Ismail Kadare - The Pyramid

AS THE ancient papyri tell, pyramids played their role as celestial go-betweens most particularly on nights when the moon was full It was then that they would best capture the orb’s wan and eerie glow and pass it on, drop by drop, to the depths of the earth, to the nameless black rocks encased in mud and void, and diamonds blinded by the light that they were unable to shed. The rays would also catch the skulls of the dead, lighting up their eye sockets for a second, before they went black again. Conversely, the tips of these monuments, with their granite pyramidions, spewed out god knows what ghastliness toward the sky— the kind of excrement of which the earth always has a surfeit and must relieve itself from time to time.

They now lay close beside each other over there, just as they had lived together previously in the forbidden city, during their earthly reign.

The pyramid of Cheops. At its base, the pyramid of his double, much smaller in size. The pyramid of Chephren, with its crouching sphinx. The female pyramid, Then, set some way off, the unfinished pyramid of Didoufri.

The female pyramid was the first to be broken into by robbers. It was on a hot and humid night. The crowbars trembled in the robbers’ hands, for it was the first time they had ever tried to get into a monument of this kind. For several nights they had wondered which pyramid they were going to start on. Because it had not been possible to eradicate quite perfectly all trace of the secret entrances, they hesitated between the female pyramid and Didoufri’s, which, as the tomb of a prematurely deceased sovereign, had been left unfinished; as for the former, it had been put up thanks to Hentsen’s lovers, who, despite the fond memories they may have kept of their mistress, seemed not to have taken all the care required (probably because they had had a good part of their stones delivered straight after having slept with the Pharaoh’s daughter, when the passion of even the most ardent lover is somewhat abated).

So they spent a longtime trying to decide. There was not much to choose between them, with as many advantages and as many disadvantages on this side as on that. In the end they decided to profane the female pyramid, which, when all was said and done, looked the less daunting of the two. As they were accustomed to violating women anyway, an attack on the tomb of a woman seemed more natural to them.

They found it much easier than they had expected to locate the place in the wall where the main gallery began, and much easier also to remove the obstructions; as a result, by dawn they were very near to the chamber containing the sarcophagus. They were exhausted, and lay down on the ice-cold flagstones, waiting for dusk.

When at long last the night seemed to them to be thick enough, Bronzejaw (so named because he was the eldest) made the first attempt at operating the heaviest lever of the doorway’s mechanism. But the black granite mass did not budge an inch.

“Go on, bitch!” he grunted as he gave another shove.

Unlocking the mechanism and the effort they then had to make to move the door panel drained them to such an extent that when they finally fell into the funeral chamber they barely had enough strength left to stay upright.

Bronzejaw was the first to stand up; then Toudhalia and One-eye followed suit. They knew from experience that torchlight always makes ornaments look more precious than they really are, so they held back from exulting prematurely. Bronzejaw ran his hand over the treasures in turn, saying only, between his teeth: “ Whore! You whore!” After surveying all that was around him, he came back to study the sarcophagus. The others stood and watched as he slid his crowbar into a crack.

As they had predicted, the most valuable adornments were indeed inside the coffin. After they had gathered up all the precious objects and stowed them away in leather bags, the coffin and its mummy looked pretty dull and poor.

“Don’t move the light about like that!” shouted Toudhalia to the torchbearer, for he could not bear to see the mummy’s face. As a grave robber, he knew that once tombs have been opened, mummies sometimes ignite and burn to a cinder straight away, but he could not get used to it.

While he and Bronzejaw tapped the walls, hoping to find another door, leading perhaps to the chamber of offerings, One-eye leaned over the open coffin.

“What are you up to in there?” Bronzejaw enquired.

One-eye’s one eye twinkled.

“I want to remove the swaddling to see her cunt,” he said gruffly. “I’ve so often wondered what it was like, for people to make a whole legend out of it!”

“ A whore’s cunt, nothing more, nothing less,” Bronzejaw grunted without turning round. “You’d do better to come and help us find the other door.”

“What are you trying to do?” Toudhalia screamed in horror, believing that One-eye, still leaning over the mummy, was really going to remove the strips of linen.

“Her face is slowly turning black,” One-eye observed. “I didn’t think that happened to royal mummies.”

“For heaven’s sake, leave that mummy alone and get over here!” Toudhalia said.

He kept a close eye on his fellow-robber, fearing he was about to grapple with the corpse at any moment. But One-eye had got hold of a burned-out torch-end and was using it to scrawl obscene words and images on the walls.

“What a nutcase!” Bronzejaw exclaimed as he continued to probe the wall.

When they got to the opposite side of the room, covered with One-eye’s graffiti, they found two lines of hieroglyphs over a crudely stylized representation of male genitalia, half-phallus and half-pyramid.

“What’s he written?” Bronzejaw asked, for he could not read.

Toudhalia moved closer so as to decipher the script.

“Er… Ha-ha! One-eye is a funny devil!”

“Just read it to me, will you? You can giggle later!”

“Hee-hee,” the other robber went on, “It’s just smut. It says that the Pharaoh’s daughter only liked pricks the size of a pyramid.”

“He’s a real nutcase,” Bronzejaw remarked.

“It’s an old quip,” the torchbearer explained. “Do you remember Shabaka, who would dash off a rhyme for a drink? I think he made up that joke.”

“You’re both crazy!” Bronzejaw shouted. “Leave the graffiti and the quips alone, will you? Let’s get on with the job, we’ve been moldering away in here for too long already.”

Since they had turned around, they saw One-eye leaning on the coffin with one hand in the posture of a man about to vomit. He was as pale as a shroud.

“What’s wrong?” Toudhalia asked.

One-eye looked as though he was about to faint.

“I’m not feeling very well.”

“Then move away from there,” Bronzejaw ordered. “You know the smell of mummies makes you want to throw up. It turns my guts too, you know.”

“Let’s get out of here, anyway. We can wait in the gallery.”

“That’s right. Come on, pick up the tools.”

A moment later, they scuttled out. On the threshold, One-eye turned toward the sarcophagus one last time. “You old tart,” he muttered sourly. “You only just got away with it.”

For a long while their steps echoed in the gallery.

Although they swore to themselves that they would never go into a pyramid again, less than two full seasons had passed before they realized that they could think of nothing else, They had acquired a taste for it, like tigers who, once they have had a morsel of human flesh, prefer it to all other meat. Ordinary tombs no longer satisfied them.

This time, apart from sharpening their crowbars and making all their other preparations, they also sewed several pieces of canvas into the shape of masks. They would soak them in vinegar and put them on their faces when the sarcophagus was opened. It was the only way to guard against the terrible sickness that came on when you got close to a mummy.