An Obvious Enchantment

by Tucker Malarkey

  One by one, the women rose and others from behind moved into the circle, which had widened, pushing to the edges of the floor. A few women wandered to the middle of the enclosure. With their eyes closed and their heads tilted back, they began to dance, freeing their robes in a solitary spin. They looked like black bells, like whirling seedpods.

  A hand found its way into Ingrid’s. The figure beside her unhooked her veil and revealed her face. It was Sari. She held a finger to her lips and pointed down. “I borrowed shoes, so no one knows Sari comes to this mosque. They think I am someone else walking through the village.”

  Ingrid looked down at her sandals. “Is that how you knew it was me?”

  “Yes, and I was happy. Come,” Sari said, her face radiant, “dance with me.”

  Side by side, they twirled, catching sight of each other and laughing as they grew dizzy and then passed through their dizziness into something else, where blurs of color floated like fabric over their eyes—but no faces, no people, only the singing and the arched ceilings stretching skyward, protecting, encouraging. Ingrid imagined God instructing the dancers, instructing her: Reach for me, forget your limitations, your balance. I am bigger than all of it. Lose yourself for a moment and see me.

  She did not want to stop because for an ecstatic moment there was no thought, there was feeling only and toward no one, but everyone, everything awash in a feeling that was large and getting larger, spilling out of her. I am not big enough, she thought. Compared to this, I am nothing.

  Then the mosque was suddenly reeling around her like a film on fast-forward. The words on the ceiling spun into one another. It’s what the world is, she thought, so many spinning circles of words you cannot read. But here, down here, there is something inside me that is not moving.

  She closed her eyes to the chaos up above. Below her was the unmoving support of the floor. She pressed her hands into it gratefully, opening her eyes to Sari’s voice: “Don’t touch her. She is my friend.” Ingrid’s head covering had fallen away and her hair lay spilled on the floor around her. A child crawled to touch it. Sari covered her up again. The singing, the music had stopped.

  “Come”—Sari’s voice—“we go outside.”

  “I don’t want to move.”

  “Try to get up. I will take you outside to sit.” Ingrid lifted her head to find Sari. “You let go to God,” Sari continued. “But not many mzungus go to God like that. I think it brings fear to them.” Sari gestured to those in the room who were staring. “It would be best if we go now.”

  Above Sari’s head was the script on the ceiling, which Ingrid could now make out. The words chased each other around and around: He who comes here will find what he is looking for. Then another face appeared above her, a man with a long face and a thin beard. “You are well?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “This is the man who translated your verses,” Sari said. “He told me he knew you would come.”

  “I recognized the handwriting straightaway,” the Imam said with a smile. “Templeton came to us years ago. My brother sent him.” The Imam touched his hand to Ingrid’s brow. “And you?”

  “I’m still looking for him,” she said vaguely, aware now that a small group had drawn around her.

  “Don’t limit your search,” he said, gathering his robes. “There is much to find.”

  “Wait,” Ingrid said, reaching under her bui-bui to her skirt pocket. She unfolded her tracing of the amulet’s inscription. “Do these symbols mean anything to you?”

  The Imam briefly inspected the page and handed it back to her. “These letters here are crudely drawn suras,” he said. “The markings of Koranic chapters. There are also what could be indicators of ayats, or verses, within those chapters.”

  “And the other markings?”

  “Script. Would you like me to read it for you?”

  The page trembled slightly in Ingrid’s hand. “Yes.”

  The Imam had barely looked at the page before he translated. “It says: Every slave is a king with God in his heart.”

  “Have you seen this before?” Ingrid asked.

  “Not directly. It is, shall I say, familiar.”

  “It exists. The amulet exists, doesn’t it?”

  “There are many stories on the island. This is one of them.”

  “Tell it to me.”

  “If you are truly a friend of the professor’s, you would know it better than I. Now if you’ll excuse me, I must return to the others.”

  “What chapters do the suras correspond to?”

