Michael Pearce - The Bride Box

So she had walked and walked, and been very hungry and thirsty, but a woman had given her a bowl of durra and let her have a drink from her water skin. And she had gone on walking until she had seen her village. She had intended to go back to her house but she had met a woman, a neighbour, who had recognized her, and said that she should not go back because her mother would beat her again.

She hadn’t known what to do. She had asked the woman, Khabradji, if she knew where Soraya was, and the woman had clicked her tongue and said no. She could well be a long way away by this time. Khabradji had given her some water and some bread and had let her sleep in the sand behind her house but had said she must be gone by morning or her man would be angry.

So Leila had gone to sleep behind the house, but she had been cold in the middle of the night and had woken up. As she was lying there she had heard the train and the thought had come to her that she might get on it and go far away, far away from her nasty new mother and from the white man and the men with whips.

And she had walked over to where she knew the train would be. It was dark and no one had seen her. The train had stopped and the driver had got out and was squatting at a brazier with the other men. And they were drinking tea.

And another man was doing something to the engine. He had climbed up on to the top of it and had swung across — she wasn’t quite sure what he had swung across; it was like a huge arm — and he had put one end of it into the engine and then said ‘Taib!’ — arabic for ‘it is well’ — and another man, who was standing beside a sort of tall tower, to which the arm was attached, had also said ‘Taib’, and then there had been a gurgle as of water, and she thought the train might have been drinking. Well, that would be reasonable, wouldn’t it? A train needed a drink, like everyone else. And after a while it had stopped drinking and the man had swung the arm back, the driver had got back into his cab, and Leila had guessed that the train was soon going to start, so she had crept under a carriage and found a place.

Owen asked her about the station. What station? There wasn’t one, not a big one as in Cairo. There was no platform or anything. There was just a little building for ‘the man’ and the water tower. And the piles of gum arabic stacked beside the line to be picked up by a goods train at some point.

When people came — yes, people did come; she had seen them on other occasions — they took a horse and carriage and drove into the town. The drivers knew they were coming and shortly before the train arrived the carriages would draw up. Sometimes the people rode on donkeys.

There were often a lot of people. The ladies were ‘Inglesi’, although not all of them were English, and they wore beautiful long dresses and big hats and looked beautiful. Although they were sometimes very hot. Even under the hats the sweat was running down their faces. And they were forever calling for water. And the men wore suits and they also had big hats, although different ones.

And what did they go into the village to see?

Leila shuddered. ‘The Place of the Giants,’ she said.

From what she said it sounded like a temple. Was there a temple at Denderah? He rather thought there was. He would have to ask McPhee, the Assistant Commissioner, who was interested in such things.

But there were many places with temples in Egypt.

He asked her about this one.

Yes, she had been there. But she didn’t like it. It was frightening. Big and dark, although it had got lighter since the Pasha had ordered some of the sand to be cleared away. But it was still dark and there were lots of places from which boys could jump out at you. But even they were frightened, she thought. The fact was, it was not a good place. It was not a decent, holy place, not a good Muslim place. There were spirits there, bad spirits. And you knew that was so because — she crept closer to Owen and whispered in his ear — of the magic marks. Right up there on the front, for everyone to see!

Owen went in to see McPhee to check if there was a temple at Denderah. This was a mistake since once the Assistant Commissioner got started on Egyptian antiquities you couldn’t get him to stop.

‘Ah, Denderah!’ he said reminiscently. ‘The Temple of Hathor. It’s very late, you know. Roman. The earliest name you find there is Cleopatra, that vile woman!’

‘Oh, really? You feel that, do you?’

‘Definitely! Sexually abandoned.’

‘Well, I’ve always thought that-’

‘No, no, Owen. You have a romantic view of her. That’s Shakespeare’s doing. “The chair she sat in …” You know, that sort of stuff. A marvellous picture, but quite untrue. She sold herself for power, you know!’

‘Well, if you’re going to sell yourself, that might be worth doing it for.’

‘No, no, Owen. It’s her honour she’s selling as well as her body.’

McPhee had always seemed to Owen to have a Boy Scout’s view of life.

He put Cleopatra reluctantly to one side.

‘Apparently the temple has some unusual markings …’

‘Oh, yes, the famous Zodiac.’

‘Famous Zodiac?’

‘Yes, on the portico. You see, the sign of the Lion comes first, showing that the summer solstice was then in that sign. Not like now, of course, when it’s in Cancer.’

‘Oh, really?’

‘At Esne the sign of Virgo comes first.’

‘Extraordinary! Well, I’d better be getting along …’

‘Of course, this shows that in Egypt the precession of the equinoxes was already well known.’

‘It does?’

‘Of course, it may simply be that the Egyptian astronomers wanted to represent two successive states of the sky-’

‘Yes, yes. Well, thank you. I’m afraid that now I must be-’

‘That in which the summer solstice was in Leo, and consequently the Vernal equinox in Taurus, instead of Aries.’

‘Yes, yes, most interesting. But I’m afraid I-’

‘As opposed to that in which the summer solstice was in Virgo and consequently the vernal equinox in Gemini.’

‘ Most interesting. Well, I must be getting along …’

‘Champollion thinks-’

‘Yes, yes, thank you. Thank you. I’m afraid I have to be …’

He edged out of the door.

They could be Leila’s ‘magic marks’! In which case, yes, the halt where she had got on the train was at Denderah. And Denderah was the village she came from.

‘A bride box?’ said the clerk at Denderah station doubtfully. ‘No, Effendi, I do not remember a bride box. And, surely, if there had been one, I would have remembered it. They are not things you see every day. And usually, Effendi, a bride goes with it. A woman does not like to be parted from her box. Surely if there had been a box, there would have been a bride. There would have been singing and dancing and much merriment. A thing like that I could not but have marked. But there has been nothing like that here!’

‘I think it is possible,’ said Mahmoud, ‘that the two were separated in this case, the bride and her box. And you might not have recognized it as a bride box, for it was stitched into a bag. Like this one here.’

He pointed to a package in the mail bag behind the clerk’s desk. ‘Only much bigger, of course. This big!’ He spread his arms.

‘In that case it would not have been with the ordinary mail, then. All parcels have to be weighed, and that would be too big to be weighed on these scales. It would have to be weighed on the weighing machine I use for commercial packages: oil cakes and such things. And now I think I remember … Come with me, Effendis. It should be on the list.’

He led them to a little goods shed, in which was a large weighing machine. Beside it was a list pinned to a board.