Visions of Isabelle

by William Bayer

  "Good. I like that. It's right for you, too. You will be a great heroine. Yes!"

  She is moved and remembers: he's always been so delicate with her in his letters, so careful not to intrude when she's written him turbulent accounts of the maddening tensions at Villa Neuve. Gently he's led her to this strange land, where she feels now she's found a place to grow and live.

  "I want to walk with you, Eugène. I want you to put your arm around my waist and guide me, show me everything. Tell me stories. Tell me about Arabs and Berbers, the blue men–the Tuaregs–and the oases of the south."

  They walk, then, for hours. She listens as he explains. And when he begins to speak of himself, his own life, his loneliness, she is touched by something vulnerable in his soul.

  "The nights are miserable," he tells her. "There are no women, of course, and I dream of these veiled creatures and feel deprived. In the Sahara sometimes the women shroud themselves completely–you see nothing but a single eyeball peering out from the hooded wool. It is torture for me there, and yet I love the desert, the emptiness, the cleanness of everything, and only wish I did not always feel so sad."

  "Of course you are unhappy," she tells him. "Of course you are. But let me tell you what I like about you–the marvelous way you carry your sadness. The fine way you endure it."

  They come to the doors of an inexpensive hotel, and, without speaking, she motions for him to lead her up the stairs.

  There is a narrow iron bed in the room they take, two old cane chairs, and a set of tall windows where they stand and look out upon the city and the port.

  She leads him to the bed and they lie down, he in his Cossack-collared tunic, she in her rust-colored cape. Carefully she undoes the buttons near his collar, stretches her arms around his chest and hugs him to her, kisses his cheeks, runs her fingers over and over through his hair. They rest this way for hours, just touching, loving each other like a brother and a sister until it is dark outside and time for him to catch his train.

  They speak for a few minutes before he leaves. They will see each other as often as life permits, though both recognize it will be difficult to arrange meetings and the visits will be long between. But they will write as before and their letters will be lit by a new intensity, fueled by this meeting so glowing, so long forestalled and so sincere.

  Old Nathalie has always been devout–even a quarter century with Vava has not extinguished her love of God. She wants to enter every mosque they pass, search out the deity of this strange land she's come to on a whim. At first Isabelle resists. Vava's imprint has been strong, his atheism has infected her. But then she begins to marvel at the way religion here is entwined with everyday life.

  No separation, as in Geneva, she sees, between pious exhortations heard at Mass, and the way people speak in the streets. Here God is everywhere, upon every lip, evoked in the merest greeting, the slightest exchange.

  Inchallah. Mektoub. Humdoul'lah. God willing. It is written. Thanks be to God. Impossible to be an atheist in Islam–impossible to speak or think without acknowledging that God is great and has willed every nuance of life.

  Early one June evening she climbs the hill of the old quarter and enters, at its summit, the Mosque of Sidi Bou Mérouane. Wandering through the great hall of prayer and its seven hushed naves, she marvels at the tiles glistening beneath the hanging oil lamps. After a few moments she presses herself against an ancient Roman column to savor the mood of peace.

  Her calm is shattered by a cry from the minaret, echoed by more distant cries from the towers of all the mosques of Bône . Listening to them rebound against the stones, echo and overlap, she is suffused with a feeling of mystery, of something ancient, veiled.

  Then, like a sound in a dream, she hears the old imam begin his prayer. His voice, tremulous and distant, calls her to her knees. Without knowing why, she joins others in the echoing gloom, listening as the prayer begins to build.

  The imam's voice rises, becomes fresh and strong, then swells at last to a powerful cry announcing the inevitable triumph of Islam.

  Her throat dilates. A tremor of deep emotion races down her spine. A sense of radiance fills her, and then everything turns serene. She closes her eyes, listens to eternity. A cosmic power enters her body from deep within the earth. She feels a call and then a warm embrace. Stunned by the revelation, she leaves the mosque convinced.

