The Linguist and the Emperor (15 page)

Now, however, Desaix is beginning to see at just what price this glory will be won. Though he tries to rouse his men with Napoleonic phrases, he is no Napoleon. He suffers with his men, reserving for himself scarcely more than they have, but he cannot make them forget their sufferings as Napoleon would have, as much with his demonic energy as by his words. Desaix cannot fill them with resolve or bring them to ecstasy with a piercing look filled with “fate.”

Napoleon is preoccupied with more mundane matters just now. If he is a demon, he is a practical one and realizes that he must leave behind a well-organized occupation at Alexandria before moving on to Cairo. When he does join the troops in a day or two, unlike Desaix, he will cross the desert quickly, on horseback and with a plentiful supply of water and wine, and a tent to retire to when the sun is at its height. Like a being from another world, he will insist on a full military review, all spit and polish, and then swoop down on the men with threats and honors, awarding medals to the brave like the emperor he will soon be—and vowing to shoot all cowards and defeatists.

If he cannot inspire the men, Desaix can, at least, give them
hope—
“that bedraggled daughter of fear and desire.” In another day, they will be at El Beydah, with its cisterns and its date palms and sheep, and they can begin to live off the land as they had done during the conquest of Italy.

Speeches done, Desaix turns into an army chaplain or father confessor, reading to the exhausted soldiers from Montesquieu—whose works, together with those of Voltaire and Rousseau, must take the place of prayer for the excommunicated Frenchmen.

And so it is to the
rational
lullaby of Montesquieu’s
Spirit of the Laws—
as opposed to the old “Roman absurdities”—that the soldiers fall into a fitful sleep under the desert sky: “Laws, taken in the broadest meaning, are the necessary relations deriving from the nature of things; and in this sense, all beings have their laws. . . . the material world. . . . the beasts of the fields have their laws, man has his laws. Those who have said . . .” On and on, as the wind blows the sand over the exhausted men until reveille sounds at 2
AM.
It seems to them that they have just closed their eyes and they begin to march again.

Hauling themselves and their baggage carts and whatever artillery they have managed to load onto limbers and caissons through the soft sand into which they sink up to their ankles, they try to cover as much territory as they can while it is still night. For with the sunrise, the torture begins anew.

Soldiers chase mirages, pools of blue water which appear on the horizon. The Frenchmen fling themselves into imaginary water which turns to sand again and again until, tortured by the illusion, some shoot themselves in despair.

Their feet are blistered from the fine sand which they cannot keep out of their boots. Their uniforms are absurdly heavy. Driven mad by the heat, men rip off their jackets and even their shirts, exposing fair skin to the desert sun. They leave behind a trail of splendid military attire, powder blue or dark green with gold facings, and stiff army caps with plumes of red and white . . . all borne to oblivion by the desert wind.

Hour after hour: surrounded by the everlasting sameness of the desert, the heat, the silence, the glare of the sun, the men collapsing, the monotonous rhythm of the march. The monotony is broken when it is least expected by the shock of attack. Bedouins suddenly appear from behind the dunes, shooting as they ride at full gallop, hurling javelins or thrusting their swords at the unwary, then disappearing again into the desert.

Ten, sometimes twenty fall during such raids, regretted less than the wounding or capture of the few precious animals. It is the horses and donkeys who help drag the weapons Napoleon has decided will be key to victory: the big guns, howitzers, and cannons.

To keep knowledge of them from the enemy until the very last minute, they are covered with canvas and surrounded by an elite guard as they approach El Beydah, where, Desaix fears, Murad bey might have stationed spies.

The precaution is unnecessary: El Beydah is desolate. Not a soul stirs within its mud-brick houses. Its few palms have been stripped of dates and even of branches. The two cisterns have been filled with rocks and sand.

“If the whole army does not cross the desert with the speed of lightning, it will perish . . .” Desaix writes to Napoleon, begging for medicine and provisions, sacrificing one of his precious horses for the messenger. “Our guides have misled us and fled. Do not leave us in this situation for the troops are beginning to give up.”

