The Twelve Rooms of the Nile (15 page)

At eight sharp, the Frenchmen arrived carrying luggage, M. Du Camp weighted down with two unwieldy sheepskin cases, and M. Flaubert with a portmanteau and a bottle of wine. In full dress, they looked like remnants from Napoleon’s army gone native. Ceremonial swords with embossed hilts swung by their sides in ornate scabbards. When they bent at the knee to board the boat, or sat in chairs, they had to coax the swords from behind like a pair of shy dogs. Perhaps they planned a fencing demonstration? They wore tight white pants, like footmen (the better, Flo thought, to show off their legs), and tall leather cavalry boots. In lieu of military jackets, they sported red Turkish vests over voluminous white shirts, the vests Flo had often seen on bare-chested Egyptian men. Only fezzes were missing to completely scramble their attire. Instead, they wore turbans. M. Flaubert’s was blood red, fixed at the top with a brooch.

While the captain and Paolo were preparing dinner topside, Charles invited everyone belowdecks. There, he poured five glasses of sherry.

The Bracebridges’ cabin was bigger than Flo’s, with one large bed in the middle, and a narrow divan on one side. With nowhere proper to sit, everyone stood. Charles gave a brief survey of his belongings,
as if, Florence thought, to assure his guests that as “Franks”—Europeans of any nationality—they had a civilization in common to uphold no matter where they found themselves. The trappings Charles so proudly showed off were like so many props in this venture: his globe, Selina’s tea caddy, maps and drawing kits, first aid supplies, a telescope, bird and reptile encyclopedias. He read the titles of his books aloud, waiting for recognition on his guests’ faces, which was only infrequently forthcoming. If Florence didn’t know Charles better, she would have thought he was quizzing them to determine how well educated they were. Charles was good-hearted, but sometimes his enthusiasms rode roughshod over people’s patience. He could be a boor.

“My dear,” he turned to her, “tell the Frenchmen how many volumes you brought from home.”

Before she could answer, he volunteered the information. “Miss Nightingale is modest, but I know to a certainty that there are more than thirty scholarly tomes dealing with Egypt and higher spiritual pursuits.”

“Now, Charles,” she said, coloring. At the rate Charles was going, she would soon be unrecognizably bookish. Higher spiritual pursuits? Had she ever used those words to him? They sounded like something Selina might have told him.

Just then, Selina changed the subject. “The captain has an ambitious menu. Five courses.”

“I believe I can smell our dinner now,” Gustave said, sniffing to reinforce his point. She thought he smiled at her.

The odors from the brazier had drifted down, whetting their appetites. They followed their noses back upstairs.

The crew had outdone themselves setting the table: within a collar of purple flowers they’d arranged a branch of dates and sectioned pomegranates, the seeds glittering like rubies. In moments, conversation was flowing as freely as the food and wine.

M. Flaubert had brought along his certificate from the government describing his mission. But it was Du Camp’s photographs that
captivated everyone. Shedding his white gloves, he passed around his pictures of the monuments at Giza and the mosques of Cairo. Spectacular images of the Sphinx elicited special praise. Florence hadn’t yet explored the monuments at Giza, only viewed them from afar, saving them, she explained, for the float downriver. “I glimpsed him from the back of a little ass,” she mentioned, studying the picture of the Sphinx. “We rode asses everywhere in Cairo,” she added. “They were so small!”

“We rode them, too,” Du Camp said. “One’s legs hang almost to the ground. They’re the Egyptian version of the coach and four.”

“It’s such a bumpy ride, isn’t it? My maid was exhausted. She complained the little beasts would displace her kidneys or cause her lungs to drop to her derriere.” (Trout had said “bottom,” but the French sounded more polite.) She’d felt ridiculous astride her donkey, a Brobdinagian suddenly transported to Lilliput. “I felt like a giant,” she said. “And I hated that my mount was throttled periodically.” She was led around like that day after day, touring the mosques and the tombs, her efreet bushwhacking through the crowds, cajoling the donkey forward by clicking, calling, and tugging at the reins, then striking him on the rump. “The poor feeling beast,” she lamented. “My weight must have been oppressive. Next time, we shall request horses.”

“Horses are hard to come by,” Du Camp said, “and impractical in the close city streets.” He turned to M. Flaubert, who nodded his agreement. “That’s why everyone rides the asses.”

