The Sacred River

by Wendy Wallace

  TWENTY

  Yael put down her spoon and looked at the French door. “It can’t be getting dark at this hour,” she said. “Can it?”

  The three of them were sitting in the places they had made their own around the long table in the dining room. Harriet pushed back her chair and went to the window. On the other side of the glass, the mulberry trees and palms waved in silent salutation. Opening the door, she stepped out into the garden and looked up at the sky. The sun had disappeared and the air was hazed with brown, carrying the scent of brick and cinders. Somewhere nearby, women were shouting to one another in Arabic. The peculiar quality of the light, the sound of the wind, made her shiver.

  “It’s dusty,” she announced, coming back inside, the wind banging the door behind her. “That’s why the sky’s overcast, Aunt Yael.”

  Harriet returned to the table and took another mouthful of a jelly that contained pieces of a sweet, soft-fleshed fruit. Nothing could dim the sense of happiness she’d felt since Eyre Soane’s visit. He wanted to paint her. Each time Harriet remembered the fact, she experienced a little jolt of pleasure. On deck, the first time they met, the painter had barely noticed her. When he joined them for dinner, he had seen her for the first time. Now he wished her to be the subject of one of his works. Despite Louisa’s discouragement, he would call again. Harriet felt certain of it.

  Mustapha entered the room with a tray. Setting out small cups with no handles, he began to pour the coffee, holding the pot high, filling the little cups with a dark, steaming stream. The room was growing dimmer by the minute.

  “What is happening, Mustapha?” asked Louisa.

  “It is the wind, madame. The Khamseen.”

  “I think we ought to investigate, Louisa,” Yael said, getting to her feet.

  “If you insist,” said Yael.

  With Mustapha following, the three of them walked through the front part of the garden and out of the gate, onto the wide, unpaved street. The watchman had enveloped his entire head in his white turban, leaving only a slit for his eyes.

  Their dresses blew against their legs as Harriet, Louisa, and Yael stood staring at the horizon, at a dim, dark shape bearing down on the city like a soft, moving mountain. Harriet felt a sense of foreboding. She enjoyed extremes of weather—found thunder and lightning exhilarating, relished the drama of high wind—but the brown cloud looked ominous. She’d never seen anything like it.

  “ ‘For, behold, darkness shall cover the earth,’ ” said Yael.

  “There’s no need to be dramatic, Yael.” Louisa rubbed her eyes and turned her back on the horizon. “Come inside, Harriet.”

  By the time they had finished the coffee, they could barely see each other across the dining table. Khamseen meant fifty, Mustapha told them as he took away the cups. It was the fifty-day wind and it had arrived early. There was no saying when it would leave.

  • • •

  Parting the curtains of net around the bed, Harriet swung her legs out from under the blanket. A shutter was banging against the wall outside the window. She leaned out over the vanished garden and pulled the shutter back into the frame as the wind blasted dust at her face.

  Back in bed, exhausted by the effort, she listened to the sound of her own breath, harsh on the air. She felt empty, devoid of the hopes and thoughts and ideas that had been filling her mind. In the weeks since they had left London, she’d allowed herself to begin to believe that she had left her illness behind. She’d been deceived. Asthma had stowed away inside her, waiting for the moment to spring out and make itself known.

  If she couldn’t be well here, a voice in her head insisted, she couldn’t be well anywhere. Propped up on the pillows in the position meant to ease the constriction in her chest, Harriet wiped her eyes. The hope and excitement she’d felt on first entering this room seemed to mock her. How could she live, when it was all she could do to keep breathing?

  She turned down Louisa’s offer to sit with her, Yael’s suggestion that she might read aloud. At mid-morning, Suraya arrived.

  “Good morning, Suraya,” Harriet said in Arabic, rousing herself. The greeting translated literally as morning of light, and Harriet enjoyed using it. Arabic seemed able to inject poetry into anything. Suraya didn’t answer. Putting down a glass of black tea on the chair by the bed, she fetched a can of water from outside the door and began scattering it on the wooden floor, casting drops as if she were sowing seeds, then picked up a grass brush and began sweeping in quick, efficient strokes, hinging from her waist, the silver bells around her ankle tinkling as she moved.

