White Alabaster

This story was published by The Willows back in 2008. It was my second published short story. I was cleaning up the files on my hard-drive and when I found it I thought I'd post it here.    

Six weeks after my wife's death I stood on the steps of a white Pullman car looking out at the mass of men and women, tarbush and turban and British scarlet that filled Cairo's train station. Mountains made of uniform cases and camel trunks were built up and brought down by weather-beaten porters who yelled and cursed and dripped sweat into the black dusty ground. Men in gray flannel suits and tweed caps, crisp and cool and clearly European stood within the shadows of the overhanging roof, smoking cigars and reading English newspapers.

     I could hear the ringing of the bells, the blowing of trumpets and the screeching of the trains as I stepped down onto the platform. Abercrombie had promised to meet me there and as I looked out on the rippling sea of swarthy porters and tweed-covered tourists, sweat-filled curses and hearty handshakes, I finally found him. He was sitting at a small cafe sipping his coffee and brushing the dust from his black leather boots. A small group of girls passed by in single file, jugs of water balanced precariously atop their dark brown heads. A group of schoolboys ran past them, their urgency kicking up clouds of dust. Abercrombie looked down at his boots and sighed. “How was the train ride from Alexandria?”

     “Crowded.”

     “Our fellow countrymen,” he explained. He waved his servants forward to collect my luggage. “Come to avenge our beloved General Gordon at Khartoum.”

     When we left the station, Abercrombie insisted that we walk. Within minutes we’d passed through garden palms and broad streets overrun by clip-clopping carriages and schoolboys with little red felt flowerpots on their heads, into the narrow warrens of the old quarter. The air smelled of musk and attar of roses.

     Laced throughout the cluttered market tables and small shops were the honey-colored mosques whose stones had been stripped from the pyramids and whose slender Turkish minarets had defined Cairo’s skyline for centuries. “The Mosque of Mohammed Ali is by far the most beautiful,” Abercrombie said. “It sits on the rock of the Citadel. You can see the whole city from there. And the Nile, on a day like this you can see the shadows of the houseboats and steamers rippling on the river bottom.”

     “And the booksellers?” I asked, eager to begin my search. I'd come to Cairo searching for a specific book, one as rare and unique as the city itself.

     “Am I to understand that you suffer from the same madness that compels me to waste away my best years in dusty old libraries and second hand bookshops?”

      “I find and purchase rare books for museums, libraries and private collectors,” I said. “My own collection is rather modest, I'm afraid.”

     “Have you come to Cairo at the bequest of a client then, Boyle?”

     I smiled and nodded. It was easier than finding words clever enough to explain why I'd left Germany so soon after my wife's death. “I’ve also been asked to do a sculpture for the opera house.”

     “Ah, you're a sculptor then. Tell me something, Boyle. Egypt's filled with sculptures, pharaohs and gods and God-knows-what. What could they possibly want you to sculpt that hasn't been done already?”

     “Amunet Fouard,” I replied.

     “The opera singer?”

     “My wife.”

     There was an awkward silence, filled by the cries of the kites and gulls that haunted Cairo's rooftops. “A tragic loss, old boy. The newshounds said she was killed in a fire?”

     Again I nodded. Determined to change the subject, I thanked him for his time and hospitality. Abercrombie was an archaeologist. He'd been sent to Egypt by the British Museum at the behest of a mutual friend, Sir E. A. Wallis Budge. He had, during his time in Cairo, amassed an impressive collection of rare and unusual scrolls, books and manuscripts. I'd originally hoped that he might know the whereabouts of the book I'd come looking for. I'd since learned through correspondence that Abercrombie, while an avid collector, was not an astute reader. He collected books like sportsmen collect their trophies. Even the most arcane tomes in his collection were little more than stuffed and mounted, leather-bound and gilded wild boars.

     “No need to thank me, old boy,” Abercrombie said. “Now, what was the name of that book again?”

     “It's called the Asclepius,” I said.

     “Hermetic?”

     I nodded. “Hermetic philosophy offered its adepts a means of personal ascension, a release from the constraints of physical being.”

     “It sounds Gnostic,” he said.

     “There are parallels. But Hermetic literature delved more deeply into magic. It drew upon the Egyptian belief in the conjuring of spirits.”

     “And Hermes wrote this, Asclepius?”

