The Twelve Rooms of the Nile Part 28

"I think you've forgotten about it." She pretended to pout. Whatever her complaint was, it didn't seem serious. She was giving a comical performance of herself. Starring, directed, and adapted for the tent by that master storyteller, rak.

"I most definitely have not," he insisted, playing along.

"I think you have." At this she wagged her finger at him playfully. What a mild inebriate she was.

"Well, then, I apologize if I've offended you," he said, propping her arm on a shallow box to dry.

"Merci beaucoup. I accept."

It would be so easy to take advantage of her while she was sauced. He pictured what lay beneath her skirt, another entry in the encyclopedia, a c.u.n.t to match her adorable chin and lips. The size of a mouse, he thought, warm and pink and furry- But no, he knew her too well. Whenever he felt a deep bond, it was impossible to violate it, to inflict harm. For alongside his cynical p.r.o.nouncements, he was hopelessly loyal, extravagantly forgiving to the point of weakness. He couldn't hold a grudge. Though Alfred had ended their friendship without explanation, he had sat holding the man's hand at his deathbed, and guarded the body all night. He'd never felt a moment's anger either-just grief. To seduce her now would be betrayal. He'd always known that friendship carried a high price. He was glad she had no inkling of her power over him.

"Trout has a lover," said Flo abruptly. She tapped on her gla.s.s.

"Good Lord! What makes you say that?"

"Promise me you won't tell anyone, though-especially Max."

"I promise, on my dear mother's life." Suddenly he ached for his mother. She must miss him terribly. He'd nearly canceled the journey at the outset, weeping prodigiously on the train from Rouen to Paris, the anguished indecision continuing for hours at Max's apartment. Then he'd written her to tell of his upheaval, and somehow that had helped.

"I read her journal. She seems to have written him love letters she never mailed. I suppose she didn't want to provoke my suspicion."

"What will you do?"

"I don't know." It was clear from her tone that she hadn't yet posed this question of herself.

He blew on her wrist and fanned it. "Je suis desole. La pauvre Truite. Et la pauvre Rossignol."

Again, he woke first. She lay sprawled on the carpet. The cast had dried. He leaned down, preparing to cut it off, when she opened her eyes and fastened on him. She studied him unself-consciously, indeed boldly scrutinizing his face. It was like being admired, he thought. "Don't move," he said, sawing carefully through the cast with his pocketknife. He lifted the cast off. "Thank you."

Again, that series of shifting expressions that denoted she was about to change the subject flickered across her face. She would have made a terrible liar, a worse card player.

She rose up on one elbow and leaned toward him so close he could see the aura of fine hairs on her cheek in the lamplight. He smelled liquor. Her breath? His? They were besotted with rak, pickled in it.

"Would you pa.s.s me the bowl, please?" she said.

He handed it to her. She picked up the spoon still stuck in the pa-pier-mache and stirred it halfheartedly. "Do you think it needs more rak? That is what you used, isn't it?"

"Yes. And yes." He scrambled on his knees to retrieve the bottle and gave it to her. She tipped a few more drops into the bowl.

"I should like to make a mold of your face, Gustave. Would you mind?" Her lips, he noticed, were chapped and starting to peel.

He liked the idea, just as he liked it when she stared at him. "Please do."

Neither of them moved.

Grinning, she said, "I think you should lie down, don't you?"

If she were any other woman, he'd have thought she was seducing him. Which she wasn't, but the thought set him tingling anyway as he reclined on the kilim rug.

Kneeling above him, she covered his face quickly, spreading the mixture in globs cold and slick as Maman's cold cream. Did skin absorb liquid through the pores? The mere possibility soothed him; he was parched again.

"I think I shall die of boredom." She smoothed his laden forehead. "Or of idleness."

"Nonsense. You shall live to be a hundred."

"What's the use if I spend it ordering mutton chops and listening to empty chatter?" She tilted his chin up. "Hold still, I'm going to do your nose."

He had no desire to move. Her touch was exquisite, hypnotic. Delicate as baby Caroline's, the sort that relaxed every fiber and nerve. He felt all of a piece, one calm texture, like a bowl of pudding, or the sea.

"But if I don't marry, I have a chance of a better future."

The masque was tightening, making his skin tingle. It occurred to him there might not be a future. They might not live to reach Kenneh. Max and Joseph might already be dead in their tent while he himself was nothing but hardening dust, a man lying on his back while an attentive and lovely woman rimmed his nostrils with glop. Was it a mere accident that they were alone and completely soused? Though he didn't believe in G.o.d, he'd always allowed himself a secret, halfhearted faith in destiny, in the dexterity, pointedness, and utter appropriateness of fate. If it was good enough for the Greeks . . .

