The Cairo Diary (15 page)

She was in such dire need that the thought of urinating there passed through her mind. She dismissed it hastily, put off less by the indecency of the act than by the fear of being caught.

Marion went down some steps and got lost again in the building's endless corridors. A spectral light forced its way as best it could through the rose windows, loopholes, and pointed windows.

Walking by a pillar, she stopped in her tracks and suddenly turned around, realizing she had just been past there.

As she turned, she became aware of a movement in the distance. In the time it took her to focus on this distant shadow, it had gone.

She thought she had made out a habit similar to those worn by the men of the fraternity. She had seen nothing more, neither a corpulent stomach nor a distinctive walk, and still less a face.

Had someone spotted her?

If so, the brother would certainly have stopped, at least greeted her, she assumed.

“He wouldn't reprimand you for being here and he could tell you where the toilets are,” whispered a little voice inside her head.

Marion rushed forward. She reached the steps, climbed onto the granite bridge where the individual had disappeared, and dashed through an arch.

At top speed, she crossed the next room in the direction of the one and only staircase the figure she was pursuing could have taken.

Running down the spiral staircase, she paused for breath by a window and saw a long courtyard down below.

The figure was trotting quickly across it. It was impossible to identify, for it was entirely covered by a black robe with a hood pulled down over the head; from a distance, it looked like a monk's habit.

Marion sped up and was soon outside again, breathing hard.

There was now no trace of her fugitive.

Because the more she thought about it, the more it seemed to her that the other person wasn't just walking, but in a hurry to escape.

That's nonsense.… It's that police story, going to your head.…

Marion sighed noisily as she got her breath back.

What an adventure! Yes, but … let's face it, adventure is a very big word.…

She thought of Brother Serge again. Of him, and of his concern for Marion to be occupied, not unduly bored.

Right, let's look on the bright side. Taking a pee isn't urgent anymore, any minute now it's going to become a catastrophe.…

The courtyard led into the guardroom, which Marion crossed, rejoicing as she saw the empty entrance booth. The cashier was warming herself with a coffee, along with one or more of the guides who were forced to wait all day in case some visitors turned up. She passed under the barbican and hurried home.

After relieving herself, she made herself some tea and took it to the corner sofa, to continue her reading.

The sight of that person fleeing in his mysterious robes titillated her.

Did the brothers usually walk along with their hoods up? She didn't have that impression.… But anything was possible.

All the same, what with the riddle she had received on her arrival, the “secret” visit to her quarters, and this strange presence, that was enough to make her ask herself a few questions! Undoubtedly the riddle was just a game, the intrusion well-meaning and designed to promote her safety, but nevertheless Marion felt the combined effect oppressive.

It's the place. It's making you paranoid. I mean
even more
paranoid than you already were.

Sooner or later, she was going to discover that the brother she had pursued had nothing to do with her; he just happened to be there and was in a hurry.

The creaking door … in the big room where I was reading. The door creaked when I stood up, as if someone was watching me and then withdrew so as not to be caught.

This hypothesis implied that she had been followed through the Mount's corridors, and spied upon.… With what aim? The fraternity had agreed to hide her, not to keep her under permanent surveillance; that wasn't part of their arrangement. She mustn't go crazy. Marion shook her head; she was going a bit too far.

It was time to move on to something else, to plunge back into Egypt during the 1920s.

From her place on the sofa, she swiftly ran through the list of items in her fridge and remembered that she had a pan of fried vegetables for lunch. Everything was settled; she had the whole day to herself.

To read.

She hadn't read three words when she got up and pushed the hall table up against the front door.

“There,” she said. “That way, my paranoia will be happy too.”

Marion stretched out under the bay window, the cup of tea in one hand and the diary in the other.

18

While Azim was attempting to identify the fourth victim, Jeremy Matheson was being jolted about at the mercy of the streetcar taking him to Giza.

After the indefinable contours of the city, the desert had an exceptionally linear appearance.

Jeremy had spent some quite long periods in this sea of sand, where the interminable horizon of saffron dunes tore at the retina, overtaxed by the contrast with an incredibly deep, indigo sky. The desert was infinity, placed within the reach of mankind. There, silence became opressive; after a few days, the absence of all sound created a continuous buzzing, before the ear and the brain became acclimatized to this scorching torpor.

Jeremy placed his palm against the glass as they approached the Giza plateau.

The triangle of pyramids imposed itself on him forcefully, like a warning of his own ephemeral nature. They did not rise up out of the desert; on the contrary, it was the desert in its entirety that unfurled before them in an endless carpet, offering as many tributes as there were grains of sand.

From the high ground in Cairo, they excited curiosity; once you were at the foot of them you trembled, both with wonder and with a fearful respect.

Line fourteen of the streetcar system terminated, five miles from the center of Cairo, in front of the Mena House Hotel, a caravansary prized by all of Western high society.

The tourist season was nearing its end, but the pyramids were attracting as many visitors as ever. The sun hadn't been up for more than two hours and already thirty or so white heads sporting extravagant hats were moving over the ridges of the Great Pyramid, standing out against the blue sky as little marks bent under the weight of effort.

Egypt was the foremost destination for all European aristocrats, all the planet's crowned heads, and their interminable hangers-on.

The Mena House Hotel was an oasis of luxury in the middle of the emerging desert, offering incomparable terraces where guests could take their rest under the watchful eyes of these outsized tombs.

Jeremy knew he was going to find her here, taking her breakfast facing the marvels. He had called the villa in Heliopolis that very morning, very early, but had been told that “Madam is not here.” At this time of day, the only place she could have spent the night was here.

She adored their rooms.

