The Twelve Rooms of the Nile (36 page)

“And scattered among this fastness of sand,” she declared as the crewmen were loading up the camels, “are remains of ancient cities and Roman garrisons.”

Her chatter about the mill had been odd, but now, as the caravan prepared to depart, she turned into an automaton—not a charming mechanical bird that chirped in a gilded cage at the turn of a key, or a little clown who spun about on tiptoes. There was nothing charming about the change that had come over her.

“I didn’t know the empire extended this far east,” Gustave replied. He wanted only to mount his camel and gallop away. But he saw that she fervently wished to be taken seriously, to be treated as his equal, to be of help in any capacity. To this end, she had brought her levinge with the promise of demonstrating it. She also seemed to have decided to pour into him every drop she knew about the eastern desert. He already felt like a big cranky baby in need of burping. Nothing he had said thus far and no studied silence on his part had stanched her endless flood of data.

“Oh, indeed. They guarded the wealth that passed from India across the Red Sea and thence to Rome. I read it in the baron’s book.”

Oh, God. He’d explode if she continued on this path.

So much for his tentative hope that they shared a deep connection beneath the obvious divisions of nationality and sex, that she might
prove to be a confidante, like Bouilhet, or like Louise, but without the sexual entanglement. No, she was not his twin, but his
opposite
. He would take his greatest pleasure in the memory of what he saw; she in anticipating it. He wished to be surprised; she wanted to know in detail what to expect before it arrived. The idea of crossing the desert alongside a talking textbook filled him with dread.

He kept wishing for Max, always helpful in deflecting the garrulous and setting the nervous at ease, to appear on the scene, but he was busy with Hadji Ismael, apparently rebundling the camera equipment to pass through the eye of a needle. Nor could Gustave hold Miss Nightingale’s hand in that moment without embarrassing her, though touch might have done the trick as the virginal Rossignol had never recoiled from his contact.

“Peppercorns, silks and cinnamon, emeralds and rubies,” she continued.

Dacca cloth, dates from Derr, a red vest, maybe a mummy, Miss Nightingale’s note to God
, he countered mentally. She was clearly in an agitated state, incapable of actual conversation. Still, he had to shut her up. “I don’t care about any of that,” he said. “I shall be happy simply to swim in the Red Sea.” He turned away.

What he had said wasn’t strictly true. The journey through the desert did interest him—not what had been built or abandoned, but the desert’s vast
néant
—the nothingness of it.

She fell silent, as if upbraided. They departed a few minutes later, the awkwardness between them now thick in the air.

Gustave maintained a veneer of courtesy and solicitude, but kept his distance from her the rest of the day without drawing attention to the fact. He sensed that her capricious behavior was not under her control and that her intentions were likely innocent enough—merely to be of use to him, somehow to repay him for the favor of bringing her along. Still, he had to avoid her: should she inflict another didactic eruption on him, he might behave rudely indeed. Better to politely disengage. For these reasons he spent the brief free moments after supper the first evening continuing a missive to Bouilhet he’d begun several days before.

15 April 1850

My dear right testicle
,

The caravan has begun!

Our party consists of ten camels and ten people—we four “Franks,” Joseph, and five Arab camel drivers, silent characters in dirty white woolen robes who speak no French and communicate through Joseph, who hired them yesterday from a larger, grimier throng of applicants at Père Issa’s house. For his part, the dragoman seems pleased to be in a position of greater authority
.

Tough-skinned and tough-minded, the camel drivers are a different breed from the Nile crew—gaunter and more leathery, with hands and faces like the crackled fell of roast lamb. They wear colorful kaffiyehs and turbans and sleep in their clothes. They conduct themselves with more reserve and dignity than the river crew, as if the desert had leached every trace of nonchalance and frivolity from them. Too little water, too much heat and wind, Joseph explained, have taught them to expend as little energy as possible
.

