Three Rivers (45 page)

“We will talk to Alexis,” said Alexander, “and arrange something wonderful, because Sakkara is something very special that he knows well. It was Alexis who taught me to love Sakkara as he does.”

And then, suddenly, they were there in the center of the ancient city of Memphis.

Memphis was the City of the Living, as Sakkara was the City of the Dead. There was something about it that Isabel liked at once. On a site in Memphis there is a simple building with a long flight of stairs going up one side of it to a balcony. When Isabel and Alexander arrived at that site, there were no bus tours and no tourists, just a few of the local dragomen who were standing around talking.

“I have a surprise for you,” said Alexander. “There is something wonderful here. It will take only a few minutes,
and it is something special to see on the way to your wedding and the trip up the Nile.”

They left the air-conditioned car and went up the flight of stairs, after being greeted by the dragomen, who all seemed to know Alexander. The doors were thrown open, and they looked down upon the enormous, magnificent, recumbent figure of Ramses II. It was breathtaking, just lying there under a shelter, in this sleepy little village, all that was left of a great dynasty.

Isabel walked the length of the platform with Alexander, looking down upon Ramses. She noticed Alexander look at his watch and smile, and then she knew that they must go. He stopped her, saying no, there was a little more time, and so she kept looking down and studying the colossal sculpture, one of the world’s greatest works of art. She could hear many men talking and a great deal of laughter outside. Other people must have arrived. It was then that Alexander put his arm around her, and the two of them strolled out of the shelter and started down the stairs to the waiting car.

She saw that twenty or thirty villagers had gathered around six magnificently draped and decorated camels and their drivers. She could not believe it. It was Ishta and her keeper, Hosni, and Alexis’s camels and drivers from Giza.

“Oh, Alexander, what a surprise, how divine!”

“I cannot take credit for this. It was Alexis. They have come from the desert to escort you from Memphis to the boat. He told me you had a camel escort of sorts when you first arrived in Cairo, and now you have another.”

Isabel was almost on the verge of tears at the lovingness of it all, the immense effort that was continually being made to make her happy. She went with Alexander and spoke to the men. They expressed elaborate congratulations through Alexander to Isabel. She went to Ishta and greeted her, seeing she had the great silver neckpiece that she had bought for her happily dangling from her neck.

The head dragoman went to Isabel and extended his good wishes on behalf of himself and the village. He called out an order to someone in the group and, within seconds, two fellahin, draped in black, their eyes heavy with kohl and sweet smiles on their lips, ran up to her in their bare feet and gave her a few pale pink, full-blown roses. They had been nibbled by insects, and were rusted
around the edges, but they were from some country garden around Memphis, and the gesture was so sweet that Isabel only saw them as the more special for that. She took them in her hands, and everyone broke out in smiles and chatter.

The dragoman spoke through Alexander and told Isabel that he was touched that she should come to them on the way to her wedding to see Ramses. They knew that the boat was waiting for her and were proud to have a look at the bride who was so beautiful. As the head man of the village, could he please offer a gesture of affection from them all? He handed her from the palm of his hand a small faience statue of the god Bes. He was very long-winded and flowery in his speech, and she was amused at his pride and touched by his kindness. She thanked him.

Alexander warned her that she had better move because the village was really awake now with the excitement of the wedding. They went quickly into her car. The six riders mounted the decorated camels, and the villagers all milled around as the camels went into position, three on either side of the car. The entourage left the village. It was a happy, gay sight to see. The contrasts of the old and new were fantastic. The sleek, long, green Rolls, purring along with the camels riding close to it as an escort, made its way down a wide dirt road that led to the very bank of the Nile. The villagers were all trailing on foot behind.

Isabel was laughing and felt so joyful as she watched the riders and heard the
hup, hup, hup
, as they drove the beasts on. There was the sound of the men calling out flowery wishes for joy and happiness to the bride as they trotted along close to her car and waved to her. There were sweet songs coming up from the local villagers and their children as well. It was, she thought, all something out of the Arabian Nights.

