Three Rivers (24 page)

VI

Isabel had been in a deep sleep. Suddenly she sat bolt upright in her bed, grabbing for her heart. The fright passed and she was calm. She remembered where she was and reached out through the mosquito netting all around the bed to turn on the light.

The room was very large with a ceiling that must have been twenty-five feet high. It was sparsely furnished in what must have been the grand style in the twenties. Now it was still grand, but on the verge of being seedy. There was something shabby and worn about it that made her feel all the more a hotel guest. Just another of the hundreds of thousands who pass through the Winter Palace
at Luxor. They had come, as she had come, to see Karnak, the Temple of Amun, the sacred lake, and the Temple of Amenophis III. They would have crossed the Nile as she did and been pulled upstream in an old felucca by fellahin in their white galabias tucked up into the tops of their baggy, white, rough cotton shorts. The fellahins’ bare feet squished along in the mud of the high bank as they kept up their rhythmic tugging on the heavy rope over their shoulders, their large white headdresses bouncing with them.

A mile upstream their boat would have been released by the men as hers was, and they too would have sailed back down the Nile while the felucca crossed over to the west bank, just opposite where they first started out. Today there is a motor launch that will take you straight across, but then, that is really not crossing the Nile at Luxor.

If they had made the pilgrimage as she had to the Valley of the Kings, to the Tombs of the Queens, the Temple of Ramses II and the smaller Temple of Merneptah, then they would be, as she had been, swept away by the thought of time. The short time we live and the long time we stay dead.

Isabel went to the oversized doors of the bedroom that led out onto the balcony. She pulled up the noisy old wooden shutter just enough to bend underneath it and stepped out into the night air.

The middle of the night was heavy with quiet. There was a warm breeze moving the tops of the palm trees, the only sound breaking that silence. She stood leaning against the stone balustrade, looking out over the Nile. The water was there, but the night was so black she could barely see where it was. In fact, she had to imagine where it was. At one moment a carriage went by with its small lanterns on either side of the driver, and its tinkling bells on the horses made romantic music as they trotted along the road next to the river. It was quiet again after the carriage had gone by. Off in the distance she heard the hollow bark of some poor dog. Isabel was feeling chilly but was rooted where she stood, overlooking the Nile towards the Valley of the Kings.

The soft breeze suddenly stopped. Everything became totally still. Not a leaf moved, there was not one sound. And then, there before her, she saw very clearly the
Nile. It appeared, looking an almost translucent blue. Isabel looked to the left and then to the right. As far as she could see there was the river. It seemed larger, wider and to have come closer to her than it really was. Then she saw the river rise. The Nile, looking like a heavy white mist, just wafted itself up and floated away into the black sky. There was nothing there now. Just the dark night, no river to be seen at all.

A chill went through Isabel, and she started shaking violently. She wrapped her arms around herself, hoping to hold down the near convulsions. The tops of the palm trees were moving again and another carriage went by with its high-stepping horses and their tuneful bells. Two people were laughing in the rear of the carriage.

Something had happened, some extraordinary phenomenon. Isabel had had a vision. There was a calmness at the realization that she had seen something extraordinary. Her only reaction was that her life would never be the same again.

A part of Isabel had disappeared upwards and away with the vision of the Nile vanishing. From across the river on the west bank the moon appeared. Its beams fell across the Nile, lighting a portion of it directly in front of her. Now she did see it; muddy, blue-brown, with a fairly swift current.

She returned inside, lifted the mosquito netting and crawled into bed. Isabel lay back against the pillows and turned off the lamp next to her. As she lay there in the quiet of her room, she remembered a dream that she once had when she lived in New York. It was about another river — the Hudson River. Now, after all these years, that dream came back to her vividly.

