Sleeping Beauty (64 page)

“Can you believe this?” Hosni murmured. “God damn, can you
believe
this?”

And then, at last, they reached the burial chamber, a square room with walls covered with paintings of the life of Tenkaure, and in the center of the room, a stone sarcophagus with Tenkaure's cartouche and gold-leaf paintings of the goddess Isis. Josh let out a long breath. The lid was intact. The mummy would be inside.

“You
did
it!” Hosni exploded. “You did it! God damn, you are one hell of a guy!”

Josh stood as if in a dream. He felt as he did when he reached the peak of a towering mountain, out of breath, a little dizzy. His whole life had led to this moment; nothing else had driven him as had this quest. He stood in the midst of the splendor of these rooms, the thousands of objects brought there with reverent hands; so much wealth, so much variety, so much brilliance in the paintings. In the seven rooms of Tenkaure's tomb were stored more pieces of the
past than most scholars handled in a lifetime. Josh turned slowly in place and stretched out his hands as if to embrace it all. Every scholar dreamed of a moment like this. Only a handful of them ever reached it.

Hosni was already kneeling, clipboard in hand, making a map of the tomb and sketching the location of the major objects. Later the decisions would be made which treasures would be allowed to go to Josh's museum in Los Angeles; the majority of them would stay at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. “We'll need a whole section just for this,” Hosni muttered happily. “Like King Tut. He has his own rooms in the museum; we'll have ours for Tenkaure. And a separate room for the mummy. . . . My God, Josh, can you imagine when we get the mummy?”

In many ways, it would look like the mummies of other pharaohs, they knew that. The embalmers followed formulas that remained the same for thousands of years. They would lift the stone lid—it would take a whole crew to do it, with scaffolding and a hoist—and look inside at the gold and jeweled coffin shaped like a human figure, and the one inside that, and the one inside that, each lavishly inlaid with lapis lazuli and precious stones set in thick gold leaf, and within the final coffin they would come to the mummy itself, wrapped in strips of hundreds of yards of fine linen. And when they x-rayed and scanned it, they would see Tenkaure, his head back, chin high, arms folded over his chest, his skin and hair still intact, his features recognizable after these thousands of years.

For many, it would be the most dramatic find of the tomb. For Josh, the inscriptions that would tell the true story of Tenkaure and his son were more exciting, and so were the kitchen utensils, game boards, and furniture, for they led him back and back, into the everyday lives of those ancient times, and they gave him the art and artifacts with which to build life-size exhibits in his museum for the people of his own time. That was the work of his life: to bridge the centuries and weave the past into the present so that each was illuminated by the other.

He breathed deeply of the musty air. It was the most glorious moment of his life. It should have been perfect. But perversely, it was not. Because he wanted Anne to be with him. We ought to be sharing this, he thought; I'll never have anything like it again.

He knew well enough that she shied away from any efforts to probe the past, but there had to be ways for her to understand what the past meant to him. She could avoid confronting her own, if she liked, though he thought that was a mistake, but surely she could see how a man could spend his time and energy deciphering other ages, for what they could tell us about our own, for locating ourselves in the long line of peoples who are part of us because we are all part of the human race, and also for the pure joy of learning. Anne loved to learn; she could understand his passion, and share it. Then, perhaps, she could break the shell within which something in her seemed to sleep. Or perhaps she would let him be the one to break it. And wake her up.

He shook his head, smiling ruefully to himself. The tomb was getting to him; he was weaving fantasies like a schoolboy. He looked through the doorway, back the way they had come. “A year, at a guess, to get everything catalogued and out of here. What do you think?”

“At least,” Hosni agreed. “Why rush it and take a chance on messing things up?”

“We'll need extra guards. How many have you had here until now?”

“Three. We'll need an army. I'll talk to the Luxor police; they'll get us started until Cairo sends more. Do you want to work on the schedule now?”

“Not alone; we've got to call your boss at Antiquities and Tourism. If we don't keep him happy, and everybody else in your government, I have a feeling my museum could be very politely shut out in the cold. This thing is so big Egypt is going to want all of it, and I understand that, but I intend to get a chunk of it for us.”

