by Warren Adler
“Sorry, everyone,” he told them, as Abdel scrambled upright. The sweat had soaked through her shirt and she gasped for breath.
“You should try out for the Egyptian track team for the next Olympics.”
She nodded, smiled, and tried to calm her breathing. He managed to find a clear corner of the car, where they squatted on the floor. She leaned against him.
“And here’s your prize,” he said, presenting her with the brioche he had stuffed into his pocket. She took it with a shaking hand.
“Did they follow you into the station?”
“I had to hide. They were very persistent.” He was proud of her, happy that she had made it. The train rolled past the drab outskirts of Cairo, gaining speed as it reached the flats of green farmland, dotted by small villages along the river’s edge.
“Nothing changes them,” Abdel whispered. Women in black malayas walked gracefully along paths beside the Nile, carrying water jars on their heads. Barefoot men on little gray donkeys rode the trails through the fields. Naked children watched their mothers beating clothes on the river’s stones. A blinkered water buffalo walked his perpetual circle around an Archimedes’ screw.
“I grew up in a village like that,” Abdel said, as they rode past a ramshackle row of mud-brick huts. “Not far from here.”
“What was it like?” he asked.
“Beautiful,” she said, mystifying him.
“Do you ever go back?”
“It is impossible.”
She waved suddenly at a group of smiling villagers. “One of them is me,” she said.
He thought about what she meant, remembering Thomas Wolfe’s wise title, You Can’t Go Home Again.
The tracks eased slowly downward, then suddenly were lower than the river, then rose again to the surface of the fields. He was amazed at the slenderness of the green strip on either side of the Nile. Not far, the desert began abruptly. Abdel was silent for a long time.
“Are you glad that I showed up?” she asked. She had closed her eyes. He thought she was asleep.
“Yes,” he whispered. She smiled.
“I’m glad,” she said.
She closed her eyes again and, after a while, despite the crowds, the heat, the smells, the bumpy track bed, they slept.
Chapter Twenty-Two
His first impression of Alexandria was that it seemed only half finished.
He counted more than a hundred unfinished buildings until he gave up. The buildings that were finished needed repairs. Every edifice needed a coat of paint. The street crowds were thinner than in Cairo, which could have been because most of the residents clogged the beaches, an arc of yellowish sand edging the blue Mediterranean. After the stifling journey, the taste of the sea tang was refreshing.
His plan, which seemed less defined than it had been in Cairo, was to find some record of Isis’s birth. He had no idea what such information would reveal. His mother had told him that Isis was born December 1, 1951. It seemed essential that he find the record of her birth, a point of reference.
They found the city hall, an antiquated building built around the turn of the century, now a dark cavern, a monument to stultifying bureaucracy. Every college graduate, he had learned, was guaranteed a government job, albeit low paying. The system, he knew, had to be riddled with inefficiency and make-work. Because of this, indifferent clerks moped about the large open space, bored and disinterested. Even the occasional tin beat of an old model typewriter seemed grudging and unwilling.
It wasn’t easy to get someone’s attention, but he finally stirred up a junior clerk who looked sleepy and illfed. Si posed the question as succinctly as possible.
“December 1, 1951,” the young man repeated with, “Maybe you should write a letter.”
They haggled back and forth for a while, until it was apparent that baksheesh was the only way to get the clerk to act. Si slipped him a pound note.
“It will take a few hours,” the clerk whispered.
“And another when you get me the information.”
The clerk nodded.
“We close at four,” he said.
He gave the clerk his mother’s full name and the first name of his half sister. He felt uncomfortable and embarrassed when he could not give a father’s name. The clerk looked at him with a wry smile.
They walked aimlessly about the main thoroughfares of Alexandria. Both people and vehicles moved at a slower pace than in Cairo. Soon they found themselves on the Corniche. The sea glistened invitingly in the sunlight.
“We owe ourselves that treat,” he said. They found a stall that sold bathing suits.
She changed behind a curtain, visibly pleased as she shyly displayed herself.
“I never had a bathing suit,” she said.
“You are a girl,” he whistled with genuine admiration. She frowned for his benefit but blushed with pleasure. Her breasts were small and high, her waist narrow, and her buttocks were shapely, bulging sensually in the tight outline of the one-piece suit. “I don’t think you can get away with it much longer, Abdel.”
They crossed the Corniche to the beach. She poked him playfully and ran toward the water. He followed her, throwing down his clothing bundle. Running like a young deer, her feet flew over the sand, kicking up tiny sand fountains.
At the water’s edge, she stopped short. But he dragged her, squealing, into the surf.
“I can’t swim,” she cried.
“You’ll have to learn in a hurry.”
When he was waist-deep, he flung her into the surf and watched her scramble to her feet, spitting water and rubbing her eyes. She was frightened and, groping toward him, grabbed him around the neck. The surf was mild, gently lifting them, the waves rippling toward shore.
“Feels good,” he said, moving farther out, helping her float. He looked upward at the endless blue on which small white clouds, like puffs of cotton, moved lazily across the dome of the sky.
“So clean,” he said. “So different from back there.”