“Of course. I hadn’t realized that,” she said.

M. Flaubert set down his goblet. “If you want to ride a horse,” he said, chewing his fish with obvious pleasure, “you must go to the desert.”

She liked watching him eat, enjoyed the subtle chewing sounds, the slightly greasy film over his lips, the almost inaudible grunts of delight.

“Why don’t you come with us for a ride across the desert?” He smacked the table. “All of you! The little Arabians are miraculous. Do you have a good seat?” he asked Flo.

Florence had always ridden sidesaddle, a terrible way to travel
anywhere, with the body positioned at cross-purposes to the forward motion of the animal. At the Hurst, she sometimes rode bareback, like a boy—much to Fanny’s horror—gripping for dear life with her thighs, her fingers entwined in the pony’s mane. “I’ve ridden quite a bit,” she told him.

“Charles raises Arabian horses,” Selina said with pride. Charles nodded, busily removing tiny bones from the head of his fish.

Max said, “You must enlighten us about them, M. Bracebridge.”

“Happy to, Max,” Charles replied. “If there’s one thing I enjoy talking about, it’s my lads and lassies.”

“And the babies,” Selina added.

Flo had heard Charles on the subject many times before. Bloodlines, imports, stud books, racing times. He was passionate about his hobby. But she was surprised to hear Selina so enthusiastic. And she could not remember ever hearing Selina call the foals “babies.”

“My stock goes back to the Byerley Turk,” Charles began.

Flo doubted either Frenchman knew much about equine pedigrees.

When Charles got no response to the famous name, he took a different tack. “The Bedouins knew a thing or two about horses. Every single Arabian in the world, not to mention every Thoroughbred, traces its origins to the Orient, to the desert.”

“Mais oui,”
Max said. He seemed genuinely curious. “And are they still breeding them?”

“Oh, yes, and we English are forever trying to buy the good ones.” Charles folded up his napkin. “They’re highly prized. Marvelous animals. Intelligent. Swift. And sweet as honey. I love them as I would my own children.”

Selina looked down at her plate for a split second, visibly shaken by Charles’s declaration, and then mopped her brow. Flo wondered if in mentioning children, he had violated an unspoken pact between them, one that provided that only Selina, not Charles, could bring up the subject of offspring and thus of her own barrenness. The Frenchmen hadn’t noticed anything amiss.

“Initially the sheiks used them as warhorses—only the mares, mind you.” Charles added.

As Max and Charles nattered on, Flaubert’s eyes grew heavy. Max continued to pose questions—about prices, training methods, cavalry battles. He had, Flo saw, an innate appetite for learning about things whether or not they directly interested him, while M. Flaubert was easily bored.

The sky had turned a deeper shade of black, pushing the stars forward, like a scene in a stereoscope. The Milky Way might have just been sprinkled there by an invisible hand. She whispered as much to Flaubert. He looked up.

“The backbone of the night, we call it. I’ve never seen it so clearly,” he said dreamily.

On the Nile, the horizon often seemed to disappear, leaving a dome of brilliance above and a reflection of speckled silver swimming unanchored below. It was no wonder, Flo thought, that some civilizations (Hindus? Buddhists? She couldn’t recall.) believed the universe was an egg, painted on the inside with the blue sky, pinprick stars, and the golden yolk of the sun.

While the crew cleared away the dinner plates, M. Flaubert pulled out her chair and guided her by the elbow to the side of the boat near the cabins, away from the others. He brought along a shot glass full of Irish whiskey.

They leaned over the rail watching the watery moonlight jiggle along the surface. He excused himself and quickly returned, bearing a bottle of wine and a glass, which he handed her. “For you,” he said simply.

“Have you read Baron Bunsen’s book on the ancient Egyptians?” she asked. “Or studied the hieroglyphic drawings?” Below them, the Nile lapped at the boat like paint jostling inside a bucket. She drank her wine in a bit of a rush. In another moment she’d feel it in her knees.

“I haven’t,” he confessed. “Not that one. Though I love to read, to do research.” He looked sheepish, as if worried he was not making a
good impression. “I have read several of the volumes on Egypt written by Napoleon’s savants.”

“Then perhaps you already know that according to the Egyptian religion, when God created the world it was made of water, including the celestial heavens.” She rested her glass on the gunwale. “Isn’t that wonderful, to imagine that the stars are made of water, that everything is?”

