The Twelve Rooms of the Nile (52 page)

Earlier that day, he’d glimpsed her, occupied with Trout. Though he hadn’t understood what they said, he observed a change: Trout was no longer sullen and silent. She spoke, and Miss Nightingale listened. Once, he heard them laughing together.

For sheer mystery, only his nervous episodes matched this sudden, stuporous malaise. When the fever waned, the lethargy waxed, as if it fed on the fever. Nothing pleased him. Food lacked flavor; sleep was not refreshing, though he slept at every chance, nodding off in the saddle until a stutter in the camel’s gait or a voice awakened him. He developed distaste for everything, like a man who opens a door expecting a restaurant and finds instead an abattoir, the saliva gone foul and bitter in his mouth.

On the last evening in the desert, she approached him as he exited his tent for some air. “Are you improved?” she asked, touching his arm, her hand lingering. They stood waiting for the crew to fetch dinner. He smelled the goat on the brazier. Or was it the jerboa?

“No. I am not yet myself.” He hadn’t been able to look into her eyes. He knew he was a disappointment to her. He was a disappointment to himself, unable to muster a shred of enthusiasm.

“I am sorry.”

“Thank you.” He hadn’t thought to ask after her, though later he recalled she looked wan and tired, a little sad.

“Gustave?”

“Yes.”

“Shall we see each other again?”

The lethargy dissipated like a mist burned off in the radiance of her regard. “Of course we shall, Rossignol. Yes.”

She looked away for a moment. Tearful, or marshaling her courage? “When?” she asked. “And where?”

His dear Rossignol, speaking Louise’s words.
When
and
how soon
and
not soon enough
. But she was not Louise, nothing like her. He peeked at her face. How completely guileless she was, unself-conscious as a plant leaning toward the light. Of course he would see her again. He wanted to, he must. He
should
. No, he
wanted
to. Certainly he owed her an explanation out of kindness, lest she be crushed, expecting more torrid encounters, more kisses.
There is nothing wrong with you
, he wanted to say.
It’s me, Rossignol, I think I am infected
. Or was that also an excuse not to pursue the friendship—

“Gustave?”

“Yes?”

“You were saying?”

“My mind wandered. Forgive me.” He was tired, his will as vaporous as a cloud. His knees buckled.

She caught him, gripping his arm. “My dear Gustave! Come sit down.” She guided him toward a camera case outside his tent. “Rest.”

“Thank you, Sweet. You are so kind to me.” He hung his head between his knees and waited until his heart stopped thudding. “I am all right now.” He stood and began creeping toward his tent. “In Cairo. We should meet in Cairo. That will be best.”

“Where are you going? The food is nearly ready.”

He forged ahead, muttering
sleep, must lie down
. The prospect of eating was nauseating.

She followed him, her steps halt, then hurtling, like Bambeh’s polka-dotted lamb. He remembered the adorable bend of its knees as it trotted behind her, the clatter of its hooves on the dock at Esneh.

“Cairo is fine,” she said agreeably. “We shall both be collecting ourselves before heading home.”

“Home?” He stopped and turned to her. “Home for you, but not for me. Remember?” His voice was louder, more emphatic. “I am headed to Palestine. After that, Syria, Turkey, Greece, and Italy.”

“Yes—”

“Perhaps Persia.” That was a lie. Because he’d overspent in Egypt, they’d already canceled Persia.

“Yes, of course.” She blushed furiously.

He was inordinately annoyed, the place names a docket of his grievances, indictments against her for forgetting their journeys didn’t match, for daring to think that they could. He was bound for more exotic ports, not home, and certainly not England.

“Cairo, then.” She folded her hands. “Shall we write in the interim?” She’d recovered nicely, he thought.

“Yes, I would like that.”

They settled on the last week in May, which would allow enough time to finish their visits on the Nile. He reminded her that he dare not kiss her even on the cheek because of the fever. Instead, he kissed her hand.

