Notorious by Roberta Lowing

‘Drink this and I’ll tell you.’
    The grit in my throat is washed away. The terrible heat lessens.
    The Sister tips the bottle higher. ‘You need to bring her to life like the desert is brought to life with rain.’ I can barely hear her over the sound of falling water in my ears. She says what sounds like, ‘You need to bring her to life with words.’
    ‘Nothing . . . she listen to.’
    ‘You’re wrong. We die always of a frustrated word.’ Her lips do not seem to move but her voice says, ‘The woman sings songs to the disappeared. I say prayers to God. Laforche looks for poems that will conquer the desert. We are like cactuses sending out shoots, placing our hard thorny side to the world.’
    I finish drinking and hand the bottle back. After a moment, I am able to sit up.
    ‘You want . . . me to talk to the woman,’ I say slowly.
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Why?’
    She hesitates. ‘Every time the Asylum has been on the verge of extinction, a woman has arrived to save it.’
    ‘But it can’t be this woman. Maybe it’s you.’
    Her face hardens so the sun traces the flat planes of her chin and right cheek in fire. ‘I hid from Him through the longest night and the brightest dawn.’ She closes her eyes. ‘There is a famous story of the desert. Maybe it takes place in Abu N’af, maybe not. It concerns a religious community long ago, one grown vain and complacent. Trading for silks and ivory idols from the south had replaced contemplation. The community fell on difficult times: years of sandstorms which blocked supplies and left the nuns and monks near starvation. A serving girl appeared among them: a bedraggled thing, barely able to speak, filthy. She was treated roughly, given only crusts to eat, but she never complained. One day she disappeared as suddenly as she came, taking the dust storms with her. The community prospered. Years later a lion was seen digging a grave in ground near the Kabir Massif, ground so hard that no shovel could break it. The lion was burying a woman, uneaten. The body of the serving girl who went into the desert.’ She opens her eyes.
    ‘Storing left-over food,’ I say, holding up the watch, shaking it.
    ‘The body was untouched, the women said.’
    ‘Why didn’t the nuns dig up the body?’
    Sister Antony looks at me as though I am mentally deficient but she answers politely enough, ‘No human tool could break the surface.’
    ‘Right.’ I shake the watch again. The numbers are still frozen.
    I can’t decipher her expression. Later, I realised what it was: acceptance. She could accept my sneers because I had caused someone to be brought to Abu N’af who more than compensated for my lack of faith.
    ‘A mirage,’ I say, sliding the watch back on. ‘They imagined the whole thing.’
    ‘All of them?’
    ‘Mass hysteria. Common among solitaries, I would have thought.’
    ‘Maybe.’ She says, ‘Two nights before your woman arrived, lions were seen on the grave.’
    ‘Oh, no.’ I slap at the dust on my legs, punching to the bone. ‘None of us are saints here,’ I say loudly. ‘It’s different after thirty-five, after forty. There’s a sense of regret. Everything is ruled by time. By calculations. This isn’t a story about a winsome girl. She would be the first to tell you she is no saint. There’s a sourness. A melancholy. A sarcasm.’
    ‘In the desert you only reach your goal by zigzagging through the wind.’
    I have to restrain myself from swearing. ‘Did she tell you her real name?’
    ‘We don’t use our names here,’ says Sister Antony. ‘We take on other identities in the desert. Other lives.’
    She closes the briefcase and stands. There is no dust on her robe. She leans to help me up. I sway and she grasps my wrists. ‘Your watch has stopped.’ She taps it with her fingernail and the numbers tick over. The alarm setting comes up.
    ‘Three o’clock?’ she says.
    ‘I must talk to the woman then. After that it will be too late.’
    ‘For