He frowned. “I embarked on this trip to escape from that . . . studiousness for a while. Often I used to read and write for fourteen hours a day.”

“That’s remarkable,” she said, fighting the feeling she’d been chastened or, worse, ignored. “Are you studying for one of the professions?”

“I was reading law, but I’ve decided it’s not the best course for me. I’ve given it up.” He took a short gulp of whiskey. “Anyway, I suppose that’s the effect of the Nile.”

“What is?”

“The belief that the world began as water. Without the Nile there would be no Egypt.”

“Oh, yes.
Vraiment
.” Florence was relieved that he didn’t think the Nile had caused him to give up the law and that he
had
been listening to her. He simply seemed sad and distracted, forlorn. Perhaps something about the law or his inability to pursue it. Despite the sympathy naturally welling up in her, she probed no further, pursuing instead her subject. “And before the Creator made dry land, he made an orb of fire, the sun, but with the spirit of a living being. That, of course, is Ra.”

He topped off her glass. “Yes, Ra was his original name, but he had many names, didn’t he?” He carefully set the bottle on the deck. “Amun-Ra and also Ra-Horakaty.”

“And Aten-Ra,” she added. He really
had
read about the Egyptians. She was again relieved, her enthusiasm sparked. “Bunsen says he absorbed the lesser gods and took their names. But that’s the scientific view. I prefer the simple story, don’t you? Instead of human beings, God creates this sun who is like a man, but more powerful.”

“Look at that!” he cried, pointing to the water, where comets flared and extinguished and flared again. They surfaced briefly, an array of pale green and pink efflorescence. “This I have read about—animals that glow at night in the water.”

Together they leaned over the side to watch the underwater fireworks. As if the stars were made of water after all, she thought. The creatures—Fish? Snails? Jellyfish?—swam about like underwater birds in loose flocks, sometimes shooting out of the water in a fountain spout.

Standing at ease alongside him, she felt pleasantly small, as if she might take shelter in his substantial presence, his large, shapely limbs and impressive height. Richard Milnes, the “Poetic Parcel,” was more refined, with hands just slightly bigger than a woman’s and a head that had always reminded her of a Shetland pony, because it was sweet but too massive for his slight body. M. Flaubert radiated palpable warmth, she noted, like the earthy and amicable body heat that collected in a barn at night. This natural warmth, visible in his flushed cheeks, promised safety, too. But she did not trust it, aware as she was of its origin in her own diminutiveness, which she had battled all her life, frequently wanting to scream
I am not a small person.
If they could see into her mind, into her heart, she was gigantic. But except for the years in Europe in the bloom of her womanhood, she went mostly unnoticed by the world, as befit a person of female sex and stature. If only she had been born a man! Even a short man gained admittance to university, Parliament, the army, medical school. If only, if only—

“I wish to be a writer,” Flaubert suddenly said. “I have written a book.”

She turned to look him full in the face. “But that is marvelous!” she exclaimed, touching his hand in admiration. “Mmm,” she said, drinking more wine. “I seriously considered being a writer, too. My family tells me I write the best letters. But in the end, I need to live a more active life. I feared it would be like looking in a mirror day after day, that eventually I should grow quite sick of portraying myself, in whatever guise.” She stopped and caught her breath, appalled at having
held forth about herself at such length. A breeze encircled them and departed. “Oh, I must beg your pardon. It was rude of me to go on and on, especially as you are the writer, not I.”

“It’s quite all right, truly. Many people think of becoming writers. They think writing a book is like reading one.” He considered his glass of whiskey, then took another drink.

“No, on the contrary, I know it’s hard work, that my hand should always be wrapped around the pen, that I should feel chained to my desk—”

“Exactly!” His eyes rested on her face, then he turned away, apparently gazing at the palm islands in the river. “You are exactly right. It’s a monotonous life, almost no life at all. But I like that about it, the devotion, the impracticality of it. It’s rather like the religious life in the end.”

She felt a further need to explain. “Yes, I can see that. But even if I had the talent, it wouldn’t be right for me because there is so much I want to
do,
so much that needs to be done in the world. But there is no profession I admire more than writing.” Behind her, she heard the others. They were discussing photographic techniques, the revolution of the camera. Charles called it a “first-rate gadget” and poured another jigger of whiskey for himself and Du Camp.