The Book on Fire (17 page)

“Who’s the girl?” Makarios asked me.

“Ask her.”

He jutted his black beard at Shireen, raised his eyebrows.

“My name is Shireen. I’m here to read Balthazar’s books.”

“Good, good. Are you a churchgoer?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never had the opportunity.”

“You’re welcome to stop by some evening. Good drink, good company.
All the host you can eat. Do you play badminton?”

“I never have.”

“Balthazar here is champion. Snappy wrist, quick feet. Karim’s
getting cocky in your absence, Balthazar. I’d be good, but my gut weighs me
down. And I can’t see out of my eyebrows. And these robes aren’t designed for
sport. Well, I thought we might take communion together. What do you say?” He
cocked a caterpillar eyebrow at Shireen, who nodded. “Fantastic!” He pulled out
a gold loaf, broke it across the stamped skull, releasing a gout of steam.
“Fresh from the oven,” he said. “Baked it myself.” He passed the bread
around—“This is my body”—pulled out a wedge of cheese and a jar of olives. “Go
to it. Fondling always brings up the appetite. Mind if I smoke?” He hauled his
pipe from somewhere within his garments, tapped the stale ashes onto my rag
rug, filled it, and set a match to the bowl. He ate and drank as he smoked,
spewing crumbs with each exhalation. “You have a nice perch here, Balthazar.
But where are the books?”

“Hidden.”

“Best policy. Read any theology lately? Of course, it’s all
theology. We try to fool ourselves, we say they’re just stories, just
entertainment, but it’s all theology. And you’re a reader too, sister?” Shireen
nodded with her mouth full. “Excellent. I can’t keep up with Balthazar, of
course, too many widows to comfort, but I like a little book chat now and then.
He’s read everything. Well, you know that, being a reader and all. But I do try
to keep abreast of the latest heresies. Even tried to write a gospel myself
once. Didn’t go so well. I’m a preacher, not a scribe. But I thought it would
have a nice ring: The Gospel According to Makarios. Everyone should write a
gospel, in my opinion. Have you written one?”

“I’m afraid not.”

“Give it a go. You’ll find it very liberating. Are you a thief?”

“Balthazar’s trying to teach me.”

“Couldn’t have a bettor tutor. Myself excepted, of course. Come
along to the Kanisa some night and I’ll give you a few tips. Might even show
you my little collection of gnostic blasphemy. Are you sure you don’t want to
see my testicles?”

She laughed. “Quite sure, thank you.”

“Well, I must be off. Appointment with a grieving widow, you know,”
he winked. “She likes nothing better than to juggle my filthy nuts.” And he was
off, leaving behind two bottles of sweet wine, his sacred stench, and a
triangle of black cloth like a pirate’s pennant on the jamb where he’d squeezed
through the door.

****

She
read all morning to finish the last of my books, then slept all evening. She
woke at midnight. “I’d like to go to church,” she said.

“I don’t know if that’s a good idea.”

“The priest invited me.”

“Well ...”

“Am I a prisoner?”

“All right.”

We dressed and walked to the Kanisa. Abuna Makarios opened the door
to a congregation of Karim, Amir, and Nura. Karim clutched his heart as Shireen
pulled her veil aside.

“Zeinab?” he stammered. “But you’re bald!”

“This is Shireen,” I said. “A friend.”

“Is she a thief?” Amir asked suspiciously.

“Indubitably. Look at her shoes.”

“What do you steal?” Karim asked.

“Leave her alone,” Nura said. “She’s my friend,” and she put an arm
around Shireen’s waist and led her to the table.

“No, I want an answer. What does she steal?”

“Can’t you see she’s shy?” Nura scolded.

“I’ll answer.” Shireen’s voice was quiet. “I’ve come to this city
from far away, farther than the north pole or the moon. You want to know what I
steal, what I’ll take away from here? The sun on the bay at dawn, a croissant
at the Trianon, curtains in a breeze, moths in jasmine, blue palm prints on
whitewashed walls, crows, flamboyants, minarets. And Nura’s smile, and
Balthazar’s kiss.”

