by Susan Daitch
While her husband sat with his back to the dance floor, Esme whisked Ryder in circles out onto the balcony where all of Cairo seemed to lay at his feet, a present she’d given to him. The small metal shapes, mirrors and bells, sewn into her costume clanging, she kissed him hard on the mouth. Esme smelled of ginger, gardenias, Indonesian clove cigarettes, and Ryder felt like the deluded wasp trying to screw an orchid. A few minutes later Esme began to introduce him to someone and turned to him as if she couldn’t remember his name exactly, what was it again? Ryder felt nothing he could see or touch was familiar, yet everything he needed was in his control.
By the next morning the memory of Edna was like one of those paintings of eighteenth-century naval battles, left in a forgotten, rarely visited museum annex. It was once very exciting, a true action painting, but now no one remembers or cares who was fighting whom, and no one gives a damn. Later Hilliard, himself a grand vizier of delusion, would say of Esme, what a mirage, what a first-class hallucination, but Ryder would dismiss him, as if the monkish Archer didn’t know what on earth he was talking about. Esme floated into a room wearing what to Ryder were wisps of Sirius clouds. He thought about her all the time, and she didn’t disappoint him.
Mrs. Canonbury fell in love with Ryder and his tales of hidden treasures buried somewhere in the far reaches of the Persian empire, a city full of treasure, the remains of counting houses, tea houses, scimitars and skeletons. His partnership with Archer only increased his capital. They began to meet whenever Esme could get away, but always referred to each other in private as well as in public, as Mr. Congreaves and Mrs. Canonbury. Hilliard saw them in a café in the French zone and again at Esme’s jeweler’s leaving a watch to be repaired. They were careful to appear as if nothing more than formal acquaintances, but Hilliard could see they stood very close to one another and that Mr. C would hold Mrs. C’s elbow a little longer than necessary. He’d bought a present for Ryder, prayer beads made of aventurine and gold. Taking them from his pocket, he handed the paper-wrapped loop to the first beggar he encountered.
Bribery
An issue arose over some survey permits, which required them to meet a local official, and Ryder protested the hour of the appointment and the way in which the whole process was a waste of his time. On their way to the domed and filigreed ministry, sitting in the back of a hot cab, he referred to the fellow as a little Walid. Hilliard didn’t know if the remark was meant as some kind of slur or that really was his name, but the man had the power to issue or withhold documents. Their initial permit had expired, and they wanted to expand the acreage under their purview.
The pair sat in a waiting room for over nearly an hour. Ryder was supposed to meet Esme at the hotel. He studied the pattern the shadows a wooden grille fit over the windows made on the floor, and imagined the languid Walid cooling his heels, smoking a nargillah in a back room while Esme looked at the clock in the tearoom of Le Pharaon Royale, finally swallowing the dregs of her drink, picking up her bag and making for the door in order to return to her house in time for a fitting with her dressmaker. Ryder pushed himself out of his chair, heading to the door, but Archer insisted he was needed for the appointment. Finally they were called in. Hilliard swept ahead of him, hand extended, all smiles. He had told Ryder the meeting was an hour earlier than it had actually been scheduled for.
The official sat behind a desk cluttered by paper and pieces of stone used as weights. Fan spinning overhead as Turkish coffee was poured, Ryder translated, turning increasingly red as the man made it clear that he would grant their permit based on certain contingencies that would primarily benefit himself, and as far as Ryder could see, himself only. Ryder refused to give in. Neither did his Egyptian opponent, who saw nothing amiss in his demands. It was the way business was done. Now it was Hilliard’s turn to grow impatient.
“Let’s just get on with it. Pay the man.”
“You can’t give in to the Walids. We’ll be emptying piastres from our pockets to theirs, from now to eternity.”
“That’s an awfully long time.” Sometimes Hilliard pretended to be stupid, especially when he knew he was about to be manipulated into doing things he was completely opposed to.
The Egyptian told them he was busy, and if they needed more time they should return another day. He made a gesture as if to point out the door. Without warning or consulting with Ryder, Hilliard stood up from his chair, reached into his robes, and handed the man a bundle of notes. The official nodded without smiling and put the notes in a drawer.
