Chapter Eight

 

“Oh God, I don’t know if I can get used to this,” Lucia remarks while slipping on a pair of designer sunglasses. “Every day here is so bright!”

She and Mark are standing on a wooden platform over the river watching Doug and Lori approach in an old motorboat. Their peaceful glide toward shore is somewhat marred by the tortured coughing of the motor and Lori’s smile looks a little fixed. As usual, she is dressed down in an army green T-shirt and knee-length khaki shorts. To hide her fat thighs, Lucia thinks uncharitably.

Doug doesn’t appear to have changed his clothes since she last saw him.

“Greetings!” Mark calls out to them. “Re is resplendent on the horizon!”

Doug looks oddly confused but Lori’s smile softens as she turns the boat gently sideways.

Mark leaps into the boat over a coil of decaying rope that resembles a snake shedding its skin, then turns and grabs Lucia by the waist to lift her down, a gesture that makes her feel lovely and precious.

Once they are seated, Lori steers the coughing vessel back around, a small red feather fluttering from the end of her braid.

The river is quite broad at this point and in its center white sails glide by even as a few yards away a motorized raft crowded with tourists also pulls away from the shore.

Seated across from her, Doug folds his reed-thin legs beneath him and stares awkwardly into space like an ancient scribe robbed of his clay tablet.

“So, what wonderful things are you planning to show us today, Doug?” Lucia asks him.

“If you really want to see anything,” he replies severely without looking at her, “you can only visit one or two places.”

“We want the abridged version,” Mark says firmly.

The Egyptologist frowns at the horizon. “I’ll try to contain myself.”

“We really appreciate your time,” she assures him.

He glances at her. “You’re going to burn.”

She is wearing a sleeveless one-piece suit of white linen that clings to her figure, its short skirt camouflaging practical shorts. Her straight dark hair and bangs complete the Egyptian look. “No I’m not,” she assures him, “I have my mother’s Italian genes. I tan, not burn.”

“Well, that explains it.” He looks straight at her finally. “Mark said you were from New England but I knew that couldn’t be true.”

“It’s where I grew up.”

“Yes, but genetically you’re Latin.”

“I told you he was a brilliant scholar.” Mark’s attention is focused on the motorized raft bearing a large crowd of tourists across the water.

Lori, apparently, is exercising the captain’s right not to socialize.

“So where are we going, Doug?” Excitement is beginning to lick at Lucia’s heart like the Nile lapping around the boat.

“I suppose that’s up to you.” He seems to relax. “What would you like to see? There are the tombs of the kings of course, eight of which are open to the public, as well as nine noble tombs.”

“I don’t suppose I could see Nefertari’s tomb, could I?”

He literally squirms. “They’re working in it.” He dismisses the idea.

“I know they are, Doug, but I’m sure you of all people…”

“Oh all right! But first you absolutely have to see the tomb of Seti I. You do know who Seti I was?”

“Oh yes, he was a marvelously handsome pharaoh whose mummy is still rather good looking.”

Mark rolls his eyes as Doug glares at her.

“He was the first great king to rule Egypt after Akhenaten threw everything into chaos,” she continues. “He re-established order and built a gorgeous temple to Osiris in Abydos. I remember seeing pictures of him as a little girl and having a major crush on him. He also completed half the Hypostle Hall at Karnak and did away with the overly decadent artistic style initiated by Akhenaten, thank God. The paintings from Seti’s time are exquisitely beautiful and elegant.”

“Yes.” Doug nods. “If you have time for only one tomb it has to be Seti’s. Every square inch is covered with excerpts from funerary texts and fascinating ceremonial and astronomical material. Yes, we’ll definitely go there first!”

Lori glances back at Mark. “I think you’ve created a monster.”

This is a meaningfully symbolic crossing for Lucia, so she is glad no one speaks as the boat approaches the West Bank and docks with a sensual thud against the wooden pier.

Lori leaves it in the care of a very sober-looking black-skinned man in a green- and white-striped galabiyya, and then she and Doug lead the way to a dusty old white Volkswagen parked in the scant shade of a palm tree. The car makes Lucia think of a huge ivory scarab.