  The Imam smiled at Ingrid’s distress. “There are one hundred and fourteen suras in the Koran. Here you have the first, al-Baqarah. In English you call it The Cow. This is al-Qamar, the Moon, followed by al-Rahman, al-Dhariyat and al-Najm—or in English, the Merciful, the Winds and the Star.”

  He read off a series of verse numbers, which Ingrid scribbled on the back side of the drawing. “I had a feeling they were linked to the Koran,” she murmured. “So he knew what he was looking for.”

  “La illaha il Allah. There is no God but God.” The Imam stood, a pillar of white above her. “Everything is linked to the Koran,” he said, removing himself while Sari helped Ingrid to her feet.

  “The Imam is the brother of Mohammad,” Sari explained as they ducked under a curtain and found themselves outside. The light was sudden and harsh. “Mohammad is the chief of Kitali,” she continued, holding her hand over her eyes. “A great man.”

  “I think he is with this Mohammad,” Ingrid said, as much to herself as to Sari.

  Instead of returning to the guesthouse, they found shade under a palm tree. The sand under their bare feet was warm, almost hot. They sat and Sari took Ingrid’s hand. “I think he is protecting you,” she said.

  “Who?”

  “Finn Bergmann.”

  “How is that?”

  “He follows you. He was there today, outside the mosque.”

  Ingrid contemplated Sari’s delicate hand in her own. “You’re protecting me too, aren’t you?”

  “You are alone,” Sari said. “But you will not be alone for long. I wasn’t.”

  “Maybe Finn is my pepo,” Ingrid said, watching as Sari’s head moved up sharply. “Does your pepo have a face, Sari?”

  Sari’s astonishment dissolved as her lips curved in sweet memory. “Sometimes I see him like a flash! But then he is gone. He is afraid, I think. I don’t think he is bad. There is a ritual that will kill a pepo, but I don’t want that. I want to make it better for both of us, so he is happy in me and I am happy with him.”

  “How do you know it’s a man?”

  Sari smiled. “Because I am a woman. Women do not haunt other women. If I am lucky, I may sometime make my pepo into a rohani.”

  “A rohani,” Ingrid repeated. “Isn’t that a spirit husband?”

  “It’s the best husband a woman can have. Only she can see him. To everyone else a rohani is invisible. But he is loving and kind and he brings her gifts of silk and rosewater and he protects her. This is the kind of husband I want to have.”

  “And what about Abdul?”

  “Abdul has another wife. He has three daughters. He will not know of my rohani.” Sari reached to adjust Ingrid’s veil. “Maybe you can pray for your pepo to become a rohani too.”

  The next morning, Sari was sitting on her bed, staring at the wall. Ingrid knocked on her open door and she started. “Are you conjuring your rohani, Sari?”

  Sari made a sign and lowered her eyes. “I was doing nothing.”

  “I’m going away for the day. I didn’t want you to worry.”

  “You are taking a holiday from your work?”

  “Yes, sort of.”

  “I hope you enjoy yourself.”

  “Thank you. Don’t wait up for me. I promise to come in quietly.”

  Ingrid knew from the morning sun which way to walk. She brought a bottle of water and a sandwich from the hotel and draped a kikoi over her shoulders to protect herself
from the sun. It was good to walk away from the village, the hotel, her roof: the bizarre microcosm that had become her world.

  The island changed quickly when she left the village boundaries. Coconut palms and sand, and no other life. The sand sank deeply beneath her feet. Simply walking should not have been so arduous, but she was tired. She had spent the previous night reading the Koran and the suras the Imam had directed her to. As she had suspected, they were the same passages she had read in Templeton’s notebook. She read the verses over and over and then transcribed the lines from the amulet in her notebook, thinking about what, in light of these verses, the amulet’s symbol might mean.

  The verse from al-Rahman, in particular, kept coming back to her. He has let loose the two oceans: they meet one another. Yet between them stands a barrier which they cannot overrun. . . . She considered Templeton’s map with its two arrows connecting at the shore. Another pilgrim before her had made his way through the desert back to his people and led them to the mouth of a new spring.