  She dropped the brush and sat down on the edge of the bed. Reaching for Harriet’s hand with her small, strong one, she squeezed Harriet’s fingers.

  “You’re well, by God’s will?” she said in Arabic.

  Harriet nodded.

  “I’m well,” she said, using the Arabic Suraya had taught her. “Thanks be to God.”

  She didn’t know how to say that she was ill, that she felt hopeless and lonely. That more than anything she was filled with a bitter disappointment.

  Suraya’s dark eyes, lined with a sooty cosmetic, were unconvinced. Glancing toward the door, she reached into the neck of her robe, pulled out an envelope, and handed it to Harriet. It was addressed to Miss H. Heron. Harriet turned it over. There was no name on the back but she knew who had sent it.

  “From where, Suraya? Who?”

  The tinkling receded, and when Harriet looked up, Suraya had gone. Harriet tore open the envelope and unfolded a single sheet of paper.

  Parthenon Hotel

  March 15th 1882

  Dear Miss Heron,

  Quite unaccountably, I find I’m missing you awfully. In fact, I long to see you again.

  I will call on you as soon as this wind subsides. We shall take a picnic in the Palace gardens and perhaps you will be persuaded to pose for sketches. Above all, I should like to paint you.

  Believe me, I shall pay no heed to your mother’s opposition.

  Yours very sincerely,

  Eyre Soane

  Harriet turned over the sheet of paper but the other side was blank. Returning it to the envelope, she caught a faint smell of cigars. Lying back again on the bank of pillows, Harriet looked about the room. Nothing had changed. The Turkish rug lay flat on the floor, forming an imperfect rectangle, one side longer than the other. Brown light filtered through the slats of the shutters, throwing a soft ladder of shadows onto the wall. “Eyre Soane longs to see me,” she said aloud. The room made no response.

  Her breathing seemed looser. Lighter. She took a sip of tea and grimaced. The water in Alexandria was brackish, its saltiness impossible to disguise even with the quantities of sugar the Egyptians used. How could he long to see her again? It wasn’t possible. She didn’t believe it. But perhaps it was true. Why would he say it if it was not?

  Closing her eyes, Harriet slipped away from the rapid rise and fall of her chest, the fast thud of her heart, and into a dream. Eyre Soane admired her. He painted her portrait and, in doing so, fell in love with her, begged her to marry him. Harriet Heron, spinster and invalid, became a woman like other women. Mrs. Cox’s prediction was fulfilled.

  Opening her eyes, Harriet felt disoriented. She got out of bed and wrapped her old pink pashmina around her shoulders. Brushed her hair at the washstand and splashed her face with water. Retrieving her pen and travel bottles of ink, a sheet of paper from the trunk, she got back into bed.

  Dear Mr. Soane,

  Thank you for your note.

  I should be glad to sit for a painting when the weather improves. I am perfectly able to make up my own mind, in all matters.

  Yours,

  Harriet Heron

  At three o’clock, the hour that Yael dubbed “Egyptian lunchtime,” that Louisa had tried and failed to alter, Suraya brought up a tray covered with what looked like a conic
al woven hat. She removed it to display a plate of tomatoes stuffed with rice and minced meat, sprinkled with green herbs.

  As she balanced the tray on Harriet’s lap, Harriet passed her the note. It was addressed to E. Soane Esq., care of the Parthenon Hotel. Suraya couldn’t read but she would know who it was intended for, Harriet was certain, and would find a way to deliver it. Suraya slipped the envelope down the neck of her robe.

  “Eat!” she commanded in Arabic, as she twitched the edge of the sheet, straightened the tray. “Eat.”

  TWENTY-ONE

  The room was lit by two pairs of candles, held in sconces on the walls. The shadows they cast reminded Louisa of antlers, as if she and Harriet were in a dim and misty forest, surrounded by wild beasts. Harriet’s breath was shallow and harsh; she could barely speak. Dash was cowering in a corner.

