Prodigies

by Francis King

  He got slowly to his feet, shod in Turkish slippers upturned at their toes, to reveal that his plump, powerful body was supported by disproportionately small legs. Since Harriet was clearly the eldest, he approached her first. He, too, spoke French. He raised her hand and lowered his head to it, without actually allowing his lips to touch it. ‘ Enchanted,’ he murmured. Next, he turned to Addy. She gave a small grimace, as she felt his luxuriant beard brush against her trembling fingertips through the thin white cotton glove covering them. Finally, it was the turn of Alexine. He raised his head, her hand still in his, and gazed up at her appreciatively for several seconds.

  Down the room, on the right side of his makeshift throne, six chairs, their leather upholstery worn and cracked, had been ranged. Opposite them, there was one other plain straight-backed chair. The young man took this chair; the three women were invited to sit opposite. The young man, the Governor said, was his nephew.

  The Governor had prepared a speech in their honour. As the muscular servant behind him lethargically waved the fly-whisk above his head, he told them how delighted he was to receive them, how surprised he was that three ladies should venture on such a trip by themselves, and how he had received a number of requests from important people to do everything in his power to help them. If they wished, he continued, he would be happy to have them to stay in this house. There were many rooms and, as they must already have noticed, it was remarkably cool because of the thick walls and high ceilings.

  Addy looked in panic at Alexine, fearful that she might accept this offer. But Alexine graciously declined it. They were all, she said, deeply touched, it showed the hospitality for which this whole region was famed. But they had already set up camp, there were so many of them, and in addition they had a number of dogs and cats of which they personally were accustomed to take care.

  The Governor was relieved.

  At all events, would the ladies do him the honour of joining him in a meal?

  Once again Addy glanced in panic at Alexine. Alexine smiled and nodded: Yes, they would be happy to do so. She fumbled in her bag and produced a curved, ivory-handled penknife wrapped in tissue paper. She had brought this present for His Excellency, she told him.

  He smiled, took the package from her, and with large, clumsy hands, began to unwrap it. Disappointment flashed briefly across his face; then, having swiftly handed paper and penknife to his nephew, he smiled and thanked her elaborately. Realizing that the penknife had not been adequate, Alexine removed the yellow silk scarf that she was wearing and told him: ‘ This is for your wife.’

  He laughed. ‘Which wife? Which?’

  They were taken aback.

  ‘I have eight wives. Eight wives, twenty-two children.’ He glanced roguishly not at Alexine but at Harriet: ‘Perhaps I may find another wife? I’m not too old?’

  None of the women responded to these questions.

  He held out the scarf, head tilted appraisingly to one side. Then he stroked it with a hand, smiled with childish pleasure, and laid it against a cheek.

  ‘Please! Come and see my garden. It’s beautiful at this hour.’

  He was right. The garden into which he led them was not the one, its soil cracked and many of its plants dying or dead for lack of water, that they had already seen at the front, but one, far larger, at the back, with a well at its centre. Harriet breathed in deeply. ‘The air is wonderful here,’ she said in Dutch. ‘Isn’t it, isn’t it? So cool, so fresh. We might be by the sea.’ She suddenly thought of walking the beach at Knokke, as the sun was sinking, just as it was beginning to sink now, and of feeling a breeze on her forehead, cheeks and lips. Another Nanny, not Nanny Rose but her own childhood one, was with her and Addy. That Nanny was telling them not to loiter, to get a move on. They must get back home for supper.

  Alexine put up an arm, plucked a rose and held it to her nostrils. She, too, now breathed in deeply.

  ‘You like my garden?’

  ‘Oh, yes, yes!’ Addy said. ‘It’s more beautiful than any of the much larger gardens we saw in Cairo.’

  He was delighted, they could see. But in a deprecatory tone he said, ‘You think that only because you’ve had such a long journey through the desert. It’s a very simple garden, nothing special. But I love it. And my wives love it.’

  Where were these wives? Would they be allowed to see them? Each of the three women silently asked herself the same question. Then they noticed the high fence around this garden. Perhaps it was so high to prevent people looking in on the wives.

