by Jina Bacarr
The next morning I wired Mrs. Wills to send me the funds.
Ramzi vanished soon after I gave him the money. When I heard the news, I found it difficult to breathe, the muscles of my stomach hardening while my emotions lapsed into depression. His disappearance struck me in the gut with the impact of something sharp ripping me apart. He’d thrust his dagger into me after all and I never saw it coming.
Hitting my fists into my palms, I cursed him, spat at him, then hurled my shoe against the wall and broke off the heel. Grabbing the box of Cleopatra’s perfume, the urge to throw it across my hotel room gripped me. Only the insistent ringing of the telephone stopped me from destroying it. Lady Palmer couldn’t wait to give me her take on the situation. She was convinced Ramzi was murdered, my money stolen; others said he disappeared into the desert; still others said he fled to Cairo to ply his trade of seduction under a different name, a different guise.
Whatever his reason for deserting me, I couldn’t stay in Port Said. During the summer of 1939, the port city was in a state of flux, flooded with Greeks, Italians, Syrians, Armenians, as well as Jewish refugees. I paid them little attention. My mind was too busy analyzing every moment I was with Ramzi, reliving every penetrating stare, every caress, every thrust of his cock in me. Always asking why, why I’d allowed myself to feel again, to dream, to let go and indulge in a dangerous obsession with this man. What did I know about him? Nothing. He knew me only as Lady Marlowe, dear reader, and that’s how it must remain. To reveal the details of my past would invite a certain scrutiny, perhaps danger as well, and I can’t take that chance. All you need to know is I was unsure of myself and harbored the doubt that no man, save my late husband, could love me for who I was and that I possessed no power within me to inspire such a deep love again.
Life in Port Said went on as usual. Tea dances, boring games of bridge, walks on the beach. A week, two, then three passed. My pain turned into a numbing feeling, then finally I rebelled against feeling sorry for myself. It accomplished nothing. As for the money I gave Ramzi, I controlled the fortunes of Lord Marlowe’s vast estate, so I dismissed the lost funds as nothing more than a bad debt. Eager to leave the city, I made plans to depart for Bombay with Lady Palmer and her wayward daughter, Flavia.
I should mention the young woman was no worse for wear for her interlude with Ramzi. Doe-eyed with brown hair longer than the current style, her silk dress hung loosely on her royal bones, belying the sensual sway of her hips and small waist underneath. She hadn’t forgiven me for interfering with her bawdy tryst. She refused to look me in the eye when we’d meet, though I hadn’t mentioned her indiscretion to her mother, merely that I’d found her drinking in a disreputable bar. I had my own secrets and prayed I would find an ally in the girl, but she disappointed me. She dismissed my offer of friendship with a toss of her head, as if I were invisible. To her, I was, for I wasn’t born with a title. Spoiled, beautiful, her flesh never poisoned by disillusionment, Flavia Palmer possessed the breeding I’d kill for, the manners I’d spent years learning and the resilience of youth to find another warm body to assuage her sexual hunger.
I, in turn, suffered from a fierce need to forget this man I knew as Ramzi, the perfume he gave me emitting from my soul as well as my body. Yes, I wore the perfume, and kept a small amount wrapped up in my handkerchief nestled between my breasts in my brassiere. Why? Why does a woman do anything when she’s suffering from the bitterness of love lost? I ask you, dear reader, do you know? I don’t.
What surprised me more was how much like Flavia I’d become.
I discovered this troubling aspect of my personality one afternoon when I strolled with Lady Palmer and her daughter through the open market in Port Said. Black women selling rich mocha coffees, the dried beans sun-golden in color, squatted on mats, the once-bright red fibers dulled by the impressions of their bare feet. Rows and rows of shiny amber beads adorned their necks and dark-skinned arms waving about as they hawked their trinkets and basked in the hot sun overhead.
A rotund woman in a black abaya and nose veil nudged Lady Palmer with her basket to better view the coffees, setting the Englishwoman’s feathered hat askew on her head. Lady Palmer was too shocked to react, but Flavia took the offense and pushed the woman, who turned and hissed at her like a cat. Laughing, the girl ignored her along with several dirty children gathering around her and holding out their hands for baksheesh, tips.
