Arabesk (128 page)

For a second he almost shook his head but the temptation to be seen to know everything was too great, so he nodded instead. All the same, he retreated to the edge of her bed and tucked himself inside his trousers. A manoeuvre made simple by the fact he never wore underwear. Too much extra washing.

“What do you intend to do about it?”

“About what?”

“The baby?”

“I don’t know,” Isabeau said, bending forward to retrieve her knickers. “What do you suggest?”

“I suggest a holiday.” Dipping his hand inside his coat, Eduardo produced an envelope. “I was going to give you this when I went,” he said, looking shamefaced. It contained a fat and tattered wad of Ottoman dollars. Almost no one used Ottoman dollars anymore, except in the suqs and most of those could manage credit cards. Only the very old still insisted on keeping their lives in boxes under the bed.

“Call it severance pay from Maison Hafsid.”

At least they were high-denomination notes. Higher than Isabeau had seen before and in one case higher than she knew existed. To this man though, used as he must be to such things, they were probably small change.

“And this,” said Eduardo, “is also for you.” As the exchange rate stood, the second, far smaller wad of US dollars was worth about twice all the other notes put together. On the black market the dollars were worth maybe five times that.

“You want me to leave,” said Isabeau. Although it wasn’t until later that she realized she was only putting into words what she already knew.

“Wait, Madame DuPuis… You have to wait.”

A railway porter glanced round and saw a young police lieutenant in brand-new uniform stride towards a woman about to clamber through the door of a second-class carriage. Alexandre scowled at the porter and the elderly man decided he had business elsewhere.

“Madame Isabeau?”

Isabeau nodded. No one had ever called her
madame
before. And DuPuis definitely wasn’t her surname.

“These are for you,” Alexandre said as he handed her an envelope. “The Chief told me to deliver them.” Jagged as a tidal pull between rocks, an undercurrent to the young man’s politeness suggested he was less than happy to be hand-delivering notes on the morning the old Emir was buried.

“Thank you.” Isabeau flashed her sweetest smile and watched Alexandre melt. It wasn’t their surliness or even the fact they often seemed to smell that put Isabeau off men, it was the fact they could be so childish, so unbelievably easily led.

“Oh,” said Alexandre, “and I’m sorry…”

Isabeau raised her eyebrows.

“About…” He shuffled his feet, apparently unable to get beyond that word. “About your husband. It was a messy campaign. A just one, obviously, but messy and I’m glad it’s over.” He clicked his heels and gave her a salute, the smartness of which was utterly at odds with the state of his fingernails, which were bitten to the quick.

Once sitting, with her case pushed into the space behind her seat and a
capuchin
from a cart that had passed by on the platform outside, Isabeau ripped the flap on her new envelope, then glanced round. The carriage was almost empty despite this being the first
turbani de luxe
to run for years. Outside, the concourse was crowded, but with people arriving, not departing.
Nasrani
tourists, Nefzaoua up from Kibili to visit recently remembered family, farmers from the High Tell, pickpockets. Few wanted to leave a city when so much was about to happen.

Twenty-four hours of mourning for the old Emir, then seven days of celebration for the new. Isabeau supposed that made sense if she didn’t think about it too hard.

Shaking out her envelope’s contents, she saw two rings slide out and clatter across the table, along with something on a dull-metal chain. The small, official-looking booklet which followed landed without a sound and Isabeau wouldn’t have known the envelope contained a letter of condolence if habit hadn’t made her check inside.

It seemed her husband had died in a police operation, somewhere unspecified, south of Garaa Tebourt while rescuing his superior officer. Isabeau liked that touch. As if any man she married wouldn’t frag all the officers and NCOs first opportunity he got, then head off down some wadi for Tripolitana. As if she’d marry any man…

They were returning his ring, his police tags and a photograph they’d found in his wallet of her wedding day. The face was Isabeau’s although the body belonged to someone else; someone marginally thinner than she’d ever been with less full breasts. The man could have been anyone.