The barge that crossed the river parallel to them is disgorging a colorful stream of tourists. Most of them hurry to board small buses while a few catch the more expensive alternative of cabs.

Holding her hand firmly in his, Mark scans the crowd with eyes as cold as a falcon’s surveying the terrain for prey. His protective attitude thrills her, as does the fact that she is about to see tombs she has read about all her life because Richard will experience them through her, the magical hieroglyphs benefiting his spirit by way of her love for him.

Lori remains the designated driver. Doug sits beside her in the front seat and caresses the back of her head as she shifts gears. “She’s such a great help to me,” he remarks wistfully. “I don’t know what I’d do without her.”

“I organize his notes and keep his files up to date,” Lori explains. “He could lose a pyramid by himself.”

The desert quickly encroaches upon the dry greenery and Lucia suddenly can’t wait to enter the golden purity she has been admiring from her balcony for days.

The narrow road they follow curves sharply between rocky cliffs that leave only a narrow path of sky visible overhead, like the celestial Nile the Egyptians believed in.

“You should see this place at night!” Lori raises her voice so it carries over the wind roaring in through the open windows. “It’s like driving on the moon!”

Lucia wonders if she and Richard are taking a first haunting step for mankind, then the astronomical conceit of such a thought disturbs her.

“How familiar are you with the Egyptian Book of the Dead, Lucia?” Doug asks her abruptly.

“Not very, I mean, it’s so confusing. The copy I had was translated by Wallis Budge.”

“A complete idiot!”

“I agree. It didn’t make any sense. All I know is its real title, The Book of Coming Forth by Day.”

“Well, for the most part,” Doug clears his throat, “the compositions adorning the royal tombs aren’t taken from the Book of the Dead. They actually derive from the early Pyramid Texts and all of them deal with the transformation of the soul in the region of the Duat after death. The compositions in the tomb you’re about to see are called The Book of What is in the Duat, which contains The Book of the Gates, The Book of Day, The Book of Night.”

“And a bunch of other books,” Mark cuts in irreverently.

“You would do best to perceive them as manuals of spiritual instruction for the disembodied spirit.” Doug blithely ignores the interruption. “In elaborate symbolic form, they show all the steps that must be taken to ensure life in eternity. But the Duat is not a place in any physical sense, you must understand. The Duat is the actual state of being in which these transformations take place. Anyhow, the Book follows the progress of the solar principle, or of the king’s spirit, through the twelve hours of the night. The damn thing is divided into three registers and although we know the nature of the text is transformational we still can’t grasp the exact meaning of all the odd little figures in it.”

“Oh.”

“It’s nearly impossible to capture the different levels of meaning taking place simultaneously in hieroglyphic texts,” he continues a little less sternly. “The Egyptians had no intention of making the complex simple.” He sounds as though he approves even though it makes his work more difficult.

Lori slows down as they leave the cliffs behind and enter an open stretch of desert, where it seems very strange to come upon a parking lot.

Doug keeps talking as they get out of the car. “I’ll be better able to explain the texts to you once we’re inside the tomb.”

Small and unadorned except for the burial chamber, Tutankhamon’s tomb nevertheless appears to be the first stop on everyone’s list, the long lines to get in reminiscent of Disney World.

The sky is strikingly blue above the light-brown desert sand and tomb-studded mountains undulating for as far as the eye can see. Lucia spots a gaping black rectangle marking the entrance to a tomb.

“Impressive, isn’t it?” Mark’s shirt is almost the exact color of the sky, which makes the conscious intensity in his eyes even more striking.

“It’s so quiet here,” she observes in an appropriately hushed voice, “even with all these people around.”

“Imagine what it’s like at night. Ancient tomb robbers had some serious cojones.”

“Oh God, I’m sure you can see all the stars. Are there any hotels around here, Mark?”

“Yes, but none that would even remotely suit you, princess.”

