The Reading of the Will

Everyone expected a formal reading of the will, but nothing of the kind happened. Three days after Ernest Curtin's unforeshadowed death from a heart attack, his son Christopher opened the safe-deposit box and found it, wedged between some A. T. & T. certificates, ridges of U. S. Steel, a pile of Du Pont, Government bonds. The estate was in a very viable condition. There were also some old school report cards, some out-of-date family jewelry, lists of holdings, financial footnotes.

Christopher pulled the will out from this welter and unfolded it. There were two witnesses with him, a Mr. Williams of the bank's trust department, who was to be one of the executors of the estate, and Christopher's uncle, George Curtin, the other.

He began swiftly scanning it: "... to my beloved wife ... bequeath ... irrevocable ... trust ... my sole legatee ... she shall have in addition ... trust ... furthermore ... all monies...."

"Give it to him," said George Curtin, indicating Mr. Williams.

Christopher went on quickly scanning the document, which, in view of the shoals of assets that had surrounded it, was surprisingly short; as nearly as he could make out from the swiftness of his reading and the legalisms of the writing, absolutely everything had been left to his mother.

"Give it to Mr. Williams," repeated his uncle a shade more impatiently.

Christopher stared at the will for a moment or two and then took a sidelong look at his uncle. "Do you mind if I read my father's will?" he asked evenly.

"You should already know the gist," George Curtin answered with a shrug.

"I'm interested in the wording," Christopher said through set teeth.

The two other men proceeded to spread out the securities on top of the oval mahogany table in this private conference room provided by the First National Bank of Connecticut at Hartford for certain major transactions of its major accounts.

All the stock certificates crackled wealthily as they were unfolded and sorted. None of them was in the name of either Christopher or his older brother, Ernest, Jr.; all were either part of their father's estate or already owned by their mother. There were a few flukes, defaulted highway bonds, expropriated foreign companies; but most were as solid as anything could be. Ernest Curtin's idea of taking a flier had been to buy into the Columbia Broadcasting System or Trans World Airlines.

"I'm hungry," said Christopher suddenly.

"Shall I send out for something?" suggested Mr. Williams. "Unless you would like to go out for lunch and go on later...."

"Let's go on," said George Curtin. "I'd like a sandwich and coffee, though."

Food was ordered and by the time it arrived, the tangible results of Ernest Curtin's much-admired and envied life were arranged in seven rather small piles on the shining solid-mahogany tabletop. He had, really, devoted his life to this moment: that these seven piles of paper would be lying here on this table.

There was one very singular remaining item. It was a large manila envelope addressed to Ernie, who was far away, sick with hepatitis in Cairo, where he worked as Middle East correspondent for World Geography magazine and also, his brother sometimes suspected, as a spy. He presumed that if that was true, he was a spy for the United States; but Ernie being Ernie, he couldn't be certain.

In this conventional, orderly, deeply conservative group of documents, the envelope was as conspicuous as a red flag. What could it mean, with its nervously scrawled inscription, its urgency, its secretiveness? The three men spent a great deal of time dealing with the other papers, shuffling them and rearranging them, drawing up lists of them, checking and rechecking what they were already perfectly sure of: that the estate was in immaculate order.

At last they turned their attention to the manila envelope.

"Addressed to Ernest," said George Curtin.

"Yes."

"Of course, your father never imagined Ernest wouldn't be here at a time like this."

"No, he couldn't have foreseen that."

"As a matter of fact, he did," put in Mr. Williams. He indicated the words written by the deceased beneath the large, scrawled "To My Son Ernest Curtin, Jr.--Strictly Private and Strictly Personal--To Be Opened Privately Only By Him." Underneath, in an only somewhat less emphatic script, was written, "In the event he predeceases me, the envelope is to be immediately burned. This is my express final wish, which I solemnly instruct be honored by my heirs and executors." And beneath that, written in all its familiar, hurried forcefulness, was the signature.

"But, of course," said Christopher irritably, "that isn't foreseeing the present situation at all."

"No, not this specific situation," murmured Mr. Williams.

George Curtin had picked up the envelope and was holding it before him, turning it slowly back and forth. "If he doesn't come for the funeral, we'll send it to him, special delivery and registered, and so on."

"To Egypt?" said Christopher.

George Curtin just looked at his nephew in his formidable, ex-football-lineman-with-brains way.

"You can't send anything as confidential as that through the mails to Egypt," Christopher went on.

