T. Boyle - Water Music

One afternoon she asked if the Nazarini practiced circumcision. “Certainly,” Mungo replied. She wanted to see for herself. The explorer looked at Johnson. “What do I do now?” he whispered.

“Tell her you’ll be more than happy to demonstrate — but it’ll have to be in private. Then toss your eyebrows a couple of times.”

Mungo told her. He tossed his eyebrows. For a moment the tent was as silent as the dark side of the moon. The Queen’s black eyes burned over the fringe of her yashmak . Then she slapped her thigh and tittered.

That night the explorer ate leg of lamb.

♦ ♦ ♦

On this particular morning, three and a half weeks since his first meeting with Fatima, the explorer is sitting in the shade of an acacia, writing. The Moorish women, he writes, wear their hair in nine plaits, which they divide as follows: two on either side of the face, six thinner braids over the crown, and one stout coil at the base of the neck. The hair is washed and oiled once a month, dressed and replaited weekly. For sanitary reasons, and because it tends to bleach the hair somewhat, the women prefer a rinse of camels urine, which is collected for this purpose. (One can always see a slave or two, cup in hand, pursuing a micturating camel about the camp.) The urine is a powerful astringent, and serves to destroy vermin and other parasites. Indeed, I have had the opportunity to assess its efficacy personally, as my pubes, axillae, side-whiskers and locks were infested with lice and desert mites. I found it refreshing, if somewhat mephitic. .

There is a bloom on the explorer’s cheek. A clarity in his eye. Worms, grippe, scabies, the fever and racheting cough — they’re things of the past. Nasty memories. He’s a meat eater now, a man of broth and blood, as befits a Scotsman, and gaining strength day by day. The heat enervates him, of course, and he still suffers attacks of confusion — but all in all the change in diet and the fresh air have gone a long way toward resurrecting him. And the peace and quiet have had something to do with it too. Just a month ago it would have been impossible for him to sit here: the very sight of him drove the average Mussulman into a frenzy. Within seconds he would have been beleaguered by a stinking, spittle-spewing mob of Moslem zealots. Now it’s different. They know he’s under Fatima’s protection, and aside from isolated incidents (some unseen adversary walloped him in the side of the head with a pig’s pizzle not more than twenty minutes ago), he is left to himself.

The Moorish men, on the other hand, never bathe. They do, however, have a biannual ceremony known as asíla má , during which they bury themselves in hot sand for some forty-five minutes to an hour just prior to sunset. They are then disinterred, rubbed down with the sweat of an estruating mare and thrashed with the underbranches of the serif bush. I am told that the operation is congenial to long life and sexual vigor.

As the explorer looks up to wet his quill, he is startled to discover that he is not alone. Standing there before him, her chocolate eyes following the dip and rush of the pen, is the plumper of the pantaloon girls. “What is it?” he says.

“Fatima says you must come to her.”

Come to her? At ten a.m.? What could she possibly want with him at this hour? “All right,” he says, getting to his feet. “I’ll fetch Johnson.”

“No,” says the girl. “Fatima says he will not be needed.”

The explorer shrugs. “Lead the way,” he says.

♦ ♦ ♦

As he pushes through the flaps and into the tent he is instantly engulfed in darkness. Blue spheres pulsate before his eyes, yellow cartwheels drift off into space. He can see nothing. There are the familiar odors of frankincense and camel urine, and from the corner, the rasp of the saker falcons chewing at their wings. But why hasn’t she lighted a lamp? And where’s that damned girl gone off to? Ah, well. No matter. May as well ride with the current. ‘‘ Salaam aleichem ,’’ he says, addressing the shadows.

‘‘ Aleichem as salaam ,’’ comes the reply, soft as the beat of a moth’s wing.

He jumps. She’s sitting right beside him — he could have stumbled over her. . Christ it’s dark. Can’t very well move for fear of upsetting something. “Braaaaak!” says one of the falcons. Maybe he should ask her to light a taper — but then how in the name of God do you say “taper”? He settles for “ Kaif halkum ?”—how are you?

‘‘ Bishára ,” she answers, which he takes to mean she has no complaints.

Silence.

He shuffles his feet, picks his ear and jerks at his knuckles, wondering if he should risk taking a seat. It’s an awkward moment. After ten or twenty seconds of ear picking, he makes a stab at conversation, hoping to express how pleasant it is to see her again — though he can barely make her out.

Unfortunately, what he actually says is: “My sight is rabid pleasure.”

Fatima titters.

Encouraged, he goes on, addressing the shadowy bulk before him. Battling case endings, syntax, verb tenses and a spotty vocabulary, the explorer waxes eloquent as Antony, Demosthenes and the Speaker of the House all rolled into one, telling her how much he’s appreciated the attention she’s given him, not to mention the jellied calves’ feet and puréed mung beans. At that moment, however, the elderly attendant enters with a taper and the explorer discovers that he’s been addressing a hand loom. The Queen is actually seated on the far side of the tent, rising up out of her enormous pillow like an Alp rising from the foothills. The explorer is bewildered. “Come over here,” she says.

At the sound of Fatima’s voice the old woman starts, then hurries about her business. She fixes the candle in the upturned palm of an ivory figurine, gathers her skirts and sweeps past the explorer with a lickerish grin. Mungo starts forward, but then hesitates. Something is wrong here — but what? Suddenly it hits him: Fatima’s head is bare, the thick braids fanning out over her shoulders like the runners of a plant. He’s never glimpsed so much as a single hair before — unless you count her eyebrows. “Come here,” she repeats.

The explorer steps up to her and bows, trying to think of something witty to say. She pats the pillow. “Up here,” she motions. Mungo shrugs. Then scales the pillow and sinks into its vastness. The old woman is nowhere to be seen. Nor is there any trace of the pantaloon girls. It occurs to him that he has never before been alone with the Queen. But now the pillow has begun to quake, flowing along its length like a wind-driven sea. He looks up. The Queen is pulling the jubbah up over her head, grunting daintily as she labors with the flashing fields of cloth. Beneath the jubbah : naked flesh. The explorer begins to get the idea.

“Help me,” she moans, the gown smothering her head and upper torso. Mungo leans forward and seizes the nape of the stupendous garment, thinking of sheets and flags and circus tents He tugs, she grunts. Her arms ripple beneath the cloth like animals in a sack, she gasps, and then suddenly her breasts jog free, shuddering mightily with the concussion, colossal orbs, heavenly bodies. They come to rest over the multiple folds of her abdomen like the twin moons of Mars. The explorer is suddenly stung with hurry and necessity. He jerks at the recalcitrant cloth with all the meat-eating fervor he can rouse, panting and moaning, until all at once the jubbah gives as if it were made of paper. He falls back, and there she is — the Queen — naked and ineluctable as the great wide fathomless sea.

“ Yudhkul ,”she whispers. ‘‘ Yudhkul alaiha .’’