifting as we drew closer and closer. There were odd-looking rocks scattered about us, round and white, as if laid in this spot by immense birds. How could Newberry communicate with these men without Petrie finding out—or, indeed, without Fraser and Blackden finding out? It was clear all this had been arranged with the help of that mysterious monk.

The desert changed color and became whiter, as if it had been covered with salt. We began to see limestone formations, and soon the earth was devoid of all forms of plant life. The camels’ pace slowed. We were surrounded on all sides by mountains, and grains of sand carried by the wind beat upon our faces.

We stopped, finally, by the slope of a high mountain, and the camels lowered us, so at last I could jump down from mine and touch the earth once more. I felt dizzy, as if my feet were not firmly placed upon the ground, but I proceeded to climb the rocks behind the others. It was not a constant ascent; at intervals we descended and had to circle around all the rocks blocking the way. I was panting and Newberry was breathing hard, but that didn’t stop him from springing over the rocks, following the old Bedouin, who stopped at last, pointing at the hollowed-out rock.

“This is the place,” he said.

We gathered and all looked down. There was a low corridor in the heart of the mountain, carved into the rock by sharp pickaxes. Newberry didn’t wait for any further explanation from the sheikh. He hurried down toward the dim cavern. I hastened after him. We were in a low passageway, its walls smooth and polished: a mountain of marble, quiet and waiting. I felt the walls, which were coated with fine dust, behind which were bas-reliefs. Newberry kept going deeper, but I stood mesmerized before the walls at the entrance. The Bedouin sheikh stopped and regarded us, smiling as if we were two children amusing ourselves. One of the Bedouin who served him brought an unlit torch, which gave off a scent of pitch. We went a bit farther into the dark passageway. The man ignited the torch, and the place lit up. The carving on the wall showed clearly, a low relief with no colors. I brushed away the dust, holding my breath, my heartbeat coming faster. I asked him to bring the torch closer.

An important personage was seated upon his chair, watching the crowded scene that was taking place before him. There was a king’s body in its shroud, arms crossed upon the chest, clutching the scepter in one hand and a lotus flower in the other. On his head was the double crown, for the two realms: Upper and Lower Egypt. There were hundreds, maybe thousands, of men pulling him with ropes. Not a living king, then; no living king would be pulled by ropes, and certainly no living king so immense that the men beneath him would look like a swarm of ants. What everyone in this splendid scene was pulling must have been an enormous statue.

The panel was full of details, dozens of them. It was difficult to read all the symbols in them by the flickering light. Was this a statue of the apostate king, Akhenaten? The face was indistinct; the image was chipped, and many features had come away from the body. On the lower part of the wall there were piles of marble fragments. I took out some paper and began to sketch the contours of the panel with trembling fingers. All at once, however, Newberry returned. He snatched the torch from the Bedouin’s hand and dashed back into the passageway. Darkness enveloped me, and I could no longer make out any details. Was it possible that discovering a tomb could be this easy?

I tried to follow the light source; the passage grew narrower, and there were more piles of rock. Newberry was standing before the last pile, which blocked everything else. In a strained voice he said, “I have a feeling it lies behind these rocks.” I turned and studied the walls, looking for any kind of sign. Impassive, they gave nothing away.

“We have to go now,” said Newberry. “But first this Bedouin must swear to tell no one.”

He hurried off, and I turned to follow him. He stopped at the front of the passage and entered into an uneasy exchange with the Bedouin sheikh. Newberry got out some money and they proceeded to negotiate. I took this as an opportunity to go back and work on my drawing. By the time they concluded their discussion I had completed the basic outlines. I would have to come back another time in order to finish the work, but now Newberry was very ill at ease.

“Draw a detailed map of this place,” he commanded me as we stood at the entrance. “I don’t want us to lose our way when we come back here.”

This time he let me catch my breath as I went over the layout of the site. It would be necessary for me to be able to distinguish this mountain from all the rest, to ascertain where the opening was located, and to set down a visual representation of the path that would lead us through this desert.

We commenced the journey back. The air had grown cold as the sun began to set behind the mountain, and the sand took on a somber cast, a pale reddish hue. Newberry, lost in thought, did not speak the whole way. “How can he be so certain?” I wondered.

