The Twelve Rooms of the Nile Part 11

He and Alfred had dressed like the das.h.i.+ng Byron for a time. After Gustave dispensed with the cape and scarf, he retained the stance of the man, who was as notorious for his scandals, debt, and s.e.xual appet.i.te as for his verse.

"Later I came to reject the writers who held an optimistic view of humanity. How," he asked her, "could Rousseau think the common man n.o.ble? How could anyone? For the common man is uncouth. Boring. He is married to tradition, distrustful of new ideas, of art itself!" He could feel the blood of his convictions coursing through his neck and head. Even in the twilit room, his face must be red as a boil. "Only Rabelais and Byron wrote in a spirit of malice, only they dared laugh at the human race."

"It is true," she said, unperturbed. "The common man is dirty. He cannot read and therefore barely thinks. But how can he rise above his station without education and the right to determine his destiny? That is why I felt so much sympathy with the Italian reformers," she added. "I knew some of them in France and Switzerland, the great social and political thinkers in exile there."

Amazing! While he was laboring all night until dawn in his study on Saint Anthony, she had been discussing the fate of the Italian states with visionaries. Perhaps he was the naive one. Of course, he had been in Paris for the revolution of 1848, though not by design. He had ventured out once from Max's flat to observe from the ramparts but had never partic.i.p.ated. The truth was that without the guidance of his friends, he had few opinions about politics. Mostly, he had to admit, he was simply against things. He aspired to misanthropy, though he had trouble pulling it off face-to-face. There was always the danger, too, that he would end his days as a sullen windbag. He had to take the measure of himself. He had to succeed. The failure of Saint Anthony had nearly broken him.

How much time had pa.s.sed-half an hour? An hour? The light inside the temple seemed brighter than before, the silence denser, more liturgical.

"Luckily, you have had advantages," she said. "You are not a common man and never could be. And most important, you have a calling, which your first failure has not altered."

"Yes," he muttered. "But it has made me cynical."

"Then that is another thing we share," she announced, looking almost excited. "I have grown cynical myself."

"About what, Rossignol? The music?"

"No, not that. I've grown cynical about people, my own cla.s.s of people. They are so smug, so comfortable sitting in judgment."

"The bourgeois herd."

"Two years ago at church, I . . . well . . . sort of lost my temper and made my opinions known."

He p.r.i.c.ked up his ears. "Oh?"

"The vicar had the gall to say it was extraordinary that Jesus arose from the working cla.s.ses, as if only the rich had a brain or sentiment."

"And not at all in the spirit of the man Himself." He loved the thought of her dressing down a cleric.

"I wanted to shout, We are all Pontius Pilate here, but instead, as I went through the receiving line, I told him it would have been more extraordinary if Jesus had arisen from this cla.s.s of people. Whereupon he pinched my elbow and steered me outside and asked why I hated my own kind." She shook her head with resignation.

"Perhaps your vicar has never actually read the Bible?" he joked.

She did not respond at first, staring grimly at the floor. "I was so angry, but then I thought, 'Look at me. I have been educated primarily to enjoy my life, to play the pianoforte, to speak French, to attend lectures and recitals. Who am I to judge him? I am no better-"

"You are, you are much, much better!" He touched her cheek.

"But all my luxuries and leisure depend upon the drudgery of people who are barely acknowledged as human beings." Sighing, she looked into his eyes.

"No, you are better. You are nothing like those people."

"Perhaps you are right. At least I notice the inequity." She smiled a little. "At least I do not say what the wealthy always say of the poor: 'Let them suffer here below becau-"

"'Because Heaven will be their recompense. They are not like us.' Blah-blah-blah-blah."

"Exactly!"

They looked at each other beyond the few seconds allowed in the presence of other people, who were always monitoring the length and propriety of a glance. He was aware of the soft skin of her cradling hand. But instead of an awakening in his groin, he felt his bottom itching. In her presence, he couldn't just reach around and scratch his a.s.s. Pity. Had he ever felt that free in front of Caroline? He couldn't recall.

