[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
Lucius Shepard
All the Perfumes of Araby
1992
For nearly two years after my arrival in Egypt, I put off visiting the Pyramids. I had seen
them once, briefly at sunset, while
en route
by car from Alexandria to Cairo. Looming up
from the lion-coloured sands, their sunstruck sides ignited to a shimmering orange, as if the
original limestone veneer had been magically restored, and the shadows in their lee showed
a deep mysterious blue, almost purple, like the blood of Caesar’s Rome. They diminished
me, those ancient tombs. Too much beauty for my deracinated spirit, too much grandeur
and immensity. They made me think of history, death, and folly. I had no wish to endure the
bout of self-examination a longer visit might provoke. It would be best, I thought, to live a
hard, modern life in that city of monuments, free of ponderous considerations and
intellectual witness. But eventually curiosity got the best of me, and one afternoon I travelled
out to Giza. This time, swarmed by tourists, displayed beneath an oppressive grey sky, it
was the Pyramids that looked diminished: dull brown heaps like the spoor of a huge,
strangely regular beast.
I wandered about for more than an hour. I regarded the faceless mystery of the
Sphinx and managed to avoid having a video taken atop a camel by a ragged teenager with
an old camcorder and the raw scar of an AIDS inoculation on his bicep. At length I leaned
up against my Land Rover and smoked a hand-rolled cigarette salted with hashish and
opium flakes. I thought in pictures, my eyes closed, imagining ibis gods and golden sun
boats. When a woman’s voice with more than a touch of Southern accent spoke from
nearby, saying, ‘You can smell that shit fifty feet away,’ I was so distanced I felt only mild
resentment for this interference in the plotlessness of my life, and said, because it required
little energy, ‘Thanks.’
She was tall and slender and brown, with a slightly horsey face and generous features
and a pronounced overbite, the sort of tomboyish look I’d always found attractive, though
overall she was a bit sinewy for my tastes. Late twenties, I’d say. About my age. Her skin,
roughened by the sun, was just starting to crack into crow’s-feet, her cheekbones were
sharply whittled, and her honey-brown hair, tied back with a bandanna, was streaked
blonde and brittle at the ends. She had on chino shorts and a white T-shirt and was carrying
a net bag that held a canteen, a passport wallet, and some oranges.
‘Aren’t you goin’ to put it out?’ She gestured at my cigarette.
‘Guess I better,’ I said, and grinned at her as I ground out the butt, expecting her to
leave now that her prim mission had been accomplished; but she remained standing there,
squinting at me.
‘You’re that smuggler guy, right?’ she said. ‘Shears.’
‘Shields. Danny Shields.’ I was not alarmed that she knew my business—many
did—but I was annoyed at not being able to recall her. She had nice eyes, dark brown,
almost oriental-shaped. Her legs were long, lean and well defined, but very feminine.
‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘I don’t remember your name.’
‘Kate Corsaro,’ she said after a moment’s hesitation. ‘We’ve never met. Just
somebody pointed you out to me in a night club. They told me you were a smuggler.’ She
left a pause. ‘I thought you looked interestin’.’
 ‘First impressions,’ I said. ‘You can never trust ’em.’
‘Oh, I don’t know ’bout that.’ She gazed off toward the Great Pyramid; then, after a
second or two: ‘So what do you smuggle? Drugs?’
‘Too dangerous. You run drugs, you’re looking at the death penalty. I have
something of a moral problem with it, too.’
‘Is that right?’ She glanced down at the remains of my cigarette.
‘Just because I use doesn’t mean I approve of the business.’
‘Seems to me that’s tacit approval.’
‘Maybe so, but I see a distinction. Whatever else pays, I’ll deal with it. Diamonds,
exotic software, hacksaw blades… whatever. But no drugs.’
‘Hacksaw blades?’ She laughed. ‘Can’t be much profit in that.’
‘You might be surprised.’
‘Been a while since anything’s surprised me,’ she said.
A silence stretched between us, vibrant as a plucked wire. I wanted to touch the soft
packs of muscle that bunched at the corners of her mouth. ‘You’ve come to the right
place,’ I said. ‘I’m surprised all the time here.’
‘Is that so?’
