Cleopatra�s Perfume (27 page)

I wish I could tell you my need to use cocaine ceased upon hearing the news, but that would be a lie. Unlike some habitual users of the drug who can cease ingesting the stimulant at will, I faced psychological problems in my need for cocaine I’ve yet to acknowledge that would be my complete undoing. I haven’t reached that part of my story, dear reader, so I will carry on by saying that I continued to
hear voices and couldn’t concentrate on the smallest task. My nerves were edgy, taut, but hearing from my flier made me feel more decisive and not as helpless to overcome the drug’s hold on me. Yet I retained a small cache of the drug hidden in my room. Addiction is
not
an easy thing to overcome, dear reader, as you shall see. But Chuck Dawn gave me the hope I could feel again as a woman. His presence in my life uplifted my spirits, threw me into an exalted state and fused my desire with anticipation for our next meeting.

Accepting the fact the drug was disrupting my existence, that it gave me no pleasure, I fought to maintain continuity in my life. I strove to restore harmony and balance in my mind and body, learning to again find enjoyment in a cup of hot mint tea, in visiting the Pyramids and basking in the warm desert breeze that once fanned the beauty of ancient queens, and indulging in applying Cleopatra’s perfume between my breasts, its spicy scent renewing me with its pinelike vigor and shimmering fragrance. Clear-eyed and sober, I tingled and overflowed with femininity, waiting for Chuck’s return, dreaming of that moment when I would press my nude breasts against his hard chest, his hands sliding down over my buttocks, then slipping around to my shaved mound before parting my thighs and pressing his hard cock into me, surrendering to my capricious mood, living the wild moment, the ecstasy.

Then Ramzi reappeared in my life.

And so began my descent into hell.

I
was walking through the Muski, buying rugs and artifacts for my cottage in Coventry, knowing someday I would return to my hideaway where I could indulge in my memories of Lord Marlowe, asking him for forgiveness for my foolish dalliance with the Egyptian, knowing somehow he would approve of my interest in the American flier, when I heard—

“May Allah be praised, I have found my English rose.
Alone.
”

Ramzi. Hands on his hips, dressed in a wide white caftan, blue turban swirling around his dark hair, he appeared without notice, as if he sought to spirit me away on his magic carpet.

“Go away, Ramzi.” I turned my back to him and feigned interest in red and purple silk-embroidered pillows, running my fingers over their smoothness, indulging in a sensual thought that had me believing I was touching the American’s hard, bare chest. I shivered. “You got what you wanted from me. I’ll not interfere with you taking over the Cleopatra Club.”

“I don’t care about the club. That was Laila’s idea.” He grabbed my hand. I was too startled to pull away from him. “It’s
you
I want. I am in love with you, my English lady.”

“What does a man like you know about love?” I dared to speak what was on my mind. I refused to believe him. Hadn’t he scoffed at the idea of love? “You’ve never allowed any woman into your heart.”

“What you say is true,” he said, “but that was before I met you, so beautiful, your breasts, your firm buttocks, your body arched in abandon when I put my cock into you…”

“Sex isn’t love, Ramzi. You enjoy women,
all
women. I can’t change that.”

“Ah, but it is Allah’s will a man be tamed by
one
woman lest he remain like a wild beast on the prowl.”

“I’m not in the mood for your pretty speeches, Ramzi. You fooled me once. I shan’t be fooled again. Let go of me.”

He refused to do so, slipping his hand around my waist, his lips so close to mine I could smell the sickly sweetness of hashish clinging to him. “You
must
listen to me—”

“Where’s Maxi?” I interrupted, not wanting to hear his petulant story. “Isn’t she waiting for you in the crypt to pleasure her?”

“It is over between us, I
swear.
”

“You’re lying. She’s taking you to Paris to show you off at her photo exhibition.”

“By the will of Allah, I am telling you the truth.” He gripped my arm, refusing to let me go.

“Ramzi—”

“Come,” he said. “I will show you.”

“Maxi means
nothing
to me,” Ramzi yelled, pulling the still-wet sheaf of prints off the drying frame where the German girl had arranged them and throwing them into the open stone sarcophagus.