The fixed irritation of George Curtin's face reminded Christopher very much of the way his brother had contemplated him from time to time. Finally, the uncle said flatly, "Why not?"

Always better informed than anyone else in his family, Christopher had learned some years before to underplay this advantage, if that was what it was. In a great many respects, it had seemed to him a drawback. "Egypt's a military dictatorship," he murmured hurriedly. "Everything's censored. Who knows what's in there? We might not want it read."

To cover his ignorance about Egypt, George Curtin attacked on the other point, Christopher noticed without surprise. "What could be in there that's so bloody special, such a secret?"

Christopher chuckled. "Maybe Ernie and I are adopted."

George Curtin put the envelope down on the table. "Do you have any objection to sending even that information to Egypt? Some wog finds out you're adopted, so what? I was at the hospital the day you were born and I was there the day Ernie was born and so I sort of don't think that's probably what's in there."

Christopher took a one-beat pause, which he knew would infuriate his uncle, having gotten tired of his policy of appeasement, and then said, "It's too risky. Ernie's got his job and his family and everything in Egypt. They throw foreigners out all the time, on any pretext. They expropriate their property. Who knows what's in there? It could be anything. It's too risky. We could get Ernie into a tremendous amount of trouble."

There was a silence and then George Curtin muttered, "It's just something about 'Take care of your mother.'"

After another, longer silence, Mr. Williams said encouragingly, "These highway bonds here ..." and uncle and nephew turned resolutely to examine the highway bonds.

• • •

The funeral had been postponed two days, in the hope that Ernest, Jr., would be well enough to fly home.

It was three in the afternoon when Christopher got home. The house, capacious Colonial Connecticut in design, was choked by banks and mounds and cascades of flowers, so intolerably odorous that their fumes transformed the atmosphere of this respectable family place into that of, it seemed to him, some Oriental love garden, some Persian terrace, corrupt and drugging. It was as inappropriate and as sickening as possible. His father's body, which he instinctively and absolutely would not approach, certain that he would find not his father, not the body of his father but some cosmetician's violation, was in the living room. The house was also full of excruciatingly helpful friends. "He looks more rested today," one lady said to him. Stricken, Christopher could only stare at her. Then someone came up out of the hubbub to say that there was an overseas telephone call. He went into the library and locked the door. It was Ernie calling from Cairo, his voice coming through very faintly, squeezed by being transmitted 5000 miles, the volume rising and fading, as tenuous. Christopher suddenly reflected, as tenuous as life.

"... There," he heard his brother yelling. "I need to be!"

"Are you coming!" he yelled back.

"I can't come. The doctor here absolutely says no. I feel ugrah. ..."

"What!"

Barbara's voice came threading to him across the world. "He's too ill to travel. He just can't. He just can't."

Then Ernie's voice again: "How's Mother?"

"She's going to be all right." Then he heard himself blurt, "Dad left everything to her."

"What?"

"She inherited everything."

"I can't hear you."

"You will."

"For Christ's sake, can't you speak louder? I'm in Egypt!"

"Mother got Everything."

Silence ensued in Egypt. Then he heard Ernie say, his voice as thin as a needle, "I hope you ... taking ... arrangements."

"There's a special letter for you from Dad. How shall we get it to you, now we know you can't come? I was afraid you couldn't."

"What's in the letter?"

"It's confidential to you. I don't know what's in it."

"I hope you know what you're doing about everything. I hate ... so sick."

"Take it easy. Everything's all right. Get better soon. I'm going to get Mother now to talk to you."

"I hope you know what you're doing about everything there."

"Get better soon. Goodbye."

The funeral took place two days later in the Congregational Church. It was well attended, for a funeral, and it helped a little. The fact that funerals happened so often, that there was an age-old formula of words and a prescribed service, immemorially performed and reperformed, helped a little.

But then came the snow-sopped cemetery, the casket, the flowers, the tent, fake grass, minister, handful of mourners. It was intolerable that this was happening at all; and at the same time, it should not be happening so fast. It was indecent, disrespectful, brutal; it was a violation.

As the family was leaving the side of the grave through the slush, Christopher was overcome with a sudden fear: "They are not going to bury my father. Once we are gone, they will take the body and sell it to some medical school or just throw it away." He would certainly have stayed and seen that the interment--he flinched as this word crossed his mind in reference to the human being who had been his father--that the interment was carried out to the last detail, except for the thought that, if they were really resolute body snatchers, he could stand there guarding it, and when he was gone, they could dig his father up and dispose of him any way they wanted. It was all intolerable.

