Part 1 (1/2)

The Twelve Rooms of the Nile.

Enid Shomer.

In memory of William Magazine and for my family.

-Nirah, Mike, Oren, and Paula.

Is discontent a privilege? . . . Woman has nothing but her affections,-and this makes her at once more loving and less loved.

-FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE, Ca.s.sANDRA.

The future is the worst thing about the present. The question ”What are you going to do?,” when it is cast in your face, is like an abyss in front of you that keeps moving ahead with each step you take.

-GUSTAVE FLAUBERT.

To speak the names of the dead is to make them live again.

-THE BOOK OF THE DEAD.

1.

FATHER MUSTACHE AND THE FATHER OF THINNESS.

Had the young Frenchman not been lost in thought, he might have caught his Baedeker as it jostled free of the gunwale and slipped into the river. Bound in red morocco with gilt lettering and gilt-edged pages, it was a costly gift from his dear mother.

At first the book floated, spread open like a bird with small red wings. But as the waters of the Nile darkened the onionskin pages already stained with Oriental sauces and cup after cup of Turkish coffee, they swelled like the gills of a drowning fish. His dragoman, Joseph, reached for it with an oar, but the attempt served only to push the guidebook farther under and soon it disappeared into the murky wake of the cange. The gentleman frowned.

The crew set about mooring the vessel on the riverbank. The Frenchman took a deep breath and realigned the incident in his mind, turning it the way you might a newspaper the better to scissor out an article. If he had to lose his guidebook, what better place than the Nile, that great liquid treasure pit? Let it molder in the deep, among shepherds' crooks and shards of clay oil lamps, or be heaved ash.o.r.e with the river's yearly inundation of silt. He pictured a workman or scientist retrieving it in the future, reading the inscription he'd written on the fly page in indelible ink: ”G. Flaubert, author of the failed novel The Temptation of Saint Anthony, 1849.” Maybe he would be remembered for something after all! But the thought only made him frown again. Ambition was a dull pain, like a continually broken heart.

The crew prepared to serve the midday meal. Egyptian cleverness extended not only upward to the immense, immovable majesty of the Pyramids, the Sphinx, and the gargantuan colonnades at Karnak, but also downward to the practical and portable, to folding stools, chairs, and tables, expandable fishnet sleeping hammocks, and sacs for foodstuffs. Where moments before the crew had trafficked the broad central planks of the deck, there now appeared a dining nook, shaded by muslin hoisted on poles and tied at the top like a fancy parasol. He watched Achmet float a white damask cloth onto the table, then lay pewter chargers and pink porcelain plates, and finally, neatly frame each table setting with utensils and drinking vessels. A ewer of red wine and two full winegla.s.ses in the dead center of the table reminded him of a floral arrangement trailing two spilled roses.

On the foredeck, a Nubian crewman was chopping and cooking, while leaning on the mainmast of the skysails, Rais Ibrahim, the captain, haggled with a fishmonger. Soon enough a phalanx of tin trays laden with dolma-all manner of stuffed vegetables-would appear to rise unaided, levitating on the heads of the crew.

Gustave and his companion, Max, had left France four months earlier. They were sailing south to Abu Simbel, after which they would turn around and follow the current back toward Cairo, visiting more monuments at their leisure. Upon the completion of their river journey, now in its eighth week, they would tackle Greece, Syria, Palestine, and all of western Turkey from Smyrna to Constantinople. Later, perhaps Persia and India.

Most of their itinerary lay within the borders of the Ottomans, who cared nothing, Gustave knew, for the connection to the cla.s.sical past that so thrilled him. Genuflection at the altar of Graeco-Roman and Egyptian antiquity was to their thinking probably amusing if not idiotic. Their holy shrines lay farther east, in domains marked by a fastness of sand and abstinence. When, four decades earlier, they'd allowed the Elgin Marbles to be removed to England, it had ignited bidding wars among curators, archaeologists, and wealthy collectors for every torso, ossuary, and water jar. To the Turks this was not vandalism, but an opportunity to sell off useless debris. With their prohibition against the graven image, he imagined they might even be disgusted that a human form fetched up in stone could excite such ardor.

