An Imperfect Lens

by Anne Richardson Roiphe

  Albert’s father was furious, although he did not reveal it to his lawyer. He simply said, “I thought it was your role to fight for our rights in this matter.”

  Monsieur Florent sighed. “I am protecting you, I promise.”

  Albert’s father puffed on a cigar. He stared out the window. He was not a fool, only a fool goes deaf in the presence of his lawyer.

  Albert’s father agreed that Monsieur Florent should negotiate a settlement, although the sum proposed made his heart sink.

  Achmed’s father still wanted to put the Jew in jail. He listened to Monsieur Florent. He called his wife into the room, who wouldn’t hear of a settlement. It wasn’t money she wanted. It was revenge. Achmed himself was interested in the offer, but he said nothing. His father would not have allowed it. After four cups of dark coffee, after several hours in which Monsieur Florent explained again and again how embarrassing the matter would be for Achmed and the family—doubts cast on their honesty, the integrity of their merchandise, and so on—a settlement was agreed upon at three times the amount that Monsieur Florent had proposed to Albert’s father. Albert’s mother’s jewels would have to be sold. The cabana at the beach would have to be given up. The household would, at least for a while, be on a tight budget. Phoebe would have to wait for her own marriage until some funds were recouped, unless a wealthy boy would have her with a very reduced dowry. It was not a small matter.

  Albert spent three nights and three days in his bed. When he rose at last, he was not greeted as a hero, as the victim of injustice that he felt himself to be. He could feel the chill in his father’s voice as he called him into his study. He saw that his sister had been crying, and his mother turned her face away from him when he bent to kiss her.

  AT THE BREAKFAST table, Lydia Malina read about the affair in the paper, which reported that Achmed had a huge bandage over his eye and contained a statement from Monsieur Florent that the unfortunate matter had been amicably concluded by the two families, who understood that young men had high tempers and no harm had been intended and the loss of Achmed’s eye was a terrible accident. Lydia said to her husband, “We will go to the Sonnenscheins’ for dinner next week, they have a cousin who I hear is most eligible.”

  “I hear he is a cripple with a hunched back, that cousin,” said Este.

  “You heard no such thing,” said her mother, and the two women laughed.

  Dr. Malina got up from the table and went to his surgery, where he knew a woman was waiting whose baby had a bulge in his small belly that boded ill. He would hint at its nature to the mother while not quite telling her all that he suspected.

  LOUIS AND EMILE and Edmond decided to increase their hours in the lab. They would work until sleep overtook them. Louis vowed not to think about Este. He would concentrate all his mind on his work. Emile would abandon his wife and children and turn all his attention to the elusive microbe. “There are too damned many people in this filthy city,” said Edmond. “You can’t get a coffee without mud in it. I tell you, I’ve just about had enough. I’m ready to go home.”

  Louis said, “Don’t worry, my friend, we’ll have years to walk on our clean streets and eat our own food at our own table, and read Le Figaro on the day it’s published. This is just a small interruption.”

  He smiled at Edmond, whose bad humor disappeared as quickly as it had arrived, and who smiled back. “Is that a promise?” he asked.

  “It’s a promise,” Louis said. “Courage,” he added.

  “Courage it is,” said Edmond, who went off to the tents pitched outside of town, where the camels grazed near the river and their owners seemed to doze perpetually on carpets spread on the sand. Camel dung was what he needed.

  If a man concentrates, there is nothing he cannot do, or so one of Louis’s favorite professors had said. Of course the professor, despite a very amiable manner, had himself published nothing of note and had, while Louis was still in school, been passed over for a senior administrative position. Nevertheless, Louis stared at the mouse guts that had been gathered in a bowl by his elbow. Was the germ perhaps in the mouth of the mouse, or did it have nothing to do with the mouse? Did mice have a way of avoiding cholera, of spitting it out, or pushing it out with their waste products? Did their tiny ears flick it out with fine hairs, did their eyes close when the germ came near? There were dead mice around, but they did not seem to have cholera in them, not even when he took his syringe and pressed the blood of the cholera victim he had taken from the hospital into the mouse, not even then did they get sick. Lucky mouse, what spared you? asked Louis.

