by Gore Vidal
“Who is that, my dear?”
“The King. This time it’s supposed to be a singer, a pretty German girl. You know the one—she sang at L’Auberge, I think, last season.”
“Ah! Anna Something-or-other. Mueller? Yes. Handsome creature. Took a fancy to her myself.”
“So has he. I’m told the court is in its usual uproar.”
“Don’t envy the poor child.” Hastings shook his head gloomily. “Not my dish at all, if I were a woman.”
“Ambitious girls are a class apart,” said Hélène. “But now we’re doing the dreary Cairo trick of gossiping about the King to someone who hasn’t the slightest interest in what he or any of the other buffoons in this country do. Forgive us, Peter.” For the first time since they had met that evening, she looked him directly in the face, a faint, sardonic smile on her lips.
He blushed, remembering the night before. “I’m very much interested,” he lied.
They talked for a while of Farouk, of his family, of the intrigues at court. At first it seemed to Pete to be very exotic and Oriental, but after a time the situation sounded more and more familiar to him. The great doings at the Egyptian court were no different, actually, than those in any other society, whether in Des Moines or Egypt or Salem, Oregon. The only difference was in wealth; these rich Egyptians, Pete had soon learned, were the wealthiest group in the world.
They went into the dining room, where dinner was served them. It was very gala, and Pete, still somewhat confused by the hasheesh, enjoyed this luxury, this comfort. He was, at that moment, quite ready to spend the rest of his life in Egypt. For someone who knew the angles it would be a cinch. Not until coffee came and he had sobered up completely did he realize, uncomfortably, that he didn’t have the slightest notion what was going on, at least as far as his two employers and the trip up the Nile were concerned.
After dinner Hastings excused himself for a moment, saying he had some telephone calls to make. When he was gone Pete looked at Hélène coolly. “What was the big idea?”
“Idea?” She was examining her face in a small mirror, to see if her lipstick had been smudged during dinner. She frowned critically at her reflection. She seemed unaware of him, of the hotel guests who paraded past the alcove where they now sat in the Turkish lobby.
“That little show in my room last night, remember?”
She sighed and put the mirror and compact away. “What show? As I remember, we parted in my room.”
“We did. Then a couple of hours later you and a pair of Arabs paid me a visit and turned everything inside out, looking for something.”
“You think I did all this?”
He nodded. “I saw you, before I was blindfolded. On top of that, your perfume’s unmistakable.”
She laughed. “Trapped by perfume!”
“You admit you were there?’’
She looked serious. “You must realize, Peter, we can take no chances. As you may have guessed, we’re involved in a hazardous game. It had to be done. We found out all about you from the Consulate, secretly, but there was still a chance you might be an agent. The only way we could be certain was to examine you, off guard.”
“I’ll say you did.”
“How modest you American men are!” she said, an amused expression on her face. “Don’t forget that I was once an agent myself and I know all the methods of concealment. Believe me when I say our lives depend upon our caution.”
“You could have let somebody else do the job.”
“But they might have hurt you…and of course it was a labor of love.” The mockery was unmistakable and he had an impulse to strike that smiling, perfect face. But he controlled himself; there would be time for that later.
“That’s good to hear,” he said.
“Any damage they did, we’ll put on your…expense account. Isn’t that what Americans call it?”
“Were you satisfied that I’m not an agent?”
“Oh, yes. We had no real suspicions, but as I have said, we take every precaution,”
“How long will I be in Luxor?”
“Not longer than a week. Less, I hope.” She added this last softly.
“You mean that?”
“Oh, I almost forgot. I have a present for you. I left it in my room. Wait here a moment, will you? I’ll go get it.”
“I’ll walk you to your room,” he said, getting up.
“To protect me?” She laughed, but allowed him to go with her.
While he stood in the center of her room, she rummaged through a jewel box. At last she found what she wanted. She turned and gave it to him, a small blue scarab, highly carved, like a seal.
