Visions of Isabelle

by William Bayer

  The young man, seated now on a fallen pillar, raises a flute to his lips and begins to play. Clear, pure, the sounds vibrate in the aromatic air with a sadness that gives her the impression she's a secret sharer, a witness to a private movement. But then, as the song nears its end, she changes her mind. Something tells her the boy knows perfectly well that she's near, and is trying, like a Hindu playing for a cobra, to lure her out.

  There is no time for this notion to catch hold. She watches, astonished, as her musician gathers up his burnoose and glides away. And, when he is gone, she walks out of the garden and up to her room, thinking strange thoughts of inscrutable cabals.

  "But this is absolutely extraordinary."

  Pierre is holding a delicately sugared crescent of pastry between his fingers, twirling it, examining it in the light.

  "How amusing! How bizarre! Little sparrow–who would have thought you'd have such an adventure. A naif like you. Such good luck! And there's something about your story that tantalizes me, though I'm not sure I can put my finger on exactly what it is."

  They are sitting in a proper café in the French quarter of the city. Boys vending fruit and pastries are circulating about.

  "Please try," says Isabelle. "I'm so confused myself."

  Pierre bites into his pastry, releasing an aroma of orange-scented almond paste.

  "Well, it's the convenience of the coincidence, if you see what I mean."

  "I'm not sure I do..."

  "The chain of events. It's rather too neat, and that final vanishing act! Ha!"

  "How do you explain it?"

  "Well, you've made quite a spectacle of yourself in Tunis, my dear–surely you know that your wanderings at night and your formidable disguises have not gone unobserved. There is even some talk, I understand, that you're a Russian spy! Ridiculous, of course, but there you are. What I'm getting at is that you might well be the victim of a complicated hoax, spun perhaps by someone wanting to use you for a fool. And I don't trust that maid. I think she knows more than she's letting on."

  "Impossible!" Isabelle shakes her head. "She's devoted to me."

  Pierre takes a swipe at a cookie seller who's been pulling at his sleeve. The boy jumps out of the way, sticks out his tongue

  "Ugh! These children are verminous! This isn't a good place to talk. We'll meet tonight at the same café. I know the place–one of the most sordid around. Perhaps the boy will reappear, and I can help you analyze his tricks."

  She is tense that night as she makes her way into the medina, plunges through the narrow streets, pushing beggars aside. New ships have landed at the Port of Tunis, and the alleys of the love market are packed with sailors on liberty, sweaty, husky men who surge through Bab El Gorjani, eager to release the tension of the seas.

  Concentrating on keeping her burnoose clean, avoiding the moist walls and the windows overhead from which, at any moment, she might be drenched by a quickly unloaded basin of slop, she takes a wrong turn and becomes lost.

  The more she struggles to find her way, the more confusing she finds the alleys. In panic she darts this way and that, searching for some familiar sight. Finally, exhausted, she stops to rest at the edge of a public well. Catching her breath, she finds her body sticky with sweat and her robe badly stained, caked with donkey dung.

  She peers about the tiny square with desperate eyes. It is hopeless, she knows, to continue looking for the café. She must first find the cemetery near her house, then work her way back along the route she took the night before.

  As she stumbles about, looking for the cemetery wall, she takes no notice of the other people around. It never occurs to her that a man is treading behind, stalking, pressing against walls, crouching in doorways, tracking her through the maze. It is only when she reaches the Menara gate and pauses to wipe her face that she has a feeling that someone is lurking near.

  Suddenly she snaps her head around. A shadowy figure emerges from the cemetery, walks directly toward her with a familiar gliding gait. She feels puzzlement, and then extreme curiosity. The young man looks stunning in his brown and white striped gown, and even before she can see his face she is certain who he is.

  "Good evening."

  "You know me?" she asks.

  "Of course. You're a Russian Moslem, and you devote yourself to literature. Is there anyone in Tunis who does not know that?"

  They both laugh then, and though she does not yet understand his game, she has no doubt now that a game is what he plays.

  "Strange we should meet here," she says. "Have you been following me for long?"

