An Imperfect Lens (25 page)

“I wish,” he suddenly managed to say, “to be with you when I am an old man with white hair and no teeth.”

The musicians changed, and now it was three Arabic men with strange, sad tunes, playing songs of love and loss. Louis did not want to hear any songs of loss. He did not need any songs of love. Just then the president of the Academy called for silence, and the guests at the reception moved toward the small podium to listen to the speech that followed, a long and dull one that spoke of the triumph of man through the victories of science. The words seemed hollow under the circumstances. Defeat was in the air. Emile was talking with Madame Cecile about his daughter’s education. Lydia Malina approached her daughter, catching a glance between the two young people that shocked her. Could that be it? Was that her daughter’s secret? She said nothing. Este also said nothing, but was feeling many things, mostly joyous. Her secret kept threatening to burst out of her mouth.
I love, I am loved.
The words brought color to her face, light to her eyes. She looked, that evening, more extraordinary than she had ever looked before.

THE FOLLOWING DAY a sandstorm blew in from the desert. The fronds of the palm trees turned gray in the dust. Este put her shawl up over her face as she left her house. Her eyes stung. As she rounded the corner she saw Louis hurrying toward her, his head down. He saw her. They sought shelter in the archway of the building that belonged to the Ratousa Steamship Company. “Este,” he said, “we will have to go back to France. With the cholera leaving the city, we will not be able to work here now. I had hoped we could stay another few months, but passage has been booked in ten days.”

Este turned very pale. Louis said to her the first thing that came into his mind: “I am very fond of Alexandrian coffee.”

“I imagine the coffee in Paris is better,” said Este.

There was a pause. An Arab man selling rags from the back of a cart called out for customers, passersby hurried on, there was a stifling heat in the air. It muffled the sound of their voices. “Do you know,” said Louis, “that the frog, the simple frog, has to get rid of the poisons in his system exactly the same as we do?”

Este smiled. “There are many frogs out in the bog by Lake Mariout, at night you can hear them calling to each other.”

Louis said, “Frogs have teeth, small, conelike teeth on their upper jaw, and some of them have a row of teeth on the roofs of their mouths. They also shed their skins and eat them.”

“It’s not their fault, I suppose,” said Este, looking disgusted. “But why are you thinking of frogs?”

“Because there are so many different kinds,” Louis said. “Red frogs that are poisonous, green and brown, toads, river and lake frogs, and they can all breathe through their skin.”

“Yes,” said Este, “but why are you telling me about frogs?”

Louis stopped. Why
was
he telling her about frogs? Perhaps because he was trying not to beg her to come to France with him. He shrugged. “I am interested in frogs,” he said.

She touched her hair and smoothed back a strand that escaped her comb. “I can’t stay here talking to you. My mother is expecting me at her sister’s.”

Louis did not look at her but stared at his shoes, which Marcus had polished for him just hours before. “At least give me permission to return to Alexandria after we have taken our research notes to Paris. I will take the next boat back. Would that be pleasing to you?” He didn’t have the savings to do that. Would his father lend him the money, would he ask his father for such a favor? How could he return? Why had he said he would, when it was probable that he couldn’t? Had he frightened her with his words? He had spoken very softly.

She held herself very straight, as if posing for a photograph at the studio in front of a curtain. “You must understand,” she said, “my father would not wish me to talk with you this way. But I would be very sorry if you sailed away and never returned. I would think of you often. Did you know that when Ismail Pasha dug the Mahmoudian Canal to reconnect us to the Nile, they found a Greek sarcophagus, and when they opened it, inside was the skeleton of a monkey?”

“I want,” said Louis, “to marry you. I am proposing to you.” He suddenly realized that he had no ring. “I have no ring,” he said, abashed. “I should have a ring.”

“That’s all right,” said Este. “I don’t need a ring.”

“I want,” said Louis, “to go back to Paris with you as my wife.”

Este felt a wave of relief flow through her body. This was what she had planned, although a moment ago she might not have been able to say it so simply, so clearly. “I want,” she said to Louis, not daring to touch him, “to be your wife, and go with you to Paris.”

“Then,” said Louis, feeling dizzy with the rush of her words, “we will go to Amiens and you will meet my mother and father and brother and sister.”

