Antiquities Page 2
In view of his warm admiration for Cousin William, I fear that my father was disheartened by his first encounter with this remarkable young man, so close in age to his own (my father was then approaching his thirty-first birthday). He was not welcomed as he had hoped to be. To begin with, he was taken aback by his cousin’s appearance: the skin of the brow already markedly lined, while the hint of a beard was late in its growth. He seemed simultaneously both a youth and a seasoned elder. His authority was innate and absolute. But for my father, most uncanny of all was this: to look into the face of Cousin William was akin to gazing into a mirror. The brilliant blue of the eye was the same, though set off against bronze, and the bold cast of the jaw, with its slight yet telltale prognathic ridge (which I too have inherited), was unmistakably familial. Yet though Cousin William was tall, my father was significantly taller, and when he was unceremoniously conscripted and sent to toil among the dark and puny fellahin, he loomed over them, he records, like a white pillar. He had in his enthusiasm immediately presented his genealogical findings to his cousin, but was abruptly warned that such fooleries were irrelevant to the work at hand. You can stay, Cousin William told him, if you are willing to pick up a spade. And if you are willing to pay for your keep.
Under the weight and strain of the long, groaning measuring chains, and his labors with pickaxe and ropes, my father soon threw off his own shirt and wound it around his head as a shelter from the blasting Levantine sun. He gradually became indistinguishable in complexion from his companions, who churned around him in their dusky swarms; he even learned a few words of their language. He grew used to the daylong sound of the great sieves skittering and shuddering like tireless dice. Hauling their laden baskets, the women and children crawled to and fro as mindlessly as a procession of beetles. The children looked underfed, and the women in their ragged tunics, or whatever they were, seemed to my father hardly women at all. His tent at night was invaded by insects of inconceivable size. In daylight, wherever the ubiquitous sand with its scatterings of wild brush and grasses gave way to more familiar vegetation, the earth itself had a reddish tint. And in those ferociously brilliant sunsets, even the sand turned red.
My father did indeed pay for his keep, and more: two extra horses, the photographic equipment soon to arrive from Germany, and an occasional repast for the youngest children, much frowned on for its disruption of duty. And still my father was joyful in those infrequent intervals when Cousin William was inclined to engage with him, most usually to lament an impending shortfall of means: after all, they were two civilized men in happy possession of the selfsame civilized tongue! There were even times when Cousin William spoke thrillingly of his plans for the decades ahead: he would search in the Holy Land for all those famed yet lost and buried Biblical cities, among them Lachish and Hinnom, and so many storied others. He meant one day, he said, to open the womb of the land that was the mother of true religion.
In late August, when the season of excavation was brought to a close, my father turned to an unused page in his notebook and requested that Cousin William inscribe it. And here it is now, clear under my present gaze: “From Petrie to Petrie, Giza, Egypt, 1880.” And my father’s comment below: “Proof that we are of the same blood.”
With nothing useful to occupy him now, my father hired a boatman to ferry him across the Nile to Cairo, where he purchased some proper clothing and had a proper bath and settled, like any idle pleasure-seeker, in a lavish hotel, where, I presume, he pondered his fate and his future. Here there is nothing introspective, but for a single word, joined by a question mark: “Ethel?” (My mother’s name.) What follows is a brief account of sailing down the Nile in a felucca, together with a chattering guide, all very much in the vein of a commonplace travelogue. Indeed, it reads as if copied from a Baedeker. He describes the green of the water, a massive colony of storks dipping their beaks, a glimpse of an occasional water buffalo, and on the opposite bank, as they were nearing the First Cataract at Aswan, a series of boulders on the fringe of what (so the guide informed him) was an island with a history of its own, littered with the vestigial ruins of forgotten worship. The boulders were huge and gray, like the backs of a herd of elephants, and beyond them a palm-studded outgrowth. But it was not for these vast vertebrae that the island was called Elephantine, my father learned; it had, it was said, the shape of a tusk. And here he wrote bluntly in his notebook: “So much for the Nile.”
