Ancient Evenings

  “I remember some of us even took the heads of Hittites and put them on long pointed sticks. While others held torches, we waved them aloft. We stood on one side of the river, across from the walls and gates of Kadesh, and we mocked them in the night while the banks began to stink from the early corruption of the bodies and would be a monstrosity in hot days to come.

  “As we stood at the river, arrows came our way from the walls, not many, so few as to make me wonder at the thousands of Hittite soldiers who had not fought today—why were they silent with their arrows?—it hardly mattered now. We were so drunk that when one of us, a charioteer next to me, was struck with a spent arrow in his chest, the point going just deep enough to stick in his flesh, and thereby oblige him to remove it, he threw the head and shaft away, rubbed the wound with his hand, and with a laugh, licked the blood from his fingers. When his chest still bled, he painted his skin with it. When still it bled, he cut some locks from the beard of the dead Hittite on his pole and stuffed that into the hole in his chest.”

  “There is,” said my mother in a sudden intrusion on this story, “nothing to compare to the monstrousness of men.” As she spoke, I was close to her feelings, twice close because of pretending to be asleep, and I lived in her emotions once more. Never had I felt such rage at my great-grandfather, yet I could also feel her courage to scold him sink into itself as she looked at his face, for she was also much excited. Her belly had an ache of expectation that settled in my head like the pain of a tooth. It was enough to make me cry out.

  Menenhetet merely shook his head. “On the other side of the river,” he said, “at the top of a tower, was a woman who looked out at us and saw the Hittite whose beard had been shorn of a lock. She began to scream. Maybe it was the face of her lover that she recognized, or her husband, or a father or a son, but I tell you her shrieks tore the sky. Her moans were bottomless. I have heard women cry in that way ever since. We know those who make such sounds at any funeral. Hypocrisy is the possession of such women. For their grief speaks of the terrible end of all things in their heart, yet a year later that same woman will be with a new man.”

  My mother answered in a deep voice. “Women search,” she said, “for the bottom of their grief. If they can find it, they are ready for another man. Why, if I were ever to weep for a lover and learn that my sorrow was bottomless, I would know he was the man I must follow into the Land of the Dead. But I cannot be certain of such feelings until I wail.” She gave my great-grandfather a triumphant look, as if to say: Have you ever believed you could be that man?

  Ptah-nem-hotep gave a small smile. “Your account, dear Menenhetet, has been so exceptional that I have had ten questions on every turn of the battle, yet I did not wish to divert your thoughts. Now, however, since Hathfertiti, out of the depth of her feelings, has spoken to you, let me ask: What are the sentiments of My ancestor, Usermare-Setpenere, during all of this, this dreadful night? Does He really see none of it? Do His feet, in truth, not move?”

  “They never moved. I had been, as I said, standing near Him, and I would also, as I said, go away. When I came back the pile would be higher, but nothing else had changed, unless it was the mood of the Pharaoh. That grew more profound. No matter how well one came to know Him, even if you were to see Usermare-Setpenere every day, be certain you would not approach with ease. If you found Him jovial, then even from some paces away, you would feel the same as you did on entering a room full of sunlight. When He was angry, you were aware of that before coming through the door. On the battlefield, His fury was so great it served as our shield. The Hittites could not see into the dazzling light that came from His sword. The horses of our enemy were afraid to charge. One does not ride up to the sun!

  “As this night went on, however, I saw He was not only the Beloved-of-Amon, Blessed-by-the-Sun, but also a King to live with the Lord Osiris in darkness and be familiar with the Land of the Dead. It is certain that the longer He conducted this ceremony of asking each soldier his name, repeating it to the scribe, and making a throw of the hand onto the pile, so did the weight of His presence grow heavier on me until I would have known with my eyes closed that I was somewhere in the presence of Ramses, just as a blind man can tell that he has stepped into a cave, even a large cave. On this night, my King filled the darkness, and the air near Him, unlike the fires of the campground, the red lick of the flames, or the breath of us drunks, was an air cool with the chill of the cave. He was observing the spirits of the dead, or at least that much of them as could be known by their hands. Even as we appreciate something of a stranger by taking his fingers in greeting, so could my Ramses know a little about each of the enemy soldiers as He held their last manifest for an instant. So He understood a bit of the character of the fellow and his death. Never had I seen my Monarch brood in such a way, and His mood continued to deepen until it was much like the sound that holds your ears in the roar of the Very Green.

