The Twelve Rooms of the Nile Part 20

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 s.h.i.+t, 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 G.o.d," 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 G.o.d 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 b.u.g.g.e.r 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 G.o.d made a more unwieldy animal? Or a more uncomfortable mount? Now that Gustave had stopped moving, he realized his a.s.s 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, wis.h.i.+ng 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 rea.s.surances 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 partic.i.p.ate. 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-"

"Would you like some sand?" He interrupted her to forestall a fact-filled disquisition on bugs. "It's as good as a bed warmer."

"Oh. Yes, I shall try a little." She extended her hand, palm up, and he filled it. The first stars were out, the sky a regal purple with pink and orange banners.

"Mm," she hummed. "That is pleasant."

"How is our fish doing?"

"Travel is completely wasted on Trout." She sighed and studied the ground as if consigning her thoughts there, possibly envisioning her maid there, too.

"I hope I was not rude yesterday," he said. What was it about men and women who didn't know each other well? he wondered. Though romance was not his object, there was awkwardness simply because he was a man and she was a woman. Each time they met, they had to reestablish their footing, treading carefully, putting on their best faces. The brothel was easier, Caroline was easier, his dear mother, even, was easier. The p.u.s.s.yfooting about reminded him of taking exams at school. So exhausting, so much precision required!

"Rude?"

"When I cut you off talking about the baron's book."

"Oh, yes."

An expression settled on her face that he had come to recognize. Her eyes seemed to lighten and her face to slacken, as if an inner vision were replacing whatever artifice or intention had held it taut. She inclined her head quizzically, and a smile gradually formed. When her lips parted and the teeth showed, she would have formulated a thought and was likely to say anything.

"You only startled me. You see, sometimes I talk too much." She said this without any self-consciousness, trepidation, or shame, the way another woman might say, "I like apples."

He was relieved; he had pa.s.sed the exam and now they were back in the cave on Philae. "I thought you were ill at ease."

"I don't know if I was. It just happens. And once I start, I can't abide silence, nor can I be derailed, except by a shock. I understood from your reply that I must stop." She spilled the last few grains of warm sand from her hand. "Do you think it strange?"

"No." He dribbled more warm sand on her hand and wrist. He had the urge to bury her in it as if they were children playing on the beach on a hot August day, baking together in the sun. "Not strange. It is . . . feminine. A feminine trait."

"Oh?"

He explained that when he didn't understand a woman he a.s.sumed it was because her experience was different from his. She listened dutifully. Only a few glimmers of twilight remained at the horizon. On the plain beyond the camp, he could see the outlines of Trout and Max, Trout with her hand on her straw hat.

In the light of the oil lamp, Miss Nightingale's face glowed. A sudden tenderness came over him. She was lovely and also pitiful. He knew she must be rich and yet she suffered-clearly she suffered-because she had nothing to do in the world. He felt their connection come alive again like a foot gone numb p.r.i.c.kling awake.

"That is sweet," she p.r.o.nounced. "But in my experience, women are not so different from men as they are made out to be. Still, they are expected to act differently, to want different things, and most important, not to want too much."

"Mon ami," he whispered. "I understand." At that moment, he realized what he and the intense, birdlike Englishwoman had in common: ambition; hers to accomplish something in the world, his to accomplish something in spite of that world. "I know you wish to do good-"

"I do. Desperately."

"But the world is a much nastier place than you imagine." Her purpose was so virtuous, her motives so pure and unreasonable. It would be easy to worry about her, to wish to rescue her, though obviously she did not wish to be rescued by him or anyone.

"I am sure you are right. You have seen more of the world than I."

Their conversation always followed this pattern-dark silences punctuated by profoundly bright and intimate jabs, like s.h.i.+ning knives laying them painlessly open to each other.

A small commotion was under way beyond the encampment. Trout and Max were waving and shouting. He stood to get a better view.

"I hear something," Rossignol said.

The sound of an animal running-pounding at top speed-catapulted through the empty air. And then, just as rapidly as he had vanished, Joseph materialized, galloping hard on his camel and weeping with joy.

16 April 1850 Two gory complications today: the salted lamb carca.s.s was reeking by noon and we discarded it. The moment it hit the sand, vultures descended upon it, rending it in b.l.o.o.d.y chunks. The feeding was so brutal Miss Nightingale averted her gaze. Later in the afternoon, one of the pack camels broke a leg. Mohammed slit its throat and gave it to an Abadi tribesman.

We have now ridden through a khamsin, which appeared at the horizon as a plume of dark brown with rusty margins that swept back and forth like a broom. The name derives from the Arabic for "fifty," because the storm sometimes lasts as many days, long enough to drive man and beast insane. Khamsin sand is a horizontal as well as a vertical force. It pours like salt, ascends in billows, and slashes sideways like rain, wrapping the traveler in its stinging net. In the eyes, it cuts like splinters of gla.s.s. It can move or make mountains. One camel driver told Joseph that he saw an entire caravan buried in less than an hour.