Though his hosts ruled a large chunk of the world, historians seemed to agree that a golden age based in raw courage and gallantry was behind them, that they now lived by collecting in tribute what they had once secured with the b.l.o.o.d.y scimitar. He admired the fact that unlike the Europeans, who were p.r.o.ne to wars of ideas, the Turks reigned benignly, ceding to their conquered peoples great lat.i.tude in the practice of religious and national customs. Or were they benign out of inefficiency? The sultans, caliphs, viceroys, emirs, sheiks, and pashas-they had countless names for grand and petty offices-ruled from an ornately disorganized web of bribery and corruption so bloated with excess that the empire had grown unwieldy as an elephant balanced on a ball. Someday it would tumble in an earth-shaking, ruined heap.

In the meantime, both he and Max entertained fantasies of returning home with a marble bust or two, possibly a mummy. For they had learned the secret to a successful tour of the Orient: baksheesh. A handful of drachmas or piastres opened the doors of private estates to the two young Frenchmen. Obscure ruins were lit by torchlight if necessary for their inspection, and skilled cicerones were a.s.signed to guide them to hidden corners of antiquity. With the right attire, a modic.u.m of financial resources, and a pouch bulging with doc.u.ments adorned with diplomatic wax and ink flourishes, Europeans traveling the Orient enjoyed the privileges of n.o.bility. Lord knew that made for a stampede of them everywhere in the cities of the delta, if not yet on the river itself. Egypt was on the verge of becoming an industry. They would be among the last to see it before it was entirely corrupted by foreigners.

To burnish their air of importance, Max, the more savvy of the two, had secured official missions for them from two different ministries of the French government. Unpaid missions, to be sure, but nonetheless effective in connecting them to diplomats and commercial agents in the East. Gustave's collection of gaseous bureaucratic prose commended him to the world beyond the Tuileries as a gentleman in the employ of the Ministry of Agriculture and Commerce with the task of collecting in ports and caravansaries information of interest to chambers of commerce in France. He had planned to dispense with his official designation upon arrival, but soon grasping its value, instructed his mother and friends to address their letters to ”Gustave Flaubert, charge d'une mission en Orient.”

Max's mission was substantive, and Gustave envied him it, though he was too lazy to have undertaken it himself. The Ministry of Public Instruction had charged Max with compiling a catalog of the ancient monuments. With the latest camera, Monsieur Du Camp could efficiently replace corps of savants and artists who in Napoleon's day had performed this task. He was also charged with making life-sized facsimiles of the inscriptions, similar to stone rubbings, but producing an actual relief. These molds, or ”squeezes,” made using wet paper, were simple but tedious to produce, and Max depended upon Gustave to a.s.sist in their manufacture. Much to his disgust, Gustave often wandered off or fell asleep precisely when he was needed.

The truth was that Gustave had never considered himself anything but a writer. He pictured his study at home, an airy consortium of books and flowered chintz, thriving potted plants, a bearskin rug and ma.s.sive desk where he had devoted the last two years to his first novel. While other writers poured out their tales or allowed them to trickle forth like seasonal streams, he had carved The Temptation of Saint Anthony from the very mountain of the French language. Then, after reading it aloud to them, his best friends Max and Bouilhet had p.r.o.nounced it inferior, unworthy of publication. The recollection sent a sharp pain through his chest and arrested his breathing. The reverie of the writer's life he would return to in his study at home vanished, like smoke on a wind.

He turned his attention to the crew approaching single-file amids.h.i.+ps. On either side of them the waters of the Nile lapped like molten pewter touched with rivulets of gold. Hasan lowered a tray of delicacies, while above his shoulder, a gull's wing fluttered like a feathery epaulet as the bird swooped onto the bow of the cange. I'm traveling in the world of Byron! he thought, surrounded not by shopkeepers and prim demoiselles, but men wearing fezzes, bare-chested under fancy red vests. Nota bene: trimmed with soutache and black silk embroidery, one of these vests would make the ideal gift for Louise. In the past few months, the memory of her infuriating possessiveness had faded somewhat, and he had begun to ponder her charms. Just now, as he sipped his wine, he recalled the disarming way on their first rendezvous she had turned to him and said, ”Shall we kiss awhile, my darling?”