  “Indeed, as I stood near Him, which is to say as I entered the cave He inhabited this night, I could not know if each thought I comprehended was mine or my Pharaoh’s. I only knew that the longer I looked at this pile of hands turning to silver in the moonlight, the more I thought of how the power of the Hittites was now in our possession, and we owned the field. They could not put the curse of their dead on us so long as our Pharaoh touched each evil thought in the hand of each lost soldier, and drew strength from it for future battles. So did my Pharaoh hold the fortunes of our Two-Lands together.

  “I stayed so near to Him for so long that whenever I left to go wandering around the campground, I think I shared a part of His thoughts. Or maybe it was no more than the keenness of His nose for what was next. I know I was hardly surprised to come over a hillock and there between two rocks find Hera-Ra half-asleep under the full moon. I do not know if the lion had never been put back in his cage or whether some of our soldiers had set him loose, but he was quiet and only half-awake. Still, such were the fires of this night on this field just a hill away from the solemnities of our Pharaoh, that Hera-Ra now gave a great broad grin at the sight of me, rolled over on his back, spread his legs, showed me the depth of his anus and the embrace of his front paws and invited me to roll on his belly. I never knew the day I would have been that brave. Not in four lives. I patted his mane, kissed him on the cheek. With a grunt and a growl, he rolled over again, got up, and burped in my face to give a sour whiff of all the blood he had drunk; but then, my breath with its wine could have pleased him no better. At any rate, we were now friends enough to go for a walk. I do not know if I ever felt any more life, health and strength than making the tour of that flame-filled bloody field with ten thousand of our madmen spread over all of these meadows and a thousand fires you could look into for a carouse, yet I was the only one with a lion! It was a wealth of sights—more buttocks than faces!

  “Let me say that there were also women among us. A company of camp followers had marched along with the Division of Set, for these were the soldiers last to arrive and they came in on the full moon. They were famous as a lot of fornicators and buggerers, this Division of Set. The tortures that had been tried up to now on the captured Hittites were nothing compared to the practices of the fresh troops who had just joined us.

  “They had done little that day but march, and toward the end, as they got word of our victory out of the mouth of some messengers from the Division of Ptah, they had broken into their provisions and were drunk when they arrived. Now lines of men were waiting before each whore brought in by these soldiers from Set (who incidentally were collecting Hittite spoil in recompense). I saw more ways of making love that night than I would see again in three full lives. Since there were more men than women, it behooved you, if you had concern for your own buttocks, to see who was behind. I swear, it was a disgrace. Those Nubians are big, and it is the practice of their males to use one another until they are rich enough to afford a wife. On this night, woe to the poor Egyptian soldier if he waited in front of a Nubian, for he was soon on his k
nees, Egyptian or not. We are a smaller people. That night, a good deal of our strength was given over to the Nubians and the Libyans, and for what good return? To be able to shoot the few arrows you had left into the loose cave of a mongrel whore? The rush was so great in the fires of this night that many a man could not wait for his place at the front, and so took the girl between her cheeks, while she was busy up forward, and thereby made a three-backed beast, a copulation of serpents. Now, a new man was at her mouth, and another in the third man’s bottom. They looked worse than those captives who had been tied like figs. Others, waiting, kept yelling ‘Hurry up, hurry up.’ Over it all was the smell of sweat. I could smell the buttocks of half an army. A fit husband was that odor to blood and smoke. I would speak of these acts as abominations but it was less than what was yet to come. Besides, I will offer no judgment. After all, is not our word for a night-camp the same as one of our expressions for fornication? I can only say I was part of it, and much stimulated. I swear, if it were not the Night of the Pig, you would not know so much of this. Enough that Hera-Ra and I moved through campfires and snoring drunks, through lovers and plunderers and scavengers, even past the groans of our wounded—for in the middle of it all, men were still dying, our men mostly (theirs already gone)—our amputees and our belly-gutted fevered, dying first of thirst, then of wine given them to drink. Sometimes you could not tell the oaths of pleasure from the wails of the doomed. Through such cries did Hera-Ra and I walk among the flames. Occasionally the lion would trample over a group of copulators, squeezing their grapes, so to speak, and many a soldier, catching the breath of the lion in his nose, or the wild look in his eye (and Hera-Ra, even when feeling like a kitten, had the wildest pale-green eye anyone had ever seen) would, staring face to face with such a beast, lose his erection for this night and more. Such frights, like a sword, cut you off. The whores, be it said, loved Hera-Ra. I have never seen women so insatiable, so brutal, so superior in pure joy—it is their art, not a man’s. Even in this riot, where one came forth so much more than one wanted that the joys were like the throes of one’s death, it was still extraordinary with these women. They were only camp whores with putrid breath, but I saw the gates of the Heavenly Fields open in my loins—these women took the sweetest shoots right into the center of themselves. It must have been all the blood and burning flesh. Maybe Maat approaches with love when all are choking with smoke. You have to wonder how many Generals are conceived on campgrounds such as this.