“It will bring you luck,” she said. “It came from the tomb of Queen Tiy, a great queen three thousand years ago.”
He handled it carefully, impressed by its antiquity. “Will I need luck?”
“A little, perhaps. It is never out of place.”
He put the scarab into his watch pocket. They stood for a moment looking at one another, then he pulled her toward him and their lips met suddenly, harshly. She struggled; then she relaxed, as though surrendering. But when he groped for her, she pulled back with surprising strength and struck his hands away.
“You’re a rough girl,” he said softly, and he moved toward her, quite ready to love, to kill. It was the same thing now, with this strange woman. But before he could seize her again, the door from the hall opened and a familiar voice said, “Thought I’d find you here. Romantic spot. Moonlight on the garden. City of contrast, as that travel fellow in the films would say. But we are in business, children.”
“I was giving Peter a good-luck charm,” said Hélène calmly, arranging her hair in the glass.
“Thoughtful, very thoughtful,” said Hastings in his genial way, but his eyes were as hard as ever, like bits of pale agate.
“We must remember how young our Peter is,” said Hélène playfully as they walked down the hall to the lobby. “Young men are a prey to their passions.”
“I never was.” Hastings chuckled. Pete said nothing.
“But Peter is unusual,” she said gaily, taking his arm, her fingers traveling over the hard muscles.
“Well, he’s got to tend to his job. Understand, boy?”
“Yes, sir.”
“There’ll be time for all that later. Now, everything straight? You’ll be met in the morning at the station by Osman. Old fellow, small gray beard, spectacles. He will be your dragoman. At the Karnak Inn you will meet, when he chooses, Mr. Said. You will then do what he tells you.”
“How will I know him?”
“Good point.” He looked thoughtful.
“I know,” said Hélène. “We will let Said know about the scarab I gave Peter. He will mention it when he meets him. He will say something about Queen Tiy and you’ll know then that it is really he.”
“Clever girl. Should have thought of that myself. Must beware of impostors.” They were now on the terrace in front of the hotel. The moon shone silver and full in the sky above the darkened street. Several taxicabs were parked in front of the hotel, their drivers arguing softly together. An old British couple sat rocking nearby.
“This is it, my boy, as the soldiers say. Don’t discuss these arrangements with anyone. Keep out of disputes. No entanglements of any kind. Understand?”
Pete said that he did. Hastings shook his hand heartily. “See you in a few days.”
Hélène held out her hand formally. “Be careful, Peter,” she said.
“I will.” He looked at her steadily, at her eyes, which shone luminous and fine by moonlight, inscrutable. He realized that he had no idea what she was thinking or what she felt about him. It was an unpleasant thought.
He said good-by abruptly and walked down the steps to the cab. His employers stood on the terrace, pale in the moonlight, until he drove away.
* * *
The railroad station was a dismal place, reminding him of the ones in France, only less crowded and dirtier. The usual begg
ars and pests were on hand and he fought his way through them grimly.
Arab gentlemen, looking as though they should be perched on camels, moved in a stately file toward the train, a nineteenth-century French specimen with an early-twentieth-century American locomotive.
He was shown to his compartment by a cheerful French porter who was voluble in garbled English.
“Here is. Here is, monsieur,” he said, sliding a door back to reveal a compartment with a bunk already made up. He switched on the frosted light overhead and Pete gave him the expected tip. “Sleep good. At your service by to ring the bell.” He pointed to a button by the bed and then, with many thanks, disappeared down the car.
Not ready for bed, Pete strolled down the corridor. There were few passengers in this car. Most of the natives traveled in second or third class. The third-class carriage that he had passed on the way to his car had been crowded with them, all shouting and laughing with excitement.
On an impulse, Pete crossed from his car into the next, which to his delight turned out to be a dining car, where whiskey was now being served. A half-dozen Europeans sat about in armchairs. He sat down just as the train began to move.