We found the mules awaiting us by the monastery wall. The Bedouins gestured their farewells to us, placing their hands upon their chests and bowing their heads. They took their camels and went back into the desert. We had to complete the rest of our journey in the dark. The muleteer led us as we made our way through the shadows. We were very close to one another. Newberry was breathing a little more easily now. I said to him, “But how could such a king be buried in that isolated place?”

“He was buried in secret,” replied Newberry with conviction. “His followers chose this distant place so that his enemies wouldn’t go there and desecrate his body.”

“What are we going to do?”

“We must find a patron who finances these excavations. I shall contact Lord Amherst at once. First of all, we must make sure . . .”

His voice began to fade from my hearing. I no longer heard anything but the hum of the insects buzzing about my head, stinging me—I hadn’t got used to this yet. My day had been long and tiring. Feeling the cold air from the fields penetrate my bones, I shivered from head to toe. I don’t know how we arrived, or how I managed to get down off the mule, or how I rode in the mule-drawn cart. I heard Newberry say, “We shall go at once to Minya. I must find a way to get a message out of the country, even if it means sending Amherst a long telegram.”

“I want to go back to Beni Hassan,” I said feebly.

“Don’t be absurd,” he said. “It’s the Christmas holidays. We shall rejoice in the occasion together.”

“I’m exhausted. I want nothing more than to return to the tomb—it’s the only secure place for me.”

He snorted. “I don’t wish to go back tonight. I want to arrange my communiqués.”

“I’ll go back on my own.”

It was odd to find Idris sleeping in his boat, as if he were waiting for me, and to hear the sound of the wolf howling on the opposite bank, greeting me. By now Idris was used to my peculiar behavior, and had no objection to going out on the water at night. I was shivering, my face drenched in sweat. Idris supported my trembling frame, climbing the rocky slope with me and settling me on my rough bed. He also started a fire, as various images obtruded upon my vision. I no longer knew where I was. I cried out, trying to ask for help from my mother or father, or even my aunt, but there was no one to reach out a helping hand to me. I heard Idris’s voice saying, “You’re feverish, my young foreigner.”

I was swamped in a sea of perspiration. I could no longer see or hear anyone. Everything had gone dark. I don’t know how much time went by, but when I opened my eyes it was day, and a red-faced doctor was in attendance. He must have been angry, since he had been obliged to come from the other side of the river. “You’ve got malaria,” he announced. “Take this medicine and keep to your bed. Your temperature will rise, and you’ll be feverish. It will go down a bit in the daytime, but it will come back at night. Whatever possesses you, to stay in a place like this?”

I subsided once again into a miasma of heat and delirium. I opened my eyes to find Idris attempting to press the pills into my mouth. Once more I sank into darkness. The night was long, the tomb was full of smoke, and the wolf was watching me with its glowing eyes. Perhaps it had entered the tomb and run its tongue over my face—my features were drenched in its saliva, and its odor filled the place.

I opened my eyes and tried to get up. I saw the faces of Fraser and Blackden staring at me. “Where did you and Newberry go?” demanded one of them sharply. “Don’t try to lie.”

I closed my eyes and the darkness swiftly returned. I tried to push away the things that were pressing on my chest. Fraser was gripping the collar of my shirt and shaking me roughly. No, it was the heat, making me shiver—that and the nightmares that closed in on me, causing the world to come down around me. But the paintings on the wall of the tombs, those remained fixed and immutable, the only reality standing between me and death and the void.

I don’t know how long it was that I lay suspended between consciousness and delirium, but I came to myself feeling terribly thirsty. The fire was dying and Idris was asleep on the ground. The gray lights of dawn came in through the entrance of the tomb. I got up with difficulty. The earth swayed beneath my feet, but I kept walking. The waters of the river had begun to recede, revealing a number of green islands. I sniffed the air. I saw the birds, which had begun their morning sorties, and I knew that I had been given a second chance at life.

Idris was happy when he saw me. He insisted he was going to prepare some onion soup for me. I laughed, but he swore he had learned the recipe from foreigners—from Englishmen—and that he was very good at making it, even though he didn’t care for the taste of it.

I sat by the entrance to the tomb until the sun rose and bestowed its warmth upon my body. There was no one but me on the western bank. Idris said, “The foreign gentleman, the high-ranking one, still hasn’t turned up, and the other two have been gone for two days.”

No one came until after midday. Then Newberry arrived, stood facing me, and took in my wasted body. Speaking through his moustache he said, “You really are ill. I met with the doctor at Minya and he informed me.”