Max is sick. He ate something at the Ababdeh village and has been puking and s.h.i.+tting ever since. He has a fever and speaks to no one. The rest of us are hale and hearty.

Despite bad food and water, my mind has been a beehive, producing ideas to fill the emptiness of the desert. Three schemes for a book are buzzing in my head, all stories of insatiable love, whether earthly or mystical, and all, no doubt, the unconscious plotting of that stubborn romantic who lives, much beleaguered, in my heart (and who had such a pitiful second visit to Kuchuk Hanem).

The first, "A Night with Don Juan," worries me-wouldn't it still entail writing about wh.o.r.es? And if he f.u.c.ks everyone, where is the suspense, where the makings of a plot? The second, still lacking a t.i.tle, is the mythological legend of the Egyptian woman, Anubis, who wished to screw a G.o.d. Same problems as the first idea. Finally, I am considering writing about a rural Flemish girl, a young mystic who dies a virgin. (I don't know what she dies of, but she will have to expire if she won't f.u.c.k!) No wh.o.r.e here, but a heroine who succ.u.mbs to spiritual masturbation after practicing the manual kind. Is there anyone I would not offend no matter how delicately I approach her obsessions?

While I agonize over my writing, my mother hatches plans for me. In her last letter, she again mentioned her wish that I find a little job. To remain respectable, she thinks I must do something visible that other people can verify. Appearances impress her inordinately. I wrote back immediately, pointing out that the pittance I could earn would be inconsequential and that it is a delusion to believe that one can work a day job and still write in the evening. Finally, I sealed my fate, I hope, by hinting that a job would keep me from spending time with her. When I get home, I shall explain the great undertaking I am about to begin-as soon as I know what it is myself.

Gustave had little inclination to converse after spending eleven hours a day on a camel. First, fatigue settled in like lead weights. The landscape was exhausting-unremittingly splendid or unceasingly boring. Either way it deadened the mind.

Max, normally gregarious and loquacious, was in a stupor from drinking rak. Since water was in short supply, he sipped it straight, hoping to settle his guts or numb them into submission. Gustave had lost track of the number of times Max dismounted to s.h.i.+t or puke. The women stared off in the other direction for modesty's sake. Their camels couldn't abide each other and began to spit if they came too close.

After three days in the desert, Gustave hungered for a color other than brown. Especially green. There was nothing green. The desert was a gigantic theater hung with numberless scrims in shades of tan, ecru, ivory, beige, and mauve. When the wind blew, he pa.s.sed through them as if through scratchy tulle. Though he had never enjoyed the taste of plain water, he'd never again take it for granted, nor for that matter small beer, the cheapest blended cabernet, coffee, or tea. Nor the transforming power of sugar, though not even sugar had made the water at Hagee Soolayman palatable that day. Execrable taste and odor! Rotten eggs with a smear of fresh dog s.h.i.+t.

They ate the last two chickens for dinner and afterward Max and Trout went to bed. Everyone was exhausted, having ridden an extra two hours by moonlight before the meal.

Gustave and Miss Nightingale stretched out on blankets in the open air. Her logorrhea seemed to have subsided completely. They lounged in a comfortable, even velvety silence together. How pleasant it was simply to enjoy each other's presence.

Gustave stared up at the sky. The darkness seemed to absorb him the way air drank in moisture. "The desert at night is so mysterious," he said. "It's like walking across a room in which the ceiling disappears. Suddenly, instead of plaster rosettes overhead there are stars."

"Mm," she agreed, leaning forward slightly.

"Then a little farther, the walls dissolve. Now you do not know what obstacles lie in your path. You might be treading the edge of the earth, about to walk into the ocean, or off a cliff. Every molecule has lost its reflective s.h.i.+ne, its very ident.i.ty, to the darkness."

"I do like your rhapsodies," she said.

Could she see his face in the darkness? He could barely discern hers. He was avid to continue. "Daylight is different here, too, because you see everything without interruption and for a great distance; on the other hand, there is only nothingness to see. Night: a sponge that sucks you up inside it. Daytime: a bright nothingness that spits you out."

Rossignol continued the thread. "This explains perfectly what I have been feeling-claustrophobia at night, and in the daylight, a sort of paralyzing humility."

"Yes."

"Mm."

They both lay back, content to return to the rich silence.