In Cairo he loitered discontentedly, as he admits, too often pestered by street vendors pressing on him what purported to be invaluable relics of this era and that, or original bits of limestone casing salvaged from a nearby pyramid. He passed them by, but not always. He was tempted to believe in material authenticity; Cousin William had inspired him. (At this juncture it behooves me to remark that my father never again came into the presence of Sir Flinders Petrie, though for the remainder of his life he read of Cousin William’s archaeological repute with persistent and considerable pride.)
To fill those desolate hours—in the sparseness of his final passages he hardly ever speaks of going home—my father began to frequent the souks with their luring rows of antiquities shops, where he saw and he bought, and sometimes believed, and sometimes did not. The dealers were pleased to educate him. Some objects were precious but likely looted. Others were forgeries, and still others purposeful pretenders from small local factories staffed by assiduous carvers and sculptors; caution was necessary. Let the buyer beware! Still, my father saw and bought, saw and bought, and in one honest shop chose a ring of true gold, in the shape of a scarab, which the merchant assured him, with a wink of his eye, had once belonged not to Queen Nefertiti, but to one of her handmaidens, and even if not, it was anyhow genuine gold. (I must note it again: though this very ring was kept with other such ornaments in a china bowl on her dresser, I never once saw it on my mother’s finger.)
And then it was mid-September, and my father came home to my mother, and to his destiny in the family firm.
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June 17, 1949. The truth is that I am discouraged. I have had to stop and reread and relentlessly subject to sober judgment the narrative above, which because of my father’s factual flatness (that meticulous list of tools and devices!) was, to my surprise, less harrowing than I had supposed. My father, as I have already observed, was not given to introspection or disclosure. The motive for his precipitous decamping has never been uncovered, and I believe never will be. My son in Los Angeles, recently learning of this long-hidden chronicle, has asked to inspect it, with the end in mind of transforming its scenes (the Great Pyramid, the Nile, the souks of Cairo, et al.) into some noisome motion picture adventure. He expresses particular interest in my mother’s travail, and has gone so far as to suggest a notable actress to embody it. As one would expect, I have categorically refused.
All this contention, thrashed out on the telephone, has left me demoralized. But I am far more apprehensive of what lies ahead: the memoir itself, which I recognize I have not yet adequately adumbrated. Since I have no informing scrawl to rely on, as heretofore, it is as if I must excavate, as in a desert, what lies far below and has no wish to emerge—to wit, my boyhood emotions. And by now I cannot escape telling of my racking affections for Ben-Zion Elefantin. That my friendship with him, unlikely as it was, would taint me, I knew. Willy-nilly, I must in earnest soon begin.
The reader will permit me a word, however, about my colleagues in this venture. If I have been delinquent in my progress herein (out of embarrassment, perhaps, or dread), I am not alone. You will recall that among the preparations for these memoirs, a specific finishing date was strictly agreed on. This somewhat threatening clause was proposed by the pair of fellow Trustees I have characterized as unmarried and childless, hence somewhat childlike themselves. They warned, you will remember, of indolence, intending a charge of procrastination leading to evasion, and of course it came as an accusation crudely directed
against my own such tendencies. Yet there is no sign that either one of these gentlemen has written so much as a line. They wake late, apparently giving much attention to their dress. The noticeably younger one is a bit of a dandy, with his colorful vests and his showy silk ties. The two of them dawdle over breakfast in one or the other’s apartment (they are wanting in any sense of privacy), and in these long and pleasant summer afternoons sit out under the maples, reading incomprehensible poetry in breathless half-whispers (Gerard Manley Hopkins, I believe, of whom I am satisfied to know nothing). Observing this duo of scrawny elders with their walkers beside them, one our sole nonagenarian, how can I not suppose their theatrics to be but a hollow affectation of youth? And it is certainly indolence. How can I proceed with my own memoir if others take theirs so lightly? Our project, after all, is intended solely to honor the Academy, and merits sincere diligence, humbling though this may be.