"I can't believe he isn't going to say anything else to me," Christopher blurted to his mother and uncle in the car driving away. "I just can't believe it. I don't believe it. It isn't possible."

"Well. ..."

"I ... all those conversations and phone calls and letters and advice and arguments and orders and fights and all that, ever since I was born. It isn't over yet. He hadn't finished what he started to say. He's been interrupted. He's been interrupted."

• • •

Following lunch--roast lamb and boiled potatoes--the heiress and the prodigal son, as Christopher now pictured them, since his mother had been left all the property and his brother had been left the only message and he himself had simply been left, quitted, the heiress and the prodigal son sat down with Uncle George around the large oval table in the library to contemplate the manila envelope addressed to Ernest.

At first George suggested they mail it, but then Christopher's point about censorship was acknowledged. George thought of a friend in the State Department who might put it in the diplomatic pouch to Cairo, but that was discarded as impractical and possibly illegal. Mrs. Curtin suggested waiting until Ernie's next planned return to America but was reminded that that was nearly a year away. They finally concluded that the manila envelope would have to be taken by hand to him in Cairo. No one knew anyone planning such a trip. Someone would have to go expressly for this purpose. Who? There was no more appropriate person than Christopher--not married, 23, just out of college and just about to be drafted.

"I'll go," he said, "but not by plane."

"Not a plane?" said Uncle George. "It would take weeks by ship. Of course you'll fly. Why not?"

"I'll go. But not by plane."

He was afraid he might be killed if he flew. Sudden death had suddenly become terribly possible. Before, it was something that had happened to others, other people, other families. With horror, he had seen the people on the sidewalks look with a certain interest at the hearse carrying a member of his family and at the black limousine carrying him move slowly along toward the cemetery, just as he had looked with mild interest often at the funerals of strangers. But now it was his own father, his family, and he was a mourner, which he had never had any intention of being. Sudden death: It existed.

"I'll go. But I won't take a plane."

He sailed from New York first class on the Cristoforo Colombo on January tenth. The manila envelope, with its urgent, scrawled directions, traveled with him like an unexamined bomb.

To take his mind off it and off death itself, he tried to read, settling into a deck chair on the enclosed promenade deck. All of the other chairs were occupied by married couples in their 50s and 60s and 70s, for this was just the sort of winter trip to a mild climate that attracted them. The men wore expensive tweeds and sweaters or sports jackets, the women wore carefully harmonized skirts, blouses and sweaters that buttoned up the front, and they all looked affluent, comfortable and rather optimistic. In just these kinds of clothes, in just this kind of style, with just such expressions on their faces, Mr. and Mrs. Ernest Curtin had sailed from New York to Venezuela, had sailed through the Canal to California and Hawaii, had sailed to Lapland and the Baltic Sea, had circled the Mediterranean, visited the Greater and Lesser Antilles, had sailed around the world.

Every day after lunch, all of the elderly couples, and Christopher, would gather up a book or some stationery and repair to their deck chairs, spread blankets (continued on page 102) Reading of the will (continued from page 82)over their knees, contemplate the empty Atlantic becoming every day a little more benign as they proceeded toward Gibraltar, and every day, sooner or later, most of the older people would fall gently asleep.

Seeing this was by far the worst experience he had had since the sight of his father's casket about to be lowered (or not lowered!) into the wintry ground. The old people became effigies on their own future coffins when they fell asleep, heads back, mouths slightly open, color growing waxen, postures final, ultimate, hands folded on the lap or crossed like Egyptian mummies on the chest, they lay there in these long reclining chairs very clearly, to his hypersleepless stare, rehearsing, every day after lunch, for the coming arrangement of their bodies in the horror of the plush inner lining of their caskets.

Then an old lady would stir, the eyes reluctantly open, blank at this return from the edge, re-collect herself gradually, glance at the old male body lying motionless beside her, and her slowly returning animation would communicate itself to him, he would stir, shake slightly, pull himself once more, this time, back into the living world and, two Lazaruses, they would say to each other, "Shall we have some tea?" and "I dropped off there for a little while," "So did I, I think," and then, slowly, they would rise.