  They sat in rickety cane chairs in an arbour beyond the well. From somewhere behind the arbour they could hear a staccato tut-tut-tut sound, presumably a bird. Otherwise everything, in the gathering darkness, was extraordinarily still. Servants came out carrying sconces, their flames juddering in the breeze. Then they brought a long trestle table and some small ones made of bamboo. For a while the Governor was silent, a vague smile hovering round his mouth as with one hand, having kicked off a slipper, he scratched at the bare sole of a foot. Meanwhile his nephew chattered away, telling them about his last visit to Khartoum, about the copy of Lemprière’s dictionary presented to him by the last party of foreigners, three Frenchmen, that had passed that way, and about his desire one day to travel to France.

  Dishes were now brought out piled with food. Addy shook her head when she was the first to be handed a serving.

  ‘You must eat something,’ Harriet told her in English.

  ‘I can’t. The mere sight of it makes me feel sick.’

  ‘Please try. You’ll only offend them.’

  ‘Oh, well! I’ll have some of that bread then. If I must. And perhaps some of that chicken. That can’t do me any harm.’

  Later Addy sipped once at the bitter-sweet, sticky cordial handed to her in an ornate brass goblet and then set it down, with a small grimace. It would only make her more thirsty, she decided, and, if there was any unboiled water in it, it would certainly not have been through a purifier such as they had brought with them from the Netherlands.

  ‘This rice is delicious,’ Alexine told the Governor in French. She alone of the Europeans had never once suffered any nausea or diarrhoea during the journey. Nanny Rose had repeatedly remarked that she must have a cast-iron stomach.

  The Governor inclined his head. ‘Thank you, mademoiselle.’ He raised his goblet to toast them: ‘Santé!’ Then he drained it at one go. Later they were to wonder whether his drink, unlike theirs, might not have contained alcohol. Each time that he drained his goblet, only to have one of the servants rush over to refill it, he talked yet more fluently, and laughed yet more often and more loudly. Eventually, he was telling them about his eight wives. One, the first, was forty-one, no, forty-two years old, and she had born him eleven children, seven of whom had died. The youngest wife was only twelve. She had been given to him only a month or two ago by a Portuguese trader, who had originally bought her for himself.

  ‘Bought her?’ Alexine demanded.

  He nodded, smiled, wholly relaxed. ‘That’s the custom of our country. Good, bad?’ He shrugged.

  Suddenly, he shouted out a command to one of the servants, who hurried off, to return with an instrument that looked like a primitive banjo. The Governor tuned the strings, head on one side, his eyes glittering in the light from the sconce on the table beside him. Then he began to play. Addy kept shifting uncomfortably in her chair – really it was excruciating to have to listen to such a cacophony, and how it went on and on! – but Harriet and Alexine were both transfixed. Huge moths were now blundering around the candles. That strange tut-tut-tut sound, almost like a woodpecker, had ceased. Instead, they could now hear water lisping from a height on to other water. Was there a fountain somewhere?

  The Governor began to sing, his voice high-pitched and nasal, his eyes half shut. His plump body swayed from side to side, as his long nails now energetically raked and now hesitantly plucked at the strings. Addy drew out a fan and began gently to agitate it before her face, not
to cool herself – she was cool enough already – but to keep away the mosquitoes and gnats. From time to time, piercing the music, she would hear a disconcerting whine.

  At the close of the song, Alexine clapped, to be eventually joined by Harriet and then, lethargically, by Addy.

  ‘Was that a sad song, do you think?’ Harriet asked.

  ‘It was an interminable one,’ Addy said.

  ‘Oh, I liked it.’ Alexine turned to the Governor to tell him in French: ‘You sang beautifully.’

  ‘Yes, my uncle sings beautifully,’ the nephew said. ‘He’s famous in the country all around.’ He made an expansive gesture with an arm.

  Harriet reached out for the instrument, which the Governor had set down on the table between them. ‘ May I?’

  He nodded. ‘Certainly.’

