The Cairo Diary

by Maxim Chattam

  Wooden poles sat in rough-hewn holes, providing the support for a fabric roof, under which two hammocks hung. A jar of water and a pot of dates were their only accompaniments on the carpet of the shelter.

  Azim was dozing in one of the hammocks, his breath whistling through his mustache. His fellow lookout, a man named Khalil, was seated against the roof’s coping, his arms resting on the shaky old masonry. He was gazing watchfully into the night.

  While all the rest of the district was sleeping in the darkness, the main roads gave off a gentle light as their streetlamps waned.

  They had all been watching over el-Gamaliya for hours already, with not a sign of the creature.

  Khalil had a panoramic view of all the different sites where the signal might come from. No movement, no light.

  Sleep wove its cloak of silence over the city, smothering sounds, numbing minds, and rendering bodies unconscious.

  The young man rolled backward and got up to go and fetch a handful of dates. The detective was snoring very softly, his feverish sleep preventing him from relaxing fully.

  In the distance, a shutter banged loudly, making Khalil start.

  Azim opened his mouth several times before sinking back into the warmth of his dreams.

  Khalil started walking back and forth across the roof, rhythmically pacing. All the excitement of the previous evening had faded, and now that the veil of time had filtered all emotions, all that remained was boredom. Khalil went and sat down on the parapet.

  He shivered as he ate another date.

  His blanket was in the hammock, and he thought about fetching it to wrap around himself. The nights were beginning to be as cold as the days could be suffocatingly hot; this year, the desert’s breath had decided to engulf spring and impose a precocious summer upon Egypt. Still, if they at least avoided an invasion by locusts that would be something, noted Khalil.

  He stretched up his arms and yawned.

  A lump of stone tore away from his impromptu seat, immediately disappearing into the darkness of the street, fifteen yards below.

  Khalil fell backward.

  In absolute silence.

  He barely made a sound.

  His hands fell swiftly back on the low wall that was dragging him down into emptiness.

  His fingers scrabbled around in emptiness.

  And his nails scratched something hard.

  He tightened his palms with all his strength and pulled in his abdominal muscles, his torso leaning dangerously over death.

  And Khalil gently rocked onto the right side, unable to breathe.

  He let himself fall between the cracks on the roof, thanking Allah in a trembling whisper.

  He had so very nearly fallen, to be crushed down below on the beaten earth, the bones of his skull pulverized like pottery, his brains spread about in the rubbish. Khalil returned his attention to the stars.

  So very nearly …

  If he had been wrapped up in his blanket, he would not have survived.

  All at once the air seemed more flavorsome.

  The wooden ladder made a cracking noise.

  Khalil turned toward the trapdoor. Nobody.

  He approached, dragging his tanned-hide moccasins in the dust, and leaned over the hole, holding one of the ladder’s uprights with one hand.

  It was completely dark down below. Khalil could not make out anything.

  One of the rungs of the ladder creaked again.

  Khalil crouched down and stuck his head down into the dark square.

  Maybe it was the young girl from the first floor?

  “Is there anybody there?” he whispered. “Mina, is that you?”

  A shape unfolded, only three feet from his face.

  Two yellow eyes.

  Not human.

  Khalil leaped back with a shout. He supported himself on the ladder to get further away and it began to sway.

  A furious yowling sound rose up out of the hole, and the dislodged cat fled, meowing discontentedly.

  Azim had swiftly extracted himself from his hammock and was already running to help his companion, one hand on the holster of the gun that hung on his belt.

  “What’s going on?” he stammered, not yet properly awake.

  Khalil began to laugh with relief.

  “What? What was it?” demanded Azim, who did not share the joke.

  “Nothing, it was just a cat. It frightened me.”

  Azim let out a long breath, emptying all the accumulated tension out of his chest. He ran a hand across his face.

  All at once, Khalil leaped to his feet. “The signal! The signal!”

  All traces of joy had left the young man, who was pointing to the north, his eyes wide and staring.

  Azim followed the direction he was indicating and saw, right on top of a small building, a light that was being swung from right to left.

  Azim clenched his fists.

  At last.

  The ghul had just emerged from its lair.

  29

  All of the part that Marion had just read was strangely written.

  Scarcely had he finished his observations on Francis Keoraz’s culpability, than the author—Jeremy—had drawn a large arrow pointing to the very last pages. There, Marion found a long supplementary chapter solely about Azim and the account of that night, dedicated to tracking down the monster. Apparently, Jeremy had partly used what his colleague had told him, but also various witness accounts that he had briefly been able to gather, like that of Khalil, whom he had met personally.

  Nevertheless, Marion suspected Jeremy of indulging in entirely imaginary digressions with regard to Azim’s emotions. At times, he wrote as if he had been in the little Egyptian’s skin.

  She found this redirection to the back of the notebook bizarre, as if it were a passage added on at the last moment, impossible to insert except by means of this arrow, drawn at the top of the pages. So she decided to alternate reading it with the chapter she had got up to, a little more than halfway through the tale. This way, she moved successively from Azim’s hunt in the narrow streets of the eastern districts to Jeremy’s dinner with Mr. and Mrs. Keoraz. The suspense was even greater.

