Chapter Five Hannah
September 1951
Outside Cairo, Egypt
Hannah had met Alistair six years earlier, at a displaced persons camp outside Vienna. Sometimes it seemed to her that it couldn’t have happened so long ago, that six whole years couldn’t have passed since the end of the war, but the calendar insisted.
She’d been living at the camp for about three weeks and had gained back a little weight, a little color. She spent her days caring for the sick in the infirmary—Hannah never seemed to come down with anything, her body had probably seen off every germ in Europe by then—and her nights reading the books sent to the camp by the Red Cross, in whatever language she could find. Sometimes she managed a few hours of deathlike sleep before startling awake, heart hammering, without any idea where she was or how she had arrived there.
So she’d had to remember, all over again.
Late one afternoon at the end of September, around the time the first cool winds whistled between the hills, smelling of autumn, word was passed for a Hungarian translator. Hannah rose from her bunk and followed the orderly down the rows of huts to the officers’ quarters, where a couple of Englishmen—one tall and spare, about sixty years old, and the other one young and muscular—were attempting to question a Hungarian man who had recently made his way to the camp from the Soviet lines. The Englishmen were from the British Foreign Office and wanted to know about German atrocities. The older one seemed to be some sort of career diplomat and the younger was a lawyer who regarded Hannah as if she were empty space. Hannah’s English was a little rusty, and she had little experience with legal or diplomatic jargon, but she managed all right.
Afterward, she asked to speak to the older one in private.
“This man was lying,” she told him. “He’s German by birth. Gestapo or SS, probably. I suspect he hid like a coward among the refugees when the Soviets came in and freed the prisons and camps.”
The diplomat offered her a cigarette and lit them both up. Hannah hadn’t smoked a real cigarette in months and it hit her head like a locomotive. “How do you know he was lying?” he asked.
She shrugged. “I can tell a German speaking Hungarian.”
The man considered this for some time. In silence she watched him smoke. His suit hung from his spindly frame. He had graying brown hair, parted down the middle and combed straight back like a man from a previous decade. The style made his long face even narrower, his cheeks even more gaunt, papered by thin, pale skin. Only his eyes saved him from homeliness. They were a bright, icy blue that pierced you all the way through. When he finished the cigarette he offered Hannah a glass of Scotch, which she also accepted, and a permanent job as his translator.
As it turned out, Hannah was right about the prisoner. He was arrested for war crimes and prosecuted at Nuremberg, and Alistair Ainsworth received a commendation from Churchill himself for his keen assessment of the situation and adroit handling of the entire affair.
At the conclusion of the trials, Alistair asked Hannah to marry him.
All this she explained to Lucien as they drove west out of Cairo in his rattletrap Fiat, windows open to the hot breeze.
He passed her the cigarette they were sharing. “Did you love him?”
She dragged on the cigarette and handed it back to him. “I felt as much for him as I was capable of feeling for anyone.”
“Not at all, then.”
“No, I didn’t love him. But I didn’t dislike him. I respected his intellect, his integrity. I thought I could grow to love him, once my heart warmed up again. And he would take me away from Europe, which was the object.”
“And he had money.”
“You men,” she said. “You’re so quick to judge a woman who marries for money. But men are the same. A different kind of treasure, that’s all.”
“I didn’t know there was another kind.”
“Beauty.” She took back the cigarette. “Men fall over themselves for a beautiful woman, women fall over themselves for a rich man. So who’s the more greedy? At least money is useful. And it doesn’t fade with time.”
He laughed. “All right, I concede.”
Hannah propped her elbow on the door and waited for him to ask what had brought her to the displaced persons camp in Austria.
What she’d had before she had nothing.
Lucien crushed out the cigarette in the overflowing ashtray and lit another while he steered the car with his knees. When he’d filled his lungs with fresh smoke, he asked her about the sea voyage from England.
Lucien parked the car near what seemed to be an encampment of souvenir sellers and dragomen and tossed some coins to a small boy who tucked the money inside his ragged shirt and touched his forehead. Taking Hannah’s hand firmly in his, he led her through the throng. Hannah knew a little Arabic by now, but not enough to understand the chatter around her and it was a relief when they emerged into the open desert, flat except for the pyramids rising above the dun sand, the Sphinx gazing east toward the Nile.
Hannah unclasped his hand. “I don’t want to ride any damn camel.”
“We’re not going to ride any camels, believe me.”
