Ancient Evenings
“With this secret whore of the King of Kadesh, however, I was in the presence of a magician. Just as we all know when we are kneeling before a person of great power, so did I know, looking through my window, that this woman was no whore to make you eat out your eyes in a wine-parlor or carry your lust to the altar, no, she might be without clothes, and her gates open, she might lie on her back, knees out, yet never was a woman less unclothed. She was, if you take the fear in my heart, a temple. I felt no haste to go over to her. Just as one must make no error when offering a sacrifice to Amon, and try to go through each step in a ceremony with no faltering, so did I lift myself from my bed, remove my own white skirt and boots, and in the most grave and comfortable motion, as if I were a cat walking the rail of a balcony, leaned out of my window, four stories in the air, and leaped across to hers. Then, with a smile that had no triumph, only my courtesy, I approached the bed on which she lay—it was all of purple silk—and knelt at her feet and was ready to touch her ankle, but as I drew near, it became more difficult to move, no, not more difficult, more circuitous, as if I could not approach directly but must respect the air, and halt. I was not two steps away from the bed, yet I could as well have been climbing a long stairway for all the time it took, and through it, her eyes and mine looked into one another for so long that I came to understand how an eye does not have a surface like a shield but is deep and something of a passage, or so you may believe on the first time you look into eyes that are the equal of your own. Hers were more beautiful than any I had known until that day. Her hair was darker than the hair of any hawk, but she had eyes of violet-blue, and by the light of a candle, they were near black when she turned her head to the shadows, yet against the purple sheets, blue again, even a brilliant purple, except it was not their color I saw but the transparency of her eyes. I felt as if I were looking into a palace, and each of its gates would open, one by one, until I could look into another palace. Yet each eye was different, and each palace was wondrous in size and had the color of every gem. The longer I stared, the more I could swear I saw red rooms and golden pools and my eyes traveled toward her heart. Since I did not dare to kiss her (I did not know how to kiss a woman, having never done so) I put my hand on the bed near her thigh.
“Once, during those days I traveled alone, the mood of the forest had become so powerful I stopped. The air was too heavy to breathe. I raised my sword then from its scabbard and drew it down slowly as if to cut through invisibility itself. Such had been the stillness that I swear I heard one fine note as pure as the plucking of a string, at least so clearly had I cut the air of the mood, and in a resonance of all my senses that was now as deep, I laid my touch on her flesh, and she returned a sound from her throat as pure and musical as a rose if the flower could speak. I knew then that I would make no mistake. Every sound that came from her mouth was a guide where next I could lay my touch, and to my surprise, since I had never heard of such an act, nor even thought it possible, my head, like a ship rounding the point to harbor, came down past her knees and I put my nose into that place out of which all children are born and smelled the true heart of this woman. She was rich and cruel and lived with a terrible loneliness in the center of this congested old city of New Tyre, although with it all, there was such loveliness in the quiver of those lower lips, and such subtlety of experience that I began to kiss her there with all my face and heart, with all the happiness of an animal learning to speak. Never had I known that my lips could offer such delicacy of movement, it was as if splendid words I had never uttered were now at the tip of my tongue, and soon I was wet with her from eyelashes to chin, wet as a snail, and indeed she smelled like the sweetest snail and more, she was the only garden on the island. I felt as if I lived in a light close to violet itself. All the while she never stopped humming her song of encouragement, as unrestrained as the purring of a cat in pure heat. Again, I knew I could make no error, and before long was introduced to the pleasures of that two-backed beast which lives with one head at either end, and her tongue felt like three Goddesses bringing peace to all the clangor of sword on shield that had been the harsh sum of my testicles, my asshole, and my cock, may the Pharaoh forgive me for so speaking in His presence, but this is the Night of the Pig.”
“I am content that the child is asleep,” said my mother, but her voice was sweet and carried the nicest rough edge to stir through my chest as I lay by her knee. Having listened to my great-grandfather speak of wondrous palaces in an eye, I now felt a kingdom stirring in the forest of her thighs while his voice went on to tell us more.
“In that manner, with a sense of respect as wide as the tide of the sea when it washes against the beach, and so gently as if I were holding a small bird in my hand, I lay with the brow of my member on the edge of those lips I had kissed with such devotion and promises that were new to me pushed so powerfully within my belly that I was tempted to have it all now and live with the fire left behind. But I could feel an invitation to know her further, and so I entered this temple that was like a palace, and descended step by step in the pulsing of my muscles, and felt the brush of her hair against mine as we went down into a splendor of many lights, rose and violet and lemon-green were their hue, and then a great serpent of the sea washed over me and I was gasping in the rush of my seven souls and spirits for they leaped out of my body and into her, even as her seven parts were coming to me. Some battle took place while each of us made great swings of a sword that cut no heads, and we were in a garden again, her garden, and it was very sweet. Her loins kept pulling on me. It had not been bliss—not as I was to know it later—indeed, in the middle, my loins knotted, but I also knew for the first time what it was to make love and be given the full value of a woman’s heart, her greed, her beauty, her rage, and all equal to my own. May I say it was my first great fuck.
