Nile Shadows

I'm leaving to get some rest because I haven't been sleeping well lately. I fall asleep but then some damn worry wakes me up at three in the morning and I can't get back to sleep. I pass the time as best I can but it would certainly be much pleasanter to share a pot of tea with someone then, if someone had some late business and chanced to drop by after it was over.

The Colonel glanced around the office, his hand on the door.

I enjoyed reminiscing about Colly this evening, he added, but we do have to keep in mind that Purple Sevens aren't everyday sorts . . . Not at all. That's why they have the designation.

***

And beyond the rumbling chaos of the city it was an eerie night of luminous stars and strange wan moonlight full upon the reaches of the Nile. In the rambling houseboat of the Sisters, in that pale airy sunroom that had once rung with gaiety and laughter and was now filled to overflowing with empty furniture, in that gently familiar place where faded voices and small unbroken melodies came to mingle in the delicate half-light, there in the stillness Big Belle and Little Alice sat gazing at the Nile, at their own restless currents of memory. The night was too bright for candles so they sat with only the moon and the stars as their guides, occasionally one of them stirring, speaking.

Little Alice touched her hair.

There's no end to it, she murmured. They go right on doing the same things, claiming it serves some purpose. I remember Uncle George used to say when things went wrong that it didn't matter, because summer was coming. He so loved summer. But then when he ended his life it wasn't summer at all, it was the dead of winter.

And cold, said Alice. Such a cold New Year's Day when they found him, all the people in the village gathered down at the pond. At least it seemed like a great crowd then, everybody standing around with somber faces, not even shuffling their feet the way they did in church. I remember that.

And they made a great show of standing in front of us and holding us back so we wouldn't see. Poor dears, they were whispering, poor little dears. But I peeked while they were leading us away and I caught a glimpse of him, just the barest glimpse when they were laying him down on the ground, before they covered him up.

Oh I didn't really know what it meant then. All those whispers and those arms around us gently pulling us away, and the solemn staring faces and Mother crying and crying and trying to be so brave, trying to hold back her tears as she squeezed us and pressed us to her.

It was all so confusing and I began crying too, not for Uncle George, because I didn't understand that yet. But for Mother, because she seemed to be in so much pain, and because of the way everybody else was acting, whispering first their father and now this, and looking at us with such sad faces I wanted to cry for their sake.

No, I didn't understand it at all, not even the funeral and the words they said under the heavy sky at the cemetery. I don't think I even heard what they said, but I can still see that sky and the hill beyond the cemetery, against it, as if it were yesterday.

And then there's something I remember that happened after that. It was warmer by then so it must have been late spring, not long before we left for good. I was playing out back and I went into the shed where Uncle George had lived, where Mother had forbidden us to go after he died, to protect us so we wouldn't think of him.

I didn't have anything in mind really. I just tried the door without thinking and it opened, so I walked in.

And the sun was streaming in the window and the air was warm and dusty and close, and there were cobwebs everywhere, and the room looked so small and empty.

Most of his things had been taken away, but the little tarnished mirror still hung by the window and the pegs were still in the wall by the door where he used to hang his clothes, and his paddle was still up on the rafters where he'd always kept it, the one he'd used when he went fishing. So those things were still there, but they just seemed to make the room look smaller and emptier than ever. . . . So very empty, so terribly empty, I've never forgotten that. It made me sad because it looked as if no one had ever lived there.

Little Alice gazed down at the floor. She touched her hair.

Belle? Why do you think Uncle George did that? He had a place in the world and people liked him, and he had his job and things to do in his free time. Certainly Mother loved him and he always seemed to enjoy having us around. He was always joking with us and showing us how to do things, how to make little things.

I suppose you'd have to say it wasn't a life with any particular surprises to it, for good or for bad, and there weren't going to be any great accomplishments to come from it, I know that. But it was a decent life and he was a good man, and there didn't seem to be any reason why he had to end it like that, all alone down at the pond on a cold night, drowning himself in the darkness.

I've just never understood that kind of thing. Summer would have come again, he was the one who always used to say that. And it's not enough to call him weak because I'm weak, no one has ever been weaker than I am. And I'm foolish too, which Uncle George never was.

I just don't understand it, Belle, I've never understood it. Why did he do it?

Belle looked at her sister. She shook her head.

I don't know, Alice, I truly don't. But why do any of them do what they do? Why did Stern? Why did Joe? Why are there all those tens of thousands of men out in the desert right now doing what they're doing? Doing the same things that were done in the same places a hundred years ago and a thousand years ago and five thousand years ago? How does it help? What does it change? What's the point of it all? How can. . . .

Belle stopped. She turned abruptly in her chair to stare at the shattered French doors, at the narrow veranda beside the water.

What is it, Belle? What did you hear?

Nothing. I was imagining it.

Alice's voice had dropped to a whisper.

Please, Belle, you know I don't hear well. What was it?

It sounded like something scraping. A piece of driftwood must have gotten caught.

Belle gripped the arms of her chair and began to pull herself forward, her mouth set.

Don't you dare get up, whispered Alice. Don't you dare go over to those doors. That's where it happened.

I have to see what's making that noise.

Don't you dare, whispered Alice. I'll go.

But she didn't move. She sat on the edge of her chair, staring at the open shattered doors, her hands clasped tightly together. The sound was louder now and Alice could also hear it, wood bumping against wood.

Alice gasped. An apparition had appeared in the moonlight, a looming chalk-white shadow of a man rising up out of the river and crouching on the small veranda, the ghastly face masklike, the whole pale figure as insubstantial as a spirit risen from the grave. Alice put her hand to her mouth and silently shrieked. Belle stiffened, her gaze unwavering.

Stop, commanded Belle. Stop right there. I refuse to believe in ghosts.

A smile appeared on the white dusty face.

And so do I, said a soft Irish voice, and not for a moment and not a bit of it. Of course it's also true that on nights such as this I've heard the odd pooka puttering around in the moonlight on occasion, muttering his jokes and his riddles and his scraps of rhymes the way their kind are wont to do. But that's only natural and pookas aren't ghosts anyway, they're just like the rest of us only more so.

The apparition grinned and hopped from one foot to the other, nodding encouragement, but Belle's stare remained defiant.

Leave, she commanded. Leave, o shade, and return whence you have come.

Oh I can't do that, said the ghostly figure. There's no going back in this world, as we well know.

Suddenly Alice found her voice.

Did he say he's a pooka, Belle? What's that?

A kind of spirit, replied Belle. One of those odd little creatures the Irish believe in.