The space around them was vast and monochrome. A yellowish haze coated the horizon and the hot white sun overhead. Lucien had a long, graceful stride, like an antelope. Hannah skipped to keep up. They skirted around the Sphinx temple and approached the beast from the south. Hannah held the brim of her hat in place as she gazed upward to its head.
“I suppose you’ve stood here a hundred times by now,” she said to Lucien.
“Each time is like the first.”
She turned her head. He was looking not at the Sphinx, but at her. Under the brim of his hat, his eyes were a dark arboreal green. She stepped away to examine the outstretched stone paws, as high as her own head.
“Were you born in Cairo?” she asked.
“No, I was born in Alexandria. My mother’s family still lives there.”
“Lillian said you were Swiss.”
“Lillian?”
“Lillian Beverley.”
“My father’s Swiss. Was Swiss, I should say. He died some time ago.” He paused to place a palm on the rough stone arm of the Sphinx. “They never married. He had a wife in Geneva.”
“How modern.”
“Modern? I would say this kind of arrangement is as old as civilization. But he took good care of us. I went to the American school in Alexandria. Then boarding school in Switzerland. A year of university in France before the war started.”
“Your English and French are impeccable.”
“So are yours.”
“My father was a professor,” she said, “and my mother was English.”
He took her right hand by the wrist. “Go on, touch it.”
“I don’t dare.”
“It’s only stone, after all. One day it will be dust, like us.”
Hannah allowed Lucien to lay her palm on the side of the paw. He moved his hand away and she closed her eyes.
“What do you see?” he asked.
“I don’t know. Four thousand years. Winters, summers without end, again and again. Some man carving this under the sun. Brown skin. Perspiration. Chisel.”
“I wonder how he died.”
“Do you think he’s dead? He’s inside the stone yet. Don’t you feel him? Pouring himself right through his tools and into the mineral, forever.” She slapped the block with her hand. “Until it turns to dust. Even then.”
“He was about twenty-five, I should guess,” said Lucien. “He spent his entire life here. His father was a stonemason before him.”
“What about his mother?”
“Would it be bad of me to suggest she worked in the laundry?” He nodded to one side. “There was a whole village here. An entire town of people who lived for nothing but to build these tombs.”
“You seem to know a lot about it.”
His hand fell away. “When I was a boy, I wanted to study these things. To dig them free from the sand.”
“An archaeologist?”
“Yes. But my father died, and my mother insisted I study something practical, like the law. So the dream stayed where it was, in my head. Come.” He took her hand and pulled her westward, toward the rear of the beast. Hannah supposed she should feel anxious or ashamed, walking like this in the hot, brazen daylight with a man who wasn’t her husband. Hand in hand. But nobody gave them a second glance, or even a first. To the rest of the world, Hannah and Lucien were just another couple touring the pyramids, probably on an Egyptian honeymoon.
They rounded the corner at the beast’s rear. To Hannah’s surprise, there was nobody near. Lucien turned and pulled her against him. Silently they kissed. Hannah fell back against the stone. Lucien braced his forearms on either side of her face and moved his soft mouth on hers. How sweet he tasted, like childhood. All along her chest and stomach they met. Not one inch of her was left untouched. She was engulfed, suffused; everything else crushed out. Nothing in the world but a pair of bodies, a pair of hips to which she pressed her own. Lucien lifted his lips a little and stroked her hair, sighed against her mouth.
“Open your eyes,” he said.
She opened her eyes.
The sun beat down from the high west. Into each other they sweated and stared. She thought she was falling. She thought she was waking from a dream. Where was she? The warm, soft eyes searching her.
János, she thought.
The name rose from her ribs to sting her throat. My God, where had it come from? For years, she hadn’t said the word, hadn’t even brought the five letters together in her head.
Her eyes hurt; her chest hurt. She couldn’t move. Rough stone behind her back. Pyramids, she thought. You’re in Egypt. You’re married. Married to an Englishman.
János is gone.
Lucien Beck touched the notch at the top of her lips with his thumb.
“What’s the matter?” he asked.
Hannah pushed him away. “Nothing. Let’s keep walking.”
They walked along the causeway to the northern pyramid and climbed the stones until all the monuments came into view, arranged perfectly in the sand. Lucien pulled her up to sit on a block and propped himself beside her. From his knapsack he took a canteen of water and shared it with her, then lit a cigarette, which they passed back and forth. The sun drenched them. Hannah lifted her arm and pointed to the three small pyramids at the base of the one they sat on.
“What are those for?” she asked.
