Ancient Evenings

  “Have you looked at the colors on the palette of the scribe?”

  I nodded. “They are black and red.” When I saw the light in his eye, I added, “They are like the sky at evening and the sky at night.”

  “Yes,” he said, “that is one reason they are black and red. Can you give me another?”

  “Our deserts are red, but the best earth is black once the flood has passed.”

  “Excellent. Can you offer another reason?”

  “I can think of none.”

  He took out a small jeweled knife and put the point to my finger. A drop of blood came forth. I would have cried out, but something in his expression kept me still. “That is the first color to remember,” he told me, “just as black is the last.” He said no more, merely patted me, and left, but, later, I heard him chatting with Hathfertiti and he mentioned my name. I could tell by my mother’s low sensual laugh that his words were kind. She always took physical pleasure in a good reference to me as though her own body were being admired, and if I happened to be in her sight, a musk of affection would come from her. Under that loving look, my body felt bathed in flowers. I had learned to gather such love as if it were a perfume equal to the breath of recollection. Nothing was more beautiful to me as a child than this power of memory. Fortified by the pleasure my mother took in me, each sight I recollected came back with luster. I could look at the red hills across the river on this sunset and have dreams of the wonders of the desert as I fell asleep, and the silver water of an oasis.

  Tonight, since there was almost no wind, the torches at the corners of the roof were lit and a servant stood by each torch with a pot of water. That was my great-grandfather taking his enjoyment of the fire in face of the ever-present danger of the servant falling asleep and a wind springing up. Every few years a great wooden house would burn that way. On the consequence, the torches were a luxury: one needed good servants to guard such fires. Of course, the torches did give a light that was more exciting than our candles.

  By one of the torches, a woman was dancing. She moved with slow undulations of her body as lascivious as the curve of Hathfertiti’s hair, and the sistrum with its singing wires was played by a dwarf wearing nothing but a gold purse and a few bracelets on his stunted biceps. He played with a tiny man’s frenzy and her hips quivered to the sound he made.

  In fact, Menenhetet’s little orchestra brought a stir to the guests when they appeared. The harper, the cymbal player, the piper, and the drummer were all dwarfs, no taller than myself, and all exceptionally skillful except for the one who played the harp since his arms were too short and therefore left his longer runs full of peril.

  They also spoke in strange languages, being descended from prisoners captured in old wars with the Kings of Arvad, Carchemish, and Egerath, and their voices together with their little faces roused a stir of applause or everything they played. It was all received with exaggerations of attention from Menenhetet’s guests, who were priests and judges, rich merchants and neighboring nobles from the best temples and good society of the land just south of Memphi, prosperous people certainly, but not so prosperous that they did not feel honored to be asked to my great-grandfather’s house and honored again by being invited up to his roof garden, although I heard a few murmur in disappointment this night that the most illustrious guests were not so celebrated as expected, and no one, but for my father, was a high official from the Palace.

  All the same, Menenhetet’s reputation was renowned from the Delta to the First Cataract. Even my nurse used to giggle lasciviously at the mention of his name, and the gossip I heard among the guests (for I was considered too young to comprehend their jokes) concerned which women had already had an affair with Menenhetet as opposed to those he was considering. It must have been a disappointing evening for the wives (and a relief to more than one husband) that he spent most of his time sitting next to my mother. I stayed away. Sometimes, when they were near one another, I could feel a force so powerful I would not dare to walk between them, as if to interrupt their mood could strike you to the ground.

  This evening, Menenhetet did not leave her side. They sat unmoving through the music. My father could hardly decide where to go. Sitting near them, he was not given much for his attempts at conversation, and when, on the confidence of his own fine features, he proceeded to charm one wife or another, the attempt soon ran out. For nothing came back to him from Hathfertiti—she sat side by side with Menenhetet in a silence that spoke of their attention for one another. Hathfertiti held a tuft of black hair in her fingers, and with it she stroked the black curls of her head. The tuft, taken from the tail of a sacred bull, prevented the onset of gray hair, and my mother continued this ritual with self-absorption, as if these intent caresses to herself would increase her inestimable value.

