The Twelve Rooms of the Nile (9 page)

Miss Christie paused and glanced at Fanny. Her smile broadened. “Well, I don’t
have
a favorite, really. You shall have to teach me yours.”

“I would love to!” Flo cried with relish. “There’s Grandma’s Basket, Giant Steps, Posey in the Pocket—”

“All right, then. There will be time for that,” Miss Christie said, reining in her smile somewhat.

Parthe could only squeal more joy, while Flo jumped up and down, as high and as fast as she could, coming perilously close to the cranberry lusters on the side table.

“But first things first,” Miss Christie added. “Penmanship—”

“Oh, we already
know
penmanship!” Flo said, though in truth her characters were still round and wobbly.

“Addition and sub—”

“But we’ve
had
that,
both
of us. Test us, why don’t you?”

“Eleven take away four, Flo!” Parthe yelled, peering wildly around the room, “plus twenty take away
eleven
.”

“Discipline,” Fanny said before Flo could begin to calculate. “First comes discipline.”

“We’ve
had
that already,” Flo said, still jumping.

“Have you?” Miss Christie asked.

“I think maybe it’s time for another hand,” said Fanny. “Yours, Miss Christie.” And with that, Fanny accompanied her to the door.

“Hooray!” both girls shouted as they rushed upstairs. “We get Miss Christie, Miss Sarah Christie.” For the duration of the afternoon, they ran from room to room trilling the governess’s name.

After Miss Christie moved in, Florence wove baskets for her out of long grass, bracelets and rings out of dandelions and the wild violets blooming profusely that spring. Florence wanted Miss Christie to know that she was loved. But alas! Miss Christie didn’t
want
love. She wanted obedience.

Days under her tutelage were rigidly scheduled and exceedingly busy. After the maid brushed and coiffed the girls’ hair and dressed them in the morning, there was calisthenics, with special attention to legs and arms. Flo had to wear her steel-lined boots all the time. There were prayers morning and evening and, of course, lessons, with an emphasis on rote learning—copying out sentences instructive of both grammar and morality dozens of times to compensate for an error or simply to emblazon them in the mind. The entire regimen left Flo disheartened and frustrated, and despite the consequences, she rebelled. When she left a note saying
I don’t like writing these copperplate sentences. It’s stupid and I don’t wish to do it,
a corrective aphorism was assigned her:
Obedience comes first, understanding later.

There was much discussion of her sudden outbursts of energy and enthusiasm. She was sparky, Miss Christie said, excessively so. Flo’s innate vitality constantly threatened to spill over into a spontaneous shout or jump, a shove in Parthe’s direction, or high jinks with the animals, such as encouraging the pony to gallop instead of walk. Inside her, something was always bubbling up—a new idea, another question. Also, she was too curious. Morally speaking, Fanny and Miss Christie agreed, this amounted to an inability to mind her own business. Life, Miss Christie believed, ought to proceed as solemnly as a funeral.

Fanny began to travel more, leaving the girls to Miss Christie’s rule for a month or more at a time. Parthe seemed content enough, but Flo missed her mother desperately. Fanny’s absences felt like punishments. Had she chosen to stay away until Flo was able to sit still, to fall asleep on time, to listen without interrupting when others spoke? It was no good. Even when Flo succeeded in showing her family a covered cage, a wild animal was still racing around inside it.

After several months, a dizzying monologue began to occupy her mind, a nagging voice that chastised her for every unscripted thought.
Stop it,
she found herself thinking.
Do not think about skipping rope or French fables or drawing the dog.
To lure Fanny home, she sent notes reassuring her mother of her improvement.
I am beginning to yield more, and I am more obliging now than formerly.
When Fanny continued to stay away, Flo slipped into a dark uncertainty. Unable to locate and reform the flaws that so upset everyone, she began to question her very nature. She would have turned herself inside out like a pocket to prove her new purity and bring Fanny home. But she did not know how. And then one July evening at dinner, the voice in her head became something else entirely.

The family had gathered over a fancy meal with meat aspics and pheasant pie to celebrate WEN and Fanny’s return to Embley from a long visit to Tapton, in the north. The conversation fluttered around Flo’s head like a flock of gulls. It was small talk and she wanted nothing to do with it. She wanted only to be hugged and kissed and petted by her parents. Perhaps then she could be disciplined and serene rather than impulsive and annoying.

