Anne Rice - The Mummy or Ramses the Damned

She watched as he charmed people everywhere that they went. Men and women deferred to him, as if they knew instinctively that he was royalty. His bearing, his great strides, his radiant smile, subdued those at whom he stared fixedly, those whose hands he hastily clasped, those whose conversation or casual words he listened to, as if receiving a secret message which must not be misunderstood.

There were philosophical words to describe his state of being, surely, but Julie could not think what they were. She only knew that he took joy in tilings, that the steam shovel and the steam roller failed to terrify him because he anticipated shocks and surprises and wanted only to comprehend.

So many questions to ask him. So many concepts she struggled to express. That was the hardest part. Concepts.

But talk of abstractions became easier by the hour. He was learning English with dizzying speed.

"Name!" he would say to her if she ceased for so much as a minute her endless commentary. "Language is names, Julie. Names for people, objects, what we feel." He hammered on his breast as he said the last words. The Latin quare, quid, quo, qui had dropped completely from his speech by midafternoon.

"English is old, Julie. Tongue of barbarians from my time, and now filled with Latin. You hear the Latin? What is that, Julie! Explain this to me!"

"But there is no order to what I am teaching you," she said. She wanted to explain about printing, relate it to the stamping of coins.

"I make the order later," he assured her. He was too busy now ducking into the back of bakers and soup kitchens, into the shoemaker's and the milliner's, and studying the refuse thrown in the alleyways, and eyeing the paper parcels which people carried, and staring at women's clothes.

And staring at the women, too.

If that isn't lust, I am no judge of character, Julie thought. He would have frightened the women had he not been so expensively dressed, and oddly self-possessed. In fact, his whole manner of standing, gesturing, speaking, had a great compelling force to it. This is a King, she thought, out of time and place, yet nevertheless a King.

She steered him into the bookseller's. She pointed out the old names, Aristotle, Plato, Euripedes, Cicero. He stared at the Aubrey Beardsley prints on the wall.

Photographs positively delighted him. Into a little studio, Julie took him to have his own portrait taken. His pleasure was almost childlike. Even more wonderful, he exclaimed, was that even the poor of this great city could have such pictures made.

But when he beheld moving pictures, he was positively stunned. In the crowded little cinema, he gasped, clinging tight to Julie's hand, as the giant luminescent figures scurried about on the screen before them. Tracing the projectionists' beams with his eye, he made at once for the little room in back, tearing open the door without hesitation. But the old projectionist fell prey to his charm as did everyone else, and was soon explaining the entire mechanism in detail.

At last as they entered the giant dark cavern of Victoria Station, the mighty chugging locomotives brought him to a dead halt. But even these he approached fearlessly. He touched the cold black iron, and stood dangerously close to the giant wheels. Behind the departing train, he put his foot on the track to feel the vibration. Dazed, he stared at the crowds.

"Thousands of people, transported from one end of Europe to the other," she cried out over the noise around them. "Journeys which once took months now take but a few days."

"Europe," he whispered. "Italia to Britannia."

' The trains are carried on ships across the water. The poor of the open country can come into the cities. All men know the cities, do you see?"

He nodded gravely. He squeezed her hand. "No haste, Julie. All will be understood in time." Flash of his brilliant smile again, that great sudden warmth of affection for her which made her blush and look away.

"Temples, Julie. The houses of the deus . . . di."

"Gods. But there is only one now. One God."

Disbelief. One God?

Westminster Abbey. They walked together under the high arches. Such splendor. She showed him the cenotaph of Shakespeare.

"Not the house of God," she said, "But the place where we gather to talk to him." How explain Christianity? "Brotherly love," she said. "That is the basis,"

He looked at her in confusion. "Brotherly love?" Keenly, he watched the people around him.

"Do they believe this religion?" he asked. "Or is it habit alone?''

By late afternoon he was speaking coherently in whole paragraphs. He told her that he liked English. It was a good language for thinking. Greek and Latin had been excellent for thinking. Egyptian, no. With each new language he had learned in his earlier existence his capacity for understanding had improved. Language made possible whole kinds of thinking. Ah, that the common people of this era read newspapers, crowded with words! What must the thinking of the common man be? "Are you not the least bit tired?" Julie asked, finally. "No, never tired," he said, "except in the heart and the soul. Hungry. Food, Julie. I desire much food."

They entered the quiet of Hyde Park together, and despite his disclaimers he did seem relieved by the sudden timeless trees around him, by the vision of the sky through branches as it might have been seen at any moment or from any vantage point on earth.

They found a little bench on the path. He fell into silence watching the strollers. And how they stared at him-this man of powerful build with his fiercely exuberant expression. Did he know he was handsome? she wondered. Did he know that the mere touch of his hand sent a frisson through her which she tried to ignore?

Oh, so much to show him. She took him to the offices of Stratford Shipping, praying that no one would recognize her, and led him into the wrought-iron lift, and pressed the button for the roof.

"Wires and pulleys," she explained.

"Britannia," he whispered as they looked out on the rooftops of London; as they listened to the scream of the factory whistles, to the jangling of the tram bells far below. "America, Julie." He turned to her excitedly, clasping her shoulders, his fingers surprisingly gentle. "How many days by mechanical ship to America?"

' 'Ten days, I believe. One could be in Egypt in less time than that. A passage to Alexandria is six days."

Why had she said those words? His face darkened ever so slightly. "Alexandria," he whispered, pronouncing it as she had. "Alexandria still stands?"

She led him to the lift. So much more to see. She explained there was still an Athens, still a Damascus, still an Antioch. And Rome, of course there was Rome.

A wild idea had come to her. Hailing a hansom, she told the driver: "Madame Tussaud's."

All those costumed figures in the wax museum. Hastily she explained what it was, a panorama of history. She would show him American Indians, she would show him Genghis Khan or Attila the Hun-creatures who had brought terror to Europe after Rome fell.

She could not envision the mosaic of facts being created for him. His equanimity amazed her more and more.

But they had been in Madame Tussaud's only a few moments when she realized her error. His composure crumbled at the first sight of Roman soldiers. He recognized the figure of Julius Caesar instantly. And then in disbelief he stared at the Egyptian Cleopatra, a wax doll which bore no resemblance to the bust he had cherished or the coins he still possessed. But her identity was unmistakable as she reclined on her gilded couch, the snake coiled in her hands, its fangs just beneath her breast. The stiff figure of Mark Antony stood behind her, a characterless man in Roman military dress.

Ramses' face coloured. There was something savage in his eyes as he turned to Julie, then looked back at the printed labels beneath this display.