“There are men who measure their life by success in battle, or by the victories of their will over other men. There may even be a few like myself who can measure each life by other lives. In this, however, my first life, I had just learned that it can also be a journey from one extraordinary woman to another. The secret whore of the King of Kadesh was my first.”
“How did you know who she was?” asked my mother.
“How, I cannot say—maybe it was the sight of those palaces in her eyes. By the time we were done, however, I did not doubt that I knew the King I soon might meet in battle. I knew him. If I met this King of Kadesh on the battlefield, I would know how to fight him. His heart was in my possession. By the way she gave herself to me she held her King in contempt. Do not inquire how I, who knew so little about women, could now know so much—it was the gift she had to offer. Women’s gifts are never so profound as when they take revenge on a lover.
“Yet I did not even say her name, and would not see her again. A night so beautiful as this could not be repeated unless one was ready to live with the woman forever. I speak now out of the extravagance of four lives and twenty such women, twenty such lost empires, but the secret whore of the King of Kadesh was the first, and we held each other until the dawn, and laughed, and told each other little things like the common name in Egyptian for the common act. She was much amused that it is written with the sign for water above the sign of a cup. ‘Nak,’ she kept saying, and repeated after me, ‘Nak-nak,’ giggling as if it were a wonderful sound and had a true echo, all the while pretending she had never heard it before.
“I wanted to know about her, I, who had never had curiosity for a woman’s story, but all I learned was that she had been kidnapped by Phoenicians when a child. A boat came to her island in Greece, and the captain sent two sailors to shore. Would the chief and his daughters come out to the ship? She had gone with her sister and her father. As soon as they were on board, the boat pulled up anchor. So she had been brought to Tyre. Now, she was the High Priestess of all the whores in the Temple of Astarte, yet remained true (except on festival nights) to the King of Kadesh. She even had three children by him.
“How much
of this was so, I cannot say. She told it like a tale she had told often. Besides her use of our language was limited. Still, I was certain she hated the King. Finally, she told me where she thought he was hiding. With her finger she made a small circle on the purple sheets to show me Kadesh, and drew another finger down from the circle to show me a river. Then she made small hills with her cupped hands. ‘He is in the forest,’ she said to me, ‘but not for long. He has boasted too much of how his army can destroy the Egyptians. Still I never know when he will visit. Maybe your Pharaoh will not know either.’ She sighed. ‘I think you need your eyes.’ She kissed me then on each one of them, and prepared to leave. It was close to dawn, and I had to wonder if she would join the other whores in the Temple of Astarte.
“After she was gone, I stepped across to my room and lay on my red sheets and tried to sleep but I could only think of the war to come and all the ways a soldier could die, and I hoped I was not afraid of the King of Kadesh but that he would know fear of me. Before the sun was up, I took the ferry back to Old Tyre, returned to the House of the Royal Messenger, and inquired about roads into the mountains toward the East.
“I soon had a decision to make. The shaft of my chariot had been repaired by the carpenter to the Royal Messenger, but since he did not have a piece of seasoned napeca wood and the other chariots had shafts too small to borrow, he had merely made new splints and attached fresh thongs. I did not think it would hold me to Kadesh, nor did I want to ride by the main road. There could be Hittites on the route to capture me. So I decided to leave my chariot and go by horse. That was certainly a change in my feelings from the way I arrived in Tyre, but I had no information then, and did not wish to meet Ramses the Second with neither a report nor a vehicle. Now my message would take care of the loss. So I packed my equipment on Mu, saddled Ta—traded the chariot for the two new harnesses—and went up into the mountains by a trail that must have belonged to a wild ram, or maybe a wild rabbit, it was that narrow. The horses’ bellies were soon raw both sides from the scratch of branches. Yet I enjoyed it. I knew I could make no great error. The sun was up and I could take direction from that. Besides, I needed only to climb up an ascending floor, then cross a great ridge, travel across another valley, climb another great ridge and beyond would be the valley of the Orontes. I knew I would find the armies of my Pharaoh near that river. It was the only route He could follow. The great cart that held His great tent had six wheels to a side, and eight horses drew it. You would not have to wonder which road He was on, only that it be wide enough.
“On my route, however, I was not halfway up to the first ridge before the thicket grew dense and the briers so agitated the horses that I was in a lather of perspiration myself what with pulling thorns from their hide without getting kicked as they thrashed, and the cedars were now so tall I could not see the sky. To the rear, the sun was only a dull glow and cast no shadow. I might never have left Tyre if I had known the gloom of these steep woods.