  She sat up a little higher in bed and checked the time on the alarm clock.

  Half-past midnight.

  It was late.

  So what, my dear? It’s Sunday tomorrow.… And besides …

  She was going to read, on and on. Enjoy herself. At least finish the passage at the end of the diary, with Azim.

  Outside the rain had stopped. Marion glanced swiftly through the window.

  The cemetery terrace shone silver from the moon, which was finally emerging from behind the clouds. The wind whistled through all the streets, along the fronts of the buildings, and twisted and turned among the headstones.

  The stone crosses in this morbid forest bore a figure of Christ on their trunks, divine fruit bearing witness to the passage of the seasons according to their respective states of decrepitude. Among all these tortured and dislocated bodies, Marion spotted a face.

  A round head, turned white by the moonlight.

  The eyes were more real than reality.

  Tiredness and the half-light abated.

  And Marion realized that the face was not mounted on a cross.

  But on a living body.

  It really was someone.

  She started.

  There was a man in the cemetery, and he was watching her.

  Marion hurriedly turned out her light, plunging the bedroom into darkness. She got out of bed and approached the little dormer window.

  She took care to hide behind the wall, revealing nothing but her right eye to distinguish the outside world.

  The man was standing amid the tombs. His hands in the pockets of a windbreaker. He was hopping from one foot to the other, trying to see what had just happened in Marion’s bedroom.

  It was Ludwig. The night watchman.

  Marion sighed. A cloud of condensation formed on the window in f
ront of her mouth.

  Ludwig bent forward, his tongue on his lips. He raised a hand, then hesitated, not certain of what he was seeing, and just on the off-chance gave Marion a friendly wave. She was careful not to respond.

  She waited until he shrugged his shoulders and strolled nonchalantly out of the cemetery to head back to bed.

  That was all she needed. A night watchman who was a Peeping Tom!

  How long had he been spying on her? Didn’t he have anything better to do?

  At this hour of night, on the Mount.… No, probably not.…

  The idea of a fifteen-year-old kid trying to see her getting undressed made her smile, but Ludwig.… He was a responsible adult.… Stupid bastard! she raged.

  She promised herself that she’d make him feel uncomfortable the next time they met; she’d have to find exactly the right words to put him in his place and remove any desire in him to do it again.

  After all that, the desire to continue reading had evaporated. She no longer had the heart to immerse herself in 1920s Cairo. And even less to switch on her bedside lamp again!

  Marion rolled over in the sheets, ready for sleep, but she moved around a lot before she closed her eyes, thinking again of Ludwig. Stupor was turning increasingly to anger.

  The wind grew in intensity, wailing like a flock of nocturnal birds. It hovered over the village while the sea battered at the gates of the seawall.

  30

  Marion hung on to the guardrail to climb the steps that ran along the ramparts.

  The storm had made its presence felt in the small hours.

  The shutters slammed against the walls with suicidal violence.

  The sea clashed its undulating cymbals, bringing forth a tremolo of foam that spurted onto the towers, soiling the stone with this choleric ejaculation.

  Marion bent low so as not to give too much purchase to the powerful winds. She held her coat tightly to her with her free hand, her bag swaying against her painful hips. As soon as she awoke, she had decided not to read in her living room anymore but in a more favorable context, in one of the rooms of the Merveille.

  It was while climbing the staircase of the inner Grand Degré that she realized the extent of the danger. Her desire to read was changing into a stupid idea, a regrettable whim. Here the wind was even stronger than in the village; it hurtled down from the top of the steps to the bottom, poured into the canyon formed between the high walls of the abbot’s residence on one side and the church on the other. Its vehemence was even more terrifying than its intermittent howling; it tangled itself around Marion’s legs, flattened her clothes as if to smell them before trying to knock her down. Each time she lifted a foot, she ran the risk of losing her balance and falling backward.

  There was something baleful about this wind.

  Normally so rational, she couldn’t prevent herself from thinking about the film The Exorcist. She had the impression that a supernatural force was throwing itself from the top of the steps to sweep everything away, that the wind itself was the Devil’s breath. In the midst of this chaos, the brotherhood’s hearty singing of the Sunday morning liturgy took on a redemptive air.

  Marion managed to push open a door that she immediately closed by throwing all her weight against it.

  She shook her head.

  I’ve never seen a storm like it!

  In better spirits, she thought back to her fantasy of the Devil trying to hurl her into the sky. It was a load of nonsense, but it didn’t surprise her; she’d always had a dazzling imagination.

  She crossed a passageway, and went down a staircase into a more modestly sized room.

  The wind was chanting its invocation even inside the walls of the abbey, whistling and echoing in the bowels of the church before hammering on both sides of the high windows.

  Marion checked that the diary was still in her pocket.

  She had chosen a good day to come and read here.

  She wandered according to her instinct until she happened upon a locked door. Searching among the keys on her bunch, she eventually found the right one and entered a long room on the intermediate level of the Merveille, the Salle des Hôtes. The absence of tourists in the winter had enabled the brotherhood to convert it back into a workroom. Several wooden desks stood facing one another, in the middle of tables covered with old books. Marion checked that there was nobody about before approaching.