“You should, you should, you did the work, you raised the money—”

“But it's Egypt's heritage, so most of it stays here. I don't
have any problem with that; I just don't want to be left out. Okay, why don't you go back to Luxor and find us three shifts of guards? I'll call Cairo; they'll have people here tonight. It shouldn't take more than a week or two to get crews and equipment; then we'll start taking things out of here.”

When Hosni had left, and the workers had gone to the surface to eat their lunch in the shade of the cars, Josh walked through the rooms alone. Excitement and jubilation buoyed him, but his movements were careful and precise as he photographed each room to illustrate the articles he would write describing his find. His was the only light now, and as he carried it, or set it down, fantastic shadows were flung across the walls and ceilings, making the scenes shift and seem alive. He propped the light on mounds of rubble and used his flash to photograph each room from all angles. The silence was absolute: calm, peaceful, indifferent to the world above. A curious juxtaposition, Josh thought: in this place of death, beauty and serenity seemed supreme.

As he photographed the jumbled objects and took close-ups of individual pieces, he realized he was photographing as much for Anne as for his future writings. He was already planning his description of each slide as it burst into life on the wall in his apartment, telling Anne the stories that made up the whole of Egyptian mythology.

If we ever do that again, he thought, or do anything at all together. But that did not stop him from thinking about her as he moved from room to room, and soon it was as if she walked beside him, wide-eyed at the splendors he was photographing, her voice echoing his excitement, her hands touching the gold statues and alabaster vases with gentle fingertips, leaving everything exactly as it was until the teams of experts would come to remove it. And when Josh had finally worked his way back to the rough staircase, and was climbing to the world above, Anne's presence was so real, her place beside him so natural, that he knew that, somehow, he would find a way to bring her here.

*   *   *

In his hotel in Luxor that night, he called her in Los Angeles. Ten hours earlier, he calculated, and began to give the operator her office number before remembering that it was Sunday. But when he gave her number at home, there was no answer. He sprawled in his armchair, staring through the window at the boats on the Nile. It was four days after Christmas; she might still be in Tamarack. But now, suddenly, he was reluctant to call her. What would he say?
I want you here; it's the most amazing time in my life and I want you to be part of it.

There would be a silence at her end; he could feel her pulling away from him even over the telephone, even at a distance of ten thousand miles.
Why, Josh? Why do you want me there?

He gazed absently at the people on the upper decks of the tour boats. They wore evening dress and the light sweaters they brought out as soon as the sun went down, and were being served appetizers by waiters in gleaming white coats and white gloves. He could hear their voices, and the ripples of their laughter. He sat alone in his hotel room, watching them, and thought of how much of the world he had seen, without sharing it.
Because, incredible as this experience is, it isn't enough: I want you to be part of it. Because whatever I do from now on, I want to share with you. Because I love you.

He had loved her for a long time, he thought, perhaps from the day they had hiked to Defiance Lake. Before then he had been impressed with her toughness and her formidable skills. Hiking with her, he had seen, beneath the cool face she presented to the world, the passionate spirit that pushed her on and responded to splendor. That was what he loved. Whatever was in her past that acted as a terrible brake on her emotions, she had survived and in many ways, been victorious, her fine mind and her wit intact, even if it seemed she could not, at least not yet, love.

He wanted to tell her. But he could not do it. It was not the kind of conversation he could have on the telephone.

He watched the decks of the tourist boats empty as everyone went below for dinner. The trouble was, he had to
tell someone, someone who knew what he was doing, a friend. He reached for the telephone again, and called Gail and Leo.

It rang for a long time before a strange voice answered. “Hello, Calders'.”

“Who is this?” Josh asked in surprise.

“Lena; I clean house for the Calders. They're not here; they're in Albuquerque. I could take a message.”

Let down, so full of his story he was spilling over with the need to talk about it, Josh picked up a pencil. “Can you tell me how to reach them there?”

