Beloved Gomorrah

by Justine Saracen

  Joanna laughed coldly. “Ironically, that’s the message implied by both the transliterations. That the two cities were not destroyed because of their innate evil, but because they offended the ‘religious community’ of the Jahwe fundamentalists. They called themselves the Angels of God, and were…well…terrorists, pure and simple. Genocidal terrorists.”

  Gamal sighed deeply. “You may be right, Dr. Boleyn, but even if what you say about the tablets is true, and you can establish a parallel, you do your cause no good by rubbing the faces of the Egyptian public in it.”

  “Cause? I have no cause, Mr. Gamal. I have only some tablets written thousands of years ago that give a firsthand account of what in the Bible has the status of legend. Fanaticism then was not much different from fanaticism now, and you do the modern world no favor by ignoring it.” She took a breath. “Forgive me if that sounded rude, but I think you’ll agree that religious fundamentalism is a destructive force in the world today.”

  Gamal stared up at the ceiling, then took a deep breath. “Unfortunately, Dr. Boleyn, religion is not an intellectual matter in Egypt, as it might be in the United Kingdom. The majority of Egyptians are poor, and for them, belief in the truth of the Quran is vital, their consolation in a puzzlingly cruel life. Whatever you have found, and however authentic it may be, you do not have the luxury of being ‘right’ here. You must be judicious and subtle.”

  “Subtle.” Joanna turned the concept around in her mind. “Yes, we can be subtle. Will it be subtle enough if the tablet texts are published only in the United Kingdom?”

  “If they contradict the story of Lot as radically as you say, then that would obviously be…judicious.”

  “And if Lot is hinted at in one of the statues but is not identified as such, that would be subtle?”

  Gamal scratched the edge of his mustache again. “You really are pushing the boundaries, Dr. Boleyn, and you may get us both in great trouble. But it’s true, if you make no identification, I should think it would be safe.”

  “Well, it looks like we’ve got everything settled then,” Charlie said, standing up.

  Joanna glanced at her watch and stood up as well. “I’m glad we could reach an agreement, Mr. Gamal. And we’ve taken up too much of your time. Thank you for seeing us.”

  Gamal shook their hands and walked with them to the door. “And thank you for calling our attention to the vandalism. We will contact Khadija Saïd immediately. I look forward to seeing your final work in our exhibit.”

  As the office door closed behind them and they strode toward the stairs, Charlie glanced toward her. “Civic duty accomplished. What do you want to do the rest of the day?”

  In a sudden flash Joanna recalled the three of them, she and Charlie and Kaia, playing dive-school in the warm shallow waters at the end of Bikar road. Her guiding touch, hip to hip, their shared air, and afterwards, laughter. That’s what she wanted to do. She forced away the thought.

  “We’re going to make us some pretty girls.”

  “Great idea. Can’t wait to get started on that.” He took her arm but it was cold comfort.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Kaia sat in the guest cabin of the Hina, turning her father’s cane idly between her fingers. She brought it up to her nose, wondering if it held a residue of Joanna’s hand lotion, but she detected only a faint whiff of old varnish.

  Three days had passed since she’d quarreled with Bernard, two nights in which she’d slept in the guest cabin instead of the marriage bed. Bernard had spoken only the minimum, asking where the clean laundry was, warning that they were about to run out of orange juice. They ate dinner together but in near silence, and the rest of the time they avoided each other. He’d left without saying good-bye and now, thank God, he was on his way to New York to face the producers of the movie he was about to renege on.

  Bernard’s silence was ominous because she’d never experienced it before. Of course, she’d also never stood up to him before, and neither of them knew how to handle the unexpected rebellion.

  The professional calculations ran through Kaia’s mind constantly, and she was certain they were running through Bernard’s as well. Her career was in his hands, but his very profitable agency depended almost completely on her celebrity. Now he had to negotiate his way out of a contract he had bludgeoned his way into, and it wouldn’t be pleasant. He’d find a way to punish her and get her back in line, she had no doubt.