“What filthy, rude people,” she commented, lighting up a cigarette. “I’ll be glad to get out of here.” She blew smoke in my direction, her eyes challenging me when she said, “I only wish I’d had as good a time here as Lady Marlowe.”
Before I could give her a piece of my mind, Lady Palmer pulled the cigarette out of her daughter’s mouth and tossed it into the dirt. Half a dozen children leaped on it, including a bare-legged boy jumping off his donkey. “No smoking, Flavia. What will your father say?”
She shrugged. “What he always says. Nothing.”
Straightening her hat, the Englishwoman turned to me, her eyes sad. “I was hoping this trip would restore some civility to my daughter.”
“Too bad she didn’t get the spanking she deserves,” I retorted, smiling, knowing Flavia would scratch my eyes out if she could. Fortunately, my double entendre was lost on Lady Palmer, who was more interested in checking out the wares of a small shop selling scarabs reputed to be from King Tutankhamen’s tomb, strings of mummy beads and little bronze gods. All made in Paris.
Dallying at the shop proved to be my undoing. I picked up a stone statuette of a bare-breasted goddess, its smooth white chalky surface dirtying my navy gloves, my irritation at Flavia’s rudeness escalating when I called upon the shopkeeper to dust them. Bowing, apologizing, the poor man wiped my soiled gloves, but not to my satisfaction.
I stormed out of the shop, fuming. What was happening to me, acting like that? I began to question why I decided to travel with the girl and her mother to Bombay. Loneliness, I presume, but that was no excuse for putting up with that girl’s insolence. No, I could no longer exist in a world whose rhythms didn’t match my own. Whatever the outcome, I made my decision. Lady Palmer could travel to Bombay without me. I had other plans. I wasn’t leaving Port Said until I tracked down Ramzi, if only to give him a piece of my mind.
And to see his magnificent body again? Was my desire for adventure, sexual fever, wild fantasy that strong? Are you that much of a fool to expose your interest in him for everyone to criticize? I asked myself. Yes, and hell be damned what anyone thought.
Fueled with a new energy, I paid little attention to the young boy wiping the dirt off my shoes with a grimy rag or the little girl pestering me with a frayed pink rose. I reached into my purse and gave him one piastre. Her, two piastres. Then I hurried down the street past butcher shops, cobbler stalls, vendors selling squabs and onions, splitting a goat flock in two, and dragging Lady Palmer with me. It was almost teatime, though I needed something stronger to calm my nerves, especially with Flavia lamenting how bored she was, then tossing more barbs my way about how she couldn’t understand how a handsome man like Ramzi could be interested in an older woman.
“No wonder he left Port Said alone,” she said, tossing her long hair over her shoulder, “after he got what he wanted.”
“I’d watch what you say, Flavia, if you don’t want to spend the next six months touring the Orient with your mother.” I turned around to make certain Lady Palmer didn’t hear my remark, when a camel blocked her way, his handler nowhere to be seen. Before I could react, the animal grabbed Lady Palmer’s feathered hat between his teeth, pulling it off her head.
“My hat!” she yelled, her voice panicked.
I wanted to laugh, but didn’t. She was lucky the camel didn’t bite her ear.
“Lady Marlowe,” she begged, “you must retrieve my hat from that dirty creature! It’s a Bond Street original.”
Shaking my head, I said, “By all means, Lady Palmer.”
Racing down the narrow
street after the camel, Lady Palmer’s hat between his teeth, the tassels on his saddle waving in the wind, I chased him down one winding lane then another, until I found myself in a seedier section of the city.
An area I knew all too well.
Across the street I saw the Bar Supplice, boarded up and deserted. My heart pounding, my lips moved without speaking in a silent prayer, recounting the mysterious awakening I discovered within those cavelike walls. The beauty, the sensual illumination, all still lived within me. Within seconds, that feeling dissipated. I sensed a tragic quality about it now, a world created for stimulation that continued to haunt me though its magic ceased when Ramzi left.
I barely noticed the camel had dropped the feathered hat until a young woman picked it up and handed it to me. Without glancing at her, I said, “Thank you. Lady Palmer will be most pleased.”
I opened my purse to give her two piastres, when she blurted out, “You’re British!”
Turning to look at her, I said, “Yes, I’m Lady Marlowe.”
