The next evening they flew back to Abu Simbel. From above, the camp came into view, glowing with its artificial light, a conflagration in the wilderness; filling the tiny plane sudden as a searchlight. Jean felt regret for the darkness of the desert they had left behind: palpable, alive, a breathing blackness.
The forces within the cliff at Abu Simbel were balanced by steel scaffolding and the roof of the temple was sliced from the walls to relieve the stress. Nevertheless, it was not known whether the release of the first block – on August 12, 1965 – would cause the temple to crack open. Avery had stood on the crest of the cofferdam. The stone had been so finely cut, the seam so invisible, that at first it seemed the winch alone was magically reaching into the stone to bring forth a perfect block from the whole.
But Avery had not felt simple relief as the stones were lifted; instead, from the very first cut of the first block – the eleven-tonne GA1A01, Great Temple, Treatment A, Zone 1, Row A, Block 1 – a specific anguish took root. As the ragged cavity expanded, as the gaping absence in the cliff grew deeper, so grew Avery's feeling they were tampering with an intangible force, undoing something that could never be produced or reproduced again. The Great Temple had been carved out of the very light of the river, carved out of a profound belief in eternity. Each labourer had believed. This simple fact roused him – he could not imagine any building in his lifetime or in the future erected with such faith. The stone had been alive to the carvers, not in a mystical way but in a material way; their relationship to the stone had affected the molecules of the stone. Not mystical, but mysterious.
The heat and weight of Jean were in his dreams. And at the beginning, memory blossomed in him, childhood images so strong he could describe to her in detail the objects on a shelf. But as the pile of temple blocks grew around them, even Jean could not dispel what quickly became in Avery more than anxiety – a dispossession.
He had expected the salvage to be an antidote, an atonement for the despair of dam-building. He had imagined a rite of passage, a pilgrimage, an argument his father could respect. Instead he felt that the reconstruction was a further desecration, as false as redemption without repentance.
– There are seeds, said Jean, coaxing Avery to sleep, coated in wax, that can survive in water without germinating; like the lotus, which has been known to survive at the bottom of a lake for more than twelve hundred years and then sprout again; seeds that can survive even salt water, like the coconut that will float across the ocean fully protected, a stony globe, and wash to shore where it will take root. There is a plant – a kind of acacia – that carries on even when all its seeds have been eaten and it is nothing but husk; after the ants have left it hollow, the wind rushes in, and it whistles …
The desert was one immensity, the river another. In the hills beyond the din of the camp, Jean and Avery looked up at the third immensity, the stars.
The importance of place: the worn garden path on Hampton Street, the dried-up riverbank, a hotel room. The incline behind Avery's house in Buckinghamshire, a view his mind still knew viscerally.
Jean led Avery a small way up the slope. They stood by a scattering of stones. Standing next to him, looking down at the river flowing in the white light of the generators, she said:
– This very place we stand is where you first learned we will have a child.
And she smiled at Avery's astonished face.
By seven weeks, one hundred thousand new nerve cells in the brain are being formed each minute, by birth, one hundred billion cells. Half of Jean's chromosomes had been discarded to form her “polar body.” By eight weeks, every organ of their child existed; each cell possessing its thou-sands of genes.
Over the months, the baby continued to swell and tighten the entire surface of her; and Jean felt not only her body, but the shape of her mind changing. She imagined taking her place next to the Nubian women, her belly a white moon next to the beautiful, swollen blackness of the other mothers. Fatigue overcame her suddenly; once, she did not make it all the way to the camp shop but sat to rest in the shadow of the generator, thirsty enough to drink the sky. She fell asleep sitting up, leaning against the machine, her legs heavy in the sand. She was not asleep long – perhaps a quarter of an hour – and woke ashamed. She'd been indecorous, and was relieved to see no one near.
As Jean moved to get up, she found beside her a jar of water. Only then did she notice the long trail of gargara all around her in the sand.
