The Winter Vault - Anne Michaels [59]
And what I said about building the room where I wished I'd been born, continued Avery, what I mean to say is that it would be a place to be reborn …
Jean reached for Avery's hand. She wondered where their child would be born: at the camp hospital in Abu Simbel, in the better-equipped hospital in Cairo, or in London, perhaps with Avery's Aunt Bett nearby. There was still time to decide, but perhaps London was best, perhaps Marina would come; for a moment she rested in the luxury of that possibility. But she knew that Avery would not want to be far from the temple, during the first months of the rebuilding.
Avery read the apprehension in Jean's face.
– Please don't worry, he began. And then, with a shock of panic: How will we manage.
After the evacuation of Wadi Halfa, the engineers turned to Aswan and to Khartoum for their supplies.
Jean and Avery flew back to the camp from Khartoum, following the Nile, its banks tarnished green where the silver river had overflowed.
At the village of Karina, the bright colour abruptly ended and, past the town, as if human history had stopped too, the eternal yellow sandstone of the Nubian Desert. They droned on in the clear air, no movement below except for the shadow of the plane and the ghostly circle of the propeller. The pilot turned slightly so Jean and Avery could look back. The floodplain spread behind them, long and green and generous. They headed farther into the desert known by the Nubians as intimately as their own bodies, and the bodies of their children.
Each time Jean had come to Wadi Halfa, she and Avery had disembarked at the aerodrome and followed the white, coarse sand road to the Nile Hotel. Past the brown hills, stony cliffs wedged with sand, blown by the winter wind for thousands of kilometres, thousands of years. The balcony of their hotel room had overlooked the railyards and they'd felt at home instantly in the incessant noise of the metalworkers.
But now they did not land, instead circled above, and saw that the town was as still as the surrounding hills. Their shadow fell on the houses, mottled the abandoned streets. So empty and so still was Wadi Halfa that Jean began to feel the city was not real.
Then, suddenly, the stones in the street seemed to jump, the sidewalk began to move, to slide back and forth, the brown ground erupted, bubbled, seethed, rock and sand burst to life.
– What is it? cried Jean. What is it?
The ground was moving so quickly it made her almost sick to look down.
– They must be starving, shouted the pilot. And now they'll be left there. The water will come and they'll drown.
He began to laugh, an awful, amazed, bitter sound.
Jean looked at him, frightened.
– Who? shouted Jean. Who will drown?
– It's dogs! he said.
Jean stared down at the seething ground.
– Just dogs! the pilot shouted.
There was a young boy in the camp; he did not belong to anyone. He earned the nickname of Monkey – the name was born of irritation and affection. He was everywhere, darting, hanging upside down, fingering tools and rope. The engineers had no patience for him, and the labourers swatted him aside. He jumped, dangled, squatted. The cook fed him so he would not pilfer.
Jean first saw the boy when she was in the camp store. He was hiding under a table, out of the sun. There was something wrong with him, with his bones. His back was twisted. But he was agile and graceful and he had a live, expressive face. The hair on the back of his arms and neck had a fine nap, the skin of a peach. His teeth were too large, a mouth full of stones.
From the moment she first saw him, Jean wanted to give him something.
–We do not like to think about children's fears, Marina had said one afternoon in the weeks alone with Jean. We push them aside to concentrate on their innocence. But children are close to grief, they are closer to grief than we are. They feel it, undiluted, and then gradually they grow away from that flesh-knowledge.