Scarcely more than four hundred men had had to do with it, six hundred at the outside. Since the stone had been hewn and placed seven years earlier, half of the unfortunate men who had taken a part in the laying of that stone were no longer of this world. So even if they arrested all the survivors, together with their families, acquaintances, and drinking companions, even going so far as to include their mistresses and those who had infected them with the clap, they would have bagged no more than two or three thousand people, a mere trifle in the human anthill of Egypt.
But such consoling reflections did not last very long. The original worries resurfaced, because of the number of the stone. To begin with it was noticed that the number contained two digits that were intended to exclude or perhaps to assimilate entirely the two pieces on either side of the accursed piece. But that was nothing compared to the misfortunes that followed: in all probability, the stone’s official number was quite unrelated to reality. To put it another way, it was perfectly obvious which stone was involved, but for easily imaginable reasons (secrecy, disinformation to confuse the enemy, etc.) the number given was completely wrong. As was the row where it was believed to be situated. And also its coordinates of location with respect to the vertical axis and the plane.
That was enough to make it seem within a few days as if the whole of Egypt had been smitten with apoplexy. Fresh rumors emerged only tentatively, made their way with difficulty along the tendrils of the grapevine. There was talk of a different number. Some people said that, according to the latest leak, the stone had been buried much lower down, in step fifteen, somewhere near the level of the sovereign’s funeral chamber. Then it was alleged that it was not just one stone that was involved, but a whole row, row number one hundred and four, or so it seemed. Then other blocks of stone were mentioned, then other rows or half-rows, all of which served to make everyone feel unsafe. Men who had been only too happy to reminisce complacently about the time when they had worked at the Abu Gurob quarry on stones for the tenth or the ninetieth row, or in the false door workshops, for there was nothing they could be reproached with (“Ha! in our time it was all good honest work, the suspicious stuff didn’t start until later!”) now ran away to hide as soon as they heard that the investigation was approaching their rows, or wrapped their heads in wet towels for fear of losing their minds.
Nobody was arrested meanwhile, but that was not a good sign either. The only thing that remained unchanged was that the streets and the markets were deserted. As always, the perfume shops were the first to be closed, followed in turn by the tanneries, the bars, and the inns.
“I see Egypt, but where have all the Egyptians gone?” was what the Sumerian foreign minister was supposed to have exclaimed, riding through the town in a horse-drawn carriage after a reception given by Cheops.
Since passersby gave him the slip, he ended up putting his question to Youyou the drunkard, the only person who would agree to converse with him.
“You want to know where the Egyptians have gone?” Youyou answered at last, his tear-filled eyes fixed longingly on the patio of the bar that had been closed. “Up my asshole, that’s where. Where else do you want them to be?”
He made a charming sign to the minister’s wife, then, after yelling at the coachman, made off with a wobbly gait.
Little by little, one by one, the investigation cast its net over them all, and they became a multitude greater than ever before. People who had never even worked on the pyramid, people who for health reasons had never set foot in a quarry or stepped onto a row, aged and twitching aristocrats who were now virtually incapacitated, society ladies who never rose before noon — all were now roped into the same fetid atmosphere and the same dust, all mixed in and muddled up with people who really had worked on the building site.
There was always one string of the investigation to tie someone up, to draw him out of his cocoon, and to take him four, seven, or fourteen years back to the time when his errors began. If it failed to tie its victim up straight away, then the victims themselves, in their attempts to escape, got themselves into a tangle, pulled the whole skein toward themselves, and were entrapped. So even as their bodies lay huddled in the warmth of their beds, their terrorized minds were up and out before dawn, just like the host of builders in bygone days, ready to start work under the torrid sun and the whip, in order to repent for their share of guilt.
Investigations proceeded into the false numbers. As a result, people wandered around the pyramid like blind men, each looking for his own stone or row, ceaselessly climbing up and down, muttering, “No, it’s not this one, I fell at the forty-fourth row.” They would hail each other with sobs, make accusations, and beg each other for pity in muffled tones. Some came up against the false doors and asked in voices that were now quite unrecognizable, “Is anyone there? So this is the kingdom of darkness… My god, how icy cold it is here!” And strange visions passed before their eyes.
It was now obvious that the almost-finished pyramid was the source of a dozen times more pain and suffering than it had been when it was an inferno of building work. When they looked upon it from afar in the mornings, and saw it so smooth and shiny, so cold and silent, with its perfect edges and slopes, people could not believe their eyes. How could the sublime form of the pyramid be a machine for crushing people all day and all night long? They came close to suspecting that once darkness fell the pyramid took itself to pieces, that the steps, the supporting masonry, and all the blood-stained and mud-encrusted stones moved out of position, that they threw themselves around in anger and tumult, in an indescribable chaos, to spread mourning and misery all around.
Meanwhile, the investigation proceeded. The numbers were still just as wrong as before, so that crowds continued to clamber up the pyramid. All around you could hear groaning pleas such as “O seventh row, may you collapse of your own accord!” or “O third row, O third, it was on thee that I was reduced to dust and knew my end!” alternating with noises of people shouting in their sleep: “Make way for number ten thousand two hundred and ninety-five! Mind your backs! Stone number ten thousand two hundred and ninety-five!”
The pandemonium was at its greatest at the point where the step numbering reversed. Hundreds of people wandered around at that level having quite lost their bearings and their sense of balance; those who looked up suddenly felt as though they were doing a handstand, and so did those who cast their eyes down. They clung to each other in desperation tore each other apart, foaming at the mouth, and ended up bursting into sobs together.
The ambient chaos and the eddies of dust were so overwhelming that they all dreamed of nothing but order and respect for the rules, at any price. For instance, they thought of stitching onto the sleeves of their tunics, or even onto their backs, the numbers of the rows, or the stones, or the names of the quarries where they or their relatives had labored, so that no one could mistake them, and even the bean vendor would be able to see from his counter and yelclass="underline" “Hey you there, from step five (or from stone five hundred thousand, or from Gurnet Murai quarry), don’t cut in line!” The vendor or the policeman would be welcome to keep them in order as long as that served to end the haunting suspicion that hovered over every single person, and did so all the more when it came from the local cop who had been looking at you askance all week and, one stifling afternoon, when it became known that all who had worked on step seventy-seven were traitors, looked straight through you as if to ask, So you wouldn’t be one of those dodgers, would you now? With numbered tunics, you could show him your sleeve (or if it were empty, wipe his nose with it) and say: Fm from step forty-one, got that? Find someone else to scare with your cat’s eyes! You can’t get anything on me, because you were still dribbling your mother’s milk when I left my arm under the three hundred thousand two hundred and fifty-ninth stone!