The Twelve Rooms of the Nile Part 22

"In the East, a woman's pleasure is also highly regarded. The nail is grown to further that regard."

How did a nail help a woman's regard? She could not pa.r.s.e the sentence. No, the woman was not regarded, her pleasure was. She remained silent, hoping he would expand upon the point, but concisely. If he could conclude his disquisition in one short sentence, it would be preferable to this gradual seeping revelation. "Further" suggested distance, and she was certain he was speaking of something requiring closeness, something he couldn't demonstrate.

"Another lovely one." He placed a reddish-brown sh.e.l.l that resembled a turkey's wing in her hand.

"'Further'? I mean, please explain 'further.'"

"Dear Rossignol." His voice dropped and his eyes grew soft. "I shall say it plain. The nail is used to stroke that part of a woman's body that is the center of her pleasure. I've been told married men take pride in that nail. So do their wives. When you think about it, the nail is a public declaration of mutual devotion. A carte d'amitie."

"A valentine?"

"Oui."

The center of her pleasure. She was blus.h.i.+ng, but she didn't care. Her curiosity, always the source of her boldness, trumped any discomfort. She hesitated over a huge orange scallop. "I don't quite understand," she said softly. She emphasized the word "quite," suggesting her lack of clarity was a matter of refinement, not substance-of inches, not miles.

"My father, by the way, was a surgeon, so I learned about the human body firsthand as a young boy. We lived in a wing of the hospital."

This was no help, either.

"You mother must have explained it to you," he said. It was a question.

"Yes." She saw that his cheeks had turned the color of rouge pots. Her own felt feverish. A match touched to either one of us would ignite, she thought.

"I believe the name for this part of the woman's body is the same in both languages-"

"Stop!" She nearly grazed his mouth with her hand. "There is no need to say it. I'm sure I know to what you refer."

She might retch if he named a part of herself she didn't recognize. Her brain switched on-she actually felt it engage inside her skull like a mouse scurrying in a wall-as she tried to recollect everything she'd read and heard of female anatomy. What had f.a.n.n.y said? There had been advice about menstrual rags, though f.a.n.n.y hadn't used those words, prompted by a collie b.i.t.c.h in heat trailing blood across the rug and hearth. f.a.n.n.y had called it "a woman's time of the month." Parthe had been in the room, too. After breakfast. f.a.n.n.y was embarra.s.sed and avoided looking at the girls. It was an agony to watch her mother squirm, so Flo had focused on the lime trees just leafing out chartreuse in the orchard.

As she replayed that morning in her mind, she watched the waves curling sh.o.r.eward, breaking into white freshets. Parthe had sat open-mouthed as a baby bird having food shoved down its craw. And then f.a.n.n.y had said those dreadful words. You will bleed every month. Parthe was twelve, Flo eleven, leggy little girls still playing with dolls. So you can have babies. f.a.n.n.y had repeated herself about days of blood and rinsing out the rags in cold water so the stain doesn't set. At first Parthe hadn't moved or made a sound. But then she smiled and nodded. Proud, pleased with herself. Not so Flo, who was silent, horrified, her whole body cold. Later, she was sure, they had laughed at her behind her back. f.a.n.n.y had told all the aunts what Flo had said when she finally spoke. Which was, "Well, I'm not going to do it. I don't want any children, so I shan't have to." f.a.n.n.y had regarded her like a cat with a half-dead mouse, with pure power and gratification. "It isn't up to you. It happens to every woman." Then f.a.n.n.y had guffawed and Parthe had mimicked her, their faces twisting up in horrid grins.

But what had any of that to do with Pere Issa's nail?

Gustave was staring at the sand. At a loss for words? Wondering at her strangeness? Regretting the entire conversation?

"Uterus," she said. "It's the uterus, isn't it?"

He took her hand as a big wave far out crashed silently at the limit of her vision. The sea droned on, its boring lesson. "Ah, Rossignol. I am so glad we met. We shall be the greatest of friends." Was he going to shake her hand to congratulate her for a correct answer? "I've never known anyone quite like you," he said.