The tinkling of the camels’ bells, the sound of their decorations, were another kind of music that mixed with the dull, thudding sound of their hooves on the sand road.

Alexander was amused, and translated some of the things that the drivers were calling out as they escorted her to her bridegroom. Such things as the beauty of the bride, the sweetness of the day, the joy she would have in the night. They spoke of Egypt and how it would love her and be good to her. Then they called out things about the bridegroom: how he would be kindness itself to the bride
and how he would provide for her. How he was a strong man among men. Then they became more bold and spoke of his virility and how he would satisfy her and keep her locked up and full of his seed always.

Alexander laughed and looked at her, bent over and kissed her on the cheek. Taking the Saladin Diamonds in his hands, he played with them and said, “My dear, it is like taking a queen to her wedding.”

The road suddenly seemed to come to an end, and the car and camels stopped in a cloud of flying sand. There were a few children waiting at the end of the road and at the beginning of a six-foot-wide path that had been cut through the undergrowth. Boards had been laid, and kilims overlapping each other covered them.

Isabel could see, fifty yards away down the carpeted path, the sails of the felucca at its mooring. The village children in their torn and tattered clothes, with bare, dirty feet and smiling, dirty and scabby faces, peered at her from a distance, all laughing and giggling.

Isabel opened up her compact and did a final check on her face in the small, beveled mirror. She dabbed some powder on her nose and made some adjustments to her hair, closed the compact and, looking at Alexander, said, “Well, this is it.”

The two of them left the air-conditioned car. They saw Alexis coming up the path from the felucca. Isabel passed the drivers and the seated camels and thanked them very much. Then she went on to meet Alexis.

She saw his eyes fill with tears over the sheer beauty of her. He thought her magnificent in all her jewels and the Fortuny dress. Her face shone and her soul came forth through her eyes just as he had seen it the first time he saw her in Chicago. He tried to contain himself, to hold back in front of all the people, but he could not help it. He simply gathered her in his arms and kissed her.

Up rose little chuckling noises from the men standing around, sighs from the black-draped ladies and giggles from the children. Alexis got himself under control. “It is not quite right you know. I am supposed to be more cool. But you are so beautiful, I could not help myself.”

Isabel looked at this handsome man whom she loved so much and burst into peals of laughter. He was wearing a banana-colored suit for the wedding.

“Yes, I told you I would,” he said, laughing, and they
stood facing each other. How clever of him to do something like that, she thought. Something so amusing and intimate, a joke only known between them. It made it all a bit less serious, their heavy love for each other and the coming ceremonies.

“Isabel, take off your diamond wedding band and give it to Alexander.” Alexis then gave Alexander a small jewelers’ box with the ceremonial gold wedding bands, telling him that when they were called for during the ceremony, those were the right rings to produce.

He turned to Isabel and told her that during the actual ceremony each of them would slip a ring on the other’s finger, but he was not a man to wear a wedding band, and so they had been designed to go as guards on either side of the diamond wedding ring that now lay in Alexander’s pocket. Alexander would take Alexis’s ring back to Cairo and have it made to the proper size for her.

Just then two servants came up from the boat and across the kilims with trays of soft fruit drinks and sweet cakes for the camel drivers, villagers and children standing all around them. Alexis whispered something to Alexander, who said, “Well, old boy, this is it,” and the three friends, Isabel in between the two men, walked down the kilims to the felucca.

Little children who lived nearby brought forth armfuls of long-stemmed flowers — Nile flowers, wild field flowers — and ran in front of the three with smiles and much laughter and strewed their path of kilims with the blossoms.

Isabel wondered how on earth Alexis had managed all this.

Later she learned that he owned the farms and mooring and most of Memphis and that these were actually his people, as their fathers before them had been and their fathers before them and on it went, far back into history.

Alexis stepped into the felucca first, helping Isabel, who was backed up by Alexander. He took her by the waist and swung her down to the deck. When he felt her breasts against his chest, he whispered, “I would like to take you in front of all of them, right now, and forget the ceremony, but I want you to be my wife more.”