  ERIC FORTMAN RESPONDED immediately to the note delivered to his office by an attaché at the British consulate. As he was walking up the steps at the entrance to the building, Lord Cromer himself, flanked by several officers of the Royal Navy, brushed past him. It was as if an avalanche had gone by, leaving him untouched but breathless. The Union Jack hung limply above his head. He was well aware of the fact that Britannia had her foot on his neck, as well as on all of Alexandria and most of the known world. He was escorted up a grand staircase, in a rather firm manner, by the attaché, and ushered into a back room. He was offered a glass of water. The water was poured from a pitcher that had been brought from the officers’ quarters in the rear of the building. He refused the water. This was no moment for congeniality. The room was as hot as a steam bath from the sun beating down on the roof above. Eric was sweating. He took out his handkerchief and wiped his brow. “We need some information from you,” said the large man in a fine suit who stood above him.

  “There is nothing to report,” said Eric. “I have had dinner with Dr. Malina and his family. I have heard nothing about plots against the British, here or in Palestine. Their son seems to be dealing in olives, and the father is concerned about the epidemic in Alexandria, and the mother and the daughter are going to teas and lunches and buying clothes, things like that.” Eric was embarrassed. This was ridiculous.

  “We can have you on a ship back to England in a matter of hours,” said the other man in the room. His jacket was tight across his stomach. His posting in Alexandria had not brought hardship, unlike his five years in India, where he had lost his wife and child to malaria. “We can have you in a jail in Cyprus as quickly as you boil your morning egg. You can be deported on an English ship and never reach England. Is that clear?” said the man.

  It was clear, but what was he to do?

  “We are not asking you to lie,” said the fatter one, in a far gentler voice. “We are asking you to observe the Malinas with a clear eye. You understand.”

  He understood.

  “And we haven’t years to wait,” the one with the good suit added. “This matter needs to be concluded. These people are dangerous wherever they live, camouflaged among the citizens, holding a seat on the Committee of Public Safety, this man may do us grave harm.”

  “But,” said Eric, “I don’t think the Malina family—” He was interrupted and sent on his way.

  Eric Fortman was not a stupid man. His position in England had not enabled him to rise very far from his origins, which were humble without being disastrous. He had a perfectly decent moral code and a conscience that, while obviously not unduly harsh, still worked efficiently. He believed that when he accepted funds from captains of ships doing business with Marbourg & Sons, he was acting as any sophisticated man would in a less-than-perfect commercial world. He admired the Malina family and felt gratitude toward them for their kindness to him. He was genuinely fond of dogs, and he quite seriously believed that birds should be free and not kept in cages. He most definitely did not want to be kept in a cage himself. He would gladly have married Este and settled down among the Malinas for the rest of his life. She was a good girl, with a high spirit. He liked that. He knew that Lydia Malina had a kind heart and had extended her hand to him, a stranger. He was, however, no dreamer. The threats from members of the British Foreign Service, here so far from England, seemed real enough. Who would notice or care if he fell
off a ship as it was crossing the Mediterranean? Who would protest if he was found in an alley with his throat cut, another victim of robbery in a quarter known for its predatory inhabitants? He went immediately to the café at the docks where he had established himself as a regular. He ordered a beer and followed it with a harsh local whiskey, the kind that burns holes in your intestines. It was unlikely that the Malinas were plotting against the Crown, but the fools in the Foreign Service would not change their minds, that was clear. His choice was to leave Alexandria on the next boat (a city he was finding most pleasant) or implicate Dr. Malina and his son in some dubious activity, some political nonsense. There was something comic about these British gentlemen. What were they? he asked himself. Just well-dressed bullies with good positions in the service. Lucky them. As he drank, he found them more and more amusing. But as he staggered back to his rooms he remembered that he had no friend in high places to protect him. He hoped Dr. Malina did.