The mention of parents caused Este to take a small step back away from him. “I have to talk to my father. He must be convinced. You are not . . .” and her voice became very soft, her head bent downward. “You are not one of us.”

“I will be,” he said. “I’ll be anything he likes.”

She smiled at him, but there was worry in her eyes. “It’s not so easy,” she said.

“I’ll try,” he promised.

“I’ll talk to my father tonight,” she said.

“I will come tomorrow morning and talk to him myself,” Louis said, then, as he turned to leave, he added, “Este, I feel as if we were already man and wife. You have possession of me, as of now.”

“And you of me,” she said.

13

EARLY ONE EVENING, Marcus was down at the docks waiting for a ship’s mate who had hired him for an evening of pleasure. An American gentleman paced up and down, waiting for his purchases to arrive and be loaded on board the ship he was taking to Venice. From there he would sail home, his precious objects following him to Philadelphia. Five large wagons pulled up to the quay, their wheels rattling and knocking against the wooden boards. The objects within were wrapped in muslin, some were in crates.

“What’s he got?” Marcus asked of the man standing next to him, who happened to be Eric Fortman, who had just inspected the ship in the next berth.

“Damned if I know,” said Eric.

Just at that moment, one of the Arab boys dropped one of the crates and it crashed on the ground. It split open and a stone obelisk appeared. Not a large one, but a real one. The American yelled, “You idiot, you bastard, you ass.” He started to strike the boy. The boy ran. The American stood there. “I’ll kill the next one of you who drops anything,” he howled and pulled his pistol out, waving it at the young men now cowering behind a wagon. The boys fled up the quay.

“Some God damned boys help me get these to the ship,” shouted the American. Marcus appeared at his elbow.

“What’s this thing worth?” he asked.

“A few thousand American dollars,” the American answered.

“And in the crates, what have you got in the crates?” asked Marcus.

“Vases, vessels, small statues, a mural I chipped out of a wall, a few things from the tombs for my home. These are genuine antiquities.” He was pleased with himself, this American.

Eric said to him, “I’ll get some men for you. Your packages should be on board in a half hour.”

The American thanked Eric.

“I’ll help you, too,” said Marcus.

“Lots of Americans like this stuff?” asked Eric.

“You bet,” said the American.

“What about the English?” Marcus asked.

“They take what they want,” said the American, “but sometimes they buy it, the small things, the necklaces, the earrings.”

“Where’s it come from?” asked Marcus.

“Pyramids,” said the American. He waved his hand up toward Cairo. “It’s just sitting there for the taking,” said the American. “When I get back to Philadelphia, I’m going to have a big bash and show everyone my own obelisk and I’ll be in the papers. Philadelphia’s own Pharaoh, I can tell you that.”

“How did you get it?” Eric asked.

“Paid some fellows to bring it here,” the American said.

“I wouldn’t mind selling you some,” said Eric.

“Have you got anything?” asked the American.

“Not yet,” said Eric.

Together, Eric and Marcus brought a few men they found in the bar to help load the American onto his ship. He put some bills in Eric’s hands. Eric counted the money and gave half of it to Marcus.

“Hey,” said Eric. “I like the idea of selling things that you just pick up from the ground.” He laughed.

Marcus decided to abandon his evening date. The two men, one older and one younger, went off for a beer together. They chose the closest bar where the noise was louder than a roaring sea, the smell of salt and half-eaten mollusks drifted in and mingled with the sweat of the loaders and the donkey boys. They found a small table among the ones on the right side of the law and the ones that were not, and the policeman who was dressed as an old lady and who was fooling no one, and the ship’s carpenter who was carrying a bag of hashish around his neck and protecting it with the regular slash of his knife through the air. There they talked. Eric had some money he might spend and, amazingly enough, Marcus, who seemed so childish, so pretty still, he had money too. One was French and one was English, and that made little difference in this port. One was seasoned in trade and one had just begun, but together they would make a good team. The older one wanted to be chief, and he declared the younger one to be his assistant. The younger one balked. He was not ready to be told what to do again. He had served long enough. “My money buys in equal,” he said, “or I go by myself.”