Karim looked dubious, but luckily Makarios, who’d been rummaging in
the sacristy, now blew through the curtains like a black gale, bearing a tray
with drinks and communion bread slathered with olivada. “Ah, my pretty sister,
welcome, welcome. Delighted you could come. Choose a drink, my dear: ouzo, arak,
karkadeh. Blood of Christ, of course.”

Karim subsided with his ouzo but still glared at Shireen. He
brightened when I challenged him to a badminton match. We played with our
drinks in our hands, ice clashing as we zigzagged the court. On the brink of
fifteen I thought better of it and lobbed the shuttlecock into the shadows. It
nosedived into Amir’s glass. I let Karim snatch the game and he smirked as he
walked off the court. “Balthazar’s lost his touch. Distracted by the bald
interloper, I believe. Better luck next time, book thief.” Sitting down
opposite Shireen, he called for a celebratory round of ouzo. He downed three in
succession and was soon beetroot and bellicose. “So why Balthazar?” he said.
“What does Balthazar the bookworm have to offer?”

“He likes to read.”

“Reading’s for children and grandmothers. Pages filled with fake
ghosts. When you’ve seen a real ghost you can’t be bothered with the paper
variety.”

“You’ve seen ghosts?”

“Every night.”

“Could you take me to see one?”

“All you’d see is dust, you’d feel the wind on your neck. I know
readers. You fuck around with belief so much you don’t know what’s real
anymore. You wouldn’t know a ghost if it bit your ass. This city is filled with
ghosts and dreamers, passing each other in the street. I watch them walk
through each other. Only those of us who spend time with the dead, with bones
and winding sheets, can see the spirits.”

“But books are filled with ghosts.”

“Books are wood chips and oak galls. Don’t fool yourself, darling.”

“I love to fool myself.”

“That’s the problem. Right there,” said Karim. He shook up
cigarettes, held one out to her. She shook her head. “You’ve boxed yourself in
with books and have to squint at the world through little chinks between the
pages. Of course you’ve never met a ghost. Here’s what I suggest.” He lit his
cigarette, inhaled, then held the burning match out to her. His words came out
on a raft of smoke, tousling the flame. “One little match, darling. Solve all
your problems. Clear the cataracts from your eyes. Take my medicine.”

Shireen looked at me in alarm. “Teach me to play.” She gestured to
the badminton court. So I showed her how to hold the racket, made her practice
swinging it, then served to her. She shrieked and closed her eyes as the
shuttlecock descended. We tried again and again. I finally got her to keep her
eyes open, but then she’d forget to swing. At last, when the shuttlecock had
bounced off her forehead, she collapsed giggling, racket clattering to a halt
beside her.

Abuna Makarios seized Shireen’s arm and dragged her away. “Come see
my books,” he said.

 “Careful with that rascal,” Nura called as they went up the stairs.
“If he gropes you, pull his eyebrows.” Makarios winked at me and mimed buggery
behind Shireen’s ascending derriere.

 They were gone a long time and, concerned, I climbed the stairs to
Makarios’s belfry hideaway, but they were sitting side by side on his bed, bent
over a heretical text and deep in discussion about the existence of angels.
Shireen seemed shocked that some denied their reality. “But surely,” she was
saying, “I mean, they come into so many books. And it seems natural that some
people would have developed wings.”

“I agree. Haven’t seen them myself, mind, but I’m sure they’re out
there. Perhaps further north. Or east. Ah, Balthazar, what do you think? Do
angels exist?”

“Why not?”

“Excellent answer. Well, shall we join the others?”

We descended the stairs. Shireen was beside me, and I felt her
stiffen. Looking up, I saw only the pockets of candlelight, eyes of icons. But
then a blue shadow detached itself from the doorframe. Zeinab had arrived.

She and Shireen stared at each other. I couldn’t breathe, let alone
speak. “Aren’t you going to introduce us?” Zeinab laughed. Her voice, after
Shireen’s murmur, clashed like rusty cymbals.

“I don’t think we need introductions,” Shireen said. Her voice
shook. I thought it was fear, then saw the brightness in her look.

