Part 3 (1/2)

”We are going to get a cup of coffee,” Gustave called back.

With the others following, he stumbled along the alleyway to the cafe next door, a wooden shack with a roof of sugarcane stalks thrown down helter-skelter. Demita.s.ses of Turkish coffee soon arrived on a copper tray. A few moments later, the muezzin sang out the call to afternoon prayer over the rooftops of the city: ”Allahu Akbar.” Kuchuk glanced through the open window, suddenly aware of the time.

”Beautiful melody,” said Max, besotted with rak. ”Allah il Allah,” he tweedled, mimicking the muezzin until the wh.o.r.es howled with laughter. It was then that Kuchuk took Gustave's face between her palms and pantomimed shaving off his mustache. ”Abu Chanab,” she whispered, Father Mustache, planting a kiss on his cheek.

”She say not to cover your pretty mouth,” Joseph translated.

He and Max decided they would visit her brothel again that night.

The musicians from the afternoon were already a.s.sembled in the courtyard when they returned in full regalia, wearing swords and bearing a bottle of rak. Oil lamps shedding pools of creamy yellow light burned on tin sconces. The women sat singing together on the divan. A new and older alma with a savage expression and deep-set eyes took him downstairs and made quick work of him. His timing was so derailed by her voluptuous writhing that he stained the divan. When he set to work on her with his mouth, she seemed surprised, but tolerated it silently. Perhaps her magic b.u.t.ton had been excised. He loved giving pleasure to a woman as much as he loved receiving it. Because he'd twice fallen in love with women eleven years older than he-Elisa Schlesinger, his first crush, when he was fourteen, and then, of course, Louise-he preferred older prost.i.tutes and was beloved by them in turn. In Egypt, the old wh.o.r.es said they found him more enchanting than Max because of his impressive height and large, cowlike eyes. But he knew they were lying: they were grateful to him for the business.

He downed a gla.s.s of rak, took Kuchuk aside, and, grasping her necklace with his teeth, had s.e.x with her. Her c.u.n.t, he wrote later, felt ”like rolls of velvet as she made me come.” Afterward, showing off her muscularity and grace, she offered him licorice straws from her second mouth.

But Kuchuk Hanem's most remarkable talent was for the Bee, the dance forbidden in all of Egypt. She began by vibrating her torso as quickly as its namesake, shedding her clothing until she was naked. Her body was sinuous, fluid, a.s.suming forms that seemed impossible. Backbends, simple flips, and rapid turns led to undulations that traveled through her flesh like water through a sluice, from her neck to her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, belly, and hips, down through her legs until only her feet were s.h.i.+vering to the music. She wore castanets on her fingers and bells on her ankles, accompanying herself vocally with trills and shouts. The chirring, clapping, and tinkling built to a crescendo until she seemed half animal, half angel, moving according to some essential rhythm borrowed from nature in harmony with the whorls of turban sh.e.l.ls, the branching lacework of leaves, the khamsin's whirlwind. She was magnetic, paralyzing, her face altering from grave to frantically wanton and grave again.

For an encore, she performed a duet with a cup of coffee placed on the floor. Castanets clacking, she made love to the cup with a series of lascivious movements and ended by clenching it with her teeth and gulping it down. In that one stroke, he felt she had taken him whole into her mouth-or could.

In the past, Gustave had loved all his prost.i.tutes, but never a particular one. His feeling was more for the inst.i.tution itself, ”prost.i.tution” being an old and venerable word, like ”university,” ”Sorbonne,” and ”Mother Church.” But by the time the dancing was over, he was convinced that he was in love with Kuchuk Hanem, and begged to spend the night with her. Though she worried that his presence would attract thieves, in the end she relented. They slept together in a small downstairs room, guarded by her pimps and by Joseph, who had paired up with an Abyssinian wh.o.r.e, forgetting for an evening his young wife. After another coup, Kuchuk drifted off, her little hand resting in his, her mound of Venus heating him like a hot water bottle. Delectable snoring issued from her elegant nose and slackened mouth. With her scruffy Papillion dog asleep nearby on his red jacket, they made as happy a family of three as might have lived anywhere on the earth. He gave himself over to reveries of domestic normalcy and oriental perversity.

At 3:00 A.M. he awakened for a final coup, rather like the affectionate s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g of an old married couple before breakfast. At dawn she fetched charcoal for the brazier, then returned to bed, warming herself in the heat of his body. The bedclothes that all night had pa.s.sed for Venetian silk revealed in the daylight the most telling touch: bedbugs, which he amused himself by squas.h.i.+ng on the wall. Their nauseating smell combined with Kuchuk's attar of roses created an odor as memorable as her rotten tooth. In his work, he decided, as in life, there must always be a touch of bitterness in the sweet, a hint of calumny in the romance, a jeer in the midst of triumph!

