The Twelve Rooms of the Nile Part 14

The stationery was a somber tan instead of Mary's usual peach. Flo flipped it over and saw that she must have borrowed it; Julius Mohl's name appeared on the back flap.

February 11, 1850 Chere Pup, I received your letter, posted from Cairo, with the wondrous description of your boat ride up the ca.n.a.l on your way to the Nile. Now I picture you, Selina, and Charles scampering up the great pyramid, scratching your initials on the ceiling of a secret pa.s.sage known only to pharaohs. I know you are having a splendid time and will write me your adventures in detail.

I've been sitting on a secret for three long months because I wanted to be able to change my mind up until the last minute. Personally, I don't give a snap for surprises, so before I tell you my news, I hope you'll accept my apology for waiting too long to share it with you. I believe you shall be happy for me. For I am happy, despite my indecision beforehand.

Julius Mohl and I were married three months ago. (Espoused "before men and angles," as Smollett said-I think in Humphrey Clinker.) I was so unsure of this decision that when we published the banns, I paid a poster boy to plaster over them immediately. Other than Herr Mohl and me, no one knew of the engagement.

Married life suits me. Julius has moved into my apartment and installed his gigantique library. I write this surrounded by Ninevah and Ur in all their glorious dust and gold.

As you know, I planned never to marry, and this conviction strengthened after Claude died, for he was the love of my life-at least so I believed at the time. Julius and I comforted each other for the great friend we had lost. This shared grief brought him closer to my attention and me to his. And though Julius is seven years my junior, I believe we are well matched. As a woman nearing fifty, I dare not call myself a "new" bride; I think of myself as a bride who has at last been brought out of mothb.a.l.l.s.

We had no official celebrations. Instead, two days later, Julius and I traveled to Berlin, where we spent three weeks with delightful and elite company. Herr Mohl, the celebrated Orientalist, had spent so many years in Paris that none of his colleagues recognized him on sight!

As you know, for years I favored ardent friends.h.i.+ps over romances, for I was not willing to trade a roomful of loving friends for one partner who might become possessive and boring and keep me from the social life so essential to my happiness. In short, the salon continues in full force, Julius being my a.s.sistant and constant companion. The only difference is that he no longer goes home at the end of the evening. (Before I forget to tell you, upon our return we had the pleasure of an evening with your friend Richard Monckton Milnes, who is an avid admirer of French literature. He takes a scholarly interest in the Marquis de Sade, Julius told me after he left.) Florence, dear, though this interlude in Egypt is only a hiatus in the family wars, I believe that once your ambitions take firmer shape, you shall fulfill them. Ultimately, I know you shall make your way in a world that is often hostile to women like us who break the standard mold.

The next time you visit, though everyone will address me as Madame Mohl, I shall still be your Clarkey (what's in a name, a rose would smell as sweet, etc.), and eager as always to hear your latest thoughts and plans.

Your loving,

Mary

Flo's temples were pounding; her face was on fire. Because they always shared their letters from Clarkey, she handed it without a word to Selina, but did not watch her read it. Being married, and happily so, Selina would doubtless be pleased.

Flo, however, felt devastated, betrayed. It could not be! She did not want it to be! But she couldn't say so, even to Selina. It was unkind and rude, small-minded and selfish. It would sound mentally unbalanced. It wasn't as if Mary had sworn to Flo to remain celibate. Yet Mary had violated her deepest precept. How could she? What had changed? If it were a union of convenience, Flo found it all the more abhorrent.

She could not imagine answering Mary's letter. Ever. For Mary was no longer Mary, but a stranger. Anyway, what could she say? I feel wretched about your marriage. How could you? She didn't wish to hurt Mary, though Mary had unknowingly cut her to the quick.

Selina finished reading. "Hurrah for Clarkey!" She waved the letter aloft. "Wonderful news! Aren't you thrilled for her?"

Flo sped through everything she might say that would not give her away, but could only manage, "I am surprised. Aren't you?" She could not force an iota of joy into her voice, further proof that deep down she was a wretched person, unable to be happy for a friend. She felt sick to her stomach, light-headed. "I'm a bit woozy," she said, touching her hair.

"Is there anything I can do?"

"I think I'll have a lie down." She stood and hurried belowdecks without waiting for Selina's response. Even with her closest confidante Flo was too ashamed to admit how she felt.

