Visions of Isabelle (23 page)

"Why not? When you thought I was a man, you thought it likely that I would have fun using your ass. Well, I didn't want that; I wanted your nice
zib
. You have a pretty good one and I thank you for it."

She laughed, turned, walked back toward Souf.

"Where are you going?"

"To ride," she said. "Thank you and good-bye."

"No! Wait! Come back!" He gathered up his cloak and chased after her, reaching her just as she was mounting up.

"Wait, please. I want to ride with you."

"All right," she said. "We'll race."

As she urged Souf forward and cantered out of Bir R'arby, she decided she rather liked the slender young man who had declared his love with such sincerity and was now, doubtless, fumbling with his reins. Once upon the dunes she galloped less furiously than usual, to give him a chance to catch up. But as soon as she saw him kicking madly at his horse's flanks, she broke forward as fast as she could. She wanted to appear like a phantom galloping on top of a ridge of sand, highlighted by the moon, a silhouette against the sky.

Let him chase me for miles,
she thought; let
me be an allusive horseman always just beyond his reach, and then when he's exhausted, and flings himself down upon the sand to bash his head with his fists and weep, I shall quietly circle back to gentle his heaving chest.

She had great pride in her horsemanship, thought of herself as one of the best riders in the world. And she had confidence, too, in Souf. But the young man who pursued her was a persistent knight. He charged out on the sand with a determination that added to her liking of him, though she thought that if he should catch her he would be unbearable in his pride. So she pushed harder until she was flying along the crests, and Souf's legs were stirring up a storm of sand.

They raced along like this, pounding the sand with rapid soft thuds, she ahead but he gaining, though still a hundred meters behind. Crouched in their saddles, their bodies sloped, they were like a pair of urgent messengers tearing up the desert to carry news to an Arabian conqueror of a great triumph or else a terrible defeat.

On the sand their horses could not sustain a frantic pace too long. After some minutes they were forced to slow, and then, when Isabelle began to shiver from the cold that chilled her perspiration, she signaled Souf to halt. She dismounted, looked back at "Mohammed Horse" and cupped her hands.

"Praise be to God," she shouted across the top of the dune. "You chase me like a madman. From this I deduce your love for me is great."

She listened while her hoarse and rasping words pierced through the hushing wind. He stopped, dismounted, cupped his own hands and shouted back his reply.

"My love for you is as great as the Sahara."

"As empty?" she growled.

"As full," he answered, "as the desert is of grains of sand."

She pondered his declaration, found it satisfactory.

"Come to me," she shouted again. "I want to see your face."

He came toward her then with a careful stride that reminded her of a soldier in the desert on march. Then he stopped five meters away.

"Come," she beckoned, "I have a candle."

He stood still and for a moment she was afraid. Then with a gesture so quick she had no time to feint, he brought out a knife from beneath his robe and plunged with it toward the sand near her feet. She heard a sound, a soft thump, and then he sprang back up and kicked the sand.

"A snake," he explained. "I saw it ready to strike."

She was filled with admiration. He was a man of action, had probably saved her from a terrible wound.

"Thank you."

"Light your candle."

She did, then placed it in a small lantern and held it up. She found him beaming, his face smooth, his moustache soft.

"Tell me your name."

"Slimen."

"Slimen?"

"Slimen Ehnni."

"And what do you do, Slimen Ehnni?"

"I'm a cavalry corporal in the French army."

They sat, after searching carefully to be sure there were no more snakes.

"So, you're a Spahi," she said to him, running her fingers along his cheek. "You ride well. I might have known."

"I'd have told you, but I didn't want to ruin the game."

"Good! You understand. I was pretending to be a spy who'd escaped from an enemy camp. I'd left all my pursuers behind but one, and he–that was you, of course–was relentless, was going to follow me till I fell. Eventually we'd both stop–our horses would fail us, and then we'd be off on foot, you tracking me through the night. At daybreak I would have disappeared, or so you'd think, until suddenly I'd leap out from behind a dune, wrestle you down and stab you to death."

"And what then?" He was fascinated. Like all Arabs he loved a story of action.

"Oh, then I would take your goatskin and start across the sands. I would try to conserve the water, but by the afternoon I would have finished it off. Then there would be the misery of searching for a well."

"Yes, yes..."

"I would be panting like a dog, crawling on the sand. Finally, the sun would strike me down. And there I'd lay, broiling, my lips blistering, my skin shriveling on my bones, until..."

"Tell me–go on."

"I would wake up in a nomad's tent, and there would be an old woman nursing me, and she wouldn't tell me where I was. And at night a man in a dark cloak would come, his face covered, and he would be silent, too. He would take me away into the desert on his horse, and then I would find myself on the sand, my arms and legs tied to stakes, and he would ravage me and ravage me, and I would grovel and moan, until, finally–"

"Yes?"

"Until, finally, he would tear away the cloth from his mouth and I would see..."

"Yes?"

"I would see a skull, a gleaming skull, shaped like your face–the face of the man I'd stabbed the night before."

She stopped, lowered her eyes.

He gasped, put his hand to his cheek.

"But this is a fantastic story. I have never heard a story like this."

"It was one of my dreams when I was running away from you."

"And there were others?"

She nodded.

"Tell me. I want to hear them all."

She talked on, into the night, weaving tales for him, tales of herself alone in the desert, made out of bits and pieces of Russian nursery stories and parts of novels and even things she invented at the moment she said them, and he listened, fascinated, amazed, his large moist eyes growing big, his pupils reflecting the single flame of her candle until the candle burned out and she stopped. Then he grasped her, kissed her, held onto her for warmth on the cold black sand.

