Beloved Gomorrah

by Justine Saracen

  “Uh, yes. Thank you. That sounds wonderful. This is my first day on my feet and I’m spent.”

  Kaia smiled and backed out of the room, closing the door softly in front of her, but Joanna limped over and opened it again. She’d had enough of the stupefying solitude of her hospital room and craved to be around human activity again. If she couldn’t stay on the deck above her, she could at least listen to its sounds: Kaia talking to Jibril, the invisible Abdullah clanging pots in the galley, even the seagulls flying overhead.

  She glanced at herself in the mirror and was shocked at how battered she looked. The bandage on one side of her face made her look frightful. Was it still necessary? Peeling back one corner, she saw that the slash underneath was bright pink and swollen, but it was fully closed and looked free of infection. The only discoloration was the residue of the Mercurochrome the nurse had painted on her.

  Gritting her teeth, she unpeeled the adhesive strips that held the gauze pad against the sensitive skin and removed it. Ah, much better. She still looked like hell but more like a prizefighter now than a war casualty.

  Then, weary from the strain of so much walking on uneven ground, she slipped off her sandals and hobbled over to the bed. With a sigh of relief, she let herself drop onto it without removing the bedspread.

  Strange where fate had taken her, she brooded, staring at the white ceiling. Exactly a month earlier she had gotten the letter from the Egyptian Ministry of Culture accepting her proposed work for the underwater exhibit.

  Having it accepted thrilled her, of course. What person wouldn’t be ecstatic to be part of an exhibit of such magnitude? But it also reassured her that in choosing marine biology and a nine-to-five job, she hadn’t killed off her creative imagination. Playing at both science and art was a juggling act, to be sure, and was possible in this case only because the British Museum of Natural History had granted her generous leave.

  What incredible luck that Charlie’s design had also been accepted and that they could travel and work together. His wife Viviane had taken a little convincing, but she’d finally agreed to see him off for two weeks. Charlie was already sixty, knew he would rise no higher in the ranks of museum curators, and had no aspirations to do so. He had enough seniority to take leave time for private diving projects yet not so much that his presence was indispensible to his department. God, what would she have done if he hadn’t been by her side when the sharks came?

  She wished she could remember what had happened, but nothing came back to her. Only vague flickerings of checking depth and oxygen gauges, of something being wrong with the site, of Charlie carrying something in his net. It tired and frustrated her to attempt to reconstruct the event, like patching together a glass from shards. Better to simply ask Charlie to tell her the details. She was ready to hear them now.

  In the meantime, she would enjoy the company of Kaia Kapulani. Joanna had seen most of her films, all big-box-office, general-audience movies: Carmen of the Factories, Vendetta, Samson and Delilah. She had always been beautiful, though not in the way that Joanna found interesting, at least in past years.

  Then came Queen of Thebes, for which she won an Academy Award. Another sprawling wide-screen historical with over-simplified heroes and villains, but playing Hatchepsut, Kaia had delivered her lines with a depth and nuance that the other characters lacked.

  Joanna vividly recalled the final scene, as the female king lay on her deathbed, confronting her weasel of a stepson Thutmose III. “Finish, if you can, the evil you’ve begun, of erasing my name. But I have scattered Egypt with my images and temples, and you’ll never efface them all. Karnak itself cries out Hatchepsut from every wall.”

  Kaia had paused, straining for breath, yet remained upright. “I hear the footfall of Anubis, come to fetch me to the Judgment, yet my heart is light. When the seasons have numbered as the stars, men will still know my name and will say, ‘Hatchepsut was pharaoh, and the land did prosper.’ Now see to your own name, and get you from my sight.”

  Damn, the woman could act.

  She must be in her forties now, Joanna mused. Age had taken away some of the overstated voluptuousness of the early roles and replaced it with solemnity, had hardened her in the way that fire hardens fine pottery and reveals the final colors of its glaze. The faint crow’s-feet around her huge brown eyes made them seem as much wise as seductive, and the demarcation—one could not call it a wrinkle—around her mouth had changed pout to determination. Yes, it is a very beautiful mouth, Joanna thought as she drifted off to sleep on her soft new bed.

