The Twelve Rooms of the Nile Part 19

"You understood my English?"

"I grasped the gist of it, or, I suppose, the intention."

"I see."

Her eyes were drawn to the lamp. Paradoxically, its small, wavering flame made the darkness around it more p.r.o.nounced.

She had reached a strange pa.s.s, having run out of what to say-she, the brilliant conversationalist whose head positively raced with too many ideas. She stared at the lamp, willing a genie to pipe forth from it in scarves of smoke. She stretched her fingers, folded them together, then pulled them apart to scratch her arm, her nails embarra.s.singly loud over the woven fabric.

At last she remembered the consul's hand. "I saw you noticed Pere Issa's nail?" She wiggled her little finger in the lamplight.

"Unusual, n'est-ce pas, Rossignol?"

"Yes."

"I've seen it before in the East. Haven't you?"

Mostly, Charles had done the talking with the few Oriental men they'd met, and, determined not to offend them, she'd always stared at her feet, or into a neutral s.p.a.ce to the side of them, while cultivating a vacant expression. The surrept.i.tious glances she took at the cataract "bigs," half naked in the river as they hoisted the Parthenope up and down the rapids, hardly counted, so far away were they, and clothed in froth. "No," she said. "I haven't."

"It is a local custom, like the turban. Or like worry beads."

"It must also be a mark of wealth," Flo said. "For with such a nail, one could not possibly do a jot of manual work." She was pleased with her logic.

"No, nothing like that, though it does have a use." He set his empty snifter on the table and, inserting two fingers in the collar of his s.h.i.+rt, cranked his head from side to side. "I'm sorry, I don't mean to be mysterious. I shall explain it to you when we are alone."

Flo looked around. Max, Charles, and Selina were out of earshot. Paolo and Joseph were smoking the captain's narghile at the bow. "But we are alone now."

He lifted her hand into his lap. Setting up a rhythm, he stroked the side of her thumb and then of each finger, moving from digit to digit. "Then we must be more alone," he said at last.

He was barely touching her, but she felt the contact before it happened, each hair p.r.i.c.king up from its follicle in antic.i.p.ation.

"Truly alone."

She found herself unable to speak-unable, in fact, to do anything save feel each finger as it was touched, all of her senses collected there, imprisoned in that single spot. Falling in love? No, not love, precisely, but falling, yes. And just where she would land was unclear and, in this moment, irrelevant.

Max returned to the table, downed the last of his brandy, and rolled up the map. Catching Gustave's eye, and not caring, apparently, if she overheard, he grunted something about leaving, then returned to the Bracebridges.

"I shall come to see you the day after tomorrow," Gustave said. "If there is anything you need for the trip, we shall buy it together in Kenneh." He released her hand. "Then, at dawn the following day, we depart!"

"Thank you."

"De rien."

"And for Trout, too."

"Ah, well. She did not require so much persuasion."

"She did not, did she?" Why had he stopped? The desolation of her abandoned hand was unbearable. She reached for his hand and placed it between hers, which he allowed without acknowledging. "But I think there is more mystery to Trout than that," she said. She was able to speak, though sentience remained centered in her hand. How strange to feel split in two, the Flo who was speaking and the Flo who was only a hand.

Not daring to mimic him, to touch his fingers, she simply held his hand until it grew heavy in hers, inanimate as a stone. Nor did she know how to free it, return it to him. It was all so awkward. He was waiting, she knew, for her to revive it, but shyness and inexperience stopped her. His hand could have been a dead fish.

Max, who seemed always to be in charge, slapped his friend on the back, impatient to go. Gustave retrieved his hand. In another moment, the three men were tromping down the gangplank, the light from Joseph's lamp flickering over their well-liquored faces as they clambered ash.o.r.e.

Turning back to the Parthenope, Gustave began to wave, his arm tick-tocking overhead like an upside-down pendulum as he sang au revoir alternated with bonsoir until his voice grew faint. This was for her, she was certain; he must have sensed how intently she was watching him.