Early the next morning, as agreed, Kuchuk Hanem appeared with her lamb in tow at the cange to pose for a portrait. No longer was she clad in diaphanous silks and cottons, much to his disappointment. She wore instead a bizarre combination of European and Ottoman clothes that denoted a prim matronliness-a black cloak, a fichu and cheap cameo at her throat, an embroidered vest and hat in the Armenian style, and European boots. Max took three exposures, all with the spotted lamb: one of her seated under a white umbrella, one standing, and one leaning over the side of the cange, so that the waters of the Nile might flow forever above the mantel at Croisset.

In accord with her attire, they had parted decorously. No fervid kisses or tender hugs, no desperate clutching of her a.s.s. He promised to return in a month or two. She stepped gracefully off the boat followed by her sheep like a figure in a nursery rhyme. When she reached the street above the docks, she looked back and wagged her small perfumed hand.

He had detected true longing in that wave, with a soupcon of love and dolor, too. Ever since, he had allowed himself the fantasy that she had found him unusually appealing, and was counting the days until his return-that she was thinking and dreaming of him, reviewing every detail of their lovemaking.

When the photographic papers were developed, Kuchuk had disappeared, leaving only a gray smudge where she and the Nile had briefly intersected in the frame.

4.

LA VIE DE FLORENCE ROSSIGNOL.

On a clear Monday in February 1850, what Flo saw from her houseboat was nothing less, she thought, than divinely inspired, powered into existence by the love of G.o.d.

She'd awakened to the unmistakable jolt of the boat setting sail at dawn. As she watched through the window, the river turned pewter, then silver, like a hand mirror tilting up to catch the ever more brilliant light. After breakfasting with the others, she'd remained on deck, antic.i.p.ating Abu Simbel.

They had been on the Nile for six weeks and more than nine hundred miles. Going south, the river had been a wide expanse, lined on either side with the fertile croplands that had filled the empire's belly for millennia. Then, at Aswan, the green borders had narrowed and the river with it, fracturing into rapids that boiled over the crags. After the cataracts came the three D's-Dendur, Dakkeh, and Derr, where Charles bought two barrels of dates. Flo had planned to spend the afternoon at a temple, but Derr was the capital of Nubia, and the clamor and poverty of its inhabitants were so dispiriting, she had spent only an hour in town.

Now, as the boat sped upriver, its great crossed sails unfurled in the breeze, sandstone cliffs encroached on both sides, rising up in sheer ocher walls to form a canyon through which the low, twisting river appeared to be fleeing for its life. The river was more tortuous here than in the north, with hairpin turns so sharp that each vista coming into view was an astonishment. Which is how it was that, rounding yet another bend, Flo was staggered by the breathtaking sight on the western bank: cut from the cliff, the faces of enormous stone pharaohs glowed in the morning light. They were the biggest likenesses she had ever seen. If the height of the cliff were three hundred feet, these colossi, she estimated, were easily seventy feet high. Her gaze s.h.i.+fted to the second temple, also carved from the rock and equally imposing, if smaller-the monument to Ramses's queen, Nefertari. Elation buzzed through her body.

Everyone, including the dragoman, Paolo, gathered eagerly as the boat moored alongside a patch of palms. Selina carried her hemp tote, packed with drawing supplies, on her shoulder. She squeezed Flo's hand and stepped onto the gangplank. Flo and Trout followed. Behind them, four brawny Nubians would, if necessary, haul the travelers over the slope of windblown sand that rose, it seemed, a thousand feet up the mountain.

The climb was slow and arduous. Never look down, her father had told her when she was a child and they hiked the hills of Kent, near Embley. She focused on the colossi when they were visible, their blank eyes staring impa.s.sively into the sun, urging her on. The heat was building, and she was glad she'd worn only her brown Hollands. Unbleached linen was perfect for the climate of Egypt.

Trout struggled alongside, aided by a crewman who pushed her from time to time, his hands hovering just behind the broadest part of her back. Flo hoped to finish the ascent una.s.sisted, but she wouldn't be shy about asking for help. Once she reached the great temple, she could rest. She planned to sit alone in the inner rooms and ponder the Egyptian religion. Unlike most Christians, she hadn't dismissed the Egyptian G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses as false deities, viewing them, rather, as alternate conceptions of holiness. Surely, the theology of a people who had ruled for four thousand years was worth contemplating.

Trout grunted, and the crewman clamped onto her elbow to steady her. She was dressed for a visit to London, not the Nubian Desert, her cotton twill bodice and skirts already damp with sweat. In front of Flo, following in Paolo's footsteps, Charles and Selina made steady progress. Selina stopped to speak, pointing at something, but the wind tossed aside her words.

