The Twelve Rooms of the Nile (43 page)

She ate little (the lamb still gamboling in her mind), asked Trout to pack up her belongings for her, and went outside alone on the terrace.

Perhaps he’d never return. The rakı might have been a parting gift for Père Elias. Maybe his itinerary had changed. How would she get back to Kenneh? Surely he hadn’t abandoned them. No, he wouldn’t stoop so low. It wasn’t
that
. She had merely misjudged him. He didn’t exist as she imagined him—as her spiritual twin—but neither did that make him a villain. It was reassuring to think so clearly, to remain calm.

Perhaps Fanny was right that she placed too much significance on small things and took the world too literally.
The event on the beach
(titled like a song in her mind) might be a triviality to him. She’d never followed up with the hand mirror, coward that she was. She needed to know he was in the next room to go through with it.

The more she thought, the darker her mood, everything conjoining at last into the familiar doom and hopelessness. As when Kaiserswerth was canceled. As when the deaf school refused her. As when she fell to pieces walking with Efreet-Youssef on the beach. As when, as when, as . . . usual.

If he did not reappear soon, she wouldn’t be able to face him at all. Her enthusiasm would burn through every pore until she shone like a lighthouse warning him off. She might swoon, or worse, fall upon him like a stray dog upon a scrap of food. Upon his arms, whose curves and angles she knew by heart, almost by touch. No, he had never existed except as an ordinary man, a person of no particular consequence she’d briefly encountered. Nothing like herself. A person who couldn’t possibly understand her.

• • •

Sometime in the middle of the night, a commotion erupted downstairs. She heard his voice, angrier—or merely drunker?—than usual. Fouler, too. Something about constipation and Max’s shitty camera and turds. Then an answer in kind using words overheard only in the roughest quarters. You are an asshole. No, you are. Then you are a bigger asshole. A pause.
Mon ami
, you make my argument for me. I
am
a bigger asshole. My asshole is so big I can eat and shit you out. Therefore,
you
are the turd. Then furniture scraping the floor and muffled thuds followed by a spell of hilarity. She fell back to sleep, content, at least, in their laughter.

• • •

At dawn they loaded their luggage and said their good-byes. Père Elias’s eyes filled with tears as he kissed her on both cheeks. Gustave, too, teared up as he kissed the consul and gave Hakim a rugged embrace. She liked to see such generosity of sentiment in him. WEN never cried, nor did the Poetic Parcel.

Gustave and Max looked awful. She could almost see their heads thrumming with a hangover. They barely spoke and took only two thimbles of coffee for breakfast.

After their intimate talk on the beach, she had hoped that Gustave would make more time for her. But when he left her in Koseir, that prospect seemed to vanish. Besides, even if he didn’t notice them, how would she get over her hurt feelings? If they did spend time together, it would be to chat in the evenings, with Max present. Or perhaps Gustave had formulated one of his plans. For privacy, they could meander around the camp, though it would be dark. Lions and jackals, venomous reptiles. Still, it might be possible.

Minutes from Koseir, the weather turned turbulent, dark skies with ominous winds. Max sighted a khamsin in the shape of a funnel sucking up sand behind them. They hurried on, not stopping to inspect the ancient glyphs on the domed formations of pink rock. In late afternoon, the camel carrying the goatskins stepped into sand riddled with rat tunnels and fell on its side, spilling all the water. Three hours later, they reached the first well, Beer El Ingleez, only to find it had been covered by a rockslide in the few days since they were there.

Sweat dried on her skin in salty patches that pasted over with sand. She was filthy and itched like a flea-bitten dog.

That evening jackals stole the dinner from the fire pit when the cook left to retrieve spices from his saddlebag. They made do with a meal of half-cooked beans and watermelons for moisture, and went
to bed hungry. In empathy with the Ababdeh children, Flo used the occasion to imagine what it would be like to go to sleep hungry night after night. This experiment, however, was a failure. She ended up hungrier than before, thought of nothing but food, and felt more selfish than ever. Tomorrow. Tomorrow Gustave and Max would go shooting and they’d be freshly supplied with fowl. They’d find a village and buy goats’ milk or water. Even their personal water and wineskins were depleted.

