Notorious (7 page)

He raises both arms, as though he is holding the desert and the sky. ‘Returning travellers fell to their knees and kissed the earth. They knew the desert is a secret life waiting to be found.’

‘I don’t have time,’ I say. ‘Don’t you understand?’

His arms drop. ‘Maybe it is beyond your control. Maybe you don’t have the right to make decisions about – ’ He pauses.

‘About her?’ I step forward. ‘And you think you do?’

‘Take off your tie, Monsieur,’ he says. ‘That would be a start.’

The generator begins its steady thudding beat. Laforche shakes his head irritably but somehow, in between the dulled strokes, I am more aware of the silence of the desert, how far we are from the city, from Mitch’s bullet-point memos and deadlines. Even the word “silence” is misleading. I hear whispers inside the sky; I imagine the wind pressing down on lost civilisations, solitaries, map-makers. Criminals.

The Asylum has ten patients, Laforche says, all women. Six novices at the most, instructed under Sister Antony. ‘This from a century ago, Rimbaud’s time, when a hundred, two hundred, would be cared for here. Travellers, leprosy sufferers, French soldiers with the usual desert sicknesses: syphilis, opium addiction.’

He takes out an immaculate white handkerchief and pats his face although there is no sweat that I can see. I shift uneasily; my shirt is sticking to my back.

‘The good Sister thinks prayers will be enough to save the Asylum,’ says Laforche. ‘The Church, of course, hears so many prayers it has become immune. “Asylum” is not a friendly word.’

‘Sister Antony will go?’

‘To a bed in a less desirable convent. She made enemies thirty years ago with her criticism, her attempts at improvements. True solitaries are always feared. And the Church has a long memory. She will be working until the day she dies.’

We walk through the archway, climb two circles of broad stone steps and come out into a hexagonal room. There are narrow windows set in every wall. Light pours in yet the stone keeps the heat out, so far. The shutters are clipped back and here, finally, is the wind. It flows across the room, pressing sand flecks into my cheek.

There are two long desks piled with books and papers, a feathered pen in an inkpot, a decanter filled with red liquid, a half-full glass, more books in an open chest on the floor. A smaller table with three chairs, a rug, a chunky wooden bureau with an ornate silver lock. A low divan in the corner is covered with an unexpectedly rich sapphire blue velvet quilt and long silk cushions embroidered with flowers and peacocks.

‘This is where he wrote,’ says Laforche. He points at the divan. ‘And lay there, for times of reverie. Not the same divan, unfortunately. Although we let people think it is.’

A book with a cracked red wooden cover is open on the nearest desk, its yellowing pages covered with large meticulous writing in ink. The date at the top catches my eye:
Abu N’af. September 30,
1890
. I read:

When I was lost in the desert, among sands the colour of saffron,
I raised my head and saw on the horizon, monks moving in the spaces
between the dust spirals. These travellers were frail, their robes full
of wind. By their presence, you see the wind. They walked backwards
against the furious air, their heads down. Clouds swirled around them,
the sun glinted off the metal crosses of the novices, the gold cross of the
abbot. I thought they were a mirage until I came to Abu N’af.

A silverfish or some creature has crawled across the right-hand page and expired. Its body is long gone but there is the faint spiky outline of brown bones pressed into the yellowing paper.

‘Rimbaud wrote in English?’ I say.

Laforche grins. ‘You would be astounded, Monsieur, how few of our tour groups ask that question.’

‘So this is – ?’

‘A translation,’ he says smoothly. ‘For display, since the late 1970s.’

The page has scorch marks, as though made by a candle. I touch the skeletal stain with my finger. ‘The silverfish is a nice touch.’

‘Sister Antony is very dedicated.’

‘Sister Antony did this translation?’

‘Sister Antony did all our translations. She could already see the benefits of the never-ending curiosity of the English tourist.’ He half-bowed in my direction. ‘And American, of course.’

‘Of course.’