Rising gently on the ocean’s rhythm, he held in an embrace. Her skin smelled sweet and her flesh was smooth and cool. Without thinking, as if it was the most natural of acts, he cupped a breast and felt her nipple harden under the tight material. She didn’t protest, but held him closer and continued to watch the vast expanse.
“You come from there?” she asked, lifting her chin as a pointer to the vast horizon.
“A long way from here,” he said. He felt suddenly deceived by distance. “Or maybe not.” He sensed the odd pull of his mother’s blood.
“I don’t understand.”
He didn’t either, not fully. Only that he felt oddly displaced, as if he inherited his mother’s lost sense of place.
“Its a lot more than I bargained for,” he said as if to himself.
They came out of the water and let the sun dry them. Later, they changed behind a wall, returning to the hall of records exactly at four. The young clerk was scowling.
He would not give him the document until Si had slipped him another pound. Si did not try to read it until he got outside. Holding it with shaking fingers, he read:
“Born. December 1, 1951. Given name Isis. Mother’s name: Farrah. Father’s name…” He swallowed hard. “Benito Mussolini!” he exclaimed. “Mussolini.”
He felt a sense of spoilage, as if the ridicule was meant to defile. Abdel looked at him with confusion, not comprehending.
“He was the Italian dictator during World War II.”
She took the paper from him, puzzling over it. He felt assaulted by despair. The gulf between him and his mother widened. Was she capable of such black humor?
“The Dancing Dolphin,” Abdel said, reading from the paper. Isis was born at the Dancing Dolphin. She held out the paper for him to see.
Abdel jogged beside him. Mussolini? Dancing Dolphin? W
as it the same Farrah? The same Isis? Surely, someone is mocking us.
The sun was now in the lower part of its descending arc, bathing the city in soft pink tones, hiding its blemishes. They stopped at a broken-down café with battered tables under torn umbrellas. It overlooked a crowded stretch of beach, from which people were now emerging in droves. In the distance, the ubiquitous call to prayer sounded from the loudspeakers in the minarets.
Si ordered himself a Stella, a labeled beer popular even in a country where Moslems are commanded to drink no alcohol, and a cola for Abdel. He felt worn out, frustrated.
“Nothing makes sense here,” he growled. Abdel shrugged. A few Stellas later, he spoke again. “Not her either.”
“Who?”
“Farrah. My mother. I feel…” He groped for the right word. “…shit… betrayed. I mean to be honest. Why should she have led a whole other life without telling me? She coddled me, smothered me. I choked on it. All that so-called love. But she had this whole other fucking life.” He gulped down his beer. “Mussolini?” he fumed. “They killed that bastard after World War II. Forty-five. Six years before Isis was born.” He ordered another beer and fell into a deep brooding despair.
“She was a god-damned whore. And she deserted her own kid,” he mumbled, the words choking him.
Finishing his beer, he paid the waiter and stalked off, walking swiftly, stopping only to brood over beer after beer at the ramshackle outdoor cafés that lined the way. By the time the sun came down and the lights went on, he was in an alcoholic haze and his black mood had accelerated. Abdel tagged along like a forlorn puppy. Once, she tried to stop him from drinking.
“Don’t mother me.”
She retreated into silence.
At every café, somber men looked at him with scorn, as if his obvious alien presence was an affront to their sense of privacy. Growing loud did not help the situation, although he managed to keep just below the edge of obnoxiousness. The fact that he spoke Arabic may have given them some excuse for toleration. As the night wore on, the narrow streets exploded with lights and people, many of them foreign seamen, dark, swarthy individuals bent on relief from the boredom of the sea, lured by the beat of the belly dancers’ music.
He moved from café to café falling into the stream of aimless wanderers. He felt at home here with these rootless men, their eyes glazed, seeking a moment’s respite from the sewer of their bleak reality. He joined them eagerly. Abdel hung back, watchful.
Abdel saw it first, a flashing neon outline of what barely resembled a fish, but the words confirmed the illustration. She tugged at his arm. Misinterpreting, he shrugged her away.
“There,” she persisted. “The Dancing Dolphin.”
He turned and saw it and the electrification transmitted itself across the space, partially sobering him. Running drunkenly, he pushed through the crowds. It was a small place, smokefilled and jammed to the rafters. A belly dancer was performing.
“Who owns this place?” he asked the bartender, who motioned toward a bone-thin ascetic man sitting near the cash register. Jostling his way through the crowds, Si confronted the man.
“You the owner?”
The man showed a broad smile, filled with gold teeth.
“You want to buy this place?” the man said in halting but efficient Arabic. “They steal you blind.” He laughed, snapping open the register and making change.
“How long have you owned this place?” Si asked, forcing a tone of humility.
“Ten years,” he mumbled. For some reason, his openness had turned inward and he had become obviously suspicious.
“It’s important to me,” Si said. He struggled to convey his sincerity. “I need to know who was here around the end of 1951.”
The man smiled, as if the idea was both amusing and ludicrous. He thought for a minute.
“Farouk. He was around.” The knot of customers within earshot laughed uproariously.
“Please,” Si said, touching the man’s arm. Perhaps it was the touch of the flesh that softened the man. He looked at Si and shrugged.