  After the music was done, a few guests began to leave. Here, anyone could have recognized how immense was the reputation of my great-grandfather since he did not even speak to them as they approached his chair, knelt, and touched their foreheads to the floor. Only a Pharaoh, a Vizier, a High Priest, or one of the most honored Generals of the nation would act in such a fashion. Indeed, Menenhetet presented his indifference to the departure of his guests with such a natural concentration upon his own thoughts, so equal in gravity to Hathfertiti’s immersion in the stroking of the bull’s hair upon her head, that the guests moved away without a sign, and yet were not displeased, but rather, looked honored that they had been allowed to stand before him, as if now they could hear the echo of his great feats in the boredom he showed in the presence of those he had invited. Standing in silence before his silence, so they could feel steeped in tales of his wickedness and knowledge of magic, and indeed these feelings came over them with such power that it left me feeling most alive until I could as well have existed in two abodes of time. I was not only standing in a corner of the roof garden near the slaves who guarded the torches, but was returned as well to the black alcove in the Pyramid with the light of the star on the water, able to know from this memory of childhood that my guide for the Land of the Dead had been a man of great esteem when he was among the living. And learning this, I was carried along on that stream of sensation which came to my hand from his bent fingers, and leaned forward, and to my great surprise gave him a kiss, there in the darkness, on his withered lips.

  They opened like the dirty skin of an apricot Just pulled from a dusty tree, and I felt the ripe warm flesh of a mouth so rich with sensuous promise that the kiss even lingered on the air after I drew back, and by that movement must have turned in my mind to Menenhetet and my mother sitting together on the roof garden in carnal silence.

  I do not know how long it was before they were alone, but now the guests were gone, and my father had departed as well—where to, seemed hardly to my mother’s concern—and even I was gone so far as anyone might know, for I had wandered to the other side of the roof, and, in fascination, was looking down on the last of the guests strolling through the avenue of flowers in the long garden below. The moon had risen and by its light the water in the wading pool was so brilliant that I could nearly see the captive fish. The servants of Menenhetet had searched the marshes and swamps with their nets that afternoon to find the most brilliant examples of the sun and the moon in gold and silver fingerlings.

  My great-grandfather’s gardens were much talked about in Memphi. But for the estates of the Pharaoh, there may not have been another superior to it. The pool was renowned for the work of the craftsmen who had laid out decorations in tile that looked like flowers but were composed of rare stones—garnet and amethyst, carnelian, turquoise, lapis-lazuli and onyx were some. I knew their value when the servants who guarded the pool looked back at me with the eyes of falcons: they were responsible that none of the gems came loose from their setting or were stolen. Such a loss would have been worth one of their hands.

  In fact, there were white wooden posts in the fields of vegetables beyond the avenue of flowers, and you could find more than one wit
hered hand nailed to a post, or even showing the white of the bone next to the white of the post. They made an atrocious sight at the head of these fields of wheat and barley and lentils, these plots of onions and garlic, cucumber and watermelon, but the fields prospered. There was a gaiety in the fields like the prosperity of Gods, as if the marrow of merriment came up from divine bellies, up through the earth.

