The Twelve Rooms of the Nile Part 9

I've been wondering if I may address you as "Rossignol," or "Florence." (I prefer the former.) I heard Mrs. Bracebridge call you "Flo," but perhaps that is reserved for family and the closest of friends; perhaps it would be too intime. Since we have revealed our failings to each other, might we se tutoyer? Would that offend you? We are far from our respective countries in a land where the formalities are largely irrelevant, in my humble opinion.

Have you noticed that on the Nile almost everyone has but one name? On the cange, only Rais Ibrahim has a family name, which is Farghali. At first I thought "rais" was his given name and Ibrahim his family name, but "rais" simply means "captain," which you probably know, having your own "rais" on the dahabiyah. Perhaps the Egyptians fancy themselves one big family. I think this lack of a second name serves to keep them in their place and powerless. But enough digression. (For I am in a mood to write tomes to you!) Will you let me know that this has arrived, my dear songbird?

I should be happy to have your help in making squeezes.

Your friend,

Gustave

11.

FRIGHTFUL ROW WITH TROUT.

Flo felt lighter than air when she returned to the cabin after her predawn visit to the temple. Trout lay with her face pressed into her pillow. Flo decided not to wake her yet.

Bending to a low cabinet, she retrieved a battered black wooden box. Dear medicine chest, friend since she was seventeen. A carpenter in Wellow had built it to her design. She grasped the bra.s.s handle. Affixed on a piano hinge, the lid folded back to make a walled gallery.

Her hands reached toward the contents, fluttering over them like a hummingbird in a sea of blossoms. Arranging her kit was the closest thing to play since childhood. She enjoyed it the way other women took pleasure organizing their jewelry, folding their shawls and pelerines, organizing toiletries on the bureau top. Pride of owners.h.i.+p, the gla.s.s and steel in her hands, the orderliness-all were deeply gratifying.

On the top tier in compartments lay salves and implements: tar and camphor ointment, mint liniment, balm of arnica, scissors, golden-eyed straight and curved sailmakers' needles, and last, wrapped in a green velvet square, three surgical needles along with silk thread for sewing up wounds. Satisfied with the inventory, she proceeded to the drawers. Here were metal tubes of smelling salts as well as the boxed set of perfumes she'd bought as souvenirs in Italy the year before, four diminutive gla.s.s bottles: orange-blossom from Spain; attar of roses from Smyrna; French lavender; and her favorite, frangipani, from India. She never wore perfume. In warm weather it attracted bees, and in winter overpowered the shuttered rooms. Also, she did not wish to advertise herself. But in the bedroom at home, with only Parthe to see, she sniffed it, or daubed it on the hem of her pillowcase, added a drop to the washbasin.

She'd longed to ease suffering for as long as she could remember. At first it was childish play. Then, when she was eleven years old, the sheepdog, Cap, had broken his leg. The shepherd-grizzled old Stennis, was it?-had come to the house to ask for a gun and a single bullet to put the dog away. Flo had interceded. "Let me set the leg," she had begged WEN, tearful. She remembered the burning in her face and neck, how she had felt she might die, too, if they shot the whimpering animal. She'd watched the doctor set broken bones in the village, but she'd only set the cloth limbs of Parthe's dolls. WEN had yielded and Flo had splinted Cap's paw, wrapped it up with clean rags, and covered the whole with an old stocking doused with oil of peppercorns to discourage chewing. She fixed him a bed in the kitchen and brought him milksops and sc.r.a.ps. The dog had recovered.

