The Cairo Diary

by Maxim Chattam

  Marion pushed the door shut and leaned back against it.

  She let out a long breath before opening her eyes again.

  The entrance hall was narrow, flanked by a staircase that led up to the bedroom. This was her home.

  She must get used to that idea. For a few weeks, minimum.

  She hadn’t yet taken the time to really explore, to get the measure of the place, and that was going to be her program that evening.

  She placed the key on the hall table, walked past the wall of the kitchen, and entered the living room, her living room.

  A long, tall window ran almost the entire width of the room, right at the back, divided vertically by slender beams that gave it a medieval feel. A sofa stood at a right angle underneath, opposite a cabinet hiding the television and hi-fi system. The place had clearly been fitted out as a not always successful compromise between an ancient house and modern comfort. But the view was pleasant. The pointed slate roofs and the redbrick chimneys led down in a gentle slope to sea level, toward the south and the entrance to the Mount, toward the causeway that led off into the distance, cleaving the gray expanse until it finally rejoined the land.

  The attics and the pointed windows of the lofts were all dark. One lone ribbon of white smoke rose from a chimney lower down in the village, and was immediately dispersed by the wind.

  Marion laid her coat on the sofa and sat down beside it, her hands folded behind her head. Noticing that she was covered in soil, she got up again rather quickly, clicking her tongue against the roof of her mouth in annoyance.

  It must be around six. She wasn’t hungry, just in need of warming up. There was a bath upstairs, a chance to relax, and why not take the time to take a little care of herself? How long was it since she had done that? Taken two hours in one evening for herself, for her body, to smooth cream over her blemishes, exfoliate with the aid of gel, wax away excess, slather, rub, sound out, and improve its appearance so she felt good? Make herself a new skin.

  Yes, that was what she needed, in order to find herself again.

  Marion leaped to her feet and climbed the steps, which creaked under the carpet that covered them. The staircase led directly into the bedroom, which had no door; a double bed, a sofa with a low table, a wardrobe, a few shelves, and a dressing table were sufficient to fill it. Three mansard windows opened up, two to the south onto the same view as the picture window downstairs, and the other to the north, onto the little cemetery.

  The two suitcases were lying on the ground, underneath the shelves, waiting to be emptied. Marion crouched down to take out a pair of clean underwear and her dressing gown, then headed for the bathroom.

  She turned her head as she got up, her eyes sweeping the room very swiftly. From right to left, linking the pieces of information with a blurring sensation.

  Sofa … low table … lamp … pile of magazines, placed there through Sister Anne’s good offices … beige carpet … bedside table … night-light … bed … sheet of paper … other bedside table … other wardrobe … carpet … and the door leading to the bathroom.

  Marion had already taken two steps when she stopped.

  Sheet of paper?

  This time her attention was drawn back to the bedspread.

  It wasn’t a sheet but a vellum envelope bearing a single word: Mademoiselle.

  Her heart started thudding in her chest, and she opened her mouth to breathe. What message lay inside?

  She closed her eyes, immediately reassuring herself. Those who wished her ill in Paris were the type to strike, not leave her an envelope.

  Marion’s fingertips felt her split lip.

  If they had found her, she would no longer be standing.

  It was Sister Anne or one of her companions who had left this. Nothing more.

  Marion nervously pushed a lock of hair behind her ear. She didn’t like the attention. The envelope hadn’t been there when she woke up; she had made the bed before leaving and could swear to it. If she must spend the coming weeks here things must be made clear: That they gave her shelter, so be it, but she would demand a certain privacy, beginning with the place she lived. She didn’t want people to be able to come in here behind her back.

  She picked up the envelope and opened it.

  Inside she found a piece of cardboard on which was written in beautiful black handwriting:

  Do you like playing games?

  45 35 51 43 22 11 12 43 24 15 32/41 24 15 43 43 15 25 11 51 34 15

  I shall say only one thing to help you: There are twenty-five of them, although one may add another, which would be the double of its predecessor, aligned in a square, 12345 across and 12345 down.

  Yours.

  Marion blinked and reread the note.

  “What is this bullshit?” she murmured.

  Her first reflex was to lift her head and look through the curtains to see if anyone was spying on her from the cemetery opposite. It was built on a terrace, which brought it up to the same height as the upper floor. The house was separated from it only by an enclosed alleyway between the buildings and the cemetery wall.

  Nobody.

  It was particularly dark outside.

  Marion lit the lamp beside the bedroom sofa and sat down on the cushions.

  What did this mean? All these figures …

  “Fine, okay … you want to play.… What is this? A kind of welcoming ritual? Hazing?”

  Marion had spoken out loud.

  Her heart started to calm down.

  She placed the card on the low table.

  What now?

  Her eyes scrutinized the succession of numbers.

  It’s a bloody riddle. A coded message …

  And she had always loved this kind of mystery, ever since she was very small. Even crosswords fascinated her. In a certain way they were, in her eyes, semantic riddles, divided up.

  So these few figures here …

  Yes, she had to admit it: This intrigued her.

  And so?

  “And so, shit! If it occupies me,” she declared, getting up to fetch a notepad and pencil from her bag.