We started from a wadi east of Kenneh, watering the camels immediately before departing. They will not drink again for days. As Joseph translated, the headman, a grizzled, bearded Mohammed, shouted out two cautions:

1. We must never, ever, wander out of sight. Our lives depend on complying with this rule. If a man falls into the Nile, he is heard and seen before it swallows him. In the desert, he vanishes silently, before he ever realizes he is lost behind a drift like every other drift
.

2. Water must be consumed sparingly
.

No maps of the routes through the eastern desert exist save those in the minds of the Bedouin and the camel drivers. Also, there are no proper roads, only depressions in sand on the rocky outcrops where hoofprints of camels, horses, or flocks occasionally survive the onslaught of the wind long enough to mark the way
.

Miss Nightingale’s servant, Trout, speaks only when addressed. Both women ride sidesaddle, no easy feat on a humped quadruped. I cringe to think of the discomfort on their joints and the danger of being so high from the ground without firm purchase. Perched in the colorful weavings and braided leather of double-pommeled saddles, they could be dolls precariously posed on a high shelf
.

We stopped for lunch at the village of Lakeita and bought two watermelons. Joseph served boiled eggs, which we ate with apricot paste and bread. The Nile water we collected at the wadi was pure and sweet, better than any wine, Max said. In the quiet of early afternoon, we passed through a steep gorge as hot as a furnace. I was determined to observe every detail—the subtle shadings of yellow, dun, and brown, the mountains serried like blue stacks of books in the distance—but what filled the center of my vision for the next four hours were Miss Nightingale and her maid jiggling above the skinny asses of their camels
.

In late afternoon, we passed our first caravan in a narrow defile. Père Issa said we’d encounter pilgrims, Koseir being the port from which they sail to Jedda, then travel overland to Mecca for the hajj. Our first fellow traveler was a man who carried his two wives in baskets suspended from either side of his camel. The wind gusted, ruffling sand around the camel’s legs so that it seemed to fly forward through clouds. Every one of these beasts is bedecked with colorful tack—halters, bridles, saddles, and cinches woven with beads, tassels, and coins. Perhaps this decoration identifies them to their owners. Surely it is a mark of value and pride
.

Whatever intelligence camels possess is not reflected in their faces. Their expression is of a man encountering a rank odor. Their tongues are long, thick paddles spotted with green from their forage. If provoked, they can spit great distances
.

And now
, mon ami,
I find my head drawn to the packed sand under the kilim that is my mattress
.

The schedule each day was rigid: rise between three and four, travel until noon, lunch, rest during the hottest part of the day, resume riding until sundown, then sup before sleeping. No time for diversions or side trips.

Although Gustave did not intend to avoid Miss Nightingale further, the next day passed without substantial conversation other than a quick greeting at lunch, after which everyone passed out in the heat. Other than when they were dining or resting, the journey was as solitary for the travelers as if they were in separate railroad cars. He urged his camel forward to join hers, but the beast refused. In fact, the camels rarely tolerated walking abreast, preferring to plod single file. And like prisoners called to the guillotine, not one was in a hurry.

As the light paled to dull pewter in late afternoon, the camels became vigilant. Lifting their heads, they sniffed the air suspiciously. A distant fire? Abruptly, one of them shat and then they all stopped to shit, as if a group stink would protect them. After this cooperation, they turned wary and distrustful of each other. They have transformed themselves into the quintessential French family, he thought, disappointed he could not share the joke with anyone. The camels jittered forward, then balked.

The caravan crew were prepared for this skittishness: they began to serenade the beasts, ending with shrill, falsetto ululations that resembled a battle cry. Why among the seventy trunks of supplies had he not brought earplugs?

“Camels like musica!” Joseph shouted over the din.

The camels responded by twitching their tails and flicking their ears, quickening the pace to a rolling trot that set the riders bouncing hard in their saddles. Gustave tried to read their mood from their bodies as with the cats at home, but dromedaries proved inscrutable. Long-lashed, half-closed eyes gave them the woozy mien of opium smokers.