  AFTER MANY NIGHTS in Alexandria’s darkest and most secret places, Marcus returned. He made a vegetable soup and poured it into a bowl in the center of the table that the French mission used both for dining and writing letters.

  “What’s the matter with you?” asked Nocard, turning to Louis, who had not said a word for hours.

  “I believe,” said Roux, “he has a woman on his mind.”

  Louis said nothing.

  “I think that must be it,” said Nocard. “I have noticed he has the pallor of a man who has lost his heart.”

  Louis said nothing.

  “There’s no shame in it,” said Roux. “She’s a good-looking woman.”

  Louis said nothing.

  “Ah,” said Emile, “have you told her how you feel?”

  Louis reached for his spoon and then put it down. His hand was shaking. “You know who it is?” said Louis, turning quite pale.

  “I know,” said Emile.

  “I know, too,” said Nocard.

  “I’ve known for weeks,” said Marcus.

  “I’ve said nothing,” said Louis.

  “Not necessary,” said Emile.

  Nocard said, “She’s good with the animals, that’s in her favor.”

  Turning to Marcus, Nocard said, “This soup tastes like soap.”

  Marcus defended himself. “You want everything scrubbed and boiled, the flavor goes, what can I do?”

  Louis said, “It’s all right, we’ll eat it.”

  But the three of them left their soup and went back to the laboratory. When they arrived, they found Dr. Robert Koch at the door, waiting for them.

  “Any progress, Messieurs?” he asked.

  “None,” they assured him. “And you?” asked Emile, first in French, then in German. “Und sie, Nothing definitive,” he said.

  “He looks pleased with himself. He might have something,” said Nocard to Roux as the metal door closed behind the small German’s back. This was not comforting, but not as discomforting as a report of a demonstrable finding would have been.

  12

  THE MOON WAS high over the Western Harbor and lit up the upper windows of the Râs el Tin Palace, casting its reflection down on the muddy shores of Lake Mariout. You could observe it peering over the rooftop of the Babel Gedid train station. The hot wind was whipping over the Corniche, bringing with it clouds of sand, sand that seemed like fog, that stuck in the throat and burned the eyes. Louis was so weary and hungry that he had to leave his laboratory. Marcus had long ago left for whatever his evening promised. Emile was sleeping at his table. Nocard had returned to his bed in their apartment. Louis walked over to Emile and gently placed a towel used for drying beakers and tubes over his shoulders. A sleeping man needed a cover. He pushed Emile’s notebook out of the accidental reach of his arms, should he stir in his sleep. He had an impulse to touch Emile’s head. He stopped himself.

  Alone, Louis walked out in the warm night. He crossed the intersection where Alexander the Great had been laid to rest. Now he was just dust like any other mortal, not so great at all. Walking toward the center of town without conscious intention, he found himself in front of Dr. Malina’s house. He stood across the street and wondered if anyone was sleepless in the house, or if they were all like the dead, immobile. He saw only darkness, pulled curtains. He heard the footsteps of a passerby, a drunk singing of love in Italian. He heard the grinding sound of carriage wheels on cobblestones as it pulled past him. A man veered near him, a sweet smell trailing him, a smile on his face. The smell hung in the air for a few seconds. The wind pulled at the palms on the street and their fronds bent low and made a whistling sound as they snapped back toward their trunks.

  He seemed impaled on the building wall. He could not cross the street. He could not move on. In that house a woman lived who would change his life, who would inspire him to find the answer he was looking for. If only she would come to a window and wave to him. He willed her to come to the window. He willed her to pull back the curtains and look into the street, just in case someone was there, waiting for her. He imagined her surprise on seeing him. She would open the window and call to him. He waited. He would find the right words if she would just come to the window. He heard the muezzin’s call to prayer. He heard a clap of thunder from afar. His jacket lifted and fell in the wind that blew the storm out to sea without ever reaching the shores of Alexandria. He stood there until he was almost asleep on his feet, his head drooping to one side in an attempt to find rest on his shoulder.