But the people and the reading and the ship and the Atlantic Ocean itself could not keep his mind off the manila envelope. He was beginning to think he ought to ... to do something about it. It lay at the bottom of the smaller of his two suitcases, under his accumulating dirty laundry, where he also concealed his traveler's checks and his passport. He extricated the envelope from this hiding place before dinner the third day out from New York and turned it in his hands this way and that. The envelope was quite opaque, no matter how strong the light he held it in front of. It felt rather thick, as though there were a number of sheets of paper--or, for example, stock certificates--inside, or something like a birth certificate ("Your brother was adopted from a fisherman and his common-law wife in Provincetown ...") or medical documents ("Following my examination of Christopher Curtin, age four, I hereby certify that he is suffering from hereditary, congenital and incurable ...") or legal documents ("In this confidential codicil to my last will and testament, I, Ernest Curtin, Senior, do order and direct that my younger son, Christopher, be disinherited upon the demise of myself and my wife, unless he will agree to enter the ministry of the Congregational Church ...").

Ridiculous fantasies, although in the Curtin family, nothing was ever really impossible; and also, what could his mind do but invent such things when it didn't know? There might be something truly precious within the manila envelope, perhaps a confidential diary his father had kept, a record of his inner life and profoundest thoughts, of his hopes for the family's future that he wanted to communicate to his older son and only to his older son. Or was he passing on to Ernie some task, some duty, that he, and only he, the older, was to be allowed to perform for their father? Why were the survivors ordered to destroy it unopened if Ernie had died first? What could he and only he be allowed to see?

He began to wonder if there might be a jet of steam somewhere on board, around the ship swimming pool, maybe, or in the kitchens. And then he immediately put that thought out of his mind.

It was of very stiff, firm manila paper, the flap sealed in the ordinary way with glue.

• • •

The Ausonia, the ship he'd boarded at Naples, docked at Alexandria in the afternoon on January 20. The wild uproar on the dock, vendors and porters and taximen yelling and scrambling, established the theme of the remainder of the day and maybe, he thought, of his stay in Egypt and even of his whole future life.

For it was now to be a Life Without Father, and who knew into what confusion, even chaos, that might lead him, especially when his mother was so vague and impractical and his brother lived on the other side of the world and didn't always particularly like him?

A gaggle of porters in dirty white-and-blue striped pajamas with rags on their heads swept up to him, yelling and gesticulating, and he was immediately engulfed in Egypt. Eventually he found himself in the Customs shed and the official asked him to open the smaller of his two suitcases. As he opened it, its contents divided into halves and the manila envelope, which he had buried in his dirty laundry in the middle, came face up on top. Both he and the inspector gazed down at it.

"Personal material?" inquired the inspector.

"Yes, it is----"

"This is your name? It is not, is it?"

"That's my brother. He is a"--spy almost sprang out of his rattled mind--"a correspondent, World Geography magazine, in Cairo. This is just--I'm taking it to him...."

The inspector fished around the contents of the bag briefly, and then it was over and he was admitted to the country and obtained some Egyptian pounds and piasters, tattered and smelling of camel and horse and sweat and poverty and desperation; and with these scattered like confetti on all sides, he got himself and his two suitcases out of the shed, into the bright warm afternoon sunshine, into a corrupt taxi with a gangster at the wheel, through a ramshackle, teeming Alexandria, alive with children everywhere, to the railroad station, cursing himself regularly for his sudden phobia against flying, got his ticket with delays and difficulties, waited a long time before being able to board the train, waited another long time before the train started, and then it proceeded at a very cautious rate of speed up the delta of the Nile to Cairo, where he arrived at precisely the time he had not wanted to arrive, dead of night. Not only that, but he had gotten reservations at a hotel that was well out of town, out in the Sahara desert, apparently, a hotel that he had chosen because it "overlooked the Great Pyramid"; and in America, that had seemed very important.

Christopher seemed to be almost the only traveler, and certainly the only foreigner, in the vast and hollow nighttime station, as he made his way through it, his bags being carried by an old man in a gray dress, whose eyes were very badly crossed.

On the street, the porter began installing his bags in a taxi and Christopher was struck by the look of its driver, an assassin with pointed teeth, black hair standing on end and the blazing grin of a maniac. Spread over his knees and tied by a string to the steering column was a dark-brown hawk whose wings, spread, would have measured approximately four feet.

His bags were already in this taxi and there was, in fact, no other waiting, so he slowly gave the porter money, got into the back seat, which had linoleum on the floor and plastic-covered seats, and, its motor rattling uncertainly, the taxi set off into the blackness.