  Whether this was the idea of Sister Anne or one of the brothers, that had no importance in itself.

  “Let’s see…”

  They didn’t look like coordinates, more like a coded message.

  The figures were all grouped in pairs. One pair could designate one letter rather than one word; that seemed like the most logical explanation.

  Marion closed her eyes to try and remember that word she had learned as a teenager.… It had haunted her mind for years.… A word with an o in it.… God, it was something everybody knew.…

  “Esarintulo!” she exclaimed.

  The order of the letters most used in the French language. First the e, then the s, the a, and so on. She could try to link the most commonly recurring figures with the most used letter.

  “That gives us…”

  Marion counted. The forty-three and the fifteen appeared the most, four times each. E and s probably. The fifteen was in the middle and ended the message, whereas two forty-threes succeeded each other in the center. Two letter es in the middle of a word? Unlikely. On the other hand, two instances of s were feasible. Marion opted for s as forty-three and e as fifteen.

  Next, eleven and twenty-four appeared twice.

  An a and an r?

  Marion wrote down her first deductions in her notebook, leaving a cross for the unknown letters:

  xxxSxAxSREx/xRESSExAxxE

  Nothing obvious. Eleven letters in both words, she noticed. It was very short. Perhaps too short for Esarintulo to work properly.

  On the spur of the moment, the sentence supposed to be a clue had seemed incomprehensible to her and she hadn’t included it in her reasoning; now it was time to reintegrate it into the equation.

  There are twenty-five of them, although one may add another, which would be the double of its predecessor, aligned in a square, 12345 across and 12345 down.

  Twenty-five what?

/>   Marion ran her tongue over her lips.

  She drew a rectangle in her notebook. Starting at the top left-hand corner, she wrote 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 at equal distances apart, following the horizontal axis, as for a graph. She repeated the operation with the vertical, the y-axis.

  “And now?”

  There were indeed twenty-five boxes to fill, but with what?

  There are twenty-five of them, although one may add another, which would be the double of its predecessor.

  Her hand fell, hitting the sheet of paper.

  “What bullshit!”

  She tried to replace figures with letters.

  “The alphabet!”

  Double its predecessor was the letter w … a double v. And from twenty-six you then went to twenty-five.

  She filled the square in ascending order, the most logical.

  Then she went back to the series of figures.

  45 35 51 43 22 11 12 43 24 15 32/41 24 15 43 43 15 25 11 51 34 15

  All she had to do was intersect the columns. One vertical and one horizontal coordinate gave a letter.

  Following this method, the first, forty-five, that is four and five, could give either t or y. Since few words began with y, the first figure in each number must indicate the horizontal, the second the vertical. She started replacing each pair with its designated letter.

  Her nails were black and the soil emphasized each crease in her fingers. Dark particles sometimes came away and soiled the paper.

  TOURGABRIEL/PIERREJAUNE

  6

  A bluish light was falling on the bedroom now that the sun had vanished. All that remained was an amber-colored circle around the sofa and the little lamp.

  “Gabriel tower, yellow stone,” Marion read.

  She rested the notepad on her knees.

  What exactly did they want from her? To drag her outside on a treasure hunt?

  She lifted her eyes to the window. The cemetery had aged three centuries with the advent of darkness, its crosses becoming menacing, its lichen taking on the unpleasant appearance of sticky flesh, flowing from stone to stone. Far above, the abbey’s mass sat atop its rock and watched over the little house.

  Marion went and fetched the map Sister Anne had given her that morning, and unfolded it on the low table.

  The Gabriel Tower was a structure that stood a little apart, on the western flank of the Mount.

  A round tower, beside the water, which could be reached by two paths. One was impractical at high tide. It necessitated a circuitous route, leaving the village by the main gate to reach the fortification. The other was a little more complicated for a neophyte. It meant climbing to the top of the village, to the path that circled the abbey, then going down again by the one called “la montée aux Fanils” in order to reach the Gabriel Tower.

  Nevertheless, with the aid of a map it shouldn’t pose any problems.

  Marion refolded the map and went down to get her coat.

  Of course she was going to go, now that her curiosity had been aroused. What would she do otherwise? Take a bath and ponder for an hour on the reasons behind this little game? Pointless.

  Pointless and irritating.

  She adjusted her warm coat, swallowed a glass of water in a single gulp, and went out, taking care to lock the door firmly behind her.

  The narrow street was as dark as a sewer. It resembled a sordid medieval alley: the wall of the cemetery’s foundations on one side and the row of little houses on the other, old stone everywhere, and in lieu of a lamppost an unlit lantern made of wrought iron, which creaked softly in the wind. Marion realized that she didn’t have a flashlight to light her way or even allow her to keep an eye on the map. Fortunately, she had a reasonably clear idea of which way to go. It was pointless to consider taking the lower route; she had seen the sea rising during the afternoon, and by now it must be licking the ramparts.

  She took the path to the left.

  The ground was paved and invisible. Marion was walking on a sieve of shadows, through which only sound could filter.

  A staircase appeared to the right, following the boundary of the cemetery, and climbing to higher levels of the Mount.