He put her down, and as he did, a sexual passion seemed to rage in him for her. He wanted her so much at
that moment that all he could think of was how divine it would be to rape her.

Alexander stepped in between them at that moment and took Isabel by the arm. Alexis kissed her hand, and leaving them, he went forward and stood under the canopy of flowers. The bride and the best man walked arm in arm, slowly, to imaginary music, towards the bow of the felucca.

Isabel was taken aback yet again. It was simple, but exquisite. She saw four poles decorated with green leaves and white camellias. They held up a canopy of palm fronds and white lilies, heavy with scent. Trailing down from the canopy were stephanotis and jasmine.

Alexander felt her surprise. He whispered in her ear, “Alexis thought that there should be at least one Jewish thing about this wedding, hence your
huppah
, darling.” They smiled at one another.

The boat seemed to be filled with men. Alexander introduced her to the chief justice of Egypt, who was performing the civil ceremony, and then the High Priest of the Coptic Church, who was a most regal and very pure-looking man. He looked at Isabel in more of a stern than friendly manner. There was also a scribe who sat at a small table with two chairs in front of it. The table was covered with half a dozen seals and stamps and many papers.

Under the canopy of flowers were a pair of high-backed wicker chairs with arms. Casually draped over each was a cloth of gold embroidered with silver pomegranates and a cloth of silver embroidered with golden poppies. Standing in front of the chairs, to the left, was Alexis.

Alexander walked Isabel to the canopy, where Alexis stepped forward and took her hand, leading her the few steps to the chairs. They both sat down. They smiled and chatted to one another while Alexander went to the scribe and recorded the details necessary for the ceremony to take place. That done, he and the chief justice asked them to rise, and suddenly it was all terribly official. The chief justice had trimmed the ceremony down to no more than three minutes, but to Isabel they were the longest three minutes of her life.

The chief justice asked Alexis to take Isabel’s hand, and for the first time, she panicked. He felt her hand begin to tremble and held it as tight as he could, hoping to
reassure her. Alexis looked down into her face and was almost frightened, for it was as if some great shadow were passing over her.

While the chief justice was performing the ceremony, Isabel gave a great sigh, almost a sob, and then a few tears trickled out of the corners of her eyes. A moment later the life and sparkle flooded back into them again, and she smiled at Alexis just as the chief justice asked Alexander for the rings.

When Alexis kissed her, she looked into his face and found him so handsome in his banana-colored suit, the best suit she had ever seen, with his tie of dark brown, heavy raw silk. He smiled, and the first thing that she said to her husband was, “I never dreamt I could be in love with a man in a banana-colored suit, but I am. Imagine! Enough to marry one! Oh, I do love you,” and they kissed.

The chief justice shook Alexis’s hand and kissed the bride’s hand. Alexander said, “None of that for me,” and kissed Isabel on the lips. The High Priest came forward and asked them to be seated as husband and wife under the canopy so that he could take them and put them in the arms of God through the Coptic Church of Egypt.

The two of them sat together, holding hands and looking at each other. The priest performed a two-minute service in the form of a blessing, and then it was over. They were married by the law of the land and the law of God. He congratulated them, and they stood up. Isabel Wells, a Jewish girl from Massachusetts, was married on the Nile in Egypt to the most eligible man in the Middle East.

They thanked him and Isabel mentioned that the priest did not look very happy.

“No, he is not,” Alexis said. “He would have liked to carry on for about an hour and a half, giving us the works. Well, I could not have stood that, and, I am sure, neither could you.” He put his arm around her and said, “Well, we are married in any event, my love.”

They went over to the scribe and sat down to sign paper after paper. Alexander and the chief justice signed as witnesses and at last the scribe stamped and sealed the papers with a flourish.

They stood up and Alexis said, “Please, everyone, come.” To Isabel he said, “We must offer our guests some refreshment before they leave.” Isabel had not realized
how terribly nervous and excited she must have been, because it was only after she left the canopy a married woman that she realized that they were sailing up the Nile and evidently had been from the time they had boarded the felucca. What had happened was that as soon as the bride was aboard they had cast off into the mainstream of the river.