The Sphinx (11 page)

Gene widened
his eyes. “You’re kidding! You mean you can trace your ancestors back to
thirteen hundred BC? That’s incredible!”

She smiled
gently. “It’s not really. The people in that part of lower Egypt were never
nomadic.

There are many
fellaheen with extraordinary faces that look just like the drawings on the
walls of ancient tombs. But it’s not surprising when you think that they are
direct descendants of the same people who made those tombs, and because there
is a great deal of inbreeding, with cousins marrying cousins, and even brothers
marrying sisters, the facial characteristics have remained constant for
thousands of years.”

Gene sat back.
“You know something,” he said, “I can trace my family back to a Scotsman who
emigrated to Florida in 1825, and I used to be proud of that You make me feel
like I don’t have any lineage at all.”

She lowered her
eyes. “A long lineage is not necessarily a good lineage,” she said, very
quietly.

“You’re telling
me there’s something wrong with tracing your family back so far?”

Lorie looked at
him. “It depends on who, and what your family was. My ancestors were not
particularly liked. The fellaheen used to call them ‘that people.’ I think they
still do.”

“ That people?’
That doesn’t sound so bad.”

“It does when
you realize that the fellaheen are masters of the insult and the epithet,” she
said.

“They can curse
you for an hour and never call you the same thing twice. But our people, the
Ubasti, they call nothing but ‘that people,’ and that is the highest expression
of their feelings about us they are capable of devising.”

Gene reached
over and touched her hair. It was soft and fine, but it had a wiry strength all
its own, and in the subdued light of the apartment it took on a golden hue that
reminded him of something he couldn’t quite bring to mind.

“We have the
same kind of feuding in America,” he told her. “Did you ever hear of the
Hatfields and the McCoys?”

“Yes,” she
said, “but it was nothing like that. It had nothing to do with feuding. It was
fear.”

“Fear? Were
your ancestors that bad?”

He was
caressing her cheek now with the back of his fingers, and she fixed her
glittering green eyes on him intently. The pupils had widened in the darkness,
and he never once saw her bunk.

He became aware
of some inner tightening inside her that she was trying hard to conceal, but as
they talked more and more it became increasingly obvious that she was sitting
there with every muscle in her body compressed with latent energy. She’s not
looking at me, she’s watching me, he thought. She’s watching every single
insignificant move I make.

“I shouldn’t
really talk about my ancestors like that,” she told him. “Even if they’ve been
dead for two thousand years, it’s still disloyal.”

“I don’t know,”
he said softly. “You talk like they only died yesterday.”

She kept on
watching him, and she didn’t stir at all ‘That’s because we speak about them at
home, nearly all the time,” she said. Mother doesn’t want me to forget my
Egyptian background.

She likes
America, but she doesn’t want me to forget.”

“And how about
you? Would you prefer to forget?”

“No,” she said,
almost inaudibly. “I cannot prefer to forget What my ancestors were, and are,
is unforgettable.”

He soothingly
stroked her neck and caressed her ears. Before, when he had touched her, she
had resented his touch, but she seemed to find this kind of idle finger play
soothing. As he ran his hands through her hair, he was conscious that her
muscular tightness was gradually easing, and that her eyes, so staring and
watchful a few moments ago, were now closing.

“You like
that?” he said. He didn’t even have to ask.

“That’s nice,”
she murmured, and she stretched herself until the last tensions had flowed from
her body and she was utterly relaxed.

“Lorie,” he
said, as he massaged her scalp, feeling the symmetrical shape of her head in
his hand.

Her eyes
remained closed. “Umh-humh?”

“Lorie, I’m
going to say something real serious.”

She was
enjoying his sensitive caress so much that she was purring with pleasure.

“Go on, then,”
she said.

He looked at
her distinctive, angular face for a while, and the way her long eyelashes
curved from her closed eyes. “I know this sounds kind of crazy. I didn’t think
it could happen myself. I’m in politics, you know? And that makes most people
cynical.

But I have to
face up to the fact that it’s true, and because it’s true I know that I’m going
to have to come out with it tonight, or tomorrow night, or some night, well, it
might just as well be tonight.”

