The Cairo Diary

by Maxim Chattam

  Nobody was talking about anything else.

  She skimmed through the newspaper. Then her eyes lit on the telephone next to the toilets. She longed desperately to phone her mother. To hear the sound of her voice, tell her over again that everything was okay, that she mustn’t worry.

  The man from the DST had explicitly forbidden her to do it. For her safety, and for that of the people she loved. Marion had had only a few hours to say goodbye to those close to her, to explain to them that she had to go into hiding for a while until things calmed down, perhaps until a court case was opened. If that was possible.

  She had a telephone card in her purse, next to the debit card the DST had given her, forbidding her to use her own until they gave her permission. There was next to nothing on the account, just enough for basic needs.

  Just one quick phone call … to hear the sound of her voice …

  And screw everything up!

  She paid for her coffee and went out. The others were still sitting at their table.

  Marion crossed the square and entered the town hall. She climbed back up to the attic, where she set to work again, although she was unable to find the switch to work the fluorescent lighting. It was dark between the shelves. The most badly damaged books were difficult to identify, and she had to take them out and open the flyleaf to read the title inside. She did this for a quarter of an hour, before reaching the lowest shelf.

  Marion took the weight off her knees and sat directly on the floor, sucking the end of her pen. Here the books were smaller, but heaped up any which way, one on top of another and covered in dust. An index card was stuck in at the end of the shelving: “Bequest of the library of the abbey of Mont-Saint-Michel—1945 or 1946—to be listed and classified.”

  The card was yellowed, and had probably been there for fifteen or twenty years.

  Everything in this room constituted the unwanted castoffs from the library. The most beautiful items were stored downstairs, while the ones that had little value had been slumbering here for a long time.

  Marion returned her attention to the abbey bequest.

  Around fifty works. At first sight, they all seemed to be in foreign languages.

  Briefly scanning them, Marion noticed especially the books in English, a few in Dutch, and a handful in German.

  She had always had a slight weakness for old books, especially those for children, which smelled of dust, mildew, and time. She read English perfectly, so she was interested in the titles of the first volumes.

  Authors whose names were unknown to her.

  Henry James appeared suddenly. Marion seized it by the edge and pulled it out to smell it. She closed her eyes.

  Then she replaced it and moved on. Virginia Woolf was lost between manuals on good etiquette in society.

  One folio volume was distinguished by its black color. It was injured; the base of its spine lay open, and twisted threads hung down from it. The letters of its author’s name had half-disappeared between two cords, eaten away by the decades.

  Marion deciphered the English title, which remained legible because it was gilded.

  As she drew out the book, white particles fell to the ground and rolled away into the gaps between the floorboards.

  It was a story she loved.

  The Narrative of A. Gordon Pym by Edgar Allan Poe.

  A novel that finished on a sentence in suspense, the only one Marion knew that had no end, ending in the middle of a chapter, with an open ending. She stuck her nose in it. It had the characteristic smell of antiquity. When she was little, she often went to her grandfather’s house, where he had a splendid library, with a large number of very old books. Marion adored their smell; she thought it was the scent of the fingers of thousands of readers that formed this magnificent bouquet.

  Poe had the same powers of memory as Proust, thought Marion.

  The flat side of the book was a little swollen, the leather cracked.

  Marion opened the first page.

  Then she turned the pages that followed.

  Her eyebrows shot up.

  Lines appeared beneath her lower eyelids.

  The pages were indeed in English.

  But there wasn’t a single printed letter.

  Nothing but pages of manuscript writing, upright and joined.

  “March 16. I asked Azim to fetch…”

  Marion flipped through the pages. It was the same throughout the book. She found the start of what appeared to be a private diary.

  “March 1928, Cairo.”

  It wasn’t light enough. Marion had to get her nose right in among the pages in order to examine the stitching.

  Somebody had meticulously removed the original printed pages, in order to replace them with this notebook, which had been sewn in with great care.

  In her hands she was holding a private diary dating from March 1928, written in Cairo, which someone had tried to hide. Marion closed it and placed it on her thigh.

  Thick droplets began to fall onto the fanlight.

  Harder and harder, until they made the attic drum to the rhythm of their sad song.

  8

  The door of the attic banged as it slammed shut.

  Marion rushed to pick up the phony novel and replaced it on the pile. She felt as if she’d been caught red-handed, like a child, although she hadn’t done anything. The feeling was curious, both disconcerting and exciting at the same time.

  “You’re here already!” exclaimed Brother Damien in astonishment, as he left his umbrella at the door. “What an appetite for work, I congratulate you!”

  Marion was about to reply that she hadn’t been sixteen for more than twenty years, but she refrained, particularly since a moment ago that’s exactly how she had felt.

  They recommenced their work for the afternoon, while the rain fell continuously.

  Around five o’clock, when Brother Damien informed her that they would be leaving soon, Marion returned soundlessly to the foreign-language shelf.

  The black volume was on the top.

  She checked that the brother couldn’t see her, and grabbed the book.

  It disappeared under her sweater.

  * * *

  “Why did you take it?” asked Béatrice as she spat out cigarette smoke.

