The Twelve Rooms of the Nile

26

FEVER

The caravan departed for Kenneh early the next morning, the trek that day bland and uneventful, with fewer travelers on the road. Perhaps the pilgrims had already reached Jeddah and thence to Mecca. They would not travel again until after the inundation subsided the following winter. Last December, Gustave and Max had delayed the Nile trip nearly a month to see the weary throngs return to Cairo. He imagined the faithful slowly circling their immense black stone. Clockwise or counterclockwise? He could not remember if he ever knew. By evening, he couldn’t remember much of anything and ached all over. A great lethargy descended upon him. He’d caught Max and Joseph’s fever.

Pleading exhaustion and lack of appetite, he excused himself from dinner. Miss Nightingale offered to nurse him. When he refused, mostly to avoid Max teasing him afterward, she insisted on brewing tea and delivered it personally. She tried to engage him in conversation, but her words vanished in the heat between them like melting snowflakes.

The next evening, she sent Trout with a pot of tea and a note. We missed you again tonight. Max says you are no better. Please keep me informed. Your, R. He threw the note away, but committed the three staccato sentences to memory in the process of appraising what she must have felt composing it. It smacked of restraint, that particular English trait. It flattered and troubled him, but he could not think why. His brain was soggy, steeped in a bottle of India ink, and as devoid of color. Abstractly, he mourned the absence of sensation: the green of desire, the purple of rage, joy’s cool blue undulations.

Earlier that day, he’d glimpsed her, occupied with Trout. Though he hadn’t understood what they said, he observed a change: Trout was no longer sullen and silent. She spoke, and Miss Nightingale listened. Once, he heard them laughing together.

For sheer mystery, only his nervous episodes matched this sudden, stuporous malaise. When the fever waned, the lethargy waxed, as if it fed on the fever. Nothing pleased him. Food lacked flavor; sleep was not refreshing, though he slept at every chance, nodding off in the saddle until a stutter in the camel’s gait or a voice awakened him. He developed distaste for everything, like a man who opens a door expecting a restaurant and finds instead an abattoir, the saliva gone foul and bitter in his mouth.

On the last evening in the desert, she approached him as he exited his tent for some air. “Are you improved?” she asked, touching his arm, her hand lingering. They stood waiting for the crew to fetch dinner. He smelled the goat on the brazier. Or was it the jerboa?

“No. I am not yet myself.” He hadn’t been able to look into her eyes. He knew he was a disappointment to her. He was a disappointment to himself, unable to muster a shred of enthusiasm.

“I am sorry.”

“Thank you.” He hadn’t thought to ask after her, though later he recalled she looked wan and tired, a little sad.

“Gustave?”

“Yes.”

“Shall we see each other again?”

The lethargy dissipated like a mist burned off in the radiance of her regard. “Of course we shall, Rossignol. Yes.”

She looked away for a moment. Tearful, or marshaling her courage? “When?” she asked. “And where?”

His dear Rossignol, speaking Louise’s words. When and how soon and not soon enough. But she was not Louise, nothing like her. He peeked at her face. How completely guileless she was, unself-conscious as a plant leaning toward the light. Of course he would see her again. He wanted to, he must. He should. No, he wanted to. Certainly he owed her an explanation out of kindness, lest she be crushed, expecting more torrid encounters, more kisses. There is nothing wrong with you, he wanted to say. It’s me, Rossignol, I think I am infected. Or was that also an excuse not to pursue the friendship—

“Gustave?”

“Yes?”

“You were saying?”

“My mind wandered. Forgive me.” He was tired, his will as vaporous as a cloud. His knees buckled.

She caught him, gripping his arm. “My dear Gustave! Come sit down.” She guided him toward a camera case outside his tent. “Rest.”

“Thank you, Sweet. You are so kind to me.” He hung his head between his knees and waited until his heart stopped thudding. “I am all right now.” He stood and began creeping toward his tent. “In Cairo. We should meet in Cairo. That will be best.”

“Where are you going? The food is nearly ready.”

He forged ahead, muttering sleep, must lie down. The prospect of eating was nauseating.

She followed him, her steps halt, then hurtling, like Bambeh’s polka-dotted lamb. He remembered the adorable bend of its knees as it trotted behind her, the clatter of its hooves on the dock at Esneh.

