Demon Box Page 15

  It's a simple, solitary passageway cut through solid stone, rough-walled, high-ceilinged, level-floored, big enough to handle a complete subway system; two trains could come and go side by side and still have ample room along the walls for gum machines and muggers. But it's completely empty. It runs on vacantly ahead of you, until out of sight in the dim distance.

  It is lit indirectly, the light coming, you realize, from large rooms chiseled alternately into each side of the tunnel about every twenty paces. These rooms are rugged, regular cubicles and similar in size, about forty feet on a side, a little higher than the roof of the tunnel and sunk a man's height deeper than the tunnel floor so when you stand at each crypt, leaning on a safety rail, you are looking down on the top of the room's sole furnishing.

  It is the same in every room: one enormous granite coffer with corresponding lid pushed slightly aside allowing a peek into the empty insides. Except for different chiseled inscriptions the coffers are all identical, each carved from a single solid block of dark red granite, each stark and somber and huge. You could have put Thud's taxi inside and closed the lid.

  As far down this eerie subway as you care to walk, it is the same, room after room; one to the left; then, a few dozen paces on, the next to your right, each with its arched entrance, each with its grim granite vault identical almost to the angle of the ten-ton lid pushed askew to allow the contents to be long ago pilfered.

  "They were for dead bulls," Muldoon told us. "Sacrificial bulls. One a year, every year for thousands of years, evidently."

  We walked down steel steps into one of the sepulchers and stood next to the giant coffer. I could reach to the top of the lid. Muldoon searched over the inscribed granite sides until he found a picture of the tomb's sacrifice.

  "The bull had to look like this; had to have exactly this pattern on his rump, plus had to have two white hairs in his tail and a birthmark under his tongue shaped like a scarab. Here, sight down these sides."

  The granite sides of the huge hollowed block were as flat as still water.

  "Yet the archaeologists won't give them anything better than copper! That's all the tools there is evidence of from this period. Our modern high-speed diamond drill takes a week to poke a little hole through, but the archaeologists won't give these poor carvers anything but copper."

  The whole effect was macabre, disconcerting; such modern precision, for something so stone-aged. Jack stamped around the giant enigma in dismay. "What the hell was their trip? I mean forget about the goddamned tools; even if they were equipped with Goldfinger's laser and Solomon's worm, it's still a hard way to carve your roast."

  "Nobody knows why they did it. Maybe it was initially intended as some kind of symbolic burial of the Age of Taurus, and they got so deep into it they kept going. But nobody knows."

  Jacky Cherry couldn't get over it. "There's something downright perverse about it, you know? Something -"

  "Bullheaded," Muldoon filled in. "Which reminds me: we better see if our driver is still reliably waiting."

  We found Thud in such a thunderous peeve he wasn't going to look at us, let alone drive us home. He stared in the direction of Cairo and claimed we had robbed him of a whole afternoon's livelihood, tips and everything. He diatribed he was going to sit there and listen to the radio until some tourists arrived on one of those camel caravans from Giza. After their voyage aboard one of those smelly ships of the desert, plenty tourists would be ready to jump camel for a berth on his luxury liner, hopefully pay him enough extra to make up for what our dawdling had cost.

  It was a bare-faced bluff. There might not be another caravan until tomorrow and he knew it, but he was going to milk every possible piastre out of the predicament. Worse yet, I realized, when the bastard finally consents he has it in his four-cylinder mind to scare the shit out of us!

  It was getting downright depressing all around. While Thud argued with Jack and Muldoon I remembered my Polaroid; I would while away this bullshit time practicing my photography.

  I got the bag and bucket of negative developer out of the rear seat and carried it to a little stone bench at the edge of the parking lot. When I took the camera from the bag I heard Thud's diatribe stumble slightly. And every time I snapped a button or turned a dial his concentration was further distracted. As an experiment I swung the lens toward him and he hushed entirely so he could suck in his gut. I swung on past to take a shot of the Step Pyramid. He tried to resume his tirade, but he was faltering fast. Then he saw it produced pictures immediately! He was a lost man.