  That afternoon I had wandered past the lanes and arbors of my great-grandfather down to the ferns and eel-ridden marshes at the rear of his lands. His high ground was an island now in the flood, and the marshes looked like lakes with no trail through them, so I came back by way of the vineyards and picked the grapes and wandered through arbors of oranges and figs, past lemon trees and olive trees, acacia and sycamore, and ate a pomegranate and spit out the seeds still thinking of the dry bloodied hand nailed to the post and wanted to splash in the pool again and piss my own water onto the gold and silver fish—excitement came to me at the thought they would drink my offering. Or did such excitement rise from the barnyard cries of sheep and goats that came to me like the groaning of a stone hinge in a large door? It was a sound to match the heat of the day and the fermentation of food, and it gave pleasure to my thighs. I lived in moldering smells on a slow and heavy wind from the livestock sheds, an unpleasant odor and yet not all unpleasant. I felt drawn by the heat in this afternoon to a full taste of the feast beneath my feet—as if the Gods, now merry, were at a banquet in the earth below. Even the braying of the donkeys and the cries of the hens became part of this heavy marrow of the air. Later in the night, watching my mother and Menenhetet on the roof, there was less mystery to me at the force between them. Indeed those buddings I had felt in my heart and my thighs had all come together this afternoon and I had felt my first transformation that was like the Gods’. For in that hour, wandering down the avenue of flowers, such was the magic in the groupings of geranium and violet, of dahlias, irises, and wondrous flowers whose names I did not know, all burgeoning like a garden in me, that I was overpowered at last by the smell of flowers. As I breathed their perfume, so did other flowers open petals in my flesh, and a green stem rose from the center of my hips to my navel. I was inhaling musk into my heart and the power of the earth rose up once in my belly, and fell back again like another body coming alive within my body, and rose once more, and I was wet all over and in some river rich and white, like a cream in the heat, and did not know where the blooms of these flowers ended, and I began.

  Now, as I looked over the gardens and saw the light of the moon on the pool, and the lanes that led to the servant and slave houses, saw the glow of fire to melt the pitch in the boat builder’s shop where workmen for some reason were still busy this night, as I looked on the very last of the guests sauntering down the lanes and disappearing in the turns of a clever maze, so I also knew what was now passing between my mother and her grandfather, and I shivered at the mad cry of a monkey who called out from his cage in a near-human if sadly demented voice. How the moon was shining. In the heat, it seemed as heavy as the earth beneath my toes this afternoon. A gazelle gave its small cry.

  Some fear was arising in Hathfertiti, some gathering of apprehension she could not locate. Even as the monkey gave his cry at the oncoming shift in the air, I felt a bolt of terror fly from my mother to me just before she screamed. Not aware that I was near, her horror was pure in its panic—I do not think I had ever heard my mother scream before. Then she began to weep like a child. “Take it off. Take it off me,” she begged, and grasped Menenhetet’s hand, pulling his fingers to her head, while whimpering with fury at the unmistakable knowledge that something was certainly crawling in the luxuriant bush of her coiffure.

  He found the louse in an instant, cracked it between his thumbnails in another, while Hathfertiti was racing her fingers through her hair, crying out with a frantic petulance, “Are there more? Will you look?”

  He soothed her as if she were an animal in fright, stroking her hair like a mane, holding her chin, murmuring to her in a language of meaningless words so soft they could have served for the intimate babble a man gives his horse or his dog, and she calmed a little as he drew her to the light of a torch, ignoring the servants still there, one to each torch, standing unmoving through the night—no reason why Menenhetet would have hesitated to do anything in front of them, but now, by the flare of the torch, he searched her scalp and assured Hathfertiti it was clean. At last, she calmed and he led her back to their couch.

  “Are you sure there was only one?” she asked.

  He smiled. The wickedness of his smile was complete. Now Menenhetet kissed her, but so adroitly, with such a lingering intimation that she leaned toward him for another. “Not yet,” he told her and gave one more of his little smiles so that I could not know if he referred to the insects or the kiss. I felt again a bolt of terror spring from her to me. But then I was already frightened. I did not wish to listen to what they might say next. I knew it would be close to what I could hear on many a night in the voice of my nurse with either of her two friends, the Nubian slave who worked in the stables, and the Hebrew slave from the metal shops who sharpened the knives and the swords. One or the other was always with her in the room next to mine at night, and from there came the sounds of the barnyard and the birds’ cries of the marsh and the swamp. My nurse and her companion grunted each night like pigs or roared like lions, and sometimes they came forth with high whinnying sounds full of every muscle in their belly. Through all of my father’s estate would such cries come up in the night, the long sighs of one couple seeming to start the growl of another only to bring forth a third roaring with pleasure, thereby encouraging the animals to join with their barks and screams and lowing sounds.

