The Cairo Diary

by Maxim Chattam

  It was he who had burgled the Keoraz Foundation to consult the children’s files, find out how to approach them and how best to bribe them. Marion closed her eyelids when she realized that he had perhaps knowingly chosen the hemophiliac boy, so he could feast his eyes on the interminable tides of blood that were going to flow.

  The whole diary came together within her: the characters, the days, the heat, the architecture of Cairo. As she read, she had made a film play in her head, and now she experienced the whole thing again, this time on fast-forward.

  Suddenly, the image silently froze.

  And a new scene added itself to the others. This one didn’t come out of the diary, but from the memories of a wounded old man.

  * * *

  It was an afternoon in March 1928.

  Sharia Maspero was packed with passersby. French ladies simpered and laughed in the shade of their parasols, Cairo governesses pushed baby carriages in the shade of the palm trees that traced a strip of greenery between the street and the majestic Nile. Men in suits jostled each other and apologized politely on the sidewalk, outside large, five-storied modern buildings, all in stone and steel, and with open windows at the top, protected from the unbearably hot sun by drapes.

  Recently made cars purred on the roadway, inviting the camel-drivers and carts pulled by mules to get a move on with blasts from their fake horns. And in the middle of this street, everyone cleared the way for the approaching train, which gave out metallic clicks and sparks amid its crowning glory of cables.

  A woman with an Italian accent leaned toward a young boy dressed in leather sandals over white socks, shorts and a shirt stained from eating aniseed balls. An itinerant seller of oranges stopped beside them and offered fruit. The woman dismissed him with a firm refusal, showing that she was well used to such things.

  “Don’t forget to do your scales,” she reminded the child. “Every day.”

  The streetcar squealed to a halt in front of them.

  The doors opened and the boy climbed aboard, waving goodbye to the Italian woman.

  “I’ll see you next week,” she shouted, over the din of the closing doors.

  The streetcar shook itself and picked up speed. The lively colors of the shop windows slid by as the train passed through the high-class districts.

  The streetcar was very full. All the seats were occupied and the boy was hesitant to go back into the compartment reserved for women, where there were still some empty seats. He did nothing: “It’s not done,” he had often been told.

  He grabbed hold of a strap and was about to occupy himself by looking at the fine cars when he recognized a face among the passengers.

  It was a rather tall man who was gazing at him, a smile on his lips. His expression broadened, giving way to real pleasure.

  “Hello, George!” he said.

  George recognized him. He was the guest who had been at their house the previous evening. A police officer, his father had told him.

  “Do you recognize me?”

  The boy nodded. “Hello, sir.”

  The man didn’t talk very loudly, just enough to be heard by the child.

  “It’s good luck for me that I’ve found you here,” he replied. “I was afraid I’d miss you. I had to run to catch the streetcar, you know.”

  George nodded out of politeness. His gaze was immediately captivated by the roar of a car overtaking them.

  “Do you like cars?” asked the police officer.

  “Yes, I adore them. My father has a Bentley. Do you know what a Bentley is, sir? It’s a very fast car, the fastest!”

  Around them, two stern-looking men were reading their newspapers, and a little farther off another was picking his nose as he watched the landscape glide past.

  “Oh, yes, I know what a Bentley is. And do you want to know something? My own car is even faster than a Bentley!”

  George frowned, as if that seemed inconceivable to him.

  “It is, I assure you. Tell you what, if you want I will take you for a drive in it.”

  George wore the expression of a child who is incredulous but fascinated.

  “Right, but before that,” the police officer went on, “I have to tell you that it’s your father who sent me. That’s how I knew you’d be on this train. He told me to come and fetch you and take you to him at the polo ground. Have you seen a polo match before?”

  “No,” the child replied immediately, with enthusiasm in his voice.

  “Well, I think that’s why your father wanted to give you a surprise. You’ll have to come with me, so I can take you to him.”

  George ventured a timid nod. He wasn’t entirely trusting, but wouldn’t dare rebel against an adult. “Are we going to go there in your car?” he asked.

  The policeman began to laugh softly.

  “Yes, you’ll see it. And even get inside.”

  The child seemed reassured.

  The police officer straightened up. “Here we are, this is where we get off. Come along.”

  He held out his hand and wrapped it around the boy’s. Together, they stepped out into the stifling sun.

  “Is your car here?” asked the boy.

  “We’re going to my place first, to pick it up.”

  From inside the streetcar, they could be seen walking into the distance as the doors closed.

  The police officer’s voice was now muffled by distance and obstacles. He said, “Once we’re at my house, I’ll introduce you to a friend of mine. You’ll see, you’re going to be able to play together.”

  And they were lost in the immensity of Cairo and its seething masses.

  * * *

  Marion clenched her jaw to silence the pain that threatened to rise up from her belly.