     “He wrote thousands of books,” I said. “Tens of thousands, said to be of immense antiquity. Although Clement of Alexandria believed that the Egyptians had forty-two sacred texts written by Hermes, encompassing all the hidden knowledge of their priesthood.”

     “And the Asclepius?”

     “It was a dialogue that spoke on the art of imprisoning demons and angels in statues. Alchemists used it as a spiritual handbook, a guide to creation through the animation of stone. According to Hermes, statues were imbued with energy and capable of wondrous feats.”

     “Like?”

     I shrugged, suddenly aware that I'd aroused his curiosity. “Divination, the granting of joys and sorrows depending on ones merit.”

     “And this book is difficult to find?”

     “In a manner of speaking. There must be a thousand copies in Europe. I've a friend in England who has three copies of Everard's 1650 translation in his library alone. Unfortunately, Everard's translation doesn't have what I'm looking for. The same could be said for the 1469 edition, the first to be spawned by Gutenberg's monster.”

     “How did you happen upon such a rarity?”

     “My client is a very wealthy man.”

     “And quite specific in his wants,” Abercrombie mused. “It would seem he’s given you a very difficult task.”

     “He’s convinced that Marsilio Ficino discovered something in the Hermetic texts he translated.”

     “What do you mean? Marsilio who?”

     “Ficino,” I said. “Cosimo Medici asked Marsilio Ficino to translate the Hermetic texts Leonard de Pistoia had brought back with him from Byzantium. When he was finished, Ficino had two different versions printed. One was offered up to the public at large. The other was given to Medici in private. The translation he gave Cosimo contained several additional texts, including a new translation of the Asclepius.”

     “And there was something different about Ficino's translation?”

     “My client thought so,” I said. “Ficino was certainly influenced by the science of the Persians and Egyptians, even the Chaldaeans. In 1489 he was even accused of magic and was nearly condemned for heresy.”

     “What happened to the translation he’d given to Medici?” 

     “It was destroyed in a fire,” I replied.

     “Your collector isn't looking for Ficino’s Latin translation then, is he? He sent you here to find a Greek version of the Asclepius.”

     “Assuming one still exists.”

     “Quite a remarkable tale. But I can assure you that your Asclepius is not here in Cairo. I've been digging through shelves and crates and crumbling stone bone boxes in every one of Cairo's dark and dusty bookstores for more than a decade. I've never heard mention of your book.”

     “Then perhaps, given your knowledge of the libraries and book sellers in Cairo, you might be willing to point me in a few well-educated directions.”

     “As I said, you won’t find it here. Not in Cairo, old boy. Your best bet is Wadi El Natrun.”

     “The Nitrian Desert?”

     “Shee-Hyt,” Abercrombie said. “The Copts call it the Balance of the Hearts. There are monasteries there, old boy, monasteries like Saint Macarius.” 

     “And why do I need to visit these monasteries?”

“Because they house books, Boyle, books that men like Ficino and Medici could only dream about.”

II  

     There were three dabs of white in the distance.  Abercrombie pointed them out from the back of his dromedary. “The walls of the desert monasteries,” he said. “Deir Al-Baramus, the Anba Beshoy and Deir Al-Surian, the Monastery of the Syrians. Welcome to Wadi El Natrun, old boy. Welcome to the Balance of the Hearts.”

     “And Saint Macarius?” I asked.

     “There...” he pointed “...out of sight but to your left. We‘re still twelve miles from its gate.”

     I followed his gaze and tried to imagine the white walls of Saint Macarius in the distance. When I closed my eyes I could see the library, smell the dust and dry leather and the countless Coptic, Christian, Gnostic and Alchemical works therein. “Paradise,” I thought.

     The three monasteries remained in view for a while. They were like islands of white limestone life surrounded by a sea of sand that stretched west, beyond Tripoli, deep into the eternal barrenness of the Sahara.

     I closed my eyes and listened to the silence. The wind and sand scratched my sunburned cheeks and the sweat that soaked my silk-cotton robes offered a subtle, cooling reprieve against the relentless heat. Lost within my senses I could almost forget why I’d come.

     Almost.

     But then she would whisper in my ear, her words, like wolves, biting at the conscious corners of my mind. The words were fleeting, evanescent. They lingered just long enough to breathe life back into my pain. “Amunet.” Her name tasted like life upon my lips. Her life, lost in a fit of madness. “Not lost,” I whispered. “Not yet.”

