Chapter Twenty-Three: The Scarab

On the fourth night, the men drank rum. Mack had just stubbed the cork back in the bottle while Theophilus Trotter exhaled a plume of smoke. Then the Captain began, "Baxter, your story reminds me of something that happened to me almost thirty years ago. The year was 1869, and the Froggies had just finished 'le Suez Canal' and changed European trade routes forever. Of course, it made Napoleon the Third richer than Suleiman, but changing the world ought to make you rich. I made my first pass through the canal in December of that year. In fact, my story happened over Christmas while we anchored in Port Ghalib. Have you ever been to Ghalib, Baxter?"

"I have," he said and that was all.

"Yes. Well, we had come ashore, and, of course, I went straight to the whorehouse. That's always been my way: first, a woman, then food, and then the tavern. You haven't learned this yet, McQuary, but your Egyptian whores are the best in the world for pleasing a sailor, that's a fact. Whether the Gypsies taught the Frenchies or the Frenchies taught the Gypsies, no man knows and no man cares. But I believe as a matter of sincerest faith that all women should be similarly schooled, and I would be willing to endow any college possessing such a noble mission. Your holy men may look forward to the Second Coming, Baxter, but I look forward to the blessed day all women are whores.

"Anyhow, I wasn't but eighteen, but the salt was already in my blood, and as we all know, a long time at sea makes a feller peckish for affection. So, I went to the district and met a gal named Mawra, barely sixteen herself but already expert in the ways, and she drained me down to my toes. Of course, that left me peckish for supper, so off I went into Ghalib, happy as a pope with a foot-high hat. I had just procured a bowl of koshary and sat on a curb stone to eat when the filthiest beggar I've ever seen—or smelled, either—come shuffling up to me. His hair hung in long, twisted coils from a dirty turban, and his left eye was swollen under a layer of crust. He wore a frayed robe, not much more than rags, and his hands and feet had open sores. He looked like Lazarus come out of the grave. You may not know this, Mack, but in the summertime your Arabs piss their robes to cool themselves off, and this fellow smelled like he had been pissing his robe for years. Oh, and one more thing: He carried a small canvas satchel slung over his shoulder.

"Anyhow, this fine fellow leans his staff against the wall and stands there looking at me and swaying like a cobra in a basket. Then he cups his left hand like this," and Trotter held out his hand, "to make a bowl and starts dipping his right hand in and lifting it up to his mouth to show he wants some of my food. As I said, Mawra had left me with a wolfish appetite, so I turned away where I couldn't see him and kept eating. Egypt is full of beggars, and once you start paying attention to 'em, they're like flies on a turd.

"But the filthy son of a bitch wouldn't let me be. He came closer, and the stench nearly knocked me over, and he was still lifting his hand to his mouth, so I said to him in a loud voice, 'Yabtaido!' Which means 'go away'! But did it make a difference? I should say not. He just kept swaying, and his good eye took on a damned mean look.

"'Ana jat yon,' he said, which means, 'I'm hungry.'

"So I said to him, 'I don't speak Moslem. I only speak Christian.'"

"Then he hissed, 'I know what you speak. I know you. You been to whore.'

"I looked him steady in his good eye and said, 'What's it to you what I do, old man?'

"He said, 'What one man does, every man does.'

"'Well, then, I reckon you enjoyed a fine time tonight. Maybe that's why you're so hungry.'

"'Fool! You and me, we struggle in the same web. Feed me, and you feed yourself.'

"So, I said, 'How about this idea? How about I take care of myself, and you take care of yourself. That's how we do it in England.'

"The beggar doesn't say a word but takes his satchel from his shoulder and starts rummaging around in it. Finally, he pulls out a blue scarab about the size of a billiard ball cut in half. Now, a scarab is a beetle, very sacred to the ancient Egyptians. Go into the pyramids and temples, and you'll see scarabs on the walls and painted on the ceilings. I've seen them carved to look like the sun with wings. Before Mohammed came along, the Egyptians used to worship scarabs like they worship Allah now."

