Into Suez

by Stevie Davies

  At Cairo Museum they’d viewed the exquisite chairs, bed and chariot the young man would need to equip him in the next life; the life-size black and gold sentinels who represented his soul, his ka. The three magnificent coffins that had nested together around the precious cadaver. The gold canopic shrine housing his guts, lungs and liver, round which four tutelary goddesses stretched their arms in a gesture of protection so tender and gracious, so human and motherly, that Ailsa’s bowels had gone to water. With a pang she’d thought of the frailty of the thread from which your child’s life hung. At Fayid Cemetery on the day of Chalkie’s interment she’d noticed the graves of children who’d died of some trivial ailment that could have been treated back home without a thought. The dead had to be buried immediately and abandoned by the Great Bitter Lake when the parents’ time came for a home posting.

  But why worry about Nia? Why feel tugged in the region of your navel, by the invisible cord that bound you to your child? Nia reared in Ailsa’s mind’s eye and stared past her, implacable as a baby god. Shan’t be long, Ailsa had wheedled, lingering in the doorway with her case. Have a gorgeous time with Daddy. But the child, who was your judge, weighed you in the balance and, finding you wanting, averted her head. You will only have me for so long. You know this and yet have shortened the time left to us. The airlessness of the passage made Ailsa light-headed. Why go on? Because you couldn’t go back. Mona led the way into the passage forking right.

  But, oh no, here he was, the American archaeologist, Mr Bothmer from Brooklyn, who’d talked them round a series of tombs this morning, until their heads had pulsed and their legs ached. In subterranean chambers, some like cathedrals, he’d interpreted paintings, commenting on the preservation of the colours, praising the cutting of reliefs, solving hieroglyphic enigmas. Not that she’d have missed it for the world: such a privilege to be instructed by one so cultivated and knowledgeable. The last tomb they’d visited belonged to Tuthmosis III. The electric current being switched off, their route had been lit by a paraffin lamp held up by a ghaffir, as Mr Bothmer called him. They’d climbed a steep mountainside and descended into a crevice hand over hand down a rickety iron ladder; then negotiated rock steps, deep, deep into the mountain side, to penetrate halls and corridors of vast dimension. When they’d emerged, soft-spoken and courtly Mr Bothmer, a handsome, suave man with a leonine head of hair, went off with the guard to share a cigarette on a rush mat in the guard’s stone hut.

  Now he swept his hat off to them and murmured something about destiny.

  The three stood together at the wooden rail, looking down at the chamber Howard Carter had unsealed thirty years before, discovering the nest of caskets, like Russian dolls, that for three thousand years had housed the boy’s corpse. The removal of the treasures had left on display only this central emptiness. At the base of the pale stone room lay a modest coffin containing the boy-king’s mummy, surrounded on four walls by pictures and hieroglyphs.

  Mr Bothmer was scathing about Tut’s tomb. ‘So disappointing for you ladies,’ he said. ‘Nothing to be seen. An inferior tomb.’

  But he perked up when Mona asked about the meaning of the monkeys on the west wall. He had much to say about baboon symbolism in Egyptian resurrection mythology. The ancients had observed, he said, that when baboons awaken in the morning, the first thing they do is to turn themselves in the direction of the sun. To Ailsa, half listening, the rows of identical baboons looked endearingly like the pattern of a child’s nursery wallpaper. She would tell Hedwig about this. Hedwig would be touched; her eyes would swim. For here the truth of human life was laid bare for all to see: mothers’ immortal tenderness for babes beyond saving.

  A chest of board games had been found here with ivory counters to amuse the young man in eternity. The paintings on the north wall showed his mouth being opened, to restore his senses for use in the afterlife: Mr Bothmer took them through the symbolism at a gallop, for time was pressing. Dark Anubis, the jackal god, led the pale Pharaoh on his journey through death, a quest fraught with terror and danger. Over the river of death. Into the presence of the most terrible gods in the pantheon. The boyish heart was weighed in judgement. Into the sky he ascended, the living image of the god Amun.

  ‘Do you believe in life after death?’ Ailsa asked Mr Bothmer.

  ‘Oh, well. As a Christian, naturally,’ he said, shuffling backwards, giving a high-pitched cough, which he covered with his hand.