     Long after the three monasteries had vanished, shimmering and dreamlike in the murderous heat, Abercrombie called out, “There.”

     At first I only saw the walls shining against the sand, but as we approached Saint Macarius, squat white domes, rooftops and palm trees began to appear above the ramparts. The buildings had slipped back within the enclosure by the time we’d reached the long shadows of the outer wall.

     Abercrombie pulled a bell-rope that dangled from the top of the wall. We could hear the faint ringing through the gate. 

     “Macarius was the first hermit in the Wadi Natrun,” he said. “He became so famous that thousands flocked here to see him. He often left the monastery and fled to the caves half a mile from here. When the pilgrims began following him, Macarius dug a tunnel from his cell to the caves, and would travel underground so that no one could see him.

     “As he was going from his cell to his cave,” Abercrombie said, “he would recite antiphons, twenty-four in all. He did the same on his way back to the monastery.”

     I was about to suggest that Abercrombie pull the bell-rope again, when an old monk opened the gate. He had an ophthalmic right eye and a toothless grin. He led us down a dusty path and into the very heart of the crumbling monastery.

     He told us that his name was Bas, and that he’d lived at the monastery for more than forty years. “I know no other life but this,” he said. He waved us through an arched doorway into the shadowed warmth of the first of the monastery’s churches. “Dedicated to the Forty Martyrs,” he explained. “Forty monks who refused to flee from the Muslims during a raid in 444.”

     After showing us the reliquary that contained the body of Saint Macarius, Bas led us back out into the merciless sunlight. We made our way up a narrow staircase to a platform that lined the monastery’s inner walls. I turned and looked back at the maze of buildings below and wondered which of them housed the library. Which building held the Asclepius, the key to all the dark and silent secrets of creation?

     Bas pointed out the bare, flat roofs of the monk’s cells. A gaunt-looking monk was lying there, prostrate. He appeared to be praying.

     “Athos,” Bas explained. “He came here seven years ago. He spoke to the abbot on his arrival, but hasn't spoken since. Not a word in seven years. He leaves his cell to attend church, to collect a few scraps of bread, and to visit the library. He's a voracious reader.”

     “Do you know why he came here?” I asked.

     Bas shrugged. “I’ve heard rumors, of course, stories about murder and lost love. We monks have a curious combination of characteristics. We've a rambunctious imagination and an unquenchable thirst for gossip. The truth is we don’t know why Athos came here, or where he came from. We don’t even know that Athos is his real name.”

     “What do you know about him?”

     “Only that he doesn't speak, he eats just enough bread to live, and that he's done three hundred prostrations every day for the past seven years.”

     “A man driven by faith,” I said.

     Abercrombie shook his head and said, “A man driven by guilt.”

     I watched the silent monk’s prostrations. Even from a distance they awoke the vampire-like guilt that fed upon my conscience.

     “Are you ill?” Bas asked.

     “Just tired, it's been a long day.”

     “The guest house is yours. Have you any idea how long you'll be staying with us?”

     “Well, I came to visit your library,” I replied. “But I was also hoping to find my muse.”

     “Are you a poet, Mister Boyle?”

     “A sculptor.”

     “Well, then there is one last place you should see before you rest.”

     We climbed a flight of stone stairs that led to the monastery keep, its cavernous, vaulted chambers echoing each weary step that we took. Bas led us to a large church, vacant save for its ghosts and a large rectangular stone that seemed strangely at home in the crumbling nave. “Alabaster,” Bas explained. “I was clearing space in the cellar when I found it. Nobody seems to know how long it sat down there. People come to the Balance of the Hearts for a reason, Mister Boyle. Perhaps this stone is yours.”

III

     The smell of dust and old books made my nose itch. It was a reaction I’d learned to accept. Penance for my idol-like worship of the printed word. Even now, running my fingers across leather spines and gilded titles I fought the urge to scratch. I had lived and breathed old books since the day my father gave me a ragged old copy of Browne's Religio Medici. At thirty-five I still found myself pouring over every word as if God Himself had whispered them into being.

     I found texts written by the Alexandrian Gnostics, Basilides, Capocrates and Valentinus. I skimmed works by Marcellina, Cerdun and Marcion. The library contained texts written by and for Nazarenes and Elchasaites, Manichaeans and Melchizadekians and the followers of Alcibiades.

