by Shana Abe
Madeleine was a strong enough swimmer not to mind the deep end of the bath. And Jack, of course . . . well, Jack could do anything. It didn’t surprise her at all to see him slicing through the water in his tunic and trunks in clean, hard strokes.
“You know,” she said, resting her crossed arms along the edge of the pool, kicking her feet behind her, “the first time I saw you, I looked a lot like this.”
“Like this?” He swam up beside her, picked up her soaked braid of hair, and wrapped it around his wrist. He drew his arm to his chest to pull her closer, to tilt her head and kiss her on the lips, ignoring the scandalized attention of the Germans.
“Yes. I’d just climbed out of the sea—”
“A mermaid.”
“Precisely. And I sat on the sand at Bailey’s Beach and saw you walking along. You were going to see your mother. She sat in a tent.”
He paused, then unwound her braid to join her with his arms propped atop the marble rim. “Really? When was that?”
“Long, long ago. When I was—oh, when I was a schoolgirl. But even then, I noticed you.”
He pushed a hand along his wet hair, slicking it from his forehead. “You never said.”
“I think I half-forgot. It was years ago. It’s like a dream memory to me now. Isn’t that funny? I forget the day, and why I was there. On holiday with my mother, I believe. But I remember you. I remember thinking that you were quite dashing.”
“Well.” He seemed amused.
“I think that was the moment I fell in love with you,” she said.
He sank away from the edge of the pool, treading water, studying her. The Germans were climbing out at the other end, searching for the attendants through the firelight.
“Yes,” she said, certain. “That was the moment. I looked at you, you looked at me—you won’t recall it, but you did, just for a second—and ta-dah. It was done. Love. Just like that.”
She dropped away from the marble rim as well, floating on her back with her arms out, gazing up at the night. A scattering of brighter stars shone through the smoke, sometimes there, sometimes not, forming new constellations, cryptic patterns of their own.
The water purled, shattered into ripples of fire as he came to float alongside her. Jack drew his palm along the lines of her—neck, chest, stomach—pausing at that modest roundness where their child grew, before pulling back.
“Do you know the moment I fell in love with you?”
She smiled drowsily up at the stars. “Tell me.”
“When you asked to read my book. Do you remember that? That night on the balcony, back in Bar Harbor?”
“Yes,” she said, surprised. She turned her head to look at him, water caressing her cheek. “All the way back then?”
“All the way back then,” he answered, grave. “You are the only one who’s ever asked me about reading it, you know. The only one.”
“I really enjoyed it.”
“You’re a very charming liar.”
They laughed together, hushed, and she came upright, treading as he did, feeling the liquid pushing back and forth through her open fingers, buoying her body and legs.
“What a strange mistress Fortune has turned out to be,” Madeleine said.
“Strange, and marvelous.”
“Yes,” she agreed, gliding closer. She wrapped her hands behind his neck so that they bobbed together, their fronts and legs deliciously brushing. “Marvelous.”
* * *
So they’d said the words after all. And the words had taken nothing away from them, their dark and precious bond. The words had only added another flavor, smoky sweet, like the night.
CHAPTER 19
My first sight of our dahabiya came under a searing, cloudless sky, with light and shadows so brittle every line of the vessel shone sharp. She’d been scrubbed and provisioned and freshly painted, forest green and bone white and ochre, a fanciful scrollwork of blue decorating her prow. She was smaller than the Noma but not by much, with twin wooden masts and an awning of apricot covering her open top deck.
As I stood at the edge of the Nile and watched the crew queue up to greet us, the overhang of the awning lifted and fell with the breeze, one tassel at a time, as if waving to us.
The name painted upon her side was Habibti. Beloved.
Your father stood beside me in the sun with his hands on his hips, taking it all in. When the captain approached, bearded and layered in robes, Jack handed me Kitty’s leash and walked with him down to the landing. I stayed back a moment to watch them, your father nodding and asking questions, nodding again whenever the captain gestured to this part of his boat or that.