In this simple act, she recognized that another connection had been forged between them. The evening had been entirely proper. Yet, the secret weight of their conspiracy had pressed them closer. They had resorted to tactics just short of lying. Surely, had they robbed a bank or committed some equally egregious crime together, it would have felt little different-no less forbidden, and no less astonis.h.i.+ng.

18.

CARAVAN.

Once a week, the Kenneh market occupied a dusty street at the northern tip of the harbor, itself no more than a sloping beach. Narrow booths lined either side of the winding thoroughfare. When the merchants were not sweeping sand from their stalls, they sat out front hawking their goods, or took refuge within from the heat and wind, bent over their accounts or chatting with customers.

One could not shop quickly. Ceremonies had to be observed. In the Orient, a substantial sale required the leisure to establish goodwill and to offset the innately degrading effects of cold cash. Tea and sweets lubricated the extensive d.i.c.kering process. With Joseph's help, they spent an hour purchasing staples: kamr-ed-din-apricot paste-along with a crock of olives, freshly butchered chickens, several dozen eggs, and a slaughtered lamb. They still needed lamps and lamp oil, goatskins and saddlebags. The caravan crew supplied nothing but camels and desert expertise.

It was hard for Gustave to talk to Miss Nightingale as they squeezed through crowds that surged through the street like a riptide or, conversely, stood in scattered formations immovable as lampposts. Miss Nightingale was often busy translating for Trout or distracted by Max's peripatetic presence. Walking faster than seemed humanly possibly, Max scouted the shops ahead and rushed back to report. He couldn't resist fingering the merchandise, while Gustave was more restrained and deliberate, not wis.h.i.+ng to convey too much interest to keep the price low. For despite his native costume, he knew that he could never really pa.s.s for an Oriental. Besides being in the company of two European women, small incongruities gave him away. His nails and robes were too clean; his skin, though tanned, too pink. He was fles.h.i.+er and taller than most Egyptians.

They stopped at a chandler's stall. "It's very bright in the market, isn't it?" Miss Nightingale remarked, shading her eyes with her hand.

"And also very dark," Gustave countered. He pointed to the back of the booth where the face of the beturbaned owner swam up like a reflection at the bottom of a well.

"Let's go in," she said, pulling Trout by the arm linked in hers. Clearly, the maid had been enlisted as chaperone.

Inside, the shop was stuffy and close. While he, Miss Nightingale, and Trout lingered over rows and rows of the clay lamps ubiquitous in the Orient, Joseph negotiated for candles at the back of the shop, where the owner kept them to guard against pilferage.

They proceeded to a saddlery to buy goatskins and camel bags. Gustave delighted in the profusion of kilim pouches in vivid patterns of madder, brown, blue, ivory, and black. "Let's take our time," he suggested.

"Yes," Miss Nightingale replied, "I hate to rush. These are all so handsome."

Even Trout took an interest in the selection. An hour later, pleased with their purchases and full of more sweets, they followed Joseph up a hill. The open-air shop at the crest was strung with clotheslines fluttering with scarves and homespun robes of every description. Sunlight and wind playing through the textiles created the atmosphere of a carnival.

"You must to cover the head," Joseph told the women, patting his skull.

"Oh, I have a shawl," Miss Nightingale replied. "I'll be fine."

In his butchered French, Joseph explained that she and her friend must wear kaffiyehs. Nothing else would do in the desert.

She examined a kaffiyeh whipping on the line. "I am sure my English cloth is just as good, if not better."

Joseph whispered and Gustave pa.s.sed it along. "He says he will not be responsible if you do not wear proper headgear."

Looking amused, Miss Nightingale translated this warning for Trout. "But he has no idea what English cloth is like."

"I am sure you are right, Rossignol, but it is just as easy to buy a kaffiyeh." He picked out a red-and-white one trimmed with yellow silk. "Very pretty, isn't it?

"Yes, but-"

"Let it be a gift from me, Rossignol," he insisted. He quickly selected a second, plainer one with black-and-white stripes. "And this is for you, Trout." He pressed it into her hand over her objections, eliciting a polite smile. She folded it under her arm.

