The Last Cato (53 page)

“What do you say we work for a while?” proposed the Rock, laying his napkin on the table.

I shook my head like someone waking from a dream. I looked around surprised. “Work?”

“Yes, Doctor, work. It’s…,” he said as he looked at his watch, “eleven at night. We can still get in a couple of hours. What do you say, Professor?”

“Fine… fine… Kaspar!” he stammered. “I don’t think we’ll have a problem gaining access to the museum’s database. I hope they didn’t erase my access code.”

Between the four of us we cleared the table and quickly straightened up the kitchen. Then, as if he would never see us again, Butros said good-bye to his son and to me with hard, loving hugs and affectionately shook the captain’s hand.

“Be very careful,” he begged us as he went down the first flight of stairs.

“Don’t worry, Papa.”

Farag sat down at the computer, while the Rock cleared a pile of magazines off another chair and pulled it up to the machine. I didn’t want to be reminded of the Staurofilakes, so I leafed through the books on the bookshelves.

“Okay, here we are,” I heard Farag say. “Enter your username: Kenneth,” he revealed in a loud voice. “Enter your access code: Oxirrinco. Great, it accepted them. We’re in,” he announced.

“Can it search images?”

“Not really. But I can search for specific texts and access the related images. I’ll look for ‘bearded snake.’”

“What language do you do search in?” I asked without turning around.

“In Arabic and English,” he explained. “Usually English. It’s easier with this keyboard in the Roman alphabet. I have another keyboard in Arabic next to that bookcase over there, but I rarely use it.”

“Can I see it?”

“Sure.”

While they jumped into the hunt for bearded snakes, I picked up the Arabic keyboard. I’d never seen anything so strange; it really amused me. It was the same as ours, of course, but with Arabic characters on the keys instead of the Roman alphabet.

“Do you really know how to write with this?”

“Yes. It isn’t complicated. The hardest part is changing the configuration of the computer and the programs. That’s why I always work in English.”

“What does it say there, Professor?” the Rock inquired, his eyes glued to the monitor.

“Where? Let’s see… Oh yeah, that’s the museum’s collection of images of bearded snakes.”

“Perfect. Let’s go.”

They became engrossed in studying photographs of reptiles and snakes engraved or painted on art objects belonging to the Greco- Roman Museum. After quite a while, they came to the conclusion that none of those images had anything to do with the Staurofilakes’ drawing, so they started all over again.

“Maybe it isn’t here,” Farag ventured, a bit unsure. “We only encompass six hundred years of history, starting from 300 B.C. It could be before that.”

“The style of the drawing is Greco-Roman, Farag,” I pointed out as I leafed through a magazine on Egyptian archeology, “so it has to fall in that time span.”

“Yes, but there’s nothing here, and that’s really odd.”

They decided to consult the general catalogues of Alexandrian art, published by the museum for the city government and available in the database. There they had more luck. They found a bearded serpent wearing the pharonic crowns of Upper and Lower Egypt that closely resembled our drawing.

“Where was that work found, Professor?” The Rock asked, bent over the copy coming out of the printer.

“Oh, in… the catacombs of Kom el-Shoqafa.”

“Kom el-Shoqafa…? I think that I just saw something about that around here.” I retraced my steps to three wobbly stacks of back issues of
National Geographic.
I remember the article about Shoqafa because it sounded like
konafa,
the huge puff pastry with honey that Farag gobbled down.

“Don’t bother,
Basileia.
I don’t think Kom el-Shoqafa has anything to do with the test.”

“Why not, Professor?” the Rock asked coldly.

“Because I worked there, Kaspar. I was the director of excavations in 1998. I know the place quite well. If I’d seen that image from the Staurofilakes’ drawing, I’d have remembered it.”

“But it looked familiar to you,” I said, as I hunted for the magazine.

“Because of the mixture of styles,
Basileia.”