Isabeau was impressed to see they’d had a modern ceremony. She wore white and her husband was in uniform, their priest had a simple jellaba, his beard recently barbered and not at all wild. The room in which they stood was panelled in dark oak and had a photograph of the old Emir on the wall behind. It might have been more useful if someone had thought to write the exact location on the back.

The official-looking leaflet was a pension book made out to Madame DuPuis. At the bottom of the first page a space had been left blank for her signature. A footnote told her she could collect money monthly from any branch of the Imperial Ottoman Bank or arrange to have her widow’s pension paid direct by filling in a form on the last page.

As for the letter, this offered Isabeau the condolences of the state, commiserated with her over all she’d lost and hoped that her future from henceforth would be happier. It was signed with an illegible scribble, although the first letter looked like an A…

Saturday 26th March

“Well,” said Raf, breath jagged and a grin on his face.

“Well what?”

Outside Zara’s bedroom window, crowds were already gathering beyond the gates of the Bardo and Raf could hear the growl of early traffic and clattering as impromptu market stalls were erected.

The police would be along later to take them down but trade would continue all day, stalls going up as soon as the old ones were broken down. Food sellers, hawkers of rice-paper rose petals and purveyors of cheap plastic flags, Raf had even seen his face on the side of a balloon.

The woman lying beside him had already made her opinion plain on all of that. As indeed she had on many other things. It had been the kind of discussion that, in later years, would raise smiles and get described, only half-ironically, as full and frank. At the moment they both still felt slightly vulnerable.

“Come on then,” Zara demanded.
“Well what?”

“Oh, I don’t know…” Raf wrapped one arm round Zara’s shoulders and pulled her on top of him. “How about,
Well, what do you plan to do with your day?
”

She laughed, kissed him back.

So Raf slid down slightly on the bed and took Zara’s nipple in his mouth, sucking comfort from her breast. She watched him as he did so, seeing only the top of his head and feeling his uncertainty.

“Are you all right?”

When Raf didn’t answer, Zara stayed where she was and closed her eyes. They had another hour before they needed to leave and if that wasn’t long enough then the wretched ceremony could wait.

Last night had been difficult. Difficult and different. Zara so nervous her whole body shook. And Raf…? She took him to her room, something she’d done with no other man and stripped to her thong in front of him, only losing her nerve at the last minute. Having sent him to the bathroom, she killed the light and hid under the covers.

Except that when he came back, all Raf seemed to want to do was lie in the darkness and let the moment wash over him. Something impossible for Zara.

“This is not fair,”
she’d said suddenly.

And thinking he knew what Zara meant, Raf nodded agreement and in that second’s movement shut down his night vision until everything in her room became outlines and shadow.

“It is now.”

“No, I mean
this.
”

And he knew then that Zara meant their lying in the dark, so much unspoken between them.

“There’s something I need to tell you…” Raf said tentatively.

“Let me guess,” she said. “I’m not the first. In fact you’ve fucked your way through an entire phone book of my friends. You have three children, well, that you know about… You’re only after my millions…”

“This is serious,” said Raf.

“So was I,” Zara answered. And pulled Raf to her and kissed him as her hand slid under his rib cage and then both her hands locked behind his back, so that Raf’s full weight rested on her trapped arm.

She felt him go hard.

“You’re naked,” said Raf, the fingers of his right hand tracing the crease of her buttocks, just to make sure he hadn’t got that wrong.

He hadn’t known, Zara realized. She’d been safely tucked under a quilt by the time he returned to the room.

There’d been one night, months before, when she’d talked and he’d listened, although she couldn’t remember it and he could; but then, if Raf was to be believed, he remembered everything, which was maybe not a good place to be.

“It’s important,” said Raf, holding her face between his hands. “And it concerns who I am. What I am…”

“You’re you,” said Zara. “That’s enough.”

“No,” said Raf sadly, “it isn’t. It’s not anything like enough.”

Zara wanted to know why, so Raf told her. Or rather he didn’t. He told her a fairy story instead. “Once,” said Raf, his fingers caressing the side of her face, “there was a son of Lilith…”

Raf took it as read that Zara knew Lilith’s story. Adam’s first wife, mother to vampyres and djinn. A woman expelled from Eden for fucking the snake.

