Part 27 (2/2)

”What?”

Both her mother and sister, she explained, dabbled at charity. ”But it's an event on their social calendar,” she said with a sneer. ”That's all. You know, riding to hounds, hunt b.a.l.l.s, the London social season. And poor-peopling.” Her voice rose. ”They bring a joint or a bird to the cottagers and think they've saved the world entire. Aargh!” she growled. ”My bootlaces are too tight.”

”Allow me.” He loosened them.

Her face brightened, s.h.i.+fting in that way he recognized as the precursor to a change of subject. ”May I see Max's photos? Oh, dear Max! We must look in on him and Joseph.”

He'd forgotten. They struggled gracelessly to their feet, walruses clamoring onto a beach, he thought with amus.e.m.e.nt. She laughed at her own awkwardness. They linked elbows and wobbled together to the tent. The patients were sleeping, their heads cooler to the touch than before. ”Good,” she p.r.o.nounced. ”Perhaps they are past the crisis.”

Returning to his tent felt like balancing on a tightrope instead of treading through sand. They held hands. He steered and she followed, each step a challenge in coordination. At last he opened the flap and they dropped down on the camera cases. ”Ah,” she said, smiling, her eyes half closed. ”The photos?”

”Of course, my pleasure.”

They were calotypes, he explained, gingerly lifting them from their cases one by one. She wanted to see all of them, dwelling with special interest on the Sphinx and Philae. ”Oh, and there is one of your crewman.” She pointed to the sweet, one-eyed model. ”He's everywhere.”

”Hadji Ismael. Yes, to convey the immensity of his surroundings.”

She made a game of finding Hadji. Sometimes he was clad in Turkish trousers, a s.h.i.+rt, and a fez or turban. But more often he wore only a loincloth and white skullcap, his suntanned body dark as the cleft rock, and dramatic against the lighter stone of the monuments. He was easy to spot, slouched at Abu Simbel against the royal wig of Ramses, or seated on a ledge in the pharaoh's crown, his dangling feet in sharp focus. ”He's as still as the statues,” she observed.

Gustave laughed. ”Yes, well, Max told him the bra.s.s tube of the lens was a cannon that would shoot him if he so much as breathed. He's always terribly relieved when Max finally folds up the tripod.”

”That's awful,” she protested, giggling. ”Would you have lied to him?”

”I don't know. But Max is all business, you see. He regards people as instruments in his various plans.” It was only a matter of time, he decided as he spoke, before Max cas.h.i.+ered him for a more influential friend.

”But, you see, Hadji's not in all the photos.” He handed her an expansive view of Abu Simbel with the Nile flowing past the temples like molten metal. ”Max took this one from high on the opposite sh.o.r.e.”

”Ah!” she exclaimed. ”There's the sand ramp we climbed every day. I had no idea it was so imposing.” She sipped at her drink. ”The camera sees so much better than the eye, really.” She studied a panoramic vista of the cataracts. ”For instance, in this one it could be the eye of G.o.d.”

Perhaps that was why he hated to be photographed. The camera was inhumanly accurate, and, yes, like being seen by G.o.d, whose existence he had outgrown, save for the resentment of being spied upon.

”Here's one of you, is it?”

Max had taken the image of him skulking in the garden behind the Hotel du Nil against his wishes. He was wearing his long white flannel robe with the signature pom-pommed hood. ”I detest being photographed,” he said.

He topped off their gla.s.ses and carried them outside in order to smoke. Following him, she plopped down on the sand without ado. ”I'm feeling the rak more.”

”Oh?”

”Things are spinning.” She pointed skyward. ”The moon. The stars. It feels as if I've been twirling and got dizzy. Not entirely pleasant, I must say.”

”I'm drunk, too,” he confessed. ”Ivre et heureux, ivre et heureux,” he sang to the tune of ”Frere Jacques.” ”Toi aussi. Toi aussi.”

They were silent for a moment.

”I might need to lie down.” she said. Which was just as well since the pipe smoke was scorching his already dry throat.

They hurried back inside. ”Much better,” she said, flat on his carpet bed.

”You should sleep.”

”But it's not that I'm tired. In fact, I'm soaring like a bird.” Her eyes were fixed on the tent top as if it were a masterpiece. ”No wonder the men take brandy after dinner.” She laughed. ”I always imagined them solving mankind's problems. Wait until I tell Parthe! Oh, you should meet my sister.”

He had no interest in meeting the sister. ”I'd be honored.” He hated to be polite when he was in his cups.

