A Cloudy Day on the Western Shore Read online

  Breathing audibly, Carter said, “I made these paintings from different tombs, from the various pharaonic dynasties. I’ve done hundreds of paintings—I copied them from the stone surfaces of the walls. But this face always leapt out at me and animated my sketches to form these features on the page—it was as if this face was pursuing me. At first I thought I had lost my reason, imagining there was a wandering spirit that had left its tomb thousands of years ago and now taken to following me—and I a foreigner, come from across the seas.”

  Carter paused for a moment to catch his breath, and looked at Aisha to see her reaction. But she, along with the rest, was staring at the paintings in amazement. The guests kept quiet, so Carter resumed, “I began to gather these faces together—I didn’t send them to the Archaeological Society in London as I did with the rest of the paintings. I felt they were something that belonged specially to me—this face that revealed itself only to me. I’ve kept these scrolls with me and never left them. It’s a strange coincidence that I brought them with me tonight—I never imagined that I’d come across this face here.”

  He stopped, out of steam. He looked at Aisha, but she didn’t return his gaze. She didn’t dare lift her face to meet his eye. The crowd studied her features for a moment, then went back to the paintings spread out on the floor, and a murmur rose as they began circling the paintings, viewing them from different angles, then looking back at her, while she clung closer and closer to the wall.

  “Mary,” said Carter, “be good enough to raise your head a little.”

  “He’s not talking to me,” thought Aisha. “He must mean someone else, not me.”

  And Eveline Hanim thought to herself, If that girl doesn’t raise her head I’ll evict her.

  But Lord Cromer came resolutely forward, reached out with a finger and tilted her chin, lifting her face. He gazed at her and said, “I thought perhaps Carter was exaggerating, as is his wont, but no—the resemblance is clear. She could be a fugitive princess from the age of the Pharaohs.”

  In spite of herself, Aisha felt tears starting from her eyes. Everyone applauded—because of Lord Cromer’s courtliness, of course, and the verdict he had pronounced. He let go her chin and walked away from her, the rest of the crowd following in his wake. That concluded her role in this night’s party, and there was nothing in her way except Carter the madman, and between them the pictures spread upon the floor. She dabbed at her tears and tried to look at the paintings. She remembered her long journey, fleeing from her village, the wolf that stalked her, the life she was living under a false name and identity. But the pictures, in spite of everything, bore something of her, as if he had not copied them from ancient lines incised in rough stone, but from a lucid mirror in which, when he sat before it, he could see through to her soul. She kept asking herself, Is that truly me?

  “I was certain,” said Carter, “that you were present and alive, from the number of reliefs depicting your face that I saw on the walls and columns and obelisks. And now I’ve seen for myself that you actually do exist.”

  Aisha reached out for one of the paintings and picked it up. It showed her face in profile, wide eyes filled with sorrow. “It’s me and it’s not me,” she said. “I’m far more unhappy than this picture. There’s more life in the colors of this painting than there is in my body.”

  Carter went to her and put his hand on her shoulder. She didn’t shy away from him—on the contrary, she took comfort from his gesture. “Could you sit for me one day?” he said. “I’d like to paint you from life, after painting you from stone. I may not be a brilliant painter, but I feel that your face will lend me the inspiration I’ve been looking for.”

  On the point of tears, Aisha replied, “Please—enough! I don’t know what will become of me tomorrow. I live day to day, moment to moment. I have no real home. I always feel like an outcast. Even wolves pursue me.”

  “I, too, am pursued by wolves. Perhaps the same wolf stalks us both.”

  They looked at each other. He wished he could embrace her, but he did not dare.

  3The Tombs at Beni Hassan

  YES INDEED, MY LITTLE PRINCESS—our life is a chase that never ends, breathless and relentless. And the wolves are not the only hunters. The wolves show their faces occasionally, but are hidden behind masks most of the time.