Perhaps he could allow himself to bed her after all. o.r.g.a.s.m was the only thing that silenced his mind, the closest thing to G.o.dliness he knew-each coup, Creation repeated anew.

Now there was some gorgeous garbage! Je merite le premier prix de la merde.

She turned and scrutinized him. "One more bit." She reached for something with her hand.

In the next moment, she smeared the mixture over his mouth, blending it into his cheeks and chin with quick, feathery strokes. It felt pleasantly sticky, like jam. Twice, in a gesture he found arousing, she inserted the tip of the spoon to fashion a slit so he could breathe and talk. "There, it's done," she said softly. "Now we wait until you are dry."

"I'll just lie here," he muttered through the mask.

"I'm afraid I shan't be able to capture your eyes or mouth. You'll have holes there instead."

This hardly sounded appealing. Weren't the eyes the portal to the soul?

She wiped her hands on her skirt. "And now I am going to give you my profile."

Did she mean a drawing of herself? Perhaps by Selina? He'd hang it above his desk, near the mummy, egret feathers- "Look at me," she commanded.

He obliged. Turned to the side, she sat stiffly erect, her neck regal, only one eye visible, like the jack in a deck of cards.

"I'm looking." Was he to draw her silhouette?

"If you wish to talk to me, you must address my profile. This is how Sultan Abdulmecid conducts audiences."

Gustave did not know how to respond.

"I wish I could speak with my family like this," she went on. "You see, a face in profile is powerful because it's inscrutable."

True enough, he thought. It was a wonder the European monarchs hadn't hit upon this trick. Nothing of her affect was revealed. He might as well be talking to a postage stamp.

"Also, the sultan is frequently seated behind a carved screen, making it even more difficult. I know you are going to Constantinople, so-"

"Mmm." He had to mutter like a ventriloquist or risk breaking the mold. "I don't expect to be granted an interview"-he took a breath through his nose-"with the Sublime Porte."

She leaned over him and dabbed more plaster on the rims of his nostrils. "I want to know how it feels to be so superior that one doesn't have to look another in the face."

"That tickles." His eyes watered from the effort of suppressing the itch.

"I'm sorry. Try not to sneeze." She resumed her imperial posture. "You may address me now," she said, with the hard perfection of a struck coin.

"I cannot think what to say." A wave of desire pa.s.sed through him.

"Imagine that I am your ruler, your Solomon," she said to the side of the tent. "What dispute shall I settle for you then?"

He did have a problem. Suddenly he wanted her. But how to plead his case, how to ask her? I come to you with a rising c.o.c.k that all day has wanted to crow. "I can't think of a thing," he mumbled, taking care not to open his mouth.

"Then I shall question you. But do try not to move your face." She asked his age and height, the names of his parents, how many cousins he had. (He was astonished to learn she had twenty-seven first cousins.) She wanted to know if he'd ever been engaged. She told him she wished he were her brother.

Her mouth was neither full nor meager, with a well-shaped upper lip. He wanted to kiss her, a desire perversely strengthened by his inability to do so from behind his mask. She chattered on without emotional force about her relatives and pets.

He dozed off and woke to feel her working the mask free from his mouth. "I would like to kiss you," he said drowsily.

"My father kisses me on the cheek."

As she popped the mask free, his face felt suddenly refreshed. "Then I shall kiss you on the mouth, Sultan Abdulmecid."

Behind her closed lips, her teeth were a fortification. Obviously she didn't know she was supposed to open her mouth. Drawing back, he lifted her hand and placed her fingers in his mouth. She shivered. Then he reached forward and placed his own finger in her mouth. When he kissed her again, her lips were pliant, her mouth open. She held her breath.

He was refilling their gla.s.ses. "I should take you to your tent."

"Mmm. But let me lie here just a little longer." She opened her eyes and closed them again.

"Would you allow me to make another cast of you?"

"I might. Yes."

She turned toward him and drifted off in his arms.

Twelve hours of night felt like a day, a week, a life. Again, they stumbled to Joseph's tent, where they found the patients no worse. They woke and slept, woke and slept, talked and murmured nonsense. He had never felt so comfortable with another person in his bed.

At some point he began quite naturally to caress her, his hand on her waist, then sliding up her ribs, a tidy but exotic landscape of concavities and rises. He kept his eyes closed, seeing only with his hand. She touched his face, tentatively, then with more vigor, stroking his cheeks, feeling his ears, nose, and lips.

