FORTY

The Nile was changing color, turning brown with the mud that it carried from the south. The inundation had begun early, the river rising by five or six centimeters each day. The ancient Egyptians had set their calendar by the rising waters, dividing the year into three parts. Akhet, the time of the flood; Peret, for the growing season; Shemu, harvest time. It was a decent way to divide any length of time, Eberhardt Woolfe thought. A day. A year. A life. He was moving from Shemu to Akhet. But what had he harvested, in this last hard year? What would he sow, this year or next, when the dig was completed and the floodwaters receded, leaving behind the layer of rich silt that sustained and created the country?

Four eggs bumped gently in a pan on the charcoal stove, steam rising from the water. Eberhardt had no servant at the house, only assistants at the tomb. Standing at the table in his kitchen, he sawed into a loaf of black bread by the light of the oil lamp and added another slice to the ones already cut. In the near darkness, he wrapped two plates and two cups in a linen cloth, then selected two knives, their bone handles rounded from use. It was a particular pleasure, to take out items in pairs.

He removed the pan from the fire and retrieved the eggs with a spoon, left them to cool. Rinsed a branched vine of red tomatoes that made him think of a robust, young family, so firmly attached they were to each other. So alike one to the other.

“Ach, Kati. What am I doing?”

The eggs were cool enough to touch. Egyptian eggs were white-shelled, all yolk inside. They were either too small, as these were, or too large, like the ostrich eggs that Professor Kranz had considered a delicacy and that Eberhardt found an abomination. Miss Heron, he was certain, would not like to eat an ostrich egg.

What did women eat? He could barely remember anymore. They ate the things one couldn’t find here. Sacher torte and strudel. Soup. White meat. That was women in Germany, he reminded himself. In England, everyone had drunk tea. He shook salt into a tin, screwed down the lid. He had packed a cloth bag of dates and dried apricots. An enamel pot. The coffee was ground, ready to brew at the site.

Did Englishwomen drink coffee? His landlady in Holborn, when he had studied at the British Museum, had served beer with every meal including breakfast, a flat, warm tankard of it that left rings on the table. Whether the woman offered it because it was her own custom, or because she believed it must be his, he’d never discovered. On the first morning, he had requested coffee; Mrs. Brown brought something unrecognizable, so much like ditchwater in appearance and taste that he had waited until she left the room, then—unable to open the filthy window—poured it into a plant pot.

Harriet was not like the Englishwomen he’d met when he was passing those dingy, intense months under the great dome of the Reading Room, treading in front of the stacks of books along perforated iron landings, through which you could see the balding heads of the scholars underneath.

The few women he’d met in London had struck him as constrained by living on their island. Short in stature and limited in their horizons. Harriet was more like he was. Not properly allied to her own country. A wanderer by nature. He sensed it. She would drink coffee. Eat black bread. March into a bat-ridden tomb without fleeing.

He wondered whether she was ill again. Her health was delicate; that was why she had come here with her mother. She had not arrived at the dig the previous day, although he had expected her. He’d thought her delayed, had been disappointed to realize, at midday, that she wasn’t coming. She would be present today, he was certain. Her interest was serious. She had the feeling, the feeling he had, of tending the legacy of living people and having a responsibility toward them. She would arrive on her black donkey, with the boy walking beside her, the dog on her lap. Wearing the orange scarf that she wrapped around her head like a turban, with her hair loose underneath it. She was tall. When they spoke, he could look her in the eye, not regard the top of her head. He liked that. The thought provoked a stab of guilt. Kati had been small; she barely measured five feet and her hips were narrow. Too narrow for life. Their daughter had survived only hours, long enough for Eberhardt to recognize his own features mirrored in her face, to feel the grip of her hand around his finger. He had named her Rosa, insisted against the doctor’s advice that before she was buried with her mother she be christened. He was not a believer except in the importance of ritual, of offering to the dead every paltry assistance available to mortals.

Eberhardt walked into the large salon that was study and drawing room, and picked up the framed photograph balanced on the Bösendorfer. Kati’s mouth was open as if to speak. Her eyes watched him, with a wry understanding he hadn’t been aware of during their life together. Sometimes he felt that it was he who had abandoned her, he who had disappeared out of their shared life, while she had remained faithful to a moment, her lace shawl draped around her sloping shoulders, her expression steadfast, as unchanging as the cameo at her neck. He had absconded into alteration, who and what he had been dying more with every day that passed.

The basket was full, the oranges nestled on the top, the last of the plum cake Mutti insisted he bring from Heidelberg neatly slid down the side. He lifted the bag by its leather handles, felt its weight. It was an offering to take into the tomb. Not for the dead but for the living. For Harriet Heron, the white woman with the red hair, who had walked into the catacomb with him and stayed there, in the darkness. He wanted to share something with her. He was not sure what.

Picking up the basket, he walked toward the door, then turned back and looked again at the photograph.

“Is it wrong, Kati? Ich muss nun Abschied nehmen. The time has come to say farewell.”