She looked at her place setting. To the right and left and above her dishes lay an arsenal of silver—four forks, three spoons, and three knives, not counting the butter knife. Fanny was proud of her table settings, especially when she threw a hunt ball. There was an implement for each foul or fish, every soup, pudding, and torte.

It occurred to Flo that she did not know the respective functions of the different cutlery. All she knew was that her mother no longer loved or wanted her. She had given her away to the implacable Miss
Christie, who was completely resistant to Flo’s charms, so much so that Flo had become convinced that she
had
no charms, that there was nothing about her that might please another. Did
anyone
love her? Well, Mrs. Gale, certainly, the old nurse, but she loved everyone equally, whatever their flaws, and at the moment, such a generalized affection was of little comfort.

A chill like pure ice seized her. She dared not pick up a single implement, lest it be the
wrong
one. Her hands remained in her lap, clenched together in a sweaty knot. She wanted to be good—to be perfect—but she understood that she was neither, and far from becoming either. She was a monster, a freak, abnormal as the two-headed chicken that the gamekeeper had brought up to the house last spring, thinking it would amuse the children. It had horrified her.

She felt glued to the dining chair, unable to move. For a while no one noticed that she was not eating, that she was frozen in place. Finally Miss Christie spoke up. “Are you not hungry, my dear Florence?” she asked.

A scorching in her chest, a sudden widening of the eyes: not yet nine years old, Flo felt rage for the first time in her life. She knew that she was not “dear” to Miss Christie, that it was just a polite form of address, but at that moment, it was intolerable.

“I am not,” she replied, “dear Miss Christie,” the last words tinged with sarcasm. “I am . . . ill.”

Flo could almost feel the sensation even now of that utter desolation. But Fanny, she was happy to remember, had not disappointed. She had scraped back her chair, rushed to Flo, and placed her palm on her forehead. “I believe you have a fever, darling. Shall we go up to bed?”

“Oh, yes, Mother. Please.” Bed meant that she would be warm and alone and, for at least a few moments, the center of her mother’s doting concern.

In the girls’ bedroom, Fanny tenderly helped her into her nightgown and sleeping cap before tucking her in, kissing her forehead and both cheeks until Flo’s eyes filled with tears of gratitude. WEN appeared at her bedside a few moments later, leaning over her and
stroking her hair, his brow furrowed. “Coming down with a chill, are you, my little poppet?” he asked, lingering by the bed with Fanny until Mrs. Gale arrived with rosehip tea and a piece of toast with jam. Flo ate greedily, hoping she would not be chastised for rushing through her food. She wasn’t, and her parents’ faces hung in the dark room like two lockets on black velvet until she fell asleep.

Soon she couldn’t bear to be seen by other children, certain that they’d perceive her monstrosity. She who had been pert and chatty and full of spicy confidence became painfully shy, barely speaking. It was not enough to excel at history, to have perfect French verbs. If anything, it was a liability, turning one into a self-absorbed braggart who flaunted her accomplishments.
Self-promoting,
Fanny called it. To please her mother, Flo decided to become the ideal unselfish daughter, allowing no thoughts in her head that did not put the comfort and benefit of others before her own. She tried especially hard to be solicitous of Parthe, not to outshine her in any way.
Pray let us love one another more than we have done,
she wrote in a note that Parthe still had.
Mama wishes it particularly, it is the will of God, and it will comfort us in our trials through life.

And then there was that awful daily list Miss Christie and Fanny devised to improve her character. A pale spot still marked where it had been tacked to her bedroom wall:

I PROMISE:

To run before breakfast to the gate and back, or if cold and dark take a long walk before and
¹
/
₂
hour after dinner

