The Lost Army of Cambyses

The Lost Army of Cambyses by Paul Sussman Page A

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Authors: Paul Sussman
Tags: Fiction, General, Thrillers, Mystery & Detective, Crime
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was an
    embarrassed silence and then, realizing what was
    expected, she fished out her purse and handed him
    a couple of notes. He looked at them, grunted and
    shuffled away down the corridor, leaving the keys
    in the door. She waited till he had gone, and then
    turned and stepped into the apartment, taking the
    keys and closing the door behind her.
    She was in a dark, wood-floored vestibule, off
    which opened five rooms – a bedroom, a bath-
    room, a kitchen and two others, both piled high
    with books. All the windows were closed and
    shuttered, giving the place a musty, abandoned
    feel. For the briefest moment she thought she
    107
    could sense a lingering odour of cigar smoke, but
    it was too intangible for her to be sure and after
    sniffing the air a couple of times she dismissed it.
    Probably just polish or something, she thought.
    She went through into the main room, switch-
    ing on the light as she went. There were books and
    papers everywhere, piles of them, like drifts of
    leaves. The walls were hung with pictures
    of excavations and monuments; in the far corner
    sat a dusty cabinet full of cracked earthenware
    pots and faience shabtis. There were no plants.
    Like somewhere that's been preserved for
    posterity, she thought. To show how people lived
    in a different time.
    She wandered around, picking things up, peer-
    ing into drawers, seeking out her father. She found
    one of his diaries from the early 1960s, when he
    had been excavating in the Sudan, his small,
    precise writing interspersed with fading pencil
    drawings of the objects he had been unearthing. In
    one of the rooms she discovered some of the books
    he'd written – Life in the Necropolis: Excavations
    at Saqqara, 1955–85; From Snofru to Shepseskaf
    – Essays on the Fourth Dynasty; The Tomb of
    Mentu-Nefer; Kingship and Disorder in the First
    Intermediate Period. She flicked through a photo
    album – pictures of a large sandy trench which, as
    the album progressed, got deeper and deeper until,
    on the last pages, the outlines of what looked like
    a stone wall began to emerge. There seemed to be
    nothing in the apartment but his work. Nothing
    that spoke of warmth or love or feeling.
    Nothing of the present.
    Then just as she was starting to feel oppressed
    108
    by the place, two surprises. Beside her father's bed
    – hard, narrow, like a prison cot – she found a
    photograph of her parents on their wedding day,
    her father laughing, a white rose in his buttonhole.
    And in the dusty cabinet in the living room,
    wedged between two earthenware pots, a child's
    drawing of an angel, the edges of its wings marked
    out with silver glitter. She had made it years ago at
    nursery school, for Christmas. Her father must
    have kept it all this time. She took it out, turned it
    over and read on the back, in her spidery child's
    writing: 'For my daddy'.
    She stared at it for a moment and then,
    suddenly, uncontrollably, began to cry, slumping
    down onto a chair, her body racked with sobs.
    'Oh Dad,' she choked. 'I'm sorry, I'm sorry.'
    Later, when the tears had slowed, she collected
    the photo from the bedroom and put it in her
    knapsack, along with the drawing. She also took a
    photograph of her father standing beside a large
    stone sarcophagus, flanked by two Egyptian work-
    men. (She remembered him explaining to her as a
    child that the word 'sarcophagus' came from the
    Greek for 'flesh eater', an image that had so dis-
    turbed her she had been unable to sleep that night.)
    She was just debating whether to take a couple
    of his books as well when the phone rang. She
    paused, uncertain whether or not to answer it.
    After a moment she decided she ought to and went
    through into the living room, hurrying over to the
    desk on the far side, where the phone was sitting
    on top of a pile of manuscripts. Just as she reached
    it the answering machine clicked on and suddenly
    the room was full of her father's voice.
    109
    'Hello, this is Michael Mullray. I'm away

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