The Khufu Equation (3 page)

Nature was, as always, abundantly displayed in the Seychelles. The ocean shimmered like an immense glass puzzle beneath the sun, and its emerald edges collided against shores weathered by eons of wave action. The mountain peaks were wrapped in clouds, and the thin veil of ocean mist hugged their flanks. Endless groves of palms. The myriad variety of tropical growth, colonized into surrounding forests, was shaded by a canopy of majestic trees. Along the shore, the beaches wore the finest coral sand.

The mean annual temperature on the Seychelles is twenty-six degrees centigrade or. The ocean breeze is there to moderate the heat, and the seasons are nearly identical, differing only in terms of wind direction and the numbers of rainy days. Perfection is a matter of course in the Seychelles.

The real performance, however, was taking place in the upper-level cabin of the airliner. There was tension in the atmosphere, as if someone had placed a cold, invisible hand on the back of the head. A newlywed couple attracted attention, having become a bit too frisky. The young Frenchman was of the type one could consider handsome. At thirty-five years of age, he still looked somewhat youthful. Women usually speak tenderly to men such as Jean-Pierre Lefebvre. He had those finely shaped lips, an ever-so-slightly hooked nose, and the clear, purposeful gaze of one who is not afraid to look another in the eye. His curly dark hair was drawn into a long braid. Oh, yes, this man was almost torturously handsome; so handsome that a woman could feel the surge of madness just by looking at him. However, this was not the case with the woman seated next to him. She was his wife, and she had reasons for feeling otherwise.

Lucien Emanescu was a pretty woman of twenty-five, whose veins coursed with the blood of her Romanian and Polish ancestry. The word "pretty," however, wasn't enough to describe her appearance. A discerning individual could see in her countenance the opportunism and sarcasm of a pathological prostitute. But if she were a prostitute, she would have been very high-priced. She had qualities at her disposal that could lead the most taciturn man into an angry fit of desire. Her perfectly curving hips and waspish waist were set beneath a succulent bosom, which in turn melded with a graceful neckline and delicately sculpted jaw. She paid particular attention to her appearance, and given the occasion this bird could preen her feathers as if there was no tomorrow. Her wheaten hair cascaded over her shoulders, and with her blue eyes--the ideal accessories--she could portray the innocence of a lamb. Who could know that an insidious plan had begun to emerge in her mind?

Lucien folded her silken arms around her husband's neck and clung to his cheek:

"Pierre, I am so delighted! This place is incredibly beautiful! You could not have thought of a better wedding present!"

"That is, if one sets aside the fact that you were the one who thought of it," Jean-Pierre thought. Then he said, "Lucien, dear. Well, . . ." Jean-Pierre tried to remove her hands from his neck, but she held on tight and imprinted a long, succulent kiss on his lips.

Jean-Pierre finally managed to free himself from Lucien's grasp. The performance had gone on for nearly half an hour, and he was bored to the point of exasperation.

"Please, will you leave me in peace for just a moment!" urged Pierre, turning red. Alas, his bride only replied in a louder tone; louder than was necessary amid the hushed ambience of the upper-level salon.

"Oh, no, my dear. I've been waiting for this day all my life and shall behave exactly as I want to. I spit on the opinions of others. I want you, here and now!" With that, she flopped down on his knees and, without averting her gaze, she allowed a smile of cunning to slide slowly across her perfectly made-up face. The slit in her skirt opened to a dangerous degree as her hips tightened with the elevation of a thigh. A pretty leg was bared up to the secret place, where it lost its nice name and was transformed into something more intense. Jean-Pierre hurriedly closed her skirt and, pushing her off by the knees, forcibly returned her to the window seat next to him.

"What is the matter with you today?" he said in a harsh whisper. "Aren't you being a bit too impulsive? You are converting our relationship into a show. If you don't show some modesty when we reach the hotel, your pretty behind will get acquainted with my leather belt."

"Okay, then let it be so!" she said contemptuously. Lucien's face was distorted in disgust, as if she were being forced to taste marsh quince. "The belt and fanny were never on friendly terms, anyway!"

