The Book on Fire (19 page)

“How does she hold a book?”

“Here.” I tucked Zeinab’s feet under her thighs, artfully ruffled
her skirts, laid her cheek on her hand, head tilted down and to the side, and
placed a book on her lap. I showed her how to stroke the book. “Not like that.
Like this. Like a cat. As if you were stroking a kitten. Yes, that’s better.
Now read.” I sat back. She turned a page but her eyes were on my face. I
smelled her perfume. Odor of ripe kelp, sautéed garlic, frangipani, myrrh. Then
she began tearing a page.

I sat back and watched her, involved in the act that is the opposite
of reading. Dismantling a book is hard work, and as she labored she shifted
positions, leaning over the book, taking a better grip.

Prying off the covers, she peeled back the cloth from the boards,
and I saw the brown flesh of the book. Even this she savaged, shredding the
cartonnage, itself the layered strata of dozens of destroyed volumes. The
boards removed, it was easy work to pluck off the flyleaves and endpapers,
tearing them into marbled plumage. Now I could see the complicated cords and
needlework and stacked folds of the spine, the rainbow headbands. She yanked
out the red tongue of the bookmark, then set to work tearing the signatures apart.
They separated with a series of dull reports as the cords pulled through the
paper. She ripped the signatures meticulously into shards, each loaded with
markings: severed words, or specks and scrapings of ink from illustrations. In
a few minutes the dismantled book lay about her feet and in the blue trough of
her lap: petals of paper and stamens of cord, noded with dried glue, a few
stiff blue rags. She brushed her hands together, satisfied: “This is the future
of all books.”

I was suddenly vertiginous with desire. “What would you cost?”

“You couldn’t afford me, book thief. Not anymore.”

“Name your price.”

“All the books.”

“What?”

“You heard me. All the books on your shelf.”

“So you can burn them.”

“Of course.”

“Never.”

“Your books will burn, Balthazar. This city will devour them.”

****

Coming
back with a modest haul from a house near Stanley Bay, I noticed Koujour’s
light was still on and climbed up to his studio. He had just finished a
painting, executed in sand, shoe polish, and blue ballpoint in the manner of
Tahir Bushra. Long-horned cattle, symbols from Saharan rock faces, geckos on a
dark ground.

“Good,” he said when I stepped in. “Drink merissa.” He poured me a
gourdful and we sat looking over the sea.

“Merissa will make you strong,” he said. “You are thin.”

“I need help. Advice.”

“Yes.”

I told him I had lost the only woman I could read with.

“The eyes.”

“Yes. Shireen.”

“Where?”

“Well ... dead. Buried, at any rate.”

“You sleep?”

“Too much.”

“You fuck?”

“I ...”

“Ah, yes. Yes. Merissa is good. Drink merissa.” He topped up my
gourd. “In my country if someone is sick we go to the priest. I am a priest.
Did you know? Yes, in my country.

“When I was young, eighteen, nineteen, I dreamed. Strong dreams. A
leopard put his feet on my shoulders. A snake bit my tongue. I could feel the
kuni coming, like the rain. One night, lightning. My house on fire. Only my
house. I saw no fire. My mother pulled me out. I shouted, they told me. My eyes
were white. This was the beginning.

“I prepared for the tir, to open the head. My clansmen came. I was
kuni da koyidi: the spirit came to me. My family made a house of grass. Fifteen
days inside. My clansmen did not touch their wives. They touch, their children
die. Then the big feast, many animals killed, merissa, dancing. The drums. The
kuni came. Now I am koujour. Look.” He touched his jewelry. “Four iron
bracelets, here. This bead, white.” He touched his throat. “These rings in my
ears. Scars. Touch.” And he grabbed my wrist and drew my hand over his textured
cheeks. “We must decorate, Balthazar. Do you hear?”

I nodded.

He was leaning into my touch, pressing my palm against his face.
“You must decorate. Do not leave your life smooth. Make a scar, make a color.
Do you see my brushes?” He pointed to a gourd stuffed with feathers, chewed
twigs, knives, matchsticks. “You paint with what you find in your hands. Even
this ...” He seized my hand. “Even this.” He gripped a finger. “Even this.
Paint with this.”