I turn the page, reading at random:

Entering the desert is like entering the ultimate book, in which the
voice is that of ourselves, alike but different, a radical stranger . . . In
the desert madness is an asset . . . It is tedious when a journal is filled
with doom and premonitions. Who’s to say that gaps weren’t left in
the beginning and filled in later, to retroactively forecast momentous
events, national disasters? There’s no point spinning elaborate scenarios
about loneliness and rage and revenge. Just say it plainly. Just say:
I frequently dreamed that my hair was a cold flag of rain and my
hands were coated with tomb dust.

‘Your tour groups would appreciate it more if they couldn’t touch it,’ I say. ‘Human nature.’

‘That is why,’ says Laforche, ‘reluctantly we show them this.’ He goes to the bureau, takes out a large key and fits it into the silver lock. He lifts out a silver box studded with small rubies. The hinged lid is elaborately patterned. Laforche raises it and carefully takes out a book wrapped in ivory silk. On top are two gloves of white kid leather. Putting on the gloves, he delicately opens the book.

The cover is made of black leather, cracked now in places but still supple enough to show it is of the finest quality. The pages are almost translucent. I am reminded of onion skin; there are faint lines running through the waxy surface.

‘Wax weave pressing,’ says Laforche. His voice has a hushed quality as though he is speaking in a church. ‘A very old process. Very slow. Traditional.’

I bend. The pages are covered in black ink. The writing is in French.

Laforche says, ‘Arthur Rimbaud’s diary.’

‘He left it here?’

Laforche hesitates. ‘It was gifted to us, by a relative of the last owner.’

‘And the English one, the one translated by Sister Antony, is an exact copy?’

He hesitates again. ‘Yes.’

I point at the French writing. ‘Does he write about his journey across the Sahara?’

‘He writes about everything, Monsieur.’

The writing is bold, impatient, forward-leaning. ‘I can’t read French,’ I say.

Laforche turns the translucent page, slowly, and reads in English:

To be born intelligent is one thing. To be born reckless and stubborn
is too close to madness. In the desert, madness is an asset. Once
your mind has split and peeled backwards, once the smallest sounds
thundered in your ears, you can cope with the nothingness of it all. I
see the long line of events beginning with the muddy-kneed boy in the
farmyard shouting at his mother, see all the way to this magnificent
blasted land. In the end I had to come to the desert. It was perverse.

It was inevitable.

‘That sounds like you,’ I say.

‘But not you.’

‘Never me.’ We look at each other and laugh.

He touches the page, lets the tip of his white glove rest there.

‘Why do you like Rimbaud so much?’ I ask. ‘A guy who failed as a poet, couldn’t hack the competition, who ran away.’

‘Rimbaud left the map,’ says Laforche. ‘In his writing, he was a true explorer. All writers are explorers and guides. But he changed the world. No-one could enter his country afterwards without acknowledging his footsteps.’

‘His country?’

‘Poetry.’

‘Poetry.’ I sigh, suddenly weary. ‘There is too much poetry in my life. I never wanted it. What is it good for anyway?’

‘Compression,’ says Laforche. ‘Communication. Reality. Intensity.’

‘I have a problem with intensity already.’

‘We noticed. Yet you say you don’t care what happens to Madeleine.’

I kick the briefcase. ‘Don’t call her that.’

‘Madeleine is the symbol of France.’ He shrugs. ‘The woman, then.’

‘Laforche, there is no big conspiracy. She has information, she needs to share it. Then she can disappear back to wherever she came from.’

‘Back to the desert,’ says Laforche. ‘You want to punish her.’

I try not to think of the gun in my briefcase. I say loudly, ‘I just want the information.’

‘Or?’

‘It will screw my career.’

‘And this is so important?’

‘It’s all I’ve got.’

The doorway darkens. It is the thin woman who had been talking to the pilot. She looks me up and down and puts her hands on her hips. There are blue inked flames curling around her wrists. She says to Laforche, ‘M’sieur, you must come.’

I step forward. ‘Is it the sick bay?’

She ignores me. ‘A message from the city,’ she says to Laforche.

He looks at the two books on the table.

‘Don’t worry,’ I say. ‘I’m not interested in your precious French book.’

Laforche takes off the kid gloves. ‘Be careful,’ he says to me.