The next day, a Nubian worker she did not recognize came to the houseboat; with him was a woman.
– My husband is not here, said Jean.
The man, too, was embarrassed. He nodded toward the woman beside him.
– I come because of my wife. She wants me to tell you that she has seen you and that you are not like the other wives. You are always alone. She wants me to tell you that she is the one who brought you the water yesterday when you were asleep. She sees that you will soon have a child. She wants me to tell you that when the child is born she can help you.
The young woman beside him was smiling unrestrainedly. She was young, at least ten years younger than Jean. The sight of her youthful spirit put tears in Jean's eyes. It took a few minutes to sort out the man's consternation at Jean's emotion, but soon it was set right and the young woman and Jean were speaking through her husband's translation.
– One week after the child is born, he is carried to the river. We must bring the fatta and eat it by the Nile, but not all – we must share it with the river. We must light the mubkhar and lift the child over it seven times. Then we must wash the baby's clothes in the river and bring a bucket of river water back to the house so the mother can wash her face. The child must then be held over the rubaa of dates and corn and everyone says the ‘Mashangette, mashangetta’ and we pass the child over the good food seven times. Then – this is most important – the mother must fill her mouth with water from the river and pour it from her mouth onto the child. It is only when the river water flows from the mother's mouth over the child that the child will be safe.
– You would do all this for me? asked Jean, holding back her tears.
The woman looked very pleased and then suddenly sad. She spoke with her husband.
–Yes, yes, the man reassured her. She will be like your mother and make the child safe.
Now Jean often woke restless, her body strange to her, in the night. Avery entertained her with childhood stories of his cousins and Aunt Bett. He kneeled naked on the bed covers and dramatized.
– One morning with nothing to do but wait for lunch, we sat in the long grass and discussed Aunt Bett's brother, Uncle Victor. For some reason he held a morbid fascination for us, and it was usually Owen who started us off.
Avery imitated the haughty angle of Owen's head.
– ‘They say he died when a book fell off his library shelf and knocked him senseless.’
‘What book was it?’ I asked him.
Owen sighed disdainfully.
‘Who cares,’ he said. ‘That's not the point, is it?’
Owen, Avery explained, was disturbed that a man who had survived being a soldier in the Great War could die so unheroically.
‘It certainly is the point,’ I argued. ‘What book would you choose to die by?’
There was a moment's silence while we all contemplated this question.
‘The Bible, I suppose,’ said Tom.
‘Oh, don't be so melodramatic,’ said Owen.
‘I'd choose Browning's Portuguese Sonnets,’ said Nina.
‘Not thick enough,’ I said.
Then we heard my mother calling and as usual Owen, being the eldest by almost eight years, had the last word.
‘I'd choose Grey's Anatomy or a medical encyclopedia, just in case there was a slim chance of resuscitating me …’
Jean laughed.
– ‘Now we can play Dessert Island,’ Nina would say as she always did when the table had been cleared. We called it that, said Avery, because we played t
he game while waiting for the pudding, such as it was, in those days. ‘I'm first,’ said Nina, ‘because I've been thinking and I've got a good one. If I could only take one thing to a deserted island, I would take knitting needles.’
Avery imitated the boys rolling their eyes.
– ‘Only a girl would think of something so ridiculous,’ said Owen. ‘And what a waste of a wish.’
‘What good would that be?’ I asked Nina, not unkindly. ‘The wool would get used up fast and then you'd have nothing.’
‘What do you mean?’ said Nina indignantly. ‘You've got a good warm sweater or blanket and you've still got the knitting needles. And they could be used for lots of things –’
‘Like a spear for piercing a wild boar,’ Tom suggested. He was next youngest and always defended his sister.
‘Or to dig holes for planting seeds,’ said Nina.
‘And for cleaning under your nails afterwards,’ added Tom.
‘But your nails wouldn't need cleaning if you used the knitting needles to make the holes,’ I said.
