It was said that the best way to cross the great desert was to find the longest rope in the world, tie a loop around your waist on one end and then give the other end to a friend to hold. That way, when you realized that it was impossible to cross the desert you could give the rope a tug and your friend could pull you out.
At the time when he had first heard this saying – inside the market in the old medina – Jack had thought it was a pretty absurd, superstitious idea, typical of something that the old men who scuttled around the cook fires might tell an outsider. Something they might tell someone like him right before offering to sell him a hard nugget of black hashish or guide him to the rug shop of their brother.
Still as Jack lay face down in the sand, the inside of his mouth coated with gritty blood, he thought that maybe a rope wouldn’t have been such a bad idea. Of course, it didn’t matter now and, he supposed, it didn’t matter then - he had no friends. No one to pull him back.
“Now, why do you think that is?” came a soft voice from his right.
Jack raised his head and squinted in the direction of the voice. A thick crust of mucus and sand coated the corners of his eyes and he was only able to open them as wide as a tiny crack. The world was a burning blur, half blinding light and half undulating dunes, and he quickly clenched his eyes shut. He dropped his head back into the sand, but shrugged over to lie on his side.
“Marla, is that you?” he thought he might have said. His could feel the salty, gritty mixture of his blood and the sand slide down his raw throat but he didn’t hear his own voice. The desert shimmered behind his eyelids and for a brief second, the sand felt soft and even, like a bed.
The first time he saw Marla was in a café in Venice shortly after he got the idea to cross the desert solo. It was the fact she had asked for an ice cube in her glass of water that caused him to first noticed her. It was unquestionably hot that summer and the café’s lazily turning ceiling fans did nothing but shuffle the searing air around. Still, ice cubes in her water seemed like, well, such an American thing to ask for and he wasn’t surprised when the waiter brought a plain glass of water and walked off without saying anything.
Jack watched this short drama unfold in the moment, taking in her short blonde hair that was fashionable cut and her lean, tan arms, and then turned back to his newspaper.
It was on the third day that they were both seated in the café that she approached him. “Excuse me,” she said. “You are American, aren’t you?”
“Guilty,” Jack said, with a smile. “You know, you should really ask for bottled water. With the lack of rain this year, I’m not sure I’d trust the water from the wells. The canal water is probably backfilling and seeping into them this year.”
“Oh, well, uh, thank you,” she said. “I was surprised to hear your accent. I didn’t think I’d meet anyone from back home here.”
“Well, you know the problem with being an American is? It’s the fact that no matter where you go, you’ll always run into another American. Why, I doubt you could even cross the Sahara without encountering a group of Ohioans who got lost on their way to see the Pyramids.”
She laughed. “Well, I was going to ask you for directions, but maybe I should get my phrase book out and ask Signore No Ice over there how to find the Cattedrale di Isabelle. I’m studying art history and I’ve been told that there is a fresco there that I must absolutely check out.”
Now Jack laughed. “No need, no need, I’m not sure he’d tell you anyway. Look, I’m staying right around the corner from that Cattedrale. I’d be happy to show you there after I finish my cappuccino.”
It was exactly two nights later that he took her to bed. Before, she had taken him to see the fresco at the Cattedrale di Isabelle. The curved plaster wall showed a monk standing in a barren desert. He held a tall cross and at his feet two plump pigs stared at the ground, looking rather depressed that there was nothing to graze.
“It’s Saint Anthony of Egypt,” Marla said. “When he was 18, he inherited a vast amount of wealth. He then heard God instruct him that if he wanted to be perfect, to go and sell all he had and give his money to the poor – only then would he find his riches in heaven. So he gave away his house, his fields, and, then, eventually everything. He then moved to the desert and lived as a hermit for the next 20 years of his life.”
Jack had been studying Marla rather than the painting. Despite the rather cool, murky interior of the cathedral, her cheeks were flushed as she explained the painting. He stared at its dull colors and tried to think of something interesting to say about it. It looked just like just another religious painting in a city filled with a lot of religious paintings.
