The Absolute, page 18
With time, the strict rigidity of the septimium ends up affecting the liveliness of the spectacle, which comes to be replaced by new attractions. The spot starts to empty out; now the beggars’ chants, Syrian songs and Arabic melodies are no longer heard; the charmers have taken their snakes elsewhere. In this solitude, the acrobats remain firm merely to serve as recipients for dog urine and rat bites. When the Second Fair takes place, no one remembers to inform them, although the empty plot is mere meters away from the Institute patio, which is bright with lights, sparkling with fireworks and filled with the cheerful laughter of spectators. In any case, the acrobats aren’t in the mood to rebuke such forgetfulness; strictly speaking, they’re dead. Some bodies have been swapped out for life-sized porcelain reproductions, taken from the holds of boats bringing new contingents of hussars. One day, a simoom blows through unexpectedly, and the glorious metaphor of France’s love for Egypt is torn to shreds in the warm wind.
9
What does Napoleon Bonaparte want? What is Andrei Deliuskin looking for when he joins the ranks? The answer to the first question is simple and has already been given: the future Emperor hopes to recuperate Joséphine by impressing her with his exploits. Andrei, in contrast, is trying to forget Alicia Varmon. Or is he studying in situ the most extreme material form taken by the chessboard of sand—that is, politics? If so, what scenario presents itself to my great-grandfather’s vistas of thought as he attempts to interpret his age? Perhaps the matter will be clarified in time. For the moment . . .
Napoleon. Sentimental Life of the Emperor. With his head full of rumors about Joséphine’s infidelities (“the things Hippolyte Charles says about you, my general,” et cetera, et cetera), Bonaparte commits the imprudence of writing a letter to his brother Louis, grumbling about his wife:
. . . The passion for glory has disappeared. I no longer have any reason to live. I’m fed up with human nature. At twenty-nine years old, sono finito. I wanted to lay the world at her feet, and she thinks only of her perfumed idiot. What is this woman doing to me? I don’t even know why I married her. She’s a far cry from my ideal and she thinks like a seamstress. I don’t even like her body odor . . . (et cetera, et cetera).
The letter is intercepted by Nelson’s fleet during the crossing of the Mediterranean, when the schooner transporting it is sunk, and the text is reproduced on the front page of all the London newspapers.
For Bonaparte, such indiscretion is exasperating:
“What does private life have to do with war? On this occasion, the British do no honor to their fame as gentlemen,” he shouts, kicking the door frames.
But the conduct of the enemy press was foreseeable. What Napoleon truly doesn’t anticipate is the reaction of Joséphine, who, in the aftermath of this ridicule before the public opinion of Europe, resolves to make his life impossible. She sends him an average of three letters a week in which she accuses him of the worst crimes, while she claims innocence. These dispatches unsettle the Corsican. What would happen if Nelson were to capture the letters, the ones she wrote . . . ? Also, who should he believe? The general gossip that brands him as a cuckold? Or those tear-soaked pages? (Joséphine strews them with water dispensed from an eye dropper.) At the start, to hide his confusion, Bonaparte responds by affecting a scornful, imperial tone. But the mistreatment doesn’t calm Joséphine and, on the contrary, sends her into a state of vengeful fury, full of delirious certainty about the truth of her own assertions; she answers with a torrent of insults. Having never expected to become the object of such a frontal attack, he immediately gives way on all counts and begs her forgiveness. “How could I let myself be led by the winds of defamation to believe that you, precisely you, my only, my adored one, would be capable of . . . ?” “I kiss your feet, I lick your fingers, I submit myself to you as a pitch-black slave, I am your dog . . .” et cetera, et cetera. Anyhow. It’s not long before the French fleet comes and goes day and night along the Mediterranean, less to supply the Corsican with fresh troops, provisions and arms than to keep alive the route of a correspondence that torments him. Soon, even this trickle of humiliations is not enough. Having grown used to the role of the lover who repents inflicting on his chaste bride the offense of an imaginary groping, Napoleon racks his brains for an adequate symbol to represent his desire for atonement. Since he knows better than anyone his wife’s monetary avarice and childish fascination for trinkets, jewels and antiquities, he dispatches certain shipments of archaeological objects for her amusement, whose natural destination would have been the Egyptology halls of a museum yet to be created—the Louvre—but that through this act of sentimental corruption, end up at his beloved’s mansion. Magical, lapis lazuli scarab beetles; miniature, gold-plated pyramids; marble altars; formulas for spells; carvings of the sun god Aten; necklaces with the image of Amun; sapphire seals; carbuncle earrings; perfumed thuribles and mortuary trunks set with precious stones. Objects that leave through the back door almost as quickly as they come in through the front, exchanged for cold hard cash that swells the accounts of the “offended.” Despite these brisk dealings, a few knickknacks worthy of Joséphine’s garish poor taste remain gleaming on her fingers, fastened to her dresses, tangled in her hair, scattered over the chocolate-colored Chinese silk sheets of the ninny Hippolyte.