Each man had spent the morning in solitary ch.o.r.es, Gustave composing in his journal, Max readying the camera for the afternoon excursion.

Max appeared at the table and greeted him. ”I will need your help,” he said. ”Today we scout the temple of Derr.”

”Yes,” Gustave muttered. ”I'm sure it will be grand.” He was remembering the Sphinx, that sublime surprise. He had seen drawings of Luxor, Giza, and Abu Simbel at an exhibition in Paris. The Sphinx, though, had existed only in his imagination until the instant he came upon it, a ferocious giant perched on the desert floor, its nose smeared flat as if bloodied in a brawl.

”There will be many inscriptions, many squeezes to be made.”

Gustave savored his wine, letting it trickle into the back of his throat. ”How many?”

”Hundreds. I don't know. Thousands. Too many to do. There are hieroglyphs, demotic Egyptian, Greek, and something called Carian, a language no one can read.”

Gustave scratched his whiskers. ”In that case, we will have to bring an extra pack donkey.” He served himself a second helping of rice flavored with cinnamon and c.u.min. The first thing he had noticed about the Orient was its parade of exotic spices, the bazaars smelling of coffee and sandalwood oil; the prost.i.tutes of rosewater, balsam, and musk.

Max thought for a moment. ”A litter will do, I think, dragged behind us Indian style.”

Usually, he and Max rode donkeys or horses, but now Gustave imagined himself tugged along on the pallet, reclining like a minor grandee. Save for the dust. And the smell and sight of the animal relieving itself. A veritable s.h.i.+t caravan.

”Joseph, of course, will go with us,” Max planned aloud, ”plus two of the crew, Aouadallah and Hadji Ismael, as usual.”

”Yes, Hadji Ismael, for scale.”

Gustave hated being within range of a camera, so Max used Hadji Ismael in his photographs to establish the implausible size of Egypt's monuments. Perched on a gigantic toe, lounging inside a mammoth doorway, Hadji Ismael was not only reliable but also photogenic-a one-eyed, well-muscled fellow who spoke a strange pidgin in the considerable gaps of which he remained always courteous and sweet. On the s.h.i.+p, he acted the wife to Big Achmet. Bardashes all, the crew. That was something s.e.xual he'd not yet tried. He was just waiting for the right opportunity. At a Turkish hammam, perhaps, where the young attendants were willing and the steam would leave him open-pored and pliant . . .

”Not just for scale-to represent the human enterprise,” Max said for perhaps the fifth time in two weeks. ”Even the stars mean nothing without a steaming hovel beneath them.”

Such grandiose talk was the result of the photography apprentices.h.i.+p in Paris that the ever-industrious, energetic Max had completed to prepare for the trip. Upon their return, his photographs would likely be the subject of an exhibition, and serve as ill.u.s.trations for the travelogue he was writing. Gustave disliked this aspect of his friend-the pragmatist who readily lowered his nose to the grindstone to advance himself. In this regard, Gustave was something of a sn.o.b, deeming useless knowledge (of beauty, truth, love, etc.) preferable-indeed, superior-to more practical information. If he were ever to publish a book, ideally he wanted it to be about nothing.

”You and Aouadallah will work on the squeezes,” Max said, wiping a spot of red sauce from his chin with his napkin, ”and I will join you when I can.” He pushed back his chair as a crewman began to collect the dishes.

Gustave scoffed at this idea. ”But you will be photographing all day, and then the sun will be down. You can't help to make squeezes in the dark. Besides, I have my own mission to accomplish. Who knows what commercial secrets I may uncover? I may find a mirage that is real, for example.”

Max began packing his bulky and fragile photographic equipment into sheepskin cases he'd had custom-tailored for the trip. ”We have a deal,” he reminded Gustave. ”Let's stick to it.”