“Try the old hag. She was here then. Vivanti. She still owns the damned building. Miss a minute in paying the rent and she’s down on me like an avenging angel. And she’s a wop like me.”
“Where can I find her?” Si pressed, though the man, making change for another customer, seemed to have come to the edge of his reservoir of goodwill.
“Try her flat.” He gave Si the address. “See, it’s engraved in my head.”
Outside, he found a policeman in a rumpled uniform smoking a cigarette in an alley. He seemed annoyed by the intrusion, but finally offered detailed directions.
Abdel had listened carefully and absorbed the directions better than Si. They were quickly lost in a labyrinth of narrow streets.
“Left,” Abdel said when he took a wrong turn. “The policeman said left.”
Finally, after more argument, they were on the right track again with Abdel leading.
“Sorry, kid, I’ve been a shit,” he said, when they found the right address, an old three-story building struggling to retain some air of respectability. There were a number of flats in the building.
“Vivanti.” He read the name in both the Arabic and Roman letters. Under the nameplate was a tiny buzzer, which he pressed. When he got no response, he rang again. A curtain moved on the ground-floor level and he saw the flashing light of a television set. He rang again. Someone was moving slowly in the hallway, and finally the door opened. A woman’s surly voice croaked, “Who are you?”
He hadn’t expected the tone.
“Osiris Kelly,” he said, politely, knowing that it would have no meaning for the woman. Politeness nearly always works with strangers, he knew, but this woman was obviously a hard case.
“Go away.”
“I must talk with you.”
“Talk then.”
“Not out here.” He resisted the impulse to push the door open.
“Then go away.”
“Please.” He moved his head closer to the crack, but the interior was dark and he could not make out the woman. “You owned the Dancing Dolphin in 1951?”
“Who are you?” she snapped.
“Nineteen fifty-one,” he repeated.
“You looking for back taxes,” she sneered.
“No,” Si said. “I’m the son of a woman you might have known then. Farrah was her name.” There was a long silence. He could hear the woman’s heavy breathing.
“You’re a liar,” she challenged. “The child was a girl.”
His heart leaped. He looked at Abdel and gripped her arm.
“She knows,” he whispered.
“Isis,” he said, spitting the name out joyously. “Isis was her name.” He hesitated.
The woman grew silent, and he sensed she was debating with herself. She thrust open the door, looked them over suspiciously, then walked heavily through the dark corridor, slippers flapping on the stone floor. They followed her into a tiny room filled with furniture and the heavy must odor of old age. She lowered the sound on the TV. The program was Hawaii Five-O with Arabic subtitles.
Then she turned on a lamp with an old-fashioned beaded shade, angled it, and inspected his face.
“And you? Say again.”
“Farrah’s son. Osiris Kelly. She died last week in America.”
“So she got away from them,” the woman said, shaking her head. “Landed in America, eh.” She fixed the lamp shade and waved the visitors to an overstuffed couch, while she sat in a straight chair facing them.
“Who is this one?” she said in a direct, arrogant manner.
“A friend,” he said.
Abdel nodded. The old woman seemed only barely convinced. Si studied her face, dark, wrinkled, with a gaping toothless mouth and steel-gray hair tied in a heavy bun. The room, stuffed
with possessions, offered a fitting complement to the acquisitive, predatory air of the woman, which smacked of greed and penury.
“So she died,” the old woman said, shaking her head. “Like my Vivanti, that alcoholic bum. That lazy bastard.” She seemed to be gaining a good head of indignation. “That Farrah. Couldn’t dance worth anything, but a good body. That Vivanti. Never a single moment’s peace. Nothing but aggravation.” She clucked her tongue and twisted old arthritic fingers in her lap. There seemed no end to her indignation.
“She named you Osiris. Of course. That had to be.” The woman’s old eyes continued to probe him.
“Farrah,” the woman said, beginning a new round of vituperations. “She was a stupid fool. Pride.” Her eyes narrowed and she squinted into Si’s face. “Too proud. Then when she got smart, it was too late.” The woman’s internal wanderings confused him.
“Her birth certificate said the father was Benito Mussolini.”
The woman’s face seemed to puff up with air. The toothless mouth gaped.
“Mussolini?” She seemed to be struggling for recall, then finally, her head rolled back and a strident cackle, like a rooster’s morning cry, rose from deep inside of her.
“Mussolini. That fool, Vivanti. That sly dog. He died just to escape me. I wouldn’t let them put the coffin in the ground until I was sure he was dead. Benito Mussolini. Another dirty bastard.”
He was puzzled, but the woman’s eccentricities were alarming and he did not want to inhibit the flow of information.
“Then who was Isis’s father?” Si asked, when her vitriol had subsided. She looked at him as if he had lost his mind.
“You mean she never told you?” she said, contemplating him archly. “Who is your father?”
“An American. Mike Kelly. Mother married him in 1953. They met in Tripoli.”
“Married?” She nodded, acknowledging what seemed like admiration. The grim facade, he saw, was a pose. He was sure of that.
“I am looking for Isis,” he said. “For some reason, my mother left her in Egypt, in the summer of 1952.”