  The brothers had collected large quantities of very old paper, aged to differing degrees, and inks of various types in order to carry out restoration. Fragments of virgin parchment were piled up between bowls of colored pigments and all the instruments worthy of the Inquisition that were used in the repair of manuscripts. Some of the writings dated back to the thirteenth century.

  Marion wavered among the chairs.

  The place was ideal for reading. Alas, the brothers and sisters might come and work here during the day; apart from the fact that she was doubtless unwelcome in this room, she would lose the tranquillity she sought.

  Marion closed the door again behind her and strolled a little further, then pushed open another door, onto a passageway from which she overlooked the Salle des Chevaliers, the former scriptorium. Here, she would be left in peace.

  She settled herself beneath one of the windows so that her eyes would not have to strain in the half-light, checked once again that she was alone, and returned to that night in March 1928, when Azim was tracking that enigmatic ghoul while Jeremy was spending the evening at the Keoraz house.

  Then the wind came and flattened itself against the glass behind her, as sharply as a presence, pressing its face close so that it too could read the fabulous tale.

  31

  Once dinner was over, they went into the small drawing room.

  Jeremy had tried to decline the invitation, with a thousand credible pretexts he’d prepared to save himself, but none of them had got any further than his thoughts. He had remained silent until he could no longer get out of it.

  Francis Keoraz led the conversation, which centered on himself and his success, describing his triumphs with surprising lassitude. After an hour, Jeremy had come to regard this ordeal as an unhoped-for opportunity to gain a better understanding of who Keoraz really was. Search his attitudes to discern breaches, gain possession of his mind in order to map out its twists and turns. It was presumptuous, but Jeremy found the idea quite attractive.

  He took care not to divulge personal information when Keoraz questioned him, nevertheless Jezebel enjoyed making a few barbed comments intended for him.

  Curiously, as the meal progressed she became less caustic and more attentive, sometimes even conniving. Twice, addressing Jeremy, she asked if he recalled such and such a day and a detail that she conjured up from their past life. Each time, the detective caught the bright flash of jealousy’s blade in Keoraz’s eyes.

  At least they shared that, he noted with bitter irony.

  The master of the house served them a liqueur that he had brought over directly from Scotland, and opened a fine metal box of Nestor cigarettes, from which Jeremy helped himself.

  “Do you play billiards, Detective?”

  “On occasion.”

  Keoraz directed an amused smirk at him and signaled him to follow him into the adjoining room. A superb wooden billiard table stood there, illuminated by its fringed lamp.

  Jeremy drew on his cigarette and let out a grunt of satisfaction.

  “They’re good, aren’t they?” chuckled Keoraz with a knowing air. “I buy them by the box at Groppi’s, they cost me a fortune! But this tobacco is worth every piaster spent on it…”

  “For those who can afford it,” Jeremy couldn’t stop himself adding.

  They each selected a cue and Jeremy began the game. Jezebel sat down on a velour-covered bench, her glass in her hand.

  “Do you frequent a club?” Keoraz asked after several minutes’ play.

  “Every one in the street. Every place where there’s a billiard table, a partner, and an invitatio
n.”

  Keoraz leaned over the green baize. “Join us sometime at the Gezira Sporting Club, you’ll have an opportunity to carry off plenty of presumptuous scalps.”

  “I shall think about it.”

  Keoraz took aim, sliding his cue back and forth across his hand, his face stern. He struck the ball and observed it as it moved across the table.

  “Why did you create this foundation?”

  Keoraz, who clearly had not been expecting this question, abandoned the rest of his turn and turned questioning eyes on Jeremy.

  “Why?” he repeated with unexpected seriousness. “What kind of man do you think I am? A miserly, inflexible blackguard? Or a philanthropist, hiding under the appearance of a sour-tempered businessman? Oh, don’t take the trouble to answer, I can see from your face what your opinion would be. And you want to know, Mr. Matheson? You would have only half the truth. I am both, Detective. Like everyone on this planet. I am neither white nor black, merely colorless and striving not to lose my way by being blinded by one color or another. As I move along, I take on the hue beside me and falter before I recover my balance. And so on…”

  Jeremy walked around the table to gauge the best angle before playing. “Not everyone in the world is necessarily gray, if I may say so,” he commented.

  “That is not what I said. We have no color, we take on the color of our thoughts, our actions. And those are as changeable and diversified as a painter’s palette.”

  Keoraz offered Jeremy the billiard rest, but he refused with a brief shake of the head.

  “My foundation is all I can do to say to this country that I like it, Detective, in my own way. I have so much money that I can no longer count it; what could I do to say thank you to this city? Take care of its offspring, the men of tomorrow. In the Cairo tradition, I set up a teaching foundation, a little like the waqf* that made it possible to build those immense fountains one sees in the streets, with a room upstairs in which to teach the Koran. The difference is that my foundation is slanted toward general learning, and is open to those few families that agree to send their daughters at the same time as their sons.”

  “So the formidable Mr. Keoraz offers culture to the children of Egypt!” Jeremy declared with emphasis. “Admirable!”