“He was older than he looked because, although his days were as your days, his nights were often longer, one of them so long that fir trees grew and houses were built while he slept. Someone who loved him grew old and stopped loving him, seeing her own life and increasing age reflected in the puzzlement in his eyes every time he woke from the cold sleep…”

If Zara thought it was odd that Raf told her a folktale she kept this thought to herself. Remembering stories Hani had told her. Small girl’s stories. Of the kind easily dismissed.

“He slept the cold sleep because that was the easiest way not to die. Until one day he awoke and Lilith had died and her friends had forgotten him or no longer cared if he escaped. So he did what sons of Lilith do, moved to a strange country to live undetected as a human for seven years. For if a vampyre or djinn can live undetected for seven years he will become as human.”

“So Hani told me,” said Zara.

“She did?”

“She’s told everybody,” Zara said. “It’s in a book, the original story. About how a son of Lilith can become as human. But the children will be born sons of Lilith.”

“Sons of Lilith, daughters of Lilith,” said Raf. “In my case it’s called germ line manipulation. Whatever I am my children will become.”

“And what are you?”

Raf thought about it. “I’m not sure,” he said finally. “I get voices. I see in the dark. There are three extra ribs on either side of my rib cage. My eyes hurt in the daylight. My memory is too distressingly perfect for my mind to manage…”

“All of this is your mother’s responsibility?”

“Or Emir Moncef’s,” said Raf, “but it gets messier.” He felt the girl go still and shifted gently away from her, giving Zara space. “I’ve opened the bags… Secret files,” he added, when he realized she didn’t quite understand. “It’s like reading the technical specifications for a new type of car. One that might not work.”

“What’s the worst?”

“Immortality. Or if not immortality, then longevity. How long I don’t know but longer than is now normal.”

“You knew this when you refused to marry me?”

“Some of it,” said Raf. He stopped himself. “More than some,” he said but the anger was directed at himself. “What I wasn’t told as a child I overheard. It’s relatively easy to code for heightened hearing. Less easy to understand the implications if one’s own hearing is normal and the subject is three rooms away.”

“I’m sorry,” Zara said. Her hand moved up to touch his face and came away wet. She believed him implicitly.

“So am I,” said Raf.

Later, when he hung over her in the darkness, both of them drunk with longing, Raf bent forward and kissed Zara lightly on the forehead. There was something else he hadn’t mentioned. If he understood it right, then immortality was sexually transmitted; the act of being pregnant infected both mother and embryo.

The second time they made love began slow and ended up hard and fast. It started with Zara swinging herself on top of Raf and straddling his hips, her face only inches from his. Outside their window, the city was expectant for what would come the next day. Guards stood at the gates of the Bardo and patrolled the streets around the palace complex. Major Gide and Raf having agreed this as a matter of protocol only. Done because it was expected.

“Remember the boat?” Zara said.

As if he could forget. Water so blue it was almost purple. The scent of rosemary and thyme carried on a warm wind across a bay. And then the return trip. Hani safely asleep and Zara bringing him a beer as he sulked outside and time and the ocean slid past.

“What boat?” Raf demanded.

Leaning forward, Zara put her mouth over his and bit, hard enough to draw blood. “That boat,” she said.

They kissed and, slowly and rather clumsily, Zara reached down to position Raf against her. To Zara he was a shadow against white sheets, a watchful silent silhouette; for Raf she was lit clear as daylight… He could see her mouth twisting, eyes open and fixed on nothing, her breasts swaying forward with each rock of her hips, impossibly beautiful.

Reaching up with open hands, Raf felt warm flesh overflow his fingers and tried not to be offended when Zara absentmindedly lifted his hands away and went back to her rocking. After she’d ridden him in silence long enough for Raf to fade out his vision and lose himself in the rhythm, Zara took his hand and positioned it on her abdomen so that Raf’s thumb reached between swollen lips.

“There,” she said, “keep it there.” And went back to her darkness and a burst of half cries and swallowed words. There was no sharing this time. And angry was the only way to describe the abruptness with which Zara shuddered to a halt, her hand still holding his own hard against her smooth mons.