“One of the Hittite raids even tried to steal a few of the donkeys transporting the hands. We used more than ten for this purpose alone and each carried two large bags, one for either side of their back. The smell was not atrocious unless you came close—there is finally so little flesh on a hand that the skin dries quickly and by itself—although the odor from one of those baskets (if you were fool enough to put your head in) was as clear to the nostrils as rotten teeth. A true curse. Leave it alone and it would hardly stir. Go too near, and the stench lived in the lining of your nose. Hera-Ra could not keep away. Untethered, he would bother these donkeys in the worst way. Trying to bolt, they tangled in their harness, nearly strangling—donkeys in doubt always climb over one another—and in the confusion, a bag broke. Hera-Ra made a meal of what fell to the ground. I came running up to pull him away since I was the only one he obeyed besides our Pharaoh, but I was late. He had gorged on a dozen of those hands, and then more. Pictures of the Pyramids danced in his brain, then sights of great cities. I had never seen buildings like the ones Hera-Ra now envisioned in his head. They showec thousands of windows and great towers and went to vast heights. It was as if a part of great buildings yet to come was in the knowledge of those hands he ate. Yet what a dreadful meal! Hera-Ra had teeth strong enough to break your bones, although not quite—his mouth was happier in soft flesh which he liked to tear to strings. Now he broke one of his own teeth, and whimpered like a baby at the pain, yet kept on eating—all that unspeakable swallow of leathery skin, cursed smell, dried flesh, together with those little bones of the hand that crunched so hard. All the same, something in their odor drove Hera-Ra to more. He growled in real rage at me when I tried to pull him back. He wanted to take this curse Some curses we dare—we wish to penetrate them. A dull anger went up from these mutilated hands at this second destruction. But then, that was why Hera-Ra took on such a fury. It gave him visions of the future Again, I saw buildings high as mountains.
“The lion turned ill from his meal. By the next day he could not walk. His belly swelled, and his hind legs, which had suffered any number of slashes from Hittite swords, began to fester. On his shoulder, an open hole from the point of a spear turned black. He could not keep the flies away. His tail was too weak to brush them off. We built a large litter and six men carried him, but Hera-Ra’s eyes took on the dull shine of a dying fish. I knew the hands in his belly were gripping his vitals, the little bones flaying his intestines like knives.
“My Pharaoh was with us ten times a day. The royal Wagon’s golden walls and golden roof were deserted by Him, and He walked along the litter beside Hera-Ra and held the beast’s paw, and wept. I cried as well, not just for love of Hera-Ra, but in the terrible fear of knowing that the animal would not have gotten ill if I had kept him away from the donkeys’ bags.
“Once, His tears washing thin lines through the black and green cosmetic about His eyes, Usermare-Setpenere said to me, ‘Ah, if I had vanquished that Prince of the Hittites who met Me alone, all would be well with Hera-Ra!’ and I did not know whether to nod or deny His words. Who could decide whether it was better to encourage His wrath against Himself or take it on my back—I should have known the answer. My good Pharaoh Ramses the Second was not made to bear His own anger.
“Then the lion died. I wept, and more than I would have believed, and for a little while my sorrow was all for Hera-Ra. I even wept because no man had been my friend so much as that beast.
“Few of the embalmed Princes had also been granted the honor of having their organs properly wrapped. The provision wagon of the embalmers could carry a few sets of Canopic jars, but how many can you treat when it is four jars to each fellow? Even Generals were having their organs thrown to the woods. For Hera-Ra, however, the embalmers used the next to last set of jars, and his wrapping was supervised by Usermare-Setpenere Himself. Indeed, I heard the rage in His voice when He examined the intestines and found bits of broken bone protruding from the coils like arrowheads of white stone. By the look my Pharaoh cast at me, it was clear that I was out of favor again.
“My punishment, however, was not so simple this time. He had me travel with Him often in the Royal Wagon. We sat on chairs of gold and looked through open windows at the chasms of the gorge, while we rocked perilously within. Certain bumps so tipped the wagon (which was high enough inside for us to stand) that we all but went over.