It was of the Hudson River near the piers where the luxury liners docked. Somewhere near Fifty-second, Fifty-third and Fifty-fourth streets. There they were, the three great, beautiful, transatlantic luxury liners always looking streamlined and impeccable with their black and white bows and their simply printed, elegant names: the
Queen Mary
, the
Normandie
, the
Ile de France
. Those three glorious ladies of the deep waves were lined up in her dreams. She was standing on the overpass at Fifty-fifth Street looking at them as the traffic raced by her. Then, suddenly one bow rose up out of the water, high into the air. When it was almost perpendicular, it slipped slowly
backwards and sank into the river. The water made circles as if a large stone had been thrown in to make the waves.

She saw the second one, the
Ile de France
, proudly raise her bow and in the same way, slip into the river. Then the
Normandie
did the very same thing.

Isabel had been haunted by that dream for years. Once she asked a psychiatrist at a dinner party about it. He told her that it was what they call a “complete dream.” It had a beginning, a middle and an end. She was the ship and would rise out of her present life, which was the river, proudly to reach out and up and die back in the river. Then she would be born again in the next ship. It would happen twice more in her life and in essence what it meant was rebirth. She would have a total and complete rebirth three times in her life.

She had often wondered if he had been right. Until this very night she had forgotten what he said, but had never forgotten the dream of those three magnificent ships on the Hudson River. She always had the feeling that one day she would understand what that dream really meant. The doctor only had part of it right, and she never really believed him.

Isabel knew just one thing for sure. The river was death but the water was life, and it had something to do with her. Now this, another river, not a dream but a vision. What did it mean?

She lay there and was aware of something. She could not exactly put her finger on it, could not rationalize or explain it. It was not in any way a strong clap of thunder, a streak of lightning: There was not a crash of cymbals or five hundred trumpets in fanfare. There was no shock at all to warn her that something had changed. She simply felt different.

At first she thought it felt like a new kind of calmness, but no, it was not as simple as that. It was more like a feeling of being. An inner voice told her that she had just passed through a great mystical experience. Sleepiness came over her, and before she drifted off, she thought of the Temple of Hatshepsut and had a feeling of being blessed.

At the foot of the Theban Hills, the Temple of Hatshepsut, built by the queen, is one of the most spectacular monuments in all of Egypt. Its vastness — with its
terraces and colonnades — is unique in ancient Egyptian architecture. Its location at the foot of the towering cliffs enhances its majesty and leaves one enraptured at the sheer presence of it.

One drives through small hills of sand and rubble for a considerable distance when approaching it. The broken, bashed-in, old Chevrolets travel over bumpy tarmac at breakneck speed, and then the rusted chariots of today approach a great open space to veer off the road in a cloud of sand and dust. There it is, framed by the hills with a great wide ramp leading up to it.

Isabel stopped the driver a good distance away, wanting to approach the temple on foot. Gamal was never too far behind, and the museum guide walked close to Isabel, setting the scene in history for her. The driver of the car drove just behind them at about two miles an hour. Finally she made it clear to them that she wanted to approach the temple alone and quietly; the entourage dropped back. She walked along, feeling divine. With every step she took towards Hatshepsut’s temple, she fantasized that she moved around with some of the sperm left in her by Alexis.

When she had bathed that morning, she had been so careful not to wash away any of the moisture inside her. She loved being full of him and, more than anything else, hoped that she was still carrying some of him in her now.

Isabel was back in the Sharia el Nil house. The journey to Upper Egypt had been marvelous. The two days and a night that they had spent there were hardly enough to constitute a real visit, but she knew that one day she would go back and see it all. Anthony, Isabel, a curator from the Cairo Museum and Gamal had flown up in a small plane. They were as thrilled with the trip as she had been and probably just as exhausted.

Now, back in Alexis’s sitting room, waiting for him to come home, she realized that she had not had a chance to think about him, let alone think about their relationship and what it meant. Those two days and a night had been wrapped up in the antiquity of Upper Egypt, and then there was her experience with the Nile. The amazing contrast between Cairo and Upper Egypt astonished and awed her.