  As in Templeton’s notes, water was a recurrent theme in the Koran; it was represented as a reward for the righteous—from the faithful Moses striking a rock to have springs rush forth, to the garden paradise reserved for true believers. At the moment, she could appreciate that to peoples of the desert, water was literally a blessing, one of God’s greatest gifts. And water on an island? Sometime during the night, the lines at the bottom of the amulet had given her an idea.

  When the sun was high, she tucked her hair into her hat and removed her sandals, which kept filling with sand. She rested in the shade of a palm and checked her watch again. It could not take longer than three hours. She had been walking for two. Later, when the skin on the soles of her feet felt tender, she strapped her sandals back on and picked her feet up as she walked like a wading bird, which tired her further.

  She decided it was wiser to rest while the sun was strong, and found a spot of shade between two palms where she ate her sandwich, sipping water she wanted to gulp: it was already half gone. When she resumed walking, she was no longer sure which way the sun was moving. It seemed not to be moving at all. It was planted directly overhead and had been, she thought, for the last hour. Maybe if she walked to a high place, to the top of a dune, she would be able to see the settlement.

  What she saw, after trudging up the nearest dune, was more dunes. Off in the distance was the ocean. As she walked, she began to feel groggy, unhappy to be so far from the sea. She was sweating, and the loss of moisture made her irritable. She should have tried to go by the beach, she thought, though judging by the map it was longer and the morning tides were wrong in any case. At least on the beach she would have had the comfort of fishermen.

  By three o’clock, the terrain had changed: the dunes were not so high and there were fewer palms. The afternoon wind had picked up. Ingrid could now feel an ocean breeze in the air. When she saw water ahead, she quickened her pace.

  The beach she came out onto was deserted. She stood for a while and stared out to sea. She was lost, but how lost could one be on an island? Unprotected by the reef, the waves were larger here. Some rolled into a break; others pushed into a frothy wall. Still others seemed destined to meet the shore calmly. Farther out, currents and crosscurrents ran against each other like rivers, so that the sea seemed to be both in motion and stationary. It was possible to see all of it only by focusing on no one point in particular. The sun was beginning to set. She knew that there would be a moon that night. She would sleep until it rose and then start back the way she came.

  She scooped sand into a mound and placed a palm frond over it for her head. Above her, the sun slanted through the trees; insects circled in and out of the golden light. The night came, and with it came hunger. At least it was not cold. She thought of Sari and her pepo and attempted to imagine a rohani. The first manifestation was said to come at night, after days of praying. It appeared as a lion or a great snake or sometimes as a human being. If she was not afraid, the vision would transform itself into a wonderful man.

  Sleep came quickly, only it was not like sleep at all. It was like floating. A weightless journey over sand and rocks and finally a pool she could swim in. Then in the dream someone was talking to her.

  “I saw you from the water,” the voice said. She opened her eyes to a world that was both dark and bright. She could not see the moon or any other source of light. She was confused. Then he touched her arm.

  “Why are you always so nearby?”

  “Come,” Finn said. “I’ll take you back by boat.”

  “I’m going to Kitali,” she protested.

  “He’s not there,” he said. “There’s no reason for you to go.”

  Ingrid sat up and gathered her kikoi around her shoulders. “Tell me something. How do you suppose Mohammad gets his water?”

  Finn stood up and looked down the beach. “A spring, I imagine.”

  “ ‘Behold, there are rocks from which streams gush forth,’ ” she recited. “ ‘God provides for the faithful, issuing sweet water from rock . . .’ I have been thinking there must be a place there where water springs from rock and sand.”

  “And?”

  Ingrid took out her sketch of the amulet. “I am not going to ask what you know, because I don’t think you’d tell me. But do you see how roughly these suras are drawn? I believe they were etched by a king who lived on Pelat. Water brought him here, water kept God in his heart. I think he wore the amulet as a reminder, as a talisman, which is why I ask where Mohammad goes to drink. Maybe the king lived near there.”