  But it would not be in bed, of that she was sure. She cast her mind back over the twenty years they had been together. They had never had a real honeymoon, since the marriage had been one of convenience for both of them and passion had never reared its mysterious head.

  As far as sex was concerned, it was rather like that of other couples, she supposed. Twice a week in the beginning, then once a week, and finally only on vacation when Bernard had no access to the starlets he managed. She was just as glad. Sex with him had never much excited her, though her naturally healthy body usually produced an orgasm from pure friction. Though he never actually hurt her, she always felt an element of force in the way he rode her, making her close her legs under him so he had to pump harder.

  When their marital sex tapered off, it was clear where he directed his attention. The new talent on his roster was easy prey, and she could almost always tell by their behavior which of the bouncy young things had passed the bedding test. She also overheard him talking on the phone to the occasional Tracy and Tiffany and assumed they were high-priced escorts who’d let him do some of the kinkier things he liked. But as long as he never brought home any diseases, that was fine with her. The arrangement suited them both.

  She’d managed it just as she’d managed the balancing act of career and family. Or had she? Kiele and Mei had tolerated him for a year or so, then seemed to actively avoid him, and she couldn’t understand why. He’d plied them with gifts, expensive clothes, even a horse. But a coldness always pervaded the room when they were together. She’d asked once what the problem was, but they said nothing, so she decided they preferred their amiable but chronically unemployed Hawaiian father and let it slide. In any case, the situation resolved itself when they went off to college.

  She laid the cane aside and wandered into the main cabin. If she was going to stay in the guest cabin, she needed to move her things. She gathered up her underwear and shorts from the drawer and shifted them to the empty drawers in the new cabin. On the second trip, she collected an armload of shirts from the closet and, as an afterthought, picked up the little plaster statue of the goddess Hina. It was a piece of tourist kitsch, which she’d bought long before they purchased and named the yacht, but it had sentimental value. She held it toward the light, studying the blue coral-studded dress that swirled around the goddess and the crescent moon in her hand.

  She set the figurine on top of a set of drawers and hung her shirts in the cabin locker. Lethargy came over her and she dropped down again onto the bed, listening to the sounds of Abdullah making lunch in the galley. What was she going to do when Bernard came back? With no movie to begin in the fall, how would they keep up the various payments on all their property? She felt as if a heavy weight were on her chest that kept her from breathing. When had she last been happy?

  Ah, she remembered exactly. It was under water, swimming in a circle in the shallow water near the beach off Bikar road, sharing air with Joanna. Joanna Boleyn, who never lost her head, whose lips were so soft, whose hair and cheeks and breasts Kaia wanted to touch. Was there nothing of that day she could recapture?

  At least she could return to the water. The El Gouna diving center offered lessons, and all she had to do was walk up the dock to their office and sign up. Yes, she would do that today, before Bernard returned and tried to browbeat her. She would have a few new things in place before he came back. Permanent separate quarters, diving lessons, and a serious discussion of the acting jobs she would consent to in the future.

  Revitalized, she sat up again and returned to the master
cabin to fetch the last of her things. But where was her credit card? She’d left it with her watch on the night table a few nights ago, and now only the watch was there. She checked all her own drawers again, but no, she remembered distinctly leaving both card and watch by the bed. Bernard must have put it some place to keep her from using it. Typical of him to try to control her that way too.

  Angry now, she began rifling through his drawers. The top drawer was full of his expensive underwear, with a side section for his male cosmetics. The second drawer held tee shirts and socks, the third drawer cashmere sweaters. The bottom drawer was a jumble of slippers, bathing suits, fishing and hunting magazines. Nothing.

  Where would he have hidden the card so she couldn’t use it? Then she remembered. Of course. How stupid she’d been. In the safe in the smaller of the two crew cabins that he called his office. He used his little lockbox for contracts, cash, his Rolex watch when he went diving, and other things she’d never asked about.