I didn’t need to have the Habibti’s virtues described to me. I had no doubt this was the finest vessel to be found on the river. Jack would not have hired anything less.
Here is the moment I remember clearest from that morning: your father beginning to move toward the gangplank, the waiting crew, then stopping, turning to look back at me. As our eyes met, he grinned, boyish, and lifted his open hand to invite me to join him, all alight with the sun.
We stepped aboard the dahabiya together, feeling the languid, steady pulse of the Nile rolling gently beneath our feet.
Oh, I hope you have his smile. I hope I get to see his smile again, through you.
February 1912
Abydos, Egypt
They took a hired motorcar to the temple of Seti I, because it was nearly an hour trip from the river even so, and renting horses instead—the more common method of reaching the ruins—would have meant riding in the sun for three hours or longer. As it was, they had decided to camp overnight by the ruins, as the only hotels available were, in the words of Izz al din, their captain, unfit for anything but rats and their fleas.
Madeleine sat in the back of the canvas-topped touring car, crammed against Margaret’s daughter Helen, Margaret herself squashed up against the other door. Jack sat in the front with their driver, a handsome young man in a pristine white galabeya, who had shaken each of their hands with great ceremony and introduced himself as Thabit, the best dragoman to be found in all of North Africa.
Izz al din had given a shake of his head at that, but as he was the one who had recommended him as a guide from the masses thronging the landing, it seemed he had nothing to say aloud about it.
Madeleine didn’t know if Thabit was the best dragoman, but it did seem he had the best automobile in Abydos, which meant that at least it had a roof attached to the chassis. Their tents and baggage and supplies all followed in a second motorcar, along with a few of the crew from the Habibti, roasting in the open day. Kitty, too much of a wild card to bring along overnight, remained behind on the boat in the care of Rosalie and Robins, stealing scraps from the galley and napping in the shade.
For a while, they drove surrounded by camphor trees and green fields, sugarcane, barley and wheat, all lush with the abundant water of the Nile. Huge, placid water buffaloes standing alongside the road lifted their heads as they passed; dogs barked at them; children popped out randomly from the stalks and reeds, running dangerously close, their hands outstretched for piastres. Thabit would press the horn and weave around them, hardly slowing. More than once, Madeleine had to hide her eyes.
The trees and verdant fields faded away, gone as the water was gone.
The sands began, long and barren and endless.
Helen Brown, auburn-haired and gray-eyed, and looking like a younger, prettier version of her mother, lifted her chin and closed her eyes and breathed deep, her hands clamped around her knees. Madeleine couldn’t tell if she was happy or merely queasy until she spoke.
“Isn’t it devastating, Mrs. Astor?” Her voice was nearly drowned by the commotion of the engine.
“Sorry?” Madeleine said loudly.
“The air. The history. One soaks it all in and can’t help but be changed by it. A soul-deep sort of change. Shifted. Devastated, but in the best way.”
Madeleine smiled, doubtful, but then turned her f
ace to the open window and supposed that Helen was right. They traveled along the heat-shimmered path of ancient gods, on their way to walk over and through the burial sites and shrines of lost kings. So many other souls had crossed this desert land before them, had lived and worshiped and perished here, leaving behind only brick and clay, stone and metal, alongside the fragmented remains of the pharaohs’ immense riches.
But they, devastated or not, would arrive in their modern motorcar, and tonight would feast on fine food and wine in their tents, and tomorrow head back to the Nile, the river of life, to resume their place among the living.
The kings and temples would remain, standing as long as they could against the sands.
Thabit was shouting something back at them, lifting a hand to point at a row of rocks in the distance. They were the same color as everything else on the ground, buff and dun, bleached and chalky, painfully pale against the neon sky. They looked like nothing at all at first, lines and shapes, but as the motorcar growled closer, Madeleine could see the lines had an order to them, that they connected into a flat roof and pillars. A vast courtyard and wide steps and ramps.