Things went on like this for months. But even though the outpouring of gifts didn’t let up, Napoleon continued to harbor the exasperating suspicion that Joséphine was taking him for an idiot. Naturally, he had no firsthand testimony that endorsed or refuted his wife’s betrayal, beyond rumors; among other reasons because she’d surrounded herself with extremely faithful and well-paid servants who wouldn’t open their mouths this side of the grave. Consumed as much by his need to know as by his fear of discovering the truth, he whipped up a scheme to introduce the most silent of spies into the heart of this court of the afterlife: a mummy.
Obviously, in this case, it would be a fake mummy. Quiet. Incorruptible. To be placed in the matrimonial bedroom. Pure eyes and memory. Alive. One of his men.
The one concerned with the details is God, not a future Emperor. Once he’d dreamed up the idea, Napoleon delegated the matter of locating a serene or resigned soldier, one who would accept the mission imposed on him, to his assistant Colonel Roger Klab; for his part, Klab thought he had too much on his plate to occupy himself, so he transferred the matter to Lieutenant Vallois, who left it in the hands of Sergeant Mirabeau, who chose one of his more slow-witted men: the hussar Patrice Daudet.
Of course, it wasn’t easy to make him understand that he’d been chosen to stay in Joséphine’s bedroom with the aim of gathering reliable information about its occupant’s activity, and it was even harder to dissuade him of the outlandish idea that his sergeant was asking him to sleep with Bonaparte’s wife. Once this had been achieved, Daudet meekly accepted the possibility that the bandages were a kind of uniform and didn’t even think to ask how long he would have to remain silent and standing with eyes open, or when he would be relieved of this labor.
Since Napoleon wanted urgent results, the mission was given top priority. The flagship, L’Orient, waited in the dock for arrangements to be completed. The bandages set aside for fabrication of the mummy were submitted to a bath of mercury and sulfur salts, and at the moment the spy was wrapped up, the precaution was taken to snip little openings at the level of his eyes and nostrils, a method also followed on the front side of the sarcophagus—this one authentic, from a looting of Thutmose I’s tomb. As a preventative measure against defecation, the hussar was submitted to a series of enemas, but in the haste to carry out orders, some elemental matters of logistics were neglected, such that only a short time after having begun the voyage, poor Daudet, squeezed tight by the bandages, stunned by the darkness and lack of air in the sarcophagus, dizzy from the ship’s movement, suffocating from the noxious smells in the hold, and already afflicted by the lack of food and drink, started to feel a certain uneasiness regarding his fate; as the days went by, this uneasiness turned to fear, then to anguish, and at last to pure and simple desperation, which manifested itself in the form of shouts, moans, cries, howls and every manner of demand for help, which of course no one heard and which went about diminishing in intensity until death arrived. The fact is that, due to these efforts at survival, or maybe due to the insufficiently developed purgative techniques of the age, as soon as the sarcophagus was unloaded at the port, Noiset, the one responsible for inspecting the consignment and transferring it to its destination, was able to judge by the smell that the contents had decomposed. Working with independence of judgment, instead of bringing it to Joséphine (who would immediately have sent it to be tossed in the dung heap), he lifted the cover, applied an injection of formaldehyde to the dead man, and, after purifying him by spritzing the contents of a bottle of cheap perfume inside, offered the lot to the owner of a circus just arrived in Marseilles . . . none other than Giovanni Battista Belzoni, or Belinzone, a giant over two meters tall with an impressive musculature, known as the Patagonian Samson.