The minute they have gone, I take the camera out of my briefcase. From the top of the steps, I hear Laforche’s voice, receding.

I set my watch for two minutes and go to the book of French writing, leafing through it as quickly as I can, looking for anything that seems relevant: to the woman, to Sicily, to Koloshnovar. I try to be delicate. God forbid I should tear a page. But there are only fragments of writing with dates, words clumped in lines, sketches of camels and lumpy mountains and men on horseback. I want to find a map. It would be a solution of sorts.

I see nothing. I leave it and turn the pages of the English book.

I try to absorb whole paragraphs, to commit them to memory.

By the very act of walking, the sand under our feet changes. Reaching
for a book is like walking into the desert: we are surrounded by alien
voices, the voices of ourselves. The way ahead seems clear and fixed
but that is a mirage. Instead, we are going deeper into ourselves, deeper
into our own long-buried subversions. The white page is the desert;
the words are trails of our own lives.

Ramblings. I am impatient.

On the third night, I see a light far away as though a candle is held above
a night sea. After a while the light moves. Bedouin travellers maybe.

I turn pages, faster.

Look at the soft edges of mirages, nothing is finite. The opposite of our
cities, all those hard lines, those sharp edges which confine us but never
touch our soul. Your mind is unfettered in the desert. You go out into
the void and the void goes into you. The void is in yourself. We are
made so that nothing contents us.

I stop. Now I see where Laforche gets his ideas from.

I am like the great writer who, when he was sick, called out for a
fictional doctor, the character in one of his books. I call out for mirages
to save me and in the end the desert did. But only when I began to
believe.

A noise outside makes me go to the window. A woman is draped across a balcony on the second level. The red stone under her dark robes makes it look as though she has already fallen, is bleeding. One of the younger nuns is trying to coax her back.

I turn pages faster, feel them tear at the binding, have to slow down. I turn and turn, stopping every now and again, an ear to the stairway.

In my delirium, I saw antiquities in the sand: the giant hand of the
Assyrian god of war clawing out of the desert; nearby, the dagger from
the great statue at Ur used in the King’s battle with the panther beast.

I take a shot of this page, keep turning. More on being lost in the desert:

Can you hear all I feared and never dared to write? . . . the darkness
above me reels with hovering birds . . .

I turn quicker, barely seeing the words, until finally a heading catches my eye. Abu N’af.

On Sitting With The Polish Traveller At Abu N’af.
The watch beeps.

In desperation I take three photos, pages at random, because some word I haven’t even fully processed has caught my eye. I pick up the book with the black leather cover and my nail catches on a thicker page, at the end.

It is two pages, partially glued together, with something inside: contrasts of light and dark. A photograph. I run my nail along the gummed edges; there is only room to slide in my little finger.

A noise, close by. I hold my breath. Laforche is coming.

I can almost make out the image although I can’t quite believe what I am seeing. It is a man standing next to a line of other smaller shapes. The smaller shapes are attached to structures which I feel are made of wood. There is writing on the shapes.
Les fugitifs
. I am beginning to guess what the wooden structures are. My brain can’t process the image. 1890, I thought. That is impossible. It is impossible that there would be a –

Footsteps on the stairs. I just have time to put the book down and slide the camera into my pocket as Laforche comes into the room.

THE SECOND AFTERNON

‘A
message from Casablanca,’ Laforche says. ‘From Hafid Street.’ He looks carefully at the desk. ‘Imagine being stationed out here, a century ago. Many times Abu N’af was used as a garrison: protecting the well, you see. Then it would take weeks of hard travelling to get back to Casa. The soldiers would sit with nothing to do but play cards, dice; their uniforms crusted with sand, wet rags wrapped around their heads, enduring the flies, the scorpions. Knowing that you couldn’t leave would make it worse. But a roll of the dice never defeats chance.’

I should be used to it by now, his techniques. I should know that all I can do is wait. It is pointless asking questions.

But of course I can’t help myself. ‘What message?’

He says, ‘Your friends are coming.’

The shock opens crevasses under my skin. Mitch is coming early, just as he threatened. To show me who’s in charge? Or because of new evidence from Sicily about her husband’s death?