     I explored books that promoted the Gnostic sects, and works that refuted them. I discovered gospels both strange and strangely familiar, books about Thomas and the Apocalypse of Paul. I found scrolls bound in leather, their titles alone expressing their worth.

     “The Exegesis upon the Soul,” Abercrombie said when I returned to the librarian’s writing table. He studied the scroll for several minutes while I skimmed an unfamiliar Gnostic text. “Fascinating,” he said. “There are annotations throughout, and while the text is clearly Gnostic, whoever wrote them quoted Hosea and here, Psalms. He also borrowed points from Homer, from the story of Ulysses and Calypso.”

     “An appropriately Gnostic allegory,” I said. “Calypso represents the physical body that imprisons the soul. In the Odyssey, Calypso imprisons Ulysses, just as the flesh imprisons our soul.”

     “Ah,” Abercrombie said. He smiled and began quoting Homer. “Now Hermes called away the suitors ghosts, holding firm in his hand the wand of fine pure gold that enchants the eyes of men whenever Hermes wants or wakes us up from sleep.”

     “Knowledge,” I said. “Reason. Through the knowledge of Hermes, Ulysses was able to escape Calypso and return, at last, to Penelope.”

     “A very interesting allegory, Boyle. Have you had any luck finding the Asclepius?”

     “None,” I replied. “There are too many books to look through. I’ve barely blown the dust off the surface. What I need is a guide, someone who knows this library intimately.”

     “What about Brother Athos? Bas said he was a voracious reader.”

     “But he hasn’t spoken in seven years.”

     “Still,” Abercrombie said. “Would you disregard the possibility?”

IV

     Brother Athos listened to my endless queries about the library, about Hermes Trismegistus and the Asclepius. He clearly understood my questions, for he would nod or smile or even raise his eyebrows on occasion. But he would neither speak nor write a response to anything I asked.

     Frustrated with his silence, I began carving Amunet in the alabaster block that Bas had given me. Her face still haunted me. Whenever my eyes slid shut she was there, waiting like Vengeance. Her ghost became my muse. Her soft features became my model. She would stare at me from my memories, her emerald eyes like lifeless stones that marked the life forever lost. “Not forever,” I whispered, and my senses filled with the sinful scent of burning books. I could feel the flames against my skin, burning shame and guilt and utter damnation.

     I labored for hours each day, for days every week until a month and more had passed. The alabaster became a soft and sinister doppelganger, mocking the sadness in my dead wife’s gaze. I’d carved in alabaster before, though in gypsum rather than calcite. Gypsum was much softer and while it required a more delicate touch it always seemed a cold and empty rock, easily purchased and just as easily forgotten. The block that had slowly taken Amunet’s form had been sitting in the monastery for more than a century. Waiting. 

     Athos would often watch me work, a silent witness to Amunet’s artistic re-birth. He would carve his penance in the dust-filled air, each prostration a silent prayer offered up to God. I carved mine in white alabaster, the sound of iron on stone a voiced rebellion against all that was Holy. We were both driven, not by faith, but by guilt. I found, in those hours, understanding. There was a kindred link between the two of us, one that comforted when it should have terrified. I’d given up asking Athos about the library, or the Asclepius. I’d surrendered the notion that he would ever speak a word. So I was surprised when he finally did.

     Alabaster has the ability to shine with shallow deceit. There were countless times when I questioned my ability to do the stone justice. I was certain that my weakness as an artist would be reflected in its polished white surface. Instead, my weakness as a person began to take shape in the baleful eyes I’d carved. Perhaps the malignant sadness inspired the silent monk’s question.

     “Who is she?”

     I turned and looked at him. He knelt in the dirt staring up at Amunet. His eyes seemed a reflection of hers.

     “My wife,” I said.

     “How did she die?”

     I closed my eyes and she was there, still wrapped in his lifeless arms. I could smell the books burning, the smoke stealing tears from my eyes as I watched the flames kiss her delicate skin. “A fire,” I replied. “She died in a fire.”

     “And now you seek to ensnare her soul.”

     It was a curious comment. Curious, because it was the very reason I’d come to Egypt. The very reason I’d come looking for the Asclepius.