  *

  “Oh, there you are. I was wondering where you’d gone off to.” Kaia greeted her husband.

  Bernard Allen stood for a moment between the sliding-glass doors of the salon, his diminutive frame making an unimpressive silhouette. “I was talking to the dock master about the docking fee. It’s higher than at Sharm el-Sheikh, but he refused to lower it. Bastards.”

  Kaia frowned at what sounded like another confrontation, but it wasn’t worth caring about. “I brought our diver back. She’s in the VIP stateroom now.”

  “The stateroom? Why couldn’t you put her in one of the twin cabins? I’m sure it wouldn’t make any difference to her.”

  “Because I wanted her to have the best. We never use the VIP anyhow.” Kaia dropped down onto one of the cushioned chairs and tried not to sound defiant. “We want her to be happy, don’t we?”

  “Did you pay her hospital bill with the company card, as I told you to?” Bernard hiked his belt over his slight paunch and tucked in his shirt. The rings of sweat under his arms told her he’d been arguing. He always sweated when he got angry.

  “No, they wouldn’t accept it. I had to pay cash. But I got a receipt.”

  “Cash? What the hell were you thinking!? You know how these Arabs are. You have to haggle over everything. You should have told them no card, no pay. Now how the hell am I going to write off the expense?”

  “Lower your voice or she’ll hear you,” Kaia hissed. “And stop worrying. Your accountant will straighten everything out. He always has.”

  “And I’ll have to pay him for it. Next time, show a little backbone.” He glanced down the staircase toward the cabins. “So, our little diver’s settled in now, is she? I guess I should meet her and play the host.”

  “Change your shirt first. There’s a clean one folded up over there with the laundry that Jibril brought back. I’ll go downstairs and see if she’s awake.”

  “Yeah, do that.” Bernie turned away, unbuttoned his soiled shirt, and began to rifle through the pile of clean laundry.

  *

  Kaia stopped at the foot of the stairs, surprised to see the door to the VIP stateroom open. Was everything all right? She crept closer until, standing in the doorway, she saw Joanna sleeping, fully dressed, just the way she had left her an hour earlier.

  She hesitated, uncertain whether to call from the doorway or intrude in Joanna’s private space. Finally she stepped inside to waken the sleeping woman, then stopped, feeling both the shame and the pleasure of the voyeur.

  Joanna lay on her back, on her good shoulder, partially tilted toward the door and with her injured leg slightly drawn up. She was still dressed in tan cargo pants and shirt, though the shirt had become untucked. Her injured arm lay across her, below her breasts. Very nice, full breasts, pressed together by the position of her arms.

  Kaia stepped closer and studied the face she’d dared not stare at before. Loosely curled hair that was a shade too dark to call blond and in need of cutting was swept back from her face. The new bright-pink scar in front of her ear ran from her hairline almost to her chin. Kaia’s guilt was in that scar.

  She moved her focus to the rest of the face: the curved brows that seemed almost to frown, even in sleep, the oval lids that covered piercing blue eyes, the long straight nose. Her narrow, rather sharp chin made her appear youthful, but the absence of plumpness in her cheeks and the faint lines around the well-developed muscles of her mouth r
evealed the mature woman. She guessed her to be about thirty-five.

  A French face, Kaia decided, using her personal inventory of national faces. A smart face too. Her too-pale skin, from five days in a hospital bed, starkly contrasted to her otherwise athletic form. Her mouth was slightly open, and her lovely young breasts rose and fell with her breathing. Did she have a boyfriend, someone who was allowed to touch those breasts?

  Kaia backed away again through the door, then climbed the stairs back to the salon puzzling over her conflicting emotions: interest in a new person that fate had brought into her home, embarrassment at having violated the woman’s privacy, and a sudden urge to protect her.

  “So, where’s our princess?” Bernie met her at the top of the stairs in a clean shirt.

  “She’s sleeping. It’s her first day out of the hospital, after all. Let’s put off the introductions until supper. And don’t call her princess. Her name is Joanna Boleyn.”

