Nefertiti's Nose Job

A major diplomatic breakthrough was brokered by Mohammed Salah the soccer superstar. Known as the Anfield Protocol, the multi-lateral agreement required several European nations to repatriate ancient treasures to their countries of origin. It was also agreed, as a quid pro quo, that the artefacts, which included the Elgin Marbles, the Rosetta Stone, and the Venus de Milo, would tour the world’s major museums before returning to their place of origin. The world seemed to be on the brink of peace and prosperity.    

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It was past midnight and Professor Angus McCann was tired but happy. The exhibits were inventoried, the documentation complete, everything was unpacked and ready for the installation team. With a great sense of satisfaction he took one last look at the star of the show – Nefertiti – then he turned off the lights in the basement office, closed the metal door. His job was done! 

In the dimly lit basement corridor, he met the mythical midnight clean-up crew: Mr. Wilcox and young Mikey, dressed in their green overalls. “Make sure you do a thorough job, men”, he said breezily as he passed the moving arsenal of brushes, buckets, carts, and vacuums, “we need the place spic and span”.

“Right-O Guvnor. No stone unturned, no corners cut, no loose ends”, said Mr. Wilcox, snappy, a wiry foxlike man of febrile energy. Wilcox saluted the tweedy professor as he sailed on by.

“Every nook and cranny, Professor”, said Mikey, the apprentice, moon-faced, smiling benignly. 

“Good men! Good men! Onwards!”, said the Professor. The British Museum was a well-oiled machine. 

“Silly toffee-nosed bastard”, said Wilcox once the Professor was gone, “thinks he fucking runs the place. I’ve been here nearly twenty years now, lad, and you should see how much damage them eggheads do to the merchandise”.

Mikey nodded in agreement.

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This new darkness, this subterranean silence, this she could not abide, not again. So many centuries without one scintilla of light, without a whisper of breath, without the soft touch of flesh; how much she would give to see the sun arching across the sky, or the moon suspended midst the stars, or the smile of a child, or to see her own incomparable countenance reflected in still water. Must her gaze be on oblivion in every direction, must she count the eons again without the apparatus of day and night? They serve her yet they keep her imprisoned.  What use such great beauty if unbeholden?

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“Blimey,” said Mikey as he pushed open the metal door to the basement office and flicked on the overhead lights. He blinked at the sight of the wooden crates, cardboard boxes, books and paperwork that were strewn about the desks and tables, “are you sure we’re supposed to be cleaning the basement this week?” he said.

Wilcox shunted Mikey aside with the vacuum cleaner, and entered the room, clipboard in hand. “Every fucking Wednesday, Mikey, you know the routine.”

“Yeah, but there’s a lot of new stuff in here. We could get in trouble if we do any damage,” said Mikey. A statuette of a man with the head of a black dog was standing on the nearest table. It looked old, fragile and creepy.

“It’s why we get paid the big bucks, lad”, said Wilcox. He pointed at the clipboard, “every Wednesday, and ‘specially with the big Neverwotsit exhibition starting up next week. Let’s get busy”. Wilcox plugged in the vacuum cleaner. Mikey pushed the broom around the room, humming a hymn that he'd learned in school.

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Like a heavy flower upon a slender stalk, she bears the blue capped crown without complaint as she has done for millennia past, but its weightiness grows through the eons; and on such a slender, serpentine neck, don’t you think it her time now? She is the most beautiful, the most graceful, she is sweet love, and she is the lady of all women. She is the Queen of the Nile. Let her go on from here.

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Mikey swept, dusted and discarded. Wilcox stacked, sorted and organized. Old boxes, bits of wood, torn fabric, shards of old pots, they all flew into the gray plastic tilt-truck for disposal at the end of the shift. Mikey stopped at a desk on which yellow fragments of torn paper were arranged like an unfinished jigsaw puzzle: inky black figures in a comic strip. He swept the old rubbish into a dustpan.

The clean-up crew worked their way to the middle of the room.

“Fuck me, she is a stunner”, said Wilcox standing in front of the bust of the Queen. Mikey gaped in awe.

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The light shines in this new tomb. If this is the afterworld it is a vexing place; there is nothing on which her good eye can rest; straight unnatural lines go nowhere, objects flash, shine, blink, and vibrate with alien energy.

What now? A peasant with the face of a desert fox is staring at her, and a pimpled moon smiles foolishly.

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“It looks like an egghead knocked out one of her eyes!”, said Wilcox, "they are a wobbly bunch of klutzes”. 

Mikey was transfixed, vaguely aware that he was in close proximity to something perfect, but he was also agitated “It looks like her ear got chewed off by a beaver,” he said. 

“Apparently, she’s the lady of the two lands, Queen of the Nile!” said Wilcox, reading from a neatly typed document that lay on the table next to the white plinth, “maybe she’s going to be in that exhibition, upstairs… maybe she is fuckin Neverwotsit!”

“Well, they could do a better job of looking after her,” said Mikey, who’d transitioned from agitated to upset. He caressed the fine line of her chin, and tenderly traced the contours of her cheek with his sausage finger, “she needs a good dusting before she goes upstairs”.

