Edward Whittemore - Nile Shadows

THE PANORAMA HAS MOVED.

Mysterious graffiti, thought Joe, and what might its origins be? Pharaonic? Nilotic? A Biblical writing on the wall after the manner of mene, mene, tekel, upharsin?

Who knows? thought Joe. Best to ask Stern about it when he shows up. When in doubt about a sign faded by sunlight deep in a crypt underground, best to ask a master cryptographer what's really going on, as some old Cairo saying must have it.

Joe turned uneasily. A sound seemed to have come from the corner where the small printing press stood

. . metal rubbing lightly against metal. . a soft crunching noise.

Impossible, he thought, gripping the arm of his park bench. Yet a part of the machinery in the corner seemed to be moving, almost as if the manual press were preparing to crank through a cycle.

My God, he thought, of course that's impossible, and steady there, I can't go losing my bloody mind now. These antique shadows are playing tricks on me

But then he jumped, startled, unable to believe it. The small hand-driven printing press was actually beginning to turn over. Meshed parts were moving methodically in some kind of inscrutable order, up and down and sideways, backward and around and in. There was a loud groan and then the machine clattered noisily, cranking out a slip of paper. The paper fluttered and floated down to the floor.

Message from the past, thought Joe, leaping to his feet and rushing over to snatch up the slip of paper. .

a Greek banknote newly printed. One hundred drachmas. The ink was still wet.

Joe whirled where he stood, taking in the crypt at a glance. The thick iron door was still solidly locked, the massive stone lid was still on the sarcophagus and as so often in life, everything seemed still the same when it wasn't.

THE PANORAMA HAS MOVED.

Joe spun around, peering in every direction. Oh help, he shouted silently, turning over the strange banknote in his hand only to find there was a different currency printed on its other side. . Albanian money. Ten thousand leks.

Ha, he thought. Inflation in the Balkans as usual and so much for classical Greek values too. They've gone to the Albanians like everything else we once admired. Just nothing's worth what it used to be and that's a fact in this world. .

Joe jumped, became rigid. Deep laughter was booming through the crypt, great surges of rolling laughter.

A hand was reaching out of a hole in the wall behind the press, stealthily removing block after block of stone and widening the hole, methodically pushing the blocks aside and stacking them up on the floor.

After a moment a ghostly head emerged from the blackness, an apparition in the age-old rags of a mummy. Without warning the ghostly head jerked back to reveal a dusty masklike face staring directly up at Joe, fierce dark eyes glittering in the dimness, beneath them the third eye of a gun barrel pointed at Joe's head.

Joe's mouth fell open. The revolver disappeared. The ghostly figure crawled forward and then all at once there was Stern standing in front of him, laughing and dusting off his tattered Arab cloak, laughing and laughing and shaking his great dark head.

. . sorry about that, Joe. I didn't mean to scare you.

Joe hopped up and down.

How's that, Stern? Didn't mean to, you say? Well do you always go around cranking off counterfeit money when you break into a tomb? Just in case you have to pay your way in eternity?

. . a mistake, said Stern, throwing back his head, laughing. . I was groping around and my hand happened to fall on the printing press handle.

Happened to fall, you say? Well after seven years in the desert I just happened to drop in down here to say hello, so hello, you stranger.

Joe laughed too and they embraced, hugging each other.

***

They sat on a park bench near the huge stone sarcophagus. Stern sniffed the bottle of arak in his hands and passed it to Joe.

The honor's yours, you must be thirsty. There's an Arab saying that nothing quickens a man's thirst like seven years in the wilderness.

Joe smiled and took the bottle, admiring it. When Stern had begun rummaging around in the crannies of Ahmad's little printing press, poking into its recesses and finally holding up the bottle in triumph, it hadn't surprised Joe particularly. Somehow it was the kind of thing he would have expected of Stern. An unlikely act in an unlikely place.

Joe glanced sideways at Stern.

Strikes you as a scene you've come across before, does it? Two down-and-out tramps sharing a bottle on a park bench?

Stern smiled.

What happened to that wondrous thirst?

Right. It's got me in its grip.

Joe drank. He turned his head and coughed.

My God that's strong stuff, Stern. But it helps a printing press think more clearly, you say?

Stern laughed.

Ahmad was very fond of his old printing press and he always claimed arak was the best solvent for cleaning counterfeit type.

And I don't doubt it for a moment, said Joe. It's a first-rate solvent for all kinds of things, brains being one and Balkan reality another. But aren't you the tricky one now? Imagine just sneaking in here through a secret passageway like a regular tomb robber on the prowl.

Stern took a drink from the bottle. He lit a cigarette and a smoke ring floated up over the sarcophagus.

I was afraid the front entrance might be watched. It seemed wiser to come in the back way.

Tricky, all right. Has that secret passageway always been there? From the time when the tomb was built, I mean?

No, Menelik had it put in as an emergency exit. But from the looks of it, I don't think he or anyone else has ever used it.

Right, dusty as dusty and the very past itself. It's just that I didn't know there was another exit of any kind down here, and that's what scared me.

Stern moved, shifting his weight.

But isn't there always another exit, Joe, if you look for it hard enough?

Joe whistled softly. He pretended to make a face.

And there you go, Stern, starting up first thing. You are tricky, you know that? As long as I can remember you've been saying things that arrive or leave more ways than one. It's not that you're ambiguous really, it's more a matter of searching out different paths in your quiet undercover way. That and keeping your eye all the while on more than one lodestar up there in the unfathomable deep. I suppose it must be a habit you picked up in the business you keep.

Stern's dusty face softened.

And which business is that, Joe?

Right you are, and that's exactly what I meant. Which business among the many and how's a body to know which one is being referred to?

Joe laughed happily, more relaxed than he had been in weeks despite the circumstances. They drank and talked about the past, passing the bottle back and forth, recalling the years since they had seen one another in Jerusalem. There had been letters back and forth during those years, but inevitably much that had been left unsaid by both of them. On Stern's part, because so many of his concerns could never be committed to paper, and for Joe, because many of his experiences in Arizona weren't of the kind that could be readily described in letters. The conversation could have gone on much longer and Stern seemed reluctant to have it end, but there was so much Joe wanted to know he finally interrupted their talk by standing and sitting down again. He took a drink from the bottle.

Stern? Can you spare one of those awful Arab cigarettes you carry?

Stern handed him the packet. Joe lit one and coughed.

Wretched, same as always. Tears the lungs right out of a man. They always were the worst.

Stern watched him. Joe glanced at Stern's scarred thumb and looked away.