“Why? They should have nice hotels on the West Bank where there’s so much to see.”

“Baby, once the sun begins to set you’ll be happy to get the hell out of here, trust me.”

Doug waits until every last tourist emerges from Seti’s tomb before leading them in, but not until he gives the native man on guard an appropriate amount of baksheesh to keep everyone else out until they are finished.

On the left wall of the first corridor Seti I is depicted as a Falcon. Doug casually explains the royal bird symbolizes the human spirit. It is chilly in the well-lit passage that thrusts deep into the earth past several more aspects of the Solar Principle, including the figure of a man with a ram’s head.

They have explored four chambers, in which Doug did not stop lecturing for one second, before the tomb splits in half. One corridor veers to the right while to the left a narrow staircase leads up into a room that looks as though it is still being worked on.

“The paintings in here are unfinished,” Doug’s reverent voice scarcely disturbs the silence, “and are fascinating in that they reveal artistic techniques. You can see here and here that the original drawings were sketched in red then corrected in black by the master artist. What we’re looking at are the Ninth, Tenth and the Eleventh Hours from The Book of What is in the Duat.”

They return to the fork in the corridor and descend through two more passages. On the way Lucia recognizes the ceremony of the Opening of the Mouth. A priest in a leopardskin cloak stands before Seti’s upraised mummy holding an object resembling a bent metal rod in front of the dead king’s face. Yet according to Doug the priest hadn’t literally opened the mummy’s mouth. The rite was symbolic and granted the disembodied soul the power to enjoy all of life’s sensual pleasures again.

“We take the world in through our eyes and think about it just as we swallow food and digest it,” he explains. “The dead soul on whom this ceremony was performed was able, from that moment on, to absorb all truth and all nourishment directly, without need of the brain or the body.”

They reach a small room where the tall and handsome Seti makes offerings to all the major gods, including Osiris, Isis, Horus, Hathor and Anubis, and this beautifully colorful little space opens onto a large, pillared hall.

“The sarcophagus which originally stood in the back of this chamber is one of the great masterpieces of New Kingdom art,” Doug informs them. “Unfortunately, it’s tucked away in some obscure little museum in London when it should be right here where it belongs. It’s carved out of a single massive block of alabaster, covered with representations from The Book of Gates in exquisite blue hieroglyphs.”

“It sounds beautiful,” Lucia says, drifting into a small alcove.

“In here,” Doug follows her in eagerly, “we see the Seventh Hour from The Book of What is in the Duat.”

“Really? Explain it to me. In detail, please.”

“You really want me to?”

“Yes, please.”

“Well, in the Seventh Hour Isis appears at the prow of the Solar Barge and her magic words keep it going when it’s confronted by Apopis, the eternal enemy of Re and the forces of light.”

“The Seventh hour is when Apopis confronts the dead soul?” Lucia suddenly feels as though the weight of the earth around them is resting on her shoulders. “And Isis helps him?”

“Yes, she renders the evil serpent powerless when he tries to stop the dead soul from achieving his divine flesh.”

“His divine flesh,” she echoes.

“The texts refer to this Hour as The Cavern of Osiris. Look there at the top of the register. See that plumed deity sitting inside the coils of a snake? That’s the Flesh of Osiris. ‘Thou art a soul’,” Doug’s voice deepens as he translates, “‘and thy soul is made spirit on earth.’ The snake there is called both Life of Forms and Life of Spirits and the twelve gods and goddesses wearing stars on their heads personify the twelve hours of the dead soul’s passage. The crocodile pictured over here is Evil. ‘He who knows the texts will be one whose soul is not swallowed by the crocodile’.” He pauses and then seems to force himself to say, “But you can’t take any of this seriously, of course.”

“Why not? It makes perfect metaphysical sense.”

“Not even Egyptologists can fully grasp what all this means, yet you think you do?” he snaps.

“I feel I do,” she corrects him mildly.

“These texts are as precise as mathematical equations and you can’t feel the right answer in math, can you?”

Mark reaches into the alcove and pulls her out. “Let’s go.”