“Sometimes, He would not say a word. Just wept silently. The eye-paint streaked. The Overseer of the Cosmetic Box would repair Him, a nimble fellow, nimble as Nef”—this with a nod to my father—“and we would sit in silence. Sometimes when we were alone (for on occasion the King would wipe all cosmetics from His face and dismiss the Overseer) He would speak briefly and in gloom about the campaign. ‘I did not win, I did not lose, and so I have lost,’ He said to me once. Since His eyes did not leave my own, I nodded. It was the truth. But not even the Gods love the truth when it scores each breath. Before the day was out, He said to me in the gloom of the carriage, ‘You should have given your arm to Hera-Ra before you let him eat those hands.’ I bowed. I struck the floor seven times with my head even though the floor of the carriage was bumping like a rock in a fall. It hardly mattered. A sigh, long as the sound of the death that had come out of the lion, now came from the throat of Ramses our Second, a terrible sound as though the eyes of the lion were losing their light once more. What can I tell you? I thought often of the meaning of that sigh, and realized that the death of the lion was the end of Usermare’s happiness at the sight of me. In the heart of His rebuke was the thought that if I did not know how much my good fortune depended on the health of His beast, then good fortune and I were best separated.
“We were. By the time the troops returned to Gaza, I was transferred from the Household Guards of Usermare-Setpenere to the charioteers of the Division of Amon, and I may say that no division of the four was in worse repute after Kadesh. Still, we were given a good reception by the natives of Gaza, and I was not surprised. In the last days of our return, people cheered us on the road. A runner traveled in front to tell them that the Armies of Ramses the Second had scourged the Hittites from the field.
“I think my Pharaoh must have listened to His messenger. He had healed from His wounds and looked magnificent. On the last day I would see Him for what would yet be fifteen years, He was on the parade ground at Gaza. There He displayed the winged bull of the Hittites and gave it to the city as a gift. This captured God, He told the multitudes, would protect our eastern frontier. By the next day, we began our march to the Delta, and, once there, sailed up the river to Thebes. I sat in the same crowded galley with my back pressing against the knees of the man sitting behind me, and since the winds were not steady, our trip upriver was even longer than the descent. Soon after our arrival, I was sent on duty into the depths of Nubia. That is to say, my King was banishing me to a distant place called Eshuranib. In command of a small detachment, I went up the Nile as far as a boat could go, and then had twenty-four days of march across a desert whose heat I will not soon forget.” Even as.he spoke these words, I could see such a desert before me. “In that time,” he said, “I gave my farewell to every great and exalted moment I had known. The desert was hotter than the steam that rises from the Land of the Dead, and I was an officer without a true command.” He ceased, he nodded, and said, “I think I can end my recollections here.”
TWELVE
There was a sigh.
“It is true,” said Ptah-nem-hotep, “that I asked you to tell us of the battle and you have done this well. Yet I cannot say that My desire is to hear no more.”
“Praise from the Pharaoh is a blessing,” replied Menenhetet, but his voice remained dry. “Good and Great God,” he said, “a life of monotony and foul work were now my reward. Do You truly wish an account of my years in the desert?”
My mother, who had been listening to my great-grandfather with more patience than she usually possessed, said, “I agree that we may not wish to hear this.??
? She laughed at the boldness of her remark, and looked into the Pharaoh’s eyes, indeed, lay her long black eyes on Him much as she might have ensconced her breasts upon His chest. “I wonder,” she murmured, “that I do not flee in panic for daring to decide what might be of interest to You.”
He gave a tender smile, but spoke to Menenhetet.
“How long,” He asked, “were you at Eshuranib?”
“For fourteen years. They were long years.”
“And the gold mines were already there?”
“They were.”
Our Pharaoh told Menenhetet: “I would hear what you will say. For how could you live in any place and not see what others fail to observe? Besides, gold is never without interest.”
