““A lifetime of war had provided him with a sense of peace when death was at hand. And it was at hand now, of that he was in no doubt.” ”
Many men have found themselves in a hole. And countless times has a soldier become lost and unable to free himself from an apparently impossible bind. Though not many can claim that a sparrow was the one to save his life.
One such soldier was a man called Larouche. He had joined the army at fourteen and had seen many battles, some he had won, some lost. Karnak was a detour his battalion had taken on their way to Aswan. The supply ship had run aground on an island near Luxor, and LaRouche had been sent to organise another ship, and then oversee the transfer of goods between the two vessels. It was to be a simple task, which offered him the opportunity to be with his horse away from the other men, and take in what he could of the locality. He had recently learned about the honey-making bees of the Nile region, and he had promised himself the luxury of a couple of days interrogating the local keepers about their technique, so he might take the knowledge back to the farm his family kept in Alsace, and swell the productivity of his own bees.
The arrangement of shipping did not take even a morning. He spent four hours explaining to the captains what men they would need and which villages nearby boasted the most reliable workers. He brought some cognac to seal the agreement and, but for a small disagreement with a port manager in Cairo, which he resolved with a promise of favourable trade that he included in the letter he sent with a courier, the day went as planned. He resolved to journey inland in search of a famed temple the Napoleonic generals had described in their letters. Larouche was a peasant, but he prided himself on his ability to appreciate history. He had visited the Acropolis and shared wine with Arouet.
He arrived at midnight, with no-one but a Bedouin to guide him to the few features that remained above the sand. He lit a fire and ate stale bread and quince, drinking a little of the cognac left over from the day’s negotiations with the captain, as the Bedouin explained the Egyptian kings to him. He described the holy boats of Amun-Ra. How Merneptah defeated the sea-peoples. He explained to Larouche the story of how the god Osiris was lost in the water so long the fishes ate his penis, condemning him to a life of shame underground. By daybreak, Larouche had heard all about the Queens of Egypt. He had pictured in his mind the beauty of Nefertari and Nebtu as easily as he could picture his own wife.
The morning found him asleep and alone. The Bedouin, having told his tales, had left.
Larouche felt an inconsolable sense of melancholy. He looked at the last stars shimmer and fade above the valley of the dead on the opposite bank, and a tear fell from his eye. Perhaps he was too old for the romance, he told himself. A peasant soldier did not have the stomach to absorb the achievements and legends of such great lives. He told himself, Better I should go back to war instead of indulging myself in such beauty. And then if he were lucky he would survive long enough to retire to the farm. Honey would be his gift to the world.
He was about to collect his belongings and saddle his horse, when a sparrow landed on the rock beside him.
‘Hello, little Captain,’ Larouche said. ‘What wonders you must have seen in your life.’ He was still absorbed in a sentimental need to talk that had remained from the night by the fire. He had enjoyed the Bedouin’s company and now he was gone, and Larouche felt very alone. All he had was the sparrow. ‘If you live as long as me, little Captain, imagine the greater miracles you will see.’
The little male sparrow seemed to understand him. He cocked his head to one side and blinked. Soon, he had puffed-out his feathers as though waking himself. Larouche watched the sparrow hop from rock to rock. A column of rose granite climbed thirty feet into the air and Larouche watched the bird swoop up and perch on its crown, the low sun picking out the tip of his beak as though it were made of gold.
Larouche followed the sparrow to the spot where the Bedouin had claimed was buried the temple in which the ancient kings would offer food to the statue of Amun-Ra standing tall in his holy boat, before the priests closed the doors and sealed the window to give the god his privacy.
From where he was standing, Larouche could see what he believed to be the flat expanse of the submerged roof. He wondered at the treasures beneath his feet. He was still wondering when he took a step forward and found the earth beneath him begin to shift. The ground groaned and then all at once gave way. His weight took him down, buried him in dust and rubble, confined him to an underground chamber from which there seemed no escape.
When the air cleared, it was evident he had found himself in a small enclosed room with only a tiny gap in the rock above to allow in light and air, the earth having subsided over him.