  By nature she's a skeptic. Vava has seen to that. For days she questions her experience, probing for any weakness in her character that has brought the feeling on. Perfectly proper, she knows, to be logical, but one must live by one's senses because they are the only things one can trust. She believes she has found God by the only authentic path–not by reasoning his existence to explain the mysteries of life and death, but by feeling his presence in a shudder of deep insight.

  Old Nathalie, exhausted by a Christ whose crucified body comes too close, in its agony, to the miseries of her own life, becomes entranced with the idea that she and Isabelle should convert. Nathalie arranges instruction, collects books, corrals the finest Koranic scholars of the town. These men, delighted at the opportunity, spend hours at the house on Rue Bugeaud, leading the two infidel ladies through the Prophet's words. Isabelle has a mind for it, adores reciting verses from the Koran, and soon becomes fascinated by its intricacies, just as she is stirred five times a day by the wild calls to prayer.

  Studying Islam, learning to submit to God's will, she and Old Nathalie become close in a way that was impossible at Villa Neuve. Here in their tiny house there are no unpredictable tantrums to spoil the serenity of life. No demons skulk the living room walls; no mad scientist works in the cellar. Here, suspended in the imbroglio of their neighborhood, they contemplate the mystery of their new shared faith.

  Still Isabelle is restless and needs, every day, to plunge out into the streets. And it becomes clear to her as she walks the medina with her sliding masculine stride, that she is being accepted as something strange and formidable, a European woman who dresses as an Arab man, a Russian who speaks Arabic, a passionate person in whom female sensuality and male force are proudly forged.

  She discovers that if she walks into a mosque 'and kneels down and prays with Moslems, then she becomes a Moslem, too. And that if she strides into a café among soldiers smoking kif, expecting to be accepted, to share the pipe and be included in the talk, then, indeed, she is accepted and welcomed and served.

  It is a startling revelation, this ability she suddenly finds to create herself as a personality, then have her portrayal accepted by an entire town. Feeling like an actress who suddenly discovers she has the power to compel belief, she spends hours before a mirror practicing sweeps of the arm, enigmatic smiles, expressions of scorn, suspension of a cigarette between her lips. She wants to see how she looks when she prays, and learns to stand facing Mecca in the manner of a Sherifian king. She practices walking with a book upon her head, so that she can sweep through the crowded streets with a straight back, conveying an impression of leanness and swiftness and primitive power.

  When she returns from her walks, full of discovery and exhilaration, of deep thoughts about her destiny and life, she goes always to the terrace, gently wakens her mother, and shares what she has seen.

  "Something's happening to you," Old Nathalie says, inspecting her slim and fiery form. "You're becoming wild, strong. There's something of Vava in you–something driven, willful, like steel."

  "Yes, yes. I'm trying to find myself–uncover what I am."

  "But, Isabelle, you frighten me sometimes. You're so like Vava, so extreme."

  "Oh, Mama, you disapprove."

  Old Nathalie shakes her head.

  "God will show you the way–I'm sure of that. And I pray He pities your poor brothers, too, if they're not lost forever in atheistic gloom."

  Tears come into her eyes. Isabelle moves beside her, kneels, takes her hand.

  "I don't know," Old Nathalie says. "I look at you sometimes and see your father. Then I think back
on all the wasted years."

  "You mustn't say that. There was love in the house..."

  "Not enough. Nowhere near enough."

  "There were good times..."

  "Yes. There were. Heaven knows the man wasn't dull! But they don't cancel out all the terrible things he did–all the violence, those awful scenes. I don't care about myself. I was grown up. But I'll never forgive the way he bent your young minds–twisted you back and forth. Still, if you have a happy life, Isabelle, then all of it will have been worthwhile."

  They sit in silence, Isabelle astonished, Old Nathalie a little ashamed of what she's said.

  "Look!" Isabelle points toward the sea. "Maybe we'll see it tonight."

  They search the horizon. The sun is only a millimeter from the water, smooth like a tile.

  "There!"

  "Yes!"

  The "green flash"–the strange explosion between falling sun and darkening sea–fills Old Nathalie with thoughts of God, and Isabelle with a question: will she ever escape the past?