The hawk now moved to the seat beside the driver and began to open its wings, fixing one eye on the passenger in the back seat. They were passing an intersection with a streetlight on the corner and the driver grabbed the bird and shoved it onto the floor, so it would not be seen. Christopher thought one of its wings was broken by this treatment, but when they were on a dark stretch of road again, the bird climbed back onto the seat and partially spread its wings again.

"English?" said the driver, grinning back at him.

"American."

"Ah."

They were driving along a broad road lined with large trees and they kept driving on and on and on. There were almost no people and no cars anywhere. The driver continued to manhandle the hawk from time to time. The hawk had not (continued on page 187) Reading of the will (continued from page 102) retaliated yet. Then the driver pulled over to the side of the road, said something unintelligible, got out, disappeared, returned, got back in and drove on. A number of possibilities as to what he had done, all unpleasant, occurred to Christopher.

"You have American money?" he asked suddenly. "Traveler's checks?"

"Yes."

"I change. Much better than at bank. How much you have?"

"Uh--no. No. Tomorrow."

"Tomorrow?"

"Tomorrow."

They drove on.

"What are you looking for?" said the driver.

"I'm looking for the hotel overlooking the Great Pyramid. Is it near here?"

"Near. Near."

And, in fact, it was. A dimly lighted driveway materialized on the right and they drove into it and stopped on the gravel before a flight of steps.

A man opened the door of the taxi. There was no one else visible and very few lights. The taxi driver asked for double what the meter showed. Christopher, feeling in a somewhat stronger position now. declined. He did give him a large tip. The hawk watched it all. So did the man who had opened the door. He went into an enormously high and silent lobby, dimly lighted. There was one man in a dark suit there asleep in an armchair. The doorman woke him up and this man registered Christopher. The silence of the building sounded unbreakable. An old man in a long white robe and a fez took him and his bags into a small elevator; it slowly rose three floors, where they got off and proceeded along a lengthy and enormous hallway, scarcely illuminated at all, arriving at last before a large door: they went into a very large pale-yellow room, with one large window at the far end, shuttered, two beds, a huge wardrobe and very chilly air. The light was one naked bulb hanging from the ceiling.

Christopher gave the man something and then he was alone. He had a very strong feeling that he was the only guest in this huge hotel and he recalled that he was in the Sahara desert, or the Libyan Desert, or the Western Desert; in any case, he was alone in the desert. He began to unpack and had nearly finished before the lights all went out.

Instinct in this situation was very definite as to what to do. He felt his way to the bed, took off his pants and shoes, pulled back the covers, got into bed and pulled the covers over himself. Then he didn't move.

• • •

Some kind of yelling and general commotion came into the room and Christopher opened his eyes--he had, after all, been asleep--and saw that daylight had also come into the room through the shutters and banished the specters of the night before. He got out of bed, threw back the huge shutters and there, without any doubt at all, was the Great Pyramid of Giza; the hotel did not, of course, overlook it; it overlooked the hotel, on a rise a few hundred yards away, gray, the essence of massiveness and of triangularity. All sorts of camels and horses and carriages and hundreds of people surged between the hotel and the Pyramid.

Everything was as animated this morning as it had been sepulchral the night before. It was possible that the telephone in the room, which he had not even bothered to pick up, so dead had it looked, worked. He picked it up, a human voice responded and he gave the number of his brother's house in Maadi, a suburb of Cairo. Barbara answered.

"You're here at last," she said. "We were so surprised when Mother Curtin wrote that you were coming by boat. How funny, we thought."

Christopher, instantly put off, said, "I'll tell you all about it. How's Ernie?"

"Still very weak. It's an absolutely filthy disease. I had no idea. Of course, it's from plain malnutrition. We just can't get the right food in this country. Do you like Mena House?"

After a pause, he answered, "More and more."

"I wish we could have had you here, but with the baby--"

"I'm fine here. When shall I see you and Ernie?"

"He wants us to come at six o'clock. Shall I pick you up there at five-thirty? What will you do all day? If it wasn't for the baby and my committee meeting, I could take you around. I hope you've got something to do today."

"Of course I do. First I'm going to go over to that big stone thing that comes to a point across the road and do whatever you do to it. Do you climb it or do you go into it?"

"I don't think they climb it anymore," she said.

It was true that people were no longer allowed to climb it. "Too many slip," the ancient robed guide explained, "and when they start to fall on the Great Pyramid, they never stop--bang, bang, bang, bang, like down a staircase, all the way to the bottom."

