The Twelve Rooms of the Nile Part 32

"You must think me an ungrateful wretch." Trout blew her nose and tucked her hankie back into her ap.r.o.n pocket, where her chatelaine, diminished by the dangles she'd given the Ababdeh, still rode. "So you don't mind?"

"What?"

"That I am to be married?"

A dozen questions rushed into Flo's head. "I am quite amazed by your news," she said, her voice lacking in wonder. How could she subtract what she'd read in the diary from her mind? If Trout ever found out, her humiliation would be total. "Will you stay on at Embley? I imagine, like Mariette, you shall wish to live apart."

Trout shook her head. "Oh, no, mum. I don't hold with living with a man under one roof. It makes for bad feelings." She leaned closer to Flo. "But we are going to Paris together for a honeymoon, next December. Gilbert has it all planned. He is keeping it a secret, too. His family are quality people and would not approve of such as me."

Trout's gentleman poet, it seemed, was ashamed of her. "And that doesn't trouble you?"

"Oh, no, mum." Looking down at her lap, Trout shook her head.

Flo was growing impatient. "But if he does not respect you-"

"Oh, he does, mum. But his kin would not understand, him being a gentleman and me not being a lady nor wis.h.i.+ng to be one or act like one." Trout looked her in the eye. "He says it is an ordinary miracle, me and him. But that most people don't credit miracles."

Would Trout allow herself to be gulled in the name of love? Flo could not abide such drivel. "What in the world do you mean?"

"I know Gilbert's heart. I knew it before I ever met him."

"How is that possible, Trout?" Flo sighed and leaned back on the sofa. "Listen to what you have said." Trout was the last person she would have figured for a romantic sop.

"I don't rightly know how it's possible, mum. I only know it's true."

"I see." Flo looked around the room for a distraction. "Do you suppose we could have some tea, Trout? I think there is time before dinner." Did Gilbert have honorable intentions, or was he taking advantage? She felt protective of Trout and abhorred the idea that a smooth-talking, educated man might casually misuse her.

"Yes, of course, mum. I should of thought of it myself."

Trout set the kettle to boil on the potbellied porcelain stove. She removed dishes from the buffet and laid the table opposing the sofa with napkins, spoons, cups, and saucers. "You see, mum, I saw Gilbert's face before I ever met him."

"Was it one of his photographs?"

"Oh, no, mum, nothing like that."

Trout told the story quickly, without embroidery. Seven years before she came to live with the Nightingales, she was working at a lodging house in Grosvenor Street. The kitchen chimney was greasy, and the sweep had missed his appointed time. Late that night, while everyone slept, she undressed, climbed the rungs, and brushed the chimney herself. She liked drudgery, she said. To be covered with soot and char and lead, too, from blacking the grates gave her satisfaction, she explained.

She had laid a fire to warm herself, washed up in a basin in the kitchen, and fallen asleep. Most unhappy she was, she added lightly, though Flo thought this might be important. She hated where she was working; the maids had stolen from her, and the house was not completely reputable. The owner was a vulgar woman to boot, Trout said, and she feared a character from her would tar her good name by a.s.sociation, though without a reference, finding a new position would be difficult.

Trout paused to pour two cups of tea and then set the teapot to rest on a trivet.

In the middle of the night, she continued, she heard a sound and woke to see a man's face complete with beard and mustache in the fire, formed from flames. It changed expressions, as if they were conversing-smiling, laughing, thoughtful, etc.

A man in the fire. That was familiar. Flo was sure she'd heard those words before from Trout.

"The very next day," Trout continued, "I went down the road to buy a pitcher of ale for the house and pa.s.sed a man in the street who was the image of the face in the fire."

"That is strange," agreed Flo, not sure what to think. Hallucinations? If Trout could unwittingly invent bodily illnesses, might she not also conjure a face from a blaze?

"I watched him go into a tavern and waited for him like a dog until he came out. I was ashamed, but I could not help myself."

"Then what happened?" Flo could hardly imagine stern, flinty Trout in the throes of an infatuation and servile as a dog.

"I introduced myself and told him the story. From that day to this he has not left me." Trout added a lump of sugar to her tea.

"And that was your Gilbert?"

"Yes, mum. That is my Gilbert. Gilbert Pennafeather. He is a known poet." She sat back, teacup in hand.

As Flo drank her tea, she wondered if the story of sweeping the chimney had anything to do with Trout's custom of "blacking up" for Gilbert and calling him "Ma.s.sa," as if she were a slave on an American plantation. But, of course, Flo only knew about those details from the diary. Oh, and the chains and lock. And the iron key, which still hung from the chatelaine, as incongruous as ever. "And what do you make of it all?" she asked.

