Cleopatra�s Perfume (21 page)

That refusal prompted a visit from the Gestapo. Maxi feared even her position as a forerunner in the Nacktkultur or nudism movement (she had dazzled them with her photos of sports nudes) wasn’t enough to keep her from being eliminated by the Nazi war machine. Her reputation for “getting the picture” had endeared her to the National Socialist Party when she captured the raw energy and superb form of the German athletes at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, but they frowned on the eroticism of her earlier photography. Even so, the office of Germany’s propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels, recognized her genius and sent her a letter, ordering her to go on a nonstop tour of German arms factories and photograph
Hitler addressing the workers. To refuse would end her career, she told me. Or worse. She would find herself in a concentration camp for what they called
reeducation,
with no chance for release until those in charge decided she had served enough time.

“Sounds boring,” I lamented, grabbing hangers and arranging her clothes in the hotel closet. Dull box suits in various shades of Nazi drab, I noticed. Did the Führer also dictate what women wore?

“
Very
boring,” she said. “And
verboten.
”

I smiled at her, intrigued. “Anything forbidden reminds me of our time in Berlin. Do you remember when we skated at the ice rink wearing nothing but a pair of earmuffs?”

To my surprise, she retained a stern look on her pretty face. “Is that all you think about is having fun?”

“What else is there?” I said in a flippant manner, trying to ease the tension between us.

“My dear Eve, you’ve been living in your dreamworld too long.” Maxi ran her fingers through her scruffy short dark hair and raised her pencil-thin brows in an act of despair. “I was referring to the rearmament of Germany. Such things are forbidden under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles.”

“Then
why
do you photograph the factories?” I asked, admiring her red leather pumps from Italy. She’d purchased them on a trip to photograph Hitler with Mussolini.

“You don’t understand, Eve, if I don’t do as I’m told, my father will suffer.”

“That’s absurd, Maxi.” I slipped on the high-heeled pumps and pranced around the room. They fit perfectly. “What does your father have to do with your work?”

She lit a cigarette, then took a few puffs before answering me, as if she was deciding what to say. “My father has…different views about how the country should be run.”

“So?”

“Things have changed in Germany, Eve,” she said in a whisper, as if she feared being overheard. “I’ve heard rumors they may send him to a labor camp.”

“Labor camp? What’s that?”

“Where they send anyone who doesn’t agree with Hitler and his cronies.” She paused. “No one ever comes back.”

“Enough of your Hitler and his silly work camps.” I put my arm around her shoulders, determined she have a good time while she was here. “Let’s have tea. Then I shall take you to the Cleopatra Club for an evening you won’t forget.”

I assure you, dear reader, I paid scant attention to her rant, involving myself more with what picture shows she’d seen or what shade of red lipstick was
en vogue,
and could I borrow a pair of silk stockings? Mine were in such disarray. With Ramzi pulling them up and sliding them down at frequent intervals, I said, they snagged easily.

Who was this Ramzi?
she wanted to know. I assured Maxi that she would meet him. Her reaction surprised me. Shy, distant, she barely spoke to him when I introduced them at the club. Later I realized why. His charm didn’t work on her. I had forgotten Maxi suffered from an insecurity around men. Especially a wildly handsome man like Ramzi. She was more comfortable with the underworld types she knew in Berlin (like her murder-crazed psychologist). This had the effect of her concentrating her desire, her body movements, her
sexual need,
all
with her camera. So while she draped her persona in bold Teutonic strokes, all artistic, avant-garde, she spoke only with her camera lens. She was a great artist and as such, revealed herself in her work, exhibiting the hypnotic brilliance of a woman who pierced through her shyness to trap a man by appealing to his ego.

Ramzi was no exception.

“Turn your head this way, yes, that’s it, just a little more.”
Click. Click.
Camera in hand, Maxi circled the Egyptian, catching his handsome features in a flattering angle from the overhead spotlight. “Open your shirt collar, more, yes, that’s it. Perfect.”
Click.

“Who
is
this woman?” Ramzi turned to me, his dark eyes questioning, but he didn’t retreat.

