The Centro Di Portuguese was a relatively new and exclusive bar in Roushdy, the same expensive suburb as the oil company’s villa. The club was a converted villa with an open-air bar in the courtyard and a disco upstairs. The entrance was hard to find and there were a couple of bouncers at the door, well-built ex-security types. The clientele was a curious mix with two things in common - wealth and loneliness.
We sat under a canopy of woven rushes, looking out over the courtyard. At another table, a group of Italian naval officers, drunk, were arguing about who was the greatest entertainer: Michael Jackson or Caruso. Nearby, a white Ugandan (rumoured to be an arms dealer) lifted his gaze away from the buxom young blonde he was flirting with and nodded slightly in my direction, the kind of sly acknowledgement one man makes to another when he thinks the other is involved in some clandestine activity, like infidelity. Aware of the possibility of having been followed I kept glancing around the bar nervously, but I was probably safer in there than in a lot of places in Alexandria. The bar was extremely select, and it was impossible to bribe your way in.
Despite her initial reluctance to join me, Rachel was by now on her third whisky. The only effect the alcohol seemed to have upon her was to make her more talkative. I didn’t care. Once we’d arrived I’d found myself growing unusually taciturn. I desperately needed to discuss the events of the last few weeks with someone who might help me reach a more objective perspective, yet I was worried she’d be sceptical, or worse, if I confided in her. I’d already wasted half the evening arguing politics, but Rachel had indulged me, as if she sensed my sudden reticence to talk about personal matters. Our intellectual sparring anchored me to the world I’d known before Eygpt, before Isabella’s death - it reminded me of a younger, more hopeful self. And as I sat there listening to her, I suddenly remembered a demonstration we’d attended as students some eighteen years earlier over France’s involvement with the Algerian war of independence, and how fervent we’d been - utterly convinced of our moral stance, swept up in that youthful bravado that seems enough to last your whole life. The emotion I’d felt that day, watching the young American woman shouting slogans, echoed in me now - I’d loved Rachel for her political commitment and energy. She still had it. Despite her tough veneer, she seemed to have developed an underlying humanitarianism that appealed to me, as well as a new sense of self-parody, a characteristic that hadn’t existed in the younger woman. It was as if she’d become sharper with age. Now there was a muscularity to her thinking that meant I felt slightly at war - a sexy wrestling match that promised to end in orgasm, defeat or death.
‘So what exactly happened to your marriage?’ I asked her. ‘Oh, it’s complicated. Basically, although Aaron claimed he loved unconventional women, I don’t think he really wanted to be married to one. And you?’
‘We are . . .
were
gloriously happy.’ Not the entire truth but to say Isabella’s name alone would have felt like an infidelity, even though I wasn’t even planning to seduce Rachel. ‘Tell me, why did you leave all those years ago?’ I went on.
‘Let’s face it, Oliver, we were the most mismatched couple in the world. It wouldn’t have lasted.’
‘Perhaps not, but it hurt like hell at the time.’ I grimaced, remembering my first adult heartbreak.
‘As it should at twenty-three,’ she retorted, smiling. Our gazes caught in sudden wry reminiscence.
The dance hit ‘Disco Inferno’ blasted out from above. I glanced up: the DJ, a young rake-thin Arab in a floral yellow silk shirt, was gazing wistfully at the deserted dance floor. Incense curled up from a burner on top of the bar and above us the open starry sky seemed to be looking down with faint amusement. Rachel’s perfume drifted across the table with the night breeze, and despite everything, my grieving and my exhaustion, my fears suddenly seemed suspended, diminished.
Rachel sighed. ‘Innocent times. I think about them nowadays. When I feel drenched in a kind of existential cynicism. It makes me feel so old. And you?’
‘Me? I’m barely surviving from hour to hour.’
She looked at me. I knew she thought I meant surviving the loss of Isabella. She finished her drink, then moved closer, sighed. A moment of hesitation, the beat of blind faith one takes before free-falling into intimacy.
‘My marriage broke down because we lost a child. A still-birth. Aaron was able to deal with it better than me. I just buried myself in work. Then one day at breakfast I looked across the table and didn’t recognise him any more. So there you have it - the end of the dream.’
I reached across for her hand. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘But we’re both still here.’