“Go?” Doug demands. “We haven’t even reached the burial chamber!”

Lucia sides with Mark, “I’ve seen enough, let’s move on.”

Mark whispers in her ear, “I just wish you would.”

Lori asks, smiling, “Are you enjoying yourself, Lucia?”

“Yes, thank you.” She senses they have been talking about her and it worries her in more ways than one. The last thing she wants is for Richard’s mysterious development to be hindered by skeptical thoughts surrounding her. Rational cynicism is the contemporary crocodile she has to fight to help him achieve his divine flesh.

As they start back toward the tomb’s entrance, the long corridor feels like an artery flowing with the mystical blood of paintings.

They emerge into radiant, blinding sunlight.

“I need a drink,” Mark announces, his squinting eyes shards of glass reflecting the sky.

“She has to see at least one other tomb first,” Doug insists. “If you’re really so interested in The Book of what’s in the Duat, Lucia, you absolutely have to experience the tomb of Thutmosis III.” It is a challenge.

“But it’s out in the middle of nowhere,” Lori protests lazily, “and you have to climb down a really long ladder to get in. Are you afraid of heights, Lucia?”

“No,” she lies. “Let’s go.”

Mark thrusts his hands into his pockets and doesn’t move.

“This tour was your idea,” Doug reminds him, taking hold of Lucia’s arm.

“I won’t run away, Doug,” she teases.

He lets go of her with a confused glance at his hand, as if he hadn’t realized what it was doing.

Mark and Lori follow behind them with obvious reluctance.

“What has Mark been saying to you, Doug?” Lucia asks him quietly. “You both know how I feel about my late husband. Why did he ask you to give me this in-depth tour if he doesn’t want to encourage my so-called delusions?”

“He thought it would make you realize what gibberish all this is, Lucia, the book of this and the book of that, winged serpents, men with scarab beetle heads. He thought it would help you come to your senses.”

“Is that so?” Anger stings her like a scorpion but makes a swift retreat since she knows Mark means well.

“Besides, none of this stuff actually worked.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“Because when the body dies, consciousness ends and that’s that.”

“I don’t think you really believe that, Doug. I mean, how can anyone really believe they’ll cease to exist forever? It’s inconceivable. There’s got to be at least a tiny spark of hope in everyone, whether they consciously believe in anything or not.”

“Lucia, Mark is concerned about you.”

“What has he told you, Doug?”

“Nothing I don’t already know, that you’re obsessed with helping your husband’s soul ascend, or whatever a soul does if it exists at all.”

Mark doesn’t seem to have mentioned Richard’s other appearances, which is a relief. “If my husband doesn’t have a soul that survived his body then it’s my own time I’m wasting. But if he does I could conceivably be helping him, Doug.”

He is silent for a long moment. “Well, I don’t see how I can argue with that.” He sounds relieved.

* * * * *

After the tomb of Thutmosis III, they spend more time at the rest area than planned, engrossed in conversation. Except for Lori, who just smiles indulgently and sips her soda.

A cold beer is intensifying Doug’s enthusiasm. “The multitude of deities in the Egyptian pantheon can be likened to the particles in subatomic physics and the mysteries of their interaction,” he declares. “In many ways, their faith was an exact science.”

“I wouldn’t think of it as exact, exactly,” Mark disagrees wryly.

They are seated at a table on the covered porch that encircles the small building, avoiding the noisy and crowded interior.

“Oh but it was, incredibly precise,” Doug insists, a stubborn gleam in his dark eyes.

“If you say so.” Mark’s shirt is half unbuttoned and the sheen of sweat on the inverted pyramid of flesh visible between its sky-blue folds seems to embody the warm haze of the desert behind him. “But you have to admit that this exact science is mostly incomprehensible to us since you can’t solve an equation without the formula.”

“That’s true,” Doug agrees, warming up for an argument. “We don’t have the key to ancient Egyptian symbolism. It’s like a modern political cartoon. If you don’t know what people, or issues, it refers to it’s just a meaningless and distorted picture of seemingly unrelated images. For example, if you didn’t know the elephant stood for the Republican Party—”

“We get it,” Lori says shortly.