“Huh, Lonely Saint Tony of the Desert” Jack said finally. He liked the way the artist painted sparseness of desert scene but could do without all the religious imagery around the saint who, despite a faint glow, looked rather ragged. Jack was hoping the desert would bring him wealth in this life, or at least an article, perhaps even a cover, featuring him in the Society's magazine.
Afterwards - after their languid sighs ended, after they untangled their limbs, after they kicked the flimsy sheets off the bed and let their glistening bodies cool in the muggy evening air - Jack told her his plans to cross the great desert.
“Maybe Lonely Saint Tony had something,” he said after he finished talking about his expedition. “Maybe to be perfect you have to go to the desert.”
Rather than say anything, she rested her head on his chest. He stroked her hair.
“Listen,” he said suddenly, “I want you to come with me. To the desert”
She laughed.
“No, no, listen…It will be a great adventure."
"Jack," Marla said, "Sometimes when you look at me, I don't think you see me. I think you see the desert. No," she corrected herself, "I think you see a picture of yourself in the desert on the cover of a magazine."
"Then come with me," Jack said. " We can cross the desert together, be in the picture together, it will be perfect.”
“Shhh,” she said. Marla held up a finger to his lips. “Shhh.”
He kissed her finger.
The last time he saw Marla, almost six months after she had first showed him the fresco, it still had not rained. The canals stunk like putrid garbage and there was dust everywhere. The air was thick and tangible, something you felt resisting you when you walked the narrow streets of Venice.
Jack had not seen Marla for at least two weeks. She had not visited the café nor had she stopped by the pension where he stayed. It was his fault, he knew. They had quarreled the last time they had been together, and he called her a boring academic and even worse, a coward.
When he finally found Marla, she was standing in front of the fresco of Lonely Saint Tony. She didn’t notice him at first and he studied her like he had done the first time she showed him the painting. Her hair was pulled back and she was looking seriously at a notebook she held. Her arms were still tan and slender.
“Marla,” he called.
Her head turned and she took one step back.
“I told you we’re through, Jack. I told you to leave me alone,” she hissed.
“Listen,” he said. “I don't want to do this alone. I need you." He hesitated. "I love you.”
She laughed. It was a small joyless sound that hung in the murky interior of the Cathedral. Some small spark that he didn’t even know was lit inside of him caught a powder keg and there was an explosion.
Her eyes were so wide and her hand snuck up to her red cheek. Her eyes filled with moisture.
“You’re sick” she shouted and someone from the back of the cathedral walked towards them. “Leave me alone.” she yelled and ran out the door.
Jack watched her go, too surprised by the explosion to follow her. He shifted his gaze up to the fresco and then left abruptly.
That afternoon, sooty, gray rain clouds gathered overhead. When he stopped by the villa that her university had rented for its students, he was turned away by the doorman, saying that she did not want to see him. Shortly afterwards, and for the first time in years, thick greasy drops of water fell from the sky.
He huddled under an umbrella in the courtyard in front of the villa for two nights but he didn’t see Marla either coming or going. After two nights he realized that he was soaked and that Marla was gone. It was time, he decided; time to begin the expedition, time to cross the desert.
“I am alone.” He thought to himself.
“Now why do you think that is?” Marla’s voice asked again. “Why do you think that you’re alone?”
Jack felt a stabbing pain in his guts, calling him back to the desert. He must have swallowed a bucket’s worth of sand, he thought. His mouth felt so gritty, so dry.
I’m so tired, Jack thought. “Marla,” he moaned. “Marla, why didn't you come with me?”
Marla laughed her deep throaty laugh. Jack cracked his eyes open but he could not focus them.
"Leave me alone," Jack whispered. "I don't need you."
Jack struggled to sit up and saw a dark silhouette that appeared to be Marla. The dark form appeared to be holding a coarse rope. “Take it,” Marla said and the dark form held out the rope to him. He grabbed for it, but the rope slid between his hands and fell into the sand. Jack slumped back into the sand.
The dunes like wrinkles in a crumpled sheet as the burning sun set behind the horizon.