  It was as if an impropriety had been committed. Shortly Mr Bothmer said he would leave the ladies for now, as he had an engagement with Miss Natacha Rombova of the Bollingen Foundation and her little dog, which accompanied her everywhere, even into the tombs, where it barked the place down.

  When he’d gone they stood in silence, hands on the railing. For ages the murals had been sealed unseen. They were painted for the gods’ eyes, Ailsa thought. The gods’ eyes see in the dark. But now we come along and breathe on their eternity, defiling them with many-times rebreathed carbon dioxide and sulphur and bacteria. She peered from the side of her eye at her friend: two silver chains on Mona’s throat picked up threads of light, the ankh Ailsa had bought her at Karnak and the key to the house in Jerusalem.

  Love for Mona suffused Ailsa. I’d risk anything for you, she thought. I don’t know what will come of it. Or what it’s all about. And immediately the tenderness was streaked by perplexity, a dark slick tainting the clear water of friendship. But what could adulterate true friendship? And theirs was true. Why should their affection feel compromised, aside from its necessary secrecy? Mona’s hand reached for Ailsa’s and clasped it. Or was it secrecy itself that contaminated what they had, Ailsa thought, at the same time as it kindled excitement and transformed fellowship into something hot, ardent? Dangerous, even. If they could just be ordinary, low-key, this passionate glow would fade. Did she want that? Did Mona? There was something more than life-sized about Mona: a spirit that burned to live on the heroic scale. It had chosen Ailsa as its partner. This force carried Ailsa along, racing dreamily down the current of another’s desire.

  The chamber was almost domestic sized; not magnificent at all, but bare and simple. It impressed her with neither peace nor calm, but with stasis, final changelessness. She thought of Chalkie. Of how there was no time in his world, only a boundless waiting. But how Sergeant Roy White ate away at the living. Was consuming Joe, his comrade, infecting him with spores of death.

  ‘Well, we’ll have to love you and leave you, Tut my dear old pal,’ Mona said at length.

  Wings fluttered in Ailsa’s chest; butterflies agitating for freedom. She couldn’t wait to get out into the fresh air.

  Then, confusingly, there was Chalkie White with the head of a hawk, face turned away, eyes fixed on some sight in another world, turned away sternly and forever. The jackal god had him by the hand and was leading him back down into the tomb, back the way they had come.

  Ailsa allowed herself to be supported up into the light of day. Passing the gatekeeper’s nod and the soldier’s sneer, they climbed into the Jeep and drank thirstily from their water bottle. The sun was setting behind tawny peaks of limestone with their patina of gold from the silted sand; the air had cooled and the swift Egyptian twilight was imminent. Vestiges of sunlight gilded the tired faces of the few tourists who’d followed in their footsteps into the valley.

  ‘I shall always remember that we were here together,’ Mona said. ‘Always. Are you all right?’ She leaned over and placed cool fingertips on Ailsa’s wrist, as if to take her pulse. They held and kissed each other. It seemed altogether the right thing. Mona drove through biblical hills with scattered mud brick villages. Black-robed women tended donkeys and goats, or carried petrol cans full of water on their heads. A boy with a cart heaped with palm leaves was thrashing a donkey.

  *

  Their last night: they laid out a picnic of delicious bread, goat’s cheese and tomatoes, and sat cross-legged on the bed eating, drinking, talking. About Habibi and his anti-Zionism and how
he’d been disowned by most of his family in Manchester as an anti-Semite and a traitor to his blood; then he’d topped it all by marrying not just a goy but an Arab woman. Habibi could understand why they felt as they did, only he couldn’t share it. It was his decency that lay at the bottom of it and common sense, Mona said: his clowning around was his way of tilting at a mad world. He’d put himself in the firing line, every imaginable firing line. He gave people their best estimate, as witness her good-for-nothing self.

  ‘Look, let me show you something.’

  From her wallet Mona took a pencilled poem by one of Ben’s psychiatric patients, jotted on a scrap of ruled paper above a sketch of the Wing Commander dancing, wearing a ballet tutu over his KDs and boots. Mona carried it around in her bag. Wasn’t it the spitting image? She kissed it. She’d wear it away, wear him away, she said, with so much kissing.

  And yet you can bear to be away from him and spend time with me, Ailsa thought.

  ‘Shall I read it aloud, love?’

  ‘Yes, of course, go on.’

