The Salt Roads Page 19

  His face set hard. “No. I’ll be careful. They won’t even let me speak of the case, can you imagine it? Threatened to sue me again if I did.” Then he frowned a little. “But the Belgians want to publish Les Fleurs du mal there.” He gave a wry, bitter laugh. “The Belgians are the crassest of bourgeois, but they do not take a man to task for showing the world at its most ugly.”

  “Hmm.”

  We walked little more, then he said, “I’m translating some more works of Poe’s.”

  “Hmm,” I murmured again, half-hearing. No longer a true liaison between me and Charles, not for years now, but he had sworn to me that he didn’t wish me to go a day without money. Begged me not to go out into the slippery streets without a companion to take my arm. He can be kind. Better for us to be apart, though. We claw at each other when we remain too close.

  Look how the lamplight shines off his balding head. So many years with him. I had watched every single one of those hairs fall. Almost a marriage I’d made; almost-white me. Best I could hope for. I think I did well. I think Grandmaman would be proud of me. Nearly I could hear her voice in my head. Only pity, girl, is that you let him fuck you. It’s that fucking has made you sick. He gave you his disease along with his money. Your maman never taught you the other tricks to satisfy a man?

  Never mind. Cane strike, heel strike, drag. The damp Paris air was making my cough worse. “Charles?”

  “Hmm?”

  “I want to leave the sanatorium. They don’t treat me well.”

  He glanced at me. “Likely you just vex them by not taking your medicines properly.”

  “They keep one set of sheets for me only.”

  “What?”

  “I am a negress, Charles. When they wash the sheets, I lie on the bare mattress until the linen is dry and I may have it again. They make me make my own bed.”

  He frowned and thought a little bit. “You need to leave there. I will see to it.”

  Eh. So easy? “Where will I go?”

  He sighed. “I am taking an apartment in Neuilly. You can stay with me.”

  “Oh.”

  Yes, take us there. I like the branch of that story, where its forks will lead. Say yes, Jeanne.

  Back living with Charles again? I can almost hear my grandmother speaking her mind. She would tell me to go, to let the man from the monied family look after me.

  Was probably him had given me the pox, never mind I’d rarely let him swive me. All my tricks for avoiding sickness, and still Charles had gotten around them. I thought of the sores on my cunny, this sickness that had come on me, and the anger started to rise like bile in me again. I looked in a window at the reflection of my crippled body, shuffling like a crab’s. I pulled my arm from Charles’s own, and stumbled as it came free. I couldn’t get the cane under me in time.

  “Oh!” Charles caught me about the waist and steadied me. “Take care, Lemer!” he said, all concern in his voice. Poxy bastard. Careful to set the cane against the pavement first this time, I jerked myself out of his grasp.

  “I’m going back to the sanatorium now,” I said, and set off before he could say anything. Cane strike, heel strike, drag. I blocked the ugly sound from my mind. Boring old Neuilly. Joël had been a few days in Paris, before he lost too badly at cards and went back to Nantes. He had visited me once in my apartments, before I got sick. Nantes was far from Neuilly, but perhaps Joël would come if I asked. I ignored the sombre, balding man who was holding so tight to my upper arm lest I fall.

  At least we’d spawned no brats, me and Charles.

  “I want us to be at peace in Neuilly, Jeanne. I need the quiet in order to write.”

  I only sighed.

  He took my arm again, his face suddenly joyful. “Don’t you think it will be well, Lemer? To live together again? As brother and sister this time? I will have you near, and know that you are looked after.”

  I grunted. Near to Charles again, every day. The truth was, a contrary part of me was glad. I leaned on his arm and stumped my way back to the sanatorium with him.

  Rattle

  I am not your withered, dead grandmaman! Can you not hear me? It is my voice, not hers. You are withering like her too. You are drowning in the brine that’s filling your lungs, when I had other plans for you. But yes, at least no whelps. Bad enough you have me ensnared so. I don’t want to share with another passenger inside your body. When I travel on my leash to other places, I see what breeding leads to. Mothers, fathers, generations fret about their children’s welfare. Look at how your paramour’s mother sorrows for her child.