  "Not too long. I saw you get lost, and thought I should help. Then I thought you might be insulted. But I followed you anyway, just in case. The medina is a nightmare, unless one is born in it, and even then... Do you know that often, if you ask a native the way to a certain place, he will send you in an opposite direction to make a joke?"

  "What's your name?"

  He stares at her, ignores the question. "Have you smoked tonight?"

  "Not yet."

  "Good. I don't think kif and absinthe mix. Let's go to your house and have a drink."

  "My house! You do have a nerve. I don't even know who you are."

  He shrugs. "It's not as if we've never met."

  "No, but one must be careful here..." She remembers all she's heard of the dangers of the medina, those tales of kidnapping and being sold into slavery, forced penetrations, multiple rapes. There is a side of her that is wary and another that is hungry for life. Already she is savoring the promise of adventure, wondering how to frame the opening words of a short story that will recount this strange meeting in the night.

  "How odd of you to want absinthe," she says. "You're the first Tunisian I've met who drinks."

  "I didn't say I was Tunisian."

  "No, but I assumed..."

  "Ah–but you mustn't assume anything. It's much better not to think. One must take one's life as it comes, accept the odd meetings, choose the untraveled roads."

  By one hand she leads him inside the house–in her other she carries a torch. When they reach the octagonal room, he grasps the torch away and brandishes it, causing whorls of light and swirls of shadow to dash across the mirrors. He laughs, brandishes the torch faster, spattering embers on the black marble floor. In an infinity of reflections Isabelle sees her hazel eyes enlarge, catch fire, gash the silver glass with streaks of gold.

  He pauses, moves close to her, holds the torch between them so it illuminates their faces from beneath. As they stand together, peering into each other's eyes, she feels a warmth rising in her loins.

  They climb the spiral stairs, higher, higher, to her round domed room in the turret at the top. Here he extinguishes the flame, throws himself on her cushions and looks about.

  "Ah," he says, pointing to her folding writing table covered with her papers, her pens and bottles of ink, "so this is where your devotion takes place. And there..." looking at her tiny prayer rug arranged with four candles, each set at a corner, stuck to the floor with a bead of wax, "...there is where you pray. Yes, I like your house. This is the room of someone interesting–an interesting personage."

  "That's very kind of you to say," she says, uncorking a bottle, pouring them each a drink. "But, if you don't mind, I think you should explain yourself."

  "My name means nothing. It wouldn't interest you, and besides I prefer to present myself in a different way. I've been observing you closely for some days now, following you about, discovering what you do and where you live. Your disguises caught my interest, and the way you run around in the medina, peering at people with that intent expression on your face."

  "I've never noticed you."

  "Well, that's the way life is–a person looks at everybody else, and never notices somebody looking at him. But sometimes," and he smiles, "there is an encounter, like a story, perhaps, or like a dream. The two observers meet, by chance or by design, and then something happens between them, and they remember it well although they neve
r see one another again."

  "Oh," she asks, amazed, "what do you suppose is going to happen between us?"

  "It is written," he says, staring at her with devouring eyes, "it is written that we shall make love."

  And at that he brings down his head and presses his lips against her mouth.

  Suddenly, she does not quite remember how, they are facing each other, their bodies bare. He grasps her, moves his fingers slowly down her flanks, until she feels moisture begin to run between her thighs. Then she seems to be falling, shedding some part of herself. She senses a wildness in him, something powerful and strong. He is limber, lithe, slim, and his skin, white, pale like lime, is glazed with a delicate moistness that shimmers in the moonlight scattering around the room.

  They lie now on cushions, on their sides. She has never felt so light, has closed her eyes, is dreaming of colors, sounds. Suddenly they begin to struggle, and then laugh as she tries to throw him off. But she can't, and when she lies beneath him, pinned, exhausted, panting for breath, playing with her palms and outstretched fingers, smearing the sweat about on his chest, she feels they've enacted a game of mastery and conquest, in which he's proved his strength and so can now take his prize.