  He left Jack and Muldoon in mid-squabble and came bargaining humbly to me: all our insults, all our dawdling and delays would be forgotten and forgiven, but for only one picture of himself produced immediately.

  I squeezed off another prizewinning shot of the sand and sky, pretending not to fahim. When he saw that precious film being wasted on wasteland he began to beg shamelessly. "Snap," he wheedled. "Snap me; snap T'udd!" I told him I had only one more snap in this packet and wanted to save it to get a shot of those farmers I had seen back down in the valley, so picturesque working that deep dark Nile soil. "But I'll tell you what, Thud. You drive us nice and slow back to the Mena House and I'll get another pack."

  We were away at once. When I tried to photograph the farmers he jumped out and ran around the front of the taxi to try to find a place in the frame. I cropped out all but his bicep, but even that meager sliver was enough to make his breath come thick and his hands grasp uncontrollably.

  It was the worst attack of covetousness I have ever had the displeasure of witnessing. It was degrading and embarrassing, and a little frightening. Thud knew he was losing all cool but he couldn't help himself. He climbed under the wheel like a whipped spaniel. He readjusted the mirror, this time so he could watch me. He watched me like Dog Watches Man With Meatball. He didn't even turn on his transistor.

  All the strained ride home he kept helplessly clearing his throat into the silence. When he turned up Pyramid Boulevard he forced himself to drive so slowly that it was almost as unpleasant as his speeding. By the time we reached the hotel all of us were trembling, and Thud's hands were shaking so he could hardly turn off the key. His stomach was growling. His brown face had actually gone ashen with the agony of that stretch of unnatural driving forced on him by his terrible yen.

  "Snapping now?" he begged pitifully.

  "Going to get film," I told him. "At the cabana." I didn't dare take the camera along. He would have driven right across the pool after me.

  "Hurry back and snap him soon," Jack Cherry called. "Before he snaps himself."

  When Thud saw me returning he almost broke into tears. I loaded the camera and noticed my hands were shaking under the scrutiny. Jacky positioned him with sideshadow, the pyramid at his back: "For dramatic effect."

  He stood on the curb. It took him nearly a minute to pull himself together and pump up to the right pose before nodding he was ready.

  "Now! Snap me!"

  He snatched the Polaroid print away before I could coat it. Its impact on him was incredible. As he studied his developing image on the little square of paper, we could actually see his face begin to change and shift. He set his jaw, then his shoulders. He worked his features until they presented once again the countenance of a very cool cat, watch out. His breathing slowed. His color returned. When he had it all together, as they say, be damned if the fucker didn't demand an extra five pounds!

  Another huge hassle. Thud laughed scornfully at our deal with Uncle Marag. Who is Marag? Where is he, this Marag, with the so-called car's five pounds promised, eh? Why isn't this Marag here to complete the transaction? Okay, okay, Jack sighs and hands over the five. No no, that was just the usual fare! (Thud glanced again at his photograph for reassurance; yep, he was still there.) Another five was what he was talking about, for all the time we made him wait. I was getting tired of it. I said okay, here's the extra five. But I get the picture back.

  He gasped.

  Hadn't that been
the deal? I gave you picture; you gave us nice ride and no extra? He blinked, looking around. He wasn't alone. Some of the other cabbies and hustlers had ambled over to see what was happening. They were all grinning. It was very clear what was happening. Thud was cornered.

  To save face he had to give face up.

  He snatched the bill from me and slapped the photo down on the street (face up) and roared off in his taxi, shoulders back, stomach sucked in, head held high. Almost made you proud of him.

  Later that night, however, the power of the picture must have run down. He came knocking on my cabana door with one of those little metal outfits you throw away when your pack of Polaroids is empty. A little flimsy black box. He'd found it under the seat where I'd kicked it, my bag already full to the brim with the print peelings and all that other Polaroid waste.

  He grinned triumphantly, holding the little box high in the air.