To do 20 arms before I dress, and, if ill done, ten more

To draw
¹
/
₂
an hour regularly

Not to lie in bed

To go to bed in proper time

To read the Bible and pray regularly before breakfast & at night

To go to the bathroom regularly after breakfast

To go to Church on Sundays

To read, write and do the Bible

To read any book you put out for me

To read this paper every day

With such a busy schedule, she was able to keep the monster at bay, at least while in the company of others. When she was alone, though, the monster transformed itself into a habit that had plagued her ever since:
dreaming.
It bothered no one else, being invisible to everyone but Flo, for whom it proved an enduring anguish, all the worse for being secret. Her long self-centered reveries were not mere daydreams but epic poems: glory unfolded in her mind’s eye, in stanza after stanza, where she featured as a person adored by multitudes for heroic deeds or stunning accomplishments. Florence Nightingale, discoverer of the cure for consumption with attendant audiences with the queen, ceremonies in Parliament, and a stamp in her honor. Or: Florence Nightingale, founder of a school for girls, of a reformatory, author of Blue Books and articles in the
Times
. Diva, doctor, translator of the classics, philosopher, reformer. It was, she knew, an evil pursuit, but no self-imposed edict, no remorse or penance had been sufficient to stop the filthy habit for more than a week or two. Dreaming became the bane of her existence, and nothing short of torture. She could barely keep it under control even now, at age twenty-nine.

• • •

A noise startled her from her reverie, a muffled sound that seemed to come from a great distance. A voice calling to her? The guide stirred, lifting his oil lamp and walking to the entry. He cocked his head, then signaled her to follow. She packed up her pen and book.

Climbing out of the entrance, Flo saw a man with a tripod, taking pictures. She hesitated before standing, worried she might ruin his photograph, but he paid her no mind. Charles called out to her and
she waved back. It was time to return to the houseboat. She scurried past the photographer without glimpsing his face.

• • •

People were scattered about the deck of the dahabiyah, taking the evening air, all except Trout who was already asleep in the stuffy cabin below. Flo shifted in her chair. The dark blue pennant announcing the name of their vessel as the
Parthenope
that Flo had sewn from a petticoat and her only roll of white seam tape waved languidly on the flagpole.

Charles was snoring in the low chair and footstool he favored for naps. Selina, too, had drifted off, Florence saw, the downy globe of one cheek pressed into her shoulder while her hand lay inert over her open book, the fingers grazing the words that had sent her sliding over the edge of attention into a delicious postprandial slumber.

One of the crew stood smoking a water pipe at the bow of the boat. He caught Flo’s eye, nodded, and then turned back, white ruffles of smoke about his neck like a jabot.

The wind stirred, lifting the unbound hair at her nape. It was the dry season in Egypt, travel of course being impossible in the summer, when the river flooded, that great upheaval of nourishing mud to which had been attributed ancient Egypt’s accomplishments—the pyramids, the gilt sarcophagi, the obelisks and tombs. The air on winter evenings tended to be clear and bracing, though occasionally the desert churned up a wind that prickled with minute particles of sand, and then it was like seeing through scratchy golden gauze. That same dust, suspended in the air, could hue the sunsets in deep reds and purples. Tonight, happily, the air was clear, the sky a mesh of stars under a fingernail moon, perfect subject for a nightscape painting.

She suddenly recalled the photographer outside the temple. Of course, it must have been M. Du Camp! He had said that he planned to record Abu Simbel in detail. That meant his companion, M. Flaubert, was somewhere about, pressing wet paper onto dry stone. He was the quieter of the two, but the more interesting, she suspected.

5

LETTERS

T
he
cange
lay at anchor immediately to the north of the small rock temple. The sun was just setting, though Gustave did not know the exact hour. He’d abandoned exactitudes. The clockwork universe he’d studied at the royal college had stopped ticking in Egypt, where the complete engagement of the senses jumbled whatever order he might once have grasped. These days he was more plant than man, a thing responding bodily to the life-giving exhalations of the Nile. Rather than clothe himself with Western logic, he preferred to venture forth naked. If it rained, he sucked it up like an elixir into his marrow. When the sun poured down warmth and light, he turned toward it, troposcopic as a sunflower, or away from it, like a parched tortoise. He was all reactive tissue, something his father might once have prodded in a laboratory dish. He allowed no energy for serious thought or long-term planning. Planning—the emblem of the bourgeois herd of which he only occasionally acknowledged himself a dissident member—was anathema. What future awaited him back in France? What kind of books would he write? Would he attempt to publish? He refused to contemplate any of it.