  She was, however, asleep under her covers. She was holding her Ganesh, her good-luck elephant, in her hand. She had picked it up from her bedside and examined it carefully as she settled her head into the pillow. She had meant to put it back on the table before falling asleep. But she had missed the moment to act, and the elephant spent the shank of the night in her hand, and then as dawn was draining the sky of its ferocity and the stars were no longer visible, she opened her hand and the Ganesh fell out onto the carpet woven in the hills of Uzbekistan and carried on the back of a donkey across the mountains and placed on a ship and sold in the covered bazaar of Alexandria, where, before she was born, her mother had admired the bunches of grapes and the pink-petaled flowers that moved across the weave. The Ganesh was on the floor in the morning when she woke and put her feet out of bed and felt the hard wood of the elephant under her heel. She picked him up, ran her finger down his trunk, and replaced him on her table. How kind it was of Eric Fortman to have brought her this elephant.

  She did not believe he was a lucky elephant. She was the daughter of a man of medicine, a reasoning man after all. But she did believe that there was little harm in pretending that the elephant had certain powers over fate. She did not believe in idols, but she did believe in games, and her Ganesh had his role to play in her life.

  As she bathed before breakfast in the tub of warm water brought to her by the houseboy, she looked at her body, her private body, that no one saw but someday someone would see.

  Louis had gone back to his apartment long before dawn, and so he didn’t see her in the breakfast room when she opened the curtains and looked out on the street just to see who was coming and going, what might be approaching this new morning. “The coffee is perfect,” she said to the serving girl. She dressed in a hurry and, after kissing her mother good-bye, rushed off to the laboratory.

  “Are you sure,” said Lydia Malina to her husband, “that it is all right to allow Este to visit this laboratory so often? My sister thinks—”

  She was interrupted. “I don’t care what your sister thinks. Este has Anippe to accompany her. She is never alone with the men. She is interested in their work, which is much better than her brooding over a lost marriage.”

  “She’s not brooding,” said Lydia.

  “Good,” said Dr. Malina, and that was the end of the subject.

  THEY NEEDED MORE material infected with cholera. Este redeemed from the sisters a shirt of one victim and a diary of another with some unpleasant fluids spilled over the pages.

  T
hey went down to the sea so that Louis could think. Anippe followed discreetly behind. Louis said that he needed to change his view. His eyes were tired from peering through the lens, and his head hurt. There were terns rushing in and out of the foam. Este took off her shoes and stockings. Behind them the palm trees stood still, their craggy trunks peeling in the heat. Este waded up to her ankles in the cool water. The gently rippling waves went on as far as the eye could see. The horizon met the sky in a gray blur out there, far away. Louis took off his shoes and stockings and placed them neatly one next to the other. Then he, too, went into the water, his trousers rolled up. Louis took Este’s hand and pulled her back when a larger wave threatened to splash up on her dress. He quickly let go of her hand. He hoped he had not been disrespectful. She seemed not to notice. She threw a pebble out into the waves. “Look how far it went,” she said.

  “We’d better get back,” he said.

  AT THE MEETING of the Committee of Public Safety in the back room of the Ministry of Health, the usual members had been joined by the administrator of the ports and the representatives of the Greek Orthodox church and the imam of the mosque and the chief rabbi of Alexandria. The mood was bleak. The banking establishments were working on skeleton staffs because the senior bankers and investors, the importers and the more affluent tradesmen with any reserves behind them, had removed themselves and their families from Alexandria. They had gone to country homes or to relatives in Cairo or Rome, or even to Istanbul or the small islands off Greece. This meant that the shopkeepers and small café owners and suppliers of linens and figs and meats and fruits were suffering from a sharp loss of clients. The bars and cafés were thinly occupied. People somehow thought that an evening’s enjoyment might make them sick. There had been few tourists at the hotels. Pyramids and palaces, tombs and obelisks lacked visitors, which meant that guides and donkey boys, postcard vendors and beggars, were all without income. The churches were full of prayers. Candles burned night and day. Funerals were almost constant. “How long will this last?” the head of the company that ran the train that connected Alexandria to Aboukir, Rosetta, and Cairo asked Dr. Malina.