She fell asleep without undressing and dreamed all night of water. Of rock cliffs softening into great gushes, of licking dew cups from leaves. Nightmare thunderstorms woke her twice. She peeked out of her tent to see if it was light. How terrible it must be to die of thirst! Her lips were so firmly stuck together she felt a gluey membrane—or was it skin?—pop apart as she opened her mouth to lick them before dozing off again.

She awoke before dawn, roused by the camel drivers making their rounds with oil lamps. A camel snorted and groaned as it turned in the sand.

Her dress was too stiff to wear another day. She’d ask Trout to help her change into clean brown Hollands. She lit a candle and stepped outside to cold, refreshing air. The stars were out high in the sky. In the near distance, Gustave sat with his back to her on a box, pulling on his boots. Max was pushing his camera cases from the tent, where he insisted on storing them every night lest they be stolen. Lamp in hand, she stepped behind a rock and urinated, carefully lifting her grimy frock. She’d have to throw it away. It would rot before it could be washed.

Skirting the banked embers marked off by rocks, she advanced toward the outline of Trout’s tent. Faintly etched against the gray sky, it resembled a small black pyramid. “Trout!” she called. “Are you awake, Trout?” She was feeling cheerful. It
was
a new day. They’d secure water or milk in the next village. Joseph was a clever haggler.

There was no reply. She opened the flap and peeked into the blackness. “Trout, come out, come out wherever you are!”

Which was, no doubt, behind a boulder doing her business. Flo decided to walk around the camp. She trod stiffly, her legs cramped and aching from the night’s restless sleep.

“Rossignol,” Gustave called out. “
Bonjour
. Where are you marching to?

“
Bonjour
, Gustave. I’m waiting for Trout. Just stretching my legs.” Her throat tightened on a strand of unacknowledged worry. Trout had never wandered away. And never would.

“I’ll come with you.” They linked arms and continued around the campsite, making discreet forays behind boulders. “Halloo!” Flo called each time to give ample warning. “We are looking for you, Trout.” At one tall outcropping, a serpent skittered across their path. Mohammed had severed a snake outside her tent the first night of the journey. What if Trout had been bitten, or was ill? Perhaps she had digestive trouble and was vomiting in the desert at a respectful distance.

By the time they’d completed their circuit, the restraint that had kept her walking and talking normally escaped with a sigh. “Oh, Gustave, I think she is missing.” She gripped his arm. He placed his hand on top of hers.

“Surely she is just asleep in her tent,
n’est-ce pas
?”

“I don’t think so.” Trout always woke before Flo. If she had gone to relieve herself, she would have had ample time to return. If she were sick, they’d have to go looking for her.

The thinnest rim of molten gold trembled at the horizon. The colors of the surroundings began to change from grayish black to muted browns and pinks. She felt a powerful urge to pray and closed her eyes for a moment; then she stepped forward and lifted the flap of Trout’s tent.

It was dark inside. Dark, and empty.

• • •

“We might muck it up anyway,” Max said, yielding to Flo as she plunged back into Trout’s tent moments later, this time to investigate thoroughly. Everyone had gathered around.

The men naturally hung back, for it would have been indelicate for them to barge in and invade Trout’s meager privacy. Besides, Flo was more likely to recognize something amiss among the alien feminine trappings.

The air inside the tent was close as a summer afternoon before a rainstorm. It smelled of camel. She peered about.

Trout’s absence was more palpable amid her possessions, as if the expectation of her return added to the oppressive stillness. Her belongings were undisturbed, her clothes folded and stacked inside her portmanteau, her boots lined up alongside the bedding. The dress she’d worn the day before was nowhere to be seen. Perhaps, like Flo, she’d never disrobed.

She picked up Trout’s journal, which was lying open, the pages crammed with sloping lines of minute cursive. On the last page, a nib had leaked, leaving a black smear. Nearby, the inkwell had tipped over and soaked the sand. It took a moment to find the pen, which had rolled or fallen far from the book. A chill ran through her. Trout had not wandered off. She’d been interrupted while writing. Tears sprang to her eyes. Kidnapped!

Still clutching the journal, she bent low and exited to the fresher air, folding the tent flap closed behind her. Everyone was congregated, waiting. “She is missing, with signs of surprise.” It would be too awful to say “struggle.”