Her feet were numb from sitting on them so long, and she felt woozy. A sickening heat proleptic of dizziness spread through her face and chest. Her monster was rousing itself, like a Cyclops in a cave. There was something unspeakably wrong with her, and everyone sensed it. He held her gaze, then looked away.

Like a criminal in the dock, she could barely utter the words. Guilty. Guilty, guilty, guilty! I confess I know nothing. I confess my vanity of mind. "Is that it?"

He was still holding her hand, which felt to her detached and dead. He shook his head almost imperceptibly. "It's not exactly the word I had in mind."

He was being polite, she knew, when, in fact, he pitied her. His kindness revolted her, or rather she found herself revolting to be the object of it. She was so humiliated she had to put her head down to avoid fainting. She heard herself whimper.

"Rossignol? Are you all right?"

She couldn't answer.

"I've upset you, I see, when all I wished was to give you a candid answer. When one travels, one learns strange things," he said more lightly. "One sees strange things. Rossignol?"

"Yes," she whispered.

"Are you ill?"

"I don't know." Her voice seemed to waft away.

He placed his hand flat upon her back. It was heavy and warm. "Perhaps you've never heard of this organ."

She exhaled and inhaled and felt the ground beneath her once more. Sand had worked its way into her stockings, and each time she moved it grated the flesh. "I don't know." If only she could skip the next few moments of her life, but they would pa.s.s in perfect agony, one second dragging after another like a bag of rocks as her childish ignorance was revealed. Her stomach felt like sour custard.

"In France, women are taught such things, but in England. Well, I've heard rumors that they aren't."

If only she knew what he was talking about! Was it one thing or many?

His hand moved in circles on her back, as WEN's used to do when she fell and sc.r.a.ped her elbows and knees. It soothed her into a sort of trance. If she kept her eyes closed to aid the illusion, she could believe he was stroking her hair, her arm, the soles of her feet.

"I'm sorry your mother or sisters or aunts didn't educate you."

She felt stupid beyond measure. Where was her reason, her logic? Where but deep in the well of her shame? And yet, when he soothed her, she cared a bit less. "There are women who cannot bear children," she tried. "Likewise, perhaps not everyone has this . . . thing."

"No, everyone has it." The warm circles stopped. "At least at birth. Though there are places in the world, some not far from here, where they cut this organ out to deprive the woman of her pleasure."

"Oh, no. Oh, that's, oh, no." She felt ill. As if her ears were stuffed with cotton wool, sounds were indistinct, the sea reduced to a faint murmur. She took a breath, then two more.

"Never mind about that." His voice deepened. "I am an idiot to mention it-"

"Perhaps mine has been cut out." The thought breached her last defenses. She broke down weeping big plinking tears like an overwrought toddler.

"No, no. Definitely no! You are innocent, Rossignol. That's all." He patted her back rapidly. "I am sure you are complete. Only barbarians deprive their women of pleasure."

Pleasure. She understood the word but was certain she'd never known the pleasure he spoke of. She had never felt any particular sensation there, only painless bleeding, the occasional itch. Perhaps she would never feel the happiness women were supposed to feel. She lifted her head and looked at him. "Mais peut-etre-"

"No, I will not hear any 'buts.' You have been done a disservice, simply that. Everyone knows the English are terrible prudes."

"I didn't know we are prudes." She furrowed her brow. "But I have often heard it said that the French are the opposite. Loose. Too amorous. Immoral," she added, hoping it wouldn't offend him.

"b.o.l.l.o.c.ks! The French are worldlier. I heard of another English-woman your age who knew nothing of her own body, so you are not alone." He put his arm around her and squeezed her in an avuncular hug. "Promise me you will forget all this."

She considered the idea and rejected it out of hand. "No. I wish to know about it, if I can bear the added embarra.s.sment." Actually, she didn't think she could be further embarra.s.sed. She'd never felt so unsure of herself, so ignorant, so reduced in stature in another's eyes. Yet, at the same time, safe.

"You must never be embarra.s.sed with me. Will you try?" The arm upon her shoulders went suddenly limp. He lowered it to his side. "I said those same words to my darling Caroline, who died so young."