  A handsome, teen-aged Tunisian prince named Tefik Saheb-Ettaba, rumored to be the heir to millions of acres of the richest wheat-producing lands in the Tunisian Sahel, sees her in the streets, follows her, then sends flowers to her house.

  Isabelle feels nothing about this except slight amusement. She continues her afternoon walks, becoming used to the sad-eyed young man who tries so hard to keep up as she sweeps through the sun-filled streets.

  But after several days her amusement fades–he is making a spectacle of himself at her expense. She makes her move carefully. She stops suddenly in a public square and turns upon him in annoyance.

  "Isn't it rather silly for you to follow me?" she asks in French, hoping he'll be humiliated as she is overheard. "I don't like it. Please leave me alone!"

  That night he hires flutists to serenade her as she sleeps. Furious, she drives them away with a few well-chosen expletives and a couple of well-aimed stones.

  No longer able to bear her indifference, Tefik demands an interview with Old Nathalie. Then, in her presence, he makes a proposal of marriage in florid Arabic couplets, classical and rhymed.

  "Thank you so much," says Isabelle when he's finished, "but I doubt I shall ever marry, and I certainly won't consider it now."

  The look of astonishment on his face is sweeter to her than any contrived serenade.

  But later she thinks: If I am a sensualist, if the world of sensation opened up to me by Archivir is the world that satisfies me the most, then I must indulge all my cravings and give myself over fully to desire.

  The next day she accompanies her mother to the prince's house. While his father enraptures Old Nathalie with a description of an esoteric Islamic rite, Isabelle asks Tefik to show her through the fruit orchard in the back. Alone with him at last she seizes his hand and brings it to her lips. Then she kisses him, begs him to take her to his room and ravish her with ardent love. Mesmerized by her impassioned eyes, he obeys her like a slave. Afterward, he is grateful, delighted and amazed, and redoubles his pleas for her hand.

  "Out of the question," she tells him, fondling his organ to a spire.

  Then later, recalling his perplexity and maddened tears, she thinks: Now I can do anything I want.

  On September 17, on a clear afternoon, while the sun seems to stand still in the sky, shining down with a radiant gloss upon the city spread below, Isabelle and Old Nathalie stand together on the side of a hill near Bône, raise their right hands and make a solemn pledge:

  "I attest there is no God but God, and Mohammed is His prophet."

  Standing about them are all the friends they've made, the Koranic scholars who've indoctrinated them, the love-struck Tunisian prince, well-wishers, neighbors, friends.

  After they say the fateful words, they clasp their hands together and embrace. Old Nathalie's eyes fill with tears.

  "Who in Moscow could have known," she asks, "that at the age of fifty-nine I would find God again?"

  As they kneel in proud submission, Isabelle looks at her mother and feels moved and sad. She prays that what she's heard is true: that those who come by choice to rest in Islam's warm shade are dearer to God even than those born to His faith.

  In October Old Nathalie falls ill–chest pains, soreness in her bosom, headaches, lack of energy. She stays out on the terrace nearly all the time, absorbing the autumnal sun. Isabelle does the shopping by herself, then spends as much time with her mother as she can. But the pressure she has known all her life–the need to move, to explore, to lose herself in strange quarters–this pressure is redoubled under the duress of the illness, and the moment the old woman slips into sleep, Isabelle flees the house.

  She wanders and marches, peering into people's faces, sitting down in cafés, smoking her pipe. Sometimes she does not return until dawn, and then, after looking into Old Nathalie's room, hearing the labored breathing of her sleep, she flings herself upon her bed, and dreams of adventures she knows will come.

  She is waiting for something, a release perhaps–some trigger that will be pulled and will propel her into life. For the moment she is content in Bône, though she senses that in time she will want to move away from the shore. There are things in the south: people, places, ways of life awaiting her discovery. But for now Old Nathalie must be cared for; a return to Geneva and all the madness there is impossible.