The third night, my dear friend: If Plato buried his proverbial table in the eastern desert, it would quickly be eaten away by the sun and scouring gusts, proving what he said about reality-that ultimately, it consists not of things but of abstractions-ideas about things, i.e., the idea of a table buried in sand. My dear Bouilhet: reality is mental! Any other explanation is wishful thinking. Reality is therefore unreliable, something perceived through thought and dedication, or, if you are a writer, by judicious decanting into words. Today as I scanned the huge surround in vain for a trace of greenery, it struck me that if reality is not substance-the thing described-then it must be the way it is described-which means style! Style is everything. When I realized this, a spasm pa.s.sed through me ten times stronger than any o.r.g.a.s.m. I must focus on my style; everything else is negotiable. (Though I still need an ostensible subject other than wh.o.r.es and saints.) This insight was the gift and the lesson of the desert's style, which consists not of sand or mountains, but the light, which creates mirages and other optical fascinations. If I were Max, I'd photograph the emptiness of the desert instead of all the man-made attempts to subdue or outlast it, for to ride in the desert is to experience firsthand the s.h.i.+fting and s.h.i.+fty nature of what we call reality or truth.

These realizations so thrilled me, that as my camel dipped down for me to alight, I lost my footing and tumbled to the ground. (A camel is like a boat: when one dismounts, the earth feels strange, the legs even stranger.) Good old Max rushed over, worried I was in the throes of an attack.

These past three days, thrown together in close quarters, I have learned that despite my dismissal of most people in theory, once I've spent time with someone, my sympathy seeps out against my will like mother's milk at her infant's cries. My curiosity also makes it difficult to remain aloof. In short, I have taken an interest in Trout. Her stoicism moves me. Also, the unpredictability of her questions and answers, some of which are naive and some worldly. She and I have conversed in short bursts with Miss Nightingale or Max translating. Miss Nightingale seems grateful for the attention to her maid, as it lightens her burden of being the woman's only human connection.

Like most working people, Trout knows nothing of politics and revolution and yet I don't think I am mistaken when I say that revolutions are always undertaken in the name of people like Trout. Her family lives in straitened circ.u.mstances, working on farms or, worse, as colliers.

Tomorrow we reach Koseir. Writing the name raises my pulse. This is the farthest east we shall travel, at least in Egypt.

I hope the G.o.ds continue to send poems and plays your way. Read some Shakespeare aloud for me. And now, my oil lamp sputters, my eyes close. Adieu, dear friend.

Je t'embra.s.se.

G. Bourgeoisophobus

19.

KOSEIR.

Gustave was excitable and nervous on the last day of the caravan. It was his habit, he explained, to grow increasingly impatient the closer he came to his goal. He hounded Joseph with questions: How many kilometers until Koseir? How many more hours? At midday, when the wind s.h.i.+fted, he sniffed the air, clapped his hands, and howled like a wolf, convinced he smelled the Red Sea. Dismounting his camel, he charged over the next rise. Flo sniffed the air, too-not a hint of coolness or salt. Moments later he returned, crestfallen. For the next two hours he alternated between clownish prattle and strained silences during which she thought he might spontaneously combust from the heat of his antic.i.p.ation.

Oddly, she was in complete sympathy with his shenanigans, for he behaved exactly as she would have if f.a.n.n.y and Miss Christie had not dampened her spirit. The only difference between herself and Gustave was that he expressed his ardor. Adorably. Inspiringly. If only she might act so free, so true to her nature! Furthermore, since he didn't bother to hide his foolishness, she was inclined to trust it, and thereby trust him. How could she not trust a man who had confided that he patronized brothels?

In the afternoon, when the road dipped and flattened into a pattern of ridges like a seabed, he howled again and galloped off. In his wake, salt air arrived on a gust, and Koseir nudged the horizon in a dazzling white clump like a toy city. This time he returned content to parade with the rest of them as the road narrowed into the dusty main street of the town. They pa.s.sed merchant stalls and cafes where men smoked narghiles and played backgammon at small wooden tables. At the last row of houses before the sea, the Arabs deposited them in the street, arranged the camels in a train, and bid farewell, calling loudly to each other as if to celebrate the end of a long enforced silence. Gustave stood silently in the road, looking dazed.

Her feet swollen and half numb after so many hours in the saddle, Flo felt light as thistle down. Each step she took was an unpredictable experience-as if a puppeteer were controlling her limbs from above, she explained to Trout. "And how do you feel?" she asked.

"Like I'm made of India rubber, mum." Trout ventured small, wobbly steps, like a tightrope walker. "I can't get purchase. It feels like I'm still riding the beast."

Flo laughed.

Just then, Pere Elias greeted them in the street. Flo could not help gawking: he was the exact double of Pere Issa, down to his beard and braided leather sandals. And his hands? Yes, the same peculiar nail flourished on his pinkie. Gustave had promised to explain it but never had. She must ask him again.

"My brother did not tell you we were twins?" Pere Elias inquired of his startled guests. "Our mother dressed us alike in every detail. She was determined to make us undistinguishable so Father would not know which one to beat." He laughed. "I like to think that though we live apart, we still dress alike, not so difficult in the Orient because one doesn't wear much." He lifted the hem of his pelisse to ill.u.s.trate his point.

"And you have the identical occupation," Max said as they followed him inside. "Both French consuls."

"I think you'll find we're very much alike." He ushered them into his villa and ordered his houseboy to make coffee.