  She plucked the strings at random. Then she began to retune them. Everyone watched and listened. At last, she began to play. She had once, as a girl, played the guitar, but this was something wholly different. All she could do was to pluck out a simple melody, single note after note.

  ‘Home, sweet home!’ Alexine cried out in recognition.

  Again Harriet plucked out a halting, blurred approximation to the melody. Her head lowered over the instrument, she suddenly felt an overwhelming nostalgia for what was certain, clean, comfortable, safe, humdrum, predictable, known. This overwhelming nostalgia eventually communicated itself to Addy, who straightened herself in her chair and gazed out, with hungry, hurt eyes, at the vast moon that was just beginning to appear above the roof of the house.

  But Alexine was impervious. The sentimentality of the air merely irritated her.

  Later, more candles were brought out and the spent ones carried away. Then there was a sound of girlish laughter from behind the high fence, succeeded by a man’s peremptory voice issuing a series of commands. The three women looked at each other. Were they now going to meet the wives?

  But the new arrivals were not the Governor’s wives but a troupe of some dozen dancing girls, ranging in age from a woman with hennaed fingernails and hair who looked at least fifty, to a pubescent girl, almost a child. With them were three male musicians.

  At a gesture from the Governor, the musicians struck up. Soon after, the girls began to dance, first one, then another, and then two or three simultaneously. The sequins in their hair and on their fluttering skirts and stiff bodices glittered in the candlelight, as did their teeth, revealed each time that they smiled.

  The oldest of them now began to rotate her huge, wobbling belly in front of the Governor. Then she turned and it was her backside that she was rotating even more frenziedly. Girls began to rotate in a similar manner in front of Harriet, Alexine and eventually Addy. Addy, turning her head aside, refused to look. Harriet and Alexine, leaning forward, mouths half-open, were enthralled.

  The wriggling and writhing went on remorselessly. Beads of sweat appeared on the faces and between the breasts of the girls. The oldest began to gulp for air. Addy, her head still turned aside, raised her fan to her mouth as she yawned twice. Harriet picked at a loose thread on her frock. Alexine gazed past the dancers at a cat that sat motionless, eyes gleaming amber, in some nearby bushes.

  At long last the performance came to a close. The Governor’s nephew clapped and, with less enthusiasm, the Governor joined in. Then the Governor fumbled in a pocket of his creased trousers and drew out some coins. Knowing what was to follow, the woman with the hennaed hair and nails leaned forward, smiling and proffering her huge breasts. He dropped the coins between them. She muttered something, smiled even more broadly, and whirled away. Alexine searched for some coins in her bag. The girl who had danced in front of her had already retreated. Alexine beckoned to her and the girl eagerly ran up. She too leaned forward and Alexine dropped the coins between her breasts, as the Governor had done with the older woman. The girl, realizing the size of the tip, let out a squeal of delight.

  ‘I’m sure it wasn’t necessary to do that,’ Addy said. ‘Not for a woman. No woman would give a tip like that to another woman – particularly not to a dancing girl.’

  Alexine shrugged. ‘ They were all trying so hard.’

  ‘With sadly little result.’

  ‘Poor dears,’ Harriet said.

  Alexine, with her usual extravagance, now took some more money out of her bag. She turned to the Governor’s nephew. ‘This is for the other girls,’ she said.

  ‘You’re very kind, mademoiselle.’ He slipped the money into a pocket of his jacket.

  ‘I hope he passes it on,’ Harriet said in Dutch. Reluctantly she admired Alexine’s generosity, even though she herself was always prudent in her handling of money.

  ‘I doubt if he will,’ Addy responded. Then she once again shifted uneasily. ‘ Isn’t it time to return? I’m sure we’ve spent long enough here not to offend him by leaving.’

  ‘There are all sorts of things I have to ask him to do for us,’ Alexine said.

  ‘Well, couldn’t you come back tomorrow with Osman?’ Addy suggested.

  ‘Yes, I suppose so.’

  The Governor staggered uncertainly as he accompanied them back through the house and out into the bare, dusty oval of ground beyond the front garden. The carriage was nowhere to be seen. Angrily he told his nephew to find it. The nephew passed on the order, no less angrily, to one of the servants.