‘Like now,’ I said. ‘Like this very minute, I’m surprised.’
‘This here?’ she said. ‘This is just doin’ what comes naturally.’
Despite her flirtatious tone, I had an idea she was getting bored. To hold her interest
I told stories about my Arab partner in the old bazaar, about moving robotic elements and
tractor parts. It’s odd, how when you come on to someone, even with the sort of half-assed
move I was making, you invest the proceedings with unwarranted emotion, you imbue every
action and thought with luminous possibility, until suddenly all the playful motives you had
for making the move begin to grow legitimate and powerful. It is as if a little engine has been
switched on in your heart due to some critical level of heat having been reached. It seems
that random and impersonal, that careless. Not that I was falling in love with her. It was just
that everything was becoming urgent, edgy. But soon I began to bore myself with my own
glibness, and I asked Kate how she had ended up in Egypt.
‘I was in the Middle East nine years ago. I had an itch to see it again.’
‘In Egypt?’
‘Naw, I was in Saudi. But I didn’t want to go back. I couldn’t walk around free like
here.’
I was just putting those two facts together, 1990 and Saudi Arabia, when the sun
came out full, and something glinted on the back of her right hand: three triangular diamond
chips embedded in the flesh. I noticed a slight difference in colouration between the wrist
and forearm, and realized it was a prosthesis. I had seen similar ones, the same pattern of
diamond chips, all embedded in artificial limbs belonging to veterans of Desert Storm. Kate
caught me staring at the hand, shifted it behind her hip; but a second later she moved it back
into plain view.
‘Somethin’ botherin’ you?’ she asked flatly.
‘Not at all,’ I said.
She held my eyes for a few beats. The tension in her face dissolved. ‘It bothers
some,’ she said, flexing the fingers of the hand, watching them work. She glanced up at me
again. ‘I flew a chopper, case you’re wonderin’.’
I made a noncommittal noise. ‘Must have been tough.’
‘Yeah, maybe, I don’t know. Basically what happened was just plain stupid.’ She
lapsed into another silence, and I grew concerned again that I might be losing her interest.
‘Would you like to go somewhere?’ I asked. ‘Maybe have a drink?’
She worried her lower lip. ‘A drink’s not all we’re talkin’ about here, is it?’
I was pleased by her frankness, her desire to move things along. Like her ungilded
 exterior, I took this to indicate inner strength. ‘I suppose not.’
She let out a breath slowly. ‘Know why I came back to this part of the world? I
want somethin’ from this place. I don’t even know what exactly. Sometimes I think it’s just
to feel somethin’ strong again, ’cause I’ve been so insulated against feelin’ the past nine
years. But whatever, I don’t wanna be hangin’ around anybody who’s goin’ to hold me
back.’ Another sigh. ‘It’s probably weird, me sayin’ all this, but I don’t want any
misunderstandin’s.’
‘No, it’s not weird. I can relate.’ Sad for her, I was careful not to let the words
sound too facile, because though I
did
understand her, I no longer believed in what she
thought was out there. I felt I should make a stab at honesty. ‘Me, I’m not looking for
anything,’ I told her. ‘I just try to accept what comes.’
‘That’s more than most,’ she said glumly.
Overhead the contrail of a fighter became visible, arrowing east toward Syria and the
latest headlines. Seeing it appeared to brighten Kate.
‘Well,’ she said, shouldering her bag. ‘I reckon I’ll take you up on that drink.’
Around midnight I got up from my bed and went into the living room, to a telephone table
by French doors that stood open onto a balcony, where I dialled the Belgian girl whom I
had been fucking for the past year. When she answered I said, ‘Hey, Claire.’
‘Danny? Where are you?’
‘Out and about.’ I tried to think of something else to say. She was helping to install
an advanced computer in one of the mosques, one of those projects cloaked in secrecy. I
found the whole thing immensely boring, but now I thought talking about it might be
distracting. ‘How’s work?’ I asked.
‘The usual. The mullahs are upset, the technicians are incompetent.’