He did not panic. A lifetime of war had provided him with a sense of peace when death was at hand. And it was at hand now, of that he was in no doubt. There was no escape from this place. The only hope he had was that when the end came it would not be too painful.
He called his horse, hoping her company would keep him from becoming delirious too soon. But she would not come.
Nothing came. He watched the sun in the fissure above him grow in strength, then fade, dying altogether as the hours dragged on. He fell asleep knowing that soon a day would have passed since he had become trapped. But the cold woke him while it was still dark.
When the next day came, still his horse would not heed him. He called until his throat was so dry he could barely make a sound. By the third day he had lost all hope of anything but a long and torturous death at the hands of hunger or suffocation, whichever came first.
By midday he had almost lost his senses. He felt the cold dark of night encompass him. When he looked up, it was the sparrow perched in the gap of rock, blotting out the sun’s light.
‘Well, little Captain,’ Larouche said, his voice hoarse. ‘What have you got for me?’
The sparrow fluttered down to Larouche’s shoulder. And Larouche saw that, indeed, the bird was carrying something in its beak. It was a part of a date. Larouche, bewildered by hunger, took his time in relieving the bird of its gift. He held the date in his hand. Only when he pressed it between his teeth and the flavour filled his mouth did he believe it was real. He looked up to thank the sparrow, but already he was gone.
An hour passed. Then the bird returned with another date.
Much as he appreciated the sparrow’s offering, Larouche knew that it would not delay his death by even an hour. But if the dates were not enough to feed him, they did at least feed his curiosity, and Larouche knew the benefit of distraction when about to die.
Each hour the sparrow brought more food, and still Larouche couldn’t fathom where it had come from. As night fell again, the food continued to arrive.
By morning, Larouche’s mood had turned. The sparrow’s efforts humbled him, and the fruit had strengthened his blood and his resolve, enough to cause him to remove some of the rubble about his legs and drag himself closer to the hole. Now, by the gap in the rock, Larouche followed the progress of the sparrow’s flight towards the temple and back. The sparrow would fly to the column of rose granite, sun himself for some minutes before descending to the buried temple, where he would disappear for almost an hour, before returning, pale with dust and holding a morsel of food in his beak.
‘Little Captain, thank you,’ Larouche would say each time the sparrow returned. Then he would marvel at the bird as he made his way back to the column to clean his feathers.
‘But how is it that there is fresh fruit in a buried temple?’ Larouche asked himself. He pictured the god in his gold and finery, the boat filled with offerings. If he were truly a god then, of course, it was possible for him to have plentiful resources of food and gold and anything else you might name, there, buried beneath the earth, garlanded with a miracle of fruit.
The sparrow continued to nurse the soldier until Larouche felt well enough to believe he might survive after all. Someone would find his horse wandering the desert, and when they did the Bedouin would lead them to Karnak. They would discover a freshly collapsed site and begin to dig. Or perhaps the sparrow would lead them there himself.
In the event, Larouche would spend another three days entombed in the earth. When his soldiers found him he was barely recognisable as their captain. He had aged terribly, and his face bore a haunted expression they had only previously seen on the faces of dead men. For months he was unable to speak. He was taken to a military hospital in Aswan where eventually he recovered enough to describe what had happened. He was not believed. The doctors said he must be mistaken. His men shook their heads, quite sure he had become crazy.
A year passed and Larouche was refused a commission until he withdrew his story. Finally, he arranged for a party of men to return with him to Karnak and excavate the temple to try to prove once and for all that his story was true. But when the men dug into the temple it had already been ransacked by bandits. There was nothing inside but broken remnants and sand. There was no food. No magical source for the sparrow’s gifts.
The night Larouche left Egypt, bound for France, he searched the Nile for sign of his little Captain, but saw nothing amongst the armies of sparrows to say which was his. Eventually, he found a commission in Catalonia, by which time he was almost old enough to retire. When that time came he returned to his family’s farm, ending his days making honey. But he never forgot the little Captain, and the miracle that had prevented him from dying in the earth of Karnak temple.