“Cairo is fine,” she said agreeably. “We shall both be collecting ourselves before heading home.”

“Home?” He stopped and turned to her. “Home for you, but not for me. Remember?” His voice was louder, more emphatic. “I am headed to Palestine. After that, Syria, Turkey, Greece, and Italy.”

“Yes—”

“Perhaps Persia.” That was a lie. Because he’d overspent in Egypt, they’d already canceled Persia.

“Yes, of course.” She blushed furiously.

He was inordinately annoyed, the place names a docket of his grievances, indictments against her for forgetting their journeys didn’t match, for daring to think that they could. He was bound for more exotic ports, not home, and certainly not England.

“Cairo, then.” She folded her hands. “Shall we write in the interim?” She’d recovered nicely, he thought.

“Yes, I would like that.”

They settled on the last week in May, which would allow enough time to finish their visits on the Nile. He reminded her that he dare not kiss her even on the cheek because of the fever. Instead, he kissed her hand.

As soon as they parted, the lethargy returned, heading toward dejection. One thing he hated about being ill was how vulnerable he felt. And how inclined to introspection he became. His feelings for Miss Nightingale were a puzzling amalgamation of contrary impulses. He admired so much in her—candor, passion, determination. But he found most women charming, irresistible. There was almost nothing about them he objected to. He liked them skinny; he liked them fat. Smooth or hairy, fair or dark, he found them endlessly enchanting. The housemaid at Rouen, the grisettes of Paris, the whores of Esneh. He loved them all. But did he love her? Given his appetites, he wouldn’t be able to disregard her sex forever. Further, he genuinely wished he could give her a taste of the sensuous life, of the pleasures the body offered. Considering her natural depth of feeling, what greater gift could he offer her? On another evening—a dinner in Paris or London—they would drink too much, or he would comfort her and feel again the soft roundness of her breasts . . .

His melancholy was now so profound that something might have curled up and died inside his chest, leaving a ruined place like a patch of contaminated soil where nothing would grow.

• • •

The next day, when they reached Kenneh at noon, the sun was thrumming inside as well as upon his head. He hadn’t eaten solid food for two days, was short of breath at the slightest exertion. That morning Max had remarked on his haggard expression and shrinking paunch.

Word of their arrival spread to the river from sentries posted outside the hamlet. The Bracebridges were waiting on the deck of the dahabiyah; the crew of the cange jumped to attention as he picked his way along the beach. Miss Nightingale fell into Selina’s arms. Charles greeted Trout, his jolly, stentorian voice resounding across the sand.

Max had hurried ahead to explain that he was ill. “Please, come aboard!” Charles shouted to Gustave. “Brandy. Luncheon. You must be starving.”

As he limped along on the crutch of Joseph’s arm, he gauged from their assembled faces how awful he must look. Selina, still embracing Flo, paled. “Pauvre homme,” she cried, “venez ici!” She conferred briskly with Max. “We wish to take care of you, dear man.”

He preferred his bed in the shaded fug of the cange, where he could sleep naked, vomit, fart, and curse without regard for etiquette. He whispered to Joseph, who called back, “Monsieur say he too sick.”

“Demain,” Gustave croaked. “I shall see you tomorrow.”

As he stepped aboard the cange, Hadji Ismael reached up a hand to steady him. Of all the crew, Hadji Ismael was his favorite, the sweetest. How many times had he repeated that supremely soothing gesture—reaching up to help him mount and dismount his horse or donkey. And just before the caravan departed, he’d handed up a blessing with a goatskin of wine. Peace be with you. May Allah protect you. It was, without doubt, the most poignant gesture in the Orient, an act of love even if it were purchased, like his whores.

Two days later, pasty and withered, he emerged on deck. There was less of him in every sense—flesh, appetite, ambition, and will. Though no longer feverish, he felt like a sack of shit and wondered if his malaise was related to the sore on his prick. That possibility boded ill.

The cange rocked gently as a cradle. In the curve of the beach that served as anchorage, he saw two fishing vessels, and beyond them, a felucca sitting low in the river with a cargo of burlap sacks. The Parthenope had sailed.