Mary Russel - Dreamers of the Day

The fellah was transparently delighted by the idea of cash passengers, and I could not bring myself to second-guess the plan. Karl boarded amid much toothless Egyptian merriment. I held Rosie under her armpits and lowered her, amused when she lengthened like a Christmas stocking with an orange in the toe. I followed, glad for the feel of Karl’s hands, steadying what felt like an endless drop. The little boat bellied down alarmingly.

With the fisherman in the stern, we nestled in: Karl’s back against a net wedged into the prow, me between his legs with my back against his chest, and Rosie in my lap. The felucca ’s noiseless skimming glide soon quelled my fears of sinking. Karl and the fisherman talked quietly, and we headed off toward a low sandy depression, full of mimosas covered with pale yellow blossoms.

“Hear that?” Karl asked.

I became aware of the birdsong ordinarily drowned out by the steamer’s slapping paddle wheel and engine noise. It sounded like human laughter but it was the call of the Egyptian dove, a pretty bird that seems to find everything irresistibly funny. In the city, they nest in mosques and the galleries of souks, but here the mimosa was thick with them.

“Listen! That’s the blacksmith bird,” Karl said.

The sound of hammering was soon joined by a lovely liquid melody that floated toward us. “And a skylark! Where is it?” I asked.

Karl pointed toward a tiny speck soaring above the plain that bordered the river. “Amazing how far the song carries! Ah, and those are bee-eaters.”

Of all the birds of the Nile, bee-eaters are the most gorgeous, I think. They come and go in magnificent flocks, radiant with an impossible color: bronze, purple, green, steel blue, bright yellow, all mingled in an indescribable iridescence. I was just admiring their wheeling, flashing flight when Karl hugged my shoulders in quiet excitement.

“Look, just there,” he whispered urgently. “A hoopoe! There is a legend about these birds. Solomon, the king of the Jews, once lost his way while hunting. He was dying of thirst in the desert when a flock of hoopoes came and led him straight to water. The king desired to reward the birds with tiny crowns of gold, but the hoopoes said, ‘O King, give us not crowns of gold, for men will hunt us then. Rather give us crowns of feathers. We shall remain in safety, but all shall know that we once served you.’ ”

The fisherman said something and directed our attention farther down the shore. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw something large and long ease down a sandy bank, and disappear into the water. “Good gracious! Was that a crocodile?”

We had seen them before, but always from the steamer’s deck. Now we were on the river, only inches from the surface. Everywhere I looked, I seemed to see pairs of reptilian eyes, staring at me from just above the low, rippling water.

The fisherman shifted the sail to bring us about, talking all the time. “He says the crocodiles are not so dangerous this time of year,” Karl told me. “When it’s dry, they have plenty to eat. All the animals are forced closer to the river—easy pickings.”

Karl asked several questions, and the man replied at length and pointed. Karl suddenly sat up straighter. “Over there! A float of hippopotamus!”

So much in Egypt must be seen for its sheer size to be appreciated: the pyramids, and the Great Sphinx, and these enormous purplish beasts. Not fifty yards away, eight of them wallowed in the mud. Our approach was making them as nervous as I was. One by one, they began to yawn, opening their stupendous mouths to display great stumps of ivory tusk.

Rosie began to growl, and I shushed her nervously. “Those things could swallow a calf whole,” I warned her. “You’d hardly make a snack.”

“They’re vegetarians,” Karl said, “but they can be bad-tempered.”

The fisherman was chattering like a parakeet now, and startled me by pulling up his robe to reveal thin brown thighs. My stomach lurched: one of his legs was horribly scarred where a chunk of muscle had been torn away.

I looked at Karl, and he nodded, confirming my guess: a hippo had attacked the man years earlier. God knows how he survived! “Shouldn’t we go back to the steamer?” I asked. “Really. This is foolish. Why are we taking a chance like this?”

All the feluccas nearby were headed toward deeper water in the middle of the current, and the fisherman gestured toward them, explaining. “He says we’ll be safer there, but I’m not sure,” Karl admitted, disturbingly uneasy himself. “Hippos can close their nostrils completely. They walk underwater as quickly as a horse can trot on land.”

Half a dozen sailboats had converged. Our own fisherman was being paid to skip the day’s catch, but the other fellahin continued to ply their trade, flinging out their nets, beating the water, singing to their quarry. Sometimes we came close enough to bump against another boat, but no one seemed concerned about the collisions or the hippos any longer. I won’t say I relaxed, but you can’t stay scared forever. I settled against Karl’s chest and tried to enjoy the sunshine, though I kept a grip on Rosie, who remained alert and tense.

A yard or two away, a man began to haul up on his net, hand over hand. Suddenly the water boiled with small fish, trapped and thrashing.

Rosie growled and began to bark furiously.

In its frantic effort to escape the net, a fish flopped into our boat, convulsed, and bounced back into the water.

I shouted, “NO!” but it was too late. Snarling, Rosie pulled free of her collar and vaulted after the fish.

She sank like a stone. No one moved—it had happened so quickly!

“She’ll drown!” I cried, and without thinking, I scrambled out of the boat and plunged in after her.

The river is always muddy, but the flailing fish had roiled it into an opaque soup. Slimy thrashing little bodies beat against my skin. Like a blind man, I threw my hands out around me, fingers stretched, trying to find Rosie.

“Karl!” I screamed. “Help me!”

I meant: Help me find Rosie, but my skirt began to tangle around my legs. Suddenly I was sinking. The river splashed into my open mouth. I gagged and gasped, pulling water deep into my lungs. Rosie was forgotten as I fought my way to the surface.

“Karl!” I screamed, frantic now.

I sank again. This was my fever dream come to life, and terror swamped me.

An eternity later, I felt strong hands grip my hips, pushing me up and out of the water. I was heaved, sputtering and choking, into the boat. For a moment I lay in the bottom and coughed up silt.

Rosie’s body thumped onto the hull beside me. Certain she was dead, I started to sob and cried out with relief when I felt her struggle to twist off her back and onto her feet. Bedraggled but exhilarated, she shook herself vigorously, flinging sparkling spirals of the Nile into the air. Then the little monster looked around happily, as if to say, That was even better than chasing chipmunks!

Weeping, I wiped muddy water and tears from my eyes and sought out our rescuer, ready to throw myself into his dear strong arms.

Hands gripped the side of the boat, and the little vessel rocked as the fisherman levered himself back into it. That was when I realized that it was he who’d saved us while Karl sat and watched the comedy unfold. “ Ach, Agnes, I’m sorry,” he wailed, trying and failing to stop his helpless, ruinous, hateful laughter. “But truly, it was so— Mein Gott, ” he gasped. “If you could have seen—! The fish! The dog! The lady! The fellah !”

I must have looked a fright: filthy wet clothes, tangled hair, makeup smeared and melting. To all that, I added cold fury as Karl gave in to another gust of incapacitating glee. One of the other fellahin retrieved my floating sunglasses and leaned across the water to hand them over to Karl. The Egyptians’ sober concern for me made Karl’s hilarity more hurtful.