Cleopatra�s Perfume (13 page)

“Ramzi, you shouldn’t…”

“No one can see us.”

I lifted my veil and challenged him, “Then I shan’t stop you.”

I parted my thighs and he moved his fingers higher, higher…until…oh, yes, he inserted a finger into me and began rubbing my aching clit back and forth while our cigarettes burned down to the stub. I tossed my head back then gripped the sides of the chair as he continued arousing me, my body glowing with an inner need to lose myself, believe in his fanciful tale of a magic perfume, a tale woven in a Scheherazadesque silk, caressed and pleasant when touching the skin, but fleeting in its pleasure.

I’ve no doubt my erotic mood was intensified by the heat, the smells, the frenetic energy vibrating around me. The constant
clickety-clack
of the great train wheels racing over the tracks provided a musical underscore both sensual and forbidding, the conductor blowing the shrill train whistle over and over as if to accent each moment we stared at each other, our cigarette tips heavy with ash, our lips parted with desire. A moment suspended in time. Aboard the train, nothing could touch us, but once we left its sanctity, we’d be exposed to a rigid Cairene society governed by British rules as well as the sharia, Muslim law. Both could be harsh in judging us. A white woman who gave any indication of intimacy with an
Egyptian provoked scurrilous remarks and obscene gestures. Petty, jealous people, you might say, but the threat was real.

Was I in danger? I dismissed the idea, though I was aware of rumors of political émigrés from all over Europe taking up residence in Cairo and bringing their prejudices with them. I could escape Hitler, but could I escape the scrutiny of my own class? I was more concerned with the latter, though the proximity of war was very real. None of us did more than nod in agreement when the subject came up. How could anyone understand the suffering, the terror, the death about to be inflicted upon us by these madmen parading around in Fascist black?

Everything seemed so simple then, so frivolous, but all that would change. After what I’ve just experienced in my efforts to secure passage to Germany, I can’t believe I was so naive.

I’m writing this section of the diary while I’m traveling on a train to Berlin, the final point of my destination. God knows what will happen to me when I arrive in the city personifying everything harsh and bitter about the Nazi dictator’s Reich. I’m still shaking from my encounter with the war in a very personal way. No, not the flight from Scotland. Crossing into Germany, I—

The pen slid through my fingers, making it difficult for me to write down the words, scratches across a page that can’t begin to explain what I’ve endured, as well as the courage, passion and resilience of the people who risked their own lives to get me aboard this train. Tomorrow they may die for doing the same thing for another agent, someone they’ll never see again, but tonight they live,
knowing their job is not yet done. And so I must thank them, these anonymous souls who believe freedom is worth dying for, these brave members of the resistance who hum the same tune of hope I’ve heard throughout my journey, knowing that with their sacrifices, their spilled blood, the storm will pass and peace will endure.

I’m not so brave. I’m frightened, nearly hysterical, my body aching in a way I’ve never known from my ordeal. How could I have believed this was a simple mission?

Have lunch in Berlin with your old friend, Maxi von Brandt, Sir_____
told me,
pick up the information from her, then return to London via Sweden.

If I’m followed by the Gestapo, I’m to abandon the original plan and go to the safe house in Berlin (I’ve memorized the location, dear reader). Under no circumstances am I to reveal my real identity, but stick to my story about being an American woman on holiday. A curious smile makes me pause. I wonder how much Sir_____ actually knows about me, about the brownstone in New York City where I grew up. Cramped, low-ceilinged rooms, sagging wooden floors, narrow hallways, dim stairway leading up to the fifth-floor apartment. Electricity that worked on occasion, insulation between the walls made of coal ash and sawdust, making the place a firetrap.

I remember sitting out on the fire escape on hot summer nights, watching the bold white street lamps twinkling between the railings. I’d pretend they were stars, wishing I could go to exotic places and explore my sexual fantasies.
And
fall in love. Those thoughts filled me with yearning, jealousy, desire.

Leaving the small borough of crowded tenements where I lived seemed impossible to me, my hands moving in a graceful sway along with my body, my tap-dancing feet skipping along to the jazz playing
on the gramophone. I wanted to dance across the black velvet sky, my feet glowing like the flickering street lamps, and never look back.

