The Book on Fire (16 page)

“Here,” I said. I wet a washcloth and dabbed her face clean. She had
vomit in her eyebrows and her ears. I led her to the bed. Abdallah arrived with
the tea and I made her sip it slowly while I wiped the mirror and floor,
sluiced the sink. When I finished she was weeping into her cup.

“Enough,” she said. “I want to go back to the library. Why did you
take me to that place?”

“I wanted to see you dance.”

“And throw up.”

“I’m sorry about that.”

“Well. How did I dance?”

“Like this.” I ripped the flyleaf from a paperback, cast it out into
the afternoon, where it curled and caught the sun, floating, falling.

“All I remember are lights. Lights in my ears, lights on my tongue.
If I close my eyes I can see them.”

She ran a fever that afternoon, eyes glittering, face the color of
damp sand. I sat by her, read to her. She would not let me hold her hand. But
that night, when I thought her asleep, while I read beside her, she murmured:
“I didn’t make a fool of myself, did I?”

“You were the most beautiful dancer,” I told her. “They’re still
talking about you. Men are wanking to your memory as we speak.”

“Balthazar!” She swatted my arm feebly, then drew the sheets to her
chin.

****

 “What about Zeinab?” she asked.

“I don’t know where she is. I haven’t seen her for weeks.”

“But what about her?”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re in love with her.”

“Oh. That.” I sat back and laced my fingers across my chest.

“Don’t think I’m trying to hold onto you.”

“What are you trying to do?”

“I’m just curious.”

“I see. What do you want me to tell you?”

“What would you do if she walked into the room right now?”

“She wouldn’t walk into the room.”

“How do you know?”

“She’s a thief.”

“But if she did?”

“She’d probably throw you over the balcony, then stick a
knife in my wrist.” I placed a fingernail on the
scar, the burred
I.

“What do you talk about?”

“We argue.”

“About what?”

“About what we should talk about.”

“Does she ever just talk?”

“Sometimes.”

“What does she say?”

“She tells me about the books she’s burned.”

She passed her hands across her face, as though wiping away tears,
but there were no tears. “Do you like that?” she asked. She sounded timid.

“Of course.”

“How does she make you feel?”

“Does she make me feel like you do? Is that what you mean?”

“Does she?”

“No.”

“Then what?”

“I don’t know her. I know you.”

“You think you know me.”

I nodded.

“Would you like me better if I never spoke?”

“No.”

“Would you like me better if I never took off this veil?”

“No.”

“But if she came back, if she came back right now, who would you
choose?”

“Are you saying you’re in love with me?”

“I’m asking you a question.”

“It’s possible to be in love with more than one person at the same
time.”

“I don’t want to believe that.”

“But you’re in love with more than one book.”

“All right, but still, there’s always a favorite.”

“Anyway, I don’t have to make that choice.”

“I think you do.”

“No. I can’t afford Zeinab anymore. And you’re going back
underground. Or so you threaten.”

“Am I just another of your whores? What do you want from me? I’m not
going to be another book on your shelves, to gloat over. I’m not going to sit
on your shelves.”

I was silent.

“Make your choice.”

“Here, in this hour, I choose you, Shireen. I’m obsessed with you.
But you’ll go underground and I’m a thief.”

She was quiet a moment, then smiled sadly. “Go away. Can’t you see
I’m trying to read?”

****

Nura
called to us as we walked along the corniche near Chatby one night. She was
crouching with some friends around a fire lit in a square charred tin. We
descended the steps to the sand.

“Balthazar, Zeinab, where have you been?” She stood up as we
approached.

“Morning, Nura. This is another friend. Shireen. I haven’t seen
Zeinab.”

“Oh. I see, yes. Sorry.” She took Shireen’s hand. “Come get warm.
Meet my friends.”

Her friends were two skinny men with lank hair, eyes at once ravaged
and ravishing, the eyes of saints and insomniacs, surfaces burnished by
visions. They nodded to us. Nura upturned tins for seats, offered cigarettes. I
took one and held it to the flames.

“Balthazar, I was just about to come looking for you. I thought you
were gone, but people saw you. At the Tempest, along the corniche. Why don’t
you come to the Kanisa?”

“I’m busy.”

“So I see. Do you steal books as well?” she asked Shireen.

“I’m a novice.”

“But you like to read?”

“Oh yes.”

“That’s wonderful. Sometimes I worry we aren’t much fun for
Balthazar to talk to, we thieves. He’s so smart.”

“What do you do?” Shireen inquired politely.

Nura displayed her ravaged arms without compunction.

“But you’re a thief as well?”

“Just to feed my addiction. I’m not as professional as Balthazar,
I’m afraid. I break in, take what I need.” She smiled at Shireen.

One of the men stood and unbelted his trousers and let them drop.
Shireen looked at him in alarm, but he sat again and rummaged in a paper bag.
His inner thighs were colorful with bruises. She watched fascinated as he
prepared the poison, drew it into the syringe, pecked for a vein. When he had
crushed the plunger he pulled out the needle, passed it on. His companion shot
up in the neck, which caused Shireen to suck in her breath. Nura held the
syringe to us. “Will you share?” We shook our heads. “I know how awful it seems
from the outside,” she said apologetically as she readied her dose, “but it
helps me. It’s so delicious, the rush. Otherwise I get sad.”

“How did you start?” Shireen asked.

