The Twelve Rooms of the Nile Part 6

"Brilliant," he lied. He planted a kiss on her knuckles. He couldn't stop staring at her. "You are such an adorable genius, my dear Madame Colet." The last time he had felt so moved, he was fourteen and watching Elisa suckling her infant on the beach. Now he ached to take Louise in his arms.

"You must call me Louise," she said, still using the more formal vous.

"My dear Louise." Desire now burned in him like lava rising to the rim of a caldera. He leaned to kiss her cheek. She, too, pressed forward, aligning her face to meet his lips. But at the very moment the fine golden hairs on her upper lip swam into view, he heard a loud click. The door flew open and a child burst into the room, followed by a nurse trying to restrain her. He and Louise snapped apart.

"Maman!" the little girl cried, jumping onto Louise's lap.

Louise made the introductions, but the child was not interested. She wished only to hang from her mother's neck, playing with her earrings as she recounted everything she had seen outdoors, babbling on and on to Louise's delight.

The child was as beautiful as her mother, he observed, further proof that Louise's beauty was not a chance or temporary thing, but an inalterable essence so innate to her being that it could be relied upon to reproduce itself.

Louise cast him a look that conveyed it was time to leave. After peremptory pleasantries all around, he gathered his jacket and hat. Louise suggested that the nurse take Henriette to her room to use the chamber pot while she accompanied her guest to the door.

As they stood prolonging their good-byes, he realized that she had not once mentioned her husband and that the apartment was devoid of male belongings. The esteemed composer must not reside there. "The child's father, does he visit?" he asked.

"We are separated." Louise adjusted the hem of his jacket sleeve to reach his s.h.i.+rt cuff. "It's a complicated arrangement." Later Pradier explained that neither Hippolyte Colet nor Victor Cousin, a previous lover, acknowledged Henriette's paternity.

He kissed her hand, hoping she would not object to the tip of his tongue brus.h.i.+ng the skin.

"Tomorrow the nurse will return Henriette to her boarding school," she whispered. "Will you visit again in the afternoon?"

He nodded. The thought of what the next day might bring made him giddy. "Au revoir." He turned to go. "a demain."

He pushed through the immense old door into the July heat.

Still slumped in the temple doorway, Gustave regarded his right hand, which lay by his side in a bright patch of light, as separate from him as a specimen in his father's laboratory. The s.h.i.+ny pink scar where his father had scalded him while tending him after his first seizure flamed anew in the desert sun. The burn had pained him for months and left him marked for life with this paternal sign-of deep-seated disapproval? Surely it had been an accident, but one that had acquired symbolic importance. On the scar, sweat formed a glistening slick. He could almost see the moisture evaporate in fetid waves.

The woman in the mirage was clearer now as she trudged purposefully forward. A native guide peripatetically extended an arm to steady her, but she seemed determined to outpace him and avoid his a.s.sistance. Behind her, a plumper woman trod more slowly, a native pressing both hands against her back to help her up the steep incline. As Gustave well knew, even where the sand was level, it constantly gave way so that one never had secure footing. The second woman was graceless. Hunkered down, her stout arms extended on either side for balance, she shambled forward like a bear.

Abruptly, she lost her footing and shrieked, continuing to yowl as she skidded onto her back and slid down the slope, finally coming to a stop like an upended tortoise. He sprang to his feet and rushed toward her.

He tacked laterally across the sand for better purchase, leaving zigzagging footprints like the trail of a huge snake. Below him, two guides were attempting to lift the horizontal female, but she was fending them off, kicking and slapping at their hands and shouting shrilly lest, he gathered, they touch her. What, he wondered, would be an acceptable anchor by which they could right this beached whale? The hair, no doubt, but that would be painful and might result in baldness. Surely she would have no objection to a native guide grabbing her by the feet. But to drag her the rest of the way would be more of a sanding than a salvation. What was needed was a magician to levitate her above the dune like one of the whirling, swirling dervishes he'd seen in Cairo.

Her smaller companion accosted him just as he reached the comical scene. It was Miss Nightingale. "Excuse me, sir," she said, squinting into the sun. "Can you help my maid?"

"It would be my honor," Gustave answered in French.

"M. Flaubert?"

"At your service, mademoiselle." He pushed back his pom-pommed hood, exposing a sunburned face, s.h.a.ggy beard, and shaved head.

The squirming figure on the ground paused in her struggles to watch the pair become reacquainted. "Leave off of me!" she screamed as the guide misread her momentary stillness as an invitation to try to hoist her from the ground. Poor fellow, Gustave thought, he thinks the soles of his feet will be blistered if he doesn't get her up in the next few minutes. Bastinadoes all around when news of the debacle reached their captain.

