Ancient Evenings

  The Gods were in the shit, Bone-Smasher said to himself, smelling the old dung in the bread, and he chose to glare at one lovely lady passing by in a transparent dress. She, had long dyed-blue hair oiled, then wound at the bottom around little balls of wax. She was wearing bracelets and beads, and had pinned a flower just above her ear. He stared as she walked around him, stared at what he could see of the shadow of her pubic hair, stared at the faint and intricate tattoo on her chin, hoping he would see the insignia of a whore and could go along to her brothel, but she was gone while he debated, and I felt a stirring in his groin different from the urge to urinate, this felt more like the earth beneath a large rock when the rock is being lifted.

  “Strength and booze,” he called after her, “strength and booze,” and when she did not reply, and what he could see of her buttocks through the transparent dress was also about to disappear, he began to laugh (which hurt his tooth) and shouted, “A word to the wise is a stick on a dumb ass,” a saying that came from Menenhetet who would use it when he whipped the boatmen. Bone-Smasher had taken it up to whip other boatmen, his mind now in the glue of these drunken thoughts because of the peculiarity that stick and word had exactly the same sound. He had never noticed that before. Medu was the word for word and medu was the word for stick. In the middle of burping, he suddenly felt splendid. Putting your stick up a woman was the same as giving her the word, yes, language was like a box he had once seen with another box inside it. He could feel his cock right now, and it had an eye for dark places. “The Gods are in the shit,” he shouted, and fell on his face.

  Naked boys were going by and naked little girls. All the children of the quarter were going by, some in no more than a bracelet to show they might be naked but not altogether poor, and they went by in a circle around Bone-Smasher’s revolving brain. He lay on the street, and a naked boy with a thick tress of hair covering his ear now stopped, looked carefully at Bone-Smasher and, giggling a little, tried to urinate on his foot. But it was only a few drops. Bone-Smasher stirred, the boy’s drops pinched off, and the boatman was dreaming again.

  Donkeys passed by with loads of straw—he looked at them from the ground, one eye open. Large-horned oxen, driven back from the market, crowded through the plaza, and walked around him. Fishermen passed with baskets of fish, and a baker with loaves. The pastry, meat, fruit, shoes, corn, sandals, onions, and wheat, the beads and perfume and oil, the honey and the sleeping mats, bronze razors, pick-axes, baskets of corn and a brace of ducks, a vendor with leather bottles for wine passed him on their way to the market or back from it. The smell of dates and spices, honey and almonds and pistachio came out of a store to his back, and now another store opened on this little plaza, and a cook and two waiters began the evening meal. Around the turn in the street from the plaza where the great square opened were a number of other food-shops I had visited with Eyaseyab and I remembered the smell of roasting goose and the stews they would make from the gravy in the sauce pans. Once, with her, I had spent part of a morning watching them chop the vegetables—she liked the cook!—now I was next to dreaming with Bone-Smasher of the joy of buying cooked food in one of these places and taking it home. That was prosperity, thought Bone-Smasher in the repose of his sleep on the street, and he dreamed of expensive shoemakers who offered sandals with turned-up points, and of the goldsmith who made earrings and bracelets from African ingots. There was one necklace of electrum with lapis-lazuli from Elam. Bone-Smasher had heard that Elam was at the end of the world, and he wanted the necklace: The boat of his mind sailed out for Elam across the deserts to the East, and all the while blacksmiths and stonemasons were closing their shops and carpenters were walking home through the little plaza, and the shoemaker, the potter, the barber, the dyer stinking of carrion scraped from the hides. Slaves and merchants and foreign traders went by, and fine ladies carried in fine chairs. Two boys began to fight over a fall of manure steaming still from one of the horses in a chariot team that swerved at the last to avoid Bone-Smasher’s head. The boys put down their collection baskets and were wrestling on the stones of the street until one could hold the other long enough with one hand to scoop up the horse-balls with the other, and Bone-Smasher stirred, opened his eyes, saw the fights of his own childhood, and got up to stagger into the fires of the market at evening, scowling at all the blacks and Hebrews he saw milling in the great plaza, and as he moved on, so did I move away and withdraw my thoughts from Bone-Smasher in much the way that later, when old enough to make love to a woman, I would after a time take my leave of her with the satisfaction that I had gone into her body so well I had not known by the end where her belly ended and mine began, a pleasure to lose oneself that well. I also remember that when I would withdraw, yes, slowly take back my phallus to myself, be in myself again and no other, so just in such a fashion now did I withdraw my thoughts from all of Bone-Smasher’s feelings and return to that rose-colored room of the Pharaoh as happy as if I had made love. It was then I became aware that the other house of my brain must have been living with the Pharaoh through the audiences He was now giving, for I awoke with a sentiment of much intimacy toward Him, the Pharaoh’s feelings so sinuous and close to all I had been taught, that I felt much nearer to Him than to the boatman. In truth, the understanding that the Pharaoh was almost my father gave even more pleasure to joining Him—like the conclusion of a jump that proves to be safe.

