by Susan Daitch
It wasn’t until I bumped into Ryder at the shops in Jazira, about a month into their sojourn, that I found myself alone with half the pair, the patsy half, I would say. This was the first time we spoke without a lot of people we knew looking our way, and as we walked down narrow streets whose overhead enclosed balconies almost touched, I ventured into the treacherous waters of the subject of Archer Hilliard.
Your friend doesn’t seem to like me very much.
He likes to be the center of attention, Mrs. Canonbury. People who know more than he does, put him ill at ease. He leaned in closer. You may not be aware of the effect you have on men, he said in a stern voice, as if repeating lines from a melodrama seen through a stereoscope, then he laughed and offered me a cigarette.
I turned to Emily: this is the kind of scene that will be repeated thousands of times over, in movies, plays, and in actual experiences of countless women. It can be read as comic, corny, or sincere, it’s up to you.
I don’t smoke, Emily replied.
What can you do with such a person? I returned my focus to her companion.
At this point in time I was getting bored with chasing Archer Hilliard, and had I not run into Ryder that afternoon, things might have turned out very differently. Hilliard was always a few steps ahead of me, just out of reach. I kept returning to my husband empty-handed, and I did have other things to do. During my time in Egypt I’d been photographing portraits of people in the diplomatic corp, their families, visiting princes, and petty potentates. At first it was only a pastime, something to keep me occupied, but also I wanted to keep a record of the men and women who had been my friends. Just as I became close to someone, they were posted on to India, or Singapore, or returned back home. Then I began to take pictures of other kinds of people: tea bearers, local merchants playing chess on the street, children employed by an olive presser, women in harems when I could get permission to do so. This was tricky, but not impossible. I was looking for archetypes, as if I could construct a vast catalogue of every kind of person from governor to dung collector, a record which, if found two thousand years from now, would tell the unearther everything they would need to reconstruct a long-dead society from the ground up.
Where are your pictures now? Casper asked.
I have a few, but most were lost when I left Egypt. Let me tell you about what I was looking for that afternoon. For a while I’d wanted to take pictures in the desert, to travel beyond a day’s distance from the city. To do this I needed quite a bit of special equipment. When I looked up for an instant and saw Ryder, I was absorbed with the task of searching for a kind of black material that would be impervious to light. Why? I needed to have a small tent made. Panchromatic film had just become available, and it had to be developed in total darkness. Today one could easily find plastic or rubberized sheeting, but then it was almost impossible.
What were you going to do with this stuff?
There was a man who studied the Maya, a Frenchman, Le Plongeon, who invented a portable darkroom. Out in the jungle, he and his wife took hundreds of pictures of ruins, buildings, small artifacts, architectural details, but had no place to develop their plates, and so constructed a darkroom they could take on their travels. One shake of your hand, and the whole apparatus fell into place. In order to take the pictures I wanted to, and be away for some time, I needed such a darkroom.
Ryder listened to me attentively, and though he had his own list of equipment he was meant to procure that afternoon, he spent the rest of the day with me. I had no idea exactly how Le Plongeon made his structure, but Ryder, drawing in a notebook, came up with a workable plan. We searched for wood and metal rods to construct a lightweight frame, bargained over hinges, metal drills, and coils of rope. I was utterly charmed by his Arabic. Toward evening, when we approached the gate to my house, he invited me to spend a day with him at Ghiza, and I accepted. Don’t necessarily expect Archer to be present; he disappears for hours at a time, only to resurface with no explanation. He laughed again in a strained sort of way. Ryder assumed he was the main attraction, not Archer Fairfax Hilliard.
Over the next couple of weeks, Archer became a neglected chore, as I began to look forward to outings with Ryder. In the morning I would pack up my tripod, a 4 x 4 Kodak camera with detachable telephoto lens, and wait with increasing anticipation for his driver who would take me to join the crew. Some photographs I anticipated taking and would plan them the night before with an imaginary Ryder looking over my shoulder. I wanted to impress him with my artistry, ingenuity, and willingness to take risks other women might not, at least I wanted to present myself as that person. There were days we were the only white people on the site, far from civilization. If a rifle shot was heard close by, I trained myself not to flinch. Also, the photographs added another layer to the justification I gave Aidan for these excursions. I did some of my best work in Ghiza: camels drinking at a pool, so clear their reflections looked like upside-down exact doubles, a cistern filled with rain, the killing of a sheep, and its subsequent roasting over a camel dung fire. If I had them with me now, you would be as transported as I was. Yet sometimes it was as if Ryder stepped in front of the camera. His face was all I could see.
You were supposed to be using Congreaves to get to the impenetrable Archer, but what your husband didn’t count on, what nobody could have predicted, you would fall in love with Ryder. Emily now hung on my every word. It had begun to snow again. The attic was not well heated or insulated. I would have to speed things up.