"This is my maid, Trout," Florence began. "Trout, meet Mr. Flau-"

"For the love of G.o.d, mum, save the introductions and just get me up. I'm sinking. Is it quicksand I'm in?"

"No, definitely not. Plain sand."

Gustave liked being the hero, but he wasn't certain that he was equal to this feat. He wondered which would be easier to move: deadweight or weight attempting ineffectually to rise? He waved the guides back. "It would help," he told Florence in French, "if she would stop fighting and lie still." Florence translated and Trout quieted, her hand stiffened into a visor on her forehead.

Planting his feet apart on the incline, Gustave bent to the task, placing one arm under Trout's knees and the other under her neck, swashbuckler-like. He lifted with all his strength, but the hot dune immediately s.h.i.+fted under him, spilling him up to his calves in sand. He let go and stood, shaking his head. What was that principle of the lever he had studied in school? The longer the handle, the greater the weight? He remembered an ill.u.s.tration of Archimedes lifting the earth with a pole, but the only lever he had handy were his arms, which weren't getting any longer. He stepped closer. Perhaps the fireman's carry, the maid like a gunnysack over his shoulder?

Miss Nightingale said, "Trout, I think it would work if one person could lift your head and another your feet."

Trout made a sour face. "I don't want these heathens touching me, mum. It ain't proper for an Englishwoman to be handled by such as these."

Gustave resumed his position to try again.

"Let me help," Florence said, bending down.

"No, you are too small."

"I'm very strong,"

"I have no doubt of that, but it would not be enough," Gustave said. "The sand sucks everything down."

They stood pondering while Trout lay in the sun, her face red, sweat forming in droplets on her upper lip and in the rolls of her neck. She wiped her brow with the sleeve of her dress.

"J'ai une idee," Miss Nightingale said. She removed her brown Holland jacket and stuffed it into Gustave's hands, then knelt, bare-armed, beside Trout and whispered into her ear.

"No," Trout objected loudly. "I won't do it!"

Florence stood up. "There is no other way."

Trout's face turned crimson with rage. "I wish I'd never come to this G.o.dless desert."

"You are not in England now. You are in Egypt and you are being unnecessarily difficult."

Trout began to bawl; small bubbles inflated and popped at her nostrils.

"As your employer, I must insist." Miss Nightingale retrieved her jacket from Gustave. The native guides shuffled their feet, looking ill at ease and fearful. Relentless sun, indifferent sand. This was, after all, the eastern Sahara. Gustave felt the heat thickening the rough wool of his robes, secreting itself into every fold of fabric and skin, sweat dripping from his armpits, chest, neck, and groin. Through the soles of his boots, his feet were beginning to burn. Trout would soon be Trout frite and then they would have to bury or eat her.

Miss Nightingale knelt again, and folding her beige jacket in half, blindfolded Trout, tying the sleeves behind her head. She waved the servants to return to the reluctant lady in distress and gestured for Gustave to take charge. She did not have to say a word. Everyone understood the enterprise. Trout was to be tackled by however many hands as were needed, placed on whatever parts of her body provided traction.

And so the Englishwoman was hefted silently from the dune by six hands and borne like a ceremonial offering toward the temple of Ramses II. Behind Trout's improvised blinders, Gustave thought he detected a m.u.f.fled sigh of resignation or relief. He followed the pink of Miss Nightingale's bonnet, the tiny masterful hands. She had placed herself alongside the procession, at his shoulder. How delicate she was, deerlike, and yet how practical, resourceful, and forthright. But there was something beyond those familiar English traits in her. He sensed it in her bearing, in the way she had taken charge of the situation-eagerly, like someone with a sense of purpose. It seemed to him that where the French had raised pa.s.sion to a universal good, the English had subst.i.tuted purpose, social progress, and s.e.xual prohibition.

The innocent Miss Nightingale (most likely she was a virgin, he theorized) smiled at him, a commendation for a job well executed as the entourage struggled at last into a patch of shade. There they were met by the picnickers he'd observed earlier, a small mob of concerned Europeans oohing and aahing at the sight of an Englishwoman being transported like a pharaoh across the blazing sand.

Among the crowd were Miss Nightingale's companions whom he'd seen before from a distance when he first met her on the road. The man loped forward and arranged a blanket to receive the still-airborne servant. But she wasn't having it and insisted they put her down on her own two feet, whereupon she all but collapsed on the blanket, her skirts deflating around her like laundry in a dead wind.