Jeremy recalled her face in the shade of a fan, and her eyes, shining with greedy lust. She and he, eating lunch at the Gezira Sporting Club. And her mouth, whispering above the fan about how she adored making love with him beneath the benevolent pyramids.

Her irreverence, her verbal effrontery in such a place, still left a hollow feeling in his belly. She had no equal when it came to asserting herself, or playing on her self-assurance with men; she did it with such charming, sexual grace that nobody ever dared say anything to her. All you could do was laugh, lower your eyes or swell out your chest when she decided to provoke, to play, and she did so with sufficient delicacy that nobody else noticed.

The heat was emerging from the ground in a thick layer as fiercely as it was descending from the sky.

Jeremy swallowed with difficulty. He was desperately thirsty.

Thirsty for what? For whom?

He closed his eyes to forget these idiotic words, these futile thoughts, and entered the hotel.

She still had the same room, the one that was set apart a little, “so we don't have to keep quiet,” as she used to say in her daring moments.

Jeremy took off his sunglasses and knocked at the door.

In the silence that followed, lucidity returned to him and he knew he had no business here. It was dangerous. For him.

A part of him began to hope that nobody would answer.

The door opened a little way, revealing a man in white-and-gold livery and a red fez.

“Sir?”

“I should like to speak to Miss Leenhart, please.”

The servant frowned. “You must be mistaken, sir. There is no Miss—”

“Show him in,” said a woman's voice behind him.

The man did so and Jeremy entered the suite with its broad bay windows, which let all the light of the plateau into the vast living room.

A wooden balcony ran along the entire length of the room. Through the open windows, the heady scent of jasmine wafted up from the hotel gardens.

Jeremy walked out to the table that had been laid out under a fabric parasol. The finest porcelain cups and plates were set out on the embroidered tablecloth, between pots of jam.

And in her rattan armchair, a woman dabbed her lips with a napkin and sat up.

Although he knew her beauty well, it took Jeremy's breath away all over again.

Her long black hair against her snow-white skin.

Her large, green eyes beneath a fringe of incredibly long lashes.

Her cheeks, whose roundness was emphasized on the left by a beauty spot right in the middle. Her arms, so long and slender.

She was wearing a green dress that fell open at both sides below her hips, and that Jeremy had never seen before; there was a large knot on the low neckline. A dress he had never touched, never unfastened. This thought clutched at his heart.

Her lips, which were a timid pink, opened in a polite smile. “Have you forgotten? I am Mrs. Keoraz now.”

“As you wish…”

She inclined her head, and an ebony-colored lock of hair fell over her forehead. She could be as elegant and beautiful as she could be cold and distant. In a moment she had switched to the second of these aspects.

“If you have come to take up my time, then respect what I am,” she cut him short, all traces of a smile gone.

She picked up a slice of bread and spread it with rose preserve.

“You know I will never call you that,” he said, dragging over a chair in order to sit facing her. “I need you.”

“That need is not reciprocated. What do you want?”

Still the same repartee, capable of trading her velvet tongue for the serpent's fangs, mused Jeremy. This allusion brought to life a whole host of memories, which tortured him inwardly.

“Well?” she demanded.

He took a long breath before beginning. “I need your help. It is about your foundation.”

“Francis's, you mean.”

Jeremy clenched his jaw, hollowing his already emaciated cheeks still further. “And which you are involved with,” he said between clenched teeth. “Don't play this game with me, Jezebel.”

“What game?”

“You know very well! This business of blowing hot and cold. Not with me, I know you too well.”

She put down her slice of bread and stared coldly at him. “So? Doesn't it work? Dare to tell me it has no effect on you. I know how to make men suffer, don't underestimate me in that art; you are all transparent to me. I was curious, I loved you all, I collected you all, I observed you from every angle, and then, I became tired. You are transparent to me. I see through you as I see through all the others. So don't come here to ask for my help and tell me that I produce no effect on you, otherwise why would you be wearing an expression like that?”

Jeremy sat up straight, aware that he had hung his head too much. She classed him among all the others, accorded him no importance whatsoever; she counted him as just one more name, one more pleasure, without taking account of what he was.

Yes, she was right, she knew what to do to make him suffer. That was exactly right. Grant him no importance and act as if their affair had been just one more domino in her own personal game.

“Jez…” he said, very quietly, after a time.

He could not continue; she started eating as she observed him, without helping him, waiting to see what words would extricate themselves from the turbulent mess inside him.

Jeremy made what he knew was a terrible mistake in her presence. He lowered his eyes. He escaped the vise of her emerald irises to sweep his gaze across the windows that led to her apartments. Behind her, the glazed door opened onto the bedroom. Onto an immense, soft bed whose sheets spilled onto the floor. Jeremy swallowed his saliva as the ditch within him became an abyss.

“He … is he there?” he managed to ask.

“Who? The man who is giving me pleasure?”

Jeremy wanted to hate her. Detest her to the point of banishing her from his existence.

She had not said “Mr. Keoraz” or “my husband,” which would have been painful enough; no, she had used him as an instrument for her pleasure. Which was even worse. And she knew it. She knew that Jeremy had loved her beyond the emotions of the mind or the heart, to the point of considering their lovemaking as the sole materialization of this powerful love. Carnal love had been everything. Because she was not playing during those moments, it was the only time of rest, the sole moment when she was herself, naked, stripped bare. And he who possessed her in the moment of orgasm could gaze upon her true soul.

This jealousy went beyond all those petty emotions of daily life that Jeremy had lost. She knew it. She was sneering at him.

“He is showing some friends from London around,” she confided. “Why? Do you wish to speak with him, perhaps?”

“Stop. I need you to help me. It's not about me. It's about children.”

A subtle movement in the alchemy of the constituent parts of her face indicated to Jeremy that he had hit home.