One morning in late February, Serge makes his way to the Ministry through streets thronged with jubilant Egyptians.
“ Independence,” a sour-face colleague informs him as he enters the half-empty building. “ Ferguson wants to see you.”
“ Independence,” Ferguson repeats, equally sourly. “Could have been avoided, if the will had been there. Never trusted Milner, between you and me. He’s got one big concession, though, as far as we’re concerned.”
He looks at Serge conspiratorially, as though the meaning of his statement were explicit. Serge stares back at him blankly.
“Communications!” Ferguson snaps. “ Britain reserves the right to maintain both military and civil offices in Egypt ‘to protect,’ as the wording has it, ‘her Imperial Communications.’ ” His hand dips into the biscuit bowl on his desk and flaps around, finding it empty. “Ishak Effendi-!” he begins to call out, then breaks off. “Opportunist. Can’t trust half the people here. They’ll probably be back in two weeks’ time, promoted to positions of…” He shakes his head, then, remembering why he summoned Serge in the first place, announces: “You’re being transferred to Cairo. Order came through from Macauley’s people just before our operators here abandoned their posts. Seems this independence thing has jolted Cairo, or Whitehall, or whatever ill-informed sub-sub-committee’s charged with the issue at the moment, into action: they’re finally getting the Empire Wireless Chain’s Egyptian station up and running.”
“When do I leave?” Serge asks.
“Day after tomorrow. Better go and pack.”
“And my report?” Serge asks. “It’s finished, more or less.”
“What report?”
“Perspective. Sacred phone boxes. I’ve typed it in tripl-”
“Oh, that. Yes. Drop it off in my secretary’s box…”
Petrou insists on spending one last afternoon with Serge. He takes him to the museum. The place is virtually empty: Egyptians are too busy celebrating, Europeans cowering indoors, to visit the salvaged jetsam of their city’s patchwork past. The two men roam through galleries lined with inscribed tombstones, framed papyri, cabinets of scarabs.
“This is Arsinoe, done as Eurydice,” Petrou says as they pause before a statue of a woman holding her distended stomach, as though pregnant. “She was the wife of the second Ptolemy, Philadelphus: his sister, seven years older than him. When she died of indigestion, he was inconsolable.”
“Bad ptomaines,” murmurs Serge, but Petrou doesn’t hear him.
“And this,” he continues, laying his hand on Serge’s chest once more and drawing him towards the next exhibit, “is Thoth done as Hermes, or Hermes as Thoth, depending on which way you look at it.”
“Oh, he’s the one with the cap,” Serge nods. “Cupid.”
“Inventor of writing,” Petrou tells him, “god of magic, measurer of time, keeper of divine records. Thoth-Hermes was supposedly the author of the Hermetic books of Roman Egypt. And here’s Bast and Sekhet.”
“They look like cats,” Serge says.
“They are, of sorts: Sekhet has a lioness’s head and holds a golden flower, to represent the sun, whose heat she takes into her body and re-emanates. Bast is a standard cat-god. In pharaonic times his statue was everywhere.”
“Is that what ‘pharaoh’ means?” Serge asks. “ ‘Sun’? Like the phare at Pharos?”
“No, it means ‘house,’ ” Petrou answers. “ ‘Great house.’ ”
They move on into a room full of small statuettes.
“Funerary art,” Petrou comments. “Dead children.”
Serge peers at a row of them. One shows a small boy sitting on his mother’s shoulders, while the one next to it has the same child, or perhaps one similar to him, riding a toy chariot full of grapes that’s drawn by dogs. Another shows seated pupils taking lessons.
“Relics from early Jewish settlers,” Petrou tells Serge. “Early Christian too. And Greek, of course: the various religions’ figures all blur into one another. This, for example,” he continues, leading Serge down the row as though he were a dignitary to whom state officials must be introduced, pausing before a bull-headed figure, “is Serapis, the deity clobbered together for the city by the first Ptolemy, Soter: Dionysus, Osiris, Apis, Zeus, Asculapius and Pluto all rolled into one. It all began here: city of sects and syncretism.”
“And incest,” Serge adds.
Ignoring his words, Petrou leads him to a large scroll that bears what seems to be a diagram: in black and white, above a set of interlocking rings inset with smaller circles that hold images of birds, compasses or clock-faces, a female figure rises. She, too, is largely composed of circles: round breasts with concentric nipples between which rests a pendant circle with a cross, or aerial, above it; a round womb in which floats a rounded baby; and, above her shoulders, a head formed by the sun, a perfect orb. Words annotate the diagram from every angle: “Lumen Naturae,” “Oculus Divinus,” “Tinctura Physica,” “Water,” “Soda,” “Terra,” “Blood.”
“Sophia,” Petrou says reverently.
“So fear what?” asks Serge.
“Her name: Sophia. Wisdom of the Gnostics. Syzygy of Christ.”
Serge is silent for a while, then says:
“Syzygy: I know about that. That’s why those orbs are dark.”
He points to two eclipsed suns on the right side of the constellated rings. One of them is blank, like carbon paper; the other has a skull set in it. Above these, to their left, a river, flat as the Canopic Nile-mouth, wends its way up between her legs.
“Philo of Alexandria devised her, to bridge the gap between man and Jehova. She’s the Logos, Dweller in the Inmost. Look between her breasts.”
He points; Serge follows his finger with his gaze and sees, hovering above the aerial-cross, its frame formed from a square inset with other squares for windows and its roof made of a triangle, a great house.
“Philo was a Jewish Platonist,” Petrou continues, “but the Christians picked up the Logos baton and ran with it. For them, Sophia’s a sad figure, symbol of our descent. Valentinus-an Alexandrian too-has her undone by love: desiring too ardently to be united with God, she falls into matter, and our universe is formed out of her agony and remorse.” Petrou’s eyes shift to Serge’s chest as he continues: “As an unknown theologian-yet another Alexandrian-wrote of her: ‘She is more beautiful than the sun and all the order of stars: being compared to light she is found beyond it…’ ”
It’s dusk; the museum’s rooms and corridors are murky. The two men stand quite static, Petrou sideways-on to Serge, his gaze fixed on his chest-as though they, too, were sculptures, syncretic overlays of eras and mythologies, gods, mortals and their relics. They remain like this as Petrou continues, in a voice becoming fainter all the time, his recitation:
“ ‘For after this cometh night…’ ”
His words trail off. Serge turns away from him, towards the window. Through it, in the gloaming, he can see a firefly pulsing photically, in dots and dashes.
ii
The train to Cairo runs through the Wady Natrun soda fields. Serge knows, because he’s sat in on at least two meetings about the issue, that the concession to develop these is held by the Egyptian Salt and Soda Company-but it’s good to set a proper landscape to an abstract history of bribery, fraud and ineptitude. Between the grey hulk of a factory and the isolated monasteries that wobble in the heat-glare, a giant mineral lake stretches. Despite the heat, the lake seems to be covered with a layer of ice; what’s more, the ice has crimson patches on it, as though baby seals had been clubbed there. Trickling streams of claret link the patches to blue and green pools. Above the blushing, multicoloured tracts stand impossibly large birds, perched on lumps of salt that look like towering icebergs.