“Uh, the hospital. I can get the number—”

“Hospital! Why?”

“Well, the accident, you know. Everybody knows about—”

Josh's heart seemed to stop. “What? What accident?”

“The gondola. Gosh, how'd you miss it? It been on the TV and everything. It fell. Not the whole thing, you know, just one of the cars, but another one was smashed and that's the one Leo was in. Nobody got killed; it was first thing in the morning so nobody'd gone up the mountain yet.”

First thing in the morning.
“Josh, Anne and I are going up tomorrow morning; you want to go along?” “I can't; I'm leaving early for Egypt. We'll do it next time.”

“Who else was hurt?” he asked tightly.

“The kids, Robin and Ned, they broke their legs. Gail's sister was there, but she's okay. They say she saved the kids, she held on to them so they wouldn't fall out. There's lots of stuff going on around here; it's kind of a mess—”

She's fine. She's fine. She's fine.
His hand was shaking and he forced himself to unclench his fingers from the telephone. I've got to be with her, he thought. And then he knew he wanted to be with all of them: Anne, Leo and Gail and the children, William, Nina, Marian . . .

“—found the number in Albuquerque,” Lena was saying. She read it to him. “They're in room fifteen. You can call them there.”

“Thanks,” he said, and immediately called the number.
When he finally reached Gail, she sounded weary. “Oh, Josh, how wonderful to hear your voice. We don't know very much yet; he has a skull fracture and maybe an epidural hematoma; that's why we're here, in case he needs surgery. Anne is with Robin and Ned at the hospital in Tamarack; they each have a broken leg, but they're doing fine. Why don't you call them?”

Again, he called the hospital in Tamarack, and then he heard Anne's cool voice, so close he felt they could be touching. “Are you really all right?” he asked. “I want to be there, but I can't get away for a few days.”

“We're fine; we're mostly worried about Leo. It's very good of you, Josh, but you shouldn't hurry; we don't need anything.”

“It isn't your need; it's mine,” he said. “I want to be there with you. With all of you.”

“Thank you.” Her voice was low and now he heard the stress in it. “This isn't a good time, Josh; all those people injured—no one killed, thank God, but one of them has a broken back, and the others have broken bones and of course they're all banged up and angry and still scared—and there's a lot of anger in town, too; people are talking about sloppy maintenance, even negligence. And the tourists are leaving. You'd think we're in a war zone; they're just going to the airport and sitting there until they can get on a plane.”

“Why? What are they afraid of?”

“The devil, I suppose.” Her voice was wry, but Josh heard a note of desolation in it, and he knew he was the first person she had been able to talk to without having to put on a show of confidence and reassurance. “It's as if they think we've been possessed by something evil. The newspapers and television keep going over the other problems we've had, and the EPA investigation just hangs there because they won't send us the documents we want so we can't do anything to end it. So people leave. And the ones who live here are hurting and blaming the company.”

“What happened to the gondola?”

“No one knows. The investigators are already here, from the State Tramway Board, and they found a bolt missing, but it wasn't part of the grip that held us to the cable. No one knows why our car slipped on the cable.”

“What did the missing bolt do?”

“It was part of a safety mechanism. If the grip failed on a car, a device was supposed to sense it and stop the gondola. It didn't work on our car because the bolt was missing, so we started up the mountain, and when we got to the steep part, the cable kept moving but we didn't, and the car behind us, which was gripped just fine to the cable, crashed into us. I can't believe two things went wrong at once—something happening to the grip and a bolt falling out—but right now that's what they've found.”

“And Robin and Ned?”

“They're fine. I'm in Robin's room now; she's watching television. Ned is across the hall, talking on the phone. They're both so excited about the accident they can't stop talking about it. I think the whole school will be here tomorrow; the phones haven't stopped ringing. I envy their resilience; they've turned the whole thing into a movie. Ned calls it
The Gruesome Gondola,
which won't make his parents happy, and Robin's named it
Blood on the Snow,
which isn't any better, and they're the producers and of course, the stars. I think it's good for about fifty years of retelling.”