As soon as they parted, the lethargy returned, heading toward dejection. One thing he hated about being ill was how vulnerable he felt. And how inclined to introspection he became. His feelings for Miss Nightingale were a puzzling amalgamation of contrary impulses. He admired so much in her—candor, passion, determination. But he found most women charming, irresistible. There was almost nothing about them he objected to. He liked them skinny; he liked them fat. Smooth or hairy, fair or dark, he found them endlessly enchanting. The housemaid at Rouen, the grisettes of Paris, the whores of Esneh. He loved them all. But did he love her? Given his appetites, he wouldn’t be able to disregard her sex forever. Further, he genuinely wished he could give her a taste of the sensuous life, of the pleasures the body offered. Considering her natural depth of feeling, what greater gift could he offer her? On another evening—a dinner in Paris or London—they would drink too much, or he would comfort her and feel again the soft roundness of her breasts . . .

His melancholy was now so profound that something might have curled up and died inside his chest, leaving a ruined place like a patch of contaminated soil where nothing would grow.

• • •

The next day, when they reached Kenneh at noon, the sun was thrumming inside as well as upon his head. He hadn’t eaten solid food for
two days, was short of breath at the slightest exertion. That morning Max had remarked on his haggard expression and shrinking paunch.

Word of their arrival spread to the river from sentries posted outside the hamlet. The Bracebridges were waiting on the deck of the dahabiyah; the crew of the
cange
jumped to attention as he picked his way along the beach. Miss Nightingale fell into Selina’s arms. Charles greeted Trout, his jolly, stentorian voice resounding across the sand.

Max had hurried ahead to explain that he was ill. “Please, come aboard!” Charles shouted to Gustave. “Brandy. Luncheon. You must be starving.”

As he limped along on the crutch of Joseph’s arm, he gauged from their assembled faces how awful he must look. Selina, still embracing Flo, paled.
“Pauvre homme,”
she cried,
“venez ici!”
She conferred briskly with Max. “We wish to take care of you, dear man.”

He preferred his bed in the shaded fug of the
cange
, where he could sleep naked, vomit, fart, and curse without regard for etiquette. He whispered to Joseph, who called back, “
Monsieur
say he too sick.”

“Demain,”
Gustave croaked. “I shall see you tomorrow.”

As he stepped aboard the
cange
, Hadji Ismael reached up a hand to steady him. Of all the crew, Hadji Ismael was his favorite, the sweetest. How many times had he repeated that supremely soothing gesture—reaching up to help him mount and dismount his horse or donkey. And just before the caravan departed, he’d handed up a blessing with a goatskin of wine.
Peace be with you. May Allah protect you
. It was, without doubt, the most poignant gesture in the Orient, an act of love even if it were purchased, like his whores.

Two days later, pasty and withered, he emerged on deck. There was less of him in every sense—flesh, appetite, ambition, and will. Though no longer feverish, he felt like a sack of shit and wondered if his malaise was related to the sore on his prick. That possibility boded ill.

The
cange
rocked gently as a cradle. In the curve of the beach that served as anchorage, he saw two fishing vessels, and beyond them, a felucca sitting low in the river with a cargo of burlap sacks. The
Parthenope
had sailed.

27

BEAUTIFUL CAIRO

A
vertiginous cliff with a stray goat glued to the rocks; fields of barley; water wheels pumped by oxen: sailing with the current and a south wind, the river flew by in vignettes of Egyptian life, as if Flo were watching a magic lantern show. Then the wind reversed, blowing from the north, and they lay about, unable to make progress or tie up. The temperature dropped. Paolo said that in twenty-five trips on the Nile, he had never encountered such frigid weather. Scoured by sandstorms, Flo’s lips blistered and her face peeled. Unless securely pinned up, the women’s hair whipped into Gorgonian tangles. Charles was seasick off and on.

Between Kenneh and Cairo, there was nothing on the scale of Abu Simbel that they hadn’t already seen. Only Dendera, just outside Kenneh, and Memphis, far to the north, promised new antiquities. They reached Dendera on the first day of fair weather. It turned out to have a crude temple that dated to Roman times. Flo found its miles of sculpture and bas-reliefs inauthentic, like trying to fathom Greek sculpture through Roman copies.

After Dendera, for more than four hundred miles Arab hamlets dotted the riverbank: Girgeh and Asiyoot, Manfaloot and Benisoof, their minarets visible like hat pins through the felted air of constant
sandstorms. It took three days to put ashore at Girgeh, the wind was so severe. Not a single candle was to be had in the entire town. A Coptic father supplied them with a small cache of church votives. Each city, otherwise, was the same: a market, the ubiquitous water-wheels, buffaloes, and ibises, and beneath it all, brutalizing poverty. She hungered for a real city, for Cairo.