  Now, my mother stood up and would have left Menenhetet, but she looked instead into his eyes and their expressions were locked again. They did not speak, but the power of the attraction which had kept them looking into one another’s eyes for all of an evening was here again, as if each pressed with the power of his will against the other, and I felt ill. Except I was not sick so much as thrown about by two winds that came howling at that instant over all of my childhood, and I heard him say to her, although indeed I do not know if it was his voice that entered my ear or his thought (for just as some are deaf, so had they begun to say of me that I was the opposite of those who cannot hear since even what was unsaid could come into my mind). Whether he spoke it, therefore, or thought it only to himself, I certainly heard my great-grandfather say, “Your best opportunity with the Pharaoh is tomorrow.”

  My mother replied, “What if I find what I want and you do not?”

  “Then you must remain loyal to me,” said my great-grandfather.

  I did not dare to look and it was just as well, since even as my eyes were closing, so did Menenhetet push my mother to her knees before his short white skirt. I felt the force of their thoughts like one chariot running full amok into another, and again I saw into his mind. She must have seen it too, for all strength broke in her, and she cried out. My great-grandfather said, “Set’s cock is in your mouth.”

  I had a true sense of poison then, like a vindictiveness brooding in the intestines of the wind, and do not know if I swooned but I was living in darkness, not six, nor twelve, not twenty-one, nor even dead—was I dead?—but in the alcove off the grand gallery of the Pyramid, Menenhetet’s cock was certainly in my mouth. My jaws froze. I felt helpless in every muscle, and a rage at the core of my will. I had only to bite and he, too, would scream. I knew at that instant I was equal to my mother, and could not separate myself from her, could not say I was Menenhetet Two, the young and noble warrior, too soon dead, and feeling no fall from the heights of my own pride, for the mouth which sucked on him was not my own mouth but my mother’s in all the windings of her thought and the currents of her senses, and I knew the cock of Set as she knew it on the roof garden of my great-grandfather’s house above the banks of the Nile and his flesh was hot as the smelting pits of a sulphur mine to s
corch the flesh of her palate. My mind resting in hers, so was my mouth living in her mouth, and I tasted a curse deep as the virulence in the seed of Set, and Menenhetet’s hand was still holding mine, while the fingers of his other hand clasped the back of my head. Through my mother’s ears I could hear the unspoken voice of my great-grandfather as he had spoken once to her while her mouth was engorged, and with a throbbing upon her face (my face) like the quivering of lightning in the heavy load of a murderous sky, so did something come up out of the bile of existence, some noxious marrow of the corruptions of the dead, and Menenhetet came forth into her mouth, so into my mouth, out of the loins of the dead Menenhetet, in the alcove of the Pyramid where I knelt so did his discharge come like a bolt and by the light of its flash I knew how he held her head on the garden of that roof, the iron of his last shuddering pulse dripping its salt onto the back of her tongue, and those thoughts passing from his head into hers, so was a cock withdrawn from my mouth in the dark, and I in the Land of the Dead began to feel a little happy expectation for what might be waiting next, even as Hathfertiti, lips bruised and perfumes turned by the onslaught of his carnal aroma, had a happiness nonetheless in her limbs and a scent of a rose in the finest folds of her meat since she, too, had an expectation now for the morning. On that thought, there still on my knees, I was transported with her, as by one breath of my mind, to the golden light of our trip downriver in all the splendid anticipation of an audience with our Pharaoh, Ramses Nine, while I dreamed of Him in all the morning effulgence of the Nile.

  TWO

  Just as we can stare into the depth of a golden goblet and find the reverberation of a thought in the last drop, so did I comprehend that the last treasure of this day on the river would be found in the private rooms of the Pharaoh. Sitting on my cushion of silver filigree, the cheeks of my buttocks in subtle tumult, I curved my body into the soft reception of Hathfertiti’s arm, and felt new heats in my thighs to bring back the memory of my mother and Menenhetet from the night before. What a transformation! Last night I had nearly cried out with my mother. Today I sat in the boat lulled with heat.