  On the evening of November 27 she goes out before the sun is down. The light is crisp, the trees green. It has been raining for several days and, as always after a shower, the sky is clear and the air has taken on an extraordinary glow.

  She walks down the hill into the medina toward the port, choosing a long and tortuous route that leads her to a notorious café. This is a place where the kif is alleged to be the very best–cut with chira with belladonna added, a mixture guaranteed to dilate the pupils even as the vision is enlarged.

  She lies here on mats made of rushes strewn over bales of hay. In the corner, behind a screen of candles, an Arab plays a flute. She stares about at the faces of the men, but as her lungs absorb the smoke, she loses her ability to concentrate and fixes her eyes upon one of the flickering flames, thinking of night and shade and death. She does not understand why she feels depressed. She has escaped, after all, and to a place she loves. But she senses that her life is soon to change–that something in it is flickering and will soon go dark.

  The shadows of the other men, settled, immobile, reposed, seem stained upon the walls. It seems to her that they are, all of them, timeless and lost in the corner of an enormous cave. After a long while of being immersed in sadness, she falls into intoxicated sleep.

  At dawn she wakes to find herself in a room of sleeping men. They lie, like cattle, in heaps covered by dark burnooses that give off an odor of cold damp wool. All the candles have decomposed to pools of wax, and outside, on the narrow cobbled lanes, she can hear the patter of rain, and somewhere farther off, the slamming of a shutter before the wind.

  Slowly she pulls herself to her feet, checks to see that nothing has troubled her in the night. Then she makes her way to the streets. Rain runs in gutters toward the port; the cobbles are slick with mud and donkey dung. Few people walk the medina: some old women with heaps of twigs piled on their backs, some men in shabby skullcaps pushing wagons filled with fruit. She pulls up her woolen hood, and shivering, weary, aching in her bones, hunches her shoulders and begins to climb.

  When she emerges at the top of the hill, an enormous gust twirls her against a wall. As she enters Rue Bugeaud the rain slashes down from all angles; she cannot protect her face and so lowers her hood and marches forward without flinching. By the time she reaches the house her hair is soaked, her face is washed, and rivers of water slide down her chest and legs.

  She thrusts open the door, enters and slams it shut. Wiping water from her eyes she calls to the servant for a towel. It takes her a few moments to realize that there are others in the house: a doctor, a priest and a large fat woman she recognizes as a nurs
e.

  They tell her what has happened during the night: the heart attack that struck as the sun went down; Old Nathalie discovered unconscious, by a servant; the hours of waiting; the agony while desperate neighbors tried to search her out; the final crisis just before the dawn. Even as they are telling her all this, and eyeing her with reproach, Isabelle forgives herself and begins to mount a grief that, by the next few days, she carries to a frantic pitch.

  Trophimovsky, hearing that Old Nathalie is sick and anxious to lure her back to Meyrin, departs before the arrival of the cable informing him that she is dead. He comes to Bône unexpected by Isabelle and not expecting to find a wreath upon the door. He realizes what has happened while still in the street. With the same steeliness that had made it possible for him to persist for years with his scheme to manufacture perfume, he takes firm grip. If a passerby had peered at him at that moment, he would have seen a strange and pitiful sight: an old man ravaged for the slightest instant, a human face reflecting the stun of grief between two moments of studied calm.

  Men are shrouding Old Nathalie's body at the very moment that Vava enters the house. Isabelle is throwing herself wildly about, rushing up and down stairs, her robe streaming, her fingers clutched into her short and ungraspable hair. From her mouth comes a trail of sobs and wails. The body rests on a table in the small courtyard, a calm center in a whirling storm. As Trophimovsky watches she pushes back the men, then flings herself upon the corpse. The smell of pitch is in the air, and a chorus of sobs issues from the adjoining roofs where the women of the neighborhood stand looking down.

  Appalled by Isabelle's vulgar demonstration, Trophimovsky, unnoticed in the gloom of the front arch, shouts to her as loudly as he can.

  "What is this farce?"

  Isabelle spins around, snapped by memory of the bellow that made her brothers tremble for years.