Since then, her doctoring had grown more sophisticated. In Italy and Egypt she applied leeches to Charles, poultices to both Brace-bridges, and cured the servants of stomachaches, headaches, sunstroke, and housemaid's knee. She was familiar with the standard remedies, compelled, as a youngster, to memorize what she overheard when the doctor came around. James compound: 16 grains for an old woman, 11 for a young woman, 6 for a child. Homeopathic curatives in tiny gla.s.s bulbs stoppered with rubber filled the second drawer of her kit. So little was needed to ameliorate a host of conditions, everything from bad appet.i.te to scurvy. She had the country remedies by heart: Saint John's wort for melancholy, chamomile for nervous agitation, witch hazel for rashes, cider vinegar for bowel distress. They lived in her mind, along with favorite poems and hymns, things that required no effort to memorize because she loved knowing them; they'd become a part of her, and only death would take them from her. What was that Egyptian spell? I am the woman who lightens darkness and look, it is bright! I have felled the evil spirit, I have- A loud thump followed by a shout: Trout lay sprawled on the floor between the two beds, just in front of Flo's feet. Twisted up in her levinge, she thrashed like a b.u.t.terfly struggling to break out of its coc.o.o.n. Flo kneeled at her side. "Are you hurt, Trout?"

"What a question! You have eyes."

A flicker of rage licked at Flo's heart. "Let me help you up." How dare Trout speak to her in such a fas.h.i.+on! She took a deep breath. She would counter with kindness. "You must have fallen in your sleep." She picked gingerly at the tangled net of the levinge. Lately, their roles had reversed.

"I can manage on my own." Trout ripped the netting of the levinge loose from the ceiling, wadded it up, and tossed it to one side.

The violence of the gesture offended Flo. She stood and backed away, fury rising once more in her craw. She fantasized sailing off in the dahabiyah without Trout, leaving the sourpuss asleep over her needlework at the temple. She'd send a punt when they reached Philae, then book pa.s.sage for Trout to England, meanwhile writing f.a.n.n.y to dismiss her. But what would f.a.n.n.y do? Likely berate Flo for inept.i.tude, maybe take Trout's side. Either way, she'd never let the matter alone. It would join the collection of distortions that pa.s.sed for Nightingale mythology, already chock full of Flo's worst moments in the bosom of her family reduced to epithets. Homeric ones, now that she thought about it. But nothing beautiful, like wine-dark sea or rosy-fingered dawn. Not flattering, like swift-footed Achilles and owl-eyed Athena. No. It was Flo of the terrible table manners, Flo the queen of melancholy. And now, Flo flummoxed by a servant and Flo who lost herself on the Nile. Feeling the ire coloring her neck, she said, "I think it would behoove us to talk about our present situation."

Trout had managed to gather herself together on the edge of the divan. Her face was the red of uncooked mutton; she kneaded her skull absently. "Hmph," she muttered.

"I beg your pardon. Did you speak?"

"What's the use, mum? I wish I'd never come here. If it was up to me, I'd of stayed home where I belong."

Flo heard desperation in Trout's words. Her heart softened a bit. "I didn't know. I'm sorry." She wondered if f.a.n.n.y had been aware of Trout's reluctance. "Did you tell my mother?"

Trout lowered her gaze. "That's a purely ridiculous question."

"You didn't?"

"Oh, no, mum, I did." Trout stood, turned her back to Flo, and changed into an old s.h.i.+ft. "There was no one else, Mariette being indisposed and the other girls inexperienced. Besides, Mrs. Nightingale told me this place was-how did she put it?-a jewel, mum." She sat back down on the bed. "Perfumy and busting with Turkey carpets and velvet drapes. And the creatures, she said, would be straight from the London Zoo. Camels and lions and zebras."

Since f.a.n.n.y had never set foot in Egypt, it was hard to know if she believed what she had told Trout or was simply inventing enticements. "I'm truly sorry for my mother's inaccuracies," Flo said, hoping that a ready apology would placate Trout and feeling, too, that she should not be held responsible for f.a.n.n.y's half-truths. "I must say that explains things to a degree." There, she had kept her head and responded kindly. "I didn't know you felt that way."

"You don't know much about me, mum, truth be told."

Flo was at a loss, pulled one moment to sympathy, the next to anger. "But we are here now, and you have a job to do as do I, dear Trout."

Trout rolled up a stocking and plunged her foot into it. "No need to dearie me." She smoothed the stocking on her leg. "You don't even rightly know my name, I'd wager."