As soon as he got wind of this bargain, Belzoni glimpsed the luminous appearance of a creative possibility: the mummy would add a new number to his spectacle of strength, beauty and ability. But the smell of rotten tinned food that escaped from inside the coffin! Did he have to change its bandages and give it a good immersion bath with scented salts . . . ? Or . . . Or perhaps . . . And if instead . . . Belzoni grasped the air with his fingers in triumph. Castanets. Nutcracker.
First days of January 1799. Night. The Belinzone Circus tent is packed. News has spread through the whole port city that the giant will present something marvelous. The crowd fills all the seats, throngs into the aisles. Ladies sigh with pleasure in anticipated enjoyment from the vision of the New Hercules’s bronzed body. All vibrates with excitement. The charm of preambles: a juggler makes five oranges spin on his nose; one cripple pursues another through the crowd, striking his head with a rubber hammer. Voices are heard clamoring for Belzoni. The one named makes his appearance only when he judges that the racket has grown irresistible. Applause. He’s half-naked, barely covered by some leather shorts that reach halfway down his thighs. “Studmuffin!” Belzoni winks and strokes the beard that spills like a river of diabolical sperm over his muscularly multifaceted chest. Two assistants carry on their shoulders a metal structure that contains him in a harness. Now another eight men come out who attach the ends to their waists and fall to the ground: Belzoni is the erect corolla, his assistants the fallen petals. The colossus tenses his muscles until they take on exaggerated shapes, then begins to lift up the structure. Slowly, slowly. His assistants now float a few centimeters from the ground, their arms limp as if they’ve fainted; but Belzoni hasn’t yet finished his stunt. On his tiptoes, he begins to spin on an imaginary axis; and if at the start his chained slaves cloak him with their bodies, wrapping themselves around him, seconds later, as they take on speed, they begin to fling away. The ropes that join them to the harnesses grow tense and whip through the air, and the assistants, transformed into spinning tops, splay out their hands, stretch out their legs and give howls of feigned terror. The audience goes wild with enthusiasm. Belzoni stops, and the assistants collapse to the ground, toppling like bowling pins. Trumpets sound. The Patagonian Samson disappears from the ring.
Intermezzo. After a couple of trifles (acrobatics, horsewomen, a human cannonball who shoots through the air without losing his tricorn hat), Mademoiselle Legrini appears. Belzoni has hired her as much for his own consumption (every night he indulges in those beautiful and symmetrical toned thighs, which imprison his neck and bring him to deliriums nearing asphyxia) as to generate in the audience the suspicion that his circus breeds artists able to challenge him for dramatic supremacy. Obviously, the contest is illusory, since what really happens at each performance is a strategic distribution of attractions by gender. While ladies swoon for a primordial macho, men are brought to the point of euphoria and vertigo by the sight of a dancer’s legs.
Mademoiselle Legrini’s number . . . extraordinary. At the end of it, silence. Coughs. Hurrahs. An empty stage. One minute, two. Then “Firecracker,” the dwarf, enters the ring wearing a dress coat and carrying a ladder. The audience whistles, applauds, makes the usual jokes about reversal of size. Making use of the ladder, “Firecracker” sets alight one of the side torches (dangerously close to the red curtains); then he crosses the stage and does the same at the other end. Left and right. The flickering flames are a call to reflection. The moment grows solemn. “Firecracker” leans in the direction of the public, blows out the wick and waves goodbye. The smoke magically spreads through the atmosphere and covers everything; at the same time the moan of a badly played violin is heard. An eastern melody. Over the music floats a hoarse, tremendously masculine voice (Belzoni).