The natives vanished in a wink, going, he figured, behind the temple or in it for shade. Miss Nightingale hastened to introduce everyone and invited Gustave to join her for sugar water and English biscuits. She really was polite, this little deer, with a heart-shaped faced and l.u.s.trous brown hair, some of which had come loose from her pink hat and hung in damp tendrils on her neck and shoulder. Her skin was as pale as cream, with an inner glow, the result of the heat, no doubt. She untied her jacket and shook it out. Her arms were thin, but with well-defined muscles. Unbidden, the image of himself licking them clean of sweat flashed to mind.

When he did not respond to her invitation, she repeated it, but her companion, Charles, had already moved into gear, pumping Gustave's hand. "Biscuits, pos.h.!.+ You must join us for dinner."

Gustave agreed to meet on their houseboat at eight the next evening.

"Along with Mr. Du Camp," Flo added.

"Who?" Charles asked.

Flo reminded her dear friend that she had met two Frenchmen on the road. Didn't he recall? They had had guns.

"I love to shoot," Charles said. "Almost as much as I love to visit Greece. My two favorite pastimes."

Miss Nightingale stepped away, in deference to Mr. Bracebridge, and was conferring with Mrs. Bracebridge, one hand on her bonnet and the other clasping her friend's hand. He watched her moving in her dress, a costume that made her larger than she was from the waist down, and smaller than she was from the waist up. The most fetching fas.h.i.+on for most women, as far as he was concerned, was a bedsheet.

"I must return to work," he said, draining the tumbler of sugar water.

"Mr. Flaubert is an emissary of the French government," Flo explained. The Bracebridges nodded, appropriately impressed if still unclear as to his occupation.

"We are making squeezes of the monuments," he explained. "Inside the temple. I have my man, Achmet, working, but he slacks off if I don't supervise." That was a lie. Achmet worked harder than a man ought, as if in fear for his life. Gustave planned to reward him with a generous baksheesh at journey's end.

"I'm sorry you can't linger," Florence said. She offered him her hand, that dainty and delightful frond of flesh. Ever the cavalier, he bowed and pressed it to his lips. He took the taste of her skin with him as he walked toward the three Ramseses steadily regarding the scene.

7.

THE WORLD IS MADE OF WATER.

Tonight's meal would have no hand-lettered place cards or menus, not that Selina had not volunteered to make them, but Florence had convinced her that the Frenchmen needed no such formality, as they, too, had been on the Nile eating native fare for months. Menus, groceries, baking, and such were of no earthly interest to Flo. That was her mother's domain, a world of ostentation and waste, where awful "menu French" prevailed, which in England was nothing like the living language but a kind of decorative captioning chefs used to impress their employers. They added a la francaise and a la reine, glace, and saute to the menu like salt and pepper to a brisket. Once f.a.n.n.y had served "julienne of soup" and Flo had piped up with, "Why not filets of carrots?" in earshot of the a.s.sembled guests. f.a.n.n.y had brooded for a day.

Despite its location in the wilds of Nubia, Abu Simbel suffered no shortage of food vendors catering to the small but steady European trade. Bakers hawked fresh bread; butchers, goats, lambs, and chickens; fishermen, fresh catch. The crew, too, found commodities to their liking-dates and spices, and the henna with which they continually dyed their hands and hair. The captain had procured Nile perch, rice, dried figs, dates, almonds, and fava beans. Paolo would attempt a fruit pudding, using goat's milk and raspberry conserve from home. If that failed, they'd munch biscuits from Fortnam and Mason's slathered with marmalade and Darjeeling tea. In any case, Charles would proffer his best Irish whiskey, a hypnotic strong enough to engulf the memory of any supper in a smoky, intoxicating fog.

Florence spent the afternoon exploring the facade of the great rock temple, writing about and sketching figures and cartouches, all the while knowing M. Flaubert was somewhere nearby. At five-thirty, she and her companions returned to the dahabiyah for the afternoon rest. This was the time for writing letters and journals, for Trout to snooze on the divan and Charles to read the cla.s.sics. (He had brought, in the original Latin, Strabo, Ptolemy, and Herodotus that he might become better acquainted with the cla.s.sical view of the late Egyptian dynasties.) Despite his unconventional clothing, Florence counted M. Flaubert a man of quality. He was tall and hearty, with an expressive face that she took as proof that significant cogitation was ongoing behind his large and lively hazel eyes. Most would call him handsome, though she refused to use that word (along with beautiful and pretty) because it reduced people to specimens, like the dumb animals at county fairs unknowingly vying for a ribbon. Still, Flaubert would have earned first place, a blue. He had been so helpful. Trout might still be roasting on the sand had he not happened along. He'd been self-possessed and understood her wishes without explanation, captaining the rescue earnestly and without pomp.