Flo was beside herself. She was trying to be accommodating and getting nowhere. They had always called her Trout. The image of a fish no longer entered her mind, though at first it always had-a sleek fish sporting a rainbow and a silky black fin. "Of course I know your name." She reached across the divide between the two divans and patted Trout's hand. "It's Troutwine. How could you think you could be in my employ without-"

"I mean my given name, not my family name."

Flo froze. Who was this impossible person who caused her to feel abashed and ashamed when she had done nothing wrong? Whatever else she was, Trout was not forgiving, she saw that now. She seemed bent on a.s.serting her malcontent and forcing Flo to acknowledge it.

She had never heard anyone, not even other servants, call Trout anything else. The Nightingales did not make a habit of renaming their servants, unlike many of their acquaintances. f.a.n.n.y considered it demeaning and bad for morale to dub a girl "Mary" or "Jane" simply because it was easier. Perhaps Trout's name was a sore subject with her because in a previous household she'd refused to answer to a fake name, insisting on her real one. Florence was horrified to realize that she had no earthly idea what Trout's name might be. Nor had she seen any of Trout's travel doc.u.ments. Charles took charge of all that. "What is it, then?" she asked timidly. Tears of frustration welled in her eyes.

"Christa," Trout said, looking up.

"Christa," Flo repeated, leaning against the wall of the dahabiyah. How fitting that her servant bear the feminized name of her Lord, as if the woman were yet another obstacle in her path to discover G.o.d's plans for her. She looked into Trout's eyes still puffy from sleep. "May I call you Christa then?"

Trout blew her nose into her handkerchief and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear while she considered. Her dress drooped off one blotchy shoulder. "No, I prefer Trout, mum. Only my family, what-ever's left of them, called me Christa."

In the small cabin, Flo felt trapped. Trout would concede nothing for the sake of her feelings. The orderly surface between them had ruptured, and Trout did not wish it repaired. "All right then, Trout, it's time to get up. I'll have my cotton day dress. You may begin with my hair."

Flo took her place on the carpet-covered stool. In a moment, Trout rose and picked up the hairbrush. Flo felt her fingers moving roughly against her scalp. At first, the brus.h.i.+ng was too vigorous, but soon enough, the strokes softened, the touch of the hands lightened. Trout would go no further for the time being. Flo relaxed into the pleasure of her morning coiffure.

At eight o'clock, when Flo went on deck, the Bracebridges had not yet appeared. The crew was engaged in cooking and cleaning the boat when the muezzin's call to prayer rang out from the sh.o.r.e. Allahu akbar, Allahu akbar!-G.o.d is great, G.o.d is great!-the voice plaintive and piercing, an imprecation edged with dolor. The crew stopped what they were about, washed with a bucket of river water, and pulling prayer mats from every crack and crevice, dropped to their hands and knees, facing east. Flo watched the familiar sight of their rumps rising as their heads grazed the floor in the required humility. Up and down they bobbed for several minutes before returning to their ch.o.r.es. What, she wondered, if Englishwomen and -men prayed with their b.u.ms to the sky? Women with hooped skirts might be stranded and scandalous, unable to right themselves, rolling in circles like enormous tops.

A crewman crept toward her with an envelope in hand. She thanked him and smiled. He was the man she called Efreet-Youssef, to distinguish him from the other Youssefs among the crew. Why did the Egyptians use the same few names repeatedly? He had been her efreet weeks before in Cairo. In the narrow city streets, he had run in front, holding the halter of the a.s.s on which she rode bouncing up and down as the tiny burro hurtled forward. Otherwise, Paolo had explained, the animal would bolt for his stall or the nearest shade.

Turning the letter over, she felt a pang of disappointment: it was not from Gustave but from Max, a note of thanks for the dinner party. Rather effusive, she thought. Except for the last lines, where he spelled out their itinerary. They'd remain another week at Abu Simbel, photographing and collecting squeezes. Next, as he'd mentioned at dinner, would be Philae. After that, they planned an extra excursion-overland from Kenneh to Koseir on the Red Sea. Then, north again, toward Cairo. He closed with polite regards.

Flo consulted the foldout map in Murray. Kenneh lay just north of Karnak and Thebes, where the river jigged to the east, forming an elbow that poked into the eastern Sahara.