"You have laid bare your heart," she whispered. "Will you keep a secret of mine that only one other human being knows?"

"Mais oui. On my life!" He thought back to the day he and Alfred had commingled their blood with finger p.r.i.c.ks as boys. Secrets thrilled him.

She yawned and hiccuped, her manners apparently suspended during extreme spiritual distress. Might she next burp or pa.s.s wind in his presence? The thought excited him, like the voyeur's fantasy that the woman he has been secretly watching continues to undress, knowing she is being watched.

"Promise you will not laugh or think me crazy if I tell you." Her voice was firm and serious.

Could he promise that? He thought he must, whatever he might actually believe. "Again, on my life."

She scooped up sand from the floor and let it sift through her fingers, gathering her thoughts. "I, too, have a calling."

At last, he thought, the mysterious source of her despondency and of her fierce commitment would be revealed.

"My calling is from G.o.d." She closed her eyes, rapturous, then opened them, looking stunned. "I mean to say that when I was seventeen, G.o.d spoke to me."

"I see," Gustave whispered respectfully. He added a weight to the scale in his mind on the side of her craziness. In France, many people conversed with G.o.d, most of them wretched peasants desperate to distinguish themselves from the flock, to leave off being sheep. He was crestfallen to think that brilliant Rossignol was similarly deluded: Joan of Arc redux. He cleared his throat. "Are there many mystics in England?" He might have been asking about the weather.

"Mystics?" It was clear from the tone of her voice that she had never applied the word to herself. "No, I've never heard of any. Is that what I am, then, a mystic?" Her voice was shaky, tinged with fear. Or was it anger?

"I don't know," Gustave floundered. "That is what we call them in France, the people who speak to G.o.d."

"But I didn't speak to G.o.d!" She lurched forward, her back ramrod straight. "He spoke to me. He called me to His service. I had no say in it. I was merely the vessel-"

"I'm so sorry. I hope I haven't offended you-"

"Offended me? No, but clearly you think me mad."

Anger, then. She made to move away from him, but he held on to her arm. A rivulet of sweat streaked between his shoulder blades. The room had disappeared from awareness for a time. Now it was stifling again.

"I don't think you are mad," he lied. "I am sometimes rude or tactless without meaning to be." A pressure was building behind his eyes, a headache coming on. Or was he about to have a seizure? He'd never been able to identify the warning signs before he vanished into the black maze of nonexistence. To prevent or at least antic.i.p.ate future episodes, he tried to remember afterward what he had been doing or feeling. But only afterward, when it felt like he'd died and revived, after a chunk of his life had been severed with an ax. "But please, tell me how and when it happened to you, Rossignol." If he did have a seizure, would she know what to do?

"Gustave? Are you quite all right?" Her head was inclined toward him, an expression of care on her face so intense it seemed that her whole life force were focused on him in a single beam of attention.

"I am fine." The pain was receding. He breathed more easily. "I have been thinking that we should swear to have no secrets today, no shame between us." Did he dare divulge the secret of his illness? He wanted to, but not quite yet. "I myself have done things I would be ashamed to tell you-"

"But I am not ashamed!" She pulled her arm free and scooted away on the floor, horrified, though she did not leave. A wave of grat.i.tude washed over him-grat.i.tude to Philae and its ancient architects. Where but in such a sacred and exotic quarter could this chimerical conversation continue?

"You must forgive . . . my inept.i.tude." His words issued from his throat like thread catching on a spool. "I was only saying I have secrets, I have things I am ashamed of." The words kept coming, colored this way, then that, like the endless silk scarf of a magician. "Ashamed of my behavior on occasion with women. I have, in short, sinned. But you! You are blessed. You are blessed that G.o.d chose you." He felt utterly lost. How had one remark altered her mood so sharply? His words lay at his feet, a tangle of knots, a hatful of failed tricks.