Thabit slowed, still pointing.
“The dominion of the dead,” he called back to them, and grinned.
* * *
The moment they emerged from the car, they were surrounded by souvenir sellers, men and children mostly, showing off miniature statues, scraps of papyrus, ivory figurines, ankhs and faience scarabs and enameled amulets. One child—a girl, the only one in sight—wiggled between her competitors to present Madeleine with a necklace of polished reddish-orange beads, holding it out to her with both hands.
Madeleine smiled, lifting the string, testing its weight.
“Asalamu alaykum,” she tried, one of the few Arabic phrases she had heard repeated enough to have memorized. Peace be with you; it seemed to serve as both hello and goodbye.
“Do not buy it,” advised Thabit, appearing at her side. He scowled at the girl and said something brusque, shooing the child away with one hand. “It’s likely only glass. If you wish for true carnelian, for jewelry or gold, ma’am, I have a cousin in Luxor with the finest shop in Egypt. First quality. I will get you a bargain.”
He lifted his voice and said something else to the crowd, and perhaps it was that the men from the dahabiya sauntered up, as well, but the swarm of sellers broke apart, wandering across the courtyard to find easier targets.
* * *
The temple honoring the great dead pharaoh was composed of limestone and sandstone incised with cartouches, and armies of small brown birds that winged through the shafts of light and high, dense shadows, perching and hopping and taking flight again. It was much cooler inside the towering stone walls than out, which might explain the murmuring birds, although the floor was mostly uneven chipped stone, so Madeleine had to be careful how she stepped.
Jack held her arm, keeping them both steady.
Both Margaret and her daughter had produced mirrors from their handbags, and they used them to reflect the narrow sun shafts falling from slits in the ceiling into beams of movable light. Everywhere they aimed the mirrors, the walls and columns came alive with color. Thabit trailed behind them, reciting the names of the illumed figures in a quiet, reverent tone, as if he spoke incantations.
Osiris.
Isis.
Seti.
Amun-Ra.
The queen, supplicating the god of the underworld.
The young prince, hunting alone.
Horus.
Ptah.
The goddess Nut, giving birth to the sun.
Seti.
Seti.
Seti.
The friezes were so clear, so fresh, they might have been created only a few years ago instead of centuries. She found herself more than once reaching up a hand to touch them, then made herself stop. These were olden beings, sacred beings. She didn’t want to disrespect them. She didn’t want them lingering on her fingertips.
* * *
Their tent was nearly as large as their cabin back on the boat, lit with both clear and colored glass lanterns, so that the cloth corners became green and violet and tangerine, and the entrance was ordinary gold. The crew had unrolled a large cream-and-carmine rug across the sand, then added a wooden table inlaid with mother-of-pearl, two chairs, and a pair of iron-framed camp beds topped, incongruously, with layers of satin covers.
A bowl of dates and sliced bread (rapidly drying out) sat upon the table, alongside two glasses and a flagon of red wine. Madeleine stood there and nibbled at a date, testing its grainy sweetness.
“Wife,” said Jack, from just beyond the open entrance of the tent. “Come out. Come see the moon.”
She ducked outside. The stillness of the evening struck her; she heard the relaxed conversation among the men from the Habibti, preparing their meal of lamb kabobs and rice over the fire, Thabit occasionally joining in with a chuckle. She heard Helen saying something to Margaret in their tent a dozen yards away, their shadows behind the canvas walls shifting in graceful, elongated lines. But they were the only group camping, the only people within miles, maybe, and beyond those dampened human notes, there lived a noiseless hush, the sound of emptiness that stretched on and on into the ebony night.
Perhaps Jack heard it, too. Without another word, he took her by the hand and drew her away from the tents, from the others and the tantalizing aroma of saffron and charred lamb. They toiled through the sand, sometimes ankle deep, until they stood on a flat, rocky crest far apart from everyone else, facing the ruins in the distance, the moon-frozen courts and shrines and halls.