T
he next day Slimen Ehnni moved into her little house. Here they lived like husband and wife, he going off each morning to join his regiment, she to the markets of El Oued to shop, and then to a café to chat with people for hours.

At night they lived a rapturous life. They would ride out into the sand, practice their horsemanship for a time, gallop this way and that, and then explore until, after a month, they knew every garden within a radius of twenty kilometers. Then they would settle near a well, share a pipe of kif, and Slimen, by mutual consent, would ravish her several times with his sturdy
zib
. Afterward they would lie together like brothers beside a fire of dung. She would run her hands over his hard wiry body, fondle the curly hairs on his chest, play with the ends of his moustache and tell him stories.

At first his demand for good tales was easy to meet–she invented them, or else framed imagined happenings from their future into romantic sagas in the style of Loti. But as he became more sophisticated and demanded more intricate plots, she relied upon her memories of the
Arabian Nights
, giving him hours of pleasure with elaborate renditions of
Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves
,
Aladdin and his Magic Lamp
, and as many as she could remember of the rest. Finally, breathless and hoarse, she would stop, they would fall into sleep in each other's arms, and, at dawn, ride back to El Oued where they would pray and then revive themselves with shots of cheap absinthe that seared their throats.

Isabelle wanted Slimen to take her roughly, and though this was contrary to his gentle nature, she forced him to it by climbing astride him and daring him to fight. Then he would mount her and ravage her with the hard strokes she liked the best. She wanted to be mastered, ground down, though it was often necessary for her to remind him that this was her desire. Then she would pretend he was a stranger, dark and strong and mean, who used her body to flog the sand, making her scream out beneath the stars.

"I want to be hurt!" she would shout to him, and though he would protest, she would claw at him until he had no recourse but to pound her to submission with high-pitched cries. Then she would scream, as if with agony, kick about with her feet, writhe beneath him, roll her head, and gulp at the clean cold air. For a time he was mystified by this behavior, but soon learned what she liked and found that he liked it himself, especially since it was only necessary for him to be forceful when they made love. The rest of the time, when they rode or talked or ate, it was she who decided everything.

Their nocturnal expeditions did not go unnoticed. The French in the Arab Bureau, horrified enough to see a European woman sharing her lodgings with an Arab male, suspected that she had not given up her pursuit of Morès' murderers, and was using Slimen to help track them down. The Arab community was even more suspicious. Her visits to nomad tents, where she taught people to clean wounds, and nursed enflamed eyes, were misunderstood. People said she was a spy, and a few fanatics said she was a kidnapper looking for babies to sell in the Sudan as slaves.

Isabelle and Slimen made no attempt to discourage these rumors. They welcomed the strange searching looks of their neighbors, and enjoyed deflecting curious questions. They savored their roles as outcasts who shared forbidden pleasures, though their only indulgence was alcohol, in defiance of the prohibitions of the Koran.

They spoke often of religion, the perfect beauty of their shared faith, and then of the future they would share in El Oued. Slimen had a dream of retiring from the Spahis and running a small grocery. He intended to do some minor smuggling on the side as well. Isabelle was amazed at the modesty of his vision: his imagination, which she treasured for its purity even as she deplored its miniscule size, could conceive of nothing grander than a caravan ten camels long.

Perhaps
, she thought,
I love him because of his inferiority
. But still, she harbored a great dream for herself: to explore the Sahara as no European had before, ranging in ever-widening circles from her base in El Oued.

She saw herself riding into oases out of the dawn, materializing in little settlements with science for the sick and sagacity to settle disputes, then riding off again, chased, perhaps, by a few stray children who shouted for her to come back from the fringes of the sand. As the years wore on she would become a legend, and no one would know that in another life she was the wife of little Slimen–ferocious lover, gentle brother–who waited for her always, and to whom she never failed to return.

At first she believed she possessed everything necessary to accomplish this dream–everything except money, which she was certain the sale of Villa Neuve would gain her in time. But the longer she remained in El Oued, the more clearly she realized that being Islamic was not enough. She needed another key to open the door to Saharan mystery–membership in one of the closed religious sects.

That no outsider had ever been admitted only hardened her resolution to try. Si Mahmoud, she vowed, would be the first.

I
n late autumn, when the great summer heat has passed, and it's possible to ride on the dunes during the day, Isabelle learns of the arrival of Sidi Mohammed Lachmi, sheik of the Kadrya sect. She urges Slimen to join her on a ride to the village of Ourmès where the great holy man is to be met by a multitude of followers and escorted back to El Oued. But Slimen is hesitant, and the night before the arrival, they quarrel for the first time.

"I'm sorry, Si Mahmoud," he says. "I have my obligations to the army."

"Send word that you're sick."

"And then be seen in the procession?"

"Why not? Are you afraid?"

"Not afraid. Never! But I can't afford the risk."

"You're too obedient, Slimen. And your obedience shows a small nature."

He rises, furious. "And you, Si Mahmoud, you are so grand. How fortunate you're a woman. How sad for me that I serve the French."

"So," she says, ignoring his sarcasm, "you refuse to go."

"I will report to my regiment."

Isabelle, disgusted, rides off before dawn alone.

She broods over their quarrel the whole distance, telling herself that soft Slimen is an insufficient man, and she is foolish to think he is someone to whom she can devote her life.
He's not of my style,
she thinks, but then, when she sees the first glimmers of the fires of the Kadrya camp, she is so thrilled that she forgets everything and hastens toward the glow.