Despite the late hour, they dove back into the catalogue of Alexandrian art from the last fourteen hundred years. They never seemed to get tired. Just as I came across the copy of
National Geographic
I was looking for, they’d come across a second important piece of information: a medallion with Medusa’s head on it. Judging from the captain’s exclamation—he’d just matched the crumpled, charcoal drawing with one on the screen—I knew they’d made a significant find.

“It’s identical, Professor,” he said. “See for yourself.”

“A Medusa from the late Hellenistic period? It is quite common, Kaspar!”

Yes, but this is exactly the same! Where is that relief?”

“Let me see… Hmmm…, in the catacombs of Kom el-Shoqafa,” he said very surprised. “How strange! I don’t remember it…”

“You don’t remember the god of wine’s thyrsus, either?” I asked, holding up the magazine, opened to the page with an enlarged reproduction. “Because it’s identical to the one on that disgusting animal’s rings and it’s in Kom el-Shoqafa.”

The captain shot out of his seat and grabbed the magazine out of my hand.

“It’s the same one, I have no doubt,” he pronounced.

“It’s Kom el-Shoqafa,” I confirmed.

“But that can’t be!” Farag objected indignantly. “The Staurofilakes’ test can’t be there. That funeral enclosure was totally unknown until 1900, when the ground sank suddenly out from under a poor donkey that happened to be walking down the street. Nobody knew the place existed, and there was no other entrance! It was lost and forgotten for more than fifteen centuries.”

“Like the mausoleum of Constantine, Farag,” I reminded him. He stared at me from across the monitor. He was sprawled back in his chair, gnawing on the end of a pen, an angry grimace on his face. He knew I was right, but he refused to admit he was wrong.

“What does Kom el-Shoqafa mean?” I asked.

“It’s the name it was given when it was discovered in 1900. It means ‘pile of rubble.’”

“That’s original!” I replied, smiling.

“Kom el-Shoqafa was a three-story, underground cemetery. The first floor was dedicated exclusively to funeral banquets. It was called that because thousands of fragments of drinking vessels and plates were found there.”

“Look, Professor,” the Rock pointed out, returning to his seat, still holding the
National Geographic,
“say what you will, but even the bit about the feasts and the dishes seems to be related to the test of gluttony.”

“True,” I said.

“I know those catacombs like the back of my hand. It can’t be the place we’re looking for. Bear in mind, they were excavated down to the rocky subsoil and have been explored completely. This overlap with certain details in the drawing is not significant. There are hundreds of sculptures, drawings, and reliefs throughout. On the second floor, for example, there are large drawings of the dead who are buried in the niches and sarcophagi. It’s impressive.”

“What about the third floor?” I asked, trying to suppress a yawn.

“It was also used for burials. The problem is, right now it’s partially flooded by underground waters. Anyway, I assure you it has been studied thoroughly and contains no surprises.”

The captain stood up and looked at his watch. “When are those catacombs open to visitors?”

“If I remember right, they open at nine thirty in the morning.”

“Okay, let’s get some rest. Let’s be there at nine thirty sharp.”

Farag looked at me, distressed. “Do you want to write those letters to your order now, Ottavia?”

I was really tired, no doubt on account of all the new emotions I’d been presented that first of June and the rest of my life. I looked at him sadly and shook my head.

“Tomorrow, Farag. Tomorrow we’ll write them, when we are on board the plane to Antioch.”

What I didn’t know was that we’d never get on the Westwind again.

A
t nine thirty on the dot, just as Glauser-Röist said, we were at the entrance to the catacombs of Kom el-Shoqafa. A bus full of Japanese tourists had pulled up in front of that strange, round house with a low ceiling. We were in Karmouz, an extremely poor neighborhood where numerous donkey carts drove down narrow streets. It wasn’t so strange that one of those poor animals had discovered such an outstanding archaeological monument. Flies flew over our heads in dense, noisy clouds and settled on our bare arms and faces with repulsive insistence. The Japanese didn’t seem to mind one bit the corporal visits of those insects, but they were getting on my nerves. I observed enviously as the donkeys shooed them away with effective switches of their tails.