     “The Asclepius speaks on the art of imprisoning spirits in statues,” Athos whispered. “Tell me something, Robert Boyle. Why do you seek that book? Have you come to raise the dead?”

      “Is it here?” I asked. Is there a Greek version of the Asclepius in the library?”

     “Not Greek,” he replied. “And not in the library. The book you want is in the caves half a mile from here.”

     “Take me there.”

     “Finish your wife’s statue.”

     I looked back at Amunet and nodded.

     Over the next four weeks I rarely saw Abercrombie. I’d stopped eating with the monks. Amunet had become my sole companion. I’d begun with her head, progressing through her slender throat to her delicate shoulders and the subtle curve of each breast. The block of alabaster gave way to Amunet’s small body, her well-defined hips and the slender strength of her thighs. The block had never really been large enough for the carving, but somehow it worked, and in the end Amunet sat before me, an angel in white alabaster. I’d always been my own worst critic, never satisfied with the work that I produced. But as I stood there in the moments following her completion, I felt both a sense of pride and unsettling terror in my creation.

     Abercrombie marveled at the gentle curves and contours I’d carved in stone. He was shocked to see the life brought out by the color of the block. My final sanding had removed the stone’s matt whiteness and produced deep satin-cloud forms and rust-colored stains that were both alluring and terribly sad. He seemed startled by the anguish in her eyes. “It’s as though you’ve carved her very soul,” he whispered.

V

     The caves, like the saline lakes that littered Shee-Hyt, were laced with salt. Athos and I had placed Amunet on a small cart and led her through the long narrow tunnel that led from the monastery to these somber caves. I listened to the strange monk’s whispered psalms while we struggled with the cart in the darkness. He followed each psalm with an antiphon, a simple chant that gave the key to the liturgical and mystical meaning of each psalm. I remembered Abercrombie's story about Macarius and the tunnel and I counted each new antiphon until Athos had completed his twenty-fourth.

     His whispered words and deep, moving songs had led us here, to the cave of Saint Macarius, with its ruined wall paintings and jagged saline shadows. Athos had prepared the cave in advance. I saw tools spread out across the floor, resin and bandages, an obsidian knife and several amulets whose meaning escaped me. I did recognize them for what they represented, though. These were the tools and talisman used in the Egyptian mummification ritual.

     “The knife is symbolic,” Athos said. “The other items are required. Hand me the book.”

     The book was the Asclepius. It wasn't the Greek version I'd come looking for. It was written in Coptic, a translation from the glyphic language of the ancients. I held the text in my hands. The scent of dust and decay filled my nostrils and made my nose itch. I was no longer certain that the magic would work, that it was real and not simply the fevered legacy of madness. “Madness begets madness,” I whispered.

     “Yes,” Athos said. His voice barely masked the sadness in his eyes. “It is madness, Mister Boyle. There are many things in this world best forgotten, demons best left alone. It isn't too late.”

     I closed my eyes and she lay there, waiting for me. “She was having an affair,” I said. “I was working for a book collector in Cologne, a man named Heinrich Hess. He was an occultist, a madman in his own right. But he was rich, as rich as he was handsome. And he was charming, oh so charming. I brought Amunet with me once, to meet him. She'd always wanted to mingle with the upper class. She was a dancing girl, you know? Before she found her voice, she would dance half-naked in the streets of Cairo.”

     Athos sat back on his heels. He'd picked up the obsidian dagger, but he remained silent, as if taking my confession.

     “He was smitten with her. I saw that immediately. It was something I'd come to expect. Amunet was breathtaking. I couldn't blame him for wanting her any more than I could her for being so beautiful.”

     “How long did it last?”

     “Months,” I said. “I'm still not sure when the affair began. But I do know when it ended.”

     “You confronted them?”

     I nodded. “She denied it, at first. When she realized the depths of my knowledge she laughed. I was a cuckold, she said, a fool. She told me she was in love with him, that she wanted a divorce.”

     “What did you do?”

     “What could I do? After everything she'd said and done, I still loved Amunet with every ounce of my heart. So I blamed Hess for everything. He’d seduced her, stolen her from me, and I would see him suffer for it. I wanted him dead, but I never meant to kill him. I only meant to burn his books, to destroy his passion the way that he'd destroyed mine.”

     “But?”