  “I don’t know. Out of curiosity, I think.”

  “What is it? A personal diary?”

  “That’s what you’d call it. From 1928, written in English by someone who was living in Cairo.”

  “An English expat. I wonder how your diary ended up in Avranches?”

  Marion swallowed a mouthful of coffee. “I have my own idea about that.”

  “You haven’t even read it!”

  “It was part of a bequest from the abbey of the Mount dated 1945 or 1946. Say the brothers at the time housed an English soldier during the war, and he died, or left them his diary. They would have stored it with the rest of the books in English in their library, before giving everything to Avranches at the Liberation, perhaps to make some room.”

  “I’m not convinced; 1928 is a long time before the war. I can’t see your British soldier trundling around with his private diary in his pocket for more than ten years!”

  “All the same, it’s an idea…”

  A few feet away, Grégoire was stretched out on the sofa with a magazine in his hand. He stood up. “I’m bored, Mom, I’m going to take a trip into town, to Pontorson.”

  He stretched and his jaw cracked as he yawned unrestrainedly.

  Good-looking boy, Marion had told herself when she saw him for the first time. Although he was eighteen, he still had baby skin on his cheeks, pink and soft. His spiky hair was messy, and the tufts fought for possession of his head. A diamond sparkled in his ear.

  “Don’t be late.”

  “I promise.”

  He put on his leather jacket and went out, the keys to the car in his hand.

  After a silence, Marion nodded to the door he had just left by. “It must be hard for him to live
here, isolated from the mainland and his friends.”

  “Greg is a loner, but it’s true that it’s not paradise for him. Sooner or later he’ll go and live on dry land.”

  “Why, isn’t that what’s here? You talk about the Mount as if it’s an island!”

  “It is one, in the minds of the people who live here anyway. You’ll come to realize that; they have a real island mentality! They stick together, take the blows, and if they have to, they can keep a secret, a secret that shouldn’t leave the Mount.”

  Marion looked deep into her eyes. “Why do you say that?”

  Béatrice shrugged. “Because it’s true. People say that islanders live on the margins of the continent; that it’s a special kind of life, and it is. And also, this place is very small. There are just a handful of us and it’s a real tourist trap, but imagine the people who live in Jersey, for example!”

  “You talk as if you’ve experienced it yourself. Am I wrong?”

  Béatrice grimaced. “I grew up on Belle-Ile. Believe me, it’s a state of mind.”

  Béatrice got up from the kitchen table and switched on the ceiling light. “Weren’t you supposed to be having dinner with the brotherhood this evening?” she wanted to know.

  “No, Brother Damien explained to me that Monday was a day of religious abstinence. He is exceptionally driven to work, but none of the others leave their cells.”

  “What a life!”

  “And besides, since I’ve been here they’ve been making an effort, in particular at mealtimes. Usually they eat in silence, or somebody reads from the Bible.…”

  Marion slammed her hand down on the cover of the black book. “Right, I’m off home.”

  “Aren’t you staying to eat?”

  “No, I’ve already outstayed my welcome and I’ve got reading to do,” replied Marion, brandishing the private diary. “I intend to fully satisfy my curiosity before I put it back.”

  A few minutes later, Marion was walking back up the main street toward the little parish church, with the book under her arm and her hands in her pockets, savoring the veil of dampness settling on her face.

  “Out for another stroll?” inquired a masculine voice behind her.

  She turned around and saw Ludwig, the night watchman, who was addressing her from his great height. “No, this time I’m on my way home.”

  “Sorry again if I frightened you the other evening.”

  Marion nodded. His Northern accent was very pronounced, and it amused her. There was an appeal to friendship in this linguistic peculiarity.

  You’re just thinking that because he doesn’t have the same way of expressing himself, that’s all.…

  “Anyhow,” he went on, “if you’re looking for me one night, my place is right down at the bottom, in the square at the entrance to the village. The door is always open, and if I’m out on my rounds, you can call me on my mobile. Here’s the number.”

  He handed her a card he had prepared.

  “Thank you, Ludwig. Good night then, and good luck.”

  Marion nodded a farewell and set off again. She didn’t feel in the mood for a chat. She went back home, put a pan to heat on the stove, and was about to throw in a chicken breast and a spoonful of crème fraîche when somebody knocked at the door.

  “What now,” she muttered.

  Brother Damien was standing on the doorstep. “Good evening, I’m sorry to disturb you, I won’t keep you long. It was simply to remind you that I’ll be calling for you at nine tomorrow morning. And take this, it’s for you.”

  He handed her a box of Xanax. A tranquilizer. “Sister Anne thought you might need it, what with the circumstances.… And with the wind blowing so hard at night.… Anyway, it might help you to sleep.”

  Marion took the packet and thanked him.

  She noticed that the brother’s attention was drawn to something behind her back. Marion remembered that she had placed the purloined book on the hall table, just behind her.

  “I’ll leave you now, I shouldn’t really be here anyway, seeing as it’s Monday. Have a pleasant evening, and I’ll see you tomorrow morning.”