  Enough! I want to dance, Jeanne, not drag like this, spitting up sputum from a weakened chest. Can you feel the rhythm of your swollen heart, how it misses beats betimes now? The pattern is patter is pat is tern is torn is broken-ken-ken. I don’t want to stumble. I want to be able to feel it when skin touches mine. I want us beautiful again. Only when you sleep and let the tether slip can I be free from your drowning for a little while. I want so much more for you!

  And there’s a thing I don’t know. When you die, what will happen to me? Will I be liberated to dance forever with those other Africans, to tell them always of how to be beautiful, how to be loved? Or will I suffocate with you in the liquor of your lungs?

  Monsieur! Monsieur Baudelaire! Forgive me, I do not mean to intrude on your perambulations. I only wished; oh—your shoes! Such a state they’re . . . I am sorry, Monsieur. Pardon, pardon.

  “I? You don’t remember me, then. But I remember you. I can’t thank you enough. Your Mr. Poe, your translation—oh, Monsieur, how you changed my life that night! Verne. I am Jules Verne.

  “But my manners are unforgiveable. It is cold. Here; let’s go to a restaurant. There’s a fine one only two more streets over, service à la russe. Will you—will you come with me? May I buy you a glass of wine?

  “A meal? Why, of course, yes. Certainly. I . . . Certainly.

  “Sir, you are shivering! At the cleaners, you say? You left your overcoat with them in this weather? What a sturdy constitution you must have, my dear Baudelaire. Here we are. Oh, sit, please do! I am so pleased to see you again!

  “Where do I begin? In my folly, I almost didn’t read that work of Poe that you so generously gave me. Put it aside in my apartments, and might have never picked it up again, except a chance boredom one night . . .

  “And oh, my dear sir; when I did—I cannot tell you! I cannot explain. That man, that Poe; what a mind, what a vision! Here, waiter. Bring us a bottle of Merlot. Will that do, my dear sir? Yes, of course, whatever you wish. The fish? And the steak? Oh, by all means, by all means.

  “But isn’t he just a marvel, Mr. Baudelaire? Such fantasms I see when I read his work. Such . . . oh, I cannot describe it!

  “Yes, I bought your other translations, too. But I haven’t told you, you know, the most wonderful part!

  “I began that very night. What I had been writing, those little plays, I saw the flaws in them, the lack of vision. That very night, I tell you, I took up my pen. Ah, here’s dinner. No, please. Go ahead without me. I took my meal just a little while ago.

  “Monsieur, I have written novels. Perhaps you’ve heard of them? Five Weeks in a Balloon and Voyage to the Centre of the Earth? I was lucky enough to get them published right away. Jules Hetzel picked them up. I have even written about our marvellous Mr. Poe!

  “How are they doing? My dear sir, the publisher had to print more copies! He has contracted me to write him a novel each year! And I owe it all to you, and to Mr. Poe. Oh, it’s shown my father, I can tell you that! Cut me out of his will, he had, when I didn’t become a lawyer. Now he’s had to eat his words.

  “Dessert? Why, yes. What would you like? Waiter, please accommodate my friend here.

  “And how goes your translation work, Mr. Baudelaire? Yes, good, good. I look forward to it. What? Poems? I didn’t know that you were a writer, too! As well as a translator? Why, that’s splendid!”

  Alexandria, Egypt, 345 C.E.

&
nbsp; Meritet,” Nefer called. Her voice echoed in the cool dark of the baths.

  “Yeah?”

  “I’m worried about Cups.”

  “How come?”

  “Is Felix fighting again tomorrow?” Drineh asked me.

  “No, it was only a two-day show. He went back to Rome today.”

  “Shit. It’s my day off tomorrow.”

  “So, about Cups?” said Neferkare loudly from where she sat. “She’s whelping again.”

  The housewife gasped. Eleni smoothed linen strips of honey and lime paste onto Nefer’s calves, then yanked a strip off. Neferkare winced. She inspected the newly hairless place on her legs and smiled at Eleni. “Looks good,” she said.

  Eleni told us, “Cups thinks it was that accountant, the one with the twisted leg. Says he didn’t pull out in time.”

  She ripped another strip away. Nefer hissed, but only said, “I keep telling her that I know this woman who makes crocodile dung balls like the ancients did.”