Mama didn’t see things my way.

Strange, I should think of her now. Mama, with her quiet manner and heavy-lidded eyes that observed, scolded, criticized.
Rules, rules, rules.
That’s all she knew.
Do this, don’t do that. Girls marry, have babies,
she’d lament when I told her about my dream to become a dancer. She’d get that faraway look in her eyes and tell me stories about the harsh life she endured as a child in the old country, then she’d shake her head and wipe the lipstick off my face and admonish me for spending my meager salary as a fitter’s assistant on a pair of black silk stockings.

Looking back, I can’t blame her. I had quit school to help Mama with the finances (Papa died in an accident when I was little, so I don’t remember him) and my older brother, Harry. He needed money to finish his education. Mama doted on him, telling everybody her son was going to be a lawyer someday, but I know she also worried about me. She warned me I should be a “good” girl so I wouldn’t end up like the neighbor girl, Sally.

A classical beauty with dark hair and eyes so big they were the first thing you noticed about her, Sally was nineteen and worked as a hatcheck girl in a fancy nightclub uptown. Mama would shoo me away from the door whenever I heard her coming home late at night, but I knew what she was doing. Parties, alcohol and men. Oh, how I envied her. I was sixteen and tired of trying to squeeze overweight matrons into girdles two sizes too small.

Sure, kid, I’ll get you a job at the club,
Sally promised, bobbing my hair and showing me how to wear makeup so I’d look older. I was
tall, slender and with big breasts. I had no trouble getting a job as a cigarette girl then a dancer at the—

What made me go on like that? Talking about Mama. I left that all behind me when I ran off to Berlin with the fast-talking manager of a girlie show. Damn, I can’t go back to those times,
I can’t.
I should tear out that page, rip it up and toss my past outside the train window, but I won’t. I must go on. It no longer matters if you, dear reader, know that Lady Eve Marlowe was once a cigarette girl named Eve Charles. The world has changed since I embarked on an orgiastic journey of a thousand pleasures;
I’ve changed,
and though I haven’t yet the courage to reveal all, I want you to know I’m no longer the wild, indulgent girl who danced naked in a nightclub first in Berlin then in Cairo covered in nothing but gold paint.

I must rest, compose myself, pull together my jagged nerves, then I shall continue with my story.

I feel better, the pen gripped between my fingers without slipping, though I had a start when a woman with a deadpan expression and lips so pale they seemed to disappear invaded my compartment, shutting the sliding door with a loud bang. I’m seated alone, shunning the attention of other travelers, my luggage taking up most of the space. A steamer trunk, a leather jewel case, a hatbox, a vanity case, traveling rug and an umbrella.

I’d hoped the brogues-wearing matron who invaded my sanctuary would find my snobbish mannerisms and American accent off-putting, but she plopped down in the seat and didn’t move. I had to do something to dissuade her, so I hiked up my skirt when the train conductor entered to take our tickets, then applied heavy dark red
lipstick while he cast an admiring glance at my legs. That ruffled her Teutonic feathers. Muttering an obvious slur under her breath, she left in a huff.

I let go of the breath I’ve been holding, then wipe the perspiration dotting my upper lip. I pray I have enough ink left to continue recording my thoughts. I’ve not finished my story and there’s so much more to tell you. But first, I must admit I fear I’ve made a dreadful mistake taking on this mission. The world is at war, though the United States isn’t in it yet, a horrible war, and I’ve just experienced a night I pray never to know again.

I crossed the Baltic Sea by ferry to Copenhagen where two boys on bicycles from the local resistance waited for me. They couldn’t have been more than fourteen, but I sensed they were already seasoned fighters. I jumped on a bicycle and we cycled to a flat located above a dress shop in the Danish capital while the other boy took off in another direction. I skidded to a halt, an awful fright gripping me when I saw a man in uniform waiting for us. Upon closer inspection, I realized he was a fireman. The boy’s father. Without a word, he took my bicycle and left with his son while I made my way upstairs. The woman in the flat spoke English, telling me I was to remain here for a few days, keeping quiet during the daylight hours and never going downstairs. I would cook my own meals and speak to no one but her. I learned later this was one of the few resistance groups in Denmark, though I discovered they were well organized.