From the moment Alexis had first seen her, he had
done nothing but prime her and tune her like a fine Stradivarius, and she knew it. With all her senses taut and quivering, she had little choice but to fulfill to the utmost their passion.

Isabel had spent a lifetime of doing just that in her work, but had never successfully achieved it in her emotional life. Without his manipulation of those senses, she was sure that she would never have experienced the Nile vision. She was open and receptive to everything. All her barriers were down. As a result, she had become spiritually richer, and that very spirituality had made her far more secure emotionally.

Isabel sat pondering all those Western rationalities that clog the mind and heart. Suddenly all her old London and American values seemed silly and irrelevant. Isabel was in love at last with herself and Alexis. She knew from experience that passion burns out; the love she felt was timeless.

Alexis had shown her that to be fulfilled by your senses was not a crime — a feeling that had been bred in her — but love. She had always been a sensualist but had tried to hide that fact. Now she had been set free. All those years of fucking with Max were wonderful, but there was no substance. If there was any love or affection between her and Max, then it was out of gratitude. Or was there something else between them? She did not know, but she would have to find out when she returned.

She thought about Ava, and the Avas of this world, and suddenly it came to her that she would never be anxious again. Then she thought of Kate, and suddenly there was nothing to think about. All those years of anxiety and guilt were gone, washed away. And Isabel started to laugh. Isabel Wells had at last been released from these two women — her sister and her mother. Fate and the river. Isabel and Alexis — their union, their oneness — had helped her around the last boulder. There was a clear path ahead for her now, and she knew it.

Gamal was standing by her, waiting, when she came out of her thoughts. He wanted to know when she would have dinner; and Mr. Moressey would like to see her. Would she receive him? Dinner at ten, in an hour’s time; and yes, please tell him to come.

Gamal drew a box from a pocket of his galabia and offered Isabel a joint. She smiled to herself, thinking that
Alexis had this arranged as well. He lit her cigarette, handed her a cable, and left.

The cable read: “Isabel Darling stop Arriving Cairo 3:00
A.M.
stop Look under your pillow before you go to sleep stop I will be with you in the morning stop Love, Alexis.”

Isabel thought with amusement how well organized Alexis was and what a brilliant diplomat he must be. His knack for getting Isabel to do as she was told and love it was an example. The normal thing for her to do would be to run at once to the bedroom and look under the pillow, but she would wait happily just as she had been told.

Halfway through the joint, Anthony came in. She found him beautiful to look at as always. They spoke about the wonders that they had seen in Upper Egypt. There was not a trace of the intimate relationship that had been theirs for so many years, not even a spark, yet, when they were ready to go to the dining room, just the two of them, Isabel recognized something that had never been there before. Anthony and Isabel were deeply attached to one another. They walked side by side down the stairs, behind Gamal, two old friends who were very close.

Their dinner conversation was easygoing, even rewarding. She asked him why it had taken them so many years to be as they were that evening.

“Until you met Alexis Hyatt, you closed it all out,” Anthony said. “If at any time I was able to reach you, you would turn it into something other than what it was. Now, I see the Isabel that I once fell in love with the very first time that I saw her. It is over for us, Isabel, and I see that I was not the man that Alexis Hyatt is. He is stronger than I and will not let you down when you need him the most. I could not stand the torture you put yourself through. I am not a guilt-ridden soul, and had we stayed together, you would have made me one. I had no idea when I fell in love with you that your family, your background, your fight to free yourself from them, would tear us apart. I never left you for good, I only left you, if you remember, to get your mess straightened out. I did come back, but you threw me out. I have no doubt now that you were right. I would never have been strong enough to stand by you. The Isabel I left is dead and you, my beloved friend” — he smiled, taking her hand — “are born again.”

Isabel listened to everything that Anthony had to say,
and was overcome with joy and relief. Their conflict had been resolved, and they would be together as friends all the days of their lives.