They searched the environs, peering behind every rock and dune and into every gully. One of the crew found camel hoofprints—two sets—that seemed fresher than their own from the evening before.

After a brief discussion among the Europeans, Max took charge. He signaled Mohammed, standing apart with his crew, to approach. Through Joseph, he questioned him. “Have you heard anything from your men about this woman’s whereabouts?”

“Find out if all the crew are still with us,” Gustave urged.

Joseph duly translated both questions.

Stroking his beard as calmly as if it were a cat, Mohammed answered with what Flo adjudged respect tinged with fearful caution.
He gestured with dark, slender hands, his voice solicitous and steady as an undertaker’s. But the length of his reply filled her with dread.

Joseph waited for Mohammed to finish, then chose his words judiciously. Mohammed and his men knew nothing of Trout’s disappearance, he reported. The crew was all accounted for.

Max fixed Joseph with a stare. “I know he said more than that.”

“
Oui, monsieur, c’est vrai
. But he want me to say
con forza
his men all counted.”

Flo could not for the life of her remember at that instant if there were five or six camel drivers, nor could she easily distinguish among them.

“All counted,” Max repeated, leveling his gaze at Mohammed.
“Charabia evasif!”
He raised his voice. Evasive double-talk. An unfortunate expression, she thought. In it, “Arabia” signified nonsense. She hoped Max had read about how easily the hot-blooded Bedouin with their strict codes of honor were offended.

Gustave added, “Ask if they are all here at this moment.”

“Good man,” said Max.

A collision of languages ensued as Joseph translated into Arabic for Mohammed and back into French for her, Max, and Gustave, and each one commented in turn. Tower of Babel, she thought. Ripe for misconstruction.

Through her own silence and inaction she felt Trout’s absence as sharply as a physical complaint. For the first time since they left Kenneh, she wasn’t translating for her. Poor woman! Missing in a vast and hostile wasteland. Flo felt suddenly alone and useless, her chest hollow with foreboding. Around her, the words seemed to boil over, subside, and boil over again as they argued back and forth.

Gustave said,
“Allons! du calme, mes enfants, je vous en prie!”

Mohammed nodded and, in the ensuing silence, took the floor. Joseph translated. “He say one man comes to him yesterday and ask permisso to leave. His mother very sick. Last night he goes home.”

“I knew it!” Max said, pounding the sand with his ivory-topped
cane. Startled, Flo stepped back. “Foul play,” he continued. “Trout did not vanish on her own.” He shook his head. “Foul play.”

“Mohammed swear by all holy that man have nothing to do with Trout,” Joseph added.

“Il est menteur, le con!”
Max cursed under his breath. Joseph let the words pass without the Arabic equivalent.

“Perhaps we should return to Koseir,” she blurted, more out of nervousness than common sense. Her first instinct was always to retreat to the place or moment before a catastrophe, as if she could turn back time itself.

“No,” said Max. “That will do no good.”

Through Joseph, Mohammed proclaimed that they must continue the journey to Kenneh or risk exhausting their food.

He is not the least intimidated by us, she thought. What she had earlier taken for trepidation was something else. But what? Duplicity? Humility? The simple desire to stick to his routine?

“
Inshallah
, perhaps the woman will return to us,” Mohammed said. “I remain at your service, effendi.” With that, he and his crew turned away to tend to the camels, which had been staked in place since the night before.

Max shouted after him, his cane in the air. “Wait right there! If a Frank is harmed or dies, an Arab, or more than one, shall also die!”

Flo caught her breath. Striking a Bedouin could be fatal. What did insulting or threatening one lead to? To her relief, the camel drivers stopped and listened to Joseph hectically translating. “He say he know the law, effendi, and he and his men are innocent.” Mohammed stopped, gestured toward them, and offered a benediction. “May Allah watch over you.”

“Et vous,”
Gustave rushed to say.

“Audthu bilahi min ash shaytan ar rajim,”
Mohammed intoned, smiling and bowing before turning away.

“What was that last?” Gustave asked. He looked beside himself with worry.

“He say he seek Allah to protect from the accursed Satan.”