"You understand nothing of this event," she said sharply. "I am not blessed. He called me to His service, but that was twelve years ago and I still do not know what I am to do." She kicked at the floor, raising a flurry of dust motes that settled erratically, like bits of gold leaf.

It took every drop of his self-control not to laugh: a woman considering suicide because her G.o.d was fickle or had a poor memory? He took several deep breaths to vanquish the hoot that hovered in his throat like a sneeze in the nose. He could feel a smile forming in his face, a disembodied grin in the sepulchral gloom. He bit his lip until his eyes teared.

She began to keen, to sob. She covered her face with her hands, as if to block the anguish from issuing forth. He had never seen such a display, not of grief, but of grief denied, of grief beat back with a hammer, of great blockades erected and then broached. He was unable to look away, like an onlooker at a fire. He had paid to watch women m.a.s.t.u.r.b.a.t.e, but that was not nearly as intimate as watching this young Englishwoman try to subdue the beast of her raw feeling.

She looked up, her nose dripping. "It is not a blessing, but a curse." Her voice was thin as a wire.

He crawled across the s.p.a.ce between them and rested his head against her shoulder. Philae held them in its silted-up silence. Barely touching her for fear she'd collapse under the weight of an embrace or move away again, he encircled her with his arms. "I am waiting for the muse to visit me," he managed to whisper, "just as you are waiting for G.o.d to speak to you again." Were they not both self-made pariahs? He felt himself in complete sympathy with her, as if they had mingled their blood in the purity and innocence of childhood.

She wiped her face on her sleeve and, still within the crook of his arm, raised her head and in a small voice asked, "What sins have you committed with women?"

He thought for a moment, considering his options. Did not the location alone cast the whole enterprise in a unique and liberating light? He was inside a derelict temple in Egypt where, for all he knew, orgies had been conducted with sacred wh.o.r.es, and hearts excised and weighed on golden scales. He decided not to consider custom or pride, which could only lead to lies and silence. "Because I cannot betray my calling by marrying," he began, "I no longer court proper women."

Florence listened while he explained how disillusioned he had been that Louise, a fellow artist, had tricked him into believing that she yearned for something other than a bourgeois existence when in fact she wanted a husband and a lover, and that was not revolutionary in the least. "That marked the beginning of my life as a cynic," he explained.

He had been cruel to Louise. But now, miles and months removed, his fury had been replaced by wistfulness, by the memory of her tongue darting between his lips like a hungry bird, the salty tang of golden thatch under her arms. "In the main," he continued to Florence, "I have found another outlet for my pa.s.sions in the brothels of Paris." In the spirit of full disclosure he added, "And Egypt."

She did not move, her head still nuzzled against his chest. He felt her bony rib cage rising and falling. "Brothels?"

"Oui. J'ai frequente des bordels presque depuis mon enfance."

Her voice altered, resembling a schoolgirl's neutrally reciting the population of Spain, the successor to Henry VIII. No, it was the s.e.xual peccadilloes of members of Parliament. "It's bruited about that lords in England do the same. Not that I would know. Or condone it." She looked up at him. "I am sure it is degrading to all concerned."

"Of course," he lied. Clearly, Florence knew nothing about brothels. How could she, being English, rich, pious, and protected? Had he ever felt degraded? He did not think so. Had he ever degraded the women? Without doubt. He had once f.u.c.ked an old woman while wearing a hat and smoking a cigar as two friends cheered him on, then pa.s.sed her around like a bottle of cognac.

"I suppose it is better than deceiving a girl by promising to marry her to gain an advantage," she added.

In other circ.u.mstances, he might have found it amusing to think of s.e.x as an "advantage" rather than his rightful due. The only time, as far as he was concerned, that s.e.x was not an advantage was when it led to marriage. Then he feared it. But he wouldn't say that. He could never say that. Because once he began to think so coldheartedly, so truthfully, love in the brothel became impossible, the brothel itself distasteful, actually a pathetic subst.i.tute. No, he could not give up his wh.o.r.es.