Ryder exploded, saying in effect, the Egyptian was an oriental despot and Hilliard was a first class moron.
The “Walid,” who, unbeknownst to them understood English fairly well, replied, “And we will be minding our sphinxes and our desert long after you’re returned to your island, which I’ve heard is swampy and covered in fog.”
If Ryder believed this was the last time they would have dealings with the functionary who had humiliated him, he was mistaken. They would need to have future meetings with this man, and they would all be conducted by Hilliard in English. Ryder was overlooked as if not even in the room. When he raised objections, Hilliard paid no attention to him. Standing by in mute irritation as Hilliard voluntarily increased payments, Ryder imagined a bag of gold coins being poured out a window. He wrote to Edna that he felt like a dog whose nose is rubbed in its own crap. Ryder’s comments weren’t forgotten in a hurry, nor were angry ridges of offended pride entirely smoothed over by extensive transfer of piastres. Hilliard intuited protocol and tried to get the older and more experienced Congreaves to step aside as gracefully as possible, but Ryder insisted on being present even if the oriental ignored him.
The Effect Of Gravity On Earth
Hilliard wasn’t at the site when it happened. Ryder was occupied with his horse a few yards from the pit when he heard a loud crash and screams. Hurrying to the edge, clumps of sand giving way under his feet, he could make out the head and upper body of one of the diggers. The lower half of the man’s body was caught under a large block of stone that had toppled from some height. The lower half of his torso and his legs were trapped and probably destroyed under the weight. Blood pooled under the boulder. He yelled to the other men at the site. There were only six, but even all of them together couldn’t budge the rock. One offered to ride for help and began to run toward a horse, but Ryder stopped him. It was too late, even if he took the fastest one, which was Ryder’s own. They were too far for help to come on time, he was sure of it.
The anguish of the man’s screams was unbearable. He was not losing consciousness yet, though he was dying. Another digger began to pour water on his head. Ryder pulled his arm away. The digger hadn’t much time left, and they needed the water they had. As luck would have it, that day there wasn’t much to spare. He argued with the foreman, an Alexandrian Greek. Blood coagulated in the sand under the trapped man. His screams were unbearable. Ryder took out his gun and shot him in the head, then ordered them all back to work.
Assassin’s Creed
The letter was delivered to Hilliard scribbled in Arabic. Unwilling to make an effort at reading the page, which he assumed was a tradesman’s bill, he passed it over to Ryder, who crumpled the paper and shoved it in a pocket.
“Letter from Mrs. Canonbury?” Hilliard asked. He was joking. Esme wouldn’t have written in Arabic and never, ever would have addressed a letter to Hilliard, who was fairly open about his dislike of her. He found her archness tedious. When something obvious was narrated, whether a government failing to protect the water supply or late arrival explained by a cab that had broken down, Esme liked to say, is that not so? An early twentieth-century way of saying you’re kidding me? But said too many times with sarcasm it annoyed Archer no end. Conversation and gestures Ryder found charming Hilliard found false and parvenu. What his friend and partner saw in the woman with jangly clothing was a mystery to him. Hoping the affair was drawing to a close, he envisioned Esme writing a tear-stained letter on embassy s
tationery. Archer imagined Mr. Canonbury had his embassy toadies who informed him of hotel assignations, but he probably didn’t need to be informed. Ryder thought no one knew, but everyone did. Perhaps Canonbury didn’t care, he was tolerant and glad to have a bit of relief from Esme, then, because of appearances, put his foot down. A woman of ellipsis and multiple exclamatory and interrogative punctuation marks and never one to shirk before an underscore, she would write: Farewell, I’ll always think about you when . . . Or maybe it would be an angry final communiqué: you’ve shamed me in front of servants for the last time!!! Hilliard imagined all these scenes as he rolled a fragment of flat bread into a cylinder and popped it into his mouth.