  “Phew!” replied Eleni. “What for? More of your old time sorcery?”

  “You mix the dung with acacia paste and sour milk. Then you make it into balls, and—” Nefer mimed putting something up into her snatch.

  “No!” Eleni yelped. “What’s that do?”

  The housewife was towelling herself off now. She pretended not to be listening, but if she’d had donkey’s ears, they would have swivelled towards the sound of Nefer’s voice.

  “Don’t listen to her, Eleni,” I said. “Nefer’s always going on about how our ancestors did everything better.”

  “But crocodile dung?”

  “It keeps you from getting pregnant!” Nefer insisted. This time the housewife didn’t even try to pretend she wasn’t taking in every single word. Heh. Maybe by tomorrow she’d have her own supply of dung ball suppositories.

  I wrinkled my nose. “I don’t blame Cups for ignoring you, Nefer. That’s disgusting. I never heard of anything like it.” I turned back to Drineh. “And Drineh, guess what else happened at the games?” I said.

  But she was looking thoughtful. “I guess I know how they’d work, though,” she said. “The dung balls, I mean. I bet the smell keeps the men away.”

  The housewife looked horrified. Eleni cackled. Drineh tittered, her hand to her mouth to hide her teeth. Ground down to nubs they were, from chewing cheap sandy-floured bread. Nefer laughed out loud, all smoky. “True, that,” she chuckled. “No fucking, no babies.”

  “You want more water, Thais?” Drineh asked me.

  “Yeah. More on my hair,” I told her. “I want it washed good today.” I pulled my long black hair up from the nape of my neck and leaned forward. Drineh poured. The water sluiced gloriously over my scalp. I’d left my blonde whore’s wig in one of the bath’s lockers. With any luck, someone would steal the itchy thing.

  “I’ll rub the olive oil through it, after,” she said.

  I nodded. I closed my eyes, enjoying the wash of water over my body. I started figuring in my head. I’d entertained four men this morning, and Nefer and I were dancing at a party tonight. So I’d made good money in tips already today, and I’d been promised more in payment for tonight, plus any tips I made there. Soon I’d have enough to have my sistrum restrung; three of the bells had fallen right off. I didn’t really like dancing at parties; all the men feeling you up when they could get you alone. But Tausiris liked the extra money it brought in. He sweared he’d free me when I was thirty. “You’ll be too old for the work then,” he’d told me. “You can find yourself a nice husband.” Fifteen more years of fucking six men a day and dancing for them at night! Would any man want me when my womb had fallen out from all that jumping up and down?

  “Meritet?” Nefer called to me again in her sand-scoured voice.

  “Yes, O sweet Little Doe?” I replied. I didn’t know which was funnier, the old-fashioned Egyptian name that Nefer insisted on using, or her whore name. All the girls teased our aging Little Doe. Too many years of sour wine and smoky inns had roughened her voice till she brayed more like a goat than a doe when she cried out during fucking. This time she ignored my jibe, though.

  “I’m really worried about Cups,” she told me. “Two children she has already, and Tausiris charging her extra for room and board for them. How will she manage with a third?”

  “Sometimes they die unborn,” Drineh pointed out.

  “And maybe that’ll kill her when it starts to rot in her belly,” Nefer said. “Don’t wish that on her!”

  “Well,” Eleni murmured, “there’s always . . . you know.” She nodded towards the back of the baths, where the drains were. The bones of many newborn babies littered those drains.

  “No, not that,” I said quickly. Nasty Roman habit, that. I could just hear my Nubian mother: Why can’t they just give them to someone who wants them? Like we’re doing with you. Yes, Tausiris had wanted me, all right. He’d known my full lips and high southern behind would fetch him a good price with the sailors. “There are other ways,” I told my friends. Me, I drank lots of pennyroyal tea and stuck a wax cup up there before I fucked, but it was too late for Cups to do any of that; the accountant’s seed was already growing in her. “If Cups has a healthy child, there’s plenty of us to help her look after it, and sometimes she can draw money from the pot to pay Tausiris with, just like she does now.”

  “Yes,” Nefer replied, sounding a little more hopeful. “Maybe it’ll go like that.”