Though some photographs seemed to fall into composition with a kind of crystalline clarity, there were instances when I couldn’t snap the shutter, and my hand just scratched my head instead. The further I entered into some kind of a relationship with Ryder, the less able I was to photograph the people around me, as if I was questioning all dealings of any kind. I kept asking myself, what is my relation to my subjects that gets into the picture, my decisions about light, expression, background? None of it was arbitrary or random (the snapshot had not yet been invented). All I had thought was incontrovertible, was re-examined as testimony by an unconscious liar — possibly. The wife of one of my husband’s Cairene associates who lived in a harem could be photographed huddled in a dark corner, or at her door in a yashmak, a Turkish traveling veil, ready to go out into the street. You wouldn’t necessarily even think it was the same woman, if you saw the two photographs. This seems obvious now, but at the time it was a novel idea. People were more inclined to believe the camera and be seduced by what was presented as a series of absolute accuracies. The train arriving on the cinema screen is actually crashing through the wall, people screaming — the kind of response that seems laughable and naïve — it wasn’t so uncommon or strange thirty years ago.
So what happened between you and Congreaves? Casper grinned a bit from his perch.
How would Lydea tell this part of the story? Everyone on the boat was so drunk. I woke up and didn’t know where I was or whose bed I had fallen into. Even if she was exaggerating, that’s how she would choose to remember, not wanting to appear calculating, but spontaneous and lighthearted, no big effort involved. I have no memories of making plastered, blotto decisions, and suspect I was always completely conscious and sober. I leaned in close to Casper, smelling the medicine on his breath, and explained.
A German magician was once hired for a children’s party at the consulate. He made an elephant disappear, he escaped from chains, emerged from within a sealed box, and did a few card tricks that were really extraordinary. Later when I was alone with him, he showed me how they were done. Fascinated, I practiced the cards over and over. Sex is sort of the same set of card tricks. You have to do everything in order, more or less, and hope that your audience, new to your ploys and sleight of hand, is blown away. It’s all about control, setting up the impossible, putting up more roadblocks, more impediments that logic and gravity can’t remove, until you get to the completion, the final surprise.
Casper smirked, though I would have gu
essed, what did he know about what people hide in their pants? Emily in her languid way looked quite interested, like a student who stops doodling in a book at the sound of the word poke, and wonders what she might have missed that sounded so suggestive; though maybe I should have used ‘how you develop a photograph’ as an analogy. I had a cigarette hidden in a jacket pocket. You weren’t supposed to smoke, but I kept a few, like worry beads, I stroked them or held a tip close to my nose and inhaled, but never lit one. For obvious reasons cigarettes were forbidden in the sanatorium, but I always find, as a rule, it’s a nice gesture to keep a forbidden substance somewhere on your person. You never know when it might come in handy. I offered one to Casper. He shuddered, as if I’d offered him strychnine, and shook his head.
Can I give you some advice?
It’s not a good idea to sleep with someone while pretending to be someone else? There’s a price for all our actions? There was more to Emily Topper than I would have thought. I decided against imparting advice for the moment.
We all want something for nothing, sweetie, was all I said.
Only on one afternoon did Archer put in an appearance at Ghiza while I was present. Entering the camp dressed as a desert Arab, but walking like a man reviewing cadets at Sandhurst, he never looked at me, but only addressed himself to Ryder. He claimed he had gone swimming in the Nile, an obvious falsehood. No one we knew swam in the Nile. Upstream from the crocodiles, I hope, was all I said.
Meanwhile Aidan knew Archer was laying the groundwork for the next leg of their journey. He wanted some substantiation of clandestine trysts, screw-ups. I want reports of street contacts, glances that led to meeting under a grove of palms in Midan Ataba or in the shadow of a Heliopolis tomb. I know these things happen, and he will one day say the wrong thing to the wrong man. What did he want me to do? Hide myself in a hotel lobby men’s room? I was not invisible. Didn’t he know I was trying as best I could, though Hilliard avoided me? I began to be afraid someone was watching me. Had Aidan guessed what had become my real reason for going to Ghiza and was therefore asking the impossible with increasing insistence?
One day, though I wanted very much to go to Ghiza as had become customary, I claimed illness, and stayed behind in Cairo. I made my way to the street near El Gamia Bridge where Ryder was lodged and bribed the concierge to let me into his rooms. I looked through his things, hoping for some clue about Archer, as my husband had advised. In truth, I was very reluctant to undertake this kind of snooping, but growing impatient, he insisted, handing me a wad of cash for payoffs. What did I find? Displayed in frames were pictures of a family, his family back in England, and in a drawer a stash of pornographic postcards was wedged between socks and underwear. At the sound of footsteps, I froze, pocketing one of the cards. I have it still. The footsteps paused, then continued. When it was quiet again, I departed, but as I opened the door, it slammed into a woman in a Tyrolean hat making her way down the narrow corridor. She snapped at me in German, which I didn’t understand, so I shut and locked the door as if nothing were irregular and she didn’t exist. Would she remember me if she saw me again? Yes, I think so, but what could I do?