But a visitor could go into it, up the outer face on steps cut into one of the immense gray-stone blocks, then into a tunnel winding toward the depths, arriving finally at the strangest chamber on earth, called the Grand Gallery, rather narrow, extremely high, the haunting gray walls sloping toward each other as they rose, lighted by electricity, the floor rising very steeply upward and farther upward, the bottom end of the gallery blocked by a stone too immense to be thought about and its upper end giving onto a large empty chamber with purple-granite walls.

It was only on arriving at last in this core of the unbelievable mass, having only half listened to the guide, that Christopher realized, or recollected, that the Great Pyramid was a tomb, was in fact the very apex of death, that he was standing in the Pharaoh's burial chamber and that the unthinkable human effort that went into erecting this had been that man's effort to defeat death, to carry himself beyond it.

But the chamber was completely empty; it had been robbed of everything thousands of years before.

• • •

Barbara was her usual extremely prompt self. How she managed to be that in Egypt was a riddle that Christopher, after he came to know the habits of the country better, never solved.

At 5:30, her black Ford, with a chauffeur at the wheel, drew up at the steps of Mena House. The robed servants, the big comfortable veranda, the Europeans having tea, Barbara with her Egyptian chauffeur, all created a small, illusory tableau of the old British Colonial days, and Barbara sustained it with her white gloves, white-linen suit, dark glasses and large hat.

They made a pass at kissing each other, then got into the back seat of the immaculately kept Ford. Barbara said, "We've got miles and miles and miles to go. The hospital's on the other side of town entirely."

They drove back along the road he had traveled the night before, and all the night before's sinister atmosphere had evaporated in the happy sunshine of what would be in Connecticut an especially fine day in late September. Apartment houses, trees, a big park, fountains all swept by; they crossed the Nile, as mighty as it should be, on through the center of Cairo and arrived at last at a pleasant-looking U-shaped building of tan concrete with balconies looking out over an agreeable square: Dar al Chifa Hospital.

Inside, it was very tidy and it was also very cheerful, almost festive. Nuns and imams scurried about, Bedouins and Europeans crisscrossed the lobby. "Well, this isn't so bad," he remarked.

They went up to the third floor, through a tiny vestibule banked with flowers and into a pleasant hospital room, with French doors opening onto a balcony and the square below. Ernie was in the bed, looking very ill.

He shook hands weakly, blinked up from his pillow, his redhead's light complexion paler than ever, hazel eyes a little groggy. Christopher was shocked and tried to hide it. But, of course, Ernie had to be seriously, even desperately ill not to have come back for the funeral.

Ernie had always been generally regarded as "crazy"; that is, overactive, unpredictable, hypercritical, uncontrollably impulsive, dangerous when drunk, extremely willful and very intelligent. He had had many vicissitudes in his stormy life and the fact that he had at last seemed to settle down, even if in Cairo, had been a great relief to everybody. The slightly askew look he had about the eyes warned some people about his nature on sight. But the basis of all the quirks of his character was his formidable, ceaseless energy. And now he didn't have any. Christopher was shocked to see this pale rag and appalled to see it after the last sight he had had of his father, lying in the way that he had been lying. And now here was Ernie, flat on his back, drained. "My family," Christopher thought, "how frail we are."

Ernie seemed to want to talk and to have enough energy for that. After describing at length the grimly depressing effects of hepatitis, he finished by murmuring, "It just makes you hope you do die."

Christopher sprang forward in his chair. "Don't say that!"

Ernie's cloudy eyes roamed over him. "Anyway, it is the dreariest disease in the annals of medicine. I have to say I never felt worse in my life--"

"Ernie," put in Barbara irritably, "just keeping on saying that makes it even truer."

He pulled the sides of his mouth down as he looked over at her and then went on, "And it had to happen to me at the biggest crisis we have had in the family and I had to be in Cairo, United Arab Republic. And Father, whom I loved and will always deeply miss, had to leave every red cent to Mother, every last single share of every last blue-chip stock. I'm sorry to say that. If I didn't feel so awful, I probably wouldn't say it, probably wouldn't even think it particularly, if I didn't feel so awful." He raised his head slightly. "Oh. Where's the envelope?"

Christopher started, stared at him and finally compelled himself to mumble, "I forgot it." He had never felt like such a complete fool.

Ernie forced his head a little higher. "You forgot it!" he said in an invalid's roar. "How could you forget it!" That's what you came five thousand miles to give me!"