But he must not, he reminded himself, could not, for many reasons, the first of which was that at Koseir he'd found a single chancre on his p.e.n.i.s. In a matter of weeks, he'd know if it was the pox. He'd bring himself off outside the tent later on, but now he gave himself to the slow pleasure of touch. Alcohol was a beautiful thing. If he had children, G.o.d forbid, he would name the first one Rak. Slowly, so that she would perceive what was happening to her in her fog, he unb.u.t.toned the top of her bodice. And then, in order not to frighten her, he hit upon a clever scheme, placing her own hand on her breast and then covering it with his.

"Oh," she said, gasping. She touched his face again with her free hand and slid her other hand out from under his.

He had felt a staggering number of b.r.e.a.s.t.s over the years, all reduced now to zero. This was the first, the only one that mattered. When her nipple hardened in his palm he became light-headed, his c.o.c.k so hard it was bobbing up of its own accord, practically straining against his shorts. Knowing she'd be frightened if she felt it, he moved his hips back, even now feeling the pressure of his swollen t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es. He put it out of his mind. Her breast, her breast, her breast . . . Her arm. Her neck. He was fading into and out of his body on waves of rapture.

He must distract himself or explode. He reached for the bowl of papier-mache. "Wait, don't move," he said. He added some rak and mixed it up. "This is going to feel cool."

She opened her eyes to see what he was up to.

He folded her bodice out of the way to reveal her breast. "I am going to make a mold of your heart."

When he next awoke, he wondered if he'd suffered a nervous attack. So complete was the oblivion from which he emerged that at first he couldn't be sure whose consciousness was peering out through his eyes. Was this what animals felt-sensation without ident.i.ty?

Alone, he sat up and lifted the tent flap, clasping it under his neck. It was light out, the Orient's bellyful of colors faded to a dun expanse. The camels were bunched on the ground, grotesque swans. And there was Miss Nightingale's white tent, medieval-looking with its decorative fringe and flag. Was it morning? Afternoon? No one was about. He closed the flaps and lay back down.

His head felt heavy and swollen, as if wrapped in a ream of sopping squeeze paper, while his mouth was dry as a broom. Thirst. That was how the previous day had begun and ended, with a thirst beyond words, beyond enduring. He recalled a stream of pilgrims on the road, calabashes hanging from the pommels of their saddles, their bad-tempered wives screaming out an unending chorus of disapproval.

Trout. Privately, he had wept for her, though not in front of Miss Nightingale, thinking it would alarm her even more. And Max, seriously ill. Joseph, too. He prayed Max was better, though he didn't love him and never would, he realized hazily-not the way he loved Bouilhet and Alfred. Still, Max was the best of companions for an adventure-fussy and ambitious, perhaps, but never too cautious.

Abruptly, a memory of Miss Nightingale surfaced, her mouth moving quickly, her neck rigid. The word Abdulmecid. . . . Abdulmecid, repeated in his mind like the tolling of a distant bell.

Inside a bandbox, he found the two casts he'd made.

Something had been said, not in profile, but looking straight at each other. What the devil was it? It had been, well, poetic. Poignant. He had promised himself to remember.

25.

AMONG THE ABABDEH.

Never having ridden her camel at a gallop, Flo was amazed at how rapidly the riders she first glimpsed churning up dust flurries at the horizon materialized at the camp: Pere Elias and his houseboy, Hakim, both showered with fine grit and wearing kaffiyehs over their faces. The forward contingent of Trout's search party!

Dazed by thirst, her head still throbbing from last night's rak, she stood up, spilling the last plate of beans and apricot paste onto the sand.

Pere Elias promptly ordered his camel to kneel and slid to the ground. "Mademoiselle Nightingale," he cried. "We have found you at last! You are all right, I hope?"

Of course you have found me, she thought. I am not the one who is lost. "Thirsty," she replied. "Have you any water?"

"Plenty." He leaned over his camel. "We carry a full load, six skins each." He hurried to her, kissed both cheeks, and handed her two goatskins.

"It is good to see you. Please, excuse me." She raised a skin above her head and, to her surprise, squirted a perfect liquid arc into her mouth. Hakim shifted on his feet. "Bonjour," he muttered. She acknowledged him by shutting her eyes as she gulped and swallowed, gulped and swallowed.

"And where are the gentlemen?" the consul asked.

She pointed to Joseph's tent. "Malades," she managed, "with fever." Her belly was cramping. She stopped drinking and placed the damp goatskin against her cheek. "All but Gustave, who is inspecting rocks for petroglyphs." In fact, he had gone to relieve himself.

Mohammed and the crew members welcomed the riders, bowing to Pere Elias and embracing Hakim. How did they know him? Were they his relatives? she wondered. Cousins?