“Of course,” Doug adds quickly, “Egyptian symbolism was much more profound than the kind we find in contemporary political cartoons.”

“Oh of course.” Lucia smiles at him fondly.

“In any case, unless we run into a real, live ancient Egyptian,” Mark’s patience is being strained, “all these precious books are going to remain mostly gibberish.”

“Not so.” Doug gazes out at the tomb-riddled Valley, a faithful gleam in his eyes like a tiny campfire burning in a vast night.

“Isn’t there some way to apply the recent theories in modern physics to these ancient tableaus?” Lucia asks tentatively, not wanting to annoy Mark or to sound foolish but too interested not to pursue the idea. “I mean, if we assume tomb paintings are symbolic representations of the workings of physical forces and of the universe itself, won’t mankind just end up saying the same thing in different ways? And if so, couldn’t we somehow place one sketch over another and work from there?”

“We would need a very real point of reference for that,” Mark argues, easily following her train of thought. He has finished his first beer and is efficiently working on a second.

“We have one!” Doug leans toward her eagerly. “The Egyptians believed in a Primordial Ocean which they called Nun, and Bohm has postulated basically the same theory.”

“‘A rose by any other name would smell as sweet’,” Lori chimes in.

“Go on,” Lucia urges.

To her surprise, it is Mark who answers her. “I suppose Nun would correspond to Bohm’s Implicate Order, the deeper level of reality that exists beneath our own level of existence, which he calls the Explicate, or Unfolded, Order. He thinks all the forms manifesting in the universe are caused by endless enfoldings and unfoldings.”

“Oh Doug, that reminds me of the serpent called the Enveloper you mentioned in Seti’s tomb,” Lucia says. “The one containing the Flesh of Osiris…but I’m sorry, Mark, I didn’t mean to interrupt you.”

He stares over her shoulder as he goes on, “Bohm believes the subatomic particles that compose matter are sustained by a constant flow from the Implicate Order. So even when a particle seems to be destroyed it isn’t really—it’s just enfolded back into the deeper order from which it emerged and there is always this constant flowing exchange.”

“Which means all manifestation,” Lucia can’t help sounding excited, “including our bodies, is in a sense a three-dimensional illusion and that reality is actually the eternal sea of energy from which all images of life surface for a while.”

Mark looks her straight in the eye. “Like a hologram.”

She takes a quick, bitter sip of her lemonade as she abruptly realizes what he is implying.

“One of the things that makes holography possible is interference,” Doug elaborates. “A crisscrossing pattern occurs when two or more waves ripple through each other. If we regard the human soul as a wave, which behaves like a particle in its physical form, then the so-called hologram of creation—”

“Is cosmic sex.” Lori suddenly comes to life. “All these waves flowing through the void or the Implicate Order or whatever the hell you want to call it, these waves caress each other and get turned on and life as we know it is this state of arousal called a particle, which explains why everything appears to be hard and solid and yet why dying will probably be a big fucking relief.”

Doug stares at her like a devoted dog but Mark’s attention is fixed on another table.

Lucia glances over her shoulder to see who he is looking at.

The tall blonde woman she remembers running into at the Luxor Museum the other morning is sitting alone a few yards away, her long legs stretched out before her in form-fitting white jeans. She is sipping her drink and gazing out across the Valley from behind the reflective silver panes of her sunglasses.

Lucia forces down the final sickly-sweet dregs of her drink, wanting to kill Mark for so obviously looking at another woman in her presence.

“Well,” Doug pushes his chair back, “are we ready for Nefertari’s tomb?”

The only thing Lucia wants now is an empty tomb in which to bury that blonde.

“It’s the most beautiful tomb in the Valley.” Doug looks bewildered by her sudden lack of enthusiasm.

“Are tourists allowed in there?” Mark asks abruptly.

“Of course not,” Doug snaps. “You know that.”

“Good. Let’s go.”