Demon полностью

She moved farther to my left to gaze intently into the exhibit case, and I saw the object of her interest: an ivory comb. For several moments, she stood unmoving, her expression thoughtful, her lips pursed. And then she tilted her head and said with what I thought was sadness, “I knew the woman this belonged to. She used to sing to the moon at night, and I used to stop to listen to her, this human who seemed to see in that pale light the very thing I did.”

I could not help but wonder if some accident had befallen that woman—the 2200 BC equivalent of being run down by a car. Just then it hit me: I stood shoulder to shoulder with a being older than any item in this room. Or the next. Older, even, than the very soil it was built upon.

She touched the Plexiglas. “How odd that I should share sentiments with a human. It was, I think, the most kinship I have ever felt with one of your kind.” Her fingers fell away. “Of course, I realized sometime later that it had not been the actual woman I was drawn to, but those qualities within her that were the earmark of El. In the poignant yearning of her psyche, in the loveliness of her voice, I had heard El.”

She fell quiet after that, her lips moving slightly, emitting no sound. And I realized that she mouthed the words to a song.

“You said El wasn’t finished,” I prompted.

She sighed. “No, he wasn’t. In a sudden, great blow to my prince, he gave the animals to the man and told him to rule over them. Do you understand what I’m saying, Clay?” She leaned against the case, her face turned up toward mine. “Gave them to the clay man! He brought them to the man and gave him the power to name them. And the man, oblivious to what he did in usurping Lucifer’s rightful place, did it. But it got worse.” She shifted her coat, lifting a finger for emphasis. “For every animal there was a counterpart.” She added a second finger and turned her fingers this way and that. “But for the man—nothing. Naming the animals took a long time. Caring for the garden was no small task. The man needed help. And he was lonely. Communing with nature is only novel for so long.”

“He had El,” I offered, wondering that such pious-sounding words should come out of my mouth.

“True, and that ought to have been enough. But El is extravagant. And what was good enough for us positively paled beside what he was willing to do for the mud race.” There was a strange, ironic tinge to her voice.

“And so, like your bakers, who pinch off dough from one loaf and set it aside to leaven another, El took out a part of this man—no flesh, but fine, sleek bone—and crafted a new thing.” She moved on toward the next room but glanced over her shoulder as though to see if I followed. I noticed that the smooth skin bore a small tattoo: a falling star. “And she rose up, a counterpart to the man, the female to his male.”

She smoothed her hair back with her hand, her fingertips brushing absently against the side of her neck, pausing to trace the line of it, to feel, perhaps, the faint pulse there. “They were as regal a pair as could ever hope to spring from the mud. Both unique from all creation, both uniquely created in person by God and after his own image. I actually forgot, as El gave them the green things to live on and told them to fill the earth, that they had been born of the dirt.”

She stopped to check her watch. I was accustomed, by now, to this ritual—and to the fact that it might signal her imminent departure. She tapped it as I had seen the demon do in the taxi with the dashboard clock. When it seemed to work to her satisfaction, she looked up at me.

“And?” I hated the way she made me wait on her. But I did it. I did it because I wanted as much to take back to my desk, to my expanding stack of pages, as possible. I did it in the hope of having more from which to glean her purpose, her unspoken reason in sharing her story in the first place.

She shrugged. “He sat back, called it good, and rested.”

I waited.

She waited.

I raised my brows. “And?”

Her mouth curved into a smile. “You think I’m pretty, don’t you.”

THE “MUMMY” ROOM WAS dimly lit, miniature track lights shedding halogen pools onto giant sarcophagi and burial masks that were never meant to emerge from darkness. It was cooler, too, the change in light and temperature making for an appropriately tomblike atmosphere. Along the far wall, a small pantheon of gods stood sentry over the dead: Isis, Anubis, Maat, Thoth. Sections of an actual burial chamber adorned the adjacent wall, etched with symbols to protect the dead.

Thinking of the Arabic calligraphy and the amulets to ward against evil in the Nubian room, I wondered what the deceased had used to protect themselves while they lived.

Lucian sauntered through the display of sarcophagi, caressing the Plexiglas cases in a way I found thoroughly unsettling.