"Oh, your poor sister. I am sorry." They had returned to familiar ground, to the world of the loved and lost where she felt more herself, more normal.

"I wonder if I'll ever get used to the idea."

"Surely, with time."

"I expect to see her running to greet me when I get home. I keep imagining it. And then"-he choked up-"I stop myself and grieve all over again."

Parthe would race to greet Flo when she returned, and Flo would be elated to see her, for despite their differences, she loved her sister.

Gustave's face was wet. He let out a low moan, then lay his head on her lap, crossing his arms awkwardly at the chest, as if he didn't know where to put them or didn't wish to impose the bulk of himself on her.

He was so genuine, she thought, patting his wide, sunburned, and surprisingly hairy back. "There, there," she murmured. "It's good to cry, isn't it?"

"Yes," he blubbered into her dress. "Yes."

He was so quixotic! Listening to him sniffle and sn.o.b, she marveled at the openness of his emotion and felt honored by his trust. He pulled a handkerchief with difficulty from his back pocket and blew his nose in three short bursts. Then he was quiet. They sat breathing together, each in a world of private contemplation. She watched the waves rus.h.i.+ng toward her. One might think of them as hopeless, their furious repet.i.tive energy spent and spent and spent. Or one could find them cheerful, full of merry abandon. They were a mirror, she decided, of their observer.

Precisely because she was reduced to meekness and shame, she wanted to ask more about the pleasure center, but surely, after his outpouring of grief, it would seem selfish. There would be other occasions. Maybe they could talk in the evenings on the return trip; perhaps he'd be less occupied with other things. In some ways he was like a sibling to her, an intimate completely different from Parthe, who was tentative and fearful, waiting to follow Flo's example, while Gustave was an explorer and guide who presented her with curiosities and oddments from the larger world.

He sat up and moved closer, cupped her ear with both hands, and whispered a single word into it. As she'd feared, it was a word she'd never heard or read. She couldn't bear to repeat it in the silence that followed. But being polite and kind, he said it again-louder, slower, clearer-as if inscribing it on her brain.

Oh, f.a.n.n.y, she thought, what have you done to me?

That evening, Flo sat in her nightgown on the edge of the bed and watched the flimsy white curtains at the windows billowing like the waves they framed in the moonlight. With the lightest touch, the breeze tugged at everything in the room.

She was a mystery to herself. In her monthly bath, she was a slick object that sank in the zinc tub except for ten nursery-rhyme toes. She'd never seen her whole body naked in a mirror, and her backside not at all.

After removing her slippers, she turned down the bedcover, stretched out flat, and pulled it to her chin. She extinguished the oil lamp and lay listening to the sea's pulse, the regular whoosh and pause.

It was a luxury to be alone in the dark. To be alone. At home, Parthe was always in the room. Seventeen bedrooms and still they shared. At her cousins', too, it was unsociable-egotistical, by f.a.n.n.y's lights-to sleep in a room by oneself. One mustn't do anything that was too important to be interrupted, not even sleep. One must be ready to offer companions.h.i.+p and comfort to others around the clock. From this single restriction she might go mad. But since the caravan began she'd had her privacy, and tonight Trout was sleeping downstairs, in the servants' quarters. Max and Gustave shared the chamber next to hers, but the walls were thick as a tomb's.

Gustave's contention that the English were prudes seemed plausible enough. But there was the evidence of Mary Clarke, a Scots woman who, for all her propriety, had chosen to live in Paris, where she kept company with two men night after night for a dozen years without marrying either man. Why hadn't Clarkey told her about the pleasure place? If anyone knew, she did.

Perhaps customs were different on the whole of the Continent. When doctors in Italy and France attended on WEN and Charles, both men had undressed. But when Great-Grandmother Sh.o.r.e lay dying, the doctor literally didn't see her. Modesty could not be dispensed with, even at the risk of death! He had merely examined her head, hands, feet, and a few inches of what was politely called the decollete. Everything else was a guess.

