Visions of Isabelle (18 page)

As they talked Isabelle could not help but notice the various transactions taking place around. A majestic Negro in snow-white burnoose with tribal scars on his cheeks purchased the services of a tiny light-skinned Berber girl; a blond legionnaire with Germanic features made arrangements with a curly-headed Arab boy. And so it went, people drifting in, taking stock of whomever they had found on the street, creating a relationship over a glass of tea, sealing a bargain over a shared cigarette.

She was fascinated by the tales of the Amars, their experiences in the dunes, their stories of various dangers encountered upon the sands at night. But when she chanced to mention that she had met Captain De Susbielle and was joining his column for Touggourt the following day, their faces fell, and they began to tell her of his terrible misdeeds.

"Once," said Saleh, "he struck a holy man, a Marabout, who refused to yield him a right-of-way."

"I heard," said Bou Saadi, "that he let his soldiers rape the fiancé of the sheik of Ouled Djellal."

"He spits into mosques!"

"He once kicked a sick woman near Sidi Rached!"

"He's rubbish," said Saleh, "the worst of all the French. To travel with such an infidel is to defile God."

They both stared at her, and she knew then what she had to do.

"Oh, my brothers," she said, "thank you for saving me from an ordeal. I cannot travel with this man now that I have learned the truth!"

Bou Saadi handed her his kif pipe, to signify their shared sense of outrage and hate.

"Have no fear, Si Mahmoud," he said. "God willing we will ride to Touggourt ourselves in several days, and you shall ride there with us."

L
ate the next morning Isabelle went to the Arab Bureau to tell Captain De Susbielle she would not be joining his convoy. She had just received an urgent telegram from home, she said, and would have to delay her departure for several days. The captain was disappointed, but took his disappointment in a gentlemanly way. He would wait for her at the post at Chegga–he had business there and could not imagine completing the full trip without her good company.

Relieved to be rid of him–an obvious hindrance if she was to gain the confidence of the Arab population, and a bore besides–she spent the day exploring the groves of Biskra, intricate gardens crisscrossed by little streams, tiny patches of vegetables fringed by date-bearing palms rustling in the desert breeze.

That evening she rejoined the Amar brothers at the Cheoui Café, and so spent the next few days until at 2: 00 A.M. on the morning of July 18
,
she and the brothers began the trek.

They were in Bordj-Saâda by nine the same morning, and even at so early an hour she was impressed by the fury of the sun. It beat down with a menace she could hardly believe, scorched her hands, baked her face. At the tiny settlement she and her companions joined a group of Chaouiya tribesmen in a game of cards. Then at dusk they were off for Chegga which they reached, fortunately, before the rising of the sun. She drank coffee there with a group of legionnaires, was pleased to learn that De Susbielle had left the night before, and departed with Saleh and Bou Saadi for the oasis of Bir-Sthil.

By this time (and she had eaten nothing but bread since leaving Biskra, was already beginning to run a fever and to suffer from unquenchable thirst) they had entered a region of dunes. She split off from the Amars, charged out upon her horse, drove the beast to step through ripples of sand, laughed as the wind lashed at her face. Sometimes the air was like a wall, and as she charged against it, eyes squinting, hood tied closely under her chin, cloth wrapped over her nose and mouth as protection from blisters and cracking by the sun, she felt a mad joy, a strange otherworldliness in which fantasies and sensations blurred and merged. Then, for the first time since Vava's death, she felt she was alive.

There was a great splendor about the desert–deathliness, barrenness–that seemed to intensify the experience of being upon it. It made her wish, time and again, to be out of sight of her companions, to be the only live thing in this utterly lifeless place. And her feverishness, too, added to her exaltation. Glowing from the heat without and the burning within, she felt as though she were on fire, a moving, rushing flame, an incandescent blinding torch shooting across the sand the way a comet shoots across the sky.

She charged forward with one arm extended to cleave the wall of sand and wind. She pranced, she plowed, she dashed, she tore. The friction between herself and the sparkling air gave off currents that coursed through her body, sent shooting throbs down from her head to her heels and back up again, until it seemed she could feel energy surge out through the root of every hair. She was real, but the landscape she rode in was not, and her intoxication grew until at times she felt she might annihilate herself, that the faster she galloped, the more furiously she charged, the more likely she was to reach a point where she would blend with the wind, the sun, the sand, and disappear.

Yes
, she thought, as her head reeled with this madness,
I
might be here one moment and gone the next.
And dwelling upon so magical a notion, she was moved and felt the tragic aura of the desert, the intense, dry, hot song of sorrow sung by its lonely burning sands.

Finally, when her exhilaration gave way to exhaustion, and fever made her so dizzy she feared she could no longer maintain her mount, she reined in, climbed off and shrouded herself in her burnoose. She flung herself down and curled up in the shadow of her horse, pulled her hands inside her woolen cuffs and rested, dreamed, slept. The Amars found her then, moistened her lips with water from their goatskin bags, and when she was revived, they helped her remount and led her forward between them like a wandering stray they must protect.

They were not dismayed by the strange mad fury of her forays. On the contrary, they were intrigued by them, incredulous at her energy, filled with awe. Her evident joy in this wasteland, in the face of this hard and indifferent manifestation of God, drew their sympathy, for to them oases were merely tiny stars set in the vast firmament of a great sad emptiness, the desert which was the world. And on this sand man could make no mark–it was the ether through which he traveled and suffered, and by suffering came to know himself.