A Negro wearing a fez asked him in French what he would like to drink. Pete told him, and then sat drinking whiskey and soda as the train moved through the outskirts of Cairo, a strange spectacle by moonlight: thousands of mud hovels, each with the yellow flickering light of a lantern in the window. Dark shapes moved quickly in the shadows; other shapes huddled around tiny fires in front of the huts. The modern city was now only a blur of electric light in the distance, hidden by this sweep of slums, which were as old as the Bible, unchanged since the days of the Pharaohs.
It was several minutes before Pete was aware that someone was staring at him.
The man was seated across from him, a long-legged, barrel-torsoed Egyptian with dark skin, arched nose, and graying hair. When he saw that Pete was aware of him, he concentrated on the cup of coffee before him.
Pete drank slowly, glancing from time to time at the stranger. The man no longer stared at him, although Pete had the sensation that each time his own gaze moved, the dark man’s eyes would again rivet on him.
It was with some relief that Pete heard a cheery English voice beside him say, “First trip upcountry?”
“Yes, first trip.” The Englishman was ruddy with blurred features. He was in the cotton business and on his way to Luxor. He chattered amiably about cotton, Luxor, and the Labour government back home. Pete relaxed, not listening, soothed by the other’s voice, by the comfortable commonplaces he was saying. He tried not to look at the man opposite, and he tried to recall if he’d ever seen him before. He did look faintly familiar, but then, in these last few days, Pete had seen many similar dark faces.
“Of course you must have the police on your side.”
The word “police” brought his attention into focus with a snap. He looked at the Englishman. “Why is that?”
“Corrupt, you know. Not like home. All these foreign places are the same. You must fix them up. Get a key man and all’s well.”
“Even if what you’re doing is entirely legal?”
The Englishman looked hurt. “Wouldn’t consider anything else, sir,” he said with dignity.
“I didn’t mean you, of course,” said Pete quickly. “I just meant that it seems funny you must pay off when your business is perfectly legitimate.”
“Funny to us, but this is Arab country.”
Pete had an idea. “Do you know many of the British in Cairo?”
“Quite a few, yes. I’ve been coming out for ten years, off and on.”
“Know a fellow named Hastings?”
The other nodded, his face becoming serious and alert. “Bad lot,” he said succinctly.
“What’s his line? I happened to meet him at Shepheard’s one evening.”
“Smuggler, mostly. Black market, that kind of thing. I’d keep away from him.”
“I was just curious,” said Pete, and then they discussed the King, the favorite topic in these parts.
Finally, his drink finished, Pete excused himself. He left the car with only the briefest sidelong glance at the curious stranger, who was now engaged in studying the interior of an empty coffee cup.
Back in his compartment, Pete undressed slowly, trying to identify the man in the dining car. It annoyed him, like a word temporarily eluding the tongue. He hung his clothes up on a highly ornamented cast-iron hook. Everything was ornate and old, he thought, sitting down on the bunk to take off his shoes.
Beneath the blanket something moved. He jumped to his feet, heart racing. Where he had been sitting there was a lump about the size of a silver dollar; it moved. He threw back the covers and saw a large ugly insect. Disgusted, he rang for the porter.
“Mineral water?” said the plump face peering into the compartment.
“Mineral water, hell. Get that bug out of here.”
The porter’s eyes grew round and his face paled in spots, producing an unpleasant mottled effect. Muttering under his breath, he rushed down the corridor, returning a moment later with a dustpan and a brush. With great care he removed the insect from the bunk; then, with the back of the brush, he crushed it in the dustpan.
“Very bad,” he said, his normal color returning to his face. He was breathing heavily, though.
“I hope to God you haven’t got bedbugs here, too.”
But the porter was not listening to him. He continued to shake his head, murmuring, “Very bad, very bad.”
Pete, a little irritated, asked him what the insect was.
“Scorpion, monsieur. Never before has there been one found like this, never before. You must believe me. It is impossible. I clean. They clean. Everyone guards well the filth. There are never scorpions on train.”