  It had annoyed her slightly that it was his safe and not theirs, and that it was intended to be secure from her intrusion as well. Bernard was entitled to his safe, but he was not entitled to keep business secrets from her, especially since his business, by and large, was her. On the very first day he had brought the twelve-by-fifteen steel box home to have it fitted into the yacht, she’d discreetly obtained the code from the accompanying papers. She’d scribbled it on a tag and put it in her jewelry box and in five years had never looked at it. But she still had it, goddam it, and the time had come. She slid the lower drawer shut with a thud and got to her feet.

  Once back in the guest cabin, she opened her jewelry box, though “jewelry” hardly described its contents. Five or six of her favorite earrings, a locket with her daughters’ baby pictures, souvenir bracelets and chains that had slowly lost their sentimental value. And under the velvet lining lay the scrap of paper.

  She hurried into the cabin that passed as his office and knelt before the tiny safe. She wasn’t sure whether to feel guilty for trespassing or amused at her own cleverness and guile. If she hadn’t been so angry at his attempt to control her, she might have enjoyed the role of safecracker. But this intrusion into the safe scarcely counted as cracking since the code worked smoothly and instantly. It was almost laughably easy to break into Bernard’s sanctum sanctorum, and she didn’t even have to do it quietly. “What a fool you are, Bernard,” she said out loud.

  She yanked open the door and peered inside. To her surprise, it was rather full. Several long envelopes held contracts, another thick one held two thousand dollars in hundred-dollar bills, and a tiny cardboard box held a man’s diamond ring. Hmm. She hadn’t known about the ring. No matter. She slid her hand inside again, groping for anything small and plastic, and…well, well, there it was. The bastard.

  Disgusted with the whole procedure but pleased with herself for defeating him and finding her card, she began cramming the contracts back into the small space. But one of the envelopes, manila in eight-by-ten format, had been stored curved rather than folded and was harder to reinsert than the others. The envelope was eroded at the edges, either very old or very often handled. She opened it and slid out the contents.

  Black-and-white photographs. About a dozen. Perplexed, she sat back on her heels and leafed through them, her confusion turning slowly to revulsion. It was children, mostly girls. Pre-adolescents in various sexual poses. Girls of ten or eleven, lying naked and spread-eagled, or standing awkwardly with their little-girl pants around their ankles.

  Vague memories came back to her, of Bernard’s oblique references to making shady movies that nonetheless provided the seed money for him to establish himself as a legitimate agent. He’d never elaborated and she was careful never to ask. Was this what he meant? Was he involved in kiddie porn? The thought sickened her.

  She leafed through more of the revolting photos, disgusted and bewildered that Bernard would keep such a collection. The poses became more lewd as she went through the pile, more sexually explicit. Prepubescent girls with tiny budding breasts, their hands on men’s erect organs or straddling men’s laps, their erect penises jutting up through the childish thighs.

  She dropped the pile as if it had stung her and recoiled so violently she fell back onto the floor. It wasn’t possible. She had to be mistaken. Her heart pounding, she gathered up the last three, delicately and with disgust, scarcely wanting to touch their edges.

  Her daughters, Kiele and Mei, naked, each one touching herself between her legs and both with uncertain, awkward smiles for the camera. The last one was Kiele, lying on her back with her knees drawn up and her legs spread, as if waiting to be penetrated. Yet her hairless, breastless body showed she was a child, no more than eleven.

  Kaia recognized the room, remembered the season. It was the second year she and Bernard were married, when they vacationed for a month at a beach house in Tahiti. The girls had seemed happy at the beginning, less so at the end. And from that time on, the family atmosphere was never the same.

  It began to make sense now. Bernard must have made his first fortune in the child-pornography business. The maggot. That would explain why he’d always been so evasive. Even if she had been able to overlook the pornography, and she wouldn’t have, his encroachment on the innocence of her daughters was unforgivable. Were there more photos, she wondered, suddenly alarmed. What else had the sleazy bastard done? Had he molested them physically?