“So I made camp and slept. Next morning I was up to travel through all of the day and then another, and thought I would never come to the end of the forest. In great gloom, I had to sit each night with no fire. I did not dare. There could be Hittite scouts in these hills. Shivering, I was on the move with the dawn, leading my horses through the early mists while thinking for the first time in many a year of Osiris and how His Ka must have traveled through mists like these in the time of His great loneliness when His body was still in fourteen scattered parts, yes, these were sights appropriate to the Lord of the Land of the Dead, the pillars of these forests coming forward like sentries one by one as we walked in file through the fog, and I only kept my direction by the knowledge that I had not turned astray for the moss still grew on the same side of the rocks. I kept the moss to the right of us. Through a long day that made me feel as old as some of these trees, we climbed to the second ridge and by evening made it through a gorge where the boulders were so huge I had fear of serpents lurking in the caves of these great rocks. Then, after we had gotten through, it grew dark. I tried to sleep with my back against a tree, but I was no longer in Lebanon, I calculated, rather in Syria, and these great cedars belonged to another God. No strength came to me. I felt weaker than at any time since I left Megiddo and knew then that the secret whore of the King of Kadesh had taken more of my strength than she had given me of hers, although, of course, I had to suppose such strength had come in the first place from the thief whose back I had beaten with my sword, which was a thought to suggest that those who make love for a night had better be as adept as thieves. At last, I fell asleep between the horses, all three of us together for warmth, and let no one say a horse is not the equal of a plump woman except no woman ever passed so much wind.
“Then, in the morning, the dawn was up before I awoke, and through the thinning of the trees, I could see the fields of Syria in a long plain. Far in the distance, half a day’s march, must be Kadesh, and I thought I saw the glint of sun on chariots, hundreds, or was it thousands of chariots, somewhere behind the town to the north.
“Beneath me, not an hour’s ride straight down the last of these slopes, I could see the van of my own armies. The Honor Guard of Usermare-Setpenere was camped there by a ford of the river. Looking on them, I knew—for I can still feel this sensation to a certainty—that other eyes were watching as well. Back of me in the forest, like a rock falling with my thought, came the sound of hooves as a horse began to ride away with news to be brought to the King of Kadesh, yes, the echo of fast-moving hooves.”
EIGHT
“The fields were empty, and I must have been visible from a long distance as I cantered in on the last long slope to the river. The outpost of my Pharaoh’s armies nearest to me had Libyans for soldiers, and they promptly tied me up in the Egyptian fashion. May I say how well it works. To sit on the ground with your wrists lashed behind your neck is cruel. I thought my sword arm would come out of my shoulder. However, a charioteer recognized me as I came down the ridge, and he galloped over and soon had me released.
“It was a sure sign, however, that the outposts were fearful. On our ride into camp, I found out from my charioteer that the bivouac here at the ford of Shabtuna would not be broken this morning. So the troops could have an afternoon to take care of equipment and rest their feet. The officers, however, were not at ease. Usermare-Setpenere was in a great state of anger, I was told. His scouts had still picked up no knowledge of our enemy, and everything was taking too long. The vanguard might be here at Shabtuna, but only the Division of Amon was close behind. The Division of Ra was half a morning back and stuck in the passes of the Orontes. The trail being too narrow for any quick passage of wagons, the Divisions of Ptah and Set were just at the beginning of this march, a full day to the rear. I had a picture then of how they must be stuck in the middle of the gorge, and I could even hear the cursing of the wagoners and the fearful voices of the horses.
“Worse than that, explained my friend, nobody knew what we would find at Kadesh. Last night Usermare-Setpenere had said to His officers, ‘The Monarch of the Hittites does not deserve to be a King.’ Our Ramses was in a rage. It was maddening that He must advance to Kadesh without knowing whether it would be battle or siege.
“I was trying to decide the worth of my news. Would He be ready to hear? I was not, however, to see our Pharaoh so quickly. There were ten officers waiting to speak to Him, and I, full of the most unusual uneasiness, went walking around the camp with a void in my torso as if my stomach had died.
“In those days, we still made camp in the same manner as in the age of Thutmose the Great. So, on this morning, the pavilion of the King was erected in the middle of the officers’ tents, and the royal chariots were on all four sides. This square was surrounded by our cattle and provenance, and infantrymen were placed to the outside, their tall shields planted vertically on the ridge of an earthwork dug the night before. In that way, we were like a fortress of four walls of shields, and you even entered through gates, except they
were not real gates, just the road and a platoon of infantrymen either side of that opening. Inside, you could stroll about, and visit your friends. If not for my message, it might have been good to feel like a soldier again. On ordinary days little made me happier than to be inside a camp, even if many did nothing but snore, or sharpen the blade of a dagger for one hour and then another.
“On this day, in the expectation that we might still be marching into battle—what life had an army without rumors?—many a Nubian put on his helmet, and would not take it off. These blacks, some in leopard skins, some wearing long white skirts with an orange sash slung from the right shoulder, made quite a sight. The blacks liked to be seen, and I watched five of them arguing in one place, and ten sitting so quietly in another that their silence was stronger than clamor, curious soldiers about whom we charioteers disagreed, some saying the Nubians would prove brave in combat, others said no. I knew they were strong, but I thought of them as horses, brave until frightened, and much in love with their plumage. Like horses, the Nubians would put at least one yellow feather at the top of their leather helmets. What a contrast they made to the Syrians who often had bald heads, no helmets, and big black beards.