The last phrase sounded loud enough that only someone hopeless deafened by age could have missed it. The other passengers were engrossed by Lucien and her display of fire, waiting to see what she'd do next. The sole exception was a man seated directly ahead. He was neither old nor deaf.

The jet had, by that time, finished taxiing and was stopped in a safety zone. However, none of the passengers even moved. To someone looking from outside, it would have appeared that time had frozen in the salon; that everything around had drowned in another layer of reality, and the people, like wax figures, wore eternal expressions of surprise in breathless expectation of the wonders they'd behold.

It wasn't the anticipation of an earthly paradise that had made them all stock-still in the salon. Instead, it was the sinewy man seated in front of the newlyweds, who had unbuckled his seatbelt and turned to face them with obvious indignation.

Quickly and unexpectedly he rose from his seat. He glared at Lucien, then at Jean-Pierre. He didn't blink an eye, nor did he speak. It was all so much that nothing he could say would be sufficient to express his distaste for such putrid public behavior.

Jean-Pierre, in his mind's eye, imagined that he too was an involuntary participant in this absurd show of vulgarity; a wax figure, like the others. The only difference was that he was indeed part of the display, and he realized the fact.

Pierre was not a guru, but suddenly he realized that one of the traps in this universe was to beckon forth one's spiritual essence with a beautiful paper and, through the deliberate contrivance of a rough material structure, transform that essence into something different, such as a vegetable.

"Mister . . . ," said a mysterious type after a pause, either being sorry or sensing some enjoyment that was to come.

"Whether it's to your delight or not, by sunset tomorrow I shall bite off the tongue of this prostitute. And sir, I'll meet you again. The stranger's temples moved in and out as if he was already chewing on that piece of severed tongue. Jean-Pierre clenched his fists in anger.

"I will kill you and piss on your corpse right here, for everyone to see!"

But it didn't happen. A moment later, a dulling shroud overwhelmed Pierre's consciousness. A minute more, and his body went limp and he lost mental control. It was the same with the other passengers. Some unknown strength had invaded and swept away, out of memory, these events. Time had been dumped into a forgotten backwater. But somewhere within secret registers of Pierre's mind remained the gaze of that fifty-year-old man; a gaze that had flashed in fire like those of a green devil.

The newlyweds, Jean-Pierre Lefebvre and Lucien Emanescu, were booked at the fashionable Beau Vallon hotel. Situated among wild greenery in Bel-Ombr Bay on the northeastern coast of the island, the elegant premises cuddled the coral beach but, in accordance with the regulations, were relatively low-slung so as not to exceed the height of the coconut palms. In this was the special beauty of a unique tourist region. The palms looked like umbrellas as they leaned languid over the hotel buildings, and gleaming shafts of sunlight shot playfully past their bright-green fronds.

As they approached Mae Island, Jean-Pierre could feel the burden of his urban lifestyle ease its way off of his shoulders. He imagined all that weight and tension just sinking into the depths of the blue. In the Seychelles, tourists never hurry and run, because the local manner of tourism is the rest of pure water: short strolls and excursions, fishing, watching the scooter races, tanning on the sun-drenched beaches and swimming in the sea.

Forty minutes later, though, Jean-Pierre felt bisected. One part of his being dreamed of rest, while the other part felt like gin distilled into a dark, narrow bottle.

Lucien was in the shower, and Jean-Pierre lay across the king-size bed with his eyes closed, thinking. He was trying to remember something vitally important but felt as if he was a pie, a fat wedge of which had been cut and shoved into some unknown place. The loathsome, hairy worm of doubt nibbled at his soul. Something was happening; something was not right.

Jean-Pierre had, for the past five years, worked as a dealer for a major chemical concern. The product assortment was impressive, ranging from insecticides to hair polish. But Jean-Pierre hated his job. He had to smile like the Cheshire cat, and to sell anything he had to cover marathon distances. Moreover, the chemical items he sold had negative effects on his skin, and occasionally he'd break out in a rash. Oh, there were so many reasons to despise that job! It was enough that he was often made a scapegoat or was unnecessarily subordinated. Pierre wanted to develop his career, but every time he was given to understand that he'd never be more than a service boy. It was true, really. Jean-Pierre, despite his dangerously handsome appearance, lacked steadfastness and the willingness to communicate.