  She had to talk to Kiele and Mei, but not on the phone. It was too delicate a subject, too long ago, too easy to suppress or deny. They wouldn’t want to talk about it. No, it had to be in person. Her fiftieth birthday. She would pay to bring both girls to Egypt for the celebration. For some quality time together and for a quiet, serious talk.

  She felt like she’d been hit by a truck, a garbage truck, and that it had hit her daughters too and covered all of them with filth. With nausea rising, she crammed the photos back into the envelope and curved it back into the safe. Then she staggered to the toilet and vomited.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Fahimah and Fayruz stood by, all but dancing with anticipation, as Joanna broke away the two molds and exposed the concrete statues inside. Witnessing their own faces in the two heads cast the day before had delighted them no end, but now they were about to see themselves whole.

  Both statues were up on the workbench in sitting positions, one inclining languidly on an elbow, the other bending forward, elbows resting on her knees.

  Joanna placed each of the previously molded heads over their respective concrete torsos. The two girls giggled awkwardly at seeing themselves in stone.

  Fahimah, the older, approached her likeness and ran her finger along one of the protruding irregularities on the drapery. “So many…uh…of these little bumps,” she said. She looked up shyly through limpid black eyes. “And the hair is…not like me.”

  Joanna carefully set the head castings on the table. “Don’t worry, it will be. I have tools to smooth out all the bad spots and make you look pretty. Of course you know that very soon your bodies will be covered with coral, don’t you?”

  “Yes, Charlie told us. But not the faces, right?” Fayruz anxiously stroked the stone cheek with a fingertip.

  “Not right away, though they’ll probably get a little green after a few months. But I promise you, before that happens, we’ll take lots of photos of them under water that you can show to your friends.”

  “That’s great,” Fahimah said, then poked her sister. “Hey, I have work now, and you have school.” The younger girl replied something in Arabic and, punching each other on the shoulder, they scrambled toward the door.

  Joanna watched them for a moment, recalling her own teen years, which were not nearly so innocent, and wondered idly what it would have been like to have a sister, her own Astari or Aina by her side during the hard times. Would’ve been nice to have more people in the family. Or a family at all, now that both parents were gone. Well, she had formed her own life pretty well, solitary a
s it was. She took up her wooden mallet and number-two chisel. Tapping gently, she began to knock away the knobs and bubbles protruding from the concrete forms.

  When she had removed the last of the irregularities with her chisels, she fitted on her goggles and dust mask. Locking the correct wheel onto the axle of the power sander, she ran it along the flowing stone fabric. After a few passes, the girls’ clothing looked smooth, fluid. She loved this part of the process, refining the forms and bringing them ever closer to the person they were taken from. But it was messy business, and soon she was covered with a fine layer of grayish powder.

  She carefully chiseled between the shoulders of the first statue, carving out a hollow. The head fit nicely into the spot and was ready to be cemented. Joanna studied the face of Fayruz-Aina, captured in the flower of her adolescence and felt a sudden swell of outrage at the very thought of Aina’s rape by her own father.

  Even in its original form, the myth of Sodom and Gomorrah had always disgusted her, but finding out it was real horrified her even more. Her mind wandered to the tablets themselves. Another transliteration was due. She fervently hoped it would be relevant and not some unrelated artifact: a cargo list, perhaps, or any of the million things that showed up in cuneiform.

  The only thing that troubled her was that the committee still hadn’t assigned her a site. She didn’t fear losing a choice spot to a fellow artist; it made no difference where her fountain stood. But while she was in limbo, as it were, any perceived offense against the committee or against Egypt could still block her participation.

  They would definitely publish the two testimonies. Their finding the tablets at all had been a fantastic coup, a gift fallen into their hands, and they had a deep moral obligation to reveal the truth. It would vindicate two innocent girls and rightfully condemn an Old Testament hero as a fanatic and a rapist. Inevitably, fundamentalist Jews, Christians, and Muslims would be offended. But how violently?