Just as the caravan resumed walking in formation again, Trout shrieked. Joseph’s mount had bolted and galloped within a hair’s breadth of hers. Gustave watched his red jacket fly off to the side and heard his terrified cries. So fleet was Joseph’s camel that it appeared to skim the ground, and after fifty meters, blended into the landscape and vanished, exactly as the headman, Mohammed, had foretold, leaving Joseph’s ghostly voice trailing behind. In another moment, that, too, disappeared, as if he had never been among them, as if he had vaporized.

Miss Nightingale clamped her hand to her mouth in horror. Gustave and she stared at each other, hardly blinking. While two camel drivers chased after Joseph, the others encircled the Franks. Mohammed inserted ropes through the animals’ nostrils and urged the riders to hold them taut.

“Dear God,” implored Miss Nightingale. “Poor Joseph. What shall we do?”

Trout was crying, her face beet-red, her mount furious, stomping in place and bellowing.

“We shall wait for him,” said Gustave.

“Pray God the men will find him. They must know the area,” she replied.

“But it will soon be dark,” Max pointed out, calmly lighting his pipe.

Gustave felt like striking him or, at the very least, elbowing him hard in the ribs, but he was stuck atop his camel and couldn’t dismount without risking a broken leg. Tomorrow he’d learn to command his camel to knee. “Then we shall sleep here and look for him in the morning.” He glared at Max to convey that he should say nothing else to alarm the women.

Instantly, Max changed his tune. “I suppose the camel knows where the wells are and will eventually take Joseph to one.” Clearly he made this up to placate Gustave. How did the bugger remain so equable? Gustave worried that all the excitement would trigger a seizure. And how would they communicate with Mohammed and his crew?

Miss Nightingale spoke repeatedly to Trout, who did not respond or look relieved.

The dromedaries lowed and grunted as if calling after their comrade. Had God made a more unwieldy animal? Or a more uncomfortable mount? Now that Gustave had stopped moving, he realized his ass was sore and his nuts felt busted.

At last, the guides helped them dismount and tied the camels to stakes in the sand. Lying together, they looked like a flock of overgrown ostriches.

They all walked toward the campfire already sending up smoke.

“I have read that camels always return to their caravans,” Gustave told Miss Nightingale, wishing to calm her, “that a runaway camel is no real cause for alarm.”

“Oh, that is good to know. Very good.” She sighed and delicately wiped her mouth on a handkerchief withdrawn from her sleeve. Max tried to catch his eye, but Gustave refused him. It was hard enough to lie without Max staring at him.

They sat in a circle and in utter silence watched the headman cook the first of the chickens in a dome-bottomed pan over open flames. Gustave had never smelled anything more delicious. The key to exquisite food, he decided, was not the chef’s recipe but the diner’s hunger.

They ate without talking, as if it would be disloyal to Joseph to enjoy the meal too much. The crew pitched the tents. Their steadiness, whatever its source, and Joseph’s waiting tent felt like reassurances that he was safe.

• • •

After dinner, Max unloaded his camera to photograph the moon, which had hung in the sky full and bright since the afternoon. He knew better than to ask Gustave to participate. As for Miss Nightingale, she waved him off politely and reminded him that Trout was his model. Gustave couldn’t wait to see the result: the desert at night with a lone and lost-looking English maid. Max instructed her not to
stiffen up or pose, that it would be a candid shot. Gustave found the term amusing, since the camera was always candid; it was incapable of lying.

Outside her tent, Miss Nightingale sat wrapped in shawls and blankets. The desert air was chilly.

“Are you not using your levinge tonight?” he asked.

“I was going to, but it seems there are no insects out here. And to be truthful, I am too tired to fiddle with it.”

“Yes, always be truthful with me,” he told her, “and I shall be with you. Perhaps you can use it when we reach Koseir. I’m certain there will be plenty of bugs on the coast.” The sand was still warm beneath the surface, and he scooped it over his legs by the handful.

She laughed. “I never thought I’d look forward to biting flies. But I do want you to see the contraption, for the rest of your trip. In Constantinople I expect the insects will be ferocious—flies, ticks, mosquitoes, sand gnats probably—”