How she envied the Frenchmen! They would gallop horses or lope on camels in a caravan, and visit the Red Sea. Who knew what adventures might lie in wait for them in the desert?

With their frail const.i.tutions, the Bracebridges weren't up to an overland trip. It was a wonder they managed any travel. For a good part of every journey, they remained indoors, reading esoteric books, writing letters, and resting-resting hour upon hour. Charles's big, whiskered face beneath the London papers as he dozed on one foreign sofa after another, Selina napping away the afternoons in bed, always in a dress, her hair loose on the pillow like sunrays. And her face, which Flo loved in all its idiosyncrasy, plump and pink, the features cl.u.s.tered too closely together in the center, as if they had stopped growing before the rest of her. The face of a happy child.

Now Selina appeared, slightly dazed, holding and reading a book in one hand as she climbed the steps from her cabin, her skirts swept up in the other hand. As she stepped into a patch of suns.h.i.+ne, she looked up. "Darling Flo," she called in her light soprano. Her face broke into a smile and she closed her book on its scarlet satin page-marker. Charles, she said, was having a tray belowdecks, something about a scrabbling sensation in his chest. They decided to breakfast together.

They ordered eggs and tea while a sailor laid the table, bowing and offering guttural sounds of apology as he whisked between their chairs. The teapot arrived first, aswim with loose pekoe leaves. Efreet-Youssef offered a cinnamon stick, but the women politely refused it. He returned to the brazier on the bow.

"I've been wanting to talk to you," Flo said.

"And I, you," said Selina. Selina was never without her fan, and now she wagged it slowly, like a dog's tail in greeting. "If we don't talk, whatever we've done or seen doesn't seem quite complete. I always need my Florence addendum." Selina raised one eyebrow, antic.i.p.ating. "Is it about last night, the Frenchman?"

"I do want to talk about that. But no"-Flo smiled shyly-"I've been wanting to ask you why it is you decided to travel without a maid. You had one in Rome. You don't mind the question, do you?"

"Why would I mind? I have no secrets from you, and in any case, there's no secret involved. I didn't bring a maid because I have Charles and you, and I am more comfortable in close quarters doing things for myself. Our lodgings in Rome were s.p.a.cious, but here . . ." Selina hugged herself tightly.

"Who fixes your hair, then? Charles?" Flo's chair scrooped as she dragged it into the shade of the reed awning.

Efreet-Youssef served the eggs, a bowl of olives, and a plate of cheese, then retreated backward, bowing, the same way Florence had left the queen's presence when presented at court. Despite his desire to be invisible, Flo could smell an oily aroma whenever Efreet-Youssef approached. Hair pomade, she supposed. He was clean. After he scrubbed the pots and dishes with sand, he rubbed it on himself before jumping into the river.

"Charles do my hair? That would be a sorry sight!" Selina tapped at her boiled egg. They always ordered three-minute eggs, but as the crew didn't have a timepiece, they never came right. "I do my own coif, can't you tell?" Selina turned her head from side to side. "A simple chignon, nothing more ambitious. Why do you ask?" Selina cinched up her mouth around a spoonful of eggs.

"I'm having problems with Trout." Three weeks earlier, Flo had recounted Trout's hypochondriasis to Selina and they'd joked about it. Later, when Trout took ill with a pounding headache as they sailed south from Derr, Flo had doctored her and the tension between them had dissipated for a time. Trout had thanked Flo for her ministrations. Flo explained now what had happened that morning, how humiliated she had been when challenged about her servant's name. "She resents me, I'm afraid, and nothing I do reaches her, nothing pleases her."

"Goodness!" Selina said. "I've never had a servant challenge me, though one reads about it in Mr. d.i.c.kens and in the papers. There have been cases of forged characters, theft-"

"Trout had excellent characters, one of them from the husband of a woman she cared for while the poor thing was dying." Flo sighed. "I think she despises me."

"Nonsense. You are one of the kindest people on the face of the earth. I'm sure it will pa.s.s. And remember: she is a servant. The point is whether you are satisfied with her, not she you." Selina frowned. "You haven't touched your food."