“No, no, not at all.” Ryder tapped his fork against his plate making repetitive taps to the tune of A Little of What You Fancy Does You Good, a music hall song made popular by the chanteuse Marie Lloyd. Ryder’s humming was meant to signal, it’s nothing, don’t bother me, but that particular tune was also meant to annoy Archer with a song that was a form of low entertainment. Hilliard could tell he didn’t want to talk about the letter, but this only made him more curious about its contents.
“What is it, then?”
“Nothing like that.”
Everyone carried a knife here. Blade pulled from a belt made no noise. It would be so easy. An oriental, as Congreaves himself would say, could disappear into a warren of streets or the desert itself. No one would find him, ever. Archer would then have to return to England. He couldn’t really survive without Ryder, and going back to London was not something he wanted to do, not yet.
Ryder picked an ant off the table and rolled it between his thumb and forefinger so it quickly became a bristle of broken ant legs, head, and thorax. When he frowned his eyebrows looked like question marks lying on their sides. He flicked the ant ball off his palm. Then he slammed his fork against table, and egg went flying. He and Esme were staying in Egypt. He flung the wad of paper to the floor and stormed out of the room.
Tucking up his dishdasha, Hilliard padded to the shadow on the tile floor, picked up the ball, proceeded to smooth it out on the table. The scalloped curves of Arabic were illegible to him, but he dressed hurriedly and called a driver.
He found the “Walid” in his office, gold spectacles pushed onto his head, reading documents, smoking. He didn’t look up when Hilliard entered the room. A highly placed functionary, if it weren’t for funds that would shortly change hands, the Egyptian would have been too busy to see Hilliard.
“Salaam Ali,” Hilliard paused, “Kuum,” he added. This much Arabic he knew. He touched his fingers to his forehead and bowed slightly, “Masa’a AlKair, Sayyid” — he had learned to say ‘good afternoon, sir’ — “please, I need some discreet help.” Archer passed the page across the man’s desk. “I would be so very grateful if you could translate this for me.” Apart from Ryder there was no other person he could call on for such services, a measure of how isolated Hilliard felt, even after several months. Despite his costume, Archer was often paralyzed when it came to acting on his desires in the city where he claimed he felt so at home. Archer would stare too long at camel drivers, café musicians, and sometimes they returned his gaze.
The Egyptian picked up the wrinkled paper, read the few lines.
“This note you should take very seriously,” he said, picking up a cigarette as if he had all the time in the world. “The message is clear. Remain in Egypt and both of you are dead.”
“You’re certain?”
“Come, my friend, let us not joke. I make money from your presence. I wouldn’t advise you to depart otherwise, would I? Do I have rivals? Yes, of course. Would they kill to make my life more difficult?” He shrugged as if to say, maybe, maybe not, who can tell? He stood from his chair and poured tea holding his arm high so the stream of tea fell several feet into gold-rimmed glasses little bigger than chicken eggs. He handed a glass to Hilliard.
“We could make a payment, I suppose, if you think it really necessary.” The glass was hot. Hilliard shifted it from hand to hand before clearing a bit of space from the desk and putting it down. The man shook his head and looked at the glasses, but offered him no milk or sugar.
“Whoever wrote this note pens beautiful calligraphy. Someone educated who knows what he’s doing. Perhaps he was only hired by someone else.”
He was offered more tea, but shook his head, no; his first glass sat cooling, precipitously close to the edge of the desk. His host frowned, picked up Hilliard’s glass, nestled it back on the tray with the teapot, and motioned with his head that the interview was finished.
Archer pushed the fretwork iron gate, left over from the French, looked back at the dome behind him and ventured into the street. Unaccompanied by Congreaves he had to pretend he was deaf when beggars followed him and tugged at his robes. He pushed them away, wishing he remembered what Ryder had said when the unwashed masses approached to get them to leave him alone. Hilliard was no wiser than he had been a few hours earlier, apart from the knowledge the threat was genuine. It wasn’t that he didn’t feel brave, although he wasn’t particularly. The local constabulary, he believed, might be less than helpful regarding a threat to an Englishman who was known to refer to them as incompetent poobahs, administered mercy killings, then got back to work. He imagined Ryder stabbed to death in the street and himself lost, wandering the desert unable to be understood by anyone within hundreds of miles. Though he knew this was a silent film hardly grounded in actual facts, the idea haunted him.