As it happens, my own diligence, or my occasional lack of it these warm June days when I am overcome by an unconquerable need to nap, can always be detected. I refer to the tapping of my Remington. Even with my door shut, its clatter can be heard throughout the corridors of Temple House. The others, confined to their silent fountain pens, are not subject to such audible surveillance. I am, as I say, a practical man, and early on took advantage of an opportunity that allowed me to acquire this useful skill. Yet luckily, until her unhappy demise seven years ago, I have never had to do without the competence (and may I add the sweetness?) of Miss Margaret Stimmer. She came to us at the age of eighteen, in response to a notice in the Tribune, and already formidably equipped with a sure command of shorthand. She confessed that she had not yet mastered the typewriter but was ready to learn, and rather winningly flourished before me a manual of instructions purchased that very day. I agreed to take her on provisionally, on the condition that she within three weeks reach a designated speed of performance. Her eagerness was persuasive, and she was winning in other ways: spirited brown eyes, and dangling brown curls, and cheeks charmingly pink—wholly in the absence, I was certain, of any aid of artifice. I observed her slender white fingers, hour after hour, dancing more and more agilely over the keys. Miss Margaret Stimmer served as my secretary for many years, until the death of my dear wife, when she became, and remained, my very good friend.
And it is to her that I owe my own facility at the typewriter. Long after she had grown proficient, she kept in one of the lower drawers of her desk, perhaps as a kind of talisman of her felicitous arrival, the manual of instruction that brought her to us. There were times, when she and all others were gone for the day, and our offices were unpeopled and hushed, in my capacity as partner (my father had seen to my promotion soon after the birth of my son) I would stay behind to review the work of some newly hired young attorney. And often enough what I saw in those regrettable papers would lead me to reflect on the future of the firm: if, say, we were to fall on hard times and were forced to retrench? and if such an eventuality might one day compel me to do without a secretary? A practical man must be resourceful, so that now and then in those quiet nights, at a late and lonely hour, I would—delicately and hesitantly—remove from the lower drawer of Miss Margaret Stimmer’s desk that well-worn manual, according to whose guidance I studied and practiced, studied and practiced, repeating difficult combinations again and again. And then I would restore the manual to its drawer, lingering over whatever else might be therein: Miss Margaret Stimmer’s fresh daily handkerchiefs, with their particular fragrance, and (somewhat to my disappointment), a compact of rouge, with its little round mirror, and a forgotten pair of lemon-colored chamois gloves. It was pleasant then to picture those nimble white fingers sliding easily into their five clinging tunnels—and once I myself attempted to fit my far thicker and clumsier fingers into Miss Margaret Stimmer’s gloves. But it could not be done.
Then let it be noted once more: it is solely because of Miss Margaret Stimmer’s fortuitous presence and my consequent expertise at the typewriter, that my colleagues are able to ascertain my progress in the composition of this memoir, while I am entirely in the dark about theirs.
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June 22, 1949. I have at long last decided to offer a description, as far as I am able, of my father’s collection. To my knowledge, it has never been properly appraised, as it ought to have been, by any reputable scholar; but for the purpose of this memoir I scarcely think this remiss. Each piece, or so I speculate, was selected chiefly to gratify my father’s interest and adoration, and if the utility of each remained a mystery, so much the better. Many of these pieces, and pieces they are, are instantly identifiable: clay lamps, jugs with handles like ears and spouts like the mouth of a fish, amulets, female figurines, and the like, but many are baffling. All are in a way miniature, either because they are parts broken off from a whole, or were conceived on this small scale. I had carried them to the Academy, as I earlier mentioned, with no notion of where I could keep them. Not on display in my cold little Fifth Form cell, like the foolish feminine bric-a-brac we had at home: this would surely invite jeers. Happily, my writing table had beneath it a small cabinet with wooden doors, with its own lock and key, in which I stored my modest necessities, and I installed them there, still in their pouch—all but one artifact, taller than the others, and untypically intact, only because the bits had been almost seamlessly sealed in place by some master restorer’s unknown hand. Its storkish height prevented my concealing it with the others; the height of the shelves was too low. Instead, I deposited it under my bed in a shoebox that had no lid and covered it with a pair of woolen socks.