Flo. Flo. When she thought of herself, the image in the tilting looking gla.s.s of the mahogany dresser came to mind-the top half of a creature corseted and laced into an unchanging shape. Rather like a vase when you got right down to it, the arms being handles, the head a single blossom, like a peony. How did she look from an angle? Was her profile strong? When Parthe sketched her reading on the settee, she was shocked to see the length of her own nose.

She might as well live in a rented costume. The drawings in her medical books were no help either, with their stylized ovals, circles, and wands for the innards, and their doll-blank exteriors. The spark of life was planted in a place too deep for her to see or touch. No one could. Her torso and legs? A small Antarctica, where she didn't trespa.s.s. Why had it never occurred to her that she could lock herself in a room and place a hand mirror between her legs?

The thought made her s.h.i.+ver.

An owl pierced the quiet, its downward-sliding whu! so sharp it blotted out the cras.h.i.+ng surf. It took a moment to collect herself, to sink back into the lumpen mattress and close her eyes.

She began with her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, small by any measure, tracing lightly, raising gooseflesh, the nipples quickly shriveling into points as if with cold. But it felt wrong to touch them. Were they not G.o.d's design, intended for an infant's nourishment?

She curled her hand into a fist and placed it by her side.

Yet, perversely, there they were all the time, as if at any moment she might be called upon to strip off her camisole and feed a regiment. Some men found them stunning, stirring. Naughty. Richard had several times managed to fondle hers, pretending it accidental, but coloring furiously.

Her fingertips barely alighting, she pulled on them, gathering a funnel shape. She felt a tug deep inside, in a place she'd never felt anything and couldn't identify. A radiating twinge like a flame inside her flared and dimmed.

The desert sand had lent itself to astounding textures, tawny curves and scoops so like flesh one could hardly believe they were just mounds of dirt. The dunes' shapeliness pleased the eye the way the hollow of her belly and the jutting swells and slopes of her hips pleased her roving hand. There were ma.s.sive drifts like the thighs and shoulders, b.r.e.a.s.t.s and b.u.t.tocks of a giant race that slept beneath the sand, that were the sand, figures defined by clefts and ramparts of unmitigated, velvety black. For five days she had marked time by their expanding and subsiding shadows, watching them ripen from palest gold through deep persimmon to ebony. Gustave had pointed out plaques where camel urine had dried to a varnished gloss. Elsewhere, the sand gleamed in creamy tufts, like frosting. Tier after tier of caramelized sugar. If you looked long enough, you felt sick, as if you'd eaten a gouty meal.

All this accidental sculpture at the wind's decree, she thought, pulling up a knee and turning onto her side, resting there.

Beneath the coverlet, the air was close, humid with sweat and bodily exhalations. In the desert, her sense of perspective had vanished until a distant pit could be the dimple of an elbow or a mile-long creva.s.se. The soft down of her thighs, the softer skin inside them. Move my hand away. Don't.

Don't! She felt so guilty. Was her body not hers? Apparently it was not. In the darkness, she resolved not to care.

She was too shy to sleep naked, and wore a nightgown and drawers on the hottest nights. The slaves, the dest.i.tute hajjis, the Ababdeh in their mud huts-all seemed less naked, less ashamed, than she was in her nightgown. Their skin seemed a more natural covering than hers, which was the pallid, sickly shade of animals you found when you turned over a rock.

She must get a French medical text. A text would be proof beyond the nudes so beloved by the French, who thought it perfectly acceptable to draw from life, which she'd always suspected was a ruse for men to ogle naked girls. A fine art tradition, Clarkey had said at the Louvre when Flo turned away from Ingres's painting of a naked Turkish concubine sprawled on one haunch, defiantly gazing over her shoulder at the gallerygoers.

She tried to imagine a long nail drawn across the different folds and bulges. Or a finger. If only she knew where to touch-how to touch-so that the unpredictable trickles of pleasure-they felt like music swelling within her-would continue.

It was very hot in the room. Suddenly she wanted nothing but to sleep.

Tomorrow she would unpack the hand mirror-she couldn't possibly use the one she had borrowed for her coiffure from Charles. Tomorrow she'd look.