Makarios looked from one to the other, bewildered. “You know each
other?” he said.

“Not yet,” Zeinab told him. She seized Shireen’s hand and, before I
could muster a word, whirled her out the door, into the night.

****

I was
the last to leave the Kanisa that evening. I waited for Zeinab to return with
my prize, but the hours passed. I played badminton and chess, drank arak. I
held a book on my lap, but couldn’t see the words. Makarios was yawning. “I’m
off to bed, librarian. Blow out the candles before you leave.”

All that night I walked through the city, peering into every
doorway, veering into every alley, horrified by the imagined conversations in
my head. Horrified and mesmerized. I tried to hush the voices, shove them under
by blabbering poetry, but they surfaced, insidious. Returning to my rooms, I
fell asleep athwart my mattress, fully clothed, and immediately entered a
vision.

Two girls are dancing across the rooftops of Alexandria, books in
their hands, matches in their hands, leaving comet tails, peacock plumage of
sparks in their wake, two girls in blue, blue-veiled against the sky. Their
thin-soled shoes are so light on the tiles and crenellation they seem to
scamper on a wafer of oxygen, never touching down. They pirouette on minarets,
shimmy down domes, slipping gravity’s leash so they can tiptoe eave to eave,
their stepping-stones sparks and gnats and fraying smoke rings. The books in
their hands are flowers, kites, fireworks, balloons. One lights a book and
passes it to the other, who holds it heavenward like a burning offering, and it
is accepted, gathered into the sky, lifted on the cord of the smoke it generates.
And they are dancing and opening books, the leaves ripped unread and lifted on
their own hot breath across the sea, above the towers and domes of the city,
torn apart by their own wings, and each morsel, bearing its cargo of word or
syllable beneath an evanescent parasol, rising to join the stars.

Lying on my bed, I whispered to them, my dancing figments. This was
a new species of sadness. The sadness of starlight traveling a million years to
crumple in the bay, of Oum Koulsoum’s contralto detailing the remnants of a
lover’s campsite, the sadness of writing a letter you’ll never send. I imagined
them dervishing on minarets over the bay, blue skirts parasols, sea breeze
whalebone, fingers plucking stars like figs, slipping them beneath their veils.

****

A
veiled figure shook me awake. I sat up, my head a heart. “What did you do with
her?” I gasped, then saw the book-shaped pupils. “Oh. Sorry. Welcome back.” She
lifted her veil and I could see in her face the afterglow of something.

“Where were you?”

“Out for a rooftop stroll.”

“What did she tell you?”

“Secrets.”

“I have to know. Did she ... did she light a match?”

“You know I won’t say.”

“What did you talk about?”

“All secrets, Balthazar.”

“Did you talk about me?”

“Hush.”

We went onto the balcony. Skyful of ash. Now she could lean over the
balustrade, thirsty for the light and space. She took a bath, read a little,
went to sleep. I lay beside her all that day while she slept, watching her
breathe, watching the small struggles of her face, the ebb and flow of her
dreams. Sometimes she said a word, in a language unknown to me. Sometimes her
eyelids would part and she seemed to look at me but she saw her secret pages.
Twelve hours she slept, then woke at dusk.

“This is the last night, isn’t it?” I said.

She nodded.

“Is there anything I could ...?”

“You’ve been wonderful. These have been the most lovely days. Oh,
the books. I’ll never forget reading your books in your room. That shelf is on
fire, I see it in flames and unconsumed. And those wonderful meals. And the
city, so many things, the lights, the faces. Lions and roses. The night we went
stealing, the girl who found us—the angel in her nightgown, bearing kofta
sandwiches. And your kiss, of course. This has been my two-week marriage. To my
demon, my thief.” She turned her small fist in my hand. “But now I have to go
down again. This has been a necessary holiday, more beautiful than I’d
imagined, but I’m a creature of dark corners, dusty passages. The books are my
family, I have to return to them.”

“I’m ... I’m angry.”

“Yes.”

“I’ll see you again. Down there.”