“Ramzi, meet Maxi von Brandt,” I said, nodding toward the brunette, “an old friend from Berlin.”

He approached Maxi, still snapping photos, with the arrogance of a man used to dominating women. “Why do you take my picture?”

She put her camera down and said without hesitation, “Because you’re the most beautiful man I’ve ever seen.”

He let go with a gorgeous smile, as if he’d been saving it for her. At that moment, what I wanted but also feared had presented itself to me, but I denied the feeling. I wasn’t prepared to accept the consequences of what I’d dreamed and the actualization of seeing it realized.

Ramzi with another woman.

I can only say, dear reader, dreaming about it stimulated me. The reality of seeing it about to happen unnerved me.

Ramzi said, “My English lady’s charming friend is welcome at the Cleopatra Club anytime.” He took her hand and turned it palm up,
then kissed her tender skin, as he often did with mine. I realized then I had unleashed a side of him I’d never seen before, a mythic self that wanted to preserve what he saw as his contribution to his Islamic culture.

His image.

I turned, the romantic look on Maxi’s face sending my libido into a downward spiral. No doubt he’d triggered something in her that had lain dormant for years. Her faintly mischievous orbs shone with a light I’d seen in her eyes only when she “got the shot,” as she called it, that elusive span of time, a second, maybe two, when she captured her subject
in the moment.
I knew she lived in fear that one day she’d click the button on her camera and find out she didn’t have the magic anymore, then panicking it may never happen again. I knew from our days in Berlin she didn’t like to discuss this subconscious gift she possessed, saying that talking about it ruined it. That it had to stay hidden, if not mercurial, so she couldn’t capture it and put it in a jar.
Then it would die,
she said,
like a bird with broken wings.

Ramzi revitalized her artistic vision and became her inspiration.

Her version of an Egyptian prince.

Sans loincloth.

She wanted to explore him on film as if he were something she could make divine and immortal, she said, while at the same time I could see she felt the rise of desire for him. It was then I realized that although
I
was suffering from the loss of my husband, Maxi had never known such intimacy with a man. It was that melancholy eating away at her that I sensed when I saw her clicking photo after photo of Ramzi in his white linen suit, prancing around the club,
posing, his curious eyes always focused on
her
and not the camera, as if he were already stripping off her clothes and fucking her.

Irritation made a circle of sweat around my neck and it wasn’t from the white scarf I wore. I was jealous. I noticed that Maxi wore a teal constructed suit that fit snug to her body like chic armor, but as she moved around, bending over, leaning down to get the shot, she undid her top button.
Unbearable heat,
she complained. So, she wanted to play. I unfastened
two
buttons on my dress, then wiped the perspiration off my neck with my white scarf, thereby acknowledging we were in competition with each other. She smiled, then disappeared with Ramzi for a tour around the club. She was confident of her innate skill as a photographer, but I speculated whether or not that was enough to feed Ramzi’s hunger for something I couldn’t give him.

A lasting impression on the world.

When they returned, her next two buttons were also undone, her coral-red lipstick smeared and her lips bruised. I seethed inside but remained silent. Yes, dear reader, I saw the deepening sexual desire between them, but I didn’t stop it, nor would I have if I’d had prescient knowledge of what was going to happen. As I often heard shopkeepers mumble in the bazaar,
what was written could not be unwritten.

I trembled, arousal reawakening in me. A sensual twitch kept making its presence known to me, a delicate unbalancing of muscle spasms on my upper thigh so close to my pubic area I tingled with carnal desire. I couldn’t deny I remained bound to the man who fulfilled my dramatic and wild impulses toward sexual gratification, even if his attention wandered. In the days that followed, I did everything I could to prove to myself I could sustain Ramzi’s interest in me.

I was so terribly wrong.

Maxi expressed her desire to photograph nudes again, using the male body as a tool for her exploration, she said, and she wanted Ramzi to pose for her. I admitted he cut a virile swath as a lover, but as a model? I wasn’t sure if Ramzi was up to the task, though there was nothing alienating about the way Maxi operated around him with her camera, how hard she worked to get the picture, how dedicated she was. She alone took responsibility for making the shot work. She said it was easier to get the picture right if she didn’t lose her identity in it, but instead stood aside and captured what she saw.