My mother and Aunt Bett approved of these discussions. ‘Now, that's sound judgment,’ they would say encouragingly. Or ‘Perhaps we might think that through again.’
‘Or you could use them to pierce a souffle,’ said Owen sarcastically.
‘A souffle!’ shouted Nina. ‘Yes, there might be ostrich eggs on the island!’
‘Haw haw haw!’ all the boys laughed.
‘All right,’ said Aunt Bett. ‘That's enough. Knitting needles are a very good idea, Nina … and there just might be ostrich eggs on the island.’
‘Haw haw haw!’ laughed Nina.
– Your family sounds like something out of a children's story, said Jean.
– That's just it, said Avery. I think my mother and Aunt Bett discussed it and decided we would all be children out of books. They were determined. We children were their war effort. Why not? You have all those other owner's manuals – Dr. Spock and all, so why not Arthur Ransome or T H. White? It's bound to work. To raise brave, moral, thinking adults, all you need is to give them a common mission –
– And a slab of chocolate and a torch. Ah, said Jean, that explains everything.
– I thought everyone grew up in a family like ours, said Avery. It was a shock to find out it wasn't so.
– Did your Aunt Bett have a sad childhood? asked Jean.
– All childhoods are sad compared to mine, said Avery.
Then Avery told the story of Nina's eighth birthday.
– When Nina's birthday package arrived from her father, who was in the RAF and stationed in an undisclosed location, she held the jewellery box in her lap, watching the ballerina come alive each time she raised the lid. Then Nina sat still with her terrible longing. I used to imagine Nina was my own little sister. I tried to look at the box the way my father would have; he would have talked to her about who'd carved it, the hands of the one who'd glued the pink gauze of the tutu onto the long legs of the wooden girl, who'd wrapped the felt around the black lacquer. Who was the man or woman who had tapped the tiny brass nails into the wood … I took her hand and led her into the sitting room, where the radio was on. The evening concert was beginning. The London Symphony Orchestra. Nina, who was deaf in one ear, used to sit next to me, her useless ear buried in one hand and her good ear open to the sound. She hooked her hair over this ear, so not a strand would get in the way of the music.
‘Here we are in the countryside,’ I told her, ‘listening to an orchestra from London and a violinist from Russia who are now actually in a concert hall in Holland. That's electricity. All of those musicians hundreds of miles away, playing to us from a little wooden box in our little house in the country.’
Nina sighed. ‘Tell me again about Maria Abado.’
‘Every nightbird can see the ghost of Maria Abado. If she is here, the birds will tell us. All over the world the birds remember her and speak her name. The cuckoos and the turacos, the colies, hoopoes, the shy trogons, cranes and grebes, tinamous, nightjars, frigate birds, and cassowaries. The avocets, hawfinches, snow geese, the starlings that migrate across the Mediterranean aboard ships. The storks of the Bosphorus, the spruce grouse, the button-quail of India, the African snipe. The African village weaver bird who builds a cave of palm leaves. The upside-down bluebird of paradise, the bird of paradise of the Aru Islands. Maria was born in a village on the other side of the mountain. She befriended the birds when she was a little girl, and by the time she died, she was their patron saint.’
‘Was she really a saint?’
‘I don't know, but the birds trusted her, in order to repair her broken trust.’
‘Why was her trust broken? Was it a broken heart?’
‘Only the birds know. But they say all birds sing her story, if only we listen.’
Jean, pinned to the bed by her fatigue and the heaviness of her belly, thought how fortunate their child to have such cousins.
– Despite how close we all were during the war, said Avery, I haven't seen them for years. Nina still lives in England, but Tom went to Australia where he does something in television. And I did meet Owen in London, not long after my father died …
We met, accidentally, on the Fulham Road. The last time I'd seen Owen was also accidental, at a matinee of a film. He and his wife, Miri, had been sitting a few rows ahead, but I couldn't bring myself to disturb them. They were so involved with each other, so passionate, it had seemed an intrusion even to observe them.