  “But I spoke of burning flesh. You cannot know the hunger that comes to your stomach on a battlefield. It mocks the hunger of your private parts. I was ravenous, and Hera-Ra was ravenous. All of our army was hungry, and after we ate all we had plundered from the Hittites, we broke into our own provision trains. I saw salted quarters of beef thrown into the fire, then pulled out, and sawed up for steaks, one side black, the other red. Then the cow was thrown back again. Soon they were cutting into the dead horses as well.

  “It was, however, a peculiar hunger. I do not know for how many I can speak, but each taste of meat gave me the desire to taste another kind. I could not satisfy myself on beef, nor even on horse, although there was something already in the flavor of the cooked blood in a stallion’s meat that spoke of strange truths and new strengths. I just kept eating to fill a hole in my intestines. Maybe it was the presence of the lion. He kept poking his snout into the wounds of the dead, and before it was over, many of these men had become as ravenous in their taste—how can I confess it to you? Walking next to that lion, he became my best friend on the field. So I could see into his thoughts as clearly as into my Pharaoh’s, and the lion, to my surprise, had a mind. Now he did not think with words, but with smells and tastes, and every sensation put sights into his eyes. As he ate the raw liver of a dead man—I think he was dead, though he twitched—Hera-Ra was seeing our Pharaoh. I knew, by the gusto with which he chewed, that the valor of our Pharaoh had made him happy, just as happy as the liver of the brave warrior he was eating. Then it turned out that the dead fellow was not so brave after all. A taste of bile came into Hera-Ra’s throat. Like a dirty vein through the liver was the secret cowardice of this warrior.

  “I watched Hera-Ra nibble on dead men’s ears until he found those that pleased him most. It was then I could see that as he ate, he had before him a heaven with stars more brilliant than our own smoke-filled sky so obscured by mist and scud. Indeed, my own mind felt blessed as he ate, for I was learning that our ears are the seat of all intelligence and the very door to the Blessed Fields. Now Hera-Ra began to lick the skin of many a forehead. With deliberation and much choice in his taste, he passed from head to head comparing the taste of their salts. Soon enough, I knew why he enjoyed such licking. For the picture he gained from the forehead that pleased him most was of a soldier running uphill, forcing his face up the hill into a stiff wind; truth, the fellow he finally chose had been a monument of perseverance. Then Hera-Ra ate him by the testicles as well and chewed into the groin. The soft growls of Hera-Ra were enough for me. I realized he had selected this fellow as the very seat of manly strength.

  “I must tell you more. Before the night was over, I, too, indulged the meat of a limb, burned it in the fire, took a taste, and knew that the pleasures of a cannibal were going to be mine this night. Suffice it that the first step in what is considered the filth of my habits was taken. It has led me through many a wonder and many a wisdom. But then you do not really wish to hear more of the Battle of Kadesh. Let me say only that human fat, gorged in considerable quantity, has an intoxicating effect. I became as drunk as Hera-Ra.”

