Edward Whittemore - Jerusalem Poker

Doing what?

Vigorously masturbating. And with both hands no less. It can be quite a surprise.

Menelik Ziwar smiled dryly.

What name does the little fellow go by?

Bongo.

The old scholar snorted at the bottom of the sarcophagus.

Well Bongo may be bright, Cairo, but all the same we have to find you another profession. I'm more convinced of it than ever. You're just not taking life seriously enough.

Menelik Ziwar nodded with authority and closed his eyes. As the heavy Italian woman had done in the moonlight, he immediately began to snore.

On a dark night, having searched the desert around the tomb to be certain he was alone, Cairo Martyr removed the outer layer of bricks from the wall and started digging. He had only gone a few feet when his shovel broke through into space.

He widened the opening and held a candle inside. Ahead lay a shaft about three feet high and just wide enough for a man's shoulders. He climbed in on his stomach.

The passage was packed with mummies on each side and the only way he could pass through them was by putting his face next to theirs, nose to nose and mouth to mouth. It might have been difficult to move at all if the shaft hadn't sloped downward, allowing the weight of his body to push him through the mass.

He slid and gathered momentum, plummeting down and down for two or three hundred yards in a shower of bones and legs and arms, heads rolling after him, cats flattened under his chin. Abruptly the shaft opened into a chamber and he went crashing down to the bottom, smashing through rags and wooden cases and coming to rest in a suffocating cloud of debris.

When the dust had settled he lit a candle and lay in the stench, staring at the blackened walls and the mummies crowded everywhere in confusion, lying and standing and some on their heads grinning, others slouched against the walls holding on to the stones with shriveled hands. There were gold armchairs and gold sedan chairs, gold drinking cups and gold plates, jewels and necklaces and occasionally, sitting on top of a dusty head, the gold cobra headpiece that was the mark of a pharaoh.

Martyr raised his candle and saw a black square opening at the end of the long narrow chamber. He elbowed his way over to it and pushed through the opening, finding himself in another compartment exactly the same size and shape as the first, also crowded with mummies.

Martyr wiped the dust out of his eyes. What was that at the far end of this chamber? Another door?

Numbly he struggled on through a third compartment, a fourth and a fifth and a sixth, a seventh. Or had he lost count? The chambers were all identical. He started back, barely able to breathe in the stench.

In one of the doorways he paused to lean against a stone and think. Had there been a door at the other end of the original chamber? Did the compartments stretch in both directions? Could he find the way out again or would he have to stumble back and forth forever through the packed compartments of this subterranean train?

The light from his candle seemed suddenly weaker. Perhaps the lack of air was going to make him faint.

Maybe he was already trapped on this immobile express train beside the Nile.

He giggled. Where was the express going? To eternity of course. Here under the desert a party of pharaohs and their entourages were on a trip to eternity, and if only briefly he was joining them.

A mummy next to him stirred. Its shoulders were pinned between four or five other passengers and it looked exhausted.

Going far? asked Cairo.

All the way, whispered the mummy with a resigned expression.

Cairo giggled and nodded and pushed on through the compartment. A cat got in his way and he gave it a kick. The cat dissolved. He came to a royal gold-encased armchair that was blocking the aisle.

Excuse me, madame, he said, trying to elbow his way around the queen who sat stiffly on her throne with a haughty suggestion of a smile. She wore a large emerald on what once must have been an ample chest, now withered. Cairo had an urge to touch one of her breasts. He did so and his fingers punched through the gold-encrusted rags into an empty cavity. He held his nose as the gases escaped and the queen's smile faded. Her mouth fell open revealing bad teeth and only a stump of a tongue. Martyr laughed and pushed on down the train.

Guv'nor?

He stopped and turned. A mummy pressed into a corner was watching him, a small stooped man with a sorrowful face.

For some reason Cairo wasn't surprised at the working-class English accent. The mummy certainly appeared to be no more than a common laborer, and in any case, if he'd spoken in ancient Egyptian there would have been no way to understand a word he said.

The mummy's narrow concave chest suggested weak lungs, perhaps even tuberculosis. Definitely working class, thought Cairo, and treated no better then than now. The mummy abjectly touched his fingers to his forehead. He seemed to be trying to show respect.

Don't mean to bother you, guv'nor, but could you spare a navvy a light? We don't get many visitors down here.

Cairo lowered the candle in front of the mummy's sickly face and saw him take a deep puff of something, slowly exhaling with a sigh. In your condition, thought Cairo, that's not going to do you any good.

Ah that's better, said the mummy. Thanks, guv. You can't imagine how dull it gets down here. We used to keep each other company all right, but after a few centuries of carrying on no one had much to say anymore. Know what I mean? Down here the party ran out of conversation about three thousand years ago.

Cairo nodded.

And of course I didn't buy this trip in the first place, they put me on it. I mean I can understand why a pharaoh would want to make the trip, being a god, but what's in it for me? You can see how we're packed in down here, the air already stifling and getting worse as time goes on, and you realize what kind of time we're talking about.

The mummy looked down the chamber in disgust.

Like I said, guv, what's in it for me? If you're not a god what's the sense of living forever? But they don't care about that, they don't care how you feel. One morning you happen to be sweeping up an antechamber, a room in the flat belonging to one of the king's third-class concubines, strictly on temporary assignment and minding your business you are, when word comes down that the king has croaked and all of a sudden you're a member of the royal funereal household and being hustled off in official mourning to be mummified. So here I am to no end, an endless no end, and all because I was doing my job one morning. It's not fair and you can't help feeling resentful.

Cairo nodded. The mummy made a face.

What's more, guv, the high priests had it all wrong up there. The pharaoh dies and being a god they're going to send him on his eternal trip. Right. But why do they assume he'd naturally like to have his queen and his playmates and servants on the trip with him? For company? Well they're crazy. We're packed in down here and there's nothing natural about the situation at all. Did they really think we were going to tiptoe around serving him while the concubines flopped on their backs and the queen smiled and the cats did appreciative somersaults? Wrong. Dead wrong. Things don't work that way. He may be a god and used to living forever but the rest of us are just tired to death of this trip of his. Tell the truth. Have you ever seen so many bored faces as you see down here?

Cairo shook his head.

Of course you haven't. They all resent this trip as much as I do. There's not a concubine here who's even looked in his direction in three thousand years. Not a cat who's done a tumble one way or the other, not a servant who's lifted a finger. Why should we? He can play with himself for all the concubines care. As for the queen, you saw what happened when you gave her a poke. Nothing but foul gases inside and her teeth are going bad and she's lost her tongue. Her smile was a fake, as you saw. In fact can you guess what it was that made her teeth go bad and withered her tongue down to a stump? That's right, that's the kind of king our Djer was and drinking all the time too. Her smile was always fake. But now that Djer's on his trip he can't get even a little cup of drink to help him face the truth. He's dry, as dry as I am, and you can't imagine how dry that is. Well that's some joke on him, but you're not staying down here are you, guv? You'd be a fool to do that. You may think you'd like to live forever, but I can tell you this is no kind of a party to be in.