  Yet all the greater was the disappointment. For now I discovered that the interior of His person was much less agreeable to me than the first wonder I knew at kissing His toe. He was feeling no more at this instant than a cramp in His belly from a turn of His digestion, just the moderate pain of a man who is used to ignoring for all of a morning or afternoon the complaints of his body. That was His first sentiment, and, on the instant, it taught me what it was like to be a grown man with duties. There was so much sourness of spirit—as if His interior tasted like a lemon! Now I knew the bleak face of His unspoken feelings, and it was as grim as the weather when the sky turned dark with dust. In such storms, the air was cold, and that wind which we say is as mean as evil (which, for fact, is its name, the Khamsin—Evil!) blew steadily across the desert and howled down the narrow streets of Memphi leaving billows of sand in front of every door. Ptah-nem-hotep’s thoughts were like the misery of sand stinging the skin, and I recognized to my own misery (after the sweet and natural fall of my mind into His) that His duty was like the weight of a dead man on one’s back. Nothing warm was left in His heart, unless it was a desire for the moment when He could find repose in the calm of evening. Like an echo that is lost but for the remnant that lingers in one’s reverie, so did I feel the last sensuous beauty of His heart seem to expire in all the solemnities of listening to the one man whom I had heard my parents speak of as often as Himself, the High Priest Khem-Usha of the High Temple of Amon at Thebes (who was also acting in these troubled days as our Vizier). Yet with all such power, this Khem-Usha still chose to speak up to the balcony from the floor of the Councillors below.

  The Pharaoh had to force Himself to listen, and did. He felt that an audience with Him must be injured if He did not offer the finest attention. So, Ptah-nem-hotep listened to each word spoken by Khem-Usha. That was the cause of His pain. I, who now dwelt like a bird in a corner of His Double-Crown, felt the weight of the High Priest on the Pharaoh’s fine ear.

  Khem-Usha had a voice to command courtesy, as slow and deep as the echo of temple chambers, indeed only a voice as deep and hollow as his own could intone the gravest prayers. There was a power in the deliberation of Khem-Usha’s voice that could overcome any mood contradictory to his own. Moreover, one’s gaze could never slip away for long from the shining prominence of his shaven skull, and so could not avoid the solemnity of his large black eyes beneath their black brows.

  Ptah-nem-hotep sat with His fingertips together, His arms on the red velvet of that railing from which He looked down on the Lords and Priests and Councillors and Royal Overseers who had come to thi
s audience. Gathered in orderly files below were some ten or twelve men, standing, kneeling, or with their faces to the dirt as mine had been earlier. On the balcony Hathfertiti, Menenhetet, and Nef-khep-aukhem sat in attendance around the Pharaoh, and they were also listening to Khem-Usha. He spoke as if each full sound he uttered was equal to the presence of a new statue in one’s courtyard.

  “O rising Sun, Who lightens the world with Your beauty,” said Khem-Usha to Ptah-nem-hotep, “You drive away the darkness of Egypt.

  “Your rays penetrate into all lands.

  “There is no place deprived of Your beauty.

  “Your words rule the destinies of all lands.

  “You hear all that is said.

  “Your eye is more brilliant than any star of heaven.”