  All the whores at Tausiris’s place relied on the pot. We all put in a few coins every time we made something, and every month a different one of us got the whole amount that was in the pot. Nefer often bought eye paint and expensive honey for her legs with hers, but I knew that she always salted half of her pot money away. She only had three years to go to freedom, did Nefer. She wanted to start her own dance school, teach the young girls the “ancient ways” that she was always on about. Her and her blessèd Hathor. Only one temple still left to her, and the Christians had broken all the images of her face. What good was a dead goddess to us?

  Cups usually spent her pot money on her children. Little Helena was smart, and Cups paid for her to take lessons with a scribe; maybe she’d get to be some fine lady’s secretary when she grew up, instead of just another whore. Me, I tried to save, but I didn’t have any grand plans for my life when I was free again. Mostly all of my money went to buying kif to smoke.

  Drineh stood and unknotted her tunic where she’d tied it up round her knees to keep it out of the damp. She reached a hand to me. “Time to go and scrape,” she said. She helped me out of the bath and we joined Nefer and Eleni in the destrictarium. The housewife slyly inspected my body. I drew myself up tall. I knew that naked I looked just as good as her; better. The housewife wrapped her towel around her and scurried out of there, her thighs jiggling in her rush to be away.

  Eleni watched her go, then kept sugaring and plucking Nefer’s legs. “I gotta hurry, friend,” she said. “Wouldn’t be surprised if that one went and tattled to Boss that we’re working for free. Hey, Drineh; keep an eye out for the old turd, will you?”

  Drineh sighed. “Okay.” She rubbed me down with some olive oil—third pressing, I could smell how cheap it was—and then began to scrape me clean with a strigil. My skin was tingling nicely. Nefer was yipping and making little hissing noises as Eleni got on with plucking her legs smooth. So vain about those legs, Neferkare was. When the men asked her why a hangdug old goat like her was called Little Doe, she’d tell them it was because of her strong, slim legs. They were, too. Looked real nice on her.

  “Pretty Pearl in there?” bellowed a voice from outside. I frowned. It was Beshotep, Tausiris’s fat steward. Running errands for his master again. “Thais?” he said, using my real name.

  “I’m here,” I shouted back. “What’s doing?”

  The little pig stuck his head right into the destrictarium. Wanted an eyeful of us. That’s all he ever got. And he took it too; stared me and Nefer up and down good and long befo
re he said, “Tausiris says come. Customer at the tavern’s asking for you.”

  I sighed. “I’m on break. He knows that.” Nefer rolled her eyes at me. Tausiris could drive us hard when he had a mind to.

  “What’s that to me? Tausiris says that Antoniou always pays right away and I’m to fetch you.” He frowned at me, crinkling his stubbly bald head. “You better come now, or both of us will be in trouble.”

  I ignored that. “Oh, it’s Antoniou who wants me, is it?” An easy customer, if Tausiris would let me deal with him my way. “How long’s he been in the tavern?”

  “Just came in now.”

  “Okay. Go on back. I’ll be just behind you.”

  “But . . .”

  “Tell Antoniou that I was all wet from my bath,” I said, “and that I stopped to get dry and changed into a nice clean tunic. Tell him I’ll be right along.”

  “And will you?” Beshotep asked. “I don’t want to get whipped for you.”

  “Yeah, yeah. I’ll be there. And listen,” I said. “Tell Antoniou I’ll be all oiled and nice for him when I get there, all right? And give him some of that Black Corinth wine while he’s waiting, okay?” Antoniou loved that wine.

  Beshotep looked doubtful. He opened his mouth. Quickly I said, “It’ll be on me. Tell Tausiris to charge it to me. Just let me finish my bath, please, honey?” I wheedled.

  “All right,” said Beshotep, looking like he trusted my word about as much as he trusted the rains. “Just don’t be long,” he told me, “or I’ll make sure that you get a whipping. You girls are always trying to shirk.” It was close and damp in the bath house. He used a corner of his wine-stained kilt to wipe the sweat from his forehead and left.

  “You girls are always trying to shirk,” Nefer imitated him. “Like to see him spend most of his days with his legs spread.”