"I shall die a virgin, I suppose," she said, brus.h.i.+ng away a channel of sand in the pleat of her skirt, "though I came close to marrying once." She told him about refusing Richard. "I reasoned that if I married, I would be a prisoner of my household, unable to do whatever it is G.o.d wishes of me. My family didn't understand how much it pained me to disappoint them. And myself, for I have a deeply pa.s.sional nature."

"So you said earlier."

"Not just carnal pa.s.sion."

"I understand. There is the mind. Ah, and the yearning spirit." She would die, he thought, without ever discovering the bazaar of flavors, sights, and sensations that was the body. A shame, all those nerve endings wasted. He remembered the corpses in his father's dissecting room, he and Caroline watching the autopsies from the apartment across the way, happy to be horrified.

"As I said, I am excessive in my likes and dislikes-my likes especially." She was matter-of-fact again, her hands folded in her lap. "And with such a pa.s.sionate nature, everyone believes that I am at greater risk than usual when I travel. I have a chaperone everywhere and at all times in England. Abroad, they say I am what is called in hunting parlance an easy target."

"After a certain age, my sister, too, required a chaperone." It was the age of b.r.e.a.s.t.s and blood, he thought but did not say. "When she was young, I schooled her to be a tomboy and a free spirit. She was a painter and actress. Then she grew up and married." He had been angry with Caroline for yielding to convention, for joining the ranks of the enemy, only recently realizing that she had no choice unless she wished to become one of the s.e.xless spinsters he joked about to her. Sometimes when they were together with her new husband, she would look at him as if to say It's not so bad. I've paid the price. Why can't you? Or perhaps he had only imagined that message in her glance. As a bride she seemed unquestionably happy, nearly gloating, not the Caroline he knew and loved. But why should he grow up to be like her? Why should any man wish to become a silo-a stolid, stationary provider for every hungry mouth?

She continued, "Everything must be planned with chaperoning in mind. You and Max follow your fancies, free to move about. You can be invisible-men among men-while wherever I go, I am a bauble trying to hang in the air as invisibly as a spider's thread."

He s.h.i.+fted to one haunch to relieve the itching. Stung with sweat, it had intensified. "Oh, but that is not quite correct, Rossignol. Max and I are not always safe. It just seems so to you. Of course," he conceded, "we are safer than you would be."

"Without the Bracebridges, I should be mad by now. They took me to Italy last year to prevent a civil war at home." She had been feuding with her family, she explained, for ten years, ever since they returned from their Grand Tour and f.a.n.n.y undertook to marry her off. She enumerated a few of the battles: the opposition to mathematics as being manly, f.a.n.n.y forbidding her to volunteer at hospitals and orphanages, both parents' distaste for her work at the Ragged School, their horror at the amount of time she spent with the poor villagers.

"I am meant to sit quietly, look pretty, and entertain at the piano-in short, to be useless in a world where so much needs to be done."

"Yes," he said, "I see that now." He did understand. He recognized the dull world she described. However, his unhappiness was of a different stripe, for he refused to aspire to the usefulness within it that she so desired. Could she grasp his nature after all? he wondered.

"According to Father, every man in the world has his mind on seduction and conquest, and will revert to it at the first opportunity, like a traveler to his native language. Then he becomes a ravening monster. The way Father talks, it is only their suits and cravats that separate men from beasts."

"He's trying to frighten you to protect you. It isn't true." Actually, it was. He was certainly guilty of making the lives of unescorted women miserable, taunting them on the street, catcalling when drunk and sometimes when sober.

"I must be out in the world to accomplish anything, but how will I do it if the world is so dangerous that I can't take a walk alone?"

"Dear girl," he said, petting her hair, "here's an idea. Why don't you come with Max and me to Koseir. It's on the Red-"

"Sea. Yes, I know where it is. I looked it up on the map when Max wrote me about it."

Max hadn't told him that he'd written to her. The lout! Did he have his rascally eye on what he called "English pudding"? He'd set him straight: Miss Nightingale was not to be prey, but comrade. "The Bracebridges could come along or wait for you in Kenneh."