Menenhetet gave a curious bow, and by the light of the fireflies I was aware suddenly of all that shone of gold, of the flat collar around my father’s chest and the snake of gold on my mother’s head, the gold bracelets of Menenhetet, or, for that matter, the gold in the houses of all nobles we would visit. It was then I thought I heard, like a faint cry, some echo of the labor that had delivered this wondrous metal, and I saw the Pharaoh nod wisely as though He had also heard such groans and they were part of the curious value of gold.
Much like moistening the memory of old dust, did my great-grandfather move his tongue. “Your desires,” he said reluctantly, “are the source of my wisdom.”
“Spoken like a Vizier,” said Ptah-nem-hotep.
Now, Menenhetet took a swallow of his beer. “I will say,” he told us, “that there was never a time in my four lives when my throat suffered so. If there was an affliction worse than others in the mountainous deserts of Nubia, it was the dust on one’s tongue. I remember that my sufferings began on that twenty-four-day march through the desert. My detachment was sent off without any better company than our platoon of prisoners, my few fellow-soldiers, and two guides who seemed to live on a handful of grain a day, drank little water, and took pains to defecate once a week. They prayed at dawn and at dusk. That was their nearest approach to a vice. What soldiers they would have made. I needed those guides, for in the heat of the march, which was greater by far than any that I had known in Egypt or at war, the desert was full of dangers, and I saw many Gods and demons in the air, and knew Osiris was accompanying me since I heard His voice tell me that when I died I would not have to take the long trek to the Land of the Dead inasmuch as I had already crossed the desert. I believe I even saw Him. (Although who could know what was seen in these valleys when great mountains of rock quivered before your view as if ravished like wood in a fire?)
“We arrived in Eshuranib at last. I saw a cliff with stone huts at its foot, but the quarry had neither a stream nor an oasis. Before us were no more than two great bowls of soft stone, cisterns to hold our water. We were free to drink every drop of rain that fell from the eyes of Nut when She wept for Geb, but even this water, so vital to our throats, had to be used first for the ore. So our thirst continued and lived with us like an illness through all our work. We used to dig our shafts into the quartz of the cliffs before us, setting a fire at the head of the passage—as if Eshuranib were not fire enough—and then the children of our miners would crawl forward into the fissures to pick out the ore that had cracked loose from the rock and was now brought forth to be ground on a wheel of granite. When the rocks were too large and would not crumble, they would be raised by means of a leather rope as thick as my arm, then shattered on a great flat stone. The leather rope, I remember, was always breaking. So the curses and the beatings never stopped. Nor did the sound of running water ever end. It flowed from our cisterns to inclined beds of stone where the ore was washed. Afterward, when the sediment had settled, we would drink a little, then carry what was left back to the cistern. When I think of Eshuranib I can still taste that water.” Since my great-grandfather now paused again, Ptah-nem-hotep said, “Yes, I am most interested.”
“We had,” said Menenhetet, “hundreds of workers, mostly Egyptians. Some were criminals from Memphi and Thebes who had been sent to this place for crimes they could no longer remember. They were soon stupefied by the heat, and blinded in the sharp dust of the mine shafts. Yet children were born in this place, and I saw a few who had grown to manhood here although they only spoke in some mixture of language I cannot describe, but that is because the soldiers who guarded these criminals were wild Syrians with great beards, Ethiopians with painted scars, and pale-colored blacks from Punt with curved Egyptian noses. Their languages mixed together until I knew the meaning of no sound, yet I was the commanding officer of this paltry legion.”
“Why,” asked our Pharaoh, “did Eshuranib have need of a charioteer?”
“In the reign of King Amenhotep the Second when they began to dig, it is said that three were assigned. I know what purpose those charioteers served in their day no more than I know why I was needed there. Soon, the other two charioteers and myself grew so bored we took to driving a cart filled with quartz from the mines out to the stone tables where the ore was washed. Then I grew so bored I even tried to improve our methods for crushing the larger pieces of quartz. The leather rope, as I said, was always breaking, so I worked at tying knots until I found one that would hold better and not snap the rope like a knife. Some hard years began, and for the longest time I learned nothing but the secret of boredom which tells you that no Gods, good or ill, are near.
“But, even as I was brooding, the rock would drop on the stone, and our river of gold would be dug out of the earth, pebble by pebble. It was a fever.” Menenhetet sighed. “All the same,” he told us, “the search kept some kind of fire alive in the heart, even if it was never our own gold. Still, it was cruel. There may be no torture like the years when one learns little after years when one has learned much.”
“And you learned nothing?” Ptah-nem-hotep asked.
My great-grandfather was silent.
Now I saw how fine was the mind of our Pharaoh. He said, “Can this be true? I feel as if you are keeping knowledge to yourself.”
“What I could tell You,” my great-grandfather said in reply, “is not large.”
“Yet I would suppose there is as much to learn from this small matter as in all you have told us tonight.”
My great-grandfather’s voice showed admiration. I do not know that I had heard such a tone come from him before. “You hear what I have kept beneath my thoughts,” he said into the eyes of our Pharaoh. “Yes, You have searched it forth. I was not about to tell, but Your knowledge of me is as powerful as a command. I may as well confess that there was indeed a small matter from which I learned much. For I found a prisoner in those gold mines who passed on to me one secret that is more valuable than any other I have acquired.” Here, he paused as if he had already said too much, and yet, reluctant to say more, must therefore say it quickly. “This prisoner was nothing but a poor Hebrew sent here for a crime his friends had committed. All the same, he interested me from the moment I saw him inasmuch as he looked like the Hittite who fought alone with Usermare at the Battle of Kadesh. Like that warrior, he had two different eyes. It was as if one looked on yesterday, and the other would see tomorrow. His name was Nefesh-Besher, which are the words of his people for Spirit of Flesh. I called him, therefore, by the good Egyptian name: Ukhu-As. After all, he had been born in our Eastern Desert near Tumilat, and therefore the truth of his name could come just as well with our Spirit of Flesh as with the Hebrews’. I may say he came to hear it often for I gave him as much attention as if he were the Hittite. People who look alike are alike. They are formed by the same agreement among the Gods.” Now, Menenhetet nodded again. “Yes, I owe much to that man.
“He was very sick when I met him, yet his wife—who was the nearest to what you might call a good-looking woman in this place—still thought enough of her mate to share his captivity and march across the desert by his side. How she nursed him. Ordinarily, a fellow like this would have been buried in a few weeks. However, I was curious enough to keep him alive, a
nd, as a result of the good share of food I sent their way, Ukhu-As became confiding. He was going to perish, he said, yet he would live. So he said. At first I thought he must be in fever, but he was so quiet, and so sure of what he said, that I began to listen. He had been given the secret by a Hebrew magician named Moses whom he had come to know in the city called Pithom, which the Hebrews had been building for Usermare ever since He became Pharaoh. Moses had been sent out to the Eastern Desert to serve as leader of these people. For that matter, I thought I remembered a tall Hebrew by the same name—Moses—in Thebes. If that was the man, he used to ride among the hundreds of nobles who followed Usermare on visits to the Temple of Karnak. Since he was Hebrew, this Moses had to wait outside, but some thought he might be a son of one of the little queens in the House of the Secluded from the time when Seti the First was Pharaoh. We never knew. I did not see him often. Now Ukhu-As told me that in the same season when Usermare marched to Kadesh, Moses arrived in Pithom dressed as an Egyptian officer and told the Hebrews he would take them to a land in the East they could conquer. Ukhu-As said he got that tribe to march into the desert early one morning without one of them being caught. Yet this feat was simple. During the night, Moses had taken a few of the strongest young Hebrews on a raid and they killed the Egyptian guards of Pithom in their sleep. So, no pursuit was possible.
“Ukhu-As told me that he, however, did not flee with the others. His wife was away that night visiting her parents in the next oasis, and he loved her so much that he did not want to leave her. Since he surrendered himself to the authorities, he was not sentenced to death, only to Eshuranib.