Next I made my way to Archer’s quarters. His concierge looked up from sipping tea in her little wrought iron booth, extended a hand to accept a bundle of piastres, and passed me the key, as if this sort of thing happened every day. Archer’s rooms were quite beautiful with a balcony and view of the Nile. I found books about Persia and Farsi grammar coated with a thin layer of dust, and letters to his father which, unless they were copies, had never been sent. In them he made great claims about the future of poisonous gas and described a delightful evening spent with a niece of some duke I never heard of and probably had never been born, any of them. In another letter he described the failure of his design for a repeating rifle, and the loneliness of his walks along the Nile: I feel like someone who was forced to attend a dance, but couldn’t hear the music, and was barred from stepping onto the floor. In a third letter he wrote that Ghiza was just a dress rehearsal for their imminent trip to Persia. I sat down on his bed in a heap, because of course, that meant Ryder would be leaving soon as well. I forced myself to read on.
Esme Canonbury is an abomination. Her clothes, her way of speaking, all irritate no end. I would like nothing better than to knock her all the way to Queer Street. She is married to my handler, but her insistence on seducing Ryder endangers all of us. The two of them may think they’re secretive, but everyone knows about their so-called outings to Ghiza. Anyone can see the way they look at one another. I’ve asked Ryder to consider what the repercussions of his actions will be over a woman who’s so clearly not worth the risk. Pick anyone, anyone else, I’ve pleaded. He either ignores me, or shrugs off my concerns as the hypocrisy of a prude. What he doesn’t realize is that as we are about to go into the desert, she’s burning all our bridges. There will be no shelter coming from the outposts of Albion, should we get in too deep. I would cut Congreaves loose, if I could, but I need him to accompany me as we go forth. I’ve told him about a lost city to the east — we would be the first to find it — instead of stagnating here, following in the tired footsteps of Napoleon’s army, but he is resistant to this enticement and doesn’t want to leave his Esme.
Archer’s pillow smelled of attar. I looked around the room at his collection of souvenirs: small clay and bronze sphinxes, pyramids, tiles arranged on his shelves, rugs laid out in studied disarray. His hoard of knickknacks were suffocating. On my way to the door I pocketed a chipped Isis with onyx eyes. He thought Ryder provided a cover, a pretence, for the real reason behind his trip, but in fact the truth was the reverse. Archer had, unwittingly, provided a cover for me. Now the three of us were at risk of losing everything. Points on a map, A leads to B leads to C, but C is the end of the route, and it’s impossible to back up or go anyplace else. Archer: a cream puff laced with cyanide. Does Aidan really know? He may have been trying to put Archer off the scent, so he wouldn’t suspect what I was actually up to, and also try to save face for himself. Or was I being set up? Does the photograph show a woman living in seclusion or one about to go out, able to go anywhere she pleases? Which is true, if either? Archer could tap out a complicated rhythm on any dance floor, spin, and then lob a dagger into an unsuspecting spectator just for the hell of it. I was sure of it.
In the days that followed my incursions into the hotel rooms, I stopped going to Ghiza. Though I tried to see less of Ryder, we met at an embassy dinner at which we were seated side by side. If everyone knew, as Archer had written, I wondered if the seating arrangements were some kind of cruel act of connivance on the part of the hostess. I felt awkward and spilled a glass of whiskey. Ryder was withdrawn and tense, bent over his food with even more intensity than usual. He barely looked at me, and I’m sure the gossips noticed. Had the Tyrolean woman said something to him? I would never know. Cardamom rosewater sweets were passed around, and we were careful that even our fingers didn’t touch. Still without turning in my direction, he invited me out to Ghiza, and I believed the invitation was sincere, so two days later I went out with him one last time.
He left me alone, and I pretended to be overly concerned fiddling with my cameras and equipment, as if the plated scissoring rods that allowed the lens to move in and out were not working properly. When he circled back from overseeing the diggers to where I fumbled, he told me about a lost city further east that Archer wanted to have a go at. Hilliard wanted to leave Egypt as soon as possible, abandoning Ghiza, which no longer interested him. Ryder relied on Hilliard’s money, he had none of his own, so he would have to go, and he was a Persianist, after all. I couldn’t tell him the lost city was nothing more than a front, because I couldn’t let him begin to suspect how I knew what I knew.
So he dumped you. Emily was very blunt.
It wasn’t that simple. In fact, Ryder didn’t want to go, didn’t want to leave me, though I no longer knew why. We found a place in an abandoned structure near the pyramids where we
could talk in private, but we didn’t talk.
I didn’t know exactly how to proceed with my story, and so paused for a moment.
Sand in the underwear, I’m guessing, Emily said in a Manchester accent that had no doubt irritated her governesses, but she was right.
We could hardly stand one another’s company, but we were stuck to each other like an old married couple who make their partner depressed and irritable, but still in some corner of their hearts, can’t live without one another. That sounds very sentimental, and it is, but I wanted them to believe it.
I arrived back home that day without the energy or desire to even tell a servant where to put my tripod. Aidan emerged from his study with a fantastically cheerful expression on his face. His smile turned momentarily to concern, and he handed me a cool glass of gin, mint floating on an ice cube. Don’t worry, dear, I’ve just the thing. He had planned a short trip to Alexandria, a vacation that would do us both good. We would stroll along the Corniche, and play at the casinos, a welcome break, no? I had no choice, downed my glass, and nodded. Though being away from Ryder made me nervous, being with him was a source of anxiety as well.