"Trout has a very practical straw hat she can wear," Miss Nightingale said. "But these will make lovely souvenirs. Thank you, Gustave."

"Well, I shall wear the Arab headgear," he said pointedly, unfolding the one he'd chosen for himself and draping it around his head. "There. I am ready for the khamsins."

"Surely you have heard of the Arkwright Mills, Gustave."

"The what?" he asked. Trout p.r.i.c.ked up her ears at the familiar English words.

"The Arkwright Mills. The most famous in the world. They weave the finest cotton cloth."

"Is that so?" He pa.s.sed a handful of piastres to Joseph to pay for the scarves.

"Quite so. You see, the mill is a new industrial design. The looms are gigantic and run day and night. I've seen them myself-"

"I had no idea." She seemed quite enthusiastic, even a tad mulish on the subject.

"Oh, yes, indeed." She turned to her maid. "Isn't that right, Trout? And they use only the strongest cotton, grown on the sea islands of Georgia and South Carolina."

He feigned interest while eyeing a chunky amber necklace. Prayer beads. He picked up the strand. The amber was warm and oily in his hand. Perfect to finger in his pocket or for his desk. A red vest, six meters of Dacca cloth, a monkey, a mummy. . .. the mummy! Joseph had told him there was a shop in Kenneh specializing in Egyptian antiquities. But where was it?

She was still enthusing about the cloth. The mills weren't far from her home. She had visited them with her father. Did he know that the girls who worked at the mill lived together in dormitories? He did not.

"Pardon me for interrupting," he told Miss Nightingale, "but we must leave. There's one more thing I want to buy-a mummy."

"Oh." She fidgeted with a sleeve. "A mummy, you say?"

"But first, let's try this on for size." He carefully arranged the kaffiyeh around her face, demonstrating how she might fasten it to cover all but her eyes. It was charming on her; the yellow silk had been an inspired choice. "It looks beautiful, doesn't it, Trout? Biblical."

"Really?" She stroked the cloth covering her hair. "What do you say, Trout?"

"I wouldn't know, mum. You do look more Egyptian."

"It's very flattering," he insisted, taking her arm as they strolled from the shop. Perhaps that would be the end of the talking jag about the mills. He hoped so.

The antiquities shop was close to the harbor; they had pa.s.sed it on their way to the butcher's. Inside, cheaply executed reproductions abounded-clay heads of pharaohs, models of the pyramids and the Sphinx. When Gustave inquired about a genuine mummy, the merchant smiled and bowed effusively, promising an answer by the time the monsieur returned from Koseir.

Miss Nightingale wore the kaffiyeh for the rest of the excursion. But she remained silent, clasping fast to his arm each time he offered it.

The next morning, she appeared wearing a green eyeshade suspended from her bonnet. She had brought it out to Egypt at the urging of Herr Professor Baron Bunsen, about whom, by 7 A.M., he did not wish to hear one more word. This contraption lent her the remote but insidious expression of a card sharp. She seemed nervous. And apparently, when she was nervous, she chattered. With relish, she had already recited a compendium of facts about each of the wells en route, the climate, and the living conditions of the Ababdeh (mud hovels too squat to stand up in; poor diet).

"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 pa.s.sed from India across the Red Sea and thence to Rome. I read it in the baron's book."

Oh, G.o.d. 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 s.e.x, that she might prove to be a confidante, like Bouilhet, or like Louise, but without the s.e.xual 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 antic.i.p.ating 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 wis.h.i.+ng 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 pa.s.s through the eye of a needle. Nor could Gustave hold Miss Nightingale's hand in that moment without embarra.s.sing 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 G.o.d, 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 neant-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 t.e.s.t.i.c.l.e, 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 Pere 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 pa.s.sed 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 a.s.ses of their camels.

In late afternoon, we pa.s.sed our first caravan in a narrow defile. Pere 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, ta.s.sels, 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 pa.s.sed without substantial conversation other than a quick greeting at lunch, after which everyone pa.s.sed 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.