She was purring
loudly now, rubbing her head back against his hand so that he could stroke her
ears.

“Lorie,” he
said softly. “I love you.”

There was a
pause. She stopped rubbing agates? him, and her slanting eyes gradually opened.
Re looked at her as sincerely and strongly as he could, because he wanted her
to see from his expression alone that he meant what he said.

“You... love
me?”

“Yes,” he
whispered.

Her eyes
flickered away from him. A slight worried crease marked her forehead.

“Gene,” she
said, “you mustn’t!”

He sat up.
“What do you mean, ‘mustn’t?’ It’s not a question of ‘mustn’t!’ I don’t have
any choice in the matter. I’ve fallen in love with you whether you Like it or
not!”

“Gene...”

“No,” he said
bluntly. “This time, I don’t want any excuses! We’ve been through all this
mysterious rigmarole of why I must never ask you to marry me, and why I
shouldn’t love you, and it’s wearing thin. If you’re afraid of something, why
don’t you come out straight and tell me?

I’m a grown
man, Lorie. I’m old enough to know what I want, and what I want is you, whether
you’ve been jailed or raped or treated for mental sickness or whatever it is.”

Her eyes opened
wide. “You think that I was raped? Or locked up in jail? Gene, I don’t
understand”

He stood up and
paced tautly across the carpet. “Lorie,” he said “I just didn’t know what to
think. All I knew was that I fancied you like crazy, and that you appeared to
fancy me, too, and yet whenever it looked like we might do something that
normal people do when they fancy each other, like kiss or go out for dinner,
you clammed up tight and told me to move along.”

He sat down
beside her again and held her hands. “I know that you’ve led a sheltered life,
and I know it’s difficult for you to form any kind of relationship. But you’re
twenty years old, and you’re beautiful, and you can’t stay in your ivory tower
forever. Someday, sooner or later, you’re going to want to form a permanent
lifetime association with somebody, whether it’s marriage or not, and you can’t
go on hiding behind these adolescent fantasies.”

She looked
confused. “Fantasies? I don’t know what you mean.”

He sighed.
“Come on, Lorie, every young girl does it. She” goes out with a man for the
first time, and she’s worried that she’s not sophisticated enough, or
mysterious enough. So she uses her imagination. A hint of mystique here, a
touch of melodrama there. When I was fifteen I dated a girl of thirteen who
told me her father was once a famous concert pianist According to her, he had
burned his hands beyond recovery by rescuing her from a fire. It turned out the
poor stiff worked in a bakery, and his only musical talent was whistling ‘After
the Ball Is Over.’“

Lorie listened
to this, and sat there silently for a long time. “Gene,” she said, “don’t you
think we’d better make this the first and last date?”

“You’ve decided
you don’t like me, huh? Is that it?”

“No, that’s not
it.”

“Then you do
like me?”

“Yes. And
that’s the trouble.”

Gene reached
out again and stroked her cheek. She looked desperately sad, and he wished to
God he knew why. She held his hand in hers, and pressed it against her lips,
kissing it gently.

“The truth is,
Gene, that I love you, too.”

He couldn’t
quite believe what he’d heard. “Are you kidding me? By Christ, Lorie, I hope
you’re not kidding me.”

“It’s true,”
she said, in a throaty voice. “I think they call it love at first sight.”

He gave her a
small, wry smile. “More like love at first bite, if you ask me.”

She lifted her
head. Her eyes were brimming with tears she didn’t want to cry, and she
couldn’t help sniffing.

“I loved you
the first time I saw you,” she said. “I know I haven’t dated any other men, and
that I don’t have any experience. Maybe I’m childish when it comes to love. But
that’s just the way I am, and you’re going to have to accept it, I love you,
Gene, and that’s all I can say. I love you more than anything.”

“Lorie,” he
whispered. He held her close, and he kissed her. “Lorie why the hell didn’t you
say...

?”

She started
weeping openly now. “I couldn’t say because it can’t last. It can’t happen. I
can’t allow it to happen. If I fall in love with you, then it’s all going to
start all over again, and I couldn’t stand it.”

He took a
handkerchief out of his pocket and dabbed at her tears. “You’re still talking
mysteries,” he told her. “What can’t you allow to happen? What’s going to-
start all over again?”