The most beautiful man she’d ever seen.

Imagining how much her art had suffered under the Nazi regime, knowing she was forced to cooperate with them, I convinced myself this interlude with Ramzi would be beneficial to her mental as well as her physical well-being. She was, after all, my friend, and It rusted her. We had known wild times in Berlin, experimenting with drugs and sex, but the world had changed and I had married and Maxi had not.

Whatever excuse I make up regarding her behavior won’t change anything, dear reader, so here you have it: She engaged in sexual acts with Ramzi
and
Laila. Yes, I was as shocked as you are. I had imagined Ramzi would flirt with her, fondle her, but I had no idea how damaged Maxi was, how starved her body was for sex, how close her psyche was to ruin because of what the Nazis had done to her mind. Numb, painful experiments that squeezed the artist in her so tight she
had
lost her magic with the lens, though she wouldn’t admit it to me
or
herself. By enclosing Ramzi in a series of photographs of form, light, texture, all aglow with sidereal effects and
subtle shadows, Maxi was convinced she could free her trapped mind and transcend her artistic expectations.

She was also convinced she was in love with Ramzi. Sex with the Egyptian became her obsession, her clit throbbing before he touched her, her blood racing through her veins, his obvious seduction of her elevating her work beyond her dreams, while she undulated with pleasure.

I pretended to be unaware of these illicit meetings, these little adventures where the unlikely ménage à trois sought their pleasure in secret, but that didn’t lessen the pain clawing at my soul, the fever that racked my body, my mind with indecision. Should I leave Cairo? I had inherited a vast fortune and could spare the lost revenue until I sold my interest in the club, but it wasn’t my style to acquiesce to petty jealousy. I was undecided on what to do.

Then everything went into a tailspin. My nerves became knotted and tangled, my stability and belief in myself shaken because of
her.

Laila.

It started one afternoon at the club when Maxi and Ramzi were out shooting photographs around the Great Pyramid. I received a telegram from Mrs. Wills, informing me my London bank had wired the funds needed to sustain the running of the club. I had no choice but to meet with Laila in her office in the club (however much the idea filled me with distaste) to discuss the details. She asked me where Ramzi was, a ploy I’m certain to make me believe she needed him to complete the transaction. She didn’t. Sitting on the edge of her desk, I opened a slim silver case and pulled out a cigarette, then told her he was with Maxi.

“Jealous?” Laila asked, leaning over and offering me a light.

I inhaled, then lifted my chin and blew out the smoke in her direction. “Should I be? Maxi is my best friend.” My voice brimmed with confidence, though I was beginning to speculate our friendship would go through trying times because of Ramzi’s apt attention to her.

“I’ve no doubt my brother finds you most captivating, though I have known him to be a most possessive and
jealous
lover.” She lay her hand on my knee, making me uncomfortable. “Be careful, Lady Marlowe, where you spread your legs.”

I removed her hand. Did she know about my indiscretion with Mahmoud? I was certain the tall Nubian would never say anything. Or was she baiting me?

“I find your remark insulting,” I said with a flatness in my voice, though the undertone seethed with anger.

“And I find your presence in my office distracting.”

What did she mean by that? I eased my body off her desk and dropped my cigarette into the ashtray. “I wish to make one thing clear, Laila…”

“Yes?”

“We don’t have to like each other, but while Maxi is here, I insist you act civil toward me.”

She nodded. “I won’t upset your friend, but if I were you, I would advise her to be more cautious about speaking out when she returns to Germany. The new order requires complete obedience, even from its artists.”

“Did your Nazi visitor tell you that?” I saw a look of surprise cross her face, but she said nothing. She didn’t have to, the look in her
eyes told me what I wanted to know. She was more involved with the Third Reich than a simple business transaction.

A not-too-subtle chill inched up my spine as I walked out of the club and hailed a gharry to take me back to my hotel. I couldn’t shake the feeling Laila was planning something, something that frightened me. I didn’t know then
I
was the intended target.