He didn’t wait for me to answer, but launched straight into talk of the steps he had taken for his project. He had sent Amherst a long telegram and obtained from him a provisional agreement to fund the project. Lord Amherst wanted to visit Egypt with his daughter—he wished to see the site for himself. He was wildly enthusiastic, his expectations running high.

Weakly, I asked, “Can the thing really be so simple? Couldn’t we be mistaken?”

He looked at me in disbelief. “What do you mean?” he cried. You saw for yourself the paintings at the entrance to the passage!”

“Indeed. Thousands of slaves dragging an enormous statue, but they were heading out of the tomb with it, not into it. By no means are these burial rites.”

I didn’t know why I said it, why I wanted to dampen his enthusiasm. I was alarmed by this zeal of his.

“Where is that painting? I wish to see it.”

I went inside, opened my case, and looked for the papers that had been with me—the map I had drawn, the wall panel I had sketched in its basic details, and the notes and instructions I had recorded, so that we might refer to them later on returning to the spot. But there was nothing. Everything had disappeared.

I shouted at Idris, “Where have my papers gone? What happened while I was delirious?” He looked at me, mystified. He didn’t know why I was shouting.

Newberry advanced swiftly and stood before me in alarm. “What do you mean?” he cried.

Crushed, I sat down. I felt guilty. It seemed as though my fever was about to come back. “I was ill and feverish,” I said. “I didn’t know what was going on around me.”

Abruptly Newberry advanced on Idris with rapid steps and seized him by the neck. The man got to his feet, terrified. He cried out for help and tried to free himself from Newberry’s grip. Newberry shoved him up against the stone wall. “Who took the papers?” he demanded.

Idris was choking. I tried to get up to come to his rescue, but Newberry shouted at me to keep my distance. Struggling for breath, Idris said, “I swear I didn’t see anyone. I didn’t invite any stranger to approach this place. There were only the two foreign beys who work here.”

Newberry stopped pushing him. He released his grip on Idris’s neck. Idris picked himself up and scurried away, making hastily for the outside of the tomb. He must have gotten into his boat and gone back to the other side of the river. Newberry looked at me and I looked back at him, both of us dismayed, unable to utter a word. At last he said, “Did you tell them?”

I hung my head, unable to deny it. Had I in fact done so? Had they listened to me when I was raving, and learned the secret of our journey? I couldn’t endure his accusing looks. He felt betrayed—by me, by Fraser and Blackden. He walked out of the tomb. I couldn’t go after him. There would have been no point in trying to make the best of things.

The two of them didn’t come until sunset. Tucked under their arms were a number of folded papers and a case filled with drawings. They headed in our direction, as cheerful as if they were enjoying a particularly triumphant moment. Newberry was watching them, eyes narrowed. They stopped and faced him defiantly. Blackden got out the folded papers, waved them right in his face, and said, “We went there and spent two whole days.”

“What do you mean ‘there’?” Newberry asked in a choked voice.

Fraser stepped forward and tossed the map down in front of him, the map they had stolen from my case. “That cave you were thinking was Akhenaten’s tomb was nothing but a quarry for the high-quality marble they used to make statues of kings.”

With an effort, Newberry swallowed. He clutched at his thick moustache as if clinging to it. “You’re lying,” he said. “You’re both lying, no doubt about it.”

Fraser challenged him. “The supervisor of that quarry was Hatnup—he was the man sitting on his seat at the entrance, watching the workers as they labored to pull the statue. We found his name recorded in five different places.”

Trying to maintain his composure, Newberry said, “You had no right to go there without my permission. And you have no right to steal my maps and interfere with my discovery.”

“The truth is,” Blackden retorted disdainfully, “you ought to thank us. We saved you from the hazard of falling prey to the Bedouins’ deception, and from wasting money on a search for more rocks . . .”

Newberry made off in the direction of the Nile. He wasn’t listening to them; he was preoccupied with getting to some air he could breathe. Adamantly he kept repeating the same words: “You had no right . . . no right . . .”

I was angry with them, but incapable of taking any action. Pointing to Newberry, Fraser said coldly, “He’s become an old man. He doesn’t accept defeat easily.”

I felt that it was our defeat, all of us—the end of us as a team. We would not be able to stay here together after this. These barren rocks, the harsh environment—had they brought out the worst in us, or had we all come to this primitive place already freighted with these small, petty feelings?