Trout, who was sulking in her bunk, had not shown a smidgen of grat.i.tude to Florence, M. Flaubert, or the quaking guides. Once delivered to the fretwork shade of the stumpy trees alongside the rock temple, she had nibbled a few dates, then spent the afternoon feverishly crocheting an infant's layette and drinking small beer. To avoid another spill in the sand, Flo had urged her to allow a crewmen at each elbow for the return walk to the boat. She had flapped down the ramp like a flightless bird.

Flo looked forward to dining with two French adventurers and with no one to glare at her or pinch her leg under the table if she made an immodest remark. She might be herself, Florence Nightingale, idealist and voracious consumer of knowledge, not Miss Nightingale, spinster and object of pity and revulsion, the living monument to f.a.n.n.y's failure.

There was hardly a ripple that evening, the breeze having moved on, the captain said, to the eastern desert. The Nile resembled a lacquered tray inlaid with nacre stars and a slender moon. One might almost think it solid, the polished stage of a theater with the arch of the heavens as its twinkling proscenium. In the air above the glossy expanse, a current flourished. Swarms of mosquitoes, gnats, midges, and biting flies hung in a particulate mist above the surface, while in pale green and gray patches, moths swam like a school of slow fish dodging bats and nighthawks. The heat had relented enough for the women to wear long sleeves and stockings as protection against the insects.

Trout had decided to take dinner in her cabin. No doubt she felt stranded, socially and geographically, and preferred the role of misunderstood and benighted lady's maid to temporary equal. Not a peep was heard from her that evening.

Because the dinner was the Bracebridges' first social event on the dahabiyah, they decided to dress. They had packed with such occasions in mind-visits with compatriots in Alexandria and Cairo, as well as with new acquaintances made while touring. Charles appeared in a clean white s.h.i.+rt, dinner jacket, and cravat, hair brushed to a s.h.i.+ne, whiskers freshly trimmed. Selina, bedecked with cameo earrings and brooch, wore a rose-colored gown covered with a fine alpaca mantle trimmed in rabbit fur.

Florence, who had brought no such finery, was content in a navy silk and wool dress with a white lace collar and matching lace headband to set off the hair curled into a rosette at each ear. A fichu of Sea Island cotton Grandmother Sh.o.r.e had tatted completed her crisp if plain outfit. The year before, at a tiny arcade in Rome, Selina had convinced her to purchase garnet earrings that dangled midway down her neck on gold-filigreed wires. Inserting them in her ears, she'd worried that she looked like a Gypsy. Selina had persuaded her that they suited her complexion, lending a hint of reflected color to her skin, which, on its own, tended toward the paleness of bone china. "No need to be a plain Jane when you have such a lovely face, "Selina had said. "I don't want to look like a baited hook," Flo had replied. Though she enjoyed fine things as much as any young woman, she had adopted plain clothing as a necessary defense against the wrong sort of men. "I would rather look like a vicar's wife," she had explained, accepting the small box of earrings from the merchant, "than a demimondaine." Tonight would mark the third time she had worn them.

At eight sharp, the Frenchmen arrived carrying luggage, M. Du Camp weighted down with two unwieldy sheepskin cases, and M. Flaubert with a portmanteau and a bottle of wine. In full dress, they looked like remnants from Napoleon's army gone native. Ceremonial swords with embossed hilts swung by their sides in ornate scabbards. When they bent at the knee to board the boat, or sat in chairs, they had to coax the swords from behind like a pair of shy dogs. Perhaps they planned a fencing demonstration? They wore tight white pants, like footmen (the better, Flo thought, to show off their legs), and tall leather cavalry boots. In lieu of military jackets, they sported red Turkish vests over voluminous white s.h.i.+rts, the vests Flo had often seen on bare-chested Egyptian men. Only fezzes were missing to completely scramble their attire. Instead, they wore turbans. M. Flaubert's was blood red, fixed at the top with a brooch.

While the captain and Paolo were preparing dinner topside, Charles invited everyone belowdecks. There, he poured five gla.s.ses of sherry.