The next morning she awakened before sunrise and worked on a letter to her mob based on notes she'd scribbled in Lavie each night. f.a.n.n.y and Parthe would be incredulous-aghast-at her descriptions of the journey's hards.h.i.+ps and splendors. (Hopefully, f.a.n.n.y would not hold it against the Bracebridges, whose reputation for mildness verging on laxity was well known.) And while Flo hadn't intended to scheme, as she wrote she realized that once the family learned she'd caravanned through the desert, Kaiserswerth would seem tame to them in comparison. They might even welcome the news.

The past five days had been more stimulating than five years in England. Life had flown at her in such a welter of color and pity and threat, she'd been unable to absorb it all-the indescribable palette of earth and sky, the sandstorm, the death rattle of a dying camel. Now she took her time to catalog the details, to chew things over lest she forget them.

Never before had she seen human beings so debased, whether the buck-naked Ababdeh children, or the skeletal Ethiopes with pendulous b.r.e.a.s.t.s that reached their waists but were no thicker than a tea towel. Most appalling were the pilgrims who wandered for months or years en route to Mecca with nothing but a begging bowl, all the while marrying, dying, giving birth. Yet, in all this blaring cornucopia of sensation, the conversation with Gustave the previous afternoon loomed foremost in her mind. a.s.suming she could ever articulate her thoughts about it, there was no one-not even Mary Clarke Mohl-to whom she could confide the sensations on the beach. Between herself and Gustave an electric current like Mr. Faraday's had jolted on and off, now emitting pretty glimmers, now hot sparks, now a skywide aurora borealis. All of which lay beyond her powers to probe and understand.

Except for one simple but enormous realization that had surfaced like cream in a jug of milk when she opened her eyes that morning: Gustave seemed to have forgotten that she was a woman! Or chosen to disregard the fact. Oh, there were the customary displays of chivalry, as on the third day when he and Max tramped on foot to guide her and Trout on camels through a steep pa.s.s. If the desert had had doors, surely he would have opened every one for her. But when they were alone, he no longer made allowance for her s.e.x. And she had felt this difference as a bodily excitement just short of terror-a quivering in her belly and limbs-as if someone had set her down in front of footlights without telling her the play, or what role she must act.

Was this not what she had always wished and railed for and dreamed of? To be treated no differently than a man? And yet she found herself in foreign territory, ignorant of the language and customs, unsure how to react. Should she have taken offense when he spoke so frankly of carnal matters? Did she dare show enthusiasm for things she barely comprehended? Certainly she didn't know how a lady would have responded. She did not know how a gentleman would have responded either, "gentleman" being a pretty word for a stranger with secrets. In her opinion, a gentleman was like nothing so much as the man in the moon. He revealed always and only the same distant half of himself to her, while his male friends were privy to all of him at gatherings after dinner in WEN's paneled library. Sometimes, after everyone had gone home, she stood alone in this room which, despite regular airing, reeked of pipe smoke fixed with the antiseptic bite of brandy-pungent traces of the male of the species, like the footprints of a rare animal never observed in the wild.

It was too much to think about all at once. She set aside her paper and pen, crossed to the window, and peered out. The sea provided instant comfort, enfolding her with hypnotic insistence as the waves unwound onto the beach, dragging with them the solacing sight and sound of gulls wheeling overhead, herons hunting along the strand with deliberate, stately steps.

It's a misnomer, she suddenly thought. The water was a sparkling aquamarine, as clear in the shallows as a polished jewel. Had it ever been red? Chevalier Bunsen proposed the name resulted from a clerical error, "reed" having been shortened by mistake over the centuries to "red." So: the Reed Sea.

Her head swam, her temples pulsed. From the mult.i.tude of rollers in the distance she settled on a particular foment of whitecaps peeling toward the sh.o.r.e and watched until it dissipated in the sand. And there, beyond the boats, another string of white curls. Then another.

20.

THE DYING SUN.

Trout had stopped complaining, but Flo knew she wasn't feeling well. At least the toothache hadn't returned, though neuralgia and eyestrain were obvious the next morning at breakfast, which they took on the terrace at eight-thirty, later than usual. Flo, too, was spent after four parching days in the desert.