  Gentle Gentle Wing Co Jacobs

  the marchpast the flypast the flytrap

  the sad ones are coming for us

  voices voices voices the sad ones

  butchers knives at Sakkara

  the chameleon on the black wall

  moths coat his tongue

  but Gentle Gentle Wing Co Jacobs

  I will join the dancepast in your footprints

  through warmer sand.

  ‘Almost as if Gentle Gentle were a rank,’ Mona said. This was how Habibi was. He found it difficult to hate. It wasn’t in him. A bit of his brain was missing. The young man who’d written the poem had been suffering from psychosis, ‘sand-happy’ they called it; he’d tried to kill himself several times. Touched by Habibi’s kindness, he wrote the first and possibly last poem of his life.

  ‘What happened to him?’

  ‘Sent home, I suppose. Or he killed himself. Many of the boys Ben sees have seen too much. The War, Palestine.’

  It wasn’t always easy to live with Habibi’s sweetness, she admitted, for Mona of course wasn’t like that, she was a bit of a bruiser. But he took people for the best in them. When they had met in Lübeck, he’d been with an American, Abe; she had imagined Habibi, well, could not love a woman. But that was wrong.

  Ailsa tried not to stare. She blushed, breathed short; was aware of Mona’s arm, brushing her own. Don’t tell me any more, she thought, edging fractionally away.

  Someone was screaming. A woman in pain or terror or both.

  Hedwig’s baby made its presence felt. Time to be born, the child announced. Ailsa scrubbed her hands and arms; offered soothing words. The labouring woman clung to her. Two months early and far, Hedwig wailed, from civilisation and clean hospitals and her husband. Don’t let me be taken into one of the native hospitals, she begged, raising her white face from the pillow, forehead beaded with sweat. Don’t let a foreign doctor get his hands on me. They don’t understand about germs, she said, and hygiene. Promise me, Ailsa, promise. And also Mrs Brean. That old battle-axe is not to come anywhere near me.

  The baby was not taking its time. It was speeding down a helter skelter and would plunge out into a dirty and unready world if they didn’t get a move on. Mona was set to fetching disinfectant, a bucket and a rubber sheet.

  ‘Now clean the sheet with the disinfectant,’ Ailsa told her. ‘Slosh it everywhere. And your hands and arms. Thoroughly. No, like this.’ As the belt of pain slammed tight round Hedwig’s belly, Ailsa murmured that all was well, breathe, breathe. There was nobody to refer to. Mona seemed to be plain useless under these circumstances. And Ailsa herself was tiddly.

  ‘If you’re going to puke, toddle,’ Ailsa told Mona with an asperity she didn’t try to hide. ‘I mean it.’

  ‘No, I’m not, I’m not.’

  Mona scrubbed the red rubber sheet. They laid it on the bed, just in time, for Hedwig’s waters broke. Is it a haemorrhage?Mona asked in alarm, stepping back. No, you idiot, it’s the amniotic waters. Ailsa told Hedwig this was normal and natural and showed that things were progressing just as they ought. She had no idea if this was so.

  Then everything stopped. Hedwig seemed to have lost her way. Get some more water, Mona. It must be boiled for three minutes and watch them do it. Mrs Brean had phoned Ish and Norman would certainly be on his way by now. And they were sending a team of medics. Not long now, Ailsa reassured Hedwig.

  ‘In a strange, hot land,’ she heard Hedwig say.

  ‘We’re here, your friends,’ Ailsa reassured her. ‘You’re not among strangers, are you? Everything’s fine.’

  Hedwig fell into a light doze. What was the time? Ailsa consulted the disc of Hedwig’s gold watch. A quarter past two. The light bulbs faltered and recovered. A power cut was all they needed. Ailsa called for a torch.

  Mrs Brean yoo-hooed round the door. She would take over now. Babs was the one to get this little squeaker born. Her abominable cheerfulness made Ailsa want to scream. No thanks. But I insist. And I insist you won’t. Ailsa assured her that everything was progressing in a calm, orderly fashion, and Mrs Webster expressly didn’t want anyone round her she didn’t know – but get hold of a torch, or preferably two, before you go.

  ‘Oh, but, lovey, everyone knows me.’

  Mona, returning with torches, saw her off, Ailsa had no idea how, for Hedwig awoke with a shriek. Her nightie rode up as she tried to scramble off the bed, revealing the twisted ridges of old scars from thigh to knee.