  I had gone to great lengths to escape, to get far away, to hide, even before I encountered the wolf for the first time. By the time I saw it standing there, watchfully, beside the entrance to the tomb, I had already trembled to hear it howling in the silence of the night. It had banished sleep and robbed me of my peace of mind. But when it stood before me I was calm, as if I had come to know it and to expect its arrival. It gazed at me with luminous eyes and open mouth. Startled, I stared at it: a dusty wild dog, only bigger and sleeker than a dog, with a tapered muzzle and prominent fangs. It stared back at me, surprised by my youth and small stature, and the harshness of my isolation. It didn’t seem capable of mauling me, at least in that moment, as I sat beside the blazing campfire, which I had fed with enough firewood to keep it burning all night. This was the reason the wolf was watching me from outside the tomb, without setting foot inside.

  Newberry had warned me about the danger of spending the night in that place. He was my oldest and most experienced leader, and he knew the secrets of this primitive region. He wanted me to work only in the daytime, then take the ferry and return to the eastern shore, but I was bewitched by the place, its sullen rocks whose fissures sprout thorns, and those black crevasses intersecting with the ridges of the mountain. He said, “I don’t mean to underestimate your abilities, but I hadn’t imagined they would send me a youth of eighteen years.”

  I didn’t feel slighted by his words, for I was still a few months shy of that age. I didn’t tell him that I had actually embarked upon my first sexual experiences, here upon the hot sands of this strange country, but I felt that this tomb in which I was to work was my gateway to the adult world. The wind was still hot, even after midnight, the river opaque as a riddle, the sky close and rich with stars. I had never before seen a sky packed with so many stars, and I was intoxicated with the space and the silence—until that wolf turned up. He stretched his paws, then sat near the opening of the tomb. I didn’t know whether he was there to guard me from attack by the other wolves or whether he was waiting for the fire to die down so as to launch an attack himself. I rose cautiously, gathered up all the bits of kindling and tree limbs that I had, and began tossing them onto the flames. My only hope was for the fire not to die out before daybreak—and when would that be?

  Nothing broke the silence but the crackling of the wood fire—could it be that this was where the hunt would come to an end? It was Newberry who had brought me from Cairo to Minya onboard an old sailing vessel. I preferred to travel by water, so that bad luck would lose my trail; the ship traveled against the current, and the water bore particles of dark-colored mud. I had spent my childhood at the edge of a dark-green river full of algae and bits of melting ice. I contemplated the flat green expanse that covered the bank on the east side, while the west side was hemmed in by desolate hills, and the desert was as close as could be.

  We disembarked together and joined the crowd at Minya. The colors of the faces, the suntanned complexions, amazed me. We rested for one night at the only hotel in the station square, and the next morning crossed to the opposite bank thanks to an old and very small boat. We climbed the arid hills to the tombs of Beni Hassan.

  There were deep trenches amidst the rocks. Newberry pointed to one of them and said, “Here is your palace, the one you’ve been seeking.”

  I noted the veiled sarcasm, but I was busy exploring the place, studying the walls of the first tomb I entered. Its paintings were faded, covered with a layer of fine dust, but they were real and authentic, full of ancient spirits in their natural abode, no embellishments or artificial gloss. Although pale, as if about to fade away altogether, they were protected from the effects of time by this pat
ina of dust. They were not stiff or mummified, the way I had seen them for the first time at Lord Amherst’s mansion. I wanted to reach out and touch them, but I was afraid they would vanish like a dream.

  “Our team is made up of two others,” said Newberry. “You’ll meet them in the morning. Mr. Fraser and Mr. Blackden. They have undertaken to copy the paintings in the other tombs. We shall all cooperate in finishing up this area.”

  “Where are they now?” I asked.

  “They’ll turn up in good time. The important thing is for you to know the scope of your work, so that you don’t interfere with theirs.”

  I arranged my things—my small case, scrolls of paper, colored pencils, and a little food. I did this in such a deliberate way as to suggest that the place had become my own, and that I was staying here.

  “You’re not in Swaffham, you know,” Newberry cautioned me. “This place is full of vipers and wolves and hyenas. It’s not a picnic.”