  If he had recognized the book, which was unlikely, he had not shown any sign of having done so.

  “Good night, Brother Damien.”

  She closed the door and threw the package onto the hall table, beside the black book.

  She ate a hearty dinner, sitting in the living room with a little music on the stereo, to give the house some semblance of life. Then Marion went and settled herself on the corner sofa, propped herself up comfortably, and opened the private diary. On the first page, she read in English: “Logbook, by Jeremy Matheson, March 1928.”

  She turned the page.

  “March 11. I have decided to…”

  Marion blinked. She had a very good command of English; she just needed to recall the vocabulary.

  * * *

  “March 11. I have decided to take up my pen, not to confide secrets and relieve a guilty conscience, or to write down the details of my day-to-day existence, but in an exceptional way, to relate this immense story in which I have recently become embroiled.

  “This exercise, if it may be considered such, is purely experimental. I am beginning it only to satisfy my desire to resolve these strange hours by means of writing, and I am not in a position to define what its end will be, if it is to have an end. I shall try to be as comprehensive as possible, to relate the facts without allowing myself to be corrupted by empiricism, empathy, or my simple subjectivity of interpretation.

  “This diary is my account of this insidious story, which now haunts me.”

  * * *

  Marion looked up. The living room was lit by a single lamp placed beside her, leaving part of the room in darkness.

  She liked this restful ambience. She returned to her reading.

  * * *

  “First of all, I would like to …

  “… introduce myself. My name is Jeremy Matheson. I am a detective ‘on behalf of the Empire of His Majesty King George V’ as one must say, stationed in one of the British colonies: Egypt; in Cairo to be precise. I am thirty-three years old and…”

  * * *

  And so began the story of Jeremy Matheson. Within the space of a few dozen words, Marion had entered the tale.

  Feeding her imagination with what was written in the diary, she plunged into this vanished world …

  9

  Jeremy Matheson wiped the ink from his index finger, then resumed his tale.

  An oil lamp was burning above the desk, suspended from one of the rail car’s beams.

  Close to the entrance, the carpet was striped with amber ridges, where the grains of sand had collected into sparkling veins. His habit of shaking his shoes in the same spot before removing them had produced these ramifications, which were building up into a welcoming delta.

  A thermometer a yard tall was hanging by the door. Although night had already fallen, it was still indicating excessive heat.

  The further into the rail car you looked, the more timid the light became, loath to unveil Jeremy Matheson’s privacy. The good-quality materials reflected or drank in the flame’s brightness. The varnished wood was worn but robust, and the velvet wall-hangings were still soft.

  Beyond the door, farther on than the wide desk where the detective was working, two cracked leather settees stood opposite each other, roasted by so many days in the middle of this steam-room, separated by a low marquetry table. Crumpled sheets of typewritten paper with the Cairo police letterhead lay in heaps on the settees. A few photos stuck out from the paper, warmed by the scorching heat.

  Black-and-white photos.

  The first had a long line of red ink across it, as if to condemn it.

  It showed a white wall, and a man in a suit, impossible to identify as he was bending forward, clinging with one hand to a hole in the mortar. Strings of saliva ran from his mouth to the ground, like a spider’s web under construction.

  On the left side of the p
hoto, the wall opened onto a nebulous side path. The thick shadows made it impossible to make out the human shapes forming a circle around a mass on the ground.

  The second photo showed a close-up of a doll of woven straw, coarsely made. It was already pretty threadbare, ready to fall apart if handled carelessly.

  Someone had clumsily painted the semblance of a dress on it.

  A painting or a stain.

  Dark and damp.

  The third photo revealed city shoes, Western shoes, freshly waxed although dressed in a filmy veil of dust. They were all surrounding something in the middle, placed on the ground. Several men were standing at the edges of the image, yet the frame of the photo went no higher than their calves.

  The snapshot centered on a little, chubby arm lying on the beaten earth of what must be an alleyway.

  And a half-open hand.

  The skin was too smooth to be old.

  The same sticky, dark substance as on the doll stained the wrist.

  Ten other photos lay on top of one another, all turned facedown on the leather settees.

  The light from the lamp’s flame hardly reached any farther now, into the place where the space narrowed to form the entrance to a bathroom. On the right, a gangway led away to the back. To the bedroom.

  A large cheval glass gave this final room an illusion of depth, by reflecting the most distant corners. Opposite the dressing table, covered with issues of Picture Show Magazine, next to the Voltaire armchair hidden beneath a heap of clothes, stretched a double bed with crumpled sheets. At its foot lay a carved wooden bowl, overturned on the carpet, with masses of cigarette butts drowned in a sea of ash overflowing from it.

  The photo of a woman decorated the bedside table. Not enough of the night’s brightness filtered through the two windows to identify her face.

  At the other end of the rail car, the kettle on the cast-iron stove started to whistle.

  Jeremy stood up, and grabbed a dirty rag to lift it and make himself some tea. The dried mint leaves swiftly filled the vast room with their fragrance.

  Jeremy savored his burning-hot drink, leaning back in his chair. Unusually, he had not removed his boots. His feet were dissolving inside them.