  Harriet began to cough, her face contorted and mouth open, gasping for air between spasms. Louisa got off her knees and hurried to the medicine chest, extracted the bottle of friar’s balsam. “Will you take this?” she asked, measuring out a teaspoonful of the black liquid, dripping it onto a lump of sugar. “I am sure Dr. Grammaticas would think you ought.”

  Harriet made the ghost of a nod and Louisa put the spoon to her daughter’s parted lips, trying to control the trembling of her own hand. She sat by the bed, straining her ears for any alteration, hearing none. Air was entering Harriet’s chest with a hoarse, sucking noise, leaving it almost immediately with a reluctant hiss. Tortured though the sound was, Louisa focused fiercely on its continuance. All the time she could hear it, Harriet was breathing.

  Earlier in the evening, Louisa had squeezed a dozen drops of lobelia tincture, twice the normal dose, into a glass of water, held her own breath as Harriet had swallowed it, then tried to make her comfortable on the hard Egyptian pillows. The tincture made little difference. The lit pan of dried stramonium leaves, mixed with belladonna, filled the room with noxious fumes like an autumn bonfire. Afterward, Harriet complained of a headache but breathed no more easily.

  At midnight, with the wind whistling down the chimney, Louisa lit the portable vaporizer. The air began to fill with the woody odor of eucalyptus and menthol oils. She placed the device on the chair by Harriet’s bed and wafted steam toward her with her fan, felt her forehead. It was clammy, her hair damp. The sound of wheezing, so close, so constrained, contrasted oddly with the great, free wind outside.

  “Do you feel any relief?” Louisa asked after a few minutes. Harriet couldn’t answer.

  By the early hours, she sounded as if she were drowning, her breath coming in desperate, groaning gasps. Louisa took a candle from the sconce and held it near her daughter’s face. Harriet’s lips were blue and her mouth open, the sinews on her neck standing out. Her glazed eyes had a faraway look and her pulse was rapid.

  It was four in the morning, an hour that seemed neither night nor day, an hour at the bottom of the sea. The wind had fallen silent. With her own heart hammering, Louisa pierced the wax seal on the bottle of chloroform, the medicine of last resort, which she’d never administered, although she had seen Dr. Grammaticas do so. She’d delayed using it because once she had, there would be nothing else left to try. She had an urgent fear that she’d delayed too long.

  Sprinkling the clear liquid on a flannel, she hurried back to the bedside and passed the cloth under Harriet’s nose once, then again, listening and praying at the same time. After a minute, Harriet’s breathing altered. The struggle became less frantic. Louisa wafted the cloth past Harriet’s face again and Harriet licked her lips.

  “I’m . . . thir . . . sty,” she said, her voice hoarse.

  “Thank the Lord.”

  The dog shook himself and padded across the room as Louisa dropped the cloth, splashed water into a tumbler, and held it to Harriet’s lips. Harriet raised herself on one elbow, took the glass.

  “Why is it so dark?” she said.

  “Dark?” Louisa’s voice shook. She opened the shutter and looked out at the beginnings of a violet dawn over the white rooftops. “It will soon be morning.”

  Harriet didn’t answer. She was asleep, her breathing easier than it had been for days. The dog snored at the end of the bed.

  In the privacy of her own room, resealing the chloroform bottle with wax, fitting it back into its compartment in the medicine chest, Louisa wept.

  • • •

  Her mother’s voice had refused to be silenced; it came to Louisa at odd hours of the day and night, demanding to be heard. The crisis had passed but Harriet was still unwell, wan-looking and short of breath. She’d been confined to bed for days, raised up on the pillows or sitting in the chair, while beyond the shutters the wind hurled itself at the villa, the trees in the garden creaking and flapping under the onslaught, part of the wall blowing down flat on the ground.

  She and Yael had taken Harriet to a European doctor, watched as the Frenchman cupped her back, leaving red weals on each side of her long spine. He had written half a dozen prescriptions but prevaricated when Louisa begged him for advice as to what they should do.

  “It is perfectly obvious, Yael. We have to go home.” Yael, blinking and looking vague, offered no reply.

