by Gore Vidal
“Dry up in summer,” said Osman, waving a professional hand at the river, which wound like a gray-green snake through the eroded valley. Even Pete could tell that it had shrunk, leaving sand bars and islands and rock beaches behind. “Libya,” said Osman, pointing to a line of skull-white mountains beyond the river to the west. “And the tombs.”
“Tombs?”
“Where the jackal god guards the dead kings,” said Osman, a strange expression in his filmy eyes.
Pete nodded, uneasy, his flesh prickling a little. Somehow the old man’s words had struck an unexpected chord of fear deep inside him…the tombs, the Valley of the Kings, where the mummies of the great Pharaohs lay buried with all their treasure. He began to recall legends, old newspaper stories.… But then they were at the Karnak Inn, and in the rush of paying for the carriage and registering the mysterious fear was forgotten.
The hotel was a one-story ramshackle building, like a house in New Orleans, with shuttered windows, tall ceilings, many overhead fans, flies, and tile floors. The lobby was comparatively cool and dim. Except for a pair of Negro servants leaning with eyes shut against the farthest wall, the lobby was empty.
Osman clapped his hands; it was the Egyptian way of getting service, and very royal in effect. One of the servants ambled forward and took the suitcase. The manager, a dark youth in a gray suit with chalk stripe and Windsor tie, appeared from an inner office.
“Mr. Wells? Yes? We were expecting you. You missed our car at the station? But I see you are in good hands. So hot…” Pete registered, then asked if there were any messages for him.
“No, sir, nothing. Would you like me to show you your room or would you care to have breakfast now? We have a celebrated dining room.” Pete said he would prefer to go to his room. The manager himself led the way down a long corridor in the wing that overlooked the river. Osman followed with the porter. It was quite a procession, thought Pete, trying to concentrate on what the manager was saying.
“You are our first American guest in two months…a rarity in hot weather. We have no Europeans here at all in the hotel, except, of course, myself and Miss Mueller. You perhaps know her? She is a very famous artist.” Pete said he was pleased to hear it. “She is here to examine the sights. You see, she works in Cairo during the season and this is her vacation. She is enamored of the tombs and spends a great deal of time on the other side of the river. A strange occupation for a young lady who is an internationally famous artist and the intimate of the highest, but then we must allow for human nature, Mr. Wells,” said the manager, ushering him into his bedroom. It was a large comfortable room with a huge bed canopied by mosquito netting. Below the window was a strip of garden, the road, and, beyond that, the river. Downriver, north of the hotel, behind a wall of green foliage, Pete could make out the dusty bulk of a temple.
After assuring the manager that all was well and that he would eat presently, Pete was left alone with Osman in the bedroom. They looked at one another thoughtfully. Pete spoke first: “Where is Said?”
“The gentleman will come to us in good time.”
“Soon?”
“I have no idea, Sir Wells. Until then you will see the ruins.”
“Are you telling me or asking me?”
The old man gave his mirthless leer. “You are tourist, Sir Wells.”
“You may have a point there. No ruins today, though. I’m going to get my bearings first. Understand?”
Osman bowed. “I am at your service.”
“Where can I find you if I want you?”
“The manager will see that I attend you, sir. Ask him. But I shall be nearby all the time.”
“That’s good news,” said Pete, and he gestured curtly to the door. Osman bowed himself out, almost bumping into a tall figure who hurried by so fast that Pete caught only a quick glimpse of the man who had sat opposite him on the train.
* * *
The celebrated dining room of the Karnak Inn was not quite so bad as Pete had suspected; he did not mind cockroaches as long as they were not on the menu. Paper gummed with glue hung from the center of each slowly revolving fan, attracting those few flies that were not already busy with Pete’s breakfast. He brushed them away and ate hungrily. Through French windows opposite him he could see a rank green garden, bright with flowers. As he was drinking coffee, a woman entered. He knew immediately who she was.
Anna Mueller was far more attractive than he had imagined. For some reason her name had made him think of a fat, red-faced German blonde with her hair tied in braids about her head; the reality was very different.
She was not tall. Her body was perfectly proportioned, from the smooth straight neck to the small waist and slender legs; but it was her face that most attracted him. Her hair was a natural red-gold, more dark than light, like dull copper. Her skin was naturally pale and her eyes, beneath straight dark brows, were a deep vivid blue. Her expression was sad.
She hesitated when she saw him; then she moved toward the French windows. “Would you like some coffee?” His own voice sounded suddenly harsh in his ears.
She turned, surprised, one hand on the door leading into the garden. “No, thank you,” she said. Her voice was deep, the German accent faint. And then she was gone.
Pete cursed himself for a fool. The first impression was always important, and he had sounded like a high-school boy cruising a Main Street girl. And it mattered, he realized suddenly; it mattered very much the impression he made upon her. Bewildered by his own discovery, he finished breakfast. Then, after lighting a cigarette and counting to twenty to quiet the familiar buzzing in his ears, he got up and walked out into the garden.