  He would trade, he carefully explained, this obviously valuable photographic attachment for the picture, which could be of no possible value to me. He stood, grinning and waiting. How could I explain to him that I had never coated his picture and that the prints from these special positive-negative Polaroid films fade blank in minutes without that coating goop? Besides, that other deal had gone down. So I told him no dice; he could keep the valuable photographic attachment, I'd keep the picture, albeit nonexistent.

  "No dice?" he cried. "No dice is no trade?"

  "No trade is what no dice is. No picture. No deal."

  He was dumbfounded. He stared at me with a new respect; here was someone as bullheaded as he was. He cursed and threatened me for a while, in Arabic and English and three or four other fractional languages, brandishing a black metal box that was as empty as his threats.

  When he finally stalked off, bewildered and pissed, I made a mental note to henceforth check both ways very carefully before crossing any busy Egyptian thoroughfares.

  Back from supper I finish washing my negatives in the little gallon bucket of chemicals you have to carry with this kind of Polaroid film. A hassle and a nuisance.

  I bought this complicated process because of all the photogs over the years who have sought to snare my likeness - affronting my view, plaguing my poise, making me stumble where I had walked sure before, always promising, "I know it's a bit of a bother but I'll send you prints! - only to disappear into their darkrooms never to be seen again.

  I thought this process would be more equitable; the subjects could have their print, I'd have the negative. But piss on it. It's just too much hassle.

  V: WITHIN THE STONE HEART

  For there is nothing covered, that shall not be revealed; and hid, that shall not be known.

  - Jesus

  When you got nothin' to say, my Great-uncle Dicker advised me once in a kind of Arkie ode to optimism, go ahead and say it.

  "Because it's like having nothin' to serve for supper but say a pot of water and some salt; could be after you get the water boiling and salted, some colored cook on a potato wagon might aimlessly run over one o' yer prize hens... ob-ligate herself to you."

  Advice I have followed, as a potboiler of aimless words, to many a last-minute successful stew.

  "How-and-ever," Uncle Dicker must have amended, "don't invite a bunch over to take supper on the basis of this could-be. Help is just too blessed unree-lie-abul!" An amendment I must have forgotten, because here I am trying to write in Egypt, with a table full of invited readers, bellies growling, salty pots steaming, but no sign of any last-minute Jemima or her potatoes.

  To tell the truth, when Marag and his map didn't come through, I pretty much gave up watching the road past the henhouse. I wish I could duck out of the kitchen entirely. Let Jann Wenner make a change in his menu: "Scratch the chicken stew special, Jacky, and open some windows; the whole diner is steamed up."

  The vaunted Secret Sanctorum? I was closer to opening it in Dayton, Ohio, than moping here in Giza watching my linen maid suck a persimmon - I can't even open a conversation. "Hot today," is all the talk I can come up with, though I know her name to be Kafoozalum and the juices of the fruit are dripping. Her eyes are on me like the top two buttons of her Mena House uniform, talk about open.

  I know she speaks English. I've had many an opportunity to watch her prattle around the cabanas, cart full of fresh white linen and uniform full of ripe brown hide, but never had occasion to make conversation more than Hello or Thanks, even when she gave me her most treasured smile, 14-carat incisors, conversation pieces both of them... until this noon.

  I'd been hurrying back to the hotel with an exciting find. Buttoned in my khaki shirt pocket was the best thing I'd found since the '66 Pontiac convertible: a fantastic old Roman coin, I think, or Greek, with a noble profile still clearly raised from its time-battered bronze.

  In my enthusiasm to show Jacky Cherry that I could find something of ancient value, I had headed back as the crow flies. Instead of circling the grounds to the front gates I had managed a running vault over the rear wall of the compound. I lit, feet first, right between the spread brown knees of Kafoozalum on a little square tablecloth.

  I thought she was having lunch. Staggering to keep from stepping in her beans or on her knees, I managed quite a dance before I could catch my balance and hop off. I saw then that instead of food the cloth had been spread with what looked like some kind of Egyptian tarot. She gathered the cards prudently out of my way, glaring up at me in an expression both enticing and curious.

  I apologized and explained about my coin, and that I meant nothing disrespectful, jumping on her.

  "I mean on your cards. Can I see them?"