The dominion of the dead.
Jack reached into his pocket. He withdrew a strand of smooth, heavy beads, reddish-orange, and draped it over her head.
“They were carnelian,” he said. “Not glass. I may not own the finest jewelry shop in Luxor, but I know a few things.”
He placed his arm around her shoulders. Madeleine lifted a hand to close her fingers over the beads. They stood there saying nothing, only watching, only listening to the aching, terrible silence of the desert, until Margaret summoned them back for dinner.
* * *
The next afternoon they returned to the landing, where a series of wooden sailboats were docked, rocking in the blue-green waters. The Habibti, larger than the rest, was moored in the shade of a grove of date palms growing close to the riverbank, their fronds rustling with every sultry slip of wind. Their crew meandered along the decks, their long robes floating pale through the light and dark.
Kitty spotted them first. The instant the gangplank was lowered, she tore across it with a happy bark, leaping through the milling sailors and vendors and tour guides to reach them. Jack laughed and dropped down to grab her just as she leapt up to kiss him, squeaking with joy. Madeleine dropped down, too, and the dog whipped out of Jack’s arms and into hers, pressing her head into Madeleine’s side, whining now, her tail a blur.
“Mother,” said Helen, watching the scene transpire, “I want a dog.”
“Later,” replied Margaret. “When you’re done with your studies. We’ll get two.”
Jack laughed again and straightened, and Robins hurried down to meet them, directing the unloading of the autos, consulting with the colonel about their itinerary and supplies. Madeleine looked around, testing the back of her hand against her neck and cheek, but Jack was still busy, and she was hot, and her legs were cramped from the motorcar ride, so she picked up her skirts and made her way up the gangplank, followed by Helen and Margaret, still debating about the proper time for dogs.
She wanted to change out of her gritty clothes. She wanted to let down her hair and wash and comb it, and drink something cool and tart, and take a nap with the windows open in their cabin so she could listen to the river as she slept.
She got as far as unpinning her hair at the vanity when Jack opened the door, swiftly scanned the room, and said, “You don’t have Kitty?”
“What?” Her hands lowe
red. “No. I thought she was with you.”
“She isn’t.”
Madeleine followed him out of the cabin. They searched every deck, every closet and chamber, even the places a dog couldn’t possibly be. At first, it was just the two of them, then together with Rosalie and Robins and the crew, then with Margaret and Helen as well, emerged from their cabins at the ongoing commotion.
They searched the landing and the dirt roads beyond it, Thabit and his auto quickly rehired to help. No one had seen the Airedale. No one noticed one extra brown dog among the many, darting between donkeys and huts.
Kitty was gone, lost to the tremendous, unfolding land.
CHAPTER 20
We searched for days.
We called her name until our voices grew hoarse, until those two small syllables, Kit-ty, came out cracked with despair.
You might think it odd to be in such a state over a lost dog. You might, but I hope you don’t, because I hope you will be the sort of person who understands what your Aunt Katherine once said to Vincent: You can get the measure of a man by observing the way he treats his animals.
Eventually, we had to sail on. The Browns, especially, were on a schedule, and we had already lingered four days past what we had originally planned.
Before we left, your father offered a princely reward to any of the locals who could find her and get her back to us. It was all that we could do.
* * *
I began to slow down. I wanted to sleep more, particularly in the high heat of the afternoon. I still appreciated the unhurried pace of the boat, the scent of the river wafting through our cabin at night. I still appreciated a great many things, in fact, but I just didn’t want to venture out for hours and hours any longer to go exploring. No more exhausting day trips, and nothing outdoors overnight. I was content to sit on the deck of the boat and watch the reeds sway along the shore; or the villagers washing clothing and filling urns in the shallows; or the tall, slender minarets of the mosques gliding by.