The older one laughed at the younger one. Well, what difference did a title make? They would share the billing. The firm would not be in either of their names. They named their company Pharaoh’s Treasures. This would attract the tourists as well as please the natives who could afford their merchandise. Pharaoh’s Treasures: they would bloody the waters with their competitors, if they had any.

“Perhaps,” said Marcus, “it will be impossible to get permission from the authorities to sell these stones.”

Eric clapped his new partner on the back. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I can get anything I want in Alexandria. The highest office in the customs department is as good as in my pocket.”

Marcus hoped this was so. If it was, there were many lucrative possibilities that leapt into his mind. When he trusted his new partner more, he would make some interesting suggestions.

By the time three hours had passed, Eric had told his new friend about his long employment at Glen MacAlan Scotch, about his first time at sea, when he had been robbed by a cook with one arm. Eric had put his arm around Marcus and rocked him tenderly, an emotion born of liquor but founded in the high hopes of profit from the Pharaoh’s Treasures Company, and from the intuition he had that this Anglo-French alliance had a brilliant future. Marcus, for his part, promised to inform the French mission that he had no intention of sailing back to Marseille, that his life from here on out would be upward and forward, as he would be his own master.

“WHERE IS MARCUS?” Emile asked. For weeks now, their cook, their housekeeper, their attendant had drifted in and out of the apartment, in and out of the laboratory, paying no attention to their needs. They had to eat at restaurants, and piles of laundry had accumulated on the rug. There were long black bugs in the pantry.

“Damn him,” said Nocard. “We should leave him behind when we return.”

DR. MALINA WAS in his clinic. Ten patients were waiting in the outer room. A woman with a child who was sleeping in her arms was crying softly to herself. A man with a sore on his arm was pacing up and down. The air was hot, but outside in the courtyard a yellow-tailed finch was singing his heart out, calling to a drab female bird, enticing her closer and closer. He was opening his beak as far as he could, singing from as deep in his small throat as he was able and letting the sound fly into the palm leaves, bounce up against the air, and float toward the object of his affections.

The door to the Malina house was opened by the maid. The two officers of the British Army and the two Englishmen in civilian clothes although they were not civilians pushed right past her into the courtyard. They moved like a wave bearing down on the sand toward the clinic door. They were not deterred by the Arab boy on the step outside, and shoved him out of the way. One of the men in suits announced to the waiting room at large, “Go, the doctor will not be able to see you.” He made this announcement in clumsy Arabic, in accented French, and in perfect Yorkshire English. Everyone understood, and the room was emptied within moments. The sleeping child woke and cried. His mother put a hand over his mouth as she moved. The men walked into the small office where the doctor was examining the thin and bony chest of the owner of a furniture factory, who, on seeing the British officers, grabbed his shirt and fled. There were many reasons he did not want to stop and talk with the officers.

Dr. Malina understood instantly that the matter was serious. It was the two men not in uniform who most alarmed him. “I must talk to my wife,” he said, “before I leave with you.” He sent the Arab boy to find Lydia and come back with her as quickly as possible. The men agreed to wait. They were not in a particular hurry. “Come into my office,” he suggested. “It will be more comfortable there.”

“My leg,” said one of the uniformed officers, “it keeps cramping up on me. Is that a symptom of illness?”

“I’ll take a look at it, if you like,” Dr. Malina offered.

The man started to roll up his trousers, but one of the non-uniformed men put a hand on his shoulder and said, “No, this man is our prisoner, not our doctor.”

“What is the charge?” said Dr. Malina. The fact that he was innocent of any wrongdoing was not as reassuring to him as it might be to another man. He understood that guilt and innocence in the eyes of the authorities were not moral issues as much as tactical ones.

“We will have a chance to talk, I assure you,” said one of the men.

Lydia burst into the room, alarm in her eyes, her arms waving as if she could chase the offending men out of her home the way one might an infestation of insects. “Go to the chief rabbi, and to the lawyer Florent,” her husband said. “Let everyone know that I have been taken.” Lydia nodded. “Be ready, my darling,” he said, “for anything.”

She wanted to throw her arms around him, but not in front of the invaders, to whom she would not give the victory of her distress. She said calmly, “I will go immediately.”

He tried to tell her with his eyes to take their money out of the bank, to hide her jewelry in her clothes. She did not need to be told these things.