“Nobody knows for certain. But those ones, over there? Next to the last pyramid?” He pointed to the south. “Those are the tombs of the pharaoh’s queens. His mother and sister and wife.”
“How do they know this?”
“The hieroglyphs, of course.”
“Can you read them?”
“A little bit. I’m not an expert, though.”
She found his hand and wrapped her fingers around his. “Would you build your wife a pyramid after she was dead?”
“I don’t have a wife.”
“Your lover, then.”
“Ah, well. I suppose I would build her a throne next to the sun.”
“Oh, you’re a poet.”
He laughed. “Me? Not at all. That’s from an opera. Aida, you know it? Ergerti un trono vicino al sol…Radamès, the Egyptian warrior. Secretly in love with the handmaid of the pharaoh’s daughter.” He lifted her hand and examined the knuckles. “Did you know this opera was commissioned from Verdi to celebrate the opening of the Suez Canal?”
“I have to confess, I don’t like opera.”
“No?”
“It’s so sentimental. Build her a throne next to the sun? How stupid.”
Lucien released her hand and leaned back on his palms. He wore a fedora of pale, fine straw and the sun cut a diagonal line across his cheek. He seemed to be studying her, although she couldn’t return his gaze. She stared across the sand at the three small pyramids.
“How funny, though, for the Egyptians to commission an Italian opera for their canal,” she said.
Lucien replied obediently. “Ah, but Suez was never really Egypt’s canal, was it? The French came up with the idea, the money came from elsewhere. Then the British bought up our share when Egypt went bankrupt from all these modernization projects. Canals, roads, opera houses. No, this commission proved all too apt. Egypt for the Europeans.” He reached for the brim of her hat and plucked off some insect. “Still, it’s a beautiful opera.”
Hannah climbed to her feet. For an instant, the height made her dizzy. Lucien grabbed her elbow.
“Steady,” he said.
“Enough of this,” she told him. “I want to see the queens.”
Each one stood about twenty meters high, made of the same heavy blocks as the giant pyramids. Hannah reached out to drag her fingers along the stone.
“By themselves, they would be colossal,” she said. “They would be wondrous.”
“I suppose one could move them out of the pharaoh’s shadow.”
She dropped her hand to her side. “No, you couldn’t. This is the trouble. They’re fixed here for eternity, as he intended.”
The sand had begun to stir in the hot afternoon breeze. A dusty haze coated the horizon. The sun was dropping now; they’d spent the day. Lucien touched her shoulder and she turned and leaned back against the rough stone block. He rested one hand next to her face and bent to kiss her. Brief, gentle kisses.
“This is stupid,” she said. “We should go back.”
Lucien raised his head and looked earnest. “Right now?”
“Before we do something even more stupid.”
“This is not stupid, Hannah. This is true.” He reached for her hand against the stone and pulled it up to his chest. “You’re here because you recognize how true it is.”
“Then you don’t understand me at all.”
“I understand you better than you think. I know you’re laboring under some great sorrow.”
Hannah pulled her hand away. “Everybody’s laboring under some great sorrow.”
“You need someone to worship you.” He leaned forward to rest his hands on either side of her head. “Someone to remind you of the joys of love.”
“Adultery, you mean.”
“When a woman is married to a man like that—”
“I chose to marry Alistair. I knew the bargain I made.”
“Love is not a bargain, Hannah.”
“Of course it is. Every exchange between human beings is a bargain of some kind. Actual treasure or moral treasure, it’s all the same. You agree on your price and make the transaction.”
“Then you’ve given yourself away much too cheap. You’re worth a hundred of him. A thousand.”
“My God, listen to you. You and your pretty words.”
“But I mean them.”
“No, you don’t. You’re saying these things to get me into bed, that’s all. Paying me the necessary toll to tuck into the pocket of my conscience, so we can move on to more pleasant business.”
“Would you rather I didn’t say anything?”
“I don’t really give a damn, one way or another.”
He murmured in her ear. “Have you been to the Mena House, Hannah?”
“No.”
“But you’ve heard of it, yes? Right on the edge of the Giza plain. You can see it from here. Look.”
She turned her head in the direction he meant. A splash of green, some white buildings like sugar cubes.
Panic struck her.
My God, what was she doing here? What had she done? A noise came from her chest, a throttled sob. She gasped for breath.
“Hannah—” he began, and then, “You’re shaking, darling. What’s wrong?”
He reached again for her waist to draw her back. Darling, she thought.