  The wolf got to his feet and turned in a circle, sensing, perhaps, that the blaze had subsided. I grasped a flaming stick and brandished it, making a loud noise. I wanted him to move off a bit, but he saw through my childish ploy. He kept staring at me with his piercing eyes, and then he began to howl. His voice split the silence of the mountain, and from afar dozens of other voices responded. Was he summoning them? Or was it a farewell? He wagged his tail and threw me a final glance before he left. I was sure he would return some other night, when there was no fire lit.

  I commenced work in the morning, even though I was tired from my night’s vigil, and from the stifling weather. A small dinghy came, and in it were some supplies which an elderly boatman named Idris brought. I didn’t go to the other tombs to make the acquaintance of those who worked there. I wanted to be alone for a while, to contemplate these cryptic paintings and try to decode their messages. I paused for a long time before a depiction of a bird. It was standing on the branch of a tree that was not visible in the picture, folding one wing and spreading the other, as if it were half-still, while the other half was poised to take flight. I stood there unable to believe what I saw—I expected it to come to life and burst from the shadowy tomb. I opened my case with a trembling hand and drew from it my papers and watercolors. There was a small table with a low chair, at which I seated myself and got to work at once. I felt as though it was essential that I rescue this bird from its silent death, to shower it with my watercolors and infuse it with a new spirit—perhaps it would find its way to the other world.

  I remembered the first time I stood before these paintings, the shiver that ran all through me as with my eyes I traced their details—a shiver of fear and amazement, and a strange kind of hunger. I was young, but the chase had begun. Yes indeed . . . it started years ago, elsewhere, on a rainy night in Kensington, our first home, when we all left, fleeing the darkness: seven siblings, seven hungry mouths, and in our mother’s arms the eighth, who was still suckling. My father was in flight from his creditors and the announcement of his ruin. We left our old house and most of our clothes and other belongings, each of us taking only what he could carry. We took shelter from the pouring rain under the station roof, until morning came, and with it the first train that would carry us to another town, far from all the memories of childhood, of brick houses and cobblestone streets. The train didn’t tarry: it raced across the fogbound flat countryside, severing us from everything that had any connection with the past. My mother cried, and so did the baby. She tried to quiet it by offering it her breast, but that didn’t seem to satisfy it. For many a long day this feeling would cling to all of us: there was never enough food to fill all those stomachs. My father was puffing on his pipe, pretending nothing had happened. At that moment his smoke was turning our stomachs, nauseating us. Next to his seat was a small number of his things, which he had been determined to bring along and keep by him: a roll of canvases, a bundle of different-sized brushes, and a quantity of half-empty paint tubes. My father was seeking a new start, and we had no choice but to go to the old family home in Swaffham—to my paternal aunt, who most particularly hated my mother.

  We crowded into the basement of the small house, the mice having fled on our account. My elder brother soon left us to seek his fortune in London. My aunt tried to get me to attend the school that was affiliated with her church, but my father refused; she persisted in her efforts to give me spelling lessons through the use of the New Testament. For the first time my father took me with him to look for work at the nearby estates, for he was afraid to face rejection on his own. Together we rode in a hay wagon that jogged along monotonously. He had brought examples of his paintings: short-tailed dogs, wide-eyed cats, and stray foxes—paintings our fugitive state had prevented him from finishing.

  “Of course,” he was telling me as we rode along, “I prefer to paint animals. They are sincere—they don’t know how to dissimulate. Likewise they have no objection to their own looks, as can be plainly seen in my paintings.”

