EIGHTEEN

The piano, a Bösendorfer, had been unloaded by crane at the harbor at Alexandria. A tugboat transported it to the dock, where it was hoisted onto a flatbed cart pulled by two asses and, at the railway station, transferred to a freight train to Cairo. Reaching the old port of Boulak, the piano was trundled on a dolly along a ramp and onto a barge; it was secured by the side of a cargo of cedar from the Lebanon that was destined for a new hotel at Luxor.

Eberhardt Woolfe was traveling with the piano on the barge, sleeping at night in a hammock on deck, listening to the sailors’ plaintive dirge. They sang to their Prophet, their voices becoming part of nature, like the sounds of the wind and the water. Ya Mohammed, ya Mohammed, ya Mohammed.

Eberhardt was impatient to get back to his house on the mountainside and resume his work. More than once, he’d cursed his own folly in bringing the piano all the way from Heidelberg. Everyone who’d learned of the plan had given the same verdict. The instrument would be damaged, perhaps catastrophically, by the clumsy porters he was sure to encounter in Egypt. The fine wood was bound to be eaten by foreign beetles; the wires would certainly rust and the ivories yellow. As for tuning! Each rested his case.

He listened patiently to the objections of his friends but did not waste his time in attempting to counter them. Not one of the fellows had been to Thebes. None had experienced the silence there, the immense and engulfing quietude, which, more than the rock tombs, more even than the loss of Kati, had shown Eberhardt Woolfe the meaning of death.

Only his mother thought to ask the question that discomforted him. How would he get the piano back home again, when his work was finished? That question he did answer, promptly and confidently. “Mutti, you worry too much. The same way as I took it there, of course, but everything backward.” His mother nodded. She knew and he knew that he would not bring back the piano. That he would not return to Heidelberg except as a visitor.

Apart from the small matter of a grand piano, Herr Professor Doktor Eberhardt Woolfe—as his trunks were labeled—was traveling light. He had in one sturdy wooden box the tools needed for excavation and exploration: pickaxes; hammers; trowels; chisels; scalpels; sable brushes. In a small leather suitcase, he’d packed three of the same lightweight and light-colored suits and white shirts that he wore in all seasons and for all occasions. One spare pair of boots. A few books of sheet music. His binoculars. A framed photograph. All other needs could be supplied locally. Mutti had insisted on a hamper that he hadn’t had the heart to refuse.

As the barge plied on to the south and the dwellings grew smaller and simpler, the factories fewer, the railway line came to an end, Eberhardt felt content. Even Cairo had been too crowded, too noisy, too full of clamorous life. He would soon be back in the Necropolis, in the only place where he belonged.