  “Boleyn!” Bernie snorted. “That’s a good one. I’ll have to remind her the next time she’s attacked by sharks not to lose her head.” He walked away chortling.

  Chapter Six

  Joanna awoke at some sound, though she was not sure what. She drew herself up, befuddled, trying to recall where she was. She concentrated on the sounds around her, the faint calls of sea birds, the footfall over her head on the main deck, and the soft murmur of voices. Ah, yes. Kaia talking to someone male. But she detected another sound that was harder to place, and it took her a minute to make sense of it.

  It was the rhythmic droning in Arabic that she’d heard every day from the local men outside her workshop window. Someone was in the adjoining cabin saying one of the daily prayers. Not wanting to disturb whoever it was, she was careful to make no sound, but the prayer ended in a few moments. The other cabin door creaked and Jibril walked past her open doorway, apparently without seeing her, and ascended the spiral staircase.

  His passing by brought home a central question: was she going to stay in her little cabin and be waited on, or should she attempt to struggle up the steps on the first day? Bedridden guests grow tiresome very quickly, she decided, and made up her mind.

  She glanced at herself in the mirror again and raked her fingers through her disheveled hair. She would have to do something about cutting it soon. Then, grasping the cane propped against the bulkhead, she set about negotiating the stairs.

  However, the deed was rather more challenging than the thought. The whole architecture of the staircase required two usable legs, but Joanna’s bruised left leg wouldn’t support her full weight without causing a jolt of pain. Well, that’s what the cane was for, she told herself, and began the ascent.

  Right foot…cane…lift, right foot…cane…lift. Gripping the banister, she hauled herself up, step by step, until she arrived at the top, panting.

  Kaia rushed to her side. “You poor dear. Why didn’t you call me? I’d have helped you.”

  “It’s all right. I have to rebuild those muscles,” she said with a strained voice. “You know, use ’em or lose ’em.”

  “Welcome to the upper world,” Bernie said, holding out his hand. Joanna took it and studied her host.

  He was a short man in his fifties, well-tanned and attractive, with dark hair thinning slightly at the top and thick, black eyebrows. His eyes were gray, intelligent, but something cold, even calculating in his glance put her off. Perhaps it was just the look of a big Hollywood agent. A rich, successful one.

  His handshake was firm, overly firm, in fact, and it took her a moment to identify what was disagreeable about it too. He had merely clutched the edges of her hand, curving his to prevent their palms touching.

  “…chicken in wine sauce. I hope you don’t mind,” Bernie was saying as he guided them to the table. She hadn’t been paying attention.

  “That sounds just fine. Delicious, in fact.” She hobbled to the table and slid onto the cushioned bench.

  The smaller of the two tables in the salon was fixed next to a semicircular bench, upholstered in some kind of canvas, while chairs stood on the outer side. An overhead panel of six lights could illuminate the area at night, but at the moment, late-afternoon sunlight poured in from the salon window next to it. The tabletop, inlaid in green marble, was set for three.

  “I think you’ll find Abdullah’s cooking much better than hospital food,” Bernie said. “It took us awhile, but we finally found a cook who could make the kind of meals we’re used to. Wine?” He held up a freshly opened bottle of chardonnay.

  Joanna raised her good hand. “Thank you. Not for a couple of days. I’m still taking an antibiotic.”

  “Ah, yes. Of course.” He smiled agreement and filled his own and Kaia’s glasses. Kaia smiled as well, though stiffly, and her eyes darted back and forth nervously between her husband and Joanna.

  “I want you to know how grateful I am that you’re taking care of me this way. I can’t imagine how I’d manage in the hostel, with no access to food. You’re so kind…”

  “Don’t even think about it,” Bernie said with paternal gruffness. “We’re all just working to get you back to what you were doing before the accident. And while we’re on the subject, what was that exactly? Something to do with the underwater art project, isn’t it? We’ve seen a few pieces being lowered into the water.”