I noticed she didn’t remove her hand from my grip. I looked up at her and suddenly the urge to unburden myself, to talk to someone was overwhelming, a little like I imagined had been the motive for Isabella’s visit to Father Carlotto, the impetus for a confession to help lighten the load.
‘Rachel, if I told you something astonishing, something barely believable, could you keep an open mind?’
‘Hey, if there’s one thing I’m proud to still have it’s an open mind . . .’
I took Rachel back to the villa and, while she waited in the living room, I slipped out to the kennel and collected the rucksack. Then, with it slung over my shoulder, we made our way to the Sheraton Hotel where she was staying. I needed her to see the astrarium while I told her my story.
In the lift going up to her room, I was aware of a growing tension between us, a creeping eroticism - her scent, the warmth of her body brushing against my bare arm. I wondered whether my senses were deceiving me, and if getting involved might be a way of exorcising the loss of Isabella. It was a disturbing but tantalising idea.
Catching Rachel’s gaze, I realised she was feeling the same sensations. Without thinking I pulled her towards me into a clash of tongues and lips. With an almost electric shock, I realised how much my body had missed being touched over the past weeks. I vanished in her skin, the feel of it so completely different from my wife’s. Rachel’s taste was green, if I could find a colour for such things. Isabella’s had been a deeper hue. We moved slowly and luxuriously, tentative in our exploration, my hands finding her nipples hard against my palms. The lift shuddering to a halt interrupted us, making us both break into self-conscious laughter.
We stumbled down the empty corridor, still kissing and struggling with each other’s clothes. Once inside her room, the realism of the pasty green walls and vinyl-covered cabinets sobered me up. But Rachel pulled me back into an embrace, then walked over to the bed.
‘I drive this,’ she said, with a grin. Then she pulled her smock top over her head, revealing her small breasts, her slim hips arching out of the low-slung jeans like some exotic musical instrument. ‘I’m so deprived of touch I think I’ve gone half-mad; I can’t even remember the last time someone hugged me. I always seem to be running - hotel lobbies, press rooms, airports. But oh boy, do I want you now.’
I moved towards her, then paused. In that brief moment of hesitation I knew that I was deceiving myself - I wouldn’t be able to escape Isabella in this desperate lovemaking. I wasn’t looking for a lover but a confidante. Someone who would convince me that I wasn’t going mad. Anything else - sexual or emotional - would get complicated. And if I knew one thing it was that Rachel was complicated.
On the bedside table was an old black-and-white passport photo of a much younger Rachel: her face shiny with the blind belief of the idealist, her curly hair tortured into one long side plait. I recognised her expression. I touched the glossy paper; the faint memory of a smile in a London doorway seemed to come off like a smudge on my finger. Next to the photograph were a seashell and a dog tag. I picked up the shell and held it to the light. It was a small nautilus shell, pearly and ribbed, a luminous subterranean cathedral fated to shine for eternity.
From the bed Rachel looked at me, smiling, her hair spread above her head. Like snakes, like the Medusa.
‘That seashell is from the beach where I lost my virginity,’ she said. ‘The photo’s from the ID badge I wore on my first Democrat campaign, and the dog tag belonged to a soldier I interviewed in Vietnam, who was killed the same day. Love, faith and destiny - I carry them everywhere as a reminder of how far I’ve come and how precarious life is. But I think you know that already, right?’
I stared down at her; she was so beautiful and desirable at that moment. I groaned inwardly, knowing I shouldn’t succumb but knowing also that I wouldn’t be able to help myself.
In lieu of an answer, I put the seashell into my mouth and placed it on her belly button with my tongue; the salt taste of her skin caught at my groin in a sudden erotic tumescence. I pulled her jeans and pants below her knees and worked my way down. Rachel gasped, her sex now wet against my face. Groaning, she reached for my fly. Then I was hard in her hand, and then in her mouth. Sitting up, she pulled my hands away from her and concentrated on pleasuring me, her eyes closed in sensual relish. It was as if she was determined to take me, not to be taken.
Trying to control the sudden surge of pleasure, I steadied myself with one hand against the headboard. Then, wanting to give to her, I pulled her up. Pushing her jeans right off, I made her stand as I kneeled. ‘No,’ she moaned and tried to pull me away, but I held her close, the rich musk of her filling me as I sucked and probed and she clawed at my shoulders. Then, finally, we toppled to the floor and she slowly lowered herself onto me, teasing me, both of us teetering on the edge of orgasm. I felt her bite my neck, her tongue in my ear, each breast filling my hands perfectly, each nipple hard against my palms.