Trout regarded her big pale hands. "I don't rightly know, mum. It was a long time ago. I never could abide a man who interfered with me." She laid her spoon on the saucer. "Gilbert lets me be. I clean for him sometimes. We play that I am his maid and he is my mister," she said, smiling. "He's offered to keep me, but I have refused. I like to come and go as I please." She gulped her tea to the dregs. "And I like to work."

Flo was silent, afraid to say anything lest she give herself away.

"Gilbert is my sweetheart. He reads to me and I write to him. He likes to know how I spend my days."

Blacked the grates, scrubbed the flags. Why would a poet care about such ba.n.a.lities? Then Flo remembered that disturbing line in the diary-but most of all, licking your boots.

"I do remember feeling I was not in my right mind waiting outside the pub that first night, not knowing if he would speak to such as me."

"But now you are in love."

Trout grinned but did not answer. She stood and collected the flatware and cups.

"Thank you for the tea." Flo was anxious to rest before dinner, a formal affair at the Hotel d'Orient. She had had enough of Trout and especially of her unquestioned happiness.

28.

CROCODILE G.o.dS.

After Kenneh, Max dithered over the list of monuments remaining to be photographed. More agitated than usual, he kept adding and subtracting names. Gustave was grateful-so grateful!-that they'd already finished with the necropolis at Giza, the Sphinx, and the pyramids. He lacked the strength to crawl through those dark tunnels now, or scale the meter-high blocks to the apex of Cheops's pyramid to watch the sunrise. Miss Nightingale might be viewing it at that moment. He pictured her twisting through the pa.s.sageways in her blue dress, hugging a small notebook to her chest. The graffiti might not amuse her, he thought. The name of the singer Jenny Lind scrawled repeatedly on an arch, apparently by a fan. And on the top of the great pyramid, a certain Henri Buffard could not resist advertising his goods. Nor could Gustave wash the useless information-Constructeur de Papier Peint, 79 rue St. Martin, Paris-from his mind. As much as Europeans loved Egyptian antiquities, they loved defacing them more.

He glanced at Max's list on the table between their beds. Grotto of Samoun (Crocodiles) had been added. Gustave had never heard of it. Perhaps Joseph had suggested it while reminding Max yet again that he had journeyed up the Nile sixty times.

He was in a foul mood. The suspicious chancre that had appeared at Koseir was now characteristically painless, smooth, and hard as a b.u.t.ton. Please G.o.d, he prayed, let it not be pox, though he was almost certain it was. He avoided looking at his body because next, if he were right, a rash would erupt on the palms of his hands or the soles of his feet, possibly the backs of his legs. Syphilis could mark a man almost anywhere. Perhaps this was Kuchuk Hanem's true keepsake. He remembered the delicate blue Arabic script tattooed on her arm. He had his own translation now: Love killed your sister and it will kill you, too, but slowly.

He went on deck. Aided by a stiff breeze, the cange was skimming along with the current, sails furled. The sight of the pa.s.sing sh.o.r.e dizzied him. It took a moment to get his legs under him.

Except for a man at the rudder, the crew was relaxing-smoking, sleeping, playing backgammon. He joined Max and Joseph chatting with Rais Ibrahim in the shade of a canvas awning.

"It is hardly worth the time to see it," Rais Ibrahim said.

Joseph demurred. "But messieurs wish to take mummy home."

Max noted Gustave's arrival. "We're discussing whether to visit the Grotto of Crocodiles," he explained.

Red vest, note to G.o.d, Dacca cloth . . . mummy! Until that instant, he'd forgotten the shopkeeper in Kenneh who'd promised to inquire about mummies. Surely the man would have tracked him down if he'd found one. The whole town knew of his return.

"How long would it take?" asked Max.

"Half a day," Joseph said. "Perhaps one day."

The captain pursed his lips and sighed histrionically. Accustomed to slapping his crew when they displeased him, he plainly wished to pummel Joseph for contradicting him. And just as plainly, Joseph's opinion rested on the hope of a fat baksheesh if he succeeded in finding them mummies.

"I do want to bring a mummy home," said Gustave from his fog. The sound of his own voice startled him, as though he were hearing it amplified through a pipe or megaphone.

"I am puzzled," Max said. "Joseph says one thing, the guidebook and the captain another."

"Do you have it here?" asked Gustave. "The book?" Rais Ibrahim shot him a penetrating glance.

Max removed it from his pocket and pa.s.sed it to him.

The entry was brief and dripping with disdain, written, as Bouilhet liked to say, from a very high horse. Not worth visiting, the guidebook said, unless you wished to bring home the charred mummy of a crocodile. Difficult climbing also was noted. Apparently the grotto had emitted suffocating fumes for years and was highly flammable.