At seventeen, Flo had climbed the stairs at Notre Dame-more than four hundred steps, her travel guide had crowed-to the parapeted rooftop and Paris below, dainty as a Persian miniature. Though not as high, this was considerably more difficult. At last she moved from the acutely angled ramp to a patch of level ground. It felt good to stand up straight after so much bending and trudging.

One Ramses was broken, the disjointed head and torso lying on the ground. Higher up, the first colossus was covered to his nostrils in sand. Arabs with shovels appeared to be digging out his visage. But despite neglect and damage, the temple seemed pristine, as if whatever had blasted the figure apart had happened centuries before, and it had been untouched ever since. Certainly no European had disturbed it, since Europe hadn't known of Abu Simbel until the French conquered Egypt. Sailing up the Nile in 1817, Giovanni Belzoni must have gasped as she had when he rounded the bend in the river.

From a closer stance, it was even more incredible that the colossi had once formed part of the undifferentiated mountain they flanked. In a niche above the entrance-at perhaps three times life size-sat another splendid pharaoh wearing the traditional kilt and bearing the orb of the sun on his head. Ramses, she guessed, this one in the guise of his namesake, the sun G.o.d Ra.

Leaning against the s.h.i.+n of the headless Ramses (it must have been twenty feet from his sandal to his knee!), she felt small and yet more significant-like a jewel-the opposite of the diminution imposed by Chartres and Westminster Abbey. They had humbled her. Karnak, two weeks earlier, had been terrifying, the immense columns pressing in, threatening to crush her. She had felt overshadowed in every way. But Abu Simbel filled her with an awe that lifted her up and enlarged her. Paradoxically, the very enormity of the figures was comforting instead of intimidating. Sublime, she whispered aloud to no one in particular, gazing up at the serenely composed faces looming above her. Two tourists were creeping down from a niche in the rock alongside the shoulder of the southernmost colossus, and she determined to perch there before exploring the interior.

”Paolo,” she said, pointing up to a stone platform, ”do you think someone could help me climb up there?”

The guide muttered to one of the crew and shouted back to her. ”Brava, Signorella Nightingale. Why not?”

The crewman preceded her, a coil of rope for her to grasp wound around his shoulder. He helped her from foothold to ledge to handhold, and within moments, she was sitting alongside Ramses. Later, she thought, she'd maneuver down to the great ruler's lap, to seek firsthand succor at his glorious breast.

She contemplated the two identical faces receding to her left in perfect alignment. The duplication was soothing. Here is Ramses, and here again, and again. By repeating that serene visage, the ancient sculptors had managed to convey the experience of time itself-of its pa.s.sage-in a way that spoke not to death and decay but eternity.

Ramses's eyes were far too big, she noticed. Nothing was in strict proportion. Yet these anatomical distortions made the figures more expressive of pure spirit than any other relics she'd seen. It was difficult to imagine that men had built these grand and G.o.dly objects. Not beautiful, certainly not realistic in the way of art as she'd always understood it, this was a whole world for which she had no language, only what stirred in her heart.

Above the four Osiridae-statues of Ramses in the guise of Osiris-a relief of yet another Ramses held a statuette in his hand. Was this an offering to or a gift from his divinity? And what did it symbolize? From its central location, she adjudged it important. Another detail to look up in Herr Bunsen's book.

Selina and Charles were picnicking near the next Ramses, sharing a cup of local beer, when Flo climbed down and signaled her intention to enter the temple. Selina waved back, smiling, and lifted her cup in a toast. Flo was so grateful to the Bracebridges. They were more than loving family friends-angels, really. A year ago she had accompanied them to Italy and learned what easygoing companions they were. The first day in Rome she'd returned to the hotel expecting a reprimand for having spent the whole day lying on her back in the Sistine Chapel, but they hadn't even missed her. No, their focus, too, was on books and art and politics-and on one another's ailments-all of which left them delightfully permissive and absentminded.

Because sand had blocked all but about three feet of the temple's doorway, she had to crawl into the magnificence on all fours-properly humbling, she thought. Her guide followed at a discreet distance. As soon as she was snug inside, she'd send him back.

Still on all fours, she found herself atop an interior sand ramp, this one the height of a double flight of stairs and illuminated by sunlight slanting through the impacted entrance. She scooted down on her bottom to the stone floor of a cavern suffused with twilight. Egypt was not only captivating, it was also glorious fun.

Eight Osiridae stood against as many pillars, their arms crossed upon their chests, the crook and flail in either hand to signify dominion over living and departed souls.

