To her, I was, for I wasn’t born with a title. Spoiled, beautiful, her flesh never poisoned by disillusionment, Flavia Palmer possessed the breeding I’d kill for, the manners I’d spent years learning and the resilience of youth to find another warm body to assuage her sexual hunger.
I, in turn, suffered from a fierce need to forget this man I knew as Ramzi, the perfume he gave me emitting from my soul as well as my body. Yes, I wore the perfume, and kept a small amount wrapped up in my handkerchief nestled between my breasts in my brassiere. Why? Why does a woman do anything when she’s suffering from the bitterness of love lost? I ask you, dear reader, do you know? I don’t.
What surprised me more was how much like Flavia I’d become.
I discovered this troubling aspect of my personality one afternoon when I strolled with Lady Palmer and her daughter through the open market in Port Said. Black women selling rich mocha coffees, the dried beans sun-golden in color, squatted on mats, the once-bright red fibers dulled by the impressions of their bare feet. Rows and rows of shiny amber beads adorned their necks and dark-skinned arms waving about as they hawked their trinkets and basked in the hot sun overhead.
A rotund woman in a black abaya and nose veil nudged Lady Palmer with her basket to better view the coffees, setting the Englishwoman’s feathered hat askew on her head. Lady Palmer was too shocked to react, but Flavia took the offense and pushed the woman, who turned and hissed at her like a cat. Laughing, the girl ignored her along with several dirty children gathering around her and holding out their hands for baksheesh, tips.
“What filthy, rude people,” she commented, lighting up a cigarette. “I’ll be glad to get out of here.” She blew smoke in my direction, her eyes challenging me when she said, “I only wish I’d had as good a time here as Lady Marlowe.”
Before I could give her a piece of my mind, Lady Palmer pulled the cigarette out of her daughter’s mouth and tossed it into the dirt. Half a dozen children leaped on it, including a bare-legged boy jumping off his donkey. “No smoking, Flavia. What will your father say?”
She shrugged. “What he always says. Nothing.”
Straightening her hat, the Englishwoman turned to me, her eyes sad. “I was hoping this trip would restore some civility to my daughter.”
“Too bad she didn’t get the spanking she deserves,” I retorted, smiling, knowing Flavia would scratch my eyes out if she could. Fortunately, my double entendre was lost on Lady Palmer, who was more interested in checking out the wares of a small shop selling scarabs reputed to be from King Tutankhamen’s tomb, strings of mummy beads and little bronze gods. All made in Paris.
Dallying at the shop proved to be my undoing. I picked up a stone statuette of a bare-breasted goddess, its smooth white chalky surface dirtying my navy gloves, my irritation at Flavia’s rudeness escalating when I called upon the shopkeeper to dust them. Bowing, apologizing, the poor man wiped my soiled gloves, but not to my satisfaction.
I stormed out of the shop, fuming. What was happening to me, acting like that? I began to question why I decided to travel with the girl and her mother to Bombay. Loneliness, I presume, but that was no excuse for putting up with that girl’s insolence. No, I could no longer exist in a world whose rhythms didn’t match my own. Whatever the outcome, I made my decision. Lady Palmer could travel to Bombay without me. I had other plans. I wasn’t leaving Port Said until I tracked down Ramzi, if only to give him a piece of my mind.
And to see his magnificent body again? Was my desire for adventure, sexual fever, wild fantasy that strong? Are you that much of a fool to expose your interest in him for everyone to criticize? I asked myself. Yes, and hell be damned what anyone thought.
Fueled with a new energy, I paid little attention to the young boy wiping the dirt off my shoes with a grimy rag or the little girl pestering me with a frayed pink rose. I reached into my purse and gave him one piastre. Her, two piastres. Then I hurried down the street past butcher shops, cobbler stalls, vendors selling squabs and onions, splitting a goat flock in two, and dragging Lady Palmer with me. It was almost teatime, though I needed something stronger to calm my nerves, especially with Flavia lamenting how bored she was, then tossing more barbs my way about how she couldn’t understand how a handsome man like Ramzi could be interested in an older woman.
“No wonder he left Port Said alone,” she said, tossing her long hair over her shoulder, “after he got what he wanted.”
“I’d watch what you say, Flavia, if you don’t want to spend the next six months touring the Orient with your mother.” I turned around to make certain Lady Palmer didn’t hear my remark, when a camel blocked her way, his handler nowhere to be seen. Before I could react, the animal grabbed Lady Palmer’s feathered hat between his teeth, pulling it off her head.
“My hat!” she yelled, her voice panicked.
I wanted to laugh, but didn’t. She was lucky the camel didn’t bite her ear.
“Lady Marlowe,” she begged, “you must retrieve my hat from that dirty creature! It’s a Bond Street original.”
Shaking my head, I said, “By all means, Lady Palmer.”
Racing down the narrow street after the camel, Lady Palmer’s hat between his teeth, the tassels on his saddle waving in the wind, I chased him down one winding lane then another, until I found myself in a seedier section of the city.
An area I knew all too well.
Across the street I saw the Bar Supplice, boarded up and deserted. My heart pounding, my lips moved without speaking in a silent prayer, recounting the mysterious awakening I discovered within those cavelike walls. The beauty, the sensual illumination, all still lived within me. Within seconds, that feeling dissipated. I sensed a tragic quality about it now, a world created for stimulation that continued to haunt me though its magic ceased when Ramzi left.
I barely noticed the camel had dropped the feathered hat until a young woman picked it up and handed it to me. Without glancing at her, I said, “Thank you. Lady Palmer will be most pleased.”
I opened my purse to give her two piastres, when she blurted out, “You’re British!”
Turning to look at her, I said, “Yes, I’m Lady Marlowe.”
“You must help me get to England,” she said, her accent foreign, “before it’s too late.” She rushed her words, as if every moment was precious.
I stood back, not wanting to get involved. “Too late for what? Who are you?”
She said her name quickly, but my ears picked up a German name, Jewish, if I wasn’t mistaken. That disturbed me for reasons I shall not explain. She grabbed my arm and begged me for help. I pulled away from her. She was a young girl, no more than eighteen, her slender form appealing but her body fragrant with the smell of fear. She was dressed in a shapeless brown-checked suit cut with a sophistication that didn’t fit her.
Eyes brimming with tears, she went on to explain how Germany’s new racial laws threatened Jews and how things had only gotten worse since Kristallnacht, when gangs of Nazis and their supporters roamed through Jewish neighborhoods breaking windows, burning synagogues and looting. Since then, no one would take in the Jews fleeing the Nazi state. No one. Both England and America had refused her entry, so she boarded the Italian ship Conte Rosso to escape persecution from Hitler’s Reich. Without a visa only one place would take her.
“Where?”