Pete sat down heavily on the bunk, feeling ill. “They’re poisonous?”
“Yes, monsieur. Most painful.”
“Can they kill a man?
“Seldom, but he becomes sick, oh, sick like the poor soul in hell.”
Pete considered the poor soul in hell for a reverent moment.
“The sickness lasts many days,” added the porter morbidly.
“About how many days?” Pete was suddenly interested.
“Ten days, maybe less, maybe more.”
“About a week, then?”
“A week, yes. Now I will examine the bed with care.” While the porter remade his bunk, Pete considered the scorpion, whose poisonous sting might have laid him up for the entire time he was in Luxor. The coincidence was striking, and sinister. Yet who could have had the opportunity to…
Then he remembered where he had first seen the dark man in the dining car: at L’Auberge des Pyramides. He had waltzed with Hélène; she had called him a business rival.
He wondered then if it was too late for him to turn back.
For a long time that night in his bunk, he lay awake, listening to the clatter of the train’s wheels as they sped him into the hot barren wastes of Upper Egypt.
Chapter Three
He got off the train shortly before nine o’clock in the morning, before the sun had begun to scorch the streets of the town. Even so, the glare of morning light was blinding and he blinked in it as he stood uncertainly beside the train, a crowd of natives jostling him, trying to get his suitcase away from him.
Except for these usual pests, he was unnoticed in the crowd. The rich Egyptians, wearing white suits and dark red fezzes, moved easily, naturally through the crowds, accustomed to the noise and confusion. There were no Americans, Pete noticed, no Europeans in sight. Suddenly he felt isolated and strange, cut off from his own kind.
He walked slowly toward the station house, a fairly modern building, like those back home. Inside the station he paused. He was wondering whether or not to strike out on his own when an old man, wearing a turban and steel-rimmed spectacles, approached him, smiling, his broken teeth like an animal’s fangs.
“Sir
Wells,” he said, bowing, reaching for Pete’s suitcase. “I am Osman, dragoman, sir.”
“I was wondering where you were,” said Pete, suddenly relieved, even by the sight of this evil-looking old man.
“We shall take the carriage. Sir Wells, to the Karnak Inn,” said Osman, without altering his wide, unpleasant smile.
“Good deal,” answered Pete, following him out to the street.
There were several battered old taxicabs of obscure ancestry out front, and a number of horse-drawn, open carriages, to one of which Osman guided Pete. The driver, without even looking around, cracked his whip as soon as they were seated, and off they rode through the crowd of milling natives. In a moment they were out of the yard surrounding the station and moving down the dry dusty street. The dragoman sat very straight beside Pete, no longer smiling, his face dignified.
For a few moments Pete was a tourist, watching the houses flash by as their carriage moved through narrow streets, natives ducking out of its way. The houses were two-story, a little like the houses of Mexico, he thought, although the minarets, the red and white striped towers on the skyline, were like nothing he’d ever seen before.
He turned to Osman and said, “Is it far from here, the hotel?”
“Only several minutes from the town, sir,” said the old man. “It is on the river.”
“The Nile?”
“Is there another river?” The old man looked surprised.
“Very crowded?”
“The hotel? No, sir. This is not the time of year for tourists. The other hotels are closed. Only this one stays open in summer, for people who must come up here to do the business.”
“Like me.”
An ugly smile split the brown withered face. “You are tourist, Sir Wells,” he said, and he sounded more as if he were giving an order than making a comment on Pete’s status.
“Any Americans at the hotel?”
“No Americans.”
“All Egyptians?”
“I think yes, Sir Wells, but then I am seldom in Karnak Inn,” and he inclined his head obsequiously.
Pete sat back in the carriage and observed the streets as they grew more and more rustic, houses giving way to fields of shacks and palm trees until, at the bend of a road, they were on a bluff overlooking the Nile.