It became a primal struggle of limbs as I threw her onto her back and, with her knees up against my chest, took her violently. With a glorious abandonment each of us surrendered to our own pleasure. She came screaming, triggering my own climax, then, to my astonishment, she broke into gales of laughter. Her hysteria was infectious and soon we were both rolling on the carpet. Perhaps we were giddy with the sheer relief of having experienced intimacy, or perhaps we were both secretly terrified - of our history, of the unspoken understanding that under the surface we were both singular creatures.
A framed poster of the Corniche slid off the wall and hit the carpet with a dull thud, missing Rachel’s head by inches.
‘You see, we’re both watched by ghosts,’ she declared. Then she got up, wrapped herself in a bathrobe and walked out onto the balcony. After pulling on my underpants I joined her.
The narrow concrete balcony looked out over the Montazah Gardens. The lights of the palace glimmered on the far side of the park and the tops of the tall palms that ran along the avenues swayed darkly, scratching at the night. Beyond were the fairy lights of the yachts moored at the jetty. It was one of those electric nights with a sense of timelessness, a certain agitation carried on the breeze that seduces fools like me into thinking they’re immortal. Only this night I didn’t feel immortal. I felt fallible and weak, unable to shake off the idea that I had somehow betrayed Isabella. Suddenly I was filled with that emptiness that often follows meaningless sex. But there was something else that disturbed me, something in the air, a creeping, inexplicable dread.
‘I haven’t had sex for over three years, not since before my divorce.’
Rachel’s statement floated out over the ugly iron railings and down into the street below where it was lost in the steam of car noise and the vitriol of two men arguing at the corner.
‘That’s far too long.’ I wrapped myself into the warmed wings of her bathrobe. A wave of affection, almost familial, swept through me. It was comforting to hold her but I knew at that moment that we weren’t going to be lovers, a mutual realisation that hung, unspoken, between us. ‘Rachel, I can’t be your lover, I just can’t. I need you to be my friend. Could you be that for me?’
She nodded against my bare chest, her cheek a burning tattoo. Below, the two men continued to argue: real time, real life. I gestured for her to follow me inside and reached for the rucksack.
We sat on the bed with the astrarium between us, the story, in all its unbelievable components, now a tangible presence. I couldn’t bear to look at Rachel, convinced my disclosure had condemned me entirely. Her hand crept along the tousled bedsheets towards my own.
‘It’s okay, Oliver, I believe you. You’re lucky - if you’d told me these things five years ago I would have dismissed you as simply another Westerner seduced by eastern mysticism. But I’ve seen some weird things myself. When I was in Kampuchea I watched the Khmer Rouge recruiting witch doctors to terrify the peasants - a campaign that worked, by the way. Then a couple of years ago I was cursed by a Papuan Highlander when my photographer stupidly took a photo of his wives. But there’s something else that makes me believe in the power of this . . . astrarium or whatever it is. This Mosry character. If anything, he’s the one I would take most seriously.’
I nodded - it was impossible to dismiss Mosry’s threatening persona even if I’d wanted to. His presence felt ubiquitious and had left me jumping at every moving shadow.
Rachel watched my expression, then put her hand on mine. ‘Prince Abdul Majeed is the one behind this, I’m sure of it.’
I remembered his glowering face from the TV programme that I’d watched in London. The arrogance of the despot.
Rachel continued urgently, as if to impress upon me how great a danger I was in.
‘
He’s religious, fanatical and dangerous, the kind of man who’d believe in the power of something like this. He hates the West with a fervour and would do absolutely anything to destroy Sadat’s peace initiatives. There’ve been attacks on Western interests in the region - a naval base in Turkey, the US embassy in Damascus, others that you don’t even hear about. It’s unofficial, but those who should know, know. It’s Majeed. Recently his pace has picked up. More and more things are happening, seemingly unrelated. Mosry is his muscle. You can bet that if the astrarium is indeed believed to have such phenomenal influence over events, or even if it is viewed simply as a talisman of an older, more powerful Arabic civilisation, then Majeed will want it and he’ll get Mosry to kill for it.’