  The change of subject was deft, but Joanna brightened at a chance to talk about her work and nodded while she finished chewing her first bite of chicken. “Yes, I’m one of the artists contributing. What you probably saw were parts of the ‘Great Balance’ of my friend Marion.” She sipped her iced tea.

  “I’d love for you to tell us about the project in general. I’ve noticed a few articles in the paper, but I confess, I haven’t been paying much attention.” Kaia seemed relaxed now and took a swallow of wine.

  Joanna wiped her mouth. “Well, it’s essentially a two-purpose undertaking, a coral-regeneration project and an art exhibit. The larger structures, the walls and arches and so forth, were brought down months ago. The whole point is to create a coral city, you see, so most of the surfaces are made of porous marine concrete and seeded with algae, porifera, hydrocorals, hard and soft corals. The official name of the project is some pompous title that ends with ‘Ecological Art,’ so you can see its purpose. Most of us just call it al medina.”

  “The city.” Kaia translated, revealing at least a tourist’s knowledge of Arabic. “So where do you enter the picture?”

  “Well, professionally I’m a marine biologist, and I specialize in coral. People who don’t know the ocean think that coral is a plant or, at most, a single animal, but it’s not. It’s not even a single species. It consists of colonies of species, all occupying the same niche. The huge variety you see in a healthy coral reef is a mix of cultures, if you will, competing just enough to keep each other in check but no one dominating. It’s quite fragile, actually.”

  “Uh-huh.” The confusion on Kaia’s face told Joanna she had wandered a little off topic.

  “What I mean to say is that I was chosen to contribute a work to the underwater city precisely because I was a marine biologist, like some of the other artists. Our sculptures will add to the coral reef that Egypt wants to build but also make the city more like an art exhibit, presumably to attract tourists.”

  “And you? What will your piece be?” Bernard asked.

  “I’m doing a fountain and several figures.”

  Kaia threw her head back. “Ha, what a fantastic joke. An underwater water-fountain.”

  “It’s an even better joke than that.” Joanna laughed. “We’ve made an air fountain, with a reservoir of air underneath. Divers can blow into it or pump air in from their regulators, and the air will bubble out very slowly from the top. Depending on how much air they pump in, the fountain could emit bubbles for up to an hour. But I’m also adding a group of statues.”

  “Of course, you need people. Will they be like the god statues we saw?” Kaia asked.

  Joanna shook
her head. “Marion actually chiseled her statues the old-fashioned way in basalt and some other materials. The one of Osiris is made of some blue mineral. Mine and those of a few others will be different.”

  “How different?” Bernie asked, scraping off the last food on his plate, though his monotone suggested he asked out of courtesy rather than interest. No matter. Joanna answered for Kaia’s sake.

  “It’s a process developed by a British artist Jason Taylor for his underwater museum in Cancun, Mexico. He made casts of actual people, hundreds of them, of all sizes, ages, races, types, etc., then poured special marine concrete into the molds. The finished statues were exact models of the people with facial expression and everything. But because they were porous and in some cases seeded, within a year, they were covered with coral.”

  Kaia winced. “That doesn’t sound so appealing, having faces disappear under vegetation. Statues sprouting wiggly growths seems, I don’t know, a little creepy.”

  “Sounds like a waste of time to me. I mean why not just put down blocks and grow more coral?” Bernie poured himself another glass of wine and topped up his wife’s glass.

  “I suppose the idea was to blend people into the environment, you know, a sort of dust-unto-dust theme.” Joanna redirected her attention to Kaia. “But I agree with you. When I saw the evolving photos, I also didn’t like watching a human face turn into a bush of coral. But I do like the idea of putting portrait statues under water.”

  “So what are you doing with your statues? They’ll just be people standing around? I’d love to see them.” Kaia’s interest seemed genuine.

  Joanna sighed. “They don’t exist yet. I have the designs, but the accident brought everything to a halt. I want to have three women of different generations and a male figure, standing separately. That one will probably be Charlie, my partner. He’s got a very sculpture-worthy face. But for the women, I’ll be looking around El Gouna for the kind of faces I have in mind. Once I find them, the sculpture part goes pretty quickly. About two days for each statue.”