"Listen to this," Gustave said. "'Fragments of Homer and the lost orations of Hyperides of Athens were discovered there in 1845.'"

Max's eyes widened. Gustave continued reading to himself. Nothing else valuable could have survived a fire that broke out in 1846 and burned for more than a year.

How could a fire burn for more than a year? A tiny asterisk led his eye to the bottom of the page. The grotto had heavy deposits of bitumen. Pitch. Essentially, the cave was a tar pit! That meant no photographing and no squeeze-making. "I vote for going," he announced, closing and returning the book. "I think we should take Joseph's advice. We both want mummies."

"So be it," said Max. "A search for buried treasure."

Rais Ibrahim, also highly flammable, excused himself and sulked on the deck with his back to them, dangling his feet in the spray of the keel. The excursion would lengthen the voyage by a day, one additional day until the captain could screw his new wife. They hadn't challenged him before. Max had been right, Gustave realized, to insist on withholding half his fee until the end, ensuring that he kept his foul moods to himself. Max usually was right about money. When Gustave paid Kuchuk Hanem twice her fee, he had disapproved, and clearly, on the second visit, Gustave did not get his money's worth.

Rais Ibrahim had hired two guides from the village of Maabdeh as well as donkeys to ride and haul their provisions and swag. The next morning they disembarked south of Manfaloot at el-Cheguel Ghil, where the desert and the fertile delta met, and where, Joseph said, there had once been crocodiles in the millions. These days the animals were a rarity in Middle Egypt because they had all been mummified. He and Max soon would see for themselves.

The riverbank was high, blocking completely views of the land beyond it. They ascended on their donkeys, tacking single file. It was a bright, sunny day, not yet too warm.

The top of the embankment overlooked a wide plain planted with corn, barley, and flowering fava beans, their scent sweet on the air. Between the rows, in ragged pink patches, clover bloomed, and lupine, in a scattered purple haze. In the distance Gustave spied a herd of black goats or sheep that dotted the ground like ants on a cloth. Just beneath him, on a ledge, two donkey foals gamboled, braying and tossing their gray velvet heads. He and Max smiled at each other. What a good decision to venture through lush and little-known lands!

They soon reached Maabdeh, a cl.u.s.ter of mud hovels surrounded by a brick wall. Pointing to it, a guide explained that it had been raised against Bedouins, who routinely pillaged the livestock and crops, and sometimes abducted women and children.

Threading along the edge of the plateau to another steep hill-five or six hundred meters, Gustave estimated-they pa.s.sed a limestone outcrop with clear chisels marks. Giant blocks had been quarried w.i.l.l.y-nilly, leaving what appeared to be a deranged staircase. No one, Joseph remarked, had worked this stone for a millennium.

As he zigzagged steadily higher, Gustave avoided looking down, observing instead his donkey's muscles twitch under its hair coat as it leaned into the trail. Twice it faltered, terrifying him, rocks falling away in a miniature avalanche. Difficult climbing, indeed.

At the next precipice, he was mystified to see the Nile again, winding after him like a thick green serpent. His sense of direction was muddled. Max proudly pointed out Manfaloot, crowned with gray minarets, on the opposite sh.o.r.e, as if he had placed it there himself to further addle Gustave's bearings.

Below lay a veritable panorama of Egyptian agriculture on another vast plain. Or was it the one he'd seen earlier? For the first and last time, he reconsidered filing a report about the abundant crops to honor his government commission. But if he wrote one, he'd have to write several. None, then. Villages tufted with palm trees came into view, and beyond them, like a dreamscape rendered in pastels, the soft pink and lavender outline of the Arabian hills. He memorized the view. If Max had taken a photograph, it couldn't have captured the subtle colors, the shapes as luscious as an odalisque's curves. An odalisque's curves: he liked it.

As they turned right (what direction would that be? he wondered), the guides galloped past him, shouting. He followed, lurching forward like a boy on a hobbyhorse. His mount had a ball-crus.h.i.+ng gait, as bad as a camel.

For the third time, a rocky prominence blocked the view. Beneath it, the trail glittered miraculously, paved with crystals.

"Talc," Max cried triumphantly. "They mined talc here, but no longer." Had Max memorized the entire guidebook? His flaunting of details, his heedless glee, galled him.

After twenty minutes in the sparkling dust, Gustave saw a dark cleft in the rock like a gaping mouth painted black. The entrance to the grotto. "We are here," he announced before Max could speak. "Are we not?"

"Obviously," granted Max.

They dismounted and tied their donkeys to shrubby trees. With Joseph bringing up the rear, they entered the opening single file.