What am I to call this object? It was a jug like other jugs (I mean a container), but more striking: it was made in the shape of a stork. Its breast was the breast of a stork, high and arched. Its spout was a stork’s long tapering bill that flowed from a head with an emerald eye. By emerald I intend not merely the color, but the veritable gem itself, yet only on one side of the head. The other showed an empty socket. The legs were folded at the knee, as if kneeling in water, and it was these knees, showing minute specks of their original red, that formed the object’s base. Under the base, when I turned it over, were odd scratchings, grooves worn shallow by some forgotten alphabet.
In the days following my father’s burial, or, rather, in the half-dark of the nights when the Academy slept and my door was shut, it became my clandestine habit to pluck this object from its cradle and contemplate its meaning for my father. Why had it attracted him, and why had he brought it from that faraway land? Did he imagine it to be a welcome if exotic ornament for domestic display, certain to please my mother? But I saw that my mother scorned it—she who was otherwise partial to polished decorative vases on this and that decorative little table; and at last my father hid it away. It belonged, she said, to his “mad episode,” an episode rarely alluded to and never defined. Or perhaps it was only that she judged it too crude and broken, with its missing eye.
In the dim corridor light that seeped under my door the emerald eye glittered, while the blind eye seemed to vanish away. For a reason I could not say then, and still cannot say now, an uncommon image came to me: I thought of a chalice. But a stork cannot be a chalice. So I called this curious thing by the name its birdlike spirit evoked: I called it a beaker. And because of the solitary nature of my cell I had little fear of its discovery.
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June 23, 1949. It was considered one of the Academy’s attractions that each pupil should have his own room, to be fully in his charge, and also to compel him to undergo the discipline of cleaning it daily and changing his personal bedsheets every Saturday morning. (At a later date, when as Trustee it became my duty to assess expenses, I saw how these youthful responsibilities conveniently lessened the need for house maids.) The reader will have seen that I speak of my cell. This term was introduced to us with the arrival of Mr. Canterbury, the new headmaster recruited to replace poor Mr. Brackett
-Lynn. Mr. Canterbury had pursued divinity studies at Oxford; his accent was pronounced satisfactory. He was expected to teach Latin and English Poetry, to maintain order and propriety, and also to preside over chapel. His first innovation was to install a carpet over the bare cold floor of his study, and also to secure it with lock and key. His aim above all, he said, was to eliminate certain American vulgarities and to elevate our language in general. When some of the masters, and nearly all of the pupils, objected to “cell” for its aura of incarceration, he insisted that its source was, rather, ecclesial and poetical, and for proof cited Coleridge’s “the hall as silent as a cell,” whereas, he retorted, our halls rivaled in noise a dungeon of blacksmiths with hammer and tongs. I am glad to say that “cell” did not last, and neither did Mr. Canterbury. His long-serving successor was the Reverend Henry McLeod Greenhill, of Boston, who later assisted in the shutting of the Academy, and whose personal library we still retain following his passing soon afterward.
In this connection, and in one of those anomalies of unexpected confluence, the phrase “hammer and tongs” set down above was repeated a very few hours later, via a most distasteful occurrence. I was accosted at the dinner hour by three of my colleagues, who had formed a committee to denounce me. I was accused of making a racket, of disturbing the peace, of interfering with well-earned sleep, and finally of wielding hammer and tongs (these very words) at unconscionable hours. It is true that on certain days when I have, to my dismay, lost an entire afternoon through napping too long, my conscience has impelled me to take up my memoir somewhat past midnight. (Despite such efforts I remain acutely aware that beyond having uttered the name, I have yet to properly acquaint the reader with my unusual attachment to Ben-Zion Elefantin.)