As always, Owen was impeccably suited, an expensive overcoat and leather gloves. Even when he was starting out, as poor as any of us, Owen's wardrobe had been the source of endless teasing. ‘How many people do you meet in a day who will ever come to your home?’ said Owen defensively. ‘But the whole world sees how you dress. I can live with nothing, not a chair or a teapot, without even heat! But I'll dress like I have all the money in the world. That's something mother taught me, and I know what I'm talking about, you'll see, you'll see.’ And Owen, corporate lawyer, showed us all.
‘How is Miriam?’ I asked. ‘The last time I saw you together I didn't say hello, you looked so happy, I thought you'd escaped the children for a rendezvous and I couldn't bring myself to intrude. It was at Anastasia.’
The traffic surged around us, the pavement in front of Conran's was bulging with shoppers.
‘At Anastasia, with Ingrid Bergman?’ Owen laughed. ‘The very day before we were to be divorced! Miri and I wanted to spend one last day together. It was perhaps the most beautiful day of our marriage – perhaps even more beautiful than the beginning, which is always fraught with such terrifying hopes. We knew the ending – which is much more secure than a future. Then we looked at each other, and it struck us. We were both so content knowing it was over, why upset the children with a piece of paper? The next day we cancelled the lawyers and went along just as before. All that haggling had completely cleared the air and we were perfectly free of wanting be together. Now we could continue separately without upsetting the children – it was a master plan. So Miri keeps on in the country house and I have my own flat to be “close to the office,” and no one has to talk about anything disagreeable. When the children are home for vacation, I come to the house and then go “back to work.” We've never been a happier family.’
‘But what if one of you wants to remarry?’
‘Avery,’ he said patiently, ‘that's all over with, isn't it? I'll always be married to Miri, I just don't want to have anything to do with her. I don't want to hear about what she thinks or what she does – I most certainly do not want to hear another word about her just causes. All that fundraising for this charity or that. I used to say to her, “Can't we eat just one meal in peace?” But,’ he said, softening, ‘she liked a good film, she really liked a good film, and so we spent a lot of time at the cinema; she was fantastic then, really clever, I could hear her brain whirring. She never, not ever, talked during a film.’
Owen smiled, now quite comfortable i
n his memories. ‘Don't you see? I know her so well. The very things that used to annoy me to despair now delight me. There's nothing she does that surprises me – even when she's trying to catch me off guard. The very things that irritated the life out of me, now that I'm far away, amuse me, fill me with compassion, even affection. When I'm at the house, I look at her, I know her every gesture. It was the same with my father’ – Uncle Jack, added Avery – ‘if we went to a restaurant for dinner and there was a choice of potato – every time, every single time – when the waitress asked if he wanted boiled or mashed, roasted or fried, he would hesitate, take serious pause, as if he were really ruminating on the possibilities and, of course – every time, every single time – after a long, expectant silence, he'd say, “Mashed.” As if there really was the possibility of him saying otherwise. For nearly twenty years this drove me mad. Now it is one of the fondest memories I have of him. And if you ask me,’ said Owen, ‘that is the greatest secret in life. That's what we're really saying when we're carping on about love. That's who he was, you see; that's who Miri is, you see? And it has nothing whatsoever to do with me!’
Owen was giggling, practically cackling with glee.
‘When I think of how angry I used to be,’ Owen continued, ‘what a waste of time. And when Miri parts her lips to begin a harangue – against that bad taxi driver who offended her on the way to the shops two years before, or the bank teller or the woman in committee number one hundred and four – all the strangers who upset her so, and with whom she rarely crosses paths twice – when she begins to rant, now I feel flooded with love for her, real sympathy and affection, and I can shake my head and tsk-tsk and pat her hand to soothe her, knowing at last that's all she wants me to do – that's all she ever wanted me to do. Ah,’ said Owen, giggling again, ‘I'm so happy now!’
Then he scrutinized me. Avery leaned back and narrowed his eyes in imitation.
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