The Bracebridges' cabin was bigger than Flo's, with one large bed in the middle, and a narrow divan on one side. With nowhere proper to sit, everyone stood. Charles gave a brief survey of his belongings, as if, Florence thought, to a.s.sure his guests that as "Franks"-Europeans of any nationality-they had a civilization in common to uphold no matter where they found themselves. The trappings Charles so proudly showed off were like so many props in this venture: his globe, Selina's tea caddy, maps and drawing kits, first aid supplies, a telescope, bird and reptile encyclopedias. He read the t.i.tles of his books aloud, waiting for recognition on his guests' faces, which was only infrequently forthcoming. If Florence didn't know Charles better, she would have thought he was quizzing them to determine how well educated they were. Charles was good-hearted, but sometimes his enthusiasms rode roughshod over people's patience. He could be a boor.

"My dear," he turned to her, "tell the Frenchmen how many volumes you brought from home."

Before she could answer, he volunteered the information. "Miss Nightingale is modest, but I know to a certainty that there are more than thirty scholarly tomes dealing with Egypt and higher spiritual pursuits."

"Now, Charles," she said, coloring. At the rate Charles was going, she would soon be unrecognizably bookish. Higher spiritual pursuits? Had she ever used those words to him? They sounded like something Selina might have told him.

Just then, Selina changed the subject. "The captain has an ambitious menu. Five courses."

"I believe I can smell our dinner now," Gustave said, sniffing to reinforce his point. She thought he smiled at her.

The odors from the brazier had drifted down, whetting their appet.i.tes. They followed their noses back upstairs.

The crew had outdone themselves setting the table: within a collar of purple flowers they'd arranged a branch of dates and sectioned pomegranates, the seeds glittering like rubies. In moments, conversation was flowing as freely as the food and wine.

M. Flaubert had brought along his certificate from the government describing his mission. But it was Du Camp's photographs that captivated everyone. Shedding his white gloves, he pa.s.sed around his pictures of the monuments at Giza and the mosques of Cairo. Spectacular images of the Sphinx elicited special praise. Florence hadn't yet explored the monuments at Giza, only viewed them from afar, saving them, she explained, for the float downriver. "I glimpsed him from the back of a little a.s.s," she mentioned, studying the picture of the Sphinx. "We rode a.s.ses everywhere in Cairo," she added. "They were so small!"

"We rode them, too," Du Camp said. "One's legs hang almost to the ground. They're the Egyptian version of the coach and four."

"It's such a b.u.mpy ride, isn't it? My maid was exhausted. She complained the little beasts would displace her kidneys or cause her lungs to drop to her derriere." (Trout had said "bottom," but the French sounded more polite.) She'd felt ridiculous astride her donkey, a Brobdinagian suddenly transported to Lilliput. "I felt like a giant," she said. "And I hated that my mount was throttled periodically." She was led around like that day after day, touring the mosques and the tombs, her efreet bushwhacking through the crowds, cajoling the donkey forward by clicking, calling, and tugging at the reins, then striking him on the rump. "The poor feeling beast," she lamented. "My weight must have been oppressive. Next time, we shall request horses."

"Horses are hard to come by," Du Camp said, "and impractical in the close city streets." He turned to M. Flaubert, who nodded his agreement. "That's why everyone rides the a.s.ses."

"Of course. I hadn't realized that," she said.

M. Flaubert set down his goblet. "If you want to ride a horse," he said, chewing his fish with obvious pleasure, "you must go to the desert."

She liked watching him eat, enjoyed the subtle chewing sounds, the slightly greasy film over his lips, the almost inaudible grunts of delight.

"Why don't you come with us for a ride across the desert?" He smacked the table. "All of you! The little Arabians are miraculous. Do you have a good seat?" he asked Flo.

Florence had always ridden sidesaddle, a terrible way to travel anywhere, with the body positioned at cross-purposes to the forward motion of the animal. At the Hurst, she sometimes rode bareback, like a boy-much to f.a.n.n.y's horror-gripping for dear life with her thighs, her fingers entwined in the pony's mane. "I've ridden quite a bit," she told him.

"Charles raises Arabian horses," Selina said with pride. Charles nodded, busily removing tiny bones from the head of his fish.

Max said, "You must enlighten us about them, M. Bracebridge."

"Happy to, Max," Charles replied. "If there's one thing I enjoy talking about, it's my lads and la.s.sies."

"And the babies," Selina added.

Flo had heard Charles on the subject many times before. Bloodlines, imports, stud books, racing times. He was pa.s.sionate about his hobby. But she was surprised to hear Selina so enthusiastic. And she could not remember ever hearing Selina call the foals "babies."

"My stock goes back to the Byerley Turk," Charles began.