She lay facing the row of windows, eyes closed. A sense of dread overpowered her and she trembled. Mary had been her ally; now she was alone. And still she did not regret refusing Richard. She would do it again.

Despite her rational resolve, a feeling of terror began to overwhelm her. Lacking Clarkey's resources, how could she achieve anything without f.a.n.n.y and WEN's consent? What would she do for money and where would she go and what would become of her shadowy sister, Parthe, who yearned always to be by her side, unable to take a forward step on her own? Poor Parthe! Poor Flo, with her sister stuck to her like dock weed to a lamb.

The sun was high in the sky when Flo opened her eyes. Soon it would be time for lunch. Selina or Charles would mention Mary's marriage, the thought of which terrified her most for what it predicted of her own future. She would have to feign a headache.

A welcome breeze pa.s.sed into the cabin through the open windows. Where did breezes come from and where did they go? The Greeks thought the winds slept in caves and in bags carried by the G.o.ds. If only she could disappear as the wind did, without fanfare or ceremony or people asking why. She was utterly alone with an ambition that was fierce and truly monstrous, for it could not be satisfied without changing the entire world.

14.

TOOTHACHE.

At first, Flo ignored Trout's guttural sounds. It was just past dawn. So often now, she suspected Trout of testing her. "What is the matter, for heaven's sake?" she finally asked, lacing up her boots. It seemed she might be dressing herself unaided today.

"Toothache." Trout's voice was m.u.f.fled by the pillow, which, Flo saw as she leaned closer, was wet with drool and flecked with blood. "A bad one."

"Do you have all your teeth?" Flo realized as she asked it how rude and irrelevant the question was. She knew very well that Trout had front and side teeth. f.a.n.n.y would not have hired a maid with a gapped smile or a mouth like burned-out ruins.

"Yes, mum. My teeth are good. So said the dentist." Trout's words were gluey and ill-formed, as if she had dumplings in her mouth. Obviously, talking was uncomfortable.

Flo was surprised. "You have visited a dentist?"

"Yes, at Hanover Square. You, mum?"

"Of course." Flo had had two wisdom teeth pulled.

"A nice gentleman," Trout recollected. "I asked was he willing to fix the teeth of a servant." Trout paused and swallowed carefully. "'Don't you worry,' he said. 'I can fix your tooth in no time.' Then he said he guessed I weighed about eleven stone and gave me a tonic."

"Eleven stone you weigh?" The number was higher than Flo would have expected.

"Eleven stone and three."

This seemed to be a point of pride.

"I think I'm half man, my arms are so strong." Trout turned slowly, keeping pressure on her jaw with one hand. "Thirteen and three-quarter inches, I've been told, at the bicep."

Flo wondered at Trout's use of bicep, and who would have measured her muscle, and why.

"The dentist stopped my tooth with that stuff."

"Gutta-percha?"

"That's it. Oh, ouch!" Trout's hand flew to her right cheek and she burrowed her face into the pillow.

"Shooting pains?"

Trout nodded. "What am I to do? I cannot think as they have dentists in these parts."

Florence bent over, pausing for a.s.sent before she gently pressed her hand on Trout's forehead. The skin was cool and damp. Trout's body gave way under her touch, like a brick wall suddenly crumbling into a heap.

"Thank you," Trout whispered. "You are kind." She adjusted her position in the bed.

"I'm sorry you are not feeling well."

"I'm sorry I'm a bother to you. Egypt is doing me in."

"It's all right. It's not your fault." At last, Flo thought, Trout had decided to trust her. Flo felt so much better being kind than being strict with her.

Though Flo had never suffered a toothache, she'd watched WEN and f.a.n.n.y and Grandmother Sh.o.r.e endure them. She was certain Trout's was genuine and that she hadn't called it forth by dint of her hypochondriacal nerves. "Will you let me help you?" she asked.

"Yes, mum. I'd be grateful. I can do nothing with this pain gnawing at me."

"I shall try my best to cure you, then," Flo said. Her mind was churning, for when it came to ague and catarrhs, wens, rashes, and simple fractures, she had experience. But of teeth, she knew nothing except what to do for any swelling or inflammation.

"Are you hungry?" she asked. "Could you take some sopped bread or soup?"