I imagined I could hear her displeasure in the bursts of static on the line. It was a cool
night, and I shivered in the breeze. Sweat was drying on my chest, my thighs. Faint wailing
music and a chaos of traffic noises from the street below. A slant of moonlight fell over the
tile floor, a thin tide that sliced across my ankles and bleached my feet bone white. Beyond
the light, two chairs and a sofa made shadowy puzzles in a blue darkness.
‘You’re with somebody, aren’t you?’ Claire said.
‘You know me,’ I said.
‘Perhaps I should come over. Make it a threesome.’
‘Not this time.’ But I could not help picturing them together. Claire, soft and white,
black hair and large, startling indigo eyes, the submissive voluptuary, the intellectual with a
doctorate in artificial intelligence. Kate, all brown and lithe, passionate and violently alive.
‘Who is she?’
‘An American. She just got a divorce, she’s doing some travelling.’
A prickly silence. ‘Why did you call?’
‘I wanted to hear your voice.’
‘That’s bullshit,’ she said. ‘You’re worried about something. I always get these calls
when something’s not going the way you planned.’
I hung my head, listening to the little fizzing storms on the line.
‘Is she getting to you, Danny? Is that it?’
Through the French doors I could see a corner of the building that housed police
headquarters on Tewfik Square, and facing it, reddish-brown under the arc lights, the
colossal statue of Rameses II, marooned on a traffic island, ruler now of a tiny country of
parched grass and chipped cement, a steady stream of traffic coursing around it.
‘That’s why you called,’ Claire said. ‘Maybe you’re falling in love a little bit, and you
wanted… what do you say? A reality check. Well, don’t worry, Danny. The world’s still
 just like it was this morning. The big ones still eat the little ones, and you and I, we have our
arrangement. We still’—she let rancour creep into her voice—‘we still are there for each
other.’
‘It must be the drugs that make you so wise,’ I said, both irritated and comforted
that she knew me so well.
‘That’s it! That’s it, exactly. And you, lover. It’s been an education with you.’
I heard a noise behind me. Kate was standing in the bedroom door, a sheet wrapped
around her body, her face in shadow.
‘I’ve got to go,’ I said to Claire.
‘Duty calls, eh? All right, Danny. I know you’ll be busy for a while, but give me a call
when you get tired of it. Okay?’
‘Okay.’
‘Who was that?’ Kate asked as I hung up.
‘I was breaking a date,’ I said.
‘For tomorrow?’ She came toward me, holding the sheet closed at her breasts. The
cloth was dazzlingly white in contrast to her tan. With her hair tumbled about her shoulders,
she had acquired an animal energy that had not been noticeable earlier. There was a sullen
wariness in her face.
‘For tonight,’ I said.
‘That wasn’t very thoughtful.’ She put her right hand on my chest; I could feel my
heart beating against it.
‘I’m not a very nice guy,’ I said.
She frowned at that. ‘I’m s’posed to believe ’cause you say you’re not a nice guy,
you really are? I’m s’posed to overlook the fact that after rollin’ around with me, you hop
outta the sack and call another woman?’
‘I think,’ I said, ‘you should probably take it to heart.’
Saying this affected me like a confession, the blurting out of a truth that until then I
had only dimly perceived, and I felt heavy with the baggage of my trivial past, my deceits
and delusions, the confidence game I had made of ordinary days and nights.
Kate studied me for a second or two. Her eyes looked all dark. Then she moved her
hand lower, her fingers trailing across my stomach. ‘Hell, I’m fed up with nice guys,’ she
said, and curled her fingers around my cock.
This made me a little nervous. That right hand of hers was a marvel. Earlier that
evening she had crushed an ice cube into powder between her forefinger and thumb to win
a bet, and had flicked off the top of a beer bottle as easily as I would have flicked a piece
of lint from my jacket. She might, I thought, want to punish me because of the phone call.
But she only caressed me, bringing my erection to life. The sheet slid to the floor, and I
touched her breasts. They were small, with puffy coral-coloured areolae. I let their soft
weights cosy in my hands. ‘Ah, baby,’ she said, a catch in her voice. ‘Baby.’ I could feel
her trembling. She drew me to the sofa, perched on the back of it, and hooked her legs
about my waist. My cock scored the crease of her, nuzzled the seep of juices. She guided
me inside, worked me partway in. Her head came forward to rest on my shoulder, and her
mouth pressed against my throat, breathing a moist, warm circle on my skin. She held me
motionless, hands clamped to my buttocks. I pushed against her, trying to seat myself more
deeply.