I staggered away from him, laughing at myself for having applied to
a drunken Nuban for advice.

****

Carrying
a bright bouquet of stolen paperbacks beneath guttering bulbs, I moved past
walls graffitoed in blood, past bloodstained gurneys. In a wastebasket, among
apple cores and yellowed gauze, a fly preened its wings on an eyeball. I had to
ask directions twice before I found Nura’s room. Her lips were covered in flies
and she was so pale I thought she was dead, then saw the sheet tremble at her
breast.

She had gorgeous bones, and as they rose to the surface she became
lovely. I could imagine her as pure skeleton, unadulterated by flesh, lying in
the sand, or beneath the sea, opalescent as mother-of-pearl, her phosphorescent
crosses glowing green in the gloom.

She opened her eyes when I waved away the flies. The platters on the
bedside table had been subsumed under pastel mold. Her lips parted, but her
throat was too dry to speak. I filled a glass at a tap in the hallway, then
propped her up and she sipped, the water spilling onto her throat and the
sheets. Her eyes glittered in violet bruises. She stank of urine and crushed
bedbugs.

“Balthazar,” she said.

“How are you, Nura?”

“I’ll be all right. This is one of my homes. I’m friends with the
nurses.”

“I brought you these. I don’t know if you’ll like them.” I held up
the paperbacks.

“Thank you so much. I’m sure they’ll be lovely. Just set them over
there. Clear a space. Balthazar, look at me. You’re haggard. What happened?”

“It’s been a rough winter. My addiction finally caught up with me.”

“You need to be careful or you’ll end up in here.”

I looked around. “It’s not so bad.”

“It’s a good place to rest,” she agreed. “Where’s your friend?
Shireen.”

“She left.”

“I’m so sorry.”

I shrugged. “Do you need anything?”

“No, I’m fine. Well, if you see any of my friends you could tell
them to bring me some stuff. You know.”

“Are you sure, Nura?”

She nodded. “I feel much better.”

“Would you like me to read to you?”

“Yes please.”

I chose a paperback and sat at the foot of the bed and started
reading. She closed her eyes, smiling. After a while I realized she’d fallen
asleep. Flies gathered on her lips. I finished the story silently, then placed
the book on her bedside table and tiptoed out.

****

That
evening as I sat at my corner table in the Elite, nursing my Omar Khayyam and
staring out the window, Karim and Amir walked in. They saw me and came over.
“What’s this?” I looked from one face to the other. “A reconciliation?”

They looked at each other and smiled a little awkwardly. “It’s like
this ...” said Karim.

The waiter came over with menus. “Have you eaten, Balthazar?” Amir
asked.

“No.”

Karim ordered a steak, Amir moussaka. I waved the waiter away, then
called him back. “Another bottle,” I said, flicking my glass with a fingernail.
I divided the remaining wine between their glasses.

“Are you all right?” Amir asked.

I shook my head.

“It’s your bald friend, isn’t it?” said Karim.

I nodded.

“Anything we can do?”

“Sit with me.” I laid the glass against my forehead, pressing the
rim into my scalp, hoping it would shatter.

“I searched her pockets, you know,” said Amir.

“What? When?”

“The Gianacles line. She was holding a blue balloon.”

“What did you find?”

“At first I thought they were empty. But then—the strangest thing—I
felt a prickling in my fingertips, like a series of sparks. As if braille was
written in sparks on her skin.”

“What did you read?”

“Nothing. But I felt there were words. I could have read them if I
was blind.”

 “How’s your work?” I asked.

“Good, good,” Amir said. “Karim took me on his rounds.”

“I thought you two were at war.”

“We were. But then one day he caught me.” Amir undid the top two
buttons of his shirt and displayed the scab, stroke of rust on his olive skin.

“I thought I’d killed him,” Karim said. “We were on the roof of the
theater.”

“
La Traviata
. The lovers’ song. You know the one. I had to
glance in, to the stage.”

“My knife met his body. He grabbed his chest and fell. I thought I’d
killed him. And in that moment, I didn’t know what I’d do if I had.”

“Karim carried me back to his apartment. He made me tea and soup.
Lovely soup. I had no idea he could cook.”