  She stroked her lips with her fingertips, as if to claim possession of her face, to put herself back in context, lost as she was amid all these lives.

  She spotted the fleeting pencil of light from a lighthouse far away on her right.

  And all these stars, the sole and silent witnesses of human tragedies since the dawn of time.

  Very slowly, she slipped the photo back inside the diary and held it in front of her before handing it to the old man. “This belongs to you, I believe.”

  He took it and made it vanish into a pocket. “You know everything now,” he concluded.

  “Except the reason why you kept this diary after all this time,” she said, with great respect in her voice.

  He gave her a weary smile. “It has helped me to understand. As for the rest … I was a child. One does not always know what drives a child to act. Today I am an old man. It’s not dissimilar.”

  “And between those two ages?” she asked gently.

  “I tried to understand Jeremy Matheson.”

  Marion swallowed. She dared not ask the question that hung upon her lips. George encouraged her to speak with a nod of his chin.

  “And … did you succeed? I mean, beyond the hatred?”

  He tapped the pocket containing the diary. “Sometimes I weep over the nature of his existence.”

  Marion pulled her coat closer to protect herself from the wind.

  “Now, my dear, I would like you to succeed in telling yourself that all of that was just a story. A long and strange story, a very long time ago. And I hope that with time, it will become no more than a vague memory—and out of respect for me, that you will eventually forget it. If I was a magician, I would remove it from your head.”

  He laid a hand on her shoulder and showed her the way back to the lace staircase.

  As she started walking, she thought she detected a movement out of the corner of her eye.

  George was wiping his cheeks.

  EPILOGUE

  Marion embraced Béatrice and walked down rue Grande.

  They had said their farewells.

  Only two days had passed since George Keoraz’s confidences, and a limousine was waiting for her at the foot of Mont-Saint-Michel.

  She had only spent two weeks there.r />
  Sister Anne had come to inform her the previous evening; they were coming to fetch her. She was going back to Paris. Marion had received a telephone call that same evening. There were developments; a judge had taken the affair very much to heart, and she was summoned without delay. And after that … they hadn’t been able to answer. She would be accommodated at a hotel for a few days, and then after that they would have to decide. Nothing was settled. Her vagabond existence still had a long time to run.

  She was leaving this place earlier than expected, in a peculiar, almost piquant context.

  Marion had gone to George’s front door early in the morning, to leave him a letter.

  A letter that she had spent all evening composing, only to end up with just:

  Thank you for having shared your truth with me.

  Marion

  It didn’t reflect what she bore in her heart, but it was better than nothing, she had decided.

  Today, she was still questioning herself with guilty doubt.

  She couldn’t repress a deep distress when she thought of George Keoraz and his story. And yet, there was still a part of herself that was attached to Jeremy. To what he had made her experience. Could he be the monster George described?

  Sometimes, Marion wondered if the old man hadn’t exploited every weak point in the detective’s account in order to find another explanation, which would exonerate his father. A process he had begun very early, when he was only a child. Obliterating the presence of his father in the streetcar to replace it with that of Jeremy. For his part, the English detective had not necessarily made mistakes in his diary, only omissions, clumsiness or errors due to fatigue.

  Scarcely had Marion thought up this theory when she drove it away, blaming herself for calling the old man’s words and sufferings into question.

  Marion reached the square at the bottom of the village. Sister Anne and Brother Serge were waiting for her there.

  They greeted her and the sister handed her a bag of regional specialities.

  Marion got into the back of the car, her suitcases already jammed into the trunk. They were about to set off when she spotted Grégoire emerging through the gates beneath the wall and running toward her.

  “Wait!” Marion called out to the driver.

  Grégoire halted beside the open window.

  “My mother wants to give you this,” he said, getting his breath back.

  Marion took the wrapped gift, improvised with old paper that had been reused, and opened it. It was a dog-eared, crumpled book.

  “How to Win Friends and Influence People,” she read out loud.

  Couldn’t find anything better, it’s a little souvenir of me. For your next life, wherever you settle. Good luck, big girl. I’ll be thinking of you and I’ll keep an eye on the newspapers and wait for you to head back to my shop one day.

  Béa

  Marion’s smile was filled with emotion.

  “Thank her for me.”

  “That’s not all,” Grégoire stopped her.” I … I have to tell you something. It’s … in a way, it’s important.”

  Marion waved at him to continue.

  “The diary you read.”

  Marion glanced at the men in the front of the car. “Well?”

  “I think you’d rather know. It’s a forgery.”

  “What?”

  “Yes, it’s a forgery. I had to tell you, so you knew before you left.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “They made it all up. To help you pass the time. People say that here, for people who aren’t used to it, the worst thing is boredom. So the monks made this false private diary. They have a workshop for restoring old manuscripts up there. They got the right kind of paper, and then they wrote this story in the hope of entertaining you, occupying you. So you wouldn’t be just marking time.”