  ‘Is she still here?’ Hedwig asked. ‘Don’t look, don’t look, just tell me. Over there. Die Jüdin.’

  A Jewish woman? Ailsa soothed her: there was nobody there at all. Just the three of them and the baby would make four when it came. Did she mean Mona? Or was she seeing things?

  Hedwig closed her eyes. Her lips moved; she was muttering or chanting. Was this how people were when they were dying? Was Hedwig dying? Ailsa had to bend to catch the words. What was she saying?

  Die Bombenflieger! Mutti burning.

  No one is burning. Wake up. You’re dreaming.

  The bombing of Hamburg, of course. Her mother and brother. Ailsa took Hedwig’s face in her hands and stroked it. Let’s get this over. Ailsa caught in fragments her hoarse whisper: Jüdin. Sara. Dort drüben.

  ‘Hedwig, stop that. Stop that instantly. Now wake up.’ She shook Hedwig’s shoulder.

  ‘What? What is it, Ailsa? What have I done?’

  She was clearly innocent of what had come out of her mouth.

  ‘You were dreaming. And delirious. Never mind. It’s all over now. We have to get this baby born. But by the way, Mona is not a Jew. Just for the record. Not that it would make any difference if she were.’

  ‘But, Ailsa dear, I know that,’ Hedwig said, puzzled. ‘Warum sagst du das, liebe Ailsa? Was meinst du damit? Why do you say that?’

  ‘I must have misheard something you were saying.’

  The belt of pain slammed tight again. The baby was coming now, fast. Contractions almost constant. Ailsa looked between the quivering legs. Darkness was crowning there. I can’t, I can’t. Yes, yes, you can. Cupping Hedwig’s knees in both palms, she created resistance. Just one more push – one more – there.

  The bloody head was driven out into Ailsa’s hands; the narrow body flopped out after it. Its little willy baptised them with an eccentric arc of urine. Ailsa sucked the mess out of its nose; spat; welcomed the mewing protest. The baby was removed from her hands; Mona wrapped it in a torn-up sheet. Ailsa awaited the afterbirth. Cries pumped out. Good, well done. Over now. But Hedwig moaned, whimpered. Here you are, Hedwig, your little boy, he’s perfect. No! Take it away! All was not right. The mother had begun to toss again, and Ailsa, straightening up, realised that labour was continuing. Ailsa said, there’s a twin, a second baby, Hedwig, now, when you want to, push, that’s the ticket, push. Nearly there.

  The head was out and it was the wrong colour. Blue-black. The embryo had died some t
ime ago; its bloodied face bunched like a fist. Another boy, less than half his brother’s size. Ailsa could not think what to do with the corpse. She held it in convulsively trembling hands, sheathed in its brother’s black slime of meconium. Keep it from the mother, wouldn’t that be best? She shouldn’t see. Poor Hedwig. Scissors were brought, Babs was there and Ailsa was glad of her. She made way for Babs and left for her own room.

  ‘God, my God, remind me not to have children,’ Mona gasped. ‘How did you manage that? Coping like that?’

  ‘No choice. You have to cope. At least she’s got one,’ said Ailsa tonelessly. ‘One healthy boy. It’s all she was expecting after all.’

  Mona’s hand shook, pouring out the red wine they’d been drinking, what seemed a lifetime ago, sharing their private confidences. She looked at Ailsa in awed apology for not having been more use.

  Glass in hand, Ailsa opened the shutters and stepped out on to the veranda. The last violet moment of sunrise burned away; men below rode bicycles with panniers of new bread; a Land Rover drew up on the opposite side of the road, four doors opening, men springing out. The medics rushed into the wrong hotel, the Luxor Star. Ailsa called but none of them heard. She shrugged. Babs would sort it out. Blood flecks stained Ailsa’s blouse, honourable blood. She thought of Hedwig’s fire-scarred legs. No wonder she wouldn’t be seen dead in shorts or a bathing suit, however sweltering the sun. She’d been hurt by us, hurt beyond all bearing, yet she’d picked herself up and agreed to live. It was brave. Yet Ailsa couldn’t like her.

  On the bedside cabinet lay Joe’s Kodak, the film not quite used up. Mona had taken endless pictures of Ailsa and the obelisk at Thebes, Ailsa eating a sandwich at Memnon, Ailsa beside the Nile. Picking up the camera, she went in to photograph Hedwig’s baby.