"I'm not hungry."

Selina blotted her lips with a square of cotton damask. "Try some anyway. Perhaps appet.i.te will follow."

Flo obeyed, spooning egg onto a crust, sipping at her tea. "What would you do?"

"Continue as usual. Ignore the ups and downs."

"She hates it here. Did I say that already?" Flo slumped back in her chair.

"Would you like me to speak to her?"

Flo didn't have to think twice. "No, then she'll think I'm weak of will. No, I'll speak to her." But Flo knew she wouldn't, as she had no inkling of what to say. She'd simply wait. The situation might improve on its own. If not, she'd reason her way through to a solution and when she hit upon the answer, inform Trout as kindly as possible.

"Don't let it upset you. Trout will come around to remembering her place." Selina gulped some tea and set her cup down, ringing, on the saucer. "May I change the subject?"

Flo nodded, her face brightening.

Selina plied her with questions about the dinner party and the Frenchman. Flo admitted gladly that she was intrigued by M. Flaubert and felt a strange kins.h.i.+p with him. She did not mention that she had written to him. The omission would spare Selina, who would fret if he did not reply.

"Did you ask if he knew Mary Clarke?"

It hadn't occurred to Flo to ask Gustave if he knew her. "He doesn't live in Paris," she explained. "He's from Rouen." She handed her dirty dish to the servant. "Dear Clarkey," Flo said with a sigh, the warmth of recollected affection radiating throughout her chest. Both she and Selina had the highest opinion of Mary and considered her the ultimate authority in matters of taste. Flo's reverence for Mary's wisdom in affairs of the heart was unmitigated, zealous. For here was a courageous woman with an entirely original way of living, a woman who had suffered the loss three years earlier of her great amour, Claude Fauriel, and did not let it ruin her life.

Flo laughed suddenly. "Did I ever tell you what happened when I came home after first meeting her? I must have."

Selina hesitated, thinking. "I'm not sure."

"About my plans for Embley Park?" She pictured the Gothic manse with its steep gables and rows of mullioned windows. WEN had built it for f.a.n.n.y in Hamps.h.i.+re, conveniently close to the London social scene.

Selina leaned forward. "No, I don't think so."

Flo smiled, remembering herself at age nineteen. "It was quite outrageous now I recall it. No wonder f.a.n.n.y was beside herself."

"Oh, do tell now." Selina's fan had stopped moving.

Flo explained that the first thought that crossed her mind when she returned home from Paris after meeting Mary was to convert Embley into a boardinghouse for intellectuals and musicians. Men and women, living communally, would maintain stimulating friends.h.i.+ps as equals, enjoying solitude in their rooms, and fellows.h.i.+p at meals and in the evenings. No one would marry, except to have children. "I wished to live as Clarkey did, don't you see, in a scintillating salon."

"I'm sure that Clarkey would find Mr. Flaubert suitable for her salon," Selina said. "So tall, such a warm and welcoming manner. I had the sense he was an independent spirit. And isn't M. Du Camp a delight with the camera?"

Though Flo loved modern inventions and all things scientific, she hadn't paid much heed to the pictures. She was drawn more to Gustave's brown-green eyes, which bulged slightly in their sockets like marbles. "I am more interested in the squeezes," she said, thinking his heavy eyelids gave Gustave a drowsy and somewhat dissolute expression. "M. Flaubert"-she smiled at Selina as she folded up her napkin-"actually, we are on a first-name basis."

"You do like him, don't you?" Selina smiled and blinked.

Flo felt her cheeks redden. "He seems good-natured, and he is intelligent. I hardly know him, but I do, I like him." She drank some tea. What had drawn her to him most was his artistic refinement coupled with his frankness. "He's been unhappy, too," she said quietly, "like me."

"He" had referred to Richard Milnes for so long that his face suddenly popped into her mind. She'd loved Richard's company-just not enough to marry him. They had talked and talked, a constant chatter like lovebirds, but never about sadness. She'd never felt the impulse simply to gaze at his face the way she had wanted to gaze at Gustave's. No one knew how much it had pained her to refuse Richard, or that she'd made a vow to herself afterward in Lavie: Now no more love, no more marriage. Only work, whatever it may be.