  “In the name,” thought Ptah-nem-hotep, listening to the sounds of movement in His stomach and bowel, “in the name of that river of food and drink which moves in Me, why must I listen to a psalm first offered to the Pharaoh Merneptah more than eighty years ago?” but He inclined His head to Khem-Usha as though the words were for Himself alone.

  Now the Councillors who had been prostrating their faces in the dirt, rose to a kneeling position, and those who were standing, knelt. Only Khem-Usha was erect. He spoke, and the others answered in unison.

  “Yours is the resemblance to Ra,” they cried aloud.

  “Every word that issues from Your mouth is like the words of Horus of the sunrise, and Horus of the sunset.

  “Your lips measure words more truly than the finest balance of Maat.

  “Who can be perfect like You?”

  I could feel satisfaction arise in Ptah-nem-hotep sweet as honey itself, but then as if the taste were too agreeable, He thought: “I respond to words composed for another King. I am no stronger than Tet-tut who rolls on his back when praise begins.” He gave a small cold smile to His audience. His head felt heavy from the Double-Crown.

  “No monument is built,” chanted the Councillors, “without Your knowledge. You are the supreme commander.

  “If You say to the Celestial Waters, ‘Come to the mountain,’ the Waters will flow at Your word.

  “For You are Ra.

  “You are the the great beetle Khepera.

  “Your tongue is the sanctuary of truth.

  “A God sits upon Your lips.

  “You are eternal.”

  Khem-Usha knelt, then prostrated his forehead to the ground. The other Councillors touched their foreheads to the ground. My parents and Menenhetet, because they were sitting in royal arm-chairs, had only to bow their heads.

  I could feel a power arise in the body of Ptah-nem-hotep during the recitation of these last words that He drew in from the devotion of those who were below. But I could also taste the bitterness of His tongue.

  “Your last praises,” He said to Khem-Usha, “are rich and wise and may even be appropriate, since they appear on the stone put up by My ancestor, the Strong-bull-Who-loves-the-truth, Great Ramses the Second. He had such words inscribed on a pillar along the road that leads to the mines of Etbaya.”

  Khem-Usha replied: “Your eyes read all the inscriptions, Great-loving-partner-of-the-truth.”

  “Last year at this time, you addressed Me in these same texts written for Merneptah and Ramses Two. I praised you then for your selection.”

  Khem-Usha replied: “Your ancestors are Great Gods, even as You will sit, Great Two-House, in such a place, equal in elevation to the praises given Your great ancestors.”

  Ptah-nem-hotep applied the tip of His forefinger to the end of His long and delicate nose, and I could feel His breath stirring. “To give Me words written for great ancestors only confers honor and strength,” He said, “if the gift can fit the box.” From the balcony, He stared down upon Khem-Usha, but the dark eyes of the High Priest did not weaken beneath his black brows; indeed, they stared back.

  “For many years,” said Khem-Usha, “I have dwelt in the language of prayer, but I do not know if my heart understands the balance of Your words, O Great Two-House.”

  “We seem to invoke the name of Maat,” Ptah-nem-hotep replied. “Is it agreeable to Her balance that praises for a brave man are laid upon the head of a prudent man? My ancestor Ramses the Second may not be happy to find the magnificence of His feats compared to the prudence of My judgments. Khem-Usha—this is the Day of the Pig.”

  “That is my knowledge, Great Lord.”

  “If we do not offer the truth to each other on the Day of the Pig, we will not come near to justice on other days.”

  A speech was now uttered in the Pharaoh’s heart. Words as alert as soldiers on parade passed through His chest but none was said aloud. Only I could hear His thoughts. “Other Kings led their troops at the age of ten, but when I was that age, Khem-Usha, you led Me in a naked dance and we fell at the end all full of sweat in each other’s arms and wrestled until I do not remember how much of the domain of your body was in My nose. Ramses Two tamed a lion and won the Battle of Kadesh, and Egypt was renowned from Syria to Punt—I have yet to lead an army into battle. I hear only from Generals who lose battles for Me. When Ramses Two was fifty, there was not a beauty in Memphi or Thebes who had not felt His heat on her mouth; I have a harem I do not visit, yet laughter issues from it. Half of My charioteers do not dare to meet My eye. This is the Day of the Pig when no custom is so valuable as to speak the truth. So I would beg of you, Khem-Usha, do not mock Me with the feats of the Great Ramses, dead for these ninety years, but let us speak of My true qualities which are prudence, wit, and the power to receive in calm the worst of bad news. Let us ask if such is worthy of a Pharaoh.”