She blew her
nose. “I can’t tell you,” she said. “Not now, nor ever.”

He took another
cigarette out of the box and lit ft. He took a long deep drag to steady his
nerves. “Not ever? Not even if we got married?”

She stared at
him, her face pale and her eyes blotted With tears.

“Please, Gene,”
she said. “You swore you’d never ask. You swore.”

He tried to
manage a smile, but it came out unsteady and lopsided. “I’m a politician,
remember?

Politicians
have divine dispensation to break promises.”

He tried to
call her again and again on Monday, but the phone rang hollow and distant and
nobody answered. An unhelpful receptionist at the Franco-African Bank said that
Lorie Semple hadn’t arrived for work and he didn’t have the time to go there
and check for himself. Henry Ness wanted a detailed profile of political
structures on three Caribbean islands, and he spent an irritating morning
collecting data and statistics on banana production and sugar shipping.

He had taken
Lorie home on Saturday night, late, and they had kissed, but the date had ended
inconclusively, and he wasn’t even sure if he was ever going to see her again.
She refused to talk about marriage and she refused to discuss love, and she
couldn’t say when she might have another free evening. In the end, he had
driven off with a furiously suppressed temper and hadn’t simmered down until he
got home and finished the left over jug of vodka.

“Walter’s
looking for you,” Maggie said.” He’s not very happy about the Isthmus file.”

Gene lit his
fifteenth cigarette of the day and refused to look up. “If Walter’s unhappy
about the Isthmus file, let Walter come ‘round here himself and tell me.”

“What is this?”
asked Maggie. “The workers revolution?”

“No,” he said
bluntly, “it’s just the first day of Keep Your Nose Out Week.”

Maggie glanced
at the stack of untidy files on his desk. “Sugar’s sweet but Lorie isn’t–is
that it?”

He scribbled
percentages in the margin of his notepad. “Something like that. It’s a mystery
of the first magnitude, if you must know.”

“I don’t
getcha.”

He sat back in
his swivel chair and stretched. Outside, through the pale-green Venetian
blinds, it looked as if a dark thunderstorm was looming from the west. It was
only one-thirty, but they had switched on all the office lights, and there was
a humid electricity in the air that didn’t do anything to make him feel
better.-

“I’m totally
baffled, if you must know,” he said patiently. “She says she loves me, but she
doesn’t want to be hugged, she’s reluctant to kiss, and she won’t even, make
arrangements for another date. I ask her why, and she goes into histrionics and
says there’s some kind of mysterious reason that she can’t explain.”

“Do you like
her that much?” Maggie asked.

“What do you
mean?”

“I mean, do you
like her enough to take that kind of stuff?”

He shook his
head. “I don’t know. I like her a lot. I love her, I think.”

“Oh.”

Gene saw
Maggie’s disappointed expression. “Come on, Maggie, he said. “It’s got to
happen sooner or later. You said so yourself.”

“I know-that. I
just don’t want you to get hurt”

“Maggie, I’m
thirty-two.”

“So you keep
telling me. Eight years to go till you’re forty. Too young to settle down but
too old to get hurt.” Gene couldn’t help laughing. “Get out of here before I
marry you,” he joked. Maggie was leaving when his telephone rang. He picked it
up. “Mr. Keiller? There’s a call for you,” the switchboard girl said. “Sounds
like someone called Sumpler.”

Semple,
pronounced with a heavy French accent. The way that Lorie’s mother spoke.
“Okay,” said Gene uncertainly. “Put her through.” When Mrs. .Semple spoke, she
seemed curiously close, as if she was standing right next to him and whispering
in his ear. Her voice was rich and vibrant, and she sounded as intimate and
confiding as his own. mother.

“Gene? How is
your shoulder?”

“Hi, Mrs.
Semple. It’s fine, thanks. You did a beautiful sewing-up job there. I don’t
know why you didn’t become a professional surgeon.”

“It was
something I picked up from an old Turkish doctor in Zagazig. Nothing special,
I’m afraid. You may always have a scar.”

“I expect I can
live with it. How’s Lorie?”

“Lorie is very
well.”

“She’s not at
work.”