The trapped air, dim light, and thick mountain walls created a strange stillness and warmth, as if she had descended into the bowels of the earth. Near her foot, a scarab beetle careered over a tiny hillock of sand. The guide lighted her oil lamp and she continued into a second hall, and then a smaller chamber aglow with trickles of light from an invisible source high in the ceiling. Four more statues of Osiris supported the roof. Lowering herself against one of them, she shooed the guide away. When he hesitated, she shouted ”Go back!” and was startled to hear the chamber echo her words in a diminis.h.i.+ng chorus. He retreated to the opposite wall and knelt, head down, to give her the privacy she demanded. Clearly he had instructions not to leave her alone under any circ.u.mstances.

She opened her bag, removed her diary, and came across a recent entry: I had been feeling melancholy when we reached Aswan, but the sheer excitement brought me round. Riding up the rapids was one of the most delightful moments of my life-a moment that lasted four and a half hours! They'd navigated the cataracts with difficulty, she, Charles, and Trout on board for the thrilling ordeal while Selina continued overland by donkey. Six times the dahabiyah jutted out of the water like a vessel about to sink and was hauled by the main force of more than a hundred men up the granite rocks. . . . With unerring aim ropes were thrown from the p.o.o.p to men on the rocks standing in the att.i.tude of the Apollo Belvedere, their keen eyes glistening with eagerness. . . . I expected them to be dashed to pieces at every moment.

Describing a thing was nearly as exhilarating as the thing itself. She smiled to herself, then uncapped her pen and smoothed a blank page.

Now, at Abu Simbel, I feel nothing but comfort, as if in the presence of G.o.d. I am as moved by the Egyptian ideas of the afterlife as by our Christian ones. Further, it seems to me that the Egyptian beliefs are not so different in mechanism than the story of Christ's resurrection. Bunsen points out that in the original mythology, only the sun-G.o.d Ra journeyed to the afterlife. Each night, when he died in the west, he traveled through the underworld on an infernal river divided into twelve rooms, one for each hour of the night. Emerging each morning at sunrise, he a.s.sured the continuation of the world. For the next hundred generations, only the pharaohs joined Ra, sailing to the Field of Reeds. But after a thousand generations (about 200 B.C.), everyone in the kingdom of Egypt could journey to the golden dawn of eternal life. The similarities with Christian belief are striking: the pa.s.sage through the twelve rooms of the night was, like the crucifixion, the earthly death. Jesus, like the pharaoh, was divine and the first man to attain heaven. If we accept Him, then like the Egyptians who wors.h.i.+pped Ra and Osiris, we receive the gift of eternal life.

She closed her eyes and sat dragging her fingers through the sand. Writing her thoughts had always been calming, a way to weather her deepest storms and sort out her feelings. In fact, after Selina Brace-bridge and Mary Clarke, she thought of her diary as her best friend. She called it Lavie, which was short for La Vie de Florence Rossignol, begun as a French a.s.signment when she was seven. Lavie was also the record of her struggles-with Parthe, with f.a.n.n.y, and with herself.

J'aime Mme. Gale, ma bonne d'enfants, was the first sentence she'd written in it. I love my nurse, Mrs. Gale. And then-she recalled this as clearly as if the words had left her pen twenty minutes rather than twenty years ago-”In English her name means a storm, but Mrs. Gale is ”une femme tres calme, tres placide.” Writing in French made her feel adult and sophisticated, and she attacked it with relish. Je suis nee le 12 mai, en l'annee 1820. My mother, whom I love, is called f.a.n.n.y, and my Father (also very loved) is William Edward Nightingale. Everybody calls him WEN. She handed the copybook in weekly to the governess, who returned it with corrections in red ink: accents and apostrophes, spelling errors, failure to match case, gender, or number. There were never any comments on the facts or Flo's effusive declarations of affection.

When she wrote about her first serious illness, Lavie seemed to come to life, to take on the characteristics of an intimate. Flo had had the whooping cough and had to be isolated, Parthe banished downstairs to prevent contagion. Flo had enjoyed having the bed to herself, being alone. ”J'aime etre seule,” she'd written in her careful French, ”completement seule.” On her first trip to London, where she had gone for a wedding, she described the soldiers' band playing at the Court of St. James's Palace and wandering with f.a.n.n.y through the s.h.i.+ning aisles of the best shops. Her dearest relative, WEN's little sister, Aunt Mai, was to be married to Sam, f.a.n.n.y's baby brother. Flo watched Aunt Mai join hands with Uncle Sam, swear her undying love, and kiss him, too long and too hard, with everyone looking on. I blushed, Flo had confided in print. She nearly cried when the young couple drove off in their coach. That, she informed Lavie, was marriage. People went away. She was never going to do it, never leave the people she loved.

The people she loved . . . She closed her eyes. Who did not, it turned out, love her as she wished them to. Instead, they had plans for her based not on her talents and desires but on what they wanted and what was proper.