“You must help me get to England,” she said, her accent foreign, “before it’s too late.” She rushed her words, as if every moment was precious.
I stood back, not wanting to get involved. “Too late for what? Who are you?”
She said her name quickly, but my ears picked up a German name, Jewish, if I wasn’t mistaken. That disturbed me for reasons I shall not explain. She grabbed my arm and begged me for help. I pulled away from her. She was a young girl, no more than eighteen, her slender form appealing but her body fragrant with the smell of fear. She was dressed in a shapeless brown-checked suit cut with a sophistication that didn’t fit her.
Eyes brimming with tears, she went on to explain how Germany’s new racial laws threatened Jews and how things had only gotten worse since Kristallnacht, when gangs of Nazis and their supporters roamed through Jewish neighborhoods breaking windows, burning synagogues and looting. Since then, no one would take in the Jews fleeing the Nazi state. No one. Both England and America had refused her entry, so she boarded the Italian ship Conte Rosso to escape persecution from Hitler’s Reich. Without a visa only one place would take her.
“Where?” I asked, more out of politeness than curiosity.
“Shanghai,” she said.
“Lovely city. Do be sure to make the rounds at the Cathay during the cocktail hour,” I said, mentioning the Chinese outpost famed for its watering hole for wealthy visitors. I rambled on about the interesting members of the literati I often found lingering at the bar. I paid no attention to the blank look on her face. I merely wanted to get rid of her. A stronger urge pulled at me as I continued to stare at the Bar Supplice and I wanted to be alone with my thoughts. I still ached for Ramzi’s arms around me, his sensuous voice spinning tales. Lies, but I didn’t care.
Meanwhile, the Jewish girl rambled on, begging me to help her. I tried to ignore her. What did her problems matter to me? Surely it couldn’t be as bad as all that in Germany. Not too long ago I’d traveled to Berlin with Lord Marlowe to attend a photography show at a gallery for my friend Maxi von Brandt. We knew each other from the old days when we both worked the cabarets, me as a dancer, her as a photographer, chatting up strangers on the telephones at each table and drinking in the pleasure palaces of Berlin. Haus Vaterland and the Resi. Fun days, filled with all the wildness and proclivity and sexual abandon of the Weimar Republic.
“Lady Marlowe, please, listen to me. You don’t understand what’s happening to Jews in Germany. The nightly arrests, the forced-labor camps—”
“Rumors, all rumors.” I avoided her eyes, not believing her theatrics. Didn’t all young girls go through a stage of dramatics? I couldn’t help her, I insisted, walking away, my eyes going again and again to the boarded-up building I’d known as Bar Supplice. I haunted the street with a vacant stare in my eyes. Hoping, dreaming it was all a mistake and Ramzi would return. I couldn’t bear the thought that the sumptuous den of decadence where I’d stripped down to my soul was dirty and crude, infested with rats, their vermin sticking to me like broken promises.
So absorbed was I in my plight, I barely listened to the mournful tale of the young Jewess following me. She implored me to tell the world what was happening to Jews, the camps, the deaths, the rape of Jewish women by the Gestapo.
“I wouldn’t have gotten out of Germany,” she said, “if a man hadn’t taken me to Genoa with him.”
“A man?” I asked, interested. “Then why are you asking me for help?”
“You don’t understand. He—he gave me a passport and said I was to tell anyone who asked I was a dressmaker.”
“A dressmaker? Why?”
“He promised me there’d be no trouble getting through customs and immigration if I did as he asked.”
“And did you?” I said, aware of the implication in my voice.
She lowered her head. “Yes. I had no choice.”
I thought about how I’d been young once and had nearly fallen for that same trick in the back alley behind a Berlin bar. In my case, the man met an untimely end when he was robbed by local thieves. And me? I ran and ran and ran, never looking back.
“Don’t you see, you must help me, Lady Marlowe,” she pleaded, her fearful eyes darting everywhere. “Without family or papers, I—I will have no way to pay for what I need in Shanghai except—”
“Yes. I understand.” I opened my purse, wrapping my hands around some bills. I was about to give her some money and be on my way, when a commotion caught my attention.
“Lady Marlowe, you’ve retrieved my hat!”