  Suddenly something warm and moist glazes her below, and she finds herself falling into a pit of wildness and violent passion. He licks her as he might lick a sherbet, in long even strokes toward a single point. She can barely stand it–his strokes are so delicate and fine. He probes on, deeper, deeper, until her whole body begins to thrash.

  Then he is upon her again, an expert horseman controlling a new mount. One part of her wants to resist, but another side takes joy in being tamed. His face is radiant as he rides, and she loves his roughness, his limber strength. She has never fought a lover so hard, never sweated in embrace like this. She revels in the push and pull, moving harder, faster, even laughing as they blast.

  At last: an explosion. She feels a contracting deep inside, spreads her thighs, arches back and thrusts. He gasps, she cries out, and then they fall. She feels him emptying–the flow goes on and on. She shudders, grasps his body. And then the odor of roses floods full in.

  It makes her heady, this rich red aroma, fogs her mind. She rolls upon her back, her head down near his thighs, and gulps in air as if she's run a race. They lie like this, eyes glazed, and then she falls off to sleep.

  She awakens occasionally in the night, once when she thinks she hears a flute. Long before dawn she hears the moans of the muezzin calling from the minarets of all the mosques of Tunis. Looking about a few minutes later, she sees her lover on her prayer rug, surrounded by lit candles, bent.

  "God is great; There is no God but God; Allah is His name; Mohammed is His prophet."

  She falls off and when she wakes again her tongue feels salty, her lips and body battered, bruised. She turns, looks about. The room is flooded with sunshine, and he is gone.

  Confused, she inspects her things. The absinthe bottle is corked, the two glasses washed, dried and arranged together on the tray. The papers on her writing desk are arranged, too, the quills and inkpot set at right angles as if ready for a clerk.

  She dresses, wanders down the stairs and corners Khadidja preparing coffee on her charcoal stove.

  "When did he leave?"

  "Hours ago."

  "Did he say anything–when he'd be back?"

  Khadidja shakes her head. Isabelle looks at her closely, forces her to meet her eyes.

  "Tell me, Khadidja–tell me who he is."

  The maid shrugs and fidgets.

  "I don't know," she says. "He came here several days ago when you were out, asked me about you, and I told him the words you taught me to say. Then he left."

  "But you'd seen him before?"

  "No, Mademoiselle. He's not from Tunis."

  Isabelle nestles herself by the old maid's side.

  "In that case, Khadidja, tell me what you think."

  Khadidja looks puzzled, as if no one has ever asked her opinion on anything before.

  "I feel he is sad, Mademoiselle, and perhaps very rich. He could be a Moroccan. Maybe he is a prince–his words are fine, and so are his clothes. When I heard him sing, I thought he might be a ghost, perhaps the ghost of someone who lived here long ago."

  "The music was real."

  "Oh, yes, Mademoiselle. But a ghost is real, too."

  Khadidja bows her head, and Isabelle understands. The gesture is an acknowledgment that there are things in the world that cannot be explained, things which happen, nevertheless, and to which people must submit.

  She spends the morning pacing about her house. When her phantom lover does not return, she goes to the city, hires a horse and gallops out to the ruins of Carthage, followed by Dédale.

  She watches the sun begin to set from the Baths of Antoninus, stumbles across the huge capital of a fallen Corinthian column, then looks out to the sea. Sweaty, dirty, smelling of her horse, she tosses aside her robe, and runs, followed by the yelping dog, into the spumy waves.

  That night she sits for a long while among the rose bushes in her garden. Then she calls for Khadidja to join her outside.

  "He is a man, Khadidja–that I know for sure. And a man cannot disappear. Come–we must find out how he leaves."

  Grasping onto torches they explore the ruins. Finally they come to the wall where, they agree, he has disappeared three times. There are bushes behind it, and behind one of these is a niche. Inside they find the white burnoose, and wrapped in it the flute.

  The next morning Khadidja comes running into the tower.

  "Mademoiselle," she cries, shaking Isabelle awake. "A boy has come from the flutist and has brought you this."

  She hands over a package which Isabelle frantically unties. Inside she finds a pair of Spahi riding boots, made of shiny red Moroccan leather, finely waxed.