Mack interrupted. "Why in the world did ancient Egyptians worship beetles?"

"I asked an imam in Cairo the same question, and he said your Egyptian scarabs aren't ordinary beetles; nossir, they're special. They're dung beetles."

"Dung? As in shit?"

"What other kind of dung is there?"

"You're telling me the ancient Egyptians worshiped shit beetles?"

"That's what the imam said. He said scarab beetles find a nice pile of shit and pull some of it away and begin rolling it through the dust. They keep rolling it and rolling it until it becomes a perfectly round shit ball. Then, they lay their eggs inside the ball. The sun bakes the ball hard as a rock until the babies hatch inside. Then, those little beetles crack the ball open and come out. He said the ancients thought that was a miracle. A pile of shit becomes a perfect ball that becomes an egg that hatches babies, and the scarab makes it all happen!"

"And that's what the beggar took from his bag? A shit beetle?"

"Yep, a scarab carved from lapis lazuli, the most beautiful stone in the world, blue as summer twilight. The old man held out the scarab like he was going to give it to me, and I leaned forward to look at it. I couldn't help myself. Then with a little push of his finger, the wings on the back popped apart and inside was a blue dust. I looked closer, and he blew the dust into my eyes. I yelled at him, 'God damn you!' and began rubbing my eyes. Tears were streaming down, not so much from pain, but from a terrible itching. But the horror began when I looked up. The old beggar was changing right in front of me! The crusted eye opened like a black orb, black as night, and his arms turned into beetle legs and two new legs grew from his stomach, and his robe fell away and the stench was godawful, like a rotted corpse or a privy in the desert. He became the scarab! With his upper two legs he snatched the bowl from me and tipped it up. Then he dropped the bowl and said, 'A man without pity finds a world without pity!'

"I fell to my knees and cried out, 'Spare me!' As I knelt there in the street, the beetle begins fingering me with his legs and rolling me over and over until I was dizzy and all the world became black. Then he says, 'Only a man born again will see light.'

"So, what happened? The scarab started rolling me down the street, God knows where—I couldn't see nothing nor smell nothing except the godawful privy stench. On and on, it rolled me until I heard the Call for Prayer, and then the rolling stopped, and everything was silent as a tomb. I could feel the day grow hotter, but I couldn't see through the walls of the ball. The heat overwhelmed me, a terrible, baking heat, the heat a sailor feels when his ship's stuck in the doldrums, and the boards become so dry they split, and the tongue cleaves to the roof of his mouth with drought and thirst. I thought I would die when I heard a voice call out, 'Lazarus, come forth!' and within my heart, I felt a power, as if the sun had been planted in my chest and was breaking out like the Sacred Heart of Jesus shooting outward in every direction. Suddenly, I found I could move my arms and legs, and I pushed against the round walls, and the ball cracked, and then . . . and then, I found myself sitting on the same curb stone in the night with a few torches sticking out from their sconces on the walls and a broken bowl at my feet. The noodles were spilled in the street. The beggar was lifting away the blue scarab, and I said to him, 'I'm hungry.'

"He put the scarab back in his pouch and took out a crust of bread and tore it in half and gave me a piece. We began to tear at it with our teeth, like we were dogs tearing at the same piece of meat. Then without another word, the beggar walked away, and since that time, I have never failed to help a man who is hungry. Or a woman who needs a man. Or a traveler who needs a berth." Captain Trotter looked at Mack and nodded. "Like you."

Mack said, "I guess I owe that old beggar some kind of debt. But tell me, Captain, is that story true?"

"Mr. McQuary, you've got much to learn. Of course, it was true because it all happened up here as in a dream." Captain Theophilus Trotter tapped his head with the stem of his pipe. "It's the visions up here that show us what's good and what's evil, don't you know? The things out there"—and here Trotter gestured to the walls of the cabin and the Indrani and the boundless, seething ocean and the swarming continents—"the things out there make us doubt the visions up here. That's why a wise man sails by two compasses: What he sees with his eyes and what he sees in his head."