Around midnight on the third night, the fireman returned and escorted me down to the docks to a nightclub, where I was kept in
a backroom with Jewish refugees, a man and a woman, who had fled Germany and were waiting for transportation to Sweden. I leaned forward, curious. Here at last was the link I needed to prove to myself my journey was not an insane undertaking. I behaved like a madwoman, plying them with questions, lapsing into the broken German I haven’t spoken since I was a child. All the fears, doubts and guilt I’d been holding in came gushing out in a torrent of words.

Were conditions for Jews in Germany as horrible as I’d been led to believe?
I asked.
No, worse, far worse,
they said in both German and halting English,
the beatings, humiliation, the killing,
then the woman cried, her shoulders shaking as if they’d never stop. I tried to comfort her, giving her several folded-up Swedish kroner to help them on their journey to freedom (I would exchange kroner for reichsmark once I was in Berlin, since it was illegal for German money to be circulated abroad). The woman thanked me over and over, kissing me on both cheeks, but the guilt riding inside me made her gesture sting, as if she branded me for my sins. Yes, sins. Hadn’t I ignored the fears of the young Jewess I’d met in Port Said? Wasn’t I just as guilty as the man who sold her into a life of debauchery? No doubt she was dead, brought down by the perversion of such men. I blamed myself. I vowed to continue my journey, knowing my mission would contribute to the downfall of the Nazi regime, for no way could I believe the Allied powers wouldn’t be victorious; if I failed, I prayed the diary would stand as a record of my efforts.

Sometime later I was taken down to a small harbor where I boarded a fishing trawler for the crossing to Warnemünde. The mood was tense. Nazi patrols had been making random searches on
seagoing craft leaving the harbor, and the captain wanted me to wait until the following week to try a crossing. I insisted I had my orders. The captain warned me he couldn’t come to my aid if the Nazis discovered I was a foreign agent. They’d all be shot if they discovered he’d helped me. I nodded, understanding.

The plan was for me to blend in with the crew. I wore dark, loose clothes, making it easy for me to slip on the cover of darkness as easily as I’d smeared the perfume on my skin. All I brought with me was a cracked brown leather satchel with my personal items and money, including the small container holding the perfume (I had removed the unguent from the alabaster box). I carried nothing that could identify me as Lady Marlowe.
Except
the diary. I held it so tightly in my hand I swear my nails snagged the red silk threads crisscrossing the cover.
Get rid of it,
the woman in the dress shop ordered me when she found it among my things.
The Nazis will show you no mercy if they capture you.

I stood on the deck, ready to toss the small book into the water, but I couldn’t. Again I rebelled, like a small child hiding in the closet to avoid Mama’s scolding.
So what if the Nazis found the diary?
I reasoned. I didn’t live in the shadow world of agents and double agents. I was above suspicion. When I arrived in Berlin I was to pose as an adventurous society girl from New York, an American engaged to a Swedish businessman on a lark to see an old friend. My country wasn’t at war with Germany. If I faced danger, the magic of the perfume would keep me safe.

I returned the diary to my jacket pocket, determined to keep recording my story because the perfume
does
work, dear reader. It saved my life…No, I can’t tell you what happened. Not yet. All I ask you to do is what the fortune-teller in Port Said said to me:
believe.

The incessant lapping of water against the hull of the trawler grated on my nerves. Back and forth…back and forth, making my stomach queasy with dread. Voices…angry, guttural. Shouting. Boots pacing up and down the top deck. Looking…searching.

Soon after we pulled away from the dock, a Nazi patrol boat spotted us and demanded we stop. Two officers came aboard the ship, their heavy-toed boots making the deck creak under their weight, their angry voices stirring up the fears of everyone on board. The crew had reason to be anxious. I wasn’t the only contraband they hauled across the sea. Earlier I’d seen several men stashing weapons below deck.

The first mate gestured for me to hide in the dinghy then he threw a large sack over my head, nearly suffocating me. I took short breaths, my mouth opening and closing in fright. What if the Nazi patrol officers found me? Checked my papers? How could I explain my presence aboard the ship? Dear God, was my journey about to end here?