"It don't seem right you serving me."

"We cannot choose our illnesses." Flo stepped away from Trout's bed. "No more than we can choose our station in life. I shall be back shortly."

Flo felt a sudden infusion of purposefulness, a welcome sensation. She went on deck and asked Charles for some whiskey, which he readily poured into a teacup. She instructed Paolo to prepare tepid broth with bread.

Back in the cabin, Trout lay flat on her back, her eyelids drooping, and the right side of her face puffy. Flo poured out a jigger of "medicine" (Trout eschewed spirits), which Trout downed in one swallow. Tea would be good, too, Flo thought, the accompaniment at any sickbed. She went back upstairs and ordered a pot.

Trout was dozing when she returned. She decided not to awaken her. She opened her medical chest and removed cotton wool, swabs, bandage gauze, and a few vials. She began a log in her journal book: Trout, 7 A.M.: Swollen jaw, painful tooth. No apparent fever. Patient fully cognizant.

Efreet-Youssef poked his head into the cabin. He went barefoot on board the dahabiyah, and except for the pleasant slap of his feet when he worked on deck raising or lowering sails, she never heard him move about. "Madami," he whispered, shyly looking down as she turned to him. He held out his hand with a letter in it. Nodding in grat.i.tude, she took it. He disappeared as silently as if he had levitated upstairs. Flo glanced at Trout: still sleeping. She sat on the divan and ripped open the envelope.

My dear Rossignol, We returned to Philae three days late from Aswan, where we succeeded in securing supplies and diverting ourselves. Not knowing what would be available farther downstream, we also purchased (against Joseph's objections) a few provisions for the trip to Koseir.

The guidebook says it is a four-day walk from Kenneh to the Red Sea, but our mounts, not we, will be doing the walking. We will not, as I expected, be riding horses, but camels. (Can one sit a trotting dromedary? Do they trot? Do they gallop?) Apparently the road is poor, and water can be a problem, with dried-up and contaminated wells. (We saw a well near Edfu with the carca.s.s of a decomposing goat draped across its mouth. The stench would have given an archbishop second thoughts about the existence of G.o.d.) I have thought often of you in the past week, hoping that you are feeling happier and even enjoying yourself-and banis.h.i.+ng any extreme thoughts.

I wonder if you are as preoccupied with fantasies of the Red Sea as I am-writing in the clouds, my mother used to call my daydreaming. Max, on the other hand, is sharpening his nibs and pencils. Everything is fodder for his literary ambitions, which differ from mine. I do not think he lives in the present at all, but in some frantic future packed with ink bottles and reams of paper whereon he rehashes and thus brings to due importance the events which pa.s.s for ordinary life to the rest of us poor sods not inclined to publish the existence of every stray cat of a thought that crosses our minds. I shall have to cut out his tongue if he suggests one more time that I write a travel book, as if my life, too, were a poor rag to be soaked in the fluid of adventure, then squeezed out drop by drop onto the page as words. b.o.l.l.o.c.ks! I want to feel the desert sun drumming the back of my neck, count the armies of stars arrayed in the night sky. I want the hot Saharan air to parch my nose and lungs so that I may know the pleasure of quenching an immeasurable thirst. Sometimes I think Max undertakes things only so he can write about them afterward.

Twice I have promised to teach you to make a squeeze. It is now 6:30 A.M. and we are camped in tents among the palms on the eastern side of Philae. I shall come by at ten to make good on my word. I know this is very short notice and if you are otherwise occupied, we shall make a future date.

Wear your pretty pink bonnet.

Your friend,

Gve. Flaubert

P.S. Bring drinking water if you can manage it.

Flo read the letter twice, then tucked it in her desk. She decided she would go. And though there wasn't time for a reply, she couldn't resist looking in Murray, if only for a moment. She scanned the index: "old Koseir" and then there, on page 398, "Koseir": ROUTE 27.

Kenneh to Koseir, by the Russafa Road.

Miles Kenneh to Beer Amber 113/4.

Wells of El Egayta 213/4.

Well of Hammamat 241/2.

Well called Moie-t (or Sayal-t) Hagee Soolayman

33.

Beer el Ingleez

15.

Ambagee 51/4.

Koseir

6.

Total miles: 1171/2.