Hilliard and Congreaves left Egypt in the middle of the night.
The two men packed their tents, collapsible canvas bath, folding canvas chairs, mosquito netting, pots, pans, tea service, and silver, made their travel arrangements and procured whatever documents they needed by cabling the India Office in London. The province they meant to explore was located in the part of Persia that had been parceled out to the British, as opposed to the oil-rich province of Khuzistan that had been grabbed by the Russians. They intended to set up base camp in Duzdab, now known as Zahedan, a small town where they could launch themselves from the comfort of what they considered likely to be habitable dwellings, situated so their forays into desert and mountains would be easy outings, or so they thought. They would be looking for the city that had once flourished in the mountains of Sistan va Baluchistan.
Debt
While Ryder disappeared into the land of pomegranate and sand, his family moved to even cheaper lodgings in Spitalfields, where they shared two rooms with another woman and her children. Maybe Edna didn’t have Esme Canonbury’s slightly horsy elegance, and at embassy parties she probably would have felt like a rubber oven mitt thrust in a drawer of silk opera gloves, but Edna never curtsied to anyone. She got her children food and shelter while the hard-edged yet ethereal Esme, in the same situation, might have turned to opium or morphine or scotch and soda and left the planet earlier than expected to more applause than expected.
Back in London, the younger Ryder was four years old, and his sister, Alicia, was six. Money was running out. In desperation Edna wrote to her in-laws in Rhodesia. My dear, their letter replied post haste, we simply haven’t got the funds ourselves. To celebrate our anniversary we had a modest tea party on the veranda. Love to the children. She wrote again. Lucky you to have tea and a veranda. We’re lining our shoes with dust bunnies against the cold. Her desperation was interpreted as cheekiness and was met with silence. Edna had, by now, long doubted the veracity of the stories he had told her about hunting elephant for ivory and skinning leopards alone in the savannah that stretched for miles around him. It’s unlikely he or his family had ever actually done such things. With two small children there was no returning to the Crystal Palace or any similar line of work. The Crystal Palace job was a moment on stage Edna thought would last forever, but then her identity as a guide vanished without a trace. Even her best clothing was worn and stained. No one would grant her an interview. Doors were shut in her face. She hadn’t the necessary training or
certificate to teach in a school and had no one to care for the children while she furthered her own education.
The landlady pounded on the door, threatening eviction. Edna’s children were taught how to be still as mice, as if their lives depended on it. She put her hands over the children’s mouths, whispered they should make no sound until the knocking passed. Ryder II whimpered, he was frightened, while Alicia made a silent counting game out of the predicament: how long would the landlady knock? (This was the beginning of Alicia’s lifelong interest in odds, betting, and a gambling habit.) They made a practice of dodging the landlady, not only going in and out of the small building where they rented rooms, but also on the street. Edna would listen, ear to the space where door meets jamb, to hear her footsteps down the hall as she prepared to leave the house, and only when she heard the key turn in the front door lock did she herself venture out. The family’s comings and goings were measured and calculated, distance and time, in relationship to the known habits of their landlady. They knew she did her shopping right after breakfast and was out all morning so this was the optimal time for venturing forth, but Edna figured they had to be back before the woman returned. Despite all her reckoning, mistakes were made. Once when rounding a corner backwards Edna knocked right into the landlady’s bony butt as she bent over a basket of eggs in front of a grocer’s. She straightened up with difficulty as if she’d been knocked over by a wrecking ball. In an instant she wiped the egg from her face and went off right in the street in front of shopkeepers and customers, sounding like a human abacus clacking what amount was in arrears and what fees had gone unpaid. Edna and the children were always hungry. Utter destitution was visited upon the Congreaves family. At one point Edna trained the children to nick food. She was ashamed, but did so anyway. At first their attempts at pinching a loaf of bread or an apple were met with humiliating failure. Shopkeepers vented anger at small children and constables offered cute warnings about special gaols, but hunger can be a shrewd teacher in this regard. They got better at it.