He was not sure whether or not she was surprised to see him. Her face was serene. She was seated on a bench beneath an arbor of what looked to Pete like camellias.
“May I sit down?”
“If you like.” Her tone was neutral. She moved over to make room for him.
“My name is Wells, Peter Wells.”
“You are American?” She turned half around and looked at him frankly.
“That’s right. You?”
“I have no country,” she said in a matter-of-fact voice, completely without the usual dramatics he had grown accustomed to in Egypt whenever nationality was discussed.
“You are German?”
She nodded. “Düsseldorf, once,” she said. “How did you know? My accent?”
“The manager told me the internationally famous artist Anna Mueller was staying in the hotel. You fit the description.”
She laughed, suddenly, her face becoming, magically, like a little girl’s. “International, yes,” she said finally. “Artist, no. Famous, no. Anna Mueller, yes, I am she.”
“You sing in a night club?”
“How did you know?”
“I heard about you in Cairo.”
She frowned and looked away. “I am so notorious?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“But that’s what you mean, isn’t it?” There was a sharp edge to her voice that startled him.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’ve only been in this country a week or so.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to say that. Forgive me.” She was genuinely sorry, he could see, and he forgave her. He talked to her a little about himself, telling her the story of wanting to see the ruins, not mentioning his actual business or his Cairo connections. When he asked her why she was in Luxor, she said, “To think.”
“In this heat?”
She smiled. “It doesn’t stop the thinking, does it?”
“A little, maybe. Why didn’t you go somewhere cool?”
“There is no such place in this country.”
“And you have to stay here?”
“I have to stay here.” She plucked a flower absently and twirled it between her fingers.
“Have you been a singer long?”
She shook her head. “I am not even a singer now. But they pay me money for some reason. They se
em to think the noise I make is worth money, and I take it, of course, I am very poor.”
“No family?”
“There is never any family,” she said dryly.
“Meaning?”
“That I am displaced. I am the child of Nazis, both dead. No brothers living, no sisters ever born. That is my family history.” All this without bitterness.
“You’re very young,” said Pete.
“I am twenty-one, but I feel as if I have lived through the end of the world, through Armageddon, as we say.”
“How did you come here, to Egypt?”
“I went where I could. This was fairly easy. Once I got here, I found work in a night club, and now…”
“You are rich and famous.”
“And now I have enough to keep me…independent.” Pete understood only too well what she meant by this; he didn’t like to think of all the things this girl must have been forced to do to live. It was a cruel business.
“Do you intend to live here all your life? In this country?”
She shrugged. “I have no plans. I have no idea. At the moment I am too pleased to be living at all, and on vacation.”
“In the heat.”
“I like it.” And sitting there beneath the thick greenery, the light filtered green-yellow by leaves, he found that the heat was not unbearable. But then, at that moment, Pete would have found the equator wonderful.
“Will you show me the country around here?”
“If you like.” Her voice was impersonal; there was no suggestion of coquetry in her manner. She was direct and uncomplicated, or so she seemed.
“You’re here alone?”
“I like being alone.” Then, politely: “But I don’t mind your company.”
“I don’t mind yours, either.” They smiled at one another. Then Pete asked her if she would like to take a walk now and she said that she would, that she’d show him the temple close to the river, the one he had seen from the window of his bedroom.
As they walked along, chatting to one another, Pete wondered whether or not it was merely his own loneliness that made her seem somehow wonderful, different from any other woman he had known, more exciting in her youthful way than the older, more glittering Hélène. Then, too, he felt protective about this slim blonde girl, and hopeful, very hopeful. He watched her out of the corners of his eyes as they strolled along the palm-shaded road in front of the hotel, the Nile to their right, at the foot of a rocky bluff. She lacked self-consciousness, seemed never to be aware of herself, only of him, of what she was saying to him.
“You should see the tombs tomorrow,” she said. “Or soon, anyway, because each day the heat gets worse across the river. It is all desert where the kings are buried, no shade of any kind.”
“Will you come with me?”
“You’ll need a real guide.”
“I have one—old fellow named Osman. He’ll chaperon us.”
“Yes, I’ll go, if you want me to. Here is the temple.”
It was a cube-shaped building with squat columns of brown stone and no roof. Inside, between cracks in the stone-paved floor, flowers grew. There were no houses nearby; only a grove of acacia trees separated it from the road. There was a full sweeping view of the river and the mountains beyond that. The temple was deserted.
They walked in silence through the main part, looking at the carvings on the wall, the rows of hieroglyphs. Then, on the other side, through the portico, they found a courtyard with what looked like smaller chapels built around it, to one of which she led him, a shadowy little room with no windows, only a door.
“To think how old it is!”
“How old?” asked Pete, turning to look down at her, at the lovely face pale in the shadows, the eyes shining as she looked not at him but at the tall statue of some god with the head of a hawk.
“Nearly four thousand years, Peter,” she said softly. She had said his name at last. It was like magic, like an incantation. He slipped his arm around her and slowly, carefully pulled her to him. Their lips met; he breathed the warm scent of her young body, of her hair, which brushed his face as lightly as the wind. Then, as naturally, they were separate again.