Meanwhile, a desperate fight breaks out around the cisterns which have been quickly cleared. From them a rivulet of muddy water flows. Those who throw themselves on the ground to drink are trampled to death by thousands struggling to get to the water. And though guns are used to restore order, before long the whole business becomes futile—the cisterns are drained dry. When he tries to calm them with promises, which even he does not believe, that food and water are just a day’s march away, Desaix is almost stoned by the angry men.

DAMANHUR,
RIVER OF BLOOD
,
a place named for the deep red its cliffs and dunes turn in the light of the setting sun.

Here Desaix and his troops are joined by a second, and then a third division from Cairo; and then by Napoleon himself. So far he has ignored the appeals of Desaix and the other generals, waiting until now to give them his answer. They want water, medicine, provisions? They will get everything they want when they reach Cairo.

The troops need victory, Napoleon tells them during a war conference held in an old barn. That will put an end to all this whining. And a victory is just what he proposes to give them, he adds.

After this rousing speech, General Mireur rides into the desert and shoots himself, unable to endure any more suffering. His men search for him and, by nightfall, they find him, vultures leading them to his beribboned and bemedaled body. He had even donned his tricolor sash of honor before killing himself. As the sun sets and the desert turns its deep, deep red, they bury him near the cliffs at the edge of the town, medals, sash, and all. The carrion birds continue circling overhead.

It is a fitting burial place. The cliffs that look down upon the grave are covered with graffiti: curses scratched onto the rocks by other solders who have also passed this way. Greeks and Romans crossed the desert in the days when Damanhur was Hermopolis Parva, city of Hermes to the Greeks (Thoth to the Egyptians). A god thrice blessed and thrice great, Hermes Trismegistos, created a deep mystery—the
neter tched,
the words of the gods, breath—fleeting sound made immortal through writing.

If the exhausted French soldiers digging Mireur’s grave had not been so busy with their task, if they had had enough strength, food, and water to permit them to think of something besides drawing their next breath, they might have lingered before these scribblings on the cliffs—these epitaphs for Mireur and all their other comrades who have fallen so far.

For while the drawings etched onto the rocks are lighthearted enough—for example, a hunchbacked, pot-bellied dwarf plays on a flute; and a bald-headed old priest, censer in hand, sports with two naked girls—while the doodlings here are whimsical or even obscene, the writing, carved in Greek and Latin, sounds a different note.

Scratched on the stone along with the many names of Greek mercenaries and Roman legionnaires on one expedition or another, the writing tells of soldiers on their way to quell a rebellion or to collect taxes, or to take prisoners to the mines and the quarries in the south.

Like the French these ancient soldiers are footsore and hungry and curse the heat and the sand and the scorpions and vipers hidden under every rock. Longing for home, they precede the grumbling of Napoleon’s men with their emphatic “Shit!” or “To hell with this land!”—their unhappiness echoing across the long perspective of time.

Far beneath the cliffs, deep under the sand, rolled up in pottery jars or hidden in the coffins of the mummified ibises and baboons (animals sacred to Thoth), are papyri which record the miseries of other soldiers, Egyptians who preceded the Greeks—who preceded the Romans—who preceded the French. In their time, these warriors had also hungered and thirsted and waded, as the French do now, through the “river of blood”:

He is awakened after only an hour and they prod him like a donkey.

He is hungry, his belly aching.

He is dead while alive.

He is ordered far away, to Syria or Cush.

He gets neither food nor sandals when they give out the supplies.

He marches while the sun is hot and burning overhead.

Only on the third day can he drink foul water that tastes like salt.

Diarrhea tears his stomach.

The enemies come and he is surrounded in combat.

Arrows take his life from him

As his leader shouts:

“Attack brave warrior! Get a name for yourself!”

But he does not know what has happened to his body.

His aching legs give way.

If victory comes, the plunder and slaves must be carried back to Pharaoh in Egypt.

The foreign slave woman can walk no further.

She is put on the soldier’s neck.

His own wife and children wait for him in their town.

But he has fallen

He is dead.

He never reaches home.

They leave behind their record as the French soldiers will leave behind theirs: memoirs and histories and even their names, Jacques or Jean or Lieutenant so-and-so of the 5th Chasseurs, scratched on rocks and temple walls.

Ancient words come down through the centuries in Egyptian and Greek, in Latin and French—half lament, half boast uttered with a melancholy smile.

Words with no other moral than to say: Look at us! Like you, we are human beings—
—tears of the gods.
Comrades in arms: of the Regiment of Seth: Senbi. Senwosret of the Regiment of Ra. Meryptah, who carries the king’s placenta when we go forth into battle.

These are our names and the honors we hold. Do not forget us till
hhehh
,
—the end of time.

AT A PLACE
called Rahmaniya,
the Merciful,
the beleaguered Frenchmen finally arrive at the Nile. There is water and shade here. There are the promised palm trees heavy with clusters of ripe dates, and lemon and orange and fig trees as well, and black currants, and watermelons, fields and fields of them.

Some men begin by gorging themselves on the fruit. Others strip off their uniforms or leap into the river fully clothed, shouting for joy.

On this day of rejoicing, the feast of St. Watermelon, the men laughingly call it, Murad bey and his Mamelukes suddenly appear. Armed with helmets, spears, sabers, lances, axes, daggers, and pistols, mounted on beautiful Arabian horses, they look down from the hills east of the Nile.

The naked men in the water, stunned, fall silent.

Chapter Ten

Of Linguists and Emperors and Everlasting Fame

1823. Italy.

ON A HOT
day in the middle of August, a swarthy man with dark eyes pores over an ancient scroll. The room is small and airless, a stone chamber in an Italian palazzo where many miscellaneous finds have been carelessly stored. Although the man is just in his thirties, his hands tremble perpetually and he is stooped as he reads. At that moment he, Jean François Champollion, is the only per-son in the world who can understand the ancient writing on the coffins and statues surrounding him, or so he thinks.
Could it be? Does he know the truth or not? Are his enemies right to mock him?

Champollion has claimed that this is a system of writing and he understands the seemingly endless number of beautiful and bizarre and sometimes grotesque pictures. There are thousands of them. Has he deluded himself? Is he mad? He insists that he has deciphered Egyptian writing. He has staked his reputation on his claim—but is it true that the disembodied hands and legs, the stars and scepters and staring eyes form words, that they speak to him and to him alone after a silence of fifteen hundred years?

Ignoring his exhaustion, Champollion persists in his patient, obscure work. Throughout his life, the rhythm of his existence is twofold: periods of almost monastic withdrawal from the world and intense lonely toil, alternate with periods of great excitement and public debate. But always the burden of the past weighs heavily. There is the crushing, painstaking labor which proceeds picture by picture, sign by sign, word by word.

Time falls away as Champollion slowly reads this ancient document, teasing out its meaning. It is a tale of passion and betrayal, a story of two thousand years before . . . in Egypt . . . as the Nile rises for its yearly flooding, bringing its rich, dark silt to the parched land.

People rejoice, breaking off from their labors, and in the midst of the celebrations, a beautiful woman leaves her husband to run away with her lover.

The woman’s name is not recorded. Or perhaps it is written on part of the scroll which has crumbled to dust in this small, stifling chamber of the palazzo. So, while she is nameless, the record states that she is tall and beautiful and dark, from the southern reaches of the divided kingdom, perhaps a Nubian. Running away with one of the foreign soldiers who have occupied northern Egypt, she abandons her two young daughters. About their Egyptian father, the story is silent. These forlorn girls are taken in by a relative to live in the city dedicated to the crocodile-headed god, Sobek.

Raised in the temple of Sobek, the two girls serve the living incarnation of the god: a huge crocodile who lazes in the sun, a glittering beast with jewels and gold sewn into its hide. One of the girls, no older than fourteen, becomes a temple prostitute, selling her body in honor of the monstrous deity. She splits her earnings with the bald-headed priests who in turn divide their share: a part for themselves, a part for the reptile-god whom they anoint with oils and perfumed unguents after offering him choice meat and game.

A year goes by and again, during the Inundation, the mother reappears. She talks her prostitute-daughter into giving up her savings: her mother promises to find her a husband. The money will be used both for the dowry and for the cliterectomy, the female castration that will make her child a better match. But the wayward mother is false in her promises and, instead of finding a husband for her daughter, she runs away with her daughter’s savings.

A temple hermit recounts the details in brilliantly colored hieroglyphs. About him we know only that he has retired to the precincts of the sacred pool where the god lives. Night after night he gazes on the bejeweled beast, praying to be granted prophetic dreams, visions which would catapult him to fame and honor at the pharaoh’s court. At the young girl’s request, he writes her tale of woe as a legal complaint.

Whether the authorities act on it, what happens to the girl, her mother, her sister, the temple recluse, we do not know. The scroll on which the story was written is kept with other such documents which remained in the great archives of the temple for hundreds of years. And then, finally, during the fourth century
AD,
the hieroglyphic script in which these documents are written goes out of use. The meaning of the strange symbols is forgotten. And for fifteen hundred years they remain a mystery, along with all the other inscriptions and carvings and paintings from this ancient world.

A CARETAKER KNOCKS
on the door but is sent away. Since coming to Turin, Champollion has been so forgetful of his appearance and surroundings that the servants have begun to whisper that he is not quite right. The scroll before him has not yielded its meaning easily: The complex writing presents endless difficulties, endless exceptions to principles he himself had discovered earlier, when he had made his great breakthrough.

He had been going along in the path which had been trod by scholars struggling with the hieroglyphs since the Renaissance, when suddenly he understood: first one word, then two, then the principle, the key which unlocked the mystery.

Half-mad then with excitement he had run through the streets of Paris to the library where his brother worked. Holding his tattered notebook out to the astonished Jacques, he shouted, “
Je tiens l’affair!
(I’ve done it!)” Then he fainted, falling into a coma and lying unconscious for eight days, more dead than alive.

From the first announcement of his discovery, it is fiercely disputed; the British especially cover him with scorn and fiercely contest his findings. Champollion’s theories are contrary to the ideas held about hieroglyphics from the earliest time, ideas which he himself had espoused until, in a moment of inspiration, all his years of study, all the concentrated effort of a lifetime, bore fruit.

The challenge now is proving what he knows. The first basis for Champollion’s conclusions had been the Rosetta stone, but this monument was not enough to refute his critics. True, the stone was inscribed both in hieroglyphic and Greek and by comparing the scripts, one could arrive at certain possibilities. But the inferences drawn from the stone are still only educated guesses, mere clues and theories.

First, the Greek and Egyptian writing on the stone are paraphrases of each other. They give the general meaning of the decree, and are not word-for-word translations. Also, the writing on the stone is dismissed by the experts as providing too small a sample to conclusively prove any theory. It contains only fourteen lines of formal hieroglyphs: a slender basis for Champollion’s claim that he can read the hieroglyphs.

The brilliant Englishman Thomas Young, physicist, physician, amateur classicist, had briefly studied the stone. He made a limited but important contribution to its decipherment before giving up. A wealthy and sophisticated scholar with a broad range of interests, Young makes Champollion, with his lifelong devotion to this one mystery, seem like a crank. Champollion, holed up in a cheap rooming house in Paris, lives for one reason and for one reason alone: the hieroglyphs.

From this obscurity, Champollion announces to the world that he can read them. Young, writing at ease from a fashionable seaside resort, gives his verdict: “Champollion is wrong.”

The burden of proof falls on Champollion. But in the time which has passed since his great discovery, physical ailments ravage the obsessed scholar. Intense intellectual effort and the struggle with poverty have taken their toll on the slender, handsome young man, prematurely aging him.

The race to confirm his discoveries is also a race with death, whose presence Champollion is not allowed to forget as he studies funerary papyri, coffin texts, and ancient dirges.

The question is, will Champollion’s discoveries be his “calling card on Immortality,” as he has put it in a letter to his brother, or will his work be dismissed as the egotistical ravings of a madman?

London. A darkened room where a single, narrow beam of light falls on a human eye.

The light illuminates this and nothing more. It is a patient’s eye, its pupil dilating and contracting as the doctor, Thomas Young, observes intently. This is how his waking hours are largely spent, observing and analyzing and collecting data as he sees patients and conducts experiments. You can see in his pale, thoughtful, otherworldly, abstracted face that he is a man who has had more nights than days in his life.

The light itself becomes the object of his study: candlelight shining through (or made “coherent” by) funnel-like shades and colored filters of blue and green and violet and red. In his most famous experiment, Dr. Young demonstrates the undulatory or wave theory of light which overturns Newton’s particle theory. But still, despite his considerable achievement, Young is dissatisfied and restless, plagued by what Milton calls “that last failing of a noble mind”: the thirst for fame.

He pursues other investigations—the nature of color; and astigmatism; and the manner in which the eye accommodates itself to distance. But in the wake of Napoleon’s campaign, as volume after volume of
The Description of Egypt
is published and thousands of scrolls and antiquities find their way to Europe, it is not talk of the nature of astigmatism or of color or light which is on everyone’s lips, but the meaning of the hieroglyphs. Though no linguist, Young now takes up the problem. He brings to his study a thorough classical education and finely honed analytic skills, as well as the pride of a (so far) undefeated intellect.

While Young pursues his intellectual quarry at his ease, a letter arrives from the village of Figeac. A schoolmaster there working with illiterate peasant children requests that the secretary of the Royal Society (Young) furnish him with clarification of some details about the stone which are obscure on his copy. Young, none too pleased to be hearing from a rival, replies that the obscurities on the copy are also unclear on the original.

The provincial schoolmaster is none other than Jean François, who is languishing in “internal exile,” a richly deserved punishment. For Jean François had taken up Napoleon’s cause just as Napoleon was going down to defeat.

Jean François had been opposed to the emperor during the years of the glorious French victories. The linguist had all along opposed the tyranny of the high-handed Bonaparte. But now, in Napoleon’s final days, the empire doomed and dying, the Bourbons waiting in the wings about to return, Jean François—idealist, romantic, fool—publicly plants the tricolor on the walls of Grenoble’s fort during the allied siege.

For if Napoleon is a tyrant, if the emperor is high-handed and authoritarian, at least his tyranny is more bearable than that of the reactionary Bourbons. At least it is in the name of an ideal. The Bourbons represent the mindless return to the stultifying past. Of the Bourbons, the dreary Louis XVIII and, even worse, his arrogant brother Charles X, it is truly said that they had forgotten nothing (of their privileges) and had learned nothing (during their long exile).

Thus Champollion becomes a “Bonapartist” just in time to be branded as persona non grata by the returning Bourbons, ensuring that both he and, by association, his brother will suffer.

Jean François has not that much to lose, for up until now his professional life has consisted of meager appointments: assistant professor (at half salary, given his youth) or sub-librarian or unpaid assistant to his brother in Paris or Grenoble. They are appointments which are given and then taken away as the political situation fluctuates. During difficult periods, his brother supports him for months at a time.

He undergoes the desperation of being down and out and knowing—trying not to lose sight of the knowledge—that if only he can continue on his path, his name will echo throughout eternity. It is the kind of struggle to which Dostoyevsky refers when he speculates that Columbus was happiest ten minutes
before
he discovered America—though perhaps without knowing it himself . . . when his sailors cursed him and mutinied; when he was straining against overwhelming obstacles; when success or failure still hung in the balance; when he was filled with self-doubt and misgivings.