"I didn't forget it in America," Christopher rasped. "I forgot it at the hotel. Take it easy. I'll bring it tomorrow." Ernie was sinking very slowly back toward the pillow. "What's the big fuss about? After all, there's nothing so important in there." He glanced over Ernie's head. "Is there?" he murmured.

Ernie contemplated him. Finally, his right hand slid out from under the sheet and he pointed at Christopher. "I can't see visitors until six o'clock. I want it here at six o'clock tomorrow night."

Christopher leaned back in his chair and threw up his hands.

"All right."

• • •

That night in his huge old room in the hotel, he took out the envelope for the last time. It had never looked so potent with information or insight or instructions or wisdom, so potentially enriching, so helpful, revealing, absorbing--well, so alive.

He was certain he knew how to open it and seal it again so that Ernie wouldn't notice. What's more, if he did notice, Christopher could just say that that was how the envelope had been when he found it in the safe-deposit box, and no one could refute him. Neither Uncle George nor Mr. Williams had examined it minutely. No one in the world would ever know.

But Ernie would probably let him see its contents anyway.

And, worst of all, there were the words in his father's handwriting, as explicit and forbidding as they could be. There were those words, in his handwriting.

But why had he left this message only to Ernie and not to him? Even if Ernie were dead, it was not to pass on to Christopher but had to be burned. Why? What did he lack, why couldn't he be trusted, what was the matter with him?

His hand trembling a little, feeling cold, very cold in this unheated night room on the edge of the great desert, Christopher held the envelope for a long time. Finally, he put it on the table beside his bed and began to undress.

The next day, he did the second thing after the Great Pyramid that he had been told was a necessity for a visitor, and went through Cairo Museum. Overwhelming statues of the Pharaohs and the gods, immense sarcophagi, the great funeral furniture of King Tutankhamen, the touching grace of the solar boat that was to carry a dead Pharaoh to his new life as a god of the sun; the mummies, swathed in brown linen, which had been peeled away on certain corpses to reveal hands or feet or a face, while others had been left completely wrapped, their little royal bodies clearly palpable beneath, recognizable still. The glory of ancient Egypt lay everywhere, their colossal attempt to sail past death itself, the huge effort they made to reach immortality, to reach the sun.

Instead, what they reached was the Cairo Museum.

Christopher left toward dusk and hailed a taxi in the great square in front of the museum to take him to the hospital. He had the manila envelope in his hand, had carried it around with him all day, his heart beating when he looked at it.

The taxi stopped for a traffic light, and across the intersection there was a group of men standing in the street, conferring. A light-brown mound was near the curb about five yards from them and it was somehow clear that the conference was related to it; it was somehow equally clear that they did not want to be too near it. The light changed; and as the taxi passed close to the mound, Christopher saw that the cloth was very similar to that which bound the mummies in the museum. There was a breeze blowing and stones had been put at the corners of the cloth to hold it down. Then he realized that there was a body under it.

"My God," he murmured.

"Traffic accident," said the driver, very calmly. His attitude seemed callous to Christopher then, but later on in Egypt, he found that traffic fatalities were so everyday, the Egyptian masses having never succeeded in adapting themselves to the automobile, that he understood it better.

"Lovemaking and death," his brother would tell him a few weeks later. (The animosity between them had ended by the time Ernie said this and he was beginning to try to be helpful to Christopher, to be an advisor, a guide, for the first time. "That's all Egypt is, lovemaking and death.")

At Dar al Chifa Hospital, Christopher paid the driver and went in through the lobby, which seemed gayer than ever, people laughing and gossiping everywhere.

He reached his brother's room. Ernie looked much better today, sitting up in bed reading a newspaper. Barbara hadn't arrived yet.

"Hi," said Ernie easily, holding out his hand for the manila envelope.

With some deliberation in his manner, Christopher handed it to him. Ernie read through carefully what their father had written on the front and then turned the envelope over and proceeded to examine the flap even more carefully.

Christopher was thrown into a paroxysm of rage, thinking, "That bastard, suspecting me of disobeying Father's last wish!" and then controlling himself outwardly because his one hope was that Ernie, voluntarily, would let him read the contents.

"I think I'll look at this now. Might be, just might be something pressing in there. And, uh," he went on in a sincere tone, "you did take your time delivering it."

Christopher managed to control himself again.

"Why not sit out on the balcony," Ernie said, "and watch the sunset? It's one of the great sights of Egypt."

Christopher smiled agreeably, he hoped, and went out and sat on the balcony, facing a tremendous Nile sunset, depths of color and desert clarity and southern glow. Now and then, he heard the hiss and crackle of sheets of paper being unfolded, shifted, arranged. He sat immobile, staring at the great sunset; he was, of course, much farther from home than he had ever been, much more of an alien than he had ever been, and now perhaps he was learning that he was an alien in his own family.

"Come on back in," Ernie called cheerfully at last, and Christopher re-entered the room to find the envelope on the night table beside the bed, face down, its flap open, its contents back inside it. Barbara had quietly arrived and was sitting in the corner. "There's a bottle of Scotch in the cupboard," Ernie went on, "if you want a drink. Not that I can have any. I'm a teetotaler--me!--for the next ten years or something, after hepatitis," and he sighed deeply. Ernie had, it was true, had a lot of bad breaks in his life. "Barbara, you know where the ice is down the hall. Of course, I could ring for service," he said ironically, his eyes widening into their famous incredulity glare. No more needed to be said about the service in Dar al Chifa Hospital. Barbara went out to get the ice.

Ernie began to recount his theories as to why he felt so much better today, then went on to a general account of their life in Egypt and then asked Christopher in detail what he had seen in the museum, and never once made any reference to the envelope.

Finally and quietly and fatalistically, Christopher asked, "What was in the envelope, Ernie?"

Ernie's slightly askew eyes looked at him, the corners of his mouth went down and then he said gravely, "I just can't tell you." He drew a serious breath. "It's just something Dad had to say. It's not something you need to know. Forget about it. I'll handle it."

At those last words, Christopher cursed himself for having ever imagined the mere possibility that Ernie would let him know their father's message. Ernie had always been extremely jealous of his position as older brother. "I'm four years, seven months and two days older than he is" had practically been a litany of Ernie's always. "I'll drive" had been his automatic reaction to their both getting into the same car. "When you've had more experience ..." had been his introduction to thousands of remarks, and his invariable response to any mutual matter had always been what it was now: "I'll handle it."

What a fool I am, Christopher exploded inwardly. No wonder Dad left no message, no instructions, no advice, no duty, no money, even, to me. He knew what a fool I am.

And from under his eyebrows, he looked at Ernie. "You want me to forget about it," he said.

Ernie looked a little surprised, but did not reply.

"Do you want me to forget Dad, too?"

Ernie contemplated him.

"Of course, you're a little jealous of me," Christopher went on. "You always have been. You always were a lousy older brother, I just thought I'd tell you that."

Ernie looked a little sadly at him. "All older brothers are lousy older brothers," he said.

"Why were you always so jealous of me? I'm not so great. Why did you always have to have everything. Why----"

"Shut up," cried Barbara, coming in from the vestibule, where she had been hesitating. "You can't say those things, Christopher, Ernie's sick. Do you have to say the worst things you can think of, now?"

Christopher didn't speak. But out of the side of his eye, he saw and interpreted a little bit of mime: Barbara gesturing faintly toward the envelope and glancing toward Christopher ("Can't he be allowed to read it?") and Ernie faintly but firmly shaking his head ("Never").

"I'm going now," said Christopher in a flat tone. "I hope you get better." And, although Barbara moved to stop him, he left the room.

Out in front of the hospital was a square and he walked up and down for a while, up and down, and then finally took a taxi back to the center of Cairo. On the way, it crossed the intersection where he had seen the body under the brown-linen cloth. It had been removed and the group of conferring men was gone. No one had ever been interrupted more abruptly than that Egyptian, that man or woman, who had been hit by a car, cut off mid-breath, mid-thought.

The dead: Through the pyramids and the solar boats and the very walls of the temples, they tried to speak. But, of course, they never succeeded in transmitting anything, here in Egypt or anywhere else.

Nothing ever came across, Christopher meditated, no communication was ever possible. To the survivor, no will was ever left, except his own.

He then felt very hungry. They were passing Shepheard's Hotel now and he asked the driver to let him off there. He went into the restaurant and ordered a steak. "Malnutrition for an American with money in Egypt!" he exclaimed to himself. "Ernie. He really does need all the help he can get." And then he suddenly thought: "Unlike me. I'll bet my father realized that. I'll bet he did. He realized I didn't need any posthumous letter of instructions or even any money; he had already given me and done for me and said to me what I needed; there's no other message coming. As a matter of fact, I don't need any message. It's too late for more instructions. There's just me, and that's enough. It has to be enough."