”She's such a prune, no curiosity whatsoever, but very dear nonetheless. They're all very dear, you know? How can I hate people who have been good to me all my life? But how can I love them when they refuse to understand the first thing about me?”

”I love my sweet old maman. But when she chatters on I simply close the door.” He drained his gla.s.s. ”Have you tried flattery on them?”

”I don't expect flattery from a woman carries much weight.”

He pondered it. No doubt she was right. Though he was naturally suspicious of flattery from either s.e.x.

”I'm so worried.” She sobbed suddenly. ”Trout, the poor old battle-ax. She never harmed a fly, really, and never would.”

As he reached to comfort her, she snuggled her face and fists into his shoulder without protest, rather like a squirrel with a nut. Patting her in a way he hoped was supportive, he couldn't think of anything clever or comforting to say. Drinking could leave him stupid and boorish, inclined to recitations of Corneille, the theorems of Pythagoras, s.m.u.tty ballads, or the conjugation of irregular verbs. And so he said nothing. Eventually they dozed off, each of them a lump of incoherence.

He awoke to find her beside him, sound asleep. What luxury, what privilege to observe her at his leisure! It felt almost illicit. But since he suspected that a sleeping person could sense another's gaze-the heat of it-instead of staring, he stole long, furtive glances at the individual hairs of her brows, the whorls of her ear, which were less fleshy than his, her smaller earlobes. Her eyelids were s.h.i.+ny and translucent, with faint pink squiggles that were invisible when her eyes were open. A brown smudge in the shape of a pickle covered part of one cheek. Her hands were ravis.h.i.+ng, as if a sculptor had idealized them, the fingers slender and tapering, the skin creamy as vellum.

Moving quietly as a breeze, he gathered half a ream of paper and some flour, then crept outside the tent so as not to disturb her. He tore the paper into tiny shreds, added the flour, and reentered the tent to moisten the mixture. It was an act of faith to use so much of the rak.

Sitting beside her p.r.o.ne figure, he applied the mixture to her hand, molding it to the bones. He worked deliberately, with focus and delight. His head was buzzing. The gluey stuff smelled like a cabinetmaker's shop. Plaster of Paris would have been better, but this would suffice.

”Oh, my.” She opened her eyes. ”What are you doing?” She sounded drunk, her words slurred.

”Making a model of your wrist. Then I'll have it cast into an objet d'art for my study at home.” A sculpture of her wrist arranged on his desk alongside his dictionary and inkstand, his travel treasures-a mummy, stones from the Parthenon, egret feathers, Rossignol's note to G.o.d. . .

”Mmm,” she hummed, closing her eyes again.

He remembered the process exactly, as if no time had pa.s.sed since he and Caroline fas.h.i.+oned heads for their puppets. The papier-mache squeezes he'd made with Aouadallah at Abu Simbel had been something of a refresher course, though they'd cracked and had to be redone in the usual way. Max had been displeased. Yes, displeased was the word he used, as if Gustave were his employee.

”It feels very nice. Cool.” She rearranged her feet and sighed. ”Have you noticed that the worst loneliness is to be in the wrong company?”

”True.” He could not divide his attention, not when he was on the verge of achieving a perfectly smooth surface. Was this not what Bernini experienced, releasing the figures yearning to be set free from the carrera? Though that was sculpture, of course. So, not freeing a figure, then, but catching one-a living, breathing subject-and fixing it in time.

”You went away,” she said vaguely. ”People I wish to leave me never do. But I didn't want you to.”

He was ecstatic, the strands adhered to the pads of his fingers all of a sudden imbued with the spark of life. ”I never left you, Rossignol. And never would. We are in Egypt, after all. Where would I go?” Indeed, in this moment, she was Egypt. And in Egypt their friends.h.i.+p would likely remain. Any future they had was dim, inscrutable. Letters arriving in the post with talk of Shakespeare.

”You did.” Her eyes were still closed. ”You went to Old Koseir. And then I lacked the nerve. Though I was planning to, thank you very much.” She opened her eyes and, with her other hand, moved the lamp closer. ”That is so kind!” she marveled, her voice high and incredulous. ”You are making a squeeze of my hand?”

”Of your wrist, actually. But not a squeeze-a cast.” He explained again that he would have it fas.h.i.+oned in bronze, for his desk.

”What a lovely thought.” She stifled a yawn. ”So full of sentiment. I quite like the idea of my hand being a guardian angel on your desk.”

He'd commission Pradier to cast it. No, not bronze. Alabaster or marble-like the bust of Caroline-the veins in the stone suggesting the delicate tracery within her flesh.

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