  Our destination was the stately homes of the nobility, those accursed Englishmen who loved their spoiled pets more than they loved their wives, according to my father. Together we climbed Didlington Hill, where Lord Amherst’s estate was: an old fortress with moss growing upon its stones, ivy and fern surrounding the window frames. The butler looked us over haughtily, but he admitted us into the presence of Lady Amherst. The dim corridors exuded the scent of wood varnish and old spices. We trod upon carpeting so soft it seemed to me that if I should trip and fall I would get lost in its dense pile. We entered a hall whose walls were covered in portraits of glowering faces and uniforms adorned with medals—lords, generals, and captains. My father looked at me, feeling diminished and wishing he could retreat. But the lady came, carrying a blindingly white Persian cat. My father talked to her about how he specialized in painting domestic animals, and had gone into a number of stately homes and painted all the creatures they housed, from birds to dogs and cats to racehorses, even snakes, and animals that had been stuffed and mounted. It appeared that despite all this the lady did not need his services, especially since his Lordship, her husband, was away on a long hunting trip. But then the Persian cat, taking her unawares, leapt onto my lap, where it subsided in a heap, settling itself comfortably. The lady looked at me in amazement. She agreed to have my father begin painting her cat and to bring me along whenever he came. At last we smiled at each other, he and I. We’d see some bread and butter and eggs on our table; perhaps we could have a little peace of mind and a fresh start.

  It would be absurd to say that the cat’s leap changed my life—it wasn’t so random as all that. The incident was no more than a chance occurrence, but it was the reason behind our regular trips to Didlington. My aunt was angry, exasperated with my father for not giving her a chance to instruct me.

  The animals began to change as new portrait subjects were introduced, and the paintings were replaced, one for another. The lady owned a menagerie of tame beasts in her back garden—monkeys from Africa, small Bengal tigers, colorful equatorial birds. I, too, brought a small tablet and some pencils. I would follow his brushstrokes and perhaps the course of his life, as a wandering artist passing through estates and manors to paint the animals they housed. Surely I would be like him.

  One day my father was painting an ill-mannered monkey. It would eat the fruit of a banana and fling the peel, while the lady smiled and my father tried to feign pleasure in this teasing. It was a foolish scene. I pulled out my chair and wandered away from them, through the long corridor, over the plush carpet. I saw the mirrors, the paintings, the carpets, and the elaborate silver candlesticks, as well as the swords, daggers, and hunting rifles.

  Eventually the corridor took me to a dimly lit hall, with faint light filtering in through narrow openings in lowered blinds. The air was stale—there was neither a source of heat nor any ventilation. When my eyes had adjusted to the shadows, I discerned wondrous things such as I had never seen before. There was a statue of black stone: a slender woman, her no
se broken but still held high, her full lips pressed together, her eyes wide and deep set; in her hand she held what looked like a flower bending forward on its stem and resting on her fingers, and she stood as if she was just about to step out of the shadows. In the middle of the hall was a massive stone sarcophagus, with exotic figures incised and painted on it, including an image of the flower that the woman held. Next to this was an old wooden box whose colors deeply penetrated its texture—outlandish images, such as staring eyes, open hands, serpent heads and jackals, strange faces decorated with jewelry that was stranger still. Everything was oddly positioned. There was another statue representing a cat standing poised on its hind legs for a savage attack, possessing nothing of the docility of the animals my father painted. Next to this was a glass case, under which were many ancient artifacts, some of them broken and incomplete—pieces of stone, wood, and greenish brass; huge vessels of pottery, marble, and granite, with extraordinary designs etched upon them; paintings hung upon the walls. There were fragments of ancient linen, worn and frayed, resting behind panes of glass. There was a picture of a warrior holding a bow and nocking an arrow as he stood upon a two-wheeled horse-drawn chariot. The hall was filled with remarkable pictures of brown-faced people with wide eyes and long, curling lashes—they belonged to another world, a different era. I knew nothing about them, and yet I moved among them, feverish, wanting to reach out my hand and touch them, to make sure they were really there. I was afraid, though—they looked like talismans for wizards, followers of Merlin.

  Could I draw these, rather than the cats and other pets? Could I get at the life behind the faded, stiff façade? They must be connected in some obscure way to this peripatetic lord, to those foreign countries he frequented. They were not to be found in our world, that much was certain. No one in Kensington or Swaffham, or even London, could fashion such totems.