I shuddered. On previous occasions I had rubbed my bare pubis against its red granite roughness much like a sculptor’s chisel fracturing, scraping, polishing its shiny surface, evoking pain play in me when I leaned over it, waiting for the sting of the whip, then spilling my juices onto the stone incised with hieroglyphs and deeply carved symbols.

At this moment, no pleasure surged through me, only fear.

Before I could stop him, Ramzi struck a match and tossed it into the burial box, setting fire to all the fresh prints Maxi had left drying in the makeshift darkroom. I couldn’t believe my eyes as I watched the flames consume the beautiful photographs of the handsome Egyptian. Burning. Red-hot. I was about to turn away, when sparks flew out of the ancient coffin and landed near me.

“You’re insane!” I cried out, stomping on a flicker of flame with the toe of my white pump, making black scorch marks on the stone floor. I dared not get any closer to the centuries-old coffin holding the prints without putting myself in danger of being burned. That thought startled me. What else had he planned? Another phony attempt on my life to prove to me the perfume worked? Did he believe I was without the mental capacity to defuse his scheme as nothing more than a mask for his lust? A thread of drama without any forward movement to keep it taut? Static, never changing?

I was emotionally drained, too weak to go on with his game, and that was my mistake. So charged was I with the needs of my own obsession, I had failed to note the furies, anguish and utter chaos inhab
iting the soul of the Egyptian. By following Ramzi down to the underground crypt of the Cleopatra Club, I had fueled his passion even more. He must have known Maxi had printed more copies of her photos, and wanted to evoke a piece of theater to compel me to stay.

I didn’t believe him,
I told him.
I was leaving Cairo. Without him.

“Then I will also burn the negatives and prove to you I am telling the truth,” he threatened, striking the match and holding it up to the large celluloid nitrate negatives. Even in the dim light, I could see him taunting me with the match, holding it to the tip of the sheets of celluloid as shiny as black silk. The detailed negatives gleamed in the red glow of the fire, the Egyptian’s nude, muscular body so clearly delineated on them, each negative substituting light for darkness, with all the subtle variations in between. A relevant truth stuck me, unnerving me. How could I have failed not to see similar darkness inhabiting Ramzi’s soul?

I clutched my throat, choking on the stifling air in the damp crypt, but I couldn’t take my eyes off the flames consuming the thick paper as easily as if it were sheer voile, the mustard-orange streaks swirling through the black smoke, all the photos being consumed in the belly of the fire where an ancient pharaoh once slept. Singeing embers flew through the air in a strange pattern against the black smoke.

“You
fool!
” I heard a woman’s voice cry out behind me. “Are you mad?”

I turned and saw Maxi racing down the stairway. She knocked the match out of his hand, its blue-yellow flame landing on the still-burning photos. Husky emotion boiled over in her voice and I could see the rising fear in her eyes as the hot, intense fire rose higher,
making a deafening roar, its wavering human form licking her face with its fiery, steamy breath and daring her to come closer. “You’ll kill us all with your insatiable need to fuck every woman you meet.”

“Leave us alone, Maxi,” Ramzi ordered, striking another match.

“If you burn those negatives,” she warned, “we’ll all die…”

“If you burn those negatives, we’ll all die.”

Maxi’s words echoed in my head over and over as I leaned backward, my head spinning, the repugnant smell of the fire making me impatient and irritable. I could hear Maxi and Ramzi fighting, then the German girl yelling if he burned the negatives we’d all suffocate since the fumes give off poisonous gases. I reached out to grab on to the Egyptian, but my hand seemed to go right through him, as if I were a ghost dematerializing in a motion-picture comedy, fooling the audience with camera tricks. But it
was
happening, here,
now,
though the rational side of my brain tried to convince me it was an illusion brought on by the swirling smoke, dim light and my volatile state of mind.

I stood motionless, my emotions on hold. I had to force myself not to panic. To think. Go back over what happened again and again until I found the logic in all this. In a subconscious gesture, I wiped my brow, sweat moistening my face and neck. I
think
I touched my face. I wasn’t sure of anything. When I tried to speak, I couldn’t, my lips were dry and I had no taste in my mouth despite the charred smell filling the crypt. My senses were depleted, gone, all except—

Smell.