  “Grégoire, are you kidding me?”

  “I swear I’m not.”

  He looked more than serious, almost desperate that he must confess to her.

  “They found a news item in newspapers of the day and embroidered what they wanted around that. Then they put everything together, in Avranches, and sent you there with the idea of slipping you the book to read on the pretext that it didn’t correspond with the cover, but that none of them read English. Stroke of luck—you found it all on your own.”

  Marion’s legs were trembling, her hands moist.

  “Even the photo’s a fake. It’s an old thing they had and they used it to make up their story. Joe was in on it, because he was a member of the brotherhood, that is true, and as he was an outsider in your eyes, he could inspire more trust in you.”

  Marion was lost. She no longer knew what to think.

  “I’m sorry to tell it to you like this. But it was better that you should know.”

  She wanted to reply that she didn’t believe a word of it, that none of it had had any effect on her, but she just nodded silently.

  What was she to believe? This unexpected revelation or George’s more dramatic one? Then there was a third … Jeremy’s, the one he had written in his diary.

  Ill at ease, Grégoire drew away with a “bye” and a small wave.

  The limousine pulled away and the electric window slid back up.

  Marion’s hair whipped against her face and then fell back down. She was leaving the Mount with her eyes filled with questions, searching its complex architecture in the hope of finding answers there.

  She was leaving for another world, taking with her this story, no longer knowing where it began and where it ended. A story that was taking control of her.

  Her story.

  The Mount remained visible in the rearview mirror for a long time, powerful and massive; watching over the bay.

  It was watching over its secrets. Just as it watched over its inhabitants.

  Béatrice’s words came back to her: “They stick together, take the blows, and if they have to, they can keep a secret, a secret that shouldn’t leave the Mount.”

  The sun tentatively appeared from behind the clouds.

  And Mont-Saint-Michel disappeared behind a bend in the road.

  * * *

  The black book lay on a bench; a hint of sunshine had just settled on its leather cover. Care had been taken to sew up the torn part that had housed the photograph.

  The gilded letters of the title shone feebly in this rare glimmer of light.

  The Narrative of A. Gordon Pym.

  The title of an unfinished novel to hide a private diary.

  Grégoire approached and sat on the bench.

  A hand with worn-out skin, prominent veins, and age spots settled on the book.

  “Did you tell her?” asked the soft voice, with just a hint of an accent.

  Grégoire turned toward the old man. “Yes.”

  Joe nodded. He waited several minutes, until the sun came back to warm him a little.

  “Do you think there was any point?” Grégoire asked eventually. “Telling her that.”

  “Yes. I do.”

  “Why? I’m not sure about it.… The truth…”

  “The truth? What is truth at the end of the day? Can you tell me?”

  In a learned, steady voice, the old man recited what he had so often thought: “If you believe in a fiction, it becomes truth. A person’s truth. But a truth in that person’s eyes, assuredly. As truly as the witness to a miracle, an appearance of the Blessed Virgin, believes what he has seen, other people’s opinions do not matter; everything is in the focusing. Beyond the great principles of our world, there is not only one universal truth, there are our personal truths as well. And there is a personal truth for every person on this planet.…”

  Joe savored the sun for another moment.

  “Let her choose her own truth,” he added. “Sometimes it is enough to know how to read between the lines. To be attentive; and she will know what she must believe.”

  His hand stroked the cover of the diary once again. “After all, ours concerns only us.�
�

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  And so this story ends.

  Don’t be surprised; there is nothing frustrating about this slightly … odd ending when you think hard about it. All the keys to reading it are given.

  I should like to thank here all the bookshops that have always been behind me, since the start of my adventure.

  This novel about truth is dedicated to them.

  My publisher and the whole formidable publishing team deserve thanks beyond my ability to give them.

  I thank François Saint-James for his knowledge of Mont-Saint-Michel, and for our nocturnal wanderings along its alleyways and corridors. If there are any mistakes concerning the Mount, they are my fault. Also, please forgive me for depicting a rather “austere” religious fraternity; this was for the needs of the novel, and is absolutely not a real portrait.

  A short note concerning Cairo in 1928. The majority of the places or events described existed. For example, the Allenby Cup soiree at Shepheard’s Hotel is real; I have not exaggerated anything. The decorations, the ambience, and the personalities mentioned were there that evening. The old-fashioned charm of the streetcars, the story of the underground passageways beneath the palaces, gardens with mercury pools: All of this contributes in a certain way to the feeling of melancholy, which haunts all of this part of the novel. I should like to specify it, so that—in your mind—these memories may go beyond the framework of a simple romantic image.

  Finally, if you, my reading companion, would like to go further and think more deeply around this novel, I invite you to recall the Polybus square … 25 35 24 34 33 15 11 45 45 23 15 32 11 12 35 34 33 54 44 24 45 15.

  www.maximechattam.com

  Until we meet again.