"I see," Selina said. "Unhappiness." She wiped her hands with her napkin. "There would be plenty to talk about if one were honest." Selina smiled at her, opened her book to the satin marker, and began to read.

Flo remembered vividly the first time she met Mary. She was eighteen, and nearing the end of the two-year-long Grand Tour with her family during which, to f.a.n.n.y's delight and surprise, Flo had attracted the attention of eligible males from eighteen to eighty throughout Europe. The Nightingales had been in Paris about a week when f.a.n.n.y left her calling card and a letter of introduction at the Clarkes'. The next morning she had received by first post a charming note on green linen paper inviting the Nightingales to a soiree that evening. "And when I read that word 'soiree,' I imagined we should have a very good time," f.a.n.n.y said, picking her way toward the coach in front of their apartment as they set off for the party. "The young Miss Clarke is quite the salonniere. Seems she has taken over Madame Recamier's circle with her blessing."

"Who?" Parthe asked.

"The most famous hostess in Paris," Flo said crisply.

"Well, I don't care," Parthe cheerfully announced, pulling her skirts closer to make room for her sister on the leather seat. Up in the driver's box, the coachman shouted, and with a crack of his whip, the cab lurched forward.

At four-thirty, darkness was descending upon the city, acc.u.mulating in alleys and pa.s.sageways like indigo dispersing in a dye vat. Lamplighters had begun their slow inroads, attending first to the bridges, while in the imposing hotels particuliers along the boulevards, yellow oblongs of candlelit rooms hung in the darkening air like perfectly taut strings of paper lanterns.

After Italy, Flo had felt fed up and bored. What she missed most was music, especially since f.a.n.n.y had canceled her singing lessons. In Paris there was only one weekly opera performance. Luckily, Flo had annotated all the librettos from Genoa, including observations on the costumes and singers, which enabled her to occupy herself reliving the performances. Parthe had imitated her sister, matching her swoon for swoon, sigh for sigh at concerts. But it was Flo whom f.a.n.n.y chastised, Flo whom f.a.n.n.y worried about. Why, she had asked only the day before, must Flo continue to take things to extremes? Flo did not care to answer. She had thrown back her head and stomped from the room.

"Here we are," f.a.n.n.y said, pulling Flo from her daydream. The liveried footman alighted from his niche, opened the door, and spread a rug upon the ground. f.a.n.n.y exited first, taking care over the narrow wooden step.

The ladies Clarke occupied the third and fourth floors of an imposing house on the rue du Bac, from which sounds of merriment drifted down to the front stoop. The three Nightingale women smiled at each other in antic.i.p.ation. They had barely knocked on the door when a maid appeared and led them, skirts clutched in their fists, up three flights of marble stairs. At the landing, the maid opened the door to number 7, then padded away without a word.

They gathered at the threshold like three hens staring into a new coop, caught between pecks and clucks. The sounds of mirth had subsided, and they waited. When no one appeared, f.a.n.n.y withdrew an ivory fan, snapped it open, and stepped into the room. They removed their coats, laying them across a wooden bench, and ventured farther into the foyer. The air was warm, scented with spiced apples and ripe cheese.

Hesitantly, they stepped into the adjoining room, a small salon sparely furnished with sofas, drapes, and easy chairs in various shades of pink velvet. Overall, the room gave the impression of a soft hand extended in welcome. In the corner sat an elderly woman in a gray satin gown with spectacles and a white mobcap. Engrossed in her book, she'd clearly not heard them. Not one to stand on ceremony, Florence approached her. "Bon soir," she said.

Just then, three children raced across the room, a blindfolded woman lunging after them. The children skittered out of the way, then flew, shrieking, into the hallway, sideswiping f.a.n.n.y and Parthe as if they were pieces of furniture. The woman's hands seized Flo's blue silk skirt. "Maman, c'est toi?" she called out. "Oh, pardon!" She untied the towel around her eyes.