  The passions of His heart, however, were to be whipped and whipped again until perfect obedience was kept. Aloud, He said to Khem-Usha: “Let Me accept your good wishes as they are expressed in the poets’ great praise for My ancestors, Ramses the Second and Merneptah. Let your selection be well taken. I have enjoyed it. I would also have you know that here to celebrate with me on the Day of the Pig is the Great Lord Menenhetet, once General of the Armies of Amon, Ra, Ptah and Set, and,” said Ptah-nem-hotep with a tender smile for Khem-Usha, “he is the last remaining survivor of the Battle of Kadesh and thereby, one must suppose, is a very wise man with much knowledge of Egypt.”

  “So far as I know,” said Menenhetet with an easy smile and the powerful look of a virile man of sixty, “I am the only eye that still sees that battle.”

  Now the Councillors could be seen to whisper again. The Battle of Kadesh, the greatest battle of them all, had indeed been fought one hundred and fifty years ago in the early years of the reign of Ramses II, and that Pharaoh had kept His Double-Crown for sixty-five years before Merneptah followed and Amenmeses and Siptah and Seti II and a Syrian usurper for a few years—I could feel the amusement of Ptah-nem-hotep’s mind as He observed the reckonings of His Councillors—yes, there had been Set-nakht, and Ramses III, Ramses IV, Ramses V, Ramses VI, Ramses VII, Ramses VIII and Ptah-nem-hotep Himself, our own Ramses IX, all of thirteen Pharaohs in the one hundred and fifty years that had passed since the Battle of Kadesh.

  The Councillors lifted their foreheads and saluted Menenhetet. “Good,” said Ptah-nem-hotep to Himself, “now they are wondering if I will make him My Vizier instead of Khem-Usha.”

  He had no more than finished this thought when I was brought back to myself on the couch in the rose-colored room. Hathfertiti was caressing me on the cheek. “Come,” she said, “it is time for you to return to the patio.” She smiled. “I would like you to see the awe with which they regard your great-grandfather.”

  “I did not know,” I said to her out of all the surrender of this sleep that had been like a life, no, two lives—was it three if I counted myself?—“I did not know that Menenhetet was born one hundred and eighty years ago.”

  For certain, Hathfertiti gave me a look. Then she touched my forehead with reverence. “Come,” she said, when she had control of her voice again, “I suppose it is time to tell you
a little more of the truth. You see, it is possible that your great-grandfather has been born four times.”

  SIX

  When I did not know how to reply, she smiled tenderly. “Do not fear,” she said, “your wisdom is equal to a boy of fifteen, and sometimes you understand matters that are beyond the grasp of a man, but then I think you have such powers because you were conceived at the time of a great event.” She paused as though the sound of such words could injure the stillness of the air and added, “Let us say of what was almost a great event.”

  “Almost?” I asked.

  “It did not quite take place.”

  As she said this, her fingertips passed around my forehead in a circle and I saw Menenhetet’s face appear in the center of her thoughts, his features as twisted as a rag squeezed out of its last moisture—a frightening sight to have of my great-grandfather, but I knew what she meant. Menenhetet had come near to death on the day I was conceived.

  She spoke, however, of other things. “I have known,” she said, “that at times you enter the mind of those who are with you, but I did not know you could hear voices from another room.”

  “Not until this hour,” I said.

  “After I left you here?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I think it is because of the room. Because”—and I did not understand why I added this—“because of the loveliness of this room,” but then I was learning what I meant by my words even as I spoke, indeed, I was recognizing that I could only learn what I knew as my voice passed into the air. For then I could feel the change I had made in what was before me, and thereby know the truth or error of what had just been said. So did I know at this moment that the loveliness of the room was like the bending of a fine bow and that was why my thoughts had flown so far.

  “Yes, it may be time,” said my mother, “to tell you of secrets I wanted to keep until you were older. But if you can hear others from so far away, what hope have I to hide my thoughts! I cannot.”