They cared for Isabelle, huddled with her in the evening, gave her warmth through the chattering chills of Saharan nights, shared bread with her, taught her how to ride the dunes, how to save her water, how to camp in the crevices, cushion her saddle for a pillow, wrap herself up against scorpions and wind. And even as they nursed her, calmed her fevers, applied their mother's salves to her desiccated lips, she quoted them verses of the Koran, and joined them as they improvised desert poems. She sealed their comradeship with the cachet of her love for the desert, her exultant pleasure in its radiant pain.

They did not reach Bir-Sthil until 11:00 A.M., and by then the sun was in a rage. They left again at nine in the evening, joining up with a caravan of Chaamba tribesmen resting by a telegraph pole a little beyond the post.

By 1:00 A.M., fascinated by the strange blue glow of the dunes, she dashed off from the column to ride alone in sand that was phosphorescent and sparkled strangely beneath the moon. She strayed to the west of the track and was soon wandering dazed and lost near the glistening wastes of a dry salt lake. She was frightened but wise enough to dismount and lead her horse on foot. Soon Saleh and Bou Saadi found her and led her back to the caravan route and into M'Raier before the dawn. She resolved, upon seeing the oasis, that she would buy a good compass as soon as she got to Touggourt.

They were off again when it was dark, and soon met up with a pair of nomads traveling under the armed escort of a huge black horseman, heading for a place near Ourlana where they were to be executed for unspeakable crimes. She and the Amars shared bread with the "condemned ones" who struck her as inexplicably resigned. When they broke away again to rejoin the Chaamba column, Saleh rode by her side.

"Will they really be killed?" she asked him.

He shook his head. "Probably not, since their crime was committed against a deceiving woman–the sister of one, the wife of the other."

"But what, exactly, did they do?"

"Oh," said Saleh with a grin, "first they mutilated her, then they carved her up. A perfectly justifiable crime, Si Mahmoud, since her deceptions had put them into a frenzy of rage."

Isabelle was fascinated, wanted to ride back and gather material for a story. But it was nine in the morning, the first well of Ourlana was in sight and her need for water, then, was stronger than literature's call.

She rested all day in the Chaamba camp, her head burning, her hunger relieved by bread spread with honey, her thirst by a thick buttermilk she could barely get down. She dragged herself up at sunset, watched incredulously as the Chaambas spent an hour searching by torch for the only good well on the route to Moghar, then spent another hour watering their horses and filling their goatskin bags. By two that morning she felt dizzy and sick. The Amars broke off from the column, made a fire of camel dung on the freezing sand, and then comforted her with stories of ghosts who resided in the dunes.

In the morning she was awakened by a terrible bang–Saleh used a pistol to light his cigarette.

They were doubled over with laughter as they rounded up the horses. Then they raced as fast as they could to the oasis of Moghar, barely succeeding in beating out the first broiling flares of the sun.

From there it was a short ride to Touggourt. They departed an hour before sunset and she was in bed before light in the best hotel she could find.

It was difficult for her to part from the Amars, who had decided to continue south. They recognized that she was too sick to go on, but swore everlasting friendship at the gates of the town, saying they would meet again if God willed.

As she left them she knew she had made the proper choice–it was far better to travel with Berbers, who accepted her as she presented herself, than with a French officer who could think of nothing but her seduction, disgusted her with false charm and had nothing to say that was true.

She slept through the day, ate her first decent meal since Biskra, spent the evening making notes on her adventures and her intoxication with desert life. She slept well again but was awakened early in the morning by an Arab courier bearing an official note. Her presence was demanded at once at the offices of the Arab Bureau. The order was signed by the acting commandant, Captain Édouard De Susbielle.

When she came in he did not stand up, but glowered at her from behind his desk. He didn't say a word until his orderly withdrew. Then came the onslaught.

"How dare you!"

"How dare I what?"

"Do you take me for a fool?"

"No, of course..."

"Do you think you can treat me like a buffoon? Do you think you can ridicule an officer of France? We shall see about that!"

"What on earth have I done?"

"Done? You haven't done anything, unless you think lying to a regional commander means nothing at all. I don't give a damn, of course, but the bloody rest of it is something else."

"Just a minute, Captain De Susbielle. Don't talk to me of lying. I changed my mind about traveling with you and gave you a respectable excuse. My conscience is clear, and I won't have you screaming at me as if I were a delinquent groom."

He glared at her.

"I offered myself as an escort. You spurned my aid, and then spat in my face, taking the same journey down the same route in the company of Arab scum."

"The Amars are my friends!"

"Ha!"

"You can't talk to me like this..."

"I most certainly can. I'm in charge here. And you're an illegal traveler. I want you out in twenty-four hours, and frankly, Mademoiselle, this time I don't give a damn how you go."

"I shall go on to Ouargla."

"Permission denied!"

"Why?"

"It's a military zone, there's fighting on the track, and you're suspected of being a spy."

"This is a joke!"

"Decidedly not, Mademoiselle. Not a joke at all."

"A spy?" She started to laugh.

"Why not? You identify yourself as a woman, a Russian subject, then travel about dressed like a man, speaking Arabic with people whose loyalties are highly suspect. As the responsible officer here I can't take a chance. I'm being lenient–considering the circumstances."

"What circumstances?"

"Those I have just stated! Fact is that Fridel never wanted to give you a permit, and it was only at my intercession that he did."

Isabelle stood up, pulled out a cigarette, lit it, inhaled deeply, then blew the smoke toward De Susbielle face. "I've never heard such rubbish in my life," she said, approaching his desk, staring him in the eye.

"Tell me, Captain De Susbielle, is this a sample of the manners they teach at Saint-Cyr?"

Her eyes bored into him; her voice withered him with scorn.

"As you've been told, Mademoiselle, the Sud-Constantine is not a region for tourists. The officers here are not required to give strangers a courteous reception."