Demon Box

The vision of this priceless prize brought him unsteadily to his feet. He stood weaving a moment, his chin trembling, then spread his arms as though he addressed all creation.

“Something is owed us. The debt is clearly implied by the scar of its erasure. We’ve been shortchanged and the books have been brazenly juggled. It’s obvious to even the densest bleeding auditor: they are trying to cover up our fall! A whole long column has been rubbed out and written over and the embezzlement assiduously concealed by fraudulent bookkeepers from Herodotus to Arnold Toynbee! But for all their artfulness the debt still shows, a bloody eighteen-and-a-half-minute buzzing gap marking the removal of something important—no, of something imperative!—to this court’s search for our dues. How much has been pilfered from us, mates? How much of our minds, our souls? How is it that the same species responsible for that great temple out there is now administering this bloody bushwah tourist trap featuring flat beer and unpredictable hoodlums strolling the grounds outside my window wearing dark glasses and revolvers?”

He had found his focus again. His voice rang through the lobby like Olivier in a Shakespearean tirade.

“I demand an explanation! As a human being I am owed an accurate accounting, by the heavens, owed an honest audit!”

It was a cry for the benefit of all the shortchanged everywhere, spoken out of a caldron of social outrage and cosmic inspiration and flat beer. He did not let his eyes drop back to us. He turned on his heel and strode from the lobby in his stateliest stagger. There was actual clapping.

When the reviews of the Englishman’s speech subsided I hoped to find out more about their ray results, but the mention of the Mena House’s new gun-toting tenants had led instead to the topic of Arafat. Not a man much loved, I gathered; even the Moslem students had bad things to say about the Palestinian guerrilla leader. The German was scathing.

“Storm trooper at heart, a filthy terrorist with a limousine.” He took off his glasses and massaged the bridge of his nose. “I was at the Munich games when they murdered those fine young Israeli athletes. Wrestlers, as I remember. Filthy! I will confess to you all: If given the opportunity I would sprinkle ground glass in his Turkish coffee when they wheel the cart past in the hall.”

The American said he would use LSD instead. “It’d be a gasser watching Yasir on a bummer. Clean up his Karma, too, heh heh. If we just knew where to get a hit…”

I excused myself and bought a beer and carried it back here to my cabana. I suppose I could have given them my Murine bottle; I’m sure not using it. But I’m against dosing. We just don’t have the right to launder other people’s Karmas, no matter how filthy. Besides, those desert gunsels? Who knows what they might do with the jams kicked out. Watching them prowl around with their revolver butts showing, I too find myself thankful their prophet forbade them booze: they’re wild enough sober. As the Englishman said, unpredictable.

October 27, Sunday. It’s all looking less and less resultful to Jacky. This morning we found a fence had been put up around the Sphinx.

“Little like closing the barn door,” Jacky observed, “after the Turks have already shot off the Sphinx’s nose.”

Ignoring the mixed metaphor, the big cat-thing kept on glowering, over our heads past the squalor of Nazlet el-Samman, toward the Nile.

This afternoon things look a bit better to Jack. He’s struck up an acquaintance with Kefoozalum, even had room service bring them two rum Cokes.

“She’s not a Moslem, she’s a Copt. The Copts are a sect of Egyptian Christians, tolerated because of their tiny size and their seniority. In fact they claim to be the first Christians, the people who cared for Joseph, Mary, and the Kid while they were in Egypt escaping Herod. Some even say they are the last remnants of the Essenes, thus actually preceding Christ as Christians by dint of second sight and signs and visions supposedly indigenous to their faith.”

“That could explain her stare,” I mused; the traditional Moslem woman is never supposed to look into any man’s eyes but her father’s, brother’s, or husband’s. “So frank and forward.”

“Could be,” Jacky said. “She buses into Cairo every Sunday morning to attend church, the very church, she told me, that housed the holy family twenty centuries ago. A place most miraculous. Just a few years ago, she said, a workman saw a woman on the roof. He went inside and got the Coptic minister, who came out and ordered her down. Then he noticed a light emitting from her: ‘Holy Mary Mother of God,’ he exclaims, ‘it’s the Virgin!’ Or something to that effect.

“Anyway, the whole congregation came out and saw her, and next Sunday saw her again. The next Sunday the churchyard was packed—Moslems, Christians, agnostics—everybody saw her! It went on for two months. Thousands witnessed her weekly appearance.”