As Gustave bent into the darkness, a sickening stench a.s.saulted him. Breathing through his mouth, he followed the back of Max's blue jacket for three or four meters. Abruptly the tunnel enlarged, the line backed up and all seven men crowded against the slippery black wall where the creva.s.se ended.

"And now we enter!" cried Joseph. Before Gustave could make sense of this remark, the first guide, lantern in hand, disappeared down a smoke vent at the base of the wall. Max scrambled after him, whooping with delight.

About a meter tall, the tunnel was unpredictable, narrowing and widening as it bored through the earth. He crawled on his knees, he wiggled and slid. One vertebra at a time, he inched forward on his back, snakelike, propelling himself through the turns by digging down with his heels. Several times he sc.r.a.ped against treacherous spikes overhead. Had he not lost weight, he thought, he might have debrided his skin against the stone-degoutant!-or been stuck in the pa.s.sage for the remainder of a short life.

The bad odor strengthened, along with the heat. Drenching sweat ran in runnels down his belly and back, his groin and armpits. In front of him, the worn-down soles of Max's cavalry boots dragged lightly along the ground, like the feet of a marionette. Behind him, the guide shouted out encouragements in Arabic and b.u.t.ted him with his head.

After several insufferable minutes, the tunnel flared into a gallery where he was able to stand. He yanked out the hem of his s.h.i.+rt to use as a mask.

What exactly was that rank smell? Not s.h.i.+t. He knew the smell of s.h.i.+t all too well. As a child in diapers, his mother liked to recount, she had found him carefully dabbing it on himself and the walls of his room. You were painting, she'd said with a laugh. He begged her not to tell the story to friends, but she did, especially after baby Caroline came to live at Croisset. So, not s.h.i.+t. s.h.i.+t didn't frighten him, but this odor did.

Before he could see much in the cavern, Max pulled him aside. "This is why I took precautions," he whispered, "why I told the guides no exposed candles." He pointed to his feet. Gustave followed a wan light to the floor.

Mummies. They were standing on mummies. He recalled the drifts of dead cicadas he'd seen as a boy encrusting the streets of Rouen. He'd be thirty-two when the next swarm hatched. Four more years.

He stepped forward and heard a crunch. Then another. Then a sifting sound like rats scurrying through litter. He froze and shouted for a guide to bring his lantern.

"Many rooms like this," Joseph said, rolling his hands to ill.u.s.trate iteration. "My last monsieur spends five hours in the grotto and never finds the end of it."

Pitch dripped from the ceiling, forming stalact.i.tes that hung down in ravaged part.i.tions. Eight months and three thousand kilometers and here he was at last in the heart of the heart of ancient Egypt. Or in the heart of its death. Mummies covered the floor. They were the floor. It felt like standing on a stack of mattresses. Death, usually so invisible, so quick to vanish once it struck, was preserved here in a stinking pile, and he was the fortunate fellow balanced on top of it. But would he never stop noticing the stench? Shouldn't his nose have acclimated to it by now?

He picked up a crocodile and sniffed it. The distinctive odor of active decay was unmistakable. Though the bodies had been preserved, dried to the lightness of husks, in the dampness of the cave something continued to rot. Hair? Nails? Bones? The leathery skin that remained after natron had extracted all the fluid from the flesh?

Besides the large crocs, there were pointy mummified eggs and baby crocodiles with elongated bodies and snouts easily recognizable through their bandages. All of them, he knew, were sacrifices to Sobek, the crocodile deity, to keep the real crocodiles at bay. His wors.h.i.+ppers had not stinted. The h.o.a.rd contained thousands of crocodile and human remains. Tens of thousands. Perhaps hundreds of thousands, he revised, estimating the depth of the piles. Millions, if you counted all the caverns in the grotto.

He'd watched the fearsome reptiles slicking through the Nile at Aswan. No one was safe near a croc, even if it appeared to sleep as it basked on the muddy bank.

Why not make a G.o.d of the thing you feared most? In which case he would have numerous deities: the butcher, with his sharp knives and dull brain; the grocer, with his palette of vegetables and colorless imagination. Professionals, too-lawyers and doctors (including his brother), and all proper dames. Only artists, a few teachers, and wh.o.r.es were exempt from his pantheon.

A sound like claws on pavement interrupted his reverie. He lifted his lantern and s.h.i.+ned it on the brightest objects in the cavern-Max's hands, rending a crocodile mummy. Twisting off the legs like drumsticks and tossing them into a corner, Max broke open the torso and plunged into the gut cavity, pulling out blackened gauze.

"What in the world are you doing?" Gustave asked.

"Looking for treasure. Gold or jeweled scarabs." He crushed a tiny crocodile underfoot and lifted a bigger one. "They're so light," he said, tearing off its limbs.