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A coarse finger touches her face, rough hands grip her precious skull, the tomb tilts and she is blinded by captive bolts of lightning. The ascent from the underworld is thrilling. Perhaps she will see the sun again, wheat fields blowing in the wind, the full moon suspended in the starry night, and diamonds playing on the placid surface of the Nile? But she can feel their presence; dull, slow, witless beasts. The two peasants, the fox and the moon. Why are they still here? 

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“Fuck me, she’s heavy”, said Wilcox, who looked like he was having a bowel movement owing to the strain of lifting the plinth and the heavy bust. Mikey ran the rag beneath Nefertiti, sweeping up traces of dust from the worktable, “hurry up will you, I’m going to drop her any sec,” said Wilcox.

Wilcox's fingers convulsed and Nefertiti slipped from his grasp. The plinth slammed on the table, she rocked forward, Mikey tried to catch her, but he was too late, she face-planted on the table with a sharp smack and something rattled across the table. Sweet, pert, but no longer attached to her face, Mikey picked up Nefertiti's nose, gingerly. 

“Fuck”, said Wilcox. 

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Fools! The two. She heaves curses at them.

The great river will drown their crops and children, Thoth will smite them with a disease for which there is no cure, Uraeus the Cobra will pierce their necks with his venom, they will be filled with the fear that she casts into them, for this life, and for seven generations hence. The gates, doors and pylons of Duat will be closed unto them, and they will toil in eternal flame without rest or succor. 

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Mikey looked like he was about to burst into tears, but Wilcox was a good man in a crisis.

“What’s done is done, no point in crying over spilt milk”, said Wilcox, “why don't you go to the storage cupboard down near the sceptic system, bring back a tube of superglue, the caulking gun we used to fix the staff toilets last week, and anything else you think might be useful”.  

Mikey didn’t move.

“Mikey! Stop fucking staring at her like she’s a car crash victim”, Wilcox punched him in the arm, “Don’t worry, we can fix this, mate”.  

Wilcox was alone with the busted bust. It would have been funny if it wasn’t so fucking unfunny! He needed the job, the pension, and the British Museum needed him. This place would go to pieces without him. He placed the nose back into the center of Nefertiti’s face. It was a snug fit. His spirits rose, they would get out of this little jam. It was just gone 2.00am.

Mikey returned with the glue, the caulking gun, and a canvass bag full of miscellaneous tools and materials. 

“Good lad, Mikey, we’ll get her fixed up in a jiffy”.

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There is grace in his movement, something loving in moon-face's touch.  His touch calms her mind and soothes a small part of her soul. She recalls the smooth and delicate touch of another hand, that of Lord Akhenaten, whom, surely, she will join one day?  And the fox-peasant is the great Tell-El Amama, reincarnate, transcendent; in his artful care her insurmountable beauty is restored, she feels reborn, harmonious and sublime.

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The superglue was drying quickly.

“Can you please place that fucking mirror so I can see what’s happening on the other side of her fucking nose?” said Wilcox. He was struggling, second go-around, to find the right fit when the glue suddenly bonded and Nefertiti's nose stuck fore eternity, a bit skewwhiff but in the right approximate vicinity. Meanwhile, Mikey fashioned a piece of dried-up chewing gum into a dead slug, which Wilcox pressed it into the mangled rim of Nefertiti’s ear. He then dropped a small black button into Nefertiti's vacant left eye, and filled the socket with the remaining glue, which hardened into a convex bubble. The eye bulged a bit, looked a bit wayward, but was otherwise totally plausible. 

“Absolutely fucking perfect!”, said Wilcox, standing back and evaluating his wall-eyed masterpiece. Mikey came around and stood behind him and admired the handiwork.

“Mr. Wilcox this is marvelous! How’d you learn to do this stuff?” said Mikey, whose undulating moon flesh betrayed whelming emotions.

“I had a model train set when I was a kid”, said Wilcox, “and my mum said I had an eye for detail.”

“And fingers too! Like you’re Picasso or Salvador Dali, or whatnot” said Mikey, utterly enthralled by the new and improved Nefertiti.

“Talking of whatnot, have we got anything to touch up Neverwotsit's patches?”, said Wilcox”.

“Gimme a sec”, Mikey rifled around in the tool bag and withdrew a tin of shoe polish.

“No brown? Just black?” said Wilcox, examining the tin. Mikey shook his head. "Oh well, nothing ventured, nothing gained”. Wilcox wiped the polish on Nefertiti’s nose. “What do you think?” 

“It looks great, Mr. Wilcox. She looks like Aisha, the canteen girl that makes the sausage sandwiches”.

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The light, it is doubled! She can see with both eyes again! She is in and of the world, time is moving forward again, light follows dark follows light, effect follows its cause, there is a before and after.  Her loveliness reflected in quicksilver, beholden again. But what is this? Perhaps it is a trick of the light? Her skin seems darkened by ague, and her nose seems oddly misshapen...

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“You sweet on the girl in the canteen then?” asked Wilcox.

Mikey blushed and changed the subject, "What's next on our schedule, Mr. Wilcox?"

Wilcox grabbed his clipboard and glanced at his wristwatch, "There's a big marble statue that arrived from Paris on Monday, waiting in the loading bay...the place is probably a right old mess by now."

“Is it the naked lady without any arms?” said Mikey, checking whether he had the caulking gun in the tool bag.

"Venus-The-Fucking-Mile-O”, confirmed Wilcox.

It was nearly 4.00am; they still had a couple of hours before the morning shift arrived.