     “They were there, Heinrich and my wife. They were asleep in the library. I didn’t see them until it was too late to save either. Months later I remembered the book Hess had shown me. The one he'd rebound. It included a copy of the Asclepius and as I’d looked through it he’d told me about the secrets it contained.”

     “The art of imprisoning spirits in statues,” Athos whispered. “And so you came here. You came to put your demons to bed, Mister Boyle.”

     I nodded.

     “Wait for me in the tunnel.”

     “I want to see this, Athos. I need to see this.”

     “It's better that you don't. This magic is dangerous and unpredictable. And it is Egyptian, Robert. It was never meant for your world.”

     I left the grotto, reluctantly, and found a place to sit in the corridor beyond. I listened to the whispered prayers and incantations that, while muffled, seemed a mixture of Christian and Egyptian and fuelled both my fear and my curiosity. After several hours I fell asleep, my mind plagued by lucid dreams in which Amunet’s cold, alabaster lips pressed against mine, stealing the breath from my laboring lungs.

     I awoke to the echo of a sharp scream that lingered in the shadowed stillness of the cave. “Athos?”

     The silence that followed was broken by a strangled groan.

     “Athos?” I stepped forward and was swallowed by darkness. Something heavy struck my chest before falling to the ground. I knelt down to and ran my hand over hair and the damp features of a human face. It was a head, severed at the neck and slick with blood. I screamed and scrambled backwards, away from the grotto and its terrifying darkness.

      “Robert,” she whispered. It was her voice, Amunet’s. She was calling out mockingly from the darkness. “Help me Robert. I'm frightened.”

     I watched in horror as she stepped from the shadows, her bone-white face alive with sinister intent. Her naked breasts were doused with blood and the obsidian dagger that she carried dripped the last of Athos’ life upon the salt-stained floor. The malignant sadness in her eyes still shamed me. I’d done more than simply carve it there. I’d burned that sadness into her soul. “Why?” she asked.

     “Because I loved you,” I whispered.

     Amunet laughed. “But I never loved you. Look at what you’ve done, Robert. You’ve murdered my soul. Did you think that things would be different now?”

     “I never meant to hurt you,” I cried. “I never meant to kill either of you. I only meant to burn his books. He took something precious from me. I sought to do the same.”

     “Henri took nothing from you, Robert. I was never yours.”

     “You were my wife.”

     “In name alone,” she said. “My heart was his. My soul was his the very moment that we met.”

     “I loved you,” I whispered. I found no other words in my throat but those three.

Amunet laughed and raised the dagger. “You took my soul, Robert. Now I would have your heart.”

            I turned and ran. While I ran I whispered all the psalms and prayers I knew. But the last words I whispered in that tunnel, the last words I'd spoken since that day, were from the Asclepius. “And heaven is not found too high for him, for he measures it by his sagacity, as though it were in his reach.”

VI

The room was lined with latticed windows so closely woven that they shut out much of the sun, and by vibrantly colored glass windows set within rims of fine plaster. An escape from the oppressive heat of the desert winds, the ornate room had become my tomb. I sank deeper into the cushions and languidly dreamed of death. It was the inevitability of death that promised release from Guilt’s unyielding grasp.

Voices crept up the narrow staircase, startling the long, slender pipe from my lips. The soft light, heavy with the heady scent of opium and human sweat seemed to swallow me whole. I watched from my shadows as Brother Bas crossed the marbled floor, each step disturbing the dust that had settled there in his absence. “You have a visitor,” he said.

Despite the blistering sun, my wife's skin had a deathly-white pallor. She was dressed in silk-cotton robes and as she knelt down beside my bed she offered me a slightly sardonic smile.”

“Your friend hasn't spoken in weeks,” Bas said. “Lord Abercrombie found him outside the monastery walls. He was delirious, confused. He was muttering something about his wife.”

    I pulled a cushion closer to my chest. The pain I now felt had been born of shame and the heartache of an unrequited love. I thought about the Asclepius, and the demon I'd carved in white alabaster. I thought about Amunet. About the night we’d met and how we’d kissed following her breathless performance in Verdi’s Aida. She had taken my heart with her voice. And in return I’d taken her soul.

     “What happened to Brother Athos?” Bas asked me.

     I heard his question, I even considered warning him. But she hadn't come for him. And my mind was already slipping...