“My father was a priest in the Orthodox church. You didn’t know
that, did you, Balthazar? Yes, I’m a daughter of the church. Look.” She touched
the blue cross tattooed on her wrist, nearly submerged under needle pricks. “I
went every day. I prayed to all the saints. When I was little I saw miracles.
Miracles are all around us, of course, happening on every street corner, in
every tramcar and every handshake. In every kiss. Often at night—miracles love
the darkness—but sometimes in daylight as well. Not everyone can see them,
though. A miracle might happen in front of you, your karkadeh suddenly turning
to wine or a fever cured by a touch, but your friends will talk about chemical
processes and phases of the moon. But whose hand joins the molecules, whose
hand nudges the moon through the sky? God is present everywhere.” She lifted
the syringe, tinkled a fingernail against its surface. “Even here. God lives
inside this glass, a djinn I set free every evening.

“I was an unruly child. I saw visions. The virgin, once, above the
cross on the bell tower, shining. She had tears on her cheeks. She was so
beautiful. I was in love with her. I fell in love with her, and with the icons
of the messiah, his face was so sad. Young girls love sadness. My father at
first welcomed my love of the church, but he soon got frightened. The visions I
saw weren’t right. They didn’t fit inside his gold frames or under the covers
of his books. At breakfast I’d tell what I’d seen in the night. The coupling
archangels, their feathers rustling together. The demiurge, master of this
world, striding along the corniche in his top hat and boots, his goatee
brilliantined, handsome as a ringmaster. The thirty-ninth angel, banished from
heaven for the sin of loving too much, tossed out of heaven and into the world.
My father would snort to erase my revelations, and then forbid me to talk. My
family knew when I had received a vision, though. ‘There’s a shining about
you,’ my mother would whisper, and she’d let me stay home, in bed, while she
put my father off with the mysteries of women. Seeing visions is wonderful, but
also exhausting.

“One night I stole my father’s keychain and went to the church and
lay naked on the altar, my eyes on the messiah. This was in the hours before
dawn—I’ve always loved the night. He winked at me. He was lonely. I wanted to
comfort him. Then I fell asleep. I woke when the priests came into the church
to get it ready for the Sunday service. I tried to tell them about my vision,
but they really had no choice but to excommunicate me. They couldn’t explain
why the icon was suddenly smiling, though.

“I wandered through the city. I was fifteen. Friends turned their
backs. I lay down in the gardens of rich relatives and they set their dogs on
me. So I walked along the corniche and it passed me into the hands of the real
saints: the addicts, the thieves, the only people who would take me in. They
showed me the way to heaven, the easy way. Daily heaven, daily hell. But it’s
better than the constant horror of the nun’s life. Or the terror of the
fanatic. At least I’m certain I’m going to paradise, if only for an hour or
two.”

Other denizens of the night joined the circle around the fire. A
white-bearded man who seemed about to collapse but perked up once the drug
entered his veins. He pulled out a bamboo nai on which he played a vagrant
melody, tapping his foot on the hot tin, his fingers trapping and releasing the
harbor lights. A boy and girl arrived, dressed in peasant rags—he in a stained
galabiyya and embroidered tagiyya, she in a frock of pink and lilac, a green
scarf on her head. They held out their arms to Nura like children begging
cookies, and received their treats. The girl still child enough I could read
the transformation in her face, the blossoming of bliss as the drug took
effect. They sat for a while holding hands, then moved to the edge of the ring
of firelight to rut in the sand. A frantic woman, half her hair scorched off,
came up and gripped Nura’s arm and whispered in her ear, and Nura emptied her
purse into the woman’s hand.

The moon passed behind the triangular struts of the cranes. Shireen
had fallen into conversation with the old man. I walked down to the water’s
edge and crouched there watching the moonlit refuse wash onto the shore and get
swept back, new patterns settling each time. Ships rested in furry gold cocoons
on the horizon. I looked back at the group around the fire. It seemed a gentle
community, Nura its benign mistress. The old man had started to play again.
Nura joined me at the water’s edge.

“She’s lovely. Who is she?”

“Just a friend.”

“You seem content.”

“Maybe. For a little while.”

“Is she leaving?”

“I think so.”

“Over the sea?”

“Underground. You won’t tell, will you, Nura?”

She touched my arm.

“She’s up here to read my books.”

“I see.”

“I’m scared, Nura. Is it possible to return to the old life?”

“You’re welcome to join us here.”

“Thank you. Perhaps I will. It would be nice to forget now and
then.”

“When will she go?”

“Soon. She’s reading the last book. Slowly. I’m trying to distract
her, take her out, but the book’s so good.”

And as if she’d heard, Shireen came up behind us. “Balthazar, I
think I have to go back now.”

****

Abuna
Makarios banged into my room the next afternoon while we lay kissing on the
bed. I had just coaxed open her gown, the first sighting of breast. “Pastoral
visit!” he trumpeted. Shireen shrieked. He bore a wine bottle in each fist and a
net bag of communion bread dangled from his wrist. “No no, don’t let me stop
you.” He gestured expansively. “I’ll watch,” and he sat down at my desk chair,
which moaned alarmingly. But kisses and giggles don’t mix, so I rolled away
from Shireen and we sat up. She turned away, closing the gown, tying the knot.

“Nice tits,” he nodded at her. He sucked the cork out of a bottle
and tipped half the contents down his throat. “Small, the nipples well-defined.
Would you like to see my testicles?” he inquired.

“No thank you.”

“Just as well, they’re none too pretty. And none too clean.
Balthazar.” He stood and subsumed me in his black garments. Priestly reek of
stale lees and incense. “I came to see how you were, but looks like you’re
happy,” and he nodded at my straining zipper. “Wine?” He sucked the cork out of
the second bottle before we could answer and tossed it to us. “Special stuff,”
he nodded as Shireen peered at the label that depicted a drunken savior.
“Contains the saliva of the Pope himself.” She drank cautiously, then laughed.