They did have a deal, struck in the sixth week when Gustave announced he could not bear to make one more squeeze; the process was driving him mad. He no longer felt like a man, but an automaton, a mold machine. Max was sympathetic; nonetheless, he needed Gustave's labor as well as his supervision over any Egyptian apprentices. And so, in exchange for Gustave's help, he had promised to make a formal photograph of Gustave's favorite prost.i.tute. It was a strong enticement: in the damp cold of Normandy, Gustave would have his sun-drenched wh.o.r.e in crisp black and white and silky grays, every eyelash sharp as a pin. Not even Madame Flaubert would object to an artful rendering of an Oriental woman on the wall. The following week he had chosen Kuchuk Hanem, the dancing girl of Esneh, with whom he and Max had spent a satisfying day and night. But the photograph was spoiled by a mistake in the exposure. Max planned to remake it on their trip back down the Nile. What, though, if Kuchuk Hanem were not at home when they called? What if she had moved or was occupied or had fallen ill? Herac.l.i.tus was right-time was a river you couldn't step into twice. Gustave thought of nothing so much as the return visit to her quarters.

Their deal-exchanging squeezes for photographs-was a polite and simplified version of the complicated alliance between them, about which they never spoke. Max loved literature and had literary aspirations, and it was in the fire of that mutual pa.s.sion that their friends.h.i.+p had been forged and was continually annealed. But Gustave was deeply indebted to Max on several counts, for without him there would have been no trip. And while Max graciously acted his equal, he was in fact the senior partner in the venture. As the more experienced traveler, he was willing to sort out the tangle of logistics. He was wealthier, which put the burden of keeping within a budget on Gustave. But most important, it was Max who had swayed Madame Flaubert into subscribing to the near-mythic healing powers of the Mediterranean. In service of this, Max had all but sworn to be the guardian of her delicate younger son. In this web of obligation and kindness, only one question sometimes nagged at Gustave: had Max cynically manipulated his dear mother, playing her for a fool, or did he actually care for her (and him)? Perhaps Max himself did not know. That would be like him, Gustave thought. Nevertheless, out of grat.i.tude for Max's many beneficences, Gustave had agreed to make squeezes, and though he found it insufferable at times, he intended to keep his word.

Gustave would have napped after lunch, but Max insisted they leave immediately. Gustave donned his heavy boots and pulled up the hood of his burnoose, which framed his face with a fringe of black pompoms that bobbed with the slightest movement, adding a dimension of merriment to his guise. With the help of the crew, they collected their belongings and arranged the donkey packs. Joseph had three horses waiting on the bank. They set off at once. Neither man had shaved or barbered in weeks, and with their ragged beards and soiled clothes, they looked neither European nor Egyptian but altogether alien.

They rode small mares trained to neck-rein. Compared to the colder-blooded European horses, the Arabians appeared scraggly and weak; in fact, Gustave had discovered, they were fine mounts of excellent endurance and temperament, accustomed to the grueling sun and sand and the merciless onslaughts of the khamsin. Hadji Ismael and Aouadallah rode donkeys, hurtling alongside them.

The road from Aswan to Derr was crowded, being the only overland route south of the cataracts on the eastern riverbank. Aside from the monuments, Gustave had observed, little in Egypt stayed still. In the desert's dry sea, the Bedouin lived as nomads; on the great Nile, commerce from all of Africa moved to market, whether slave girls from Nubia or rice from Luxor. The Bedouin took their houses on their backs; the Nubians lived in mud huts that could be rebuilt in a day elsewhere.

The stream of traffic reminded him of the sugar ants that invaded the house at Croisset in early summer. With no laws or rules of etiquette for the road, people traveled on both sides and in the middle. Every manner of conveyance and beast moved together-camel caravans, flocks of sheep and goats, a.s.ses, horses, and the occasional richly draped palanquin with, presumably, a notable personage within. The ubiquitous cudgel flashed out from robes and saddlebags like a lightning bolt. Public beatings were an everyday occurrence. It seemed to Gustave that everyone in clean clothes routinely beat everyone in dirty clothes. Where baksheesh ended, the cudgel began. Between the two, commerce moved at a brisk clip. Arguments were short, ending with much begging and quivering before punishment was meted out and all protest resolved by a quick blow to the back or thighs. He had witnessed an official bastinado in Cairo-fifty strokes delivered unhaltingly to the soles of the feet. The poor fellow was no doubt crippled for life.