THE COMMITTEE OF Public Safety met again, but Dr. Malina did not appear at the appointed time. The assembled men waited for him for more than fifteen minutes and then began the meeting. They were all pleased at the figures before them. But, as one astute businessman pointed out, cholera would not disappear from their streets overnight. It would take some weeks or more before the last case would be reported. There could be no rejoicing until there had not been a death from the disease for at least a month. “Can cholera return in a second wave?” asked the Coptic bishop, whose success in church politics had depended on his pessimistic vision. The assembled group was not sure of the answer. They had no idea why the scourge was weakening, and they had no idea if it could regain its strength.

The day was humid, there were no clouds in the sky. The ocean lapped against the jetty without force. Out in the harbor a steamboat left in its wake the straw hat of one of its lady passengers who had leaned too far over the rail to catch a last glimpse of Alexandria as the boat moved off for the open seas. The mollusks that clung to the rock and coral buried in the depths of the waters swayed with the vibrations of the steamship that passed far above their small but resilient shells. A long, extended rope of brown matter floated in the tidal pull toward Africa. Inside its mucus strands, cholera, unmindful of its certain dissolution, drifted without mind or despair or anger at its approaching end. It would last a long time in the moist waters, weeks, maybe months, but it would find no nourishment, and without nourishment no life continues. It did not need oxygen, it did not need sunlight, it did not need affection from another of its kind. It needed a human host, and it would find no such host in the sea.

IN THE MORNING, as the British officers approached the Malina home, Louis Thuillier set out for the same destination. Emile and Edmond had offered to accompany him, but he had declined their kind support. As he walked he rehearsed over and over again his words to the father of the woman he wanted to make his bride. He practiced them again and again. He knew he did not have the funds to keep her as comfortable as she was in Alexandria. He knew that he was not yet a famous scientist, a man of high repute. On the other hand, he had expectations. Pasteur thought highly of him, had selected him for this very mission. He had a reputation among his colleagues as a hardworking man. Would his good prospects sway the doctor? Would the matter of religious difference be overcome by his promise to take on any religion that Dr. Malina preferred, although he himself would prefer none? He intended to explain that the French mission was leaving in a few weeks and he planned to take Este back to Paris with him. They would have to be married quickly. He wanted them to travel as man and wife. Over and over he rehearsed his speech in his head, correcting this word or that. He didn’t want to mumble. He didn’t want to be searching for the phrase he needed. He wanted to seem confident of a positive answer. He knew that if Dr. Malina just promised to ask his daughter what she wanted, all would be well. He had announced to his friends that he would not return without at least this promise. His colleagues had applauded his resolve, although Edmond kept repeating that if the father should refuse him, although regrettable, this disappointment would not be anything like the tragedy that Louis would make of it. “Hearts are like earthworms,” he told Louis. “If you cut them in half, they grow new parts.”

“Not mine,” said Louis. But he understood his friend was merely protecting him from an excess of optimism.

When the carriage arrived at the Malina house, he knew immediately that something was wrong. The front door had been left wide open. The servant who answered the bell was weeping. There were suitcases in the hall. When he ran upstairs and entered the drawing room, he saw that the curtains had been pulled down, the shutters were open to the street, and papers were strewn everywhere. The contents of the drawers in the main chest had been thrown on the floor. Este was not in sight. Neither was her mother or her father. Had they been robbed? Louis tried to find out from the girl who was holding a bucket of dirty water and scrubbing the same spot over and over again. She did not seem to speak any language other than Arabic and screamed in fear as Louis approached her. He went to Dr. Malina’s clinic on the other side of the courtyard. There, too, the door was open. In Dr. Malina’s office the desk had been overturned. The medicine cabinet had been opened and the bottles thrown on the floor, and the glass of the cabinet had been smashed into many small pieces. As he walked about the deserted clinic, Louis could hear the crunch of splintered glass beneath his feet. Running back to the house, he found the cook was in the kitchen putting the silver spoons into a large carpetbag she had open on the floor. The jewelry, unfortunately, for her, was locked in a safe. She was startled when she saw him. “They will not need these now,” she said in perfect French. “No use in giving good silver to the rats.”