Dreamers of the Day

The museum was laid out clockwise, with the oldest objects to the left of the entrance. Circling, one encountered five thousand years of rulers: Pre-Dynastic, Old Kingdom, New Kingdom, Ptolemaic, Roman, Ottoman.

Despite Karl’s wise advice, I tried to take it all in. The striding vitality of Ka-Aper, whose gleaming eyes seemed alert and lively; the seated Khufre, whose throne is enveloped by the protective wings of Horus; the lifelike statue of Princess Nofret, whose “real” hair can be seen poking out from beneath her royal wig. The sad, severe face of Ramses II, once mighty but now a beak-nosed, lipless mummy exposed to the vulgar curiosity of tourists.

My eyes swept over death masks, coffins, armchairs. Statues of falcons preparing for flight and of crocodiles lying in wait. Alabaster perfume bottles that would not have looked out of place on a modern woman’s dresser. Gold jewelry that Tiffany’s might have sold that very day in New York City. I paid as much attention as I could to the exhibits so that I would have something interesting to tell Karl when I returned to him, but I will be honest with you: I was as giddy as a schoolgirl with a crush.

Looking back now, it seems plain that I had passed into a sort of delayed adolescence on my first visit to Halle’s Department Store. After decades of defining myself by what I would not do, what I did not want, what I could not be … Well, my young friend Mildred had allowed me to see myself in an entirely new way—as a grown woman really, making my own choices, hearing myself think.

And what I thought that first afternoon in the Egyptian Museum was, Forty minutes … thirty minutes … ten minutes, and then I will see him again.

I made myself stay inside a while longer to keep my eagerness to rejoin him from being too obvious. When at last I allowed myself to go back outside, Karl was sitting on a stone bench in a cool green square a few steps from the entrance and waved to catch my attention.

“An hour!” he called, releasing Rosie and gri

He had assembled a picnic for us: tomatoes, creamy goat cheese, disks of soft flat bread dotted with blackened, bubbled dough. “These tomatoes are delicious,” he told me when I joined him on the bench. “I am thinking of importing them to Europe. A man could make his fortune that way. And so, Agnes, what was the best thing you saw?”

I chewed, and thought, and swallowed. “Akhenaten,” I said, and then described the winsome oddity of that strange pharaoh with his soft little potbelly and long lantern jaw. There he sat, basking in the sun with his beautiful wife, Nefertiti. I was especially intrigued by their peculiarly adult children, sitting on the royal laps or playing at their parents’ feet. The children looked like Mr. and Mrs. Tom Thumb.

“A touching image,” Karl agreed. “And here we are, you and I, under the very same sun, with our little deformed daughter!” It took my breath away, that casual joke. “All those gods,” he went on, “each demanding attention! Amun, Osiris, Isis, Horus. Anubis, Ra. Maat, Geb, Bes! Monotheism must have been a welcome simplification,” he remarked, and I shocked myself by laughing at what I suspected was blasphemy. “Of course, polytheism has its advantages,” Karl pointed out. “If you fall suddenly in love with an unsuitable person, you may say, I am struck by Cupid’s arrow and helpless to resist! Or if something awful happens, you needn’t ask, What have I done to deserve this misfortune? Or, How could a just God permit such a thing? You merely say, Alas! Poor me! The gods are playing in the sky, and I have stumbled into their path.”

With that, he licked the last of the tomato juice and cheese from his fingers and stood, telling me regretfully that he had an appointment that afternoon. “And you, I think, must now have a rest—siesta, the Spaniards call it. A nap in the heat of the afternoon. You must keep up your strength, Agnes, for more adventures later.”

After the warmth and noise of beledi Cairo, my frangi hotel room was a cool and quiet oasis. I took off my street clothes, put on my robe, and lay back on the soft bed with Rosie at my side. Hands clasped behind my head, I watched the bed’s white cotton netting lift and sway in the slight breeze that drifted through the balcony doors. I felt enveloped, and … cared for.

It occurred to me then that no one had ever really taken care of me. Papa was always working and, you’ll recall, Mumma was never a great one for fussing over children. I learned early not to need much. After Papa died, it fell to me to look after everyone else. So, you see, to have someone like Karl anticipate my need to learn, to eat, to rest, to enjoy—that was profoundly moving.

Old as I was, I was i

What I felt in those first hours with Karl was a sense of excitement at discovering a person who seemed to find me witty and perhaps even a little attractive. His joy in sharing his knowledge of the city made my own enthusiasms seem well proportioned and justified. He had a great deal to teach but did so without talking down to me. That meant a lot. Until I met Karl, I was a daughter before parents, or a student before teachers, or a teacher before students. Even with my brother and sister, my responsibilities took me somewhat out of their spheres. I would not have said so at the time, but I suppose I had been lonely all my life. Karl was a companion, you see. Someone who treated me as an equal, worthy of his thoughtfulness and care.

He even mentioned Cupid, Mildred whispered.

And, of course, when a couple walks side by side, they look out at the world together, not at each other. The voice becomes more important than the face, you see. The soul and the intellect can be more beautiful without the dross of physicality.

Well, not entirely without.

Built like a bull. Great strength in the shoulders and chest. Karl’s description of Lawrence seemed more a self-portrait …

“Ah, vain delusion!” wrote the poet. “The fancy that flits before my mind is not the truth.”

There’s no fool like an old fool, Mumma sneered.

Pay no attention! Mildred advised. She’s just jealous.

“What do you think, Rosie?” I asked as she chewed meditatively on her toes. Receiving no clear reply, I answered for her. “You think he’s a nice man who feeds you sausage, don’t you!”

And for the moment, that was good enough for me.

I was awakened in the full heat of late afternoon by the sound of knuckles rapping on wood. Convinced now that the room was hers to defend, Rosie hurtled off the bed, barking maniacally until I could make myself decent, pick her up, and open the door.

It was Karl. Merry eyes averted, he murmured apologies for interrupting my nap and explained that he’d overheard the desk clerk’s instructions to deliver a message immediately and wait for an answer.

Blinking and benumbed by interrupted sleep, I traded Rosie for the loosely folded note Karl offered on a silver salver as though he were the hotel bellhop. “I took the liberty,” he admitted and waited, smiling broadly, for my reaction.

The handwriting was small, upright, and worth no better than a C for penmanship. “Miss Shanklin: Di