  "You bet!" The grin flashed and the two golden incisors winked out at me. "Sure!"

  When I was comfortable on a sack of cement, she smoothed the linen back out and began spreading the cards in rows for me to see. They weren't tarot after all. They were her personal collection of those saccharoidal "posecards" that you see sold at all the knick-knack stands. Only these are for the natives, not the tourists. They display Egyptian fashion models, male and female, in stiffly tailored romantic poses. Mostly of marriage and courtship. Instead of a major arcanum like The Lovers, for instance, you have Handsome Young Couple at the Girl's Door Saying Goodnight with Soulful Looks or Fiancee Alone, Beaming Wet-Eyed at Her Mailbox by the Flowery Gate with a Letter from Him - all always in Cairo's latest hair and haberdashery, all always beautiful, loving, beaming. In short, sickening. But I was impressed by the way she presented her presentation.

  She reverently dealt the last one, her favorite (Beautiful Young Couple Still in Wedding Finery Alone for the First Time at Last or So They Think for We See in the Windowpanes Behind Them the Wedding Party Watching, as He Lifts Her Veil, Tenderly, and as She Touches His Mustache, Provocatively), then lifted her lashes to me with a look asking, in any language, What are you waiting for, fool? I responded by inviting her to drop into my cabana when she got her next break, I'd show her my Polaroid negatives -

  Now she's accepted, traipsed into my cell with an armload of fresh folded damask and let the door blow closed behind her. Preliminary rites have been observed; we've exchanged pictures and she's taken the persimmon from the dish. Nothing remains but for me to incant some key words, unlock the doors of our delight. And all I can say is Hot today.

  "What is you write?" Dripping on my notebooks, here.

  "Nothing. Notes. To remember what happened..."

  All for lack of simple courage, for fear of international faux I sit gnawing my tongue until she mercifully takes us off the hook.

  "Ya Salam!"

  Photos traded, fruit gone, there is nothing left for a maid to do but check the time on her wrist how it flies! She thanks me in a rush and scoops up her unrumpled linen, peeks a quick check both ways out my door, and is off to her cart, sucking on the seed.

  When she has traded all the clean laundry on her cart for soiled she comes wheeling back past my open door and inquires in at live, "Is yet hot to you, the day?" I t
ell her yes, yet hot. She encourages me to brace up; the winds change any day now.

  "All will pass." She smiles. "Even the diarrheas."

  And wheels on, leaving me tongue-tied like a hick fool indeed. What a low blow from a linen maid! Nevertheless, better toss the little filly a nice tip when you check out. How nice? Real nice. This is why the help in foreign realms always like us Americans best: we can always be expected to tip more, because we are always so inadequate of what is expected.

  October 23, Wednesday. The mosquitoes and scarabs have pinned Jacky Cherry up against his cabana wall. Also Yasir Arafat is taking a side trip from the Moslem convention in Cairo to visit the historic pyramids. He was allegedly seen lunching in a private portico off the main dining room. A sinister-looking coterie of bodyguards and lieutenants is spotted darkly around to make sure the Holy Land tour members don't start anything. This doesn't make Jacky any more comfortable. He catches the 900 bus into Cairo to see if he can't get lodging with fewer pests.

  I walk up the hill, stopping at the shop nearest the pyramid to buy a miniature hookah I've had my eye on. The shop is an orderly little side cranny of a building labeled Poor Children's Hospital. I ask the proprietor how he happens to have a place so close to the pyramid. He says because the profits help the hospital cure the Poor Children. I ask him what it is exactly that these Poor Children are sent out here, to the base of the Great Pyramid, to be cured of. After struggling to find a name for the disease he finally points back toward the city.

  "Of the pray-sure - eh? - of the city Cairo, they come to be cure. You understanding?"

  I take the hookah, nodding, and go out to seek my own cure. I had thought to find a private place somewhere on the pyramid's outskirts, but there is a big crowd of tourists. I climb up to the third course and sit on the casing stones and watch the hustlers descend on each new shipment of live ones. They are merciless. One poor woman actually breaks into tears.