  "Was there a message? Did the boy say anything at all?"

  "Just that his master is leaving Tunis, and will not be back again."

  Days pass, and the young man sends no further word. His flute and burnoose remain untouched in the niche. Isabelle waits and waits, and the next time the moon is full, she watches the garden the whole night hoping he'll return. But he does not, and after that she takes him at his word.

  Through the rest of 1898 she writes little, though she comes to know Tunis well. She becomes adept at assuming a male disguise, and begins to use a man's name: "Si Mahmoud."

  Often she leaves the old Turkish house to ride in the countryside for days. Then she sleeps out in the open, in meadows or on the beach, listening to herself, her thoughts, trying to work out the meaning of her life.

  Sometimes she does not leave her tower for a week, smoking, drinking, dreaming of herself in situations, her destiny, the real meaning of her disguise. Then she goes out to Bab El Gorjani, finds a lover, takes him to her tower, gratifies herself and dismisses him at dawn.

  Sometimes, when she is prowling in the medina, she thinks she sees the donor of the red boots. But always, when she looks closely, the person turns out to be someone else.

  In early 1899, she begins to receive disturbing news. Vava is ill, and Augustin (out of the legion, married to Madeleine, "in business" in Marseilles) writes her that the old man does not have long to live. She knows she must return to Geneva, but puts off the trip as long as she can.

  Finally, when she receives an urgent cable, she calls at the bank to tell Pierre she will no longer be able to keep the house. She learns that he has not come in to work for several days.

  She finally finds his home, a charming villa poised on a hill overlooking the sea. She walks through the garden and finds her friend running about his terrace in a rage. The two Dalmatians are barking ferociously as the Frenchman, forehead covered with sweat, scurries about throwing potted plants off his balcony into the sea.

  "They're transferring me to Lyons," he shouts, as rose bushes, potted yuccas, rare bamboos and dahlias are heaved. "My life is over. I shall never survive in th
at hideous, heartless town. Seems some rumors of my inversion have filtered back. God damnit," he cries, as he holds a huge earthenware pot of violet hydrangeas above his head. "The brutes! The dirty swine!"

  He thrusts the pot over the railing, and Isabelle watches as the petals break loose and glide, sprinkling a thousand shards of smashed pottery scattered on the rocks.

  Later that night, the two of them drunk on wine, the Dalmatians snoring loudly at his feet, Pierre asks if she ever met up again with the mysterious boy who sent her the boots.

  "No," she says. "The story was left unresolved."

  "Still you should try and write it up."

  "I've tried many times," she says, "but the words never come."

  "Ah," Pierre shrugs. "Perhaps it was not such a great experience after all."

  "He was the best lover I ever had."

  "And the boots...?"

  "What about them?"

  "You must use them, little sparrow. To march. March and explore."

  A GARDEN GONE TO SEED

  May I, 1899. There was no one to meet her at 5:00 PM when she arrived at the Gare de Cornavin. She was wearing her red boots and a hooded cloak of pure white wool. Crowds thronged the station, the smoke of the locomotives was blue, and the papers that had come on the same train from Paris were full of speculation about whether Captain Dreyfus would be retried. The Affaire had been the talk of Tunis, and for that matter Bône when, a day before Old Nathalie's death, Mathieu Dreyfus had denounced Esterhazy as the true author of the bordereau. But to Isabelle the Dreyfus case was confusing to the point of boredom; she swept by the newspaper kiosks and out to the street to find a carriage for Meyrin.

  Moving down the Rue Voltaire she found it difficult to imagine she'd once lived among the Alps. No camels plowed these neat Swiss farms; no African sun beat upon these verdant fields. Long past the outskirts of Geneva it struck her that she'd reentered a museum–of European culture and of memories from her past. As the wheels of her carriage creaked, she recalled exchanges with disillusioned Europeans who'd complained of living in the Maghreb so far from opera, theater, concerts, museums. They miss the whole point of North Africa, she thought, a place to escape the embalmed culture of Europe, to learn to live on a sensual plane.