  She turned up her collar to protect her neck from the cold, slid her hands into her pockets, and kept her elbows tightly to her sides as she climbed the steps.

  The way was narrow and turned several times. It wound between low, decrepit walls and age-old houses. Marion was soon looking down on the village, from which very little light was emanating.

  The streets were deserted.

  She found herself in front of the abbey. A formidable fortress of faith, powerful and dominant, facing the bay. Marion walked for a moment under its protection, until she found a large staircase, which led to a road that wound between trees and led down to the fortifications.

  The wind had strengthened.

  The Gabriel Tower appeared down below, partly hidden by the vegetation that covered the western and northern part of the hill. Quite tall but particularly wide, it was isolated from the rest of the buildings on the Mount, like a pariah.

  The sound of the surf now joined with the wind’s lament.

  Marion eventually reached an open postern gate, which led to the side of the tower.

  A fierce wave thundered against the other side, breaking violently against the stone.

  After looking down on the landscape for several minutes, Marion was disturbed to find herself on the same level as the sea. She had lost that impression of assurance and control, and had become vulnerable, snatchable.

  Yes, that was the word. Snatchable.

  Seen from above, the dark immensity that surrounded her seemed beautiful and as inoffensive as a picture, but now the sea could snatch her with just one tentacle a little wilder than the others. All it took was a sudden burst of anger to carry her off, out to sea.

  The absence of real light gave each sound a disconcerting amplitude. Marion drew her neck down even further into the collar of her coat. She was not terrified. Not at ease, because of her proximity to the sea in the darkness, but she was not afraid.

  By this time, she had reached the Gabriel Tower. She had still to find a yellow stone.

  The road had disappeared behind her; the earthen pathway sloped gently down toward the shoreline.

  Suddenly, the gleaming arc of a circle appeared at the end of the path. It howled as it shattered against itself, spitting its spume onto the rocks. The sea remained motionless for a second then drew back, like the tip of an immense tongue that had tasted the flavors of the earth in that place. The sky’s timid twilight was reflected in it, creating a chaotic interplay of mirror effects.

  Marion stood almost twenty-two yards from the edge of the world, her hair driven to madness by the lashing wind.

  She didn’t regret coming down. The atmosphere was worth the trouble.

  A yellow stone. You still have to find a yellow stone, and see where this little game is supposed to lead us.

  She advanced step by step, scanning the ground and trying to make out the rare lighter patches scattered across it. She quickly walked beyond the tower, coming closer to the sea, which was now scarcely more than three feet below her.

  It undulated constantly, noisily crushing its edges against the banks. Marion stood as far away as possible, receiving the ocean’s salty dross in return for her temerity.

  There was no trace of a yellow stone.

  Unless it was small and hidden in the bushes, and without a flashlight it would be impossible to make out.

  Marion reached the end of the path. Beyond it stretched out the sea’s kingdom.

  Yellow stone … yellow stone … I still have to bring it to light!

  She turned around and walked back toward the tower.

  A multitude of whitish dots were scattered across the ground like constellations.

  A larger, duller patch lay against the wall of the Gabriel Tower, a small rock. Probably yellow.

  Marion pulled it backward. It was heavy.
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  The block rolled onto its side, the sound swallowed by the roaring of the waves.

  Marion pounced on the envelope that had just been liberated before it had a chance to fly away.

  Nothing written on it.

  She put it in her pocket.

  There was a whistling sound above her.

  At first it was faint, then it began to swell. Something began to breathe the air forcefully, like an enormous asthmatic creature.

  Marion carefully scanned the tower and its top, from which the breathing sound seemed to come. The noise was drowned out.

  Its last notes were swallowed up by a liquid sound, like a valve suddenly closing on the water.

  Suddenly the air gave a violent crack, sharper and deeper than thunder. Marion started.

  The echo resounded inside the tower. And Marion understood as she saw the sea drawing back. There were long openings, practically at the bottom of the tower, like horizontal arrow slits, through which a powerful wave could sometimes enter and strike the internal structure of the building. As it withdrew, the water caused an indraft that produced a long, whistling sound.

  Marion had seen enough. The cold was starting to overwhelm her and if up to now she had been merely uneasy, this time she had to admit that she felt less sure of herself.

  It was as she was climbing back up the circular path around the abbey that she saw the shadow for the first time.

  A shape down below, in an adjacent narrow street, a few yards below her. An individual whom she had just noticed and who had without a doubt noticed her too, as was evident from the frequent halts he or she made to look up in her direction. Unfortunately it was too far away for the person to be recognizable.

  Marion walked faster. It wasn’t late, but the wind really was blowing very hard, hard enough to dissuade people from going out. They were in the antechamber of the storm, there was no longer any doubt about that. And the presence of this individual did not reassure her.

  Carried along by the speed of the wind’s gusts, the silhouetted figure was making swift progress, continuing to keep watch on Marion.

  Marion had no desire to encounter whomever it was, still less a stranger. Not now.

  She walked down the first flight of steps, then jumped down the next. The narrow corridor turned to the right, between two empty houses, then to the left, swerved again, and then there were more stairs. Marion literally hurtled down them.