She yanked away and staggered around the corner of the pyramid, where the sun burned a ferocious white hole in the sky. She realized she was crying, that tears ran down her cheeks and dripped from her jaw. She put out a hand and collapsed against the side of this pyramid, built in praise of a faithful wife, to last for eternity.
Hannah had had a list of sound reasons to marry Alistair, but she’d never really understood why he married her. He’d lived sixty-one years without a wife—why now? She’d had nothing to bring to the marriage—no name, no money, just herself.
But since he hadn’t asked her any questions, she returned the favor.
The Anglican chaplain of a regiment of military police married them after a two-day engagement—long enough for Hannah to stitch some old parachute silk into a modest wedding dress. Alistair’s colleagues threw them a rousing wedding party in the restaurant of the local hotel in Nuremberg. After she and Alistair left to a hail of confetti ripped from old legal dossiers—there was no rice to be had—the celebrations continued for some time without them. All night Hannah heard them downstairs, toasting the bride and groom—long after the groom himself was fast asleep.
You would think she might have been anxious about the wedding night, but she’d had no qualms at all, really. Her body had long since ceased to be a thing of wonder to her, a source of delight. She had sunk her old ideas—sex as a sacred mystery, as an act of love—in a deep well, or she could not have survived what came next. Your body was just a bag of bones and skin, sex was just an act performed on you. Your soul existed apart from all this, where it kept safe, untouched.
Not that she’d expected Alistair to make violent love to her, just because they were married. In fact, he’d remained formal, even bashful, which was both touching and strange—hadn’t Alistair been the one to propose marriage? You would think he harbored some powerful sexual desire for her.
But while he was commanding enough in a Nuremberg courtroom or a prison interview cell, and while he’d certainly gone to bed with women before, he had never gone to bed with a lawfully married wife. For some reason this took him aback. He’d sent her to bathe while he answered the congratulatory telegrams—his sister back home in England was shocked, to say the least—and when she emerged in a dressing gown, fresh and pink, he’d walked straight past her to wash himself.
Not knowing what else to do, Hannah had removed the dressing gown and got into bed.
Some time later he’d emerged, switched off the light, climbed in beside her. She’d heard him breathing heavily a foot away. Just as she wondered whether she ought to kiss him or something, he’d turned on his side and reached for her. His wet mouth covered hers while his hands kneaded her breasts like a pair of dough balls. He said not a word. After a minute or two, she reached down to hurry him along. He groaned at her touch and started to mutter. Oh God, oh God, that’s it, there we are, oh God, harder, harder, there we are. She wasn’t sure if he was instructing her or congratulating himself. Maybe both. The harder she stroked, the harder he got. At last he creaked into position. He was more vigorous than she expected. He shoved away in mighty, almost spasmodic jerks of his hips, apologizing as he went. Almost done, darling, he panted. Sorry, sorry, nearly there. She felt him nearing the brink, harder and faster, iron determination—Almost, almost, blast it all, sorry, hang on, hang on, blast it, almost got it, sorry, almost got it. There was a kind of rhythm to it, she realized, like the chuffing of a train as it worked up a head of steam. She clutched his skinny buttocks to encourage him. Finally there was a triumphal bellow that rang from the walls—Fuck, fuck, FUCK! He arched his back and went stiff as a corpse, then fell on her chest and apologized for the unseemly outburst.
Heat of the moment, he’d gasped. Forgot myself.
Quite all right, darling, she’d said, patting his back.
Good, good, he’d muttered. Good girl.
Then he’d rolled away and fell to sleep.
When Hannah had woken at dawn, her new husband lay next to her in exactly the same position, as if in a coffin, perfectly white except for the pink tip of his nose, snoring in long, deep rumbles.
She remembered how she’d crawled out from beneath the covers and lit a cigarette and smoked it slowly, naked and unwashed, staring out the window at the distant mountains, and said to herself, I wonder if I’m going to have another baby.
Now her indifference was gone. Her body was no longer a bag of bones and skin. Her body wanted to live again, wanted to melt, wanted to love.
Lucien’s arms settled around her.
“Hannah, I’m sorry,” he said. “Don’t cry.”
She shook her head. What else could she do? She couldn’t speak. To speak you had to harbor some hope, and she had none. Either she went on existing like a stone pyramid, a monument to fidelity, or she returned to life in mortal sin.
Somehow they were sitting on the dirt. She cried into his shirt. He stroked her hair.
“I’ll drive you back to Cairo,” said Lucien. “Everything will be all right.”