There was a long silence at the feet of the hawk-headed god. At last Anna said, “Why did you do that?”
“Because I wanted to. Because I thought you wanted me to.”
“Is it so easy?” and she touched her lips with the back of her hand, as though to feel the impression of his mouth with her fingertips.
“I think so…unless I was wrong.”
“Do American men always kiss women when they meet them?”
“I don’t know what they do, only what I do.”
“Do you do it often? Like this?”
“Very often,” he said, telling the truth. “But never like this, Anna.”
“You don’t know me.” And she turned away from him and pretended to examine the carvings on the wall. A man wearing the double crown of Egypt was riding in a chariot, followed by a row of captives, grotesque little figures, all in chains.
“Does it make so much difference?” He studied her straight back. The long hair gleamed in the dim room.
“It would…if you knew.” Her voice was even.
“That you have had lovers?” He was moving boldly now, driven on not only by his desire, but by something else, by a power he had never suspected himself of possessing: a need not just for a woman, but for this woman.
“Worse.” The word was like a small explosion of bitterness.
“I don’t care.”
“But perhaps I do.” She turned and faced him, her dark blue eyes sad. “We won’t talk like this again, will we?” Then, before he could say anything, she pointed to the train of captives some long-dead artist had etched on the wall with a skillful hand. “Look at those poor creatures! Prisoners of war.”
“More like freaks,” said Pete, wondering if he should pursue her further or not. He decided to wait, for a time. “Like a sideshow back home. There’s even a hunchback, like—” For some reason he paused.
She looked up at him quickly, her eyes wide. “You know Le Mouche?” Her voice was tense.
“Yes, I know him.”
“It must be nearly noon,” she said, moving toward the door of the stone chamber. “We should get back to the hotel before the sun is too hot.”
And, try as he might, he could not regain that intimacy with her that had begun in the ruined temple.
At the hotel they parted in the lobby. When he suggested a later meeting, she was vague. Puzzled, angry at himself for having made a wrong move somewhere along the line, he went to his room.
* * *
The revolver was very large, of a foreign make with which he was not familiar. The way it was pointed at him, however, was unmistakable, and he put up his hands immediately.
“Don’t bother,” said the dark man. “This is not a criminal visit.” He was seated at the plain dressing table by the window. A Tauchnitz edition of an English novel lay open beside him on the table. He had obviously been reading it.
“I think this is my room,” said Pete, putting down his arms and walking over to the bed as casually as he could. He sat down on the edge of the bed and, with a hand made steady by an effort of will, lit a cigarette.
“I’m perfectly sure it is,” said the other agreeably. Despite his swarthy Arabic features, he spoke English with a clipped British accent.
“Make yourself at home,” said Pete.
“I’ve spent a pleasant morning reading while you were with Fräulein Mueller.”
“How did you know that?”
“How does one know anything? I have two eyes.”
“Isn’t that swell!” Pete mocked him, anger rising in spite of the ugly revolver. “I’ve got a pair, too. They were open on the train when I saw you in the dining car and they were open in Cairo when you danced with Hélène at that night club.”
The man nodded. “Very good. Very good indeed. You are not as stupid as you
look.”
“If you’d like to put that gun down, Junior, I’ll show you who’s the stupid one.” Pete’s upper lip was growing dangerously tight. His muscles twitched. A store of rage had been accumulating in him ever since he’d come to Cairo. He was not afraid of the revolver; the other wouldn’t dare shoot him in his own room. He wasn’t afraid of the man’s body, either, tall and thickset as it was.
His antagonist only chuckled at his anger. “I have no intention of fighting with you on such a hot day. Where did you go with that girl?”
“None of your damned business.”
“I am from the police, Mr. Wells.”
“And I’m from Mars.”
“Here are my authorizations.” He tossed a passport-like document at Pete. In three languages it announced that the bearer was a police inspector named Mohammed Ali. There was even a photograph. Pete gave the papers back.
“I can put you in jail, Mr. Wells, whenever I choose.”
“I’m an American citizen.”
“It won’t make the slightest bit of difference. Your consulate would never hear another word about you. Our prisons are very uncomfortable, quite barbaric, if I say so myself. You would never be heard from again.”
“What do you want?”
Mohammed Ali put his revolver away and teetered his chair back. “At present, nothing, Mr. Wells—or very little. I would like to know what you and Fräulein Mueller talked about this morning, and where you went.”
“We went to the temple up the road. What we talked about couldn’t’ve interested you less.”
The policeman nodded sympathetically. “She is very attractive, of course. Many people have found her so. I am certain that if you liked, she would be only too happy to accommodate you as she has all the others.”
Pete got to his feet slowly, moved two paces forward, and then, with the quick left hook that made him the champion of his division, sent the other man reeling. Mohammed Ali fell to the floor with a crash. Pete stood over him, mechanically massaging the knuckles of his left hand.
“You hit very hard,” said the policeman, pulling himself to his feet, one hand held to his jaw. His eyes were suddenly swollen with pain and his face was dark red.