  “The dust is worse for her than the fog,” Louisa said. “I will send Mustapha today to book the tickets.”

  “I am not ready to go back to England, Louisa,” Yael said.

  Louisa jumped up from the sofa.

  “Why on earth not?” she said as the door opened. “Harriet! Ought you to be out of bed?”

  “I thought I heard you talking.”

  Harriet looked at Yael and Louisa in turn. She had on the slippers that Yael had bought for her on a visit to a bazaar. They made a shuffling sound, imitating the Arabic word for them, ship-ship, as she crossed the room and sat down.

  “Your mother believes it is time to go home, Harriet,” Yael said.

  “But your aunt refuses to leave Alexandria.” Reaching one hand behind her head, Louisa began to pat at her hair. “Very well, Yael. Harriet and I shall return alone.”

  Behind her spectacles, Yael blinked again.

  “If Harriet wishes to leave. It is on her account, after all, that we’re here.”

  The dog raised himself from the rug at Yael’s feet and flopped down on Harriet’s. In the wind, his white fur had turned the color of brick. Harriet stroked the top of his head.

  “I don’t want to leave. We can travel farther south, to Luxor. We’ll escape the wind there, Mother.”

  “Not without Yael.”

  “Aunt?”

  “Forgive me, Harriet. I determined on the steamer that I would go no farther than this. But I see no reason why you and your mother should not go on.”

  “Mother?”

  Louisa didn’t know which prospect seemed more dangerous—taking Harriet back to London, or traveling farther into Egypt. The only thing she was sure of was that they could not remain where they were.

  “We cannot travel alone, Harriet,” she said. “We need assistance.”

  Mustapha stepped forward from the doorway, his white robe gleaming in the brown haze in the atmosphere.

  “Madame must take a dragoman.”

  He left the room, returning minutes later with a boy that he thrust through the door in front of him and introduced as his nephew, Fouad. Louisa raised her head from her hands. The boy was skinny and small, his black hair cut close to his head. He wore baggy Arab pantaloons and an old, highly polished pair of brown shoes tightly laced around bare feet.

  “Does he speak English?” Louisa asked.

  “Yes, madame,” Mustapha said. “He is your lifesaver.”

  “I doubt that. He doesn’t look more than fourteen.” Fouad stared at the floor.

  “I think it would be excellent if Fouad came with us, Mother,” Harriet said.

  Fouad raised his head, look
ed at his uncle and then at Louisa. His eyes came to rest on Harriet.

  “I will travel with you,” he said. “Inshallah. If God wills it.”

  TWENTY-TWO

  The muezzin began calling the faithful, his words floating over the dusk like another form of ethereal cloud. In a corner room on the first floor of a Cairo hotel, Eyre Soane turned away from the window. The hotel barber had nicked his skin, stuck a piece of cotton on the cut. Eyre pulled it from his jaw and watched in the mirror as a drop of blood gathered slowly on his flesh, spilled like a tear. He sat down in the leather armchair, loosening the cord of his dressing gown and looking around his suite.

  He was delaying dressing for dinner. Hadn’t pared his nails, applied his cologne, oiled his hair. He was off-duty, in the business of being Eyre Soane, son of the late, great Augustus. Inheritor, said the critics, of his father’s wealth but not his talent.

  They were wrong on both counts. His father’s talent had been for creating voluptuous, creamy-looking flesh that connoisseurs could feel they might reach into a painting and touch. All instinctively wanted to possess it. It was a formula Augustus had repeated scores of times, in different draperies, with different props. Different eyes, necks, breasts. Eyre favored landscapes. Landscapes never lied.

  A high-pitched whine near his ear grew louder and Eyre slapped at the newly shaven portions of his neck with the palm of his hand. He hadn’t wanted to be in Egypt this winter. He’d undertaken the journey only to escape the London season, the matrons of his ­mother’s acquaintance throwing their female offspring in his path. He’d gotten away, all right, but now that he was here, he couldn’t tolerate the crowds of English idlers and investors and adventurers whose laughter and boasts and pointless games of pinochle filled the downstairs bar.