  Finn reached for the sketch. “You are beginning to sound like your professor. You make things up out of air and then pretend they are real.”

  “Have you seen this before?” Ingrid asked. Finn ignored her, studying the faint lines in the moonlight. “I don’t know what you’re hiding from,” she added. “I don’t know why you can’t talk to me.”

  “Who are you, anyway?” Finn thrust the map back at her. “An accident. What brought you here has nothing to do with me.”

  “Just tell me if he’s all right,” Ingrid whispered.

  “I don’t know.” Finn turned toward the shore. “But no amount of walking in the sand will get you closer to him. Now, come.”

  When they got to the boat, conversation stopped. At one point, Ingrid shouted another question, which Finn also ignored. It could have been because of engine noise, but she doubted it. She watched him covertly, envious of his stubborn reserve.

  CHAPTER

  19

  The Beginning of Silence

  Ingrid found she could not talk about Finn.

  Nor could she talk directly to him.

  Twice since he found her on the beach she had sat next to him at the bar and drunk the sweet drinks Jackson mixed for her, absorbing with strong doses of alcohol the fact that conversation between them was impossible. Finn refused to abide by the contract of language. He was like a terrorist who blew up bridges between them; fragile, rickety beginnings. At first it made her angry, angry at herself, if this was her fault, then angry at him because it was ultimately his fault. Coward! The malady of isolation didn’t mean you had to forever boycott conversation with the rest of humanity. Because he refused to speak about Templeton she persisted in the impossible task of extracting personal information from him. “And your mother?”

  “I didn’t know her.”

  “And your father?”

  “No more questions now. Shh.”

  But she continued to lob words at him like rocks from under her broken bridges, amazed that they did not hurt him. “Danny told me how your father died,” she told him.

  “Did he?”

  “Why are you smiling? It’s an awful story. But it sounds like he was in the wrong. He was the foreigner, after all. He was the guest. You must have noticed, colonial behavior and thinking can be very inhospitable to its hosts. Anyway, you must miss him.”

  “Not exactly.”

  “I don’t believe you. I miss m
y mother even though I barely remember her. Maybe you don’t miss him because the island is being ruined by his hotel. Look at them. They’re sitting ducks for this mzungu bacchanal.” The words didn’t touch him. He didn’t even flinch. She changed her approach. “When was the last time you drank a nice bottle of wine with a woman? My father says—”

  “Your father’s daughter talks enough for three.”

  “He would laugh to hear you say that.”

  When she finally sat next to him without trying to speak, he touched her hair. She felt a shock and turned away, afraid that if she looked at him, she might cry at this small reward. She felt like a child again, learning how to behave in a world she didn’t understand.

  “I won’t make a habit of touching you,” Finn said.

  The words jolted her. “Why not?”

  “Because you can’t look at me.”

  “I see.”

  “Most women don’t. They create things that aren’t there.” He’s trying to hurt you, she thought. “You think you’re different?” he asked.

  “I am different, aren’t I? You sleep with me without fucking me, don’t you?” Saying the word made Ingrid’s courage surge. It was like a sharp pebble in her mouth. She wanted to say it again. When Finn chose not to answer, she opened a book on the bar, quietly pleased with herself.

  Danny replaced Finn as the afternoon wore on. “Oh, my. As I approached you I thought I saw a dream on your face. A wish, a want, a yen. Something flimsy and unnameable. What a lovely sight: the softening of hard, Nordic rigor.”

  “I was thinking about Islam and how it got to this island,” she said.

  Danny signaled to Jackson. “Do you ever let your mind wander, or do you always steer it?”

  “I find steering more productive.”

  “Well, I recommend a good wander.”

  “Don’t worry.” Ingrid closed her book. “My mind wanders enough in this heat.”

  “Good. It’s the secret to happiness here.”