She sat up briskly, eyes glittering. "Is that a genuine invitation?"

"It is." He swept the air gallantly with his hand and bowed his head. "It would be my great pleasure to remove you from your scheduled itinerary. Imagine"-he stretched an arm toward the opposite wall, using it as a canvas-"the sun turning the sea to a golden laver that stretches to the horizon. Immersing yourself in the ancient waters where all those Egyptians drowned with their horses and chariots." But the more he painted the scene, the more disheartened she became. "What is wrong, Rossignol?"

"I shall still need a chaperone. The Bracebridges are in poor health and would never allow me to go with the two of you. The chaperone must be a male relative or older woman or married couple. Those are the rules, even in the Orient, even in the emptiness of the Sahara."

"You can take your servant, La Truite. It might do her good."

"Trout?" she repeated dubiously. Her face, moments before glowing like an alabaster lamp, clouded over. "I don't think she'll agree to it."

"Leave it to me." He dreaded the thought of flirting with the churlish hen, but then he had slept with wh.o.r.es older than Trout. "Oh, but I cannot!" He smacked his thigh. "She doesn't speak French!"

"She hates me," said Flo. "It would turn her against the idea if I translated for you. She'd smell a plot."

"But Max can get by. I shall set him the task." Even in broken English, Max was adept at melting hearts with the saga of his life as an orphan. (He never mentioned his wealth and that his parents died when he was nearly grown.) "Max could photograph the old biddy. So few people have seen a photograph, let alone owned one. Surely she could be bought with a portrait of herself on the rump of a camel. He could say he needs her as a model on the caravan."

Florence clapped her hands. "If only it could be done."

How good it was to see her animated. He felt himself expand with pleasure, too. Not only had he cheered her up; he'd also found a way to put some distance between himself and Max. Max would be less inclined to ask for his a.s.sistance if Miss Nightingale came along. She would be Gustave's project for the desert trip.

"Let's find Max," he said, offering his hand as she stood.

They brushed off their clothes and located the entrance, then crept up the stairs. Bending through the doorway as one, they stepped onto a slab of light on the threshold. Flo extended her palm. "Oh, my letters, please."

He'd nearly forgotten them. "Will you put them back?"

"No. I left one inside the chamber of Osiris. That is enough."

Reluctant to return them-he cherished his mementos of women-he dug one of the two from his pocket. "I seem to have only this," he said, placing it in her palm. She tucked it in her bodice. A mummy . . . dates from Derr . . . Rossignol's secret scroll . . .

They tramped arm in arm over the rubble in silence. As they neared the temple to Isis, Max hailed them excitedly. "Venez ici!" he shouted, waving to them. "Look what I've found." Hadji Ismael lounged nearby, braiding a palm frond, his one eye focused elsewhere. Joseph was nowhere to be seen.

Max indicated a stele behind the pylons. When they did not react, he pointed to a French inscription incised near the ground: En l'annee 1799, Napoleon a conquis les Mamelukes dans la Bataille des Pyramides.

"Do you think our great emperor wrote his name everywhere, like Ramses?" Gustave asked. "Why is there no mention of his sweetheart, Josephine?" He winked at Flo, who began to laugh. In a moment, they were both howling. He a.s.sured Max they were not laughing at him. The truth was they were laughing because they needed to after the intense encounter in the temple. Anything might have triggered it.

"Laugh all you want," Max said, kicking at the ground. "I have photographed this historical marker for my book." Behind his bl.u.s.ter was clearly dismay.

"I suppose we shall need a squeeze of this," Gustave said.

"As a matter of fact, yes."

"You did promise to teach me how to make a squeeze, M. Flaubert," Flo said nonchalantly. "Might it be this one?"

So he was M. Flaubert again. "This one is awfully low," he said. "It will be difficult, with a lot of bending and groveling in dirt. A higher engraving would be easier."