  With these words, Menenhetet shut his mouth and did not speak again.

  ELEVEN

  We were left with much curiosity. The silence broke, but only into another silence, and our Pharaoh gave a wise look at the fireflies and said, “I hope you will continue. I would like to know of the next day.”

  Menenhetet sighed. It was the first sound of fatigue he had uttered on many a breath, and the insects quivered behind their fine linen. Did I see what was not to be perceived, or did the glow of these mites fade in salute to the dawn that came outside the walls of Kadesh when the fires were burning down and exhausted soldiers began to sleep? It is certain that their light was less. But then I could remember Eyaseyab telling me that the finest food for these fireflies was themselves, and they ate each other.

  “I do not know how much there is yet to tell,” said my great-grandfather. “Metella must truly have been cursed by his secret whore; he did not come out in the morning with his eight thousand infantrymen, nor with what were left of his chariots. Even when we took a captured officer, tied his arms to his chariot, and drove him into the river so that he drowned under their noses, Metella did not come out. I thought he was a fool as well as a coward. He should have attacked. We were so festered and unruly that morning, so entangled in a million and infinity of evil spirits that Metella could have overrun us—unless his troops had also had a night like ours.

  “We held a council. Some of our officers spoke of siege, and tried to tell how Thutmose the Great had cut the fruit trees in the groves surrounding these hills in order to build the siege-walls that He brought forward against the walls of Kadesh. In the months ahead, if we did the same, the city could be taken. My Ramses listened, and looked affronted, and said at last, ‘I am not a slayer of trees.’ By that afternoon, camp was broken.

  “It proved no easy departure. First, our dead had to be buried, and our wounded gotten ready for the trip. It took a lot of digging before the bodies were covered over, and the pits were never deep enough. These dead men were pressed down so tightly that a hip, an elbow, or even a head would push up and the birds must have had their pick. Of course, the insects devoured the other half. Seeing those myriads swarm over the pits before they were even covered, I knew the answer to one question forever. I learned why the beetle Khepera is the creature closest to Ra. In the middle of any hot night, beneath the silence, give a moment’s attention: You will
hear the mightiest sound of them all. It is the drone of insects. What multitudes! They possess the silence.

  “Needless to say, a few of our dead were saved from the birds and the maggots. Each division had a platoon of embalmers who carried a sacred table with their wagon, and they soon wrapped the Princes and Generals who had fallen. Even if you were no more than an officer (but also happened to be the dead son of a rich merchant) there was a good chance someone would speak up for your remains. No embalmer could be unaware of the award he would receive in Memphi or Thebes if he delivered a well-wrapped son back to the family. Before it was all over, a hundred officers were stacked with care on the different work carts, and though the task was done in the field, only a few of these wrapped bodies began to stink.

  “The wounded were worse. Some lived. Some died. They all stank. The Divisions of Amon, Ra, Ptah, and Set traveled behind each other in so long a line that it took a day to move from the van to the rear. Now we were truly like a worm cut in four pieces. Yet the smell connected us. We moved slowly, a thick river, full of rot, and the screams of the wounded were terrible when their wagons shuddered over the rocks of the gorges.

  “Of course, we were all in pain. Who did not have foul cuts and scrapes? I soon grew a dozen boils to meet my other afflictions, and you could feel the poison of these wounds growing in new places even as they were being worked out of the old. Some of us were demented by fevers after the third day, and in the heat of our march, what had seemed a victory quivered before us like a defeat. By the fourth day, we were being attacked. A few of Metella’s best troops began to follow, not enough to matter, but in sufficient numbers to raid our rear. They would kill a few, wound a few, and ride away. We would lose time in chasing them, more time in burying our dead. Since the carts for the wounded were filled, foot soldiers were now used as litter-bearers and some dropped from the heat and were left behind and had to catch up again. Others were lost altogether.