I spun around, surprised to see Lady Palmer bouncing down the dirty street hatless with both her sagging bosom and her daughter in tow. But who was that man in the dark jacket, bow tie, white pants and Panama hat behind them? His gait was uneven, as if he had a crippled leg, and his right hand was in his pocket in a way that disturbed me. Was he reaching for a gun?
“My pleasure, Lady Palmer,” I said, plopping the hat on her head and trying to smile, though I cast a wary eye toward the man observing us. I turned my back and chatted with Lady Palmer about the impudent camel who dared to pluck her designer hat off her head. Silly, infusive talk, but I was grateful to once again enter that parallel dimension I lived in whose portal was accessible to a privileged few.
When I turned around to give the Jewish girl some money, the man in the Panama hat had her by the elbow and out of my reach. Then she was gone. Off to Shanghai, I imagined.
I recounted the girl’s story over tea to Lady Palmer, if only to assuage the guilt burning in my soul. I knew what happened to white women in Shanghai. Not even a heated fainting spell from Lady Palmer kept me from telling her how disease was rampant in the miserably squalid, decadent city. And how procurers of human flesh forced women to service customers in dirty backrooms, lying in a bunk in a cloud of smoke while one, two men fondled them, opening them to the probing of fingers, mouths, with only opium to help them forget. Intense nausea gripping them from the drug, their skin turning sallow, their bodies growing thin and frail until they took their last breath and found release.
Lady Palmer dismissed the entire incident as a scheme to cheat me. The whole thing was an act, she insisted, admitting she’d also been approached with the same story the week before in the bazaar.
Later in my room, I collapsed on the bed, sobbing. I couldn’t stop shaking, fearful to face what I’d become. I had money, privilege, yet I had done nothing to help the young Jewish woman. Why did that bother me so?
No, Lady Palmer was right, I convinced myself. Her story was a fabricated tale like Ramzi’s, designed to glean money from me. I owed her nothing.
I put aside the unpleasantness in the Port Said market, reminding myself though I was faced with the rigidity of British society, I would find no shortage of gentlemen wishing to escort me to the races or to the ballet. Taking a lover would be difficult. Sexual freedom was considered a gentleman’s sport among the royals, though I often dared to join the hunt with
discreet weekend affairs at country estates.
I was after bigger game now. Ramzi. Setting into motion my plan to find him obsessed me. I used my fortune to hire guides to get leads on his whereabouts, sent cables to the local authorities in Cairo to track him down and bribed bank officials to check his financial records. So consumed was I with my hunt, I forgot all about the Jewish girl. Whatever curiosity I’d experienced about her dissipated like dewdrops sucked up by the greedy tongue of the sun. I continued to hide from the problems of a world on the brink of war, dismissing them as easily as I eliminated anything in my life that didn’t please me, whether it was weak tea, cotton underwear or a snoopy maid. Little did I know I couldn’t escape. The seeds of war grew slowly, nurtured by those like myself who refused to see them sprouting under our feet, though I had personal reasons for ignoring them I dare not explain here, fearing you’ll detest my actions even more so.
I cringe now, my hand aching, cramping though I must fight through the physical pain and write down these words of truth so you can see, dear reader, what a ruthless, rapacious woman I’d become. I cared only for my own endless carnal satisfaction, seeking to possess every moment and entwine it around my senses and never let it go. My hunger was a sexual journey not ending in submission or physical satisfaction, but a yearning for the passion left unfulfilled by the death of my husband.
My whole being quivered when, after two weeks, I again picked up the scent of the man I believed would satisfy that hunger. I received a telephone call. My contact at the bank had news. Good news, he said. Ramzi had returned to Port Said.
I put the phone down, shaking, my pubic muscles tightening. I moaned as a sense of heightened anticipation took hold of me, a hot, glowing arousal making my mouth dry. I gave no further thought to the world’s problems. None at all.
Ramzi was back. But he wasn’t alone.
My excitement turned to jealousy when I found out he’d brought a woman with him.
She was dark, mysterious, with the bearing of a high priestess, her long neck unadorned, dangling earrings reaching to her shoulders. I’ll never forget the first time I saw her. I could see sexual arousal spark in her eyes every time her beaded earrings brushed her bare shoulders. I had no idea then who she was, or what part she would play in this melodrama. I sharpened my claws and arched my back like a feline in heat on the attack. I wanted Ramzi for myself. And I’d do anything to keep him.