“She’s spent more than two thousand years in eternal sleep, guarded from the harassment of profaners. Her dwelling was a tomb of rectangular stone. But today we dare trouble this lady’s well-deserved rest for the benefit of knowledge and science. Ladies and gentlemen, just arrived from the Near East and prepared to reveal to us the Enigma of the Other World, with you tonight, Nofretamon, the most beautiful of Egyptian princesses!”
Belzoni enters the ring carrying the sarcophagus that Noiset sold him. He leans it upright against a stand. The light from the torches, unpredictable and partial, carves out areas of shadow. Belzoni’s smile is a grimace. He himself looks like Baphomet. Now he whispers:
“This is the moment of your life you have to mint in your minds like a unique coin; this is the moment you will choose to tell your grandchildren about. Today, my friends, for the price of admission, you are about to witness the miracle of miracles: the resurrection of a mummy.”
Having said this, and pretending not to notice the exclamations (horror, incredulity, admiration), Belzoni passes a caressing hand over the hieroglyphs that scatter the length and breadth of the sarcophagus:
“According to what can be read in these inscriptions, Nofretamon lived for fifteen years in the city of Thebes, and then died suddenly of an unknown illness; she was the second princess of the dynasty of . . . And today we’ll bring her back to life. But I need a collaborator! Does anybody in the audience want to volunteer?”
Before anyone else, a teenager shoots up a delicate white hand:
“Me!”
“You? Very well, my boy. Come on up. What’s your name?”
“Jean-François Champollion.”
“Perfect, Jean-François. How small you look by my side!” (General laughter.) “Well then. Now I’m going to pronounce a magic spell that lets me enter the fourth astral state, where I’ll make contact with the spirit of this girl. Yes, Jean-François: the soul that two thousand years ago animated this gorgeous bandaged creature will surrender to the influence of my words and leave the heavens to breathe life once again into this body . . . When this happens, my dear boy, I ask you to separate the lid from the sarcophagus, and if it’s not too heavy for you” (to the public) “—because he looks a little scrawny!—” (more laughter) “you can lay it on the sand. All right?”
“All right,” says Champollion.
“Good, then let’s begin. Ready. Set. Go!”
Belzoni closes his eyes, blinks and lets a mumbo jumbo of pure vocals and consonants flow from his firm lips. Then he rolls his eyes upward, says something like “caramba” and starts to shiver; his entire body trembles, his muscles jump, and he seems to melt and go solid at the same time, like a kind of firm gelatin. Champollion pulls the lid off the sarcophagus and sets it aside. Belzoni, bathed in the sweat of his success, comes out of his self-absorption and proceeds to unwrap the mummy. The first thing that appears to public view is a black wig, cut in Ancient Empire style, which leaves half the forehead free and from its sides reveals some uneven, rebellious locks. The eyelids of the deceased are painted with bitumen or black China ink or antimony (whatever can be got at the druggist); the cheeks are of a spectral paleness; the nose is perfect and lightly aquiline; the lips are full, abundant and quivering with life. Although they’ve rehearsed the number many times, Mademoiselle Legrini can barely resist the temptation to laugh, and contains herself only out of fear of her master. When Belzoni reaches the level of her breasts, just barely covered by a few shiny-bright tinplate leaves, the dancer shudders with excitement.
“You’re coming . . . coming to life,” Belzoni says in a false murmur, loud enough to be heard by the last row. “Life is coming to you!”
The bandages fall away. Legrini is revealed like a supernatural apparition, a beauty not of this world.
“Tell me your name, I beg you!”
The woman opens her eyes, summoned by the spell.
“I am Nofretamon, princess of Thebes. Have I returned? Where am I now? Am I alive?”
Mademoiselle Legrini raises her arms. Applause breaks out. Belzoni takes one of the mummy’s hands and greets the audience. Then he leans over to acknowledge Champollion with a condescending hug, as the latter uses the moment to whisper in his ear:
