Where new writing finds its voice
Short Story

The Pharaoh's Paper

Dominic Perrem

Paper,’ I began, standing before them all. ‘What would Chaucer have done without it? Nothing, that’s what. Chaucer and I, and you my dear sirs and ladies. Did not that great man set down in script the very core of truths that have touched all our hearts, and curved the etching of our pens? I glance at your faces, yes I can see the truth of this hitting home. Thank you for your approving nods, dear friends! I sweep a bow at you now. I’m sorry that I’ve been so distant with you all since my move to Cairo, you must understand, the baggage, the rent, the papers, you must understand…’

‘No, no, Geoffrey!’ They flock to my side. ‘It is us who should be sorry, expecting so much of you, and you only just uprooted!’

‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Yes, now surely I must get back to the point! Where was I? I hope, by the way, you do not begrudge me my tuxedo. Do you think it smacks of a little pride, I ask? You know,’ I say, you must know, I only aim to please! And there is always someone,’ I say wiping my brow and furrowing it in that habitual way, ‘there is always someone one might need to impress.’

At that point Mr Graham Chancellor stepped up himself to my side, speaking for them all, as it was an intimate crowd: ‘Geoffrey,’ he said, ‘Geoffrey, we are all here and impressed. How grand a salad, tête-à-tête with your own previous menus, une belle époque. If anything, applause should greet you wherever you turn, as the finest, the paragon of Englishmen. Do forgive us if we are unworthy of your calm, or worthy only to praise and have you at our side, for this at least would be wise. But, still! Speak to us and know how we adore you!’

I patted Chancellor’s hand and he sat. Furrowed my brow a little, it’s just that Cairo had worn the socks off me. Terrible way to think, as if my socks were going to come off, but I could not deny the truth of the matter; what a day it had been. ‘My friends,’ I say, ‘nothing could prepare you for what I am to tell.’

The night grew dark, like the ringing of a bell softening into the middle distance. If one sat in Nôtre Dame long enough to hear the bell cry hour after hour, one would experience the thrilling loss of life as the sound of her bells melted into Paris. It didn’t matter whether you sat near Champs Elysées or atop any apartment window near any Persephone, you would hear that sound melt, and you would know then as you never had before that there were parts of Paris that you would never touch. Oui, madame, j’éspère que vous allez bien. Allez vous? Je sais pas, rien. Such a simple language. Beckett wrote in French because it was simple, simplicity, nothing misread.

It was clear I had been silent for some time. As I write this to you, to all of you on paper, you must understand the world we lived in 1928. In Paris, large buildings were not the commodity they are now. Size and grandeur spoke of wealth in a way that now they speak of pride reduced to public tourism; if you had ever visited Florence you would know what I mean. When you raise your eyes high above sea level, you’ll see the twelfth century architecture or Dante’s bust as you pass, stirring thoughts of the Inferno or of better times. But lower your eyes and the city is dead and its death breeds a terrible life, the life of passivity, as if Michelangelo is only worth fighting for in a queue; his great history of blood, of rage, is forgotten. One cannot queue to touch the genius of life fought on those old centuries of stone. The great passion he lived as he painted the Vatican and vied against the syphilitic Raphael. Can you hear him? Can you sense his superiority? His rage? No, all you see is the statue, and all you can do is hate yourself for knowing so little.

But, friends, silence still reigns in the room. ‘I say,’ said I. ‘Cairo is a dark place, full of nothing but light. If any of you were to come, you would find Muslim man, Jew or Christian, each of them understanding little of themselves or the other. Hatred only reigns where history is unforgotten, and in that place where civilisation began, nothing was ever born that did not leave its life lingering in dry yellowness, all is dead and preserved in the sky, in the thousands of stars that we never see in London.’

I patted my brow. It was terrible to talk of Cairo in this way, my city. ‘None of you must forget that papyrus was invented in Egypt, the place from which the Pharaohs ruled the world.’

The room took on the softness of a hue anticipatory. Eleanor, my old pupil, John, dear friend and companion, all wiped their mouths and watched me, furrowed, eager. While I spoke I remembered dark nights in Paris, meeting Joyce and Proust and later Beckett for coffee. That never quite occurred the way you thought it would, the way that Pound and Woolf would have liked, for words to them were self-absorbed. Joyce, the cataracts in his eyes and the whiskey in his hand every night, plunged darkness onto the page. I knew him then, he used to cast stones into the Seine. Beckett once wrote, ‘all he had seen was ashes’. Even though dear love did exist, his words set out to destroy things and creatures, and then retreat back into the pages, or whatever it was that held them together.

‘Let us not forget, my friends, that were it not for the oppression of the Hebrews by the Babylonians they never would have written down the Scriptures; the oral tales they had.’

I patted my brow. Sweet Anton Chekhov, whom Stanislavksy called a poor interpreter of his own plays. Chekhov was a doctor, he spent his whole life in medicine, married an exciting actress who he could barely understand but who reflected the energy in his heart. He died, in the provinces, of consumption. He could not perform his own work, he wrote it down for Nemirovich-Danchenko to interpret. He died never having spoken his own plays. An actor once asked him ‘How should I play this role?’ Chekhov answered: ‘As well as possible.’

‘When the oral poets of Greece learned to write, they lost their memories. They could no longer recite The Iliad. They were useless, for they did not need to remember anymore. The flesh of the story was lost in the scraping of etch on paper. Writing began in Phoenicia, in Lebanon, where men wanted to remember how much money they were earning. Then the paper became goldsmiths’ IOUs, the IOUs became legal tender, and soon everything was paper. Long and hard have I tried to reason these arguments to the good. However, I cannot: no good has come.’

‘It has come to my attention that every Pharaoh who lived lost his reputation, lost it on papyrus, on the scrolls of what the ancients whispered about him. When tourists come to Florence, they follow a map. A map which tells them where to go, where to stop. Where to begin? Does anybody know who wrote the map? And who wrote the map from which this map were taken? We have lost our way. We do not know what the truth is, or cannot do. And I, Geoffrey Hardy, palaeographer, must do what I must do to stop the nameless rot of degradation and woe that paper has caused, and will cause by its abuse!’

There was a certain grimness to the affair, but I had to do it, here in London, with all of them there, I had made up my mind. Graham and John were at my side, but I would not sit, not even with the burgundy held to me. ‘Hands off! Hands off me! Damn you, John!’ I was renowned enough at the time to have in my possession, in my flat in South Kensington, a Gutenberg Bible. I groped it from a box to my left and held it aloft to show them all.

‘My friends I intend to undo some of our so-called civilisation. Words have been written, and caused nothing but misery. We must make our stand against their continuation.’ I tore at it, eliciting shocked sounds from my eight dinner guests. Chancellor covered his eyes in embarrassment.

Nôtre Dame’s bells and all those literary fools. I used to tell them about paper’s importance. And what happened to Joyce? His Ulysses was so full of mistakes that he would never be able to correct it. So much for the printed word! So much for your faith! Don’t believe any of them. Nôtre Dame’s bells, they echo into a part of Paris you will never touch, never, but write down the taste of it on a page.