Lucien Emanescu had poured a soporific into her husband's coffee, after which she stood in the shower for half an hour, waiting for it to take hold. On coming out she found Pierre on the wide sofa. He was asleep. The empty cup was on the bedside table.

"Peppery, are you sleeping?"

He didn't answer but only snored lightly. She was sure he was asleep. So, with that assurance, Lucien placed her leather suitcase on the chair, opened it and took out some racy lingerie of the whitest silk and most delicate lace. "He will pay me for everything," she thought, as she slid into them. "Pigeon's excrement imagines itself to be an eagle's. Tomorrow you'll swallow your own shit, you swine. I promise."

Then the young woman elicited from case a light-blue dress. Now he would pay. For the luck that came not to her, for the mud, she had to bathe in for the sake of a loaf of bread, and for the talentless, boring sex. In five minutes Lucien was ready. She made up her lips and eyes, took the keys from the table but then caught sight of the massive ashtray. Unexpectedly a wave of fantasy washed over her: She saw herself standing over Jean-Pierre with that heavy glass cudgel raised high, and bringing it down with a gashing thud upon his head just as he opened his eyes to witness the act.

She could hear the crunchy cracking of glass at it crashed through his forehead; she could imagine the muted scream and the moment of convulsions that would follow. And then would come the best part: the death of this one-dimensional, egotistical loser named Jean-Pierre.

"Well, these are only dreams," she thought, feigning self-pity like a mime. "But . . . one should have faith in dreams, for tomorrow they will become reality. The time has come to settle the account."

Luci left the room and locked the door, and with her exit Jan-Pierre immediately jump off the bed. He wasn't sorry he had poured the coffee over the balcony. He always disliked it, anyway. "But what is this bitch planning?" he wondered. "Has she gone out to the street again?"

The "Corsair" room had no second key. He went out to the balcony. The overhanging palms swayed in the breeze, and the sun was at its zenith. From that room on the fourth floor, there opened a fantastical view of Bel-Ombr Bay. On one end, the stretch of coral beach was rounded by the tropical greenery, while at the other end it met the dreamy azure of the Indian Ocean. Like a chameleon, the ocean gently changed its color from malachite to the delicate pinkish white of a flamingo. And there, a few miles away along the horizon, lay the massive green bulk of Silhouette Island.

Could the young man have supposed, even half a year earlier, that somewhere in his life he would witness such beauty? Surely, he thought, Paradise must look like this. Then he realized something: He would never get there. He had a lot of lives on his conscience. He had overstepped the line, something had broken in him. Only brief, nostalgic reminiscences of the previous Jean-Pierre remained, and it was painful to recall them. He longed to be what he was before. Certainly it was the unfortunate, unlucky life of a boy who fed bread crumbs to pigeons and brought fresh bones to the mongrels of the streets. If he had had anything from God now, it was only the name Jean-Pierre. There was nothing more he could claim. He saw Luci as she really was: a false, cunning fox. "And what am I?" he thought. "I was crazy to spend all my savings on her. Where was my mind!?"

Jean-Pierre managed to reach the third floor. He took the slender braid in his teeth and threw his body over railing, whereupon he was suspended above the second-floor balcony. If he allowed himself to drop from that point, he could only be sorry that the first and ground floors had no balconies. But there was no retreat. He heard voices from the room on the third floor.

"Ralph, what's that noise on the balcony?"

"I think you've had enough."

"No, really. Somebody's there! Come and see!"

Jean-Pierre had no time to think. He simply slid open the glass door and stepped into the room. Immediately, he was met by a pungent, unpleasant odor. It was the smell of narcosis. Quickly, Pierre surveyed the room. A man of thirty stood in front, wearing only green boxer shorts. He was short and bow-legged, with a ludicrous growth of chest hair. His eyes betrayed the depth of his emptiness. He was hiding something behind his back, and from there a middle-aged woman was looking out. She was even more dismayed than her partner was, and it seemed her eyes would roll right out of her face.