Ancient Evenings (75 page)

He stopped before the ugly face of Heqat, and said, “You are from Syria. So you know the prayer of my young Queen Rama-Nefru. Say this Hittite prayer against the demons who are as numerous as the dust.”

“Do You speak of the incantation against the worms, Good and Great God?”

“That is the one,” said Usermare. “Say it before the enemies who are in the air can escape.”

“These worms,” said Heqat, “cannot be seen. But their howling is heard in the Palace when the night is still.”

“I hear them,” said Usermare.

“They can be found in the rafters of every house. No gate can keep them out. They pass beneath the door. They separate the wife from her husband.”

“Call forth the Gods who will chase them. Call upon your Gods,” said Usermare.

“I call upon Nergal,” said Heqat, “who sits at the top of the wall. I call upon Naroudi who waits beneath this bed. He will bless us if we give him food and drink.”

Now, Usermare stood up. Once the little queens had begun to offer their gifts, He usually did not rise from the bed until He came forth many times, but on this night, as if disturbed by the Nile, whose murmur could be heard across the distance of all these gardens and parks, agitated again by the sore irritations of His thoughts, He stood up and told Heqat to bring food and drink to set beneath the bed for the Syrian God Naroudi. Then Usermare grasped Menenhetet in the full sight of the four little queens, and said aloud, “It is Isis I desire.”

Menenhetet did not know whether it was his own terror, but a giddiness began in his feet. He could not speak for the fright. Usermare, despite forty-two circles of silence, was near to his thoughts.

“Do any of you,” asked Usermare, “know the Ceremony to Invoke Isis?”

The little queens were silent.

“You, Heqat, who are ugly as a frog. You are a Syrian and know words of magic in two tongues. Invoke the Nearness of Isis.”

“Great Sesusi,” she said, “the ceremony is reserved for a Pharaoh or a High Priest.”

“It needs a High Priest?” asked Usermare. “You, then, Menenhetet, will serve. For this hour. No more. More would offend Amon.”

“Lord of the Two-Lands,” whispered Menenhetet, “I do not know the words.”

“Heqat will say the words. You will hear them.” Menenhetet’s hair was rudely grasped by His hand. Then Usermare lay back upon the bed, and brought Menenhetet’s nose near the divide of His buttocks.

“Pray,” said Usermare, and Menenhetet heard the scream of Isis as the body of Osiris was cut into fourteen parts.

Yet, the first fruit of such prayer was the clear voice of my great-grandfather himself. Menenhetet began to speak aloud once more as if his voice could not only reach our ears, but was ready to travel through the night and be heard by Hathfertiti and Ptah-nem-hotep, no matter where they might be.

“Yes,” said my great-grandfather, with a look of much sympathy toward my father, as if to state that he, Nef-khep-aukhem, asleep or not, would understand, better than any, those sentiments that came from licking the Royal Buttocks, “you are one to know of these matters,” yes, none could know better than he how my great-grandfather felt.

“Through the gilded nails of Ramses the Second,” said my great-grandfather, “by way of His royal sweet-breathing palm, I had already entered some of the great and powerful halls of His thoughts. But that was as nothing before the entrance to His Kingdom provided by the Mouth of the Pit. I knew no more defiance than a slave. I even girded myself to breathe the putrefaction of the swamp, but it was otherwise. For I saw the light of Ra at the end of a great and golden chamber. This was no foul exchange like swilling in the traps of Honey-Ball even as she, in homage to the balance of Maat, would bury her mouth in me, good pig to pig, no, I was drawn forward by the tip of my tongue. Like the paw of a dog scratching the earth for new mysteries, so did it quiver to kiss the buttocks of Usermare. Even to suffer my nose as a plow, or my tongue as a spade (for His hand was rude!) did not make me feel as if I were being buried in Egyptian mud, no, it was more like entering a temple, I swear, He had been so much anointed and by so many little queens, that He smelled of perfume, and I, entering, learned of royal passions that grabbed at me as quickly as the hook that enters your nose for the old dead stuffs of the brain. So His rage came to me, and His royal desires. He lay there, attended by the others, washed by their tongues from His ears to His belly, and by Heqat on His sword whose base rubbed like a pillar on my head when she sucked at it, and buffeted me like a lion’s tail whenever she forsook it long enough to intone, ‘O Goddess of the Green, Great Isis Sister of Osiris, Nephthys, and Set, child of Earth and Sky, Lady of the Swamps,’ on the words went until she must suck again, but I, rooting in the pit like a beast, was the only one to know the thoughts of Usermare, and I can tell you that He was dreaming of how He would devour all the Gods in the Land of the Dead, at least all Who were His enemies. He traveled on a ship that was like the Boat of Ra and it went past fiery furnaces on the banks of the Duad. I could see the damned squirming in ditches while Goddesses vomited forth a great fire from burning rocks to consume these souls and shadows who were enemies of Usermare. I even thought I beheld the body of Amen-khep-shu-ef in flames. Certainly I saw devils of mist and rain, and the fiends of cloud and darkness.

“In this boat with Usermare was a great Pharaoh, and He was as strong and beautiful and as great in height as Usermare. I knew it was His ancient ancestor, the Pharaoh Unas for whom the Festival Hall was being built. Now, in the company of Unas, Usermare moored the boat and went onto the shores of the Land of the Dead in order to hunt other Gods. I saw the chase. Many of these Great Lords were soon caught, and servants to Unas and Usermare cut Them up and cooked Them in great pots. I saw Usermare eat the parts of these Gods, even as His ancestor Unas also devoured the best and finest, while older Gods Whose flesh was dry were merely broken like wood, and Their brittle bones used for fuel. But the spirits and souls of the best Gods were taken into Usermare, and He grew Their features. Now, I saw His mouth, His nose, and His eyes as they came to Him from the Gods. He was Horus, the son of Osiris, yet He was Osiris Himself, and Usermare sat with the Lord of the Dead, side by side, there with Osiris on the Great Throne that is made of a material clearer than water and brighter than light. Usermare sat in the place of Isis.

“All this was in the mind of my Pharaoh, Great Ramses the Second, Usermare-Setpenere, lying among us with His scented body, our own God, Sesusi, in the warmth of His flesh, and I, suffused with the blood of the fires He saw and the meals He consumed, radiant with the glow of the luminous fields where the flowers of the stalks of grain shone like golden stars, was close to believing that I would never breathe again, just so cruel was the pinch of His buttocks on my nose, yet I was relieved that He had suspicions of me no longer, and merely enjoyed Himself eating those Gods. His gloom was gone. The base of His sword trembled against my forehead even as He came forth into the mouth of Heqat. Then He lay in repose against a golden field of grain. Yet He would not release me.

“So I continued to kiss and to lick, seeking to give pleasure to Him Whose appetite was best satisfied by the body of a God, and in the peace that came upon all of us now that He was no longer in His most woeful mood, so did I go back to the village of my boyhood, a boy again, if indeed not a child just born, and was returned to calm memories of my past, as firm and certain as the stone and clay that are baked by the sun. I lived not only in my Pharaoh’s heart but in my own, and that was like being in the Two-Lands. One is the knowledge of all that is behind us, and the other must be our vision of what is yet to come. In that manner was my mind equal to two minds, and my hands held the separate buttocks of my Great King whose cheeks were as firm as the haunches of a horse. Out of His heart, into the wisdom of my hands did I begin to live in the despair and joy He knew of His two Queens, of Nefertiri and Rama-Nefru.

“Although I had been near to Queen Nefertiri but once, and never to Rama-Nefru, now they were like the Two-Lands of His two buttocks, and by His right mound was I led to drift on His sweetest memories of Nefertiri, for He had gone back to the year of His ascension to the throne. In that season when the young King meditated on the works of His dead Father, Seti, He searched for feats to excel His Father, and by that path came to think of the dry wells on the roads that led to the gold fields of Ekayta. No water was to be found on the route, and half of the laborers perished on every trip. No gold had come out of Ekayta to celebrate the Reign of Seti.

“Yet in the first weeks of Usermare’s ascension, there was a night when He plunged so deep into His young bride that the beer in the jugs by Their bed began to froth. Later, when They lay beside each other, Nefertiri said, ‘Water will come out of the mountain on the road to Ekayta.’ Hearing the confidence in Her voice, Usermare ordered a well to be dug, and there, water was found, and its flow enabled the laborers to bring back much gold in the early years of the Reign of Ramses the Second. So, He took a vow upon Nefertiri’s body that He would know love for no other woman.

“Yet, now, forsaking His right buttock for the touch of His left, so could I see Rama-Nefru as clearly as Nