Sphinx (11 page)

‘What’s this baloney got to do with the astrarium or astrolabe or whatever the hell it is?’ I asked.

Barry dipped a finger into the mud inside the steel tube and tasted it, oblivious to my disgust. ‘Mate, if this is an instrument once used by a magician, you have to adopt their mentality and treat it accordingly - with respect and fear. This artefact, as you insist on calling it, could still be formidable in the right hands. In the hands of someone who knows how to use it. If Isabella was right, then it was constructed hundreds of centuries before the Enlightenment, before the separation of church and state, religion and science, before the compartmentalising of the psyche. Not that I expect a repressed bastard like yourself to understand,’ he concluded affectionately.

I pointed at the steel tube. It stood there, upright, like some obelisk of ill portent.

‘Magical or not, or whether it still has power, just remember Isabella drowned for that bloody piece of irrelevant history,’ I said, a little more bitterly than I’d intended.

Barry reached into the top of the tube and, with the edge of his fingernail, carefully scraped away some of the mud to reveal the edge of what appeared to be a wooden casing.

‘This looks way too well preserved for Ptolemaic. You sure Isabella didn’t have her dates mixed up?’

‘You know Isabella - she was obsessive and thorough in her research. But - you’ll love this - it was a mystic called Ahmos Khafre in Goa who finally convinced her it existed.’

‘
The
Ahmos Khafre?’

‘I imagine so.’

‘That bloke’s legendary. He was one of the greatest mystics of this century.’

‘Yeah, along with Houdini, Crowley and Mickey Mouse. Legitimate or not, Khafre had a total hold over Isabella. So there it is - myth made real,’ I finished dramatically, sitting on the floor myself.

Barry peered back into the tube. ‘I’ll have to take it to my apartment to desalinate it, then carbon-date the wooden casing. Jesus, Oliver, if Isabella was right, do you know how significant this could be?’

To my dismay, Barry’s face had lit up with the same kind of maniacal excitement I’d seen so many times in my wife. I’d debated whether to ask his opinion about Isabella’s missing organs but now decided against further encouraging his obsession with mysticism.

‘Take it, but please get some results quickly,’ I said. ‘I have to figure out what to do with the bloody thing before I get back to Abu Rudeis next week.’

 

I watched from my balcony as Barry walked off down the alleyway, the shaggy outline of his mane visible between the branches of the magnolia tree. Night was Barry’s natural domain, along with the subterranean underwater world. He was fearless. Actually, I suspected it wasn’t so much fearlessness as active risk-taking - an irresistible compulsion to seek out any situation that would challenge his faculties. It was because of this that I had known he would take the job.

He turned the corner and vanished. Exhausted, I leant against the wall, the night air playing across my face. My shirt, damp with sweat, stuck to my back and I realised how much I had begun to fear sleeping, how I’d started to be afraid that with each passing day my memory of Isabella would fade and eventually she would leave me completely - a terrible, infinite abandonment.

I dragged myself back into the bedroom. The bed was large and low; an embroidered quilt with mirrors sewn into it lay over the top - one of Isabella’s Indian acquisitions. I dreaded sleeping in that bed alone and the thought of finding it empty of her in the morning was overwhelming. The reality of Isabella’s absence had started to grow like an invisible force that threatened to eclipse my own desire to keep living. And I knew that if I didn’t sleep now I probably risked having a breakdown.

Stripping off my shirt and trousers, I walked into the bathroom. As I reached into the bathroom cabinet I knocked over a tin of talcum power, spilling it over the window ledge. I looked at it forlornly for a moment but realised I was too drunk to deal with it. I decided to clean it up in the morning.

I brushed my teeth and, in an attempt to sober up, plunged my face into a basin of cold water. As I stood there, the water pressing into my nostrils and against my lips, I couldn’t help thinking of Isabella’s drowned face and how she must have felt. Had she panicked, had she fought to stay with me? I needed to know. I needed to get inside her consciousness - I needed her back. For a moment, I was tempted to breathe in and join her.

I waited until my lungs were bursting, then, spluttering, lifted my face, now streaming with water.

I pulled away the scarf Ibrihim had used to cover the bathroom mirror and barely recognised the face, covered with stubble, that stared back. Exhaustion and grief had hollowed my cheeks. Surprisingly, I welcomed my altered appearance: it delineated transition from the person I had been before Isabella’s death to the person I was now. I decided I would stop shaving from now on to emphasise the delineation. I was determined; this new alien Oliver would face sleeping in the empty bed; would block out the hours of lovemaking that had taken place there, the faint scent of Isabella that still lingered on the linen, the taste of her skin imprinted on my senses.

I re-entered the bedroom and threw myself onto the quilt. In seconds I was asleep.

 

The sound of a door clicking woke me. I forced my eyes open and craned my neck to check the digital alarm clock. It read 3.45 a.m. but as I watched the digits didn’t appear to flip over. The bloody thing’s broken again, I thought, and was reaching over to switch it off when a noise from the bathroom made me swing around. The door was closed but light shone out from beneath it. I froze. I couldn’t remember leaving the lamp on.

Then I heard it again - a rustling sound, like someone moving about. A puddle of water began to seep out from under the bathroom door. Slowly I got up.

Inside the bathroom, the art deco lamp had been switched on, illuminating the pink marble tiles. The bathroom sink was empty, gleamingly clean; a normalcy that was comforting. The sound of water swishing against the bathtub broke the silence. I stopped in my tracks. Suddenly I was aware of another presence in the room; fear crept up the back of my scalp, stretching back the skin. My immediate thought was that it had to be Isabella, yet I knew that wasn’t possible.

I turned around slowly. A hand hung over the edge of the bathtub - a woman’s hand, long fingers blanched by water and death. My heart pounded against my throat as I forced myself to walk over to the bath. Each step brought me closer to a terror I knew I had to face.

Twisted, the curve of one buttock pressed up against the porcelain, her skin as white as a beached cuttlefish, Isabella’s corpse floated in the bathtub. Her eyes were closed; her lips a faint violet. I was close to screaming. The room felt like a vacuum, as if all sound and air had been sucked out of it. I couldn’t tear my eyes away. A great bloodless gash ran down the centre of her body and her wet hair floated, suspended like tendrils. Her other hand lay palm up in the water, the fingers plaintive in their curled pleading. As I watched transfixed, her eyelids flickered, then opened.

I screamed and woke again in my bed. Terrified, I looked across at the bathroom door. The room was dark and silent.

The scent of kosherie - a local rice, lentil and pasta dish - floating up from the kitchen woke me. Ravenous, I sat up, only to sink back, flattened by a pounding hangover, onto the pillows. I waited a couple of moments, then bellowed for Ibrihim, who confirmed that it was indeed past midday.

Gingerly, I made my way to the bathroom. A series of bird-claw prints were clearly marked in the talcum powder that I’d spilt on the window ledge the night before. The window was ajar, yet I felt sure I’d shut it. Could a bird have flown in through the open shutters of the bedroom while I was sleeping?

The Ba tattoo on Isabella’s ankle flashed through my mind. Then I remembered the events of the night before. Isabella’s presence had been so vivid. Had it been real? My terror had been real enough. My mother’s warnings of souls caught in purgatory for sins left unconfessed came flooding back to me. As a child I’d hated the fear these tales engendered in me; they had seeded my determination to live unfettered by superstition. But Isabella had lived a ‘good’ life. I suddenly thought again of the bizarre encounter with Demetriou al-Masri after Isabella’s burial, the horror of her missing organs. Had being buried incomplete condemned her somehow?

Crazy lapsed-Catholic nightmares, I told myself as I stood naked in the middle of the bathroom. This isn’t rational, it’s just coincidence - the dream, the fact that a bird flew in during the night. This is grief stringing together a narrative.

Turning the shower on, I stepped into the cold water, letting it pummel my face and shoulders in an effort to exorcise the images of the night before. But Isabella’s gaze of entreaty and bewilderment had seared itself into my memory.

I stepped out, wrapped a towel around my waist and went to the library.

The small square room was panelled in dark oak and had brass trimmings. The walls were lined with bookcases, many of them filled with Isabella’s books. The volume I was looking for was on a top shelf, between works by Robert Graves and Giovanni Belzoni:
The Meaning of Ba
.

I opened the book at a photo of a wooden effigy of King Tutankhamen on his funerary bed. He was flanked by two wooden birds: one with a human face, his Ba; the other showing the face of the sun god, Horus, signifying that Tutankhamen’s Ba was that of a pharaoh, a living god. I turned to the next page and began reading:

I remembered that Isabella’s Ba tattoo had her own profile. She’d told me she’d had it tattooed on her ankle to ensure her path to the afterlife. She had been deadly serious about it and there was something unnerving about the tattoo - its vulnerable profile with the distinctive nose and large eye; its bird legs and large claws seemingly poised for flight.

Was it possible that I’d experienced some kind of visitation of Isabella’s Ba, that Demetriou was right? I entertained the notion for an instant, then immediately dismissed it as ridiculous. But a sliver of doubt remained. Haunted by the travesty of Isabella’s desecrated body, I knew I had to find out why it had happened and how.

Banging, loud and persistent, on the front door below startled me, followed by the sound of Ibrihim’s footfall as he ran to answer it. I leaped up, Faakhir’s warning flashing in my mind. Or maybe it was the police, come to search the villa on some flimsy excuse. Instead, I heard Barry’s voice roar up the stairs.

‘Mate! Get yer clobber on! I’m taking you out!’

 

The Union restaurant was one of the last bastions of colonial Egypt. A favourite of Alexandrian society before nationalisation, it still retained some of its earlier glamour. The head waiters were dressed in black suits (now frayed at the cuffs and collars) and bow ties, while the lower waiters wore white skull caps and brown jellabas. The ornate pink and brown wallpaper had started to peel and the velvet curtains were blotched, but the piano was still polished and the pianist wore real diamond earrings. At the height of the Union’s glory white caviar had been flown in from Iran with French foie gras and Scottish salmon readily available. Now the kitchen was dependent on the black market. On a good day it was possible to order Australian lamb chops, mint sauce and couscous and be swept up by a nostalgia you knew wasn’t your own while a head waiter pointed out where Montgomery used to sit and which table was Churchill’s favourite.

Barry was a close friend of the maître d’hôtel, Photios Photaros, who was the nucleus of all society gossip and knew not only all the old power players of the European diaspora but their children and grandchildren. He was the story-keeper. Photios, having heard of Isabella’s drowning, had placed us at his prize table, in an alcove near the pianist who was playing a mournful rendition of ‘La Mer’. The maître d’hôtel had also supplied Barry with his customary bottle of Johnny Walker Black Label whisky.

I’d thought initially that Barry had come back with some exciting news about the astrarium but it turned out he was scheduled to meet an American journalist, keen to get Barry’s view on the local reaction to Sadat’s peace initiatives with US President Carter. Convinced that no grieving man should be left alone for long, Barry had insisted I accompany him while the astrarium was desalinating back in his apartment, a process that could take a few days.