Memphis, however, was inspiring. Though fallen into a reflecting pool, its single most beautiful statue was of Ramses. Again that serene face! She strolled through a palm forest, retracing in her mind Moses’s tribulations, for this was his city. His tribe never forgot the story of their exodus. In every generation, Moses warned, they must behave as if they had just gone forth from Egypt. Memory was sacred, part gratitude, part scar. The cooling of the fires of suffering into history. She, too, would never forget Egypt, she promised herself as they struggled northward against the cold windings of the khamsins.

At Giza, just south of Cairo, a storm prevented them from disembarking for the pyramids for two more days. The pyramids! It was time, at last, to tour them. Selina remained shipboard, too infirm for the arduous climbing required.

In England, people regarded Egypt as nothing more than a tray to hold the giant monoliths. If you went to the East and missed them, you hadn’t “done” Egypt. A simple formula applied, like something out of Euclid.
Egypt = Pyr and Pyr = Egypt
. Aided by guides up and down the face and through the passageways, Flo compared herself to a rat navigating the drains at Embley. Yes, exactly like a rat sniffing through the maze of a bigger, more important rat. They were, she reported afterward, monomaniacal tributes to tyranny, amazing only for their size and expense.

On May 16 they reached Cairo and sadly prepared to leave the boat that had been their home for four months. The farewell to the crew brought an inundation of tears all around. Even the stodgy rais wept. Two days later, to everyone’s surprise, the crew appeared at the Hôtel d’Orient for a second round of good-byes. This was an occasion of deep sentiment, since they had already received their baksheesh. Again, a
flood of tears. Each sailor gave her the Arab salute, grasping her hand, kissing it, then pressing it to his heart and head. She wept profusely and without illusions, moved, she knew, not only by the pitiful Egyptians, but also by the prospect of seeing Gustave within the next two weeks, and the fainter prospect, too, of never seeing him again. She didn’t like to ponder what and where
their
last adieu might be, or have been.

Cairo was the end of Egypt, for to her mind it was not Egyptian but Arabian. She took her leave of the magnificent land of Ramses, Abu Simbel, and Philae.
Farewell
, she wrote in
Lavie
, blinking back tears,
dear, beautiful, noble
, dead
Egypt
.

• • •

Cairo was even more splendid than Flo remembered. By May there were extra touches of color, the dun city like a pavement in spring when rain has driven the tender new leaves and flower petals to the ground. So much loveliness! Bright rugs on clotheslines exhaled glittering motes with each thwack of the rug beater. On the avenues, mimosa trees sprouted tufts of pink swansdown. The carob trees with their sweet-smelling leathery pods cast a reticulated shade to complement the wooden grilles of the balconies and harems. But what pleased Flo most were the skyline views, the domes of mosques rounding upward like earthbound clouds, the minarets at dusk pointing to the first stars.

The desert dashed relentlessly against Cairo’s gates, a petrified sea waiting to flood it daily, but by the time she arose at seven, the sand and dung had been swept away. Without vigilance, Cairo would have succumbed to the dunes on which it perched like a faerie kingdom. She wrote to Parthe, calling it
a jewel that rose to the seventh heaven
and
the most gorgeous of cities
. With Trout and an efreet, she wandered the streets, slipping into tiled courtyards and dark bazaars. Repeated visits to her beloved Sistine Chapel had added the beauty of familiarity and made it more like home. But she didn’t repeat any of the tours of her first Cairo visit. The new vistas and thronged intersections were freshly exhilarating. She had the easy freedom of a person with a pouch of gold in her pocket and a secret she could choose the exact moment to contemplate or reveal.

On the third day, with Trout, Selina, Charles, and their efreets, she went to the street of perfume sellers and silk mercers to buy gifts. She and Trout rested in chairs while the merchant unrolled fabrics. Bolt after bolt spilled onto the cobbles in sumptuous layers—translucent voiles, iridescent organdies, heavy damasks threaded with gold and silver. She could nearly taste the purple haze of plums, the chalky pink of a petit four, billows of white silk lustrous as boiled icing. She wished to clutch them in a giant bouquet, fling them like streamers into the street.