‘No!’ She pricked me with her nails. ‘Stay like this a minute.’
‘I want to be all the way in you,’ I said. She laughed happily, said, ‘Oh, I thought I
had it all,’ and angled herself to accommodate me. I went in deeper with that silky glide that
makes you think you are going to flow along with it forever, like the entry of a diver or the
dismount of a gymnast, so perfect and gravityless, it should mark the first stage of a journey
and not merely an abrupt transition into a clumsier state. I needed to feel it again, and I
 fucked her heavily, supporting her with both hands. She quit trying to hold me and thrust
with her hips, losing her balance and putting a strain on my arms. We wobbled, nearly
tumbled off the sofa. It was clear we were not going to make a success of things in this
position.
‘Let’s go back in the bedroom,’ I said.
‘Stay inside me,’ she said, and threw her arms around my neck. ‘I need you there.
Carry me.’
I lifted her and went weaving toward the bedroom, into the thick darkness, lurching
sideways but managing to keep the tip of my cock lodged inside her; then I lowered her
carefully, awkwardly, onto the cool, rumpled sheet. We wriggled about until we were
centred on the bed, and I sank into her again. She bridged up on her elbows. I thought she
would kiss me, but she only put her lips to my ear and whispered, ‘Do everything to me.’
Those words seemed so innocent, as if she were new to all this sweet struggle, they
made me feel splendid and blessed and full of love. But as I moved in her again, caution
ruled me, and though I told her I loved her, I spoke in the softest of voices, a windy phrase
almost indistinguishable from a sigh, and not so she could hear.
Two days later as we explored the old bazaar, the Khan al Khalili, idling along the packed,
dusty streets among beggars, acrobats, men selling holograms of the Sphinx and plastic
cartouches, ox-carts laden with bricks, hooting taxis, more beggars, travelling through zones
of garbage stink, spicy cooking odours, perfumes, incense, hashish, walking through a
thousand radio musics in the elaborate shade of mosques and roof warrens, past bamboo
stalls and old slave markets with tawny arched façades and painted doors in whitewashed
walls that might lead into a courtyard populated by doves and orange trees and houris or
the virtual reality of a wealthy businessman with violet skies and flames bursting from black
rock and djinns in iron armour, it occurred to me that while I had come to know a great
deal about Kate during the past forty-eight hours, incidents from her armed service, sundry
drab episodes from her marriage, her family in Virginia, she knew next to nothing about me.
Having identified me as ‘that smuggler guy’ appeared to have satisfied her curiosity. Not
that there was anything more salient to know—my life had gone unchanged for almost a
decade, and the colours of my youth had no real bearing on the man I had become, aimless
and pleasure-seeking and competent in unimportant ways. I recognized that Kate was
hoping to recapture the intensity she had experienced during her war, the talent for intensity
that had been shrouded by marriage, and I realized now it was my occupation, not my
winning personality, that had attracted her. I was to be the centrepiece of her furious
nostalgia, a sinister element of the design. This comprised an irony I did not believe she
would appreciate, for I was far from the adventurous soul she assumed me to be. My
success in business was due to an attention to detail and the exercise of caution. The urge to
play Indiana Jones was not in my canon. On the other hand, a large portion of what had
attracted me to her was more or less the same quality she thought to perceive in me: her
drive toward the edge, her consuming desire to put herself in harm’s way on both emotional
and physical levels. Because of the imbalance of our involvements, I knew that by allowing
myself to become obsessed—and I had already developed a pounding fascination with
her—I was opening myself up to a world of hurt; but that, too, the possibility of emotional
risk, was part of her appeal. In ways I did not understand, I was committed to whatever
course she cared to choose. It was as if when I first looked at her and saw the glitter of that
impersonal desire in her eyes, that lust for whatever would excite her, I’d heard the future
roaring in my ears and said to myself, Now, old son, now you can throw your life away for
no reason at all.
The interior of the shop belonging to Abdel Affifi, my partner in crime, was a
  [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]