“And now you’re ransacking graves,” I said. “Have you seen any
ghosts?”

“I’m learning to look. I think I saw something, like a bit of cobweb
in a corner, but I couldn’t be sure. I’m teaching Karim to pick pockets.”

“Is he any good?”

Amir smiled. “He’s dreadful.” He picked up Karim’s hairy, calloused
hand and ran his palm over the burred fingernails. “He couldn’t pick a
quadriplegic’s shoelaces with these bananas.”

Karim didn’t pull away from his touch, and their hands lay side by
side on the table, little fingers overlapping. The food arrived. “Eat
something.” Karim held out a forkful of charred meat. “You’re thin.”

“I’m not hungry. I’ll eat later.”

“This moussaka is delicious,” said Amir.

“Can I try?” Karim bent to him and they put their forks in each
other’s mouths.

****

There
is no sorrow like the sorrow of abandonment. If she’d been on another
continent, if she’d disappeared leaving no address, if she’d died, perhaps I
could have reconciled myself to it. But she walked beneath my feet: the mole on
her neck was a clove-shaped pea and I the tossing princess. Sometimes, pacing
the alleys, I imagined we were magnets on either side of the earth’s crust, the
turnings I chose dictated by her rovings through the library labyrinth. I
dreamed I was watching her reading. For hours I paced the perimeter of the
library fence, peered into the face of every shaven-headed witch. “Where’s
Shireen?” I called to the librarians. “Tell her Balthazar greets her.” But
their glances brushed my face and moved on. They were accustomed to madmen.

Through every thought ran the golden-brown thread of her memory.
Every book I read, every meal I ate, every sunrise I watched, I wanted to shout
to her. Constantly I conversed with her, another zany muttering along the
corniche. Sudden outbursts as I sat alone. Abrupt gestures at the Kanisa. Nura,
recently released from the hospital, told me I displayed all the symptoms of
withdrawal and wondered if I needed someone to sit by me and bathe my forehead
with cool cloths.

In front of the mirror, as I shaved, I’d pause to argue a point with
Shireen, stabbing the air with my razor, then catch sight of myself in the
glass. I’d admonish my image, waggling a finger at my nose. “Watch it,
Balthazar. This is how it starts. Soon you’ll be barking like a dog, dragging
your sack of paperbacks through the streets.” But as I sat on the balcony she’d
invade my skull again and I’d give in, jerking my wineglass about, mumbling to
my djinn, while the urchins in the midan giggled and pointed.

At last, as I was leaving the Kanisa one night, drunk, wacky as a
monkey, Koujour and Makarios each seized an elbow and dragged me back inside,
into the sacristy, stripped me naked, laid me on the altar, and bound my wrists
and ankles to the horns with chains ripped from censers. The messiah gazed from
the ceiling, T to my X. I saw for the first time that the thorns on his brow in
fact grew from his scalp, their tips pen-nibs dripping blue blood on my
forehead, an emission like ink or sap or semen, natural and salubrious. Priest
and painter performed over me that night an exotic exorcism, conjoining the
lore of Coptic Orthodoxy and Nuban spirituality. Koujour wore a mask he’d
carved himself, not so distant from his own daubed visage, with stained eye
sockets and stippled cheeks, though the mask bore horns and a beard of strung
mirror fragments. He shook a calabash rattle in one hand, a colobus-tail
flywhisk in the other. Makarios, clad in his own ridiculous costume, brandished
a cross and a censer. They sang and danced for me that night, cavorting like
the ambassadors of Oberon himself, their chants and dancing at first clashing,
so they banged elbows, and censer and flywhisk knocked in a spray of sparks,
but as the night wore on they learned to dance with each other, round and round
the altar, fat priest and masked Nuban, in a haze of incense and
mirror-sparkles, and their songs learned a harmony. Koujour brushed my body
with powdered color—karkadeh bellybutton, sky-blue cock, saffron rings around my
nipples, and Makarios double-crossed my forehead with holy ash. At last, as the
dawn prayer calls flooded the city, Makarios placed his hands aside my skull
and Koujour flailed my belly with his whisk and they shouted the invocation at
the same moment, summoning my demon. I fainted.