A sumptuous scent overwhelmed me, a dynamic, spicy essence emitting a dry heat of warm, exotic tones doused with a smoky
incense filled my nostrils, evoking the memory I feared. I’d experienced a similar pattern once before—the dizziness, the overpowering odor, a sense of voices fading, my flesh dissolving—when Ramzi acted out his game to make me believe he had tried to plunge a knife into me and the perfume saved me from his blade. I dared not put it into words then, though what remained missing until this moment was the link between the two that completed the circle of events.

I was wearing Cleopatra’s perfume then and now.

No, I couldn’t go there, later maybe. Start with what I could see, hear, feel. I strained my ears, trying to hear them fighting, but their voices faded, then my vision blurred, snatching the scene of Ramzi and Maxi clawing at each other from my mind’s grasp. It was as if I had developed so acute a sense of approaching danger I could perceive the smell of violence before actual dissolution.

I never forgot the strange odor permeating my brain, as if it stained my imagination, its mystical spell dousing my mind with rare spices. I will not try to explain what cannot be explained, rationale prevents me from doing so, but I have long pondered both as well as the fantasy and the science of what happened to me and I’ve come to this conclusion: Like the negatives of the Egyptian containing varying degrees of lights and darks, I believe a spiritual energy manipulated the intensity of light on me whenever I faced oncoming danger in such a way that my body seemed to fade from the scene.

I had no idea then what would happen if certain death and not merely the threat of danger awaited me. I will leave that for a later telling and I must ask you, dear reader, not to skip ahead to those pages (God willing I complete this diary) but instead continue on your journey with me, for I have so much more to tell you, to make
you understand that though anxiety caused by the drug prevented me from accepting what was happening to me, I was entering a new phase in my life and I rush forth to write it down lest I lose my courage to do so.

I had no doubt Ramzi didn’t believe in the magic of the perfume, but what if it
did
work? A daring thought skimmed the edge of my mind: What if the perfume saved me from violence by dissipating all my senses except the sense of smell, much like savage man or an animal developed a sense of smell so powerful it warned them of danger. And when the danger passed, I regained my senses?

No,
no,
the idea was insane.

The consequences of such a reality threw me into a state of chaos, while at the same time the air in the crypt turned heavy and dark, choking me. I fought the pulling sensation dragging me into a state of numbness as churning black smoke closed in around me, the suffocating darkness holding me tightly in its grasp, pulling me back and forth, hurling me into a cold well of fear that wouldn’t let go. I couldn’t stop shivering. My teeth chattered. My lips trembled.

Then it stopped. It was suddenly calm. I touched my fingers to my lips, my cheeks. Sweat dripped from my face, my mouth tasted of soot, my breath was erratic. I blinked. Shadows, light, then color redistributed itself in front of my eyes, forms took shape, then dimensions until I could hear Ramzi cursing in Arabic—

Then I saw him draw his curved dagger from his waistband and slice through the slippery celluloid in one long movement, making Maxi scream. She beat on him with her fists. I didn’t move. All I could think of was that I was back. I could see, hear, touch, speak…

And smell. The fragrance was light, airy, even amid the charred smell of burned paper, as if I breathed in the freshness of a creamy
summer day.
What happened?
I couldn’t explain it then nor did I wish to try. I was high on the intoxicant and blamed my experience on its ill effects as if it suffused my mind with wild imaginings. But I was sober enough to realize if Maxi hadn’t stopped the Egyptian from burning the negatives and releasing the toxic fumes, inhaling the vapors would have been deadly. For them, but not for me.

I was wearing the perfume.

When Maxi discovered the blackened sooty embers in the sarcophagus and realized that was all that remained of her photos, she dissolved into tears. I’ve never seen her so heartbroken. I tried to comfort her, but she pushed me away. Something about her had changed. I saw it in her eyes. Fierce. Hateful. She spit at me and blurted out she was leaving Cairo tonight. Goebbels’s office had called her back to Berlin for reassignment, she said, her eyes glancing downward as if she was hiding something from us. She had planned to take Ramzi to Paris, she gloated, then London and New York, but now she would be pleased never to see either one of us again.