  ‘I’m sorry to keep you waiting, ladies.’

  Addy involuntarily cringed, as a bat swooped above them.

  Alexine smiled. ‘It doesn’t matter. It’s so beautiful out here at night.’ She looked up at the sky. ‘So many stars. At home we never see so many stars so clearly.’ She was enchanted.

  When the tired horses eventually appeared, drawing the ancient carriage, its hood hanging askew, the Governor suddenly announced, on a whim, that he would accompany them back to the camp.

  ‘Oh, no, that’s not necessary, not necessary at all. Many thanks, Your Excellency, but really …’

  The Governor would have nothing of Harriet’s intervention. ‘No, no. So late at night. In any case, I’m not in the mood to sleep. I’ll enjoy the ride in the company of three such charming – and remarkable – ladies.’ He clambered into the carriage, after having assisted them to do so, and sat down heavily next to Alexine. ‘This is a unique occasion for me. I’ve never before entertained three foreign ladies, never in all my years in Barbar. Once I entertained one foreign lady – her name was, yes, yes, Pullar, Madame Pullar – but she was with her husband.’ He turned to Alexine: ‘ Not as young or as beautiful as you, mademoiselle.’

  Alexine ignored the compliment. ‘Your Excellency, we have to replenish some of our supplies. Water is one of our problems. That well in your garden …’

  He nodded, not pleased with the practical direction in which she had so abruptly switched the conversation. ‘ Yes, tomorrow, I suggest that my nephew … He can discuss all these matters …’

  Alexine persisted in mentioning other problems to him, but each time received the same sort of reply.

  When they had reached the camp, she handed a tip, lavish as always, to the coachman, and then handed some money to the Governor: ‘Your Excellency, please do not be offended. This is a little present for your staff.’

  The present was not little; the Governor was far from offended.

  ‘Dear ladies, dear ladies! How kind you all are! Now, please remember, I am here to help you, to do whatever you command me. Tomorrow morning, my nephew will come to see you. Please be sure to tell him of all your needs, all, all! Then he’ll report to me and I’ll ensure that action is taken. Of course, we’ll meet again. I’ve so much enjoyed our meeting together. I hope that you’ve also derived some pleasure from it, dear ladies. I sincerely hope so.’

  He went on for a considerable time, while the two horses tugged at the scant vegetation around them and the women shifted uneasily, the breeze disordering the hair so patiently coiffured for them by Nanny Rose and two of the Egyptian maids, and flutter
ing the carefully laundered and ironed flounces of their dresses.

  ‘Oh, what a bore!’ Addy exclaimed, as at last the carriage trundled off. ‘I must go and see how my Mister is getting on. I’ve neglected the poor little poppet for most of today.’

  ‘I thought that a wonderful evening,’ Alexine said.

  Harriet pondered. ‘ It was interesting.’ For her that word was never a pejorative. That things should be interesting was always more important to her than that they should be enjoyable.

  That was the first and last of such meetings that Addy was ever to attend with them during the journey to Khartoum. She became increasingly reluctant to leave the stifling cabin on the little boat, even to lie out on the camp bed in the comparative coolness of her tent each night. Each time that, at Alexine’s and Harriet’s insistence, she left the cabin, she felt as though they were prising her from a protective shell, and her spirit felt raw and bruised.

  Day after day, oblivious to the shouts between the near-naked, sweating men pulling the craft up the river, to what was happening on either bank and to the constant buzzing of flies around her, she read on and on. For much of the time Mister lay on her lap. If, in search of a cooler place, he attempted to jump off the bunk, she would tell him ‘No, no, darling, no! Stay! Stay!’ and clutch at his collar. He was ceaselessly scratching and gnawing at himself for fleas, and her own fragile arms and her bony chest were covered in flea bites.

  But, curiously, she felt a widening, placid contentment, as hour succeeded hour and nothing happened except what Balzac made happen in a far-off provincial town that she had never visited and was never likely to visit.