Fifteen minutes after opening time, an elderly civil servant who must have been well past the age to be enjoying a well-deserved retirement, parsimoniously approached the door and opened it as if he didn’t see the fifty or sixty people waiting there. He sat in a little wicker chair behind a table that held several ticket books, muttered a gruff
Ahlan wasahlan,
*
and gestured that we should approach in a single file. The guide for the Japanese group tried to cut in line, but the captain, who was half a meter taller than him, put his hand on the guide’s shoulder and stopped him cold with some well-chosen words in English.

Farag, being Egyptian, only had to pay fifty piasters. The civil servant didn’t recognize him, even though he’d worked there just two years before. Farag didn’t reveal his identity either. Glauser-Röist and I, being foreigners, paid twelve Egyptian pounds apiece.

Just inside the door, we came across a hole in the floor with a long spiral staircase excavated in the rock that left a dangerous hollow space in its center. We started our descent, treading carefully on the steps.

“At the end of the second century,” Farag explained, “when Kom el-Shoqafa was a very active cemetery, bodies were slid on cords through this opening.”

The first staircase ended at a sort of vestibule with a perfectly leveled limestone floor. There you could just make out, in the very bad light, two benches dug out of the wall and inlaid with seashells. This vestibule opened onto a great rotunda in whose center were six carved columns with capitals in the shape of papyrus. As Farag had said, everywhere around us there were strange reliefs in which the mixture of Egyptian, Greek, and Roman motifs bore an amazing similarity to the strange women in the
Mona Lisa
paintings by Duchamp, Warhol, or Botero. There were so many funeral banquet rooms that they formed a labyrinth of galleries. I could imagine a typical day in that place, around the first century of our era, when all those rooms would have been full of families and friends, seated on cushions placed on the stone seats, celebrating feasts in honor of their dead by torchlight. It’s amazing how different the pagan mentality was from the Christian one.

“In the beginning,” Farag went on to say, “these catacombs must have belonged to a single family. With time, some corporation must have acquired it and turned it into a place of massive burial. That would explain why there are so many funeral chambers and so many banquet rooms.”

On one side was an enormous crevice opened by a cave-in.

“On the other side is what’s called Caracalla Hall. In it we found human bones mixed with horses’ bones.” He ran his palm along the edge of the breach as if he were the owner of it all. “In 215 Emperor Caracalla was in Alexandria and for no apparent reason, he decreed a draft of strong, young men. After reviewing the new troops, he commanded that men and horses be assassinated.”
*

From the rotunda, a new spiral staircase descended to the second level. If we thought the light on the previous level was bad, on this level we couldn’t make out anything except the scary silhouettes of life-size statues of the dead. The Rock automatically dug out his flashlight and switched it on. We were completely alone; the throng of Japanese tourists had stayed above. In this vestibule, two enormous pillars, crowned by capitals decorated with papyruses and lotuses, flanked a frieze in which two hawks escorted a winged sun. Carved in the wall, two figures, a man and a woman also life-size, observed us with empty eyes. The body of the man was identical to the figures in ancient Egypt: hieratic, with two left feet; but his head was in Hellenistic Greek style, with a very beautiful, extremely expressive face. The woman, on the other hand, wore an affected Roman hairdo on another passive Egyptian body.

“We believe they were the occupants of those two niches,” Farag explained, pointing down a long corridor.

The size of the chambers was impressive; their luxury and strange decoration surprised us. On one side of a door was the god Anubis, with the head of a jackal; on the other side was the crocodile-god, Sobek, also the god of the Nile, both adorned with loricas of the Roman Legion, short swords, lances, and shields. We found the medallion with Medusa’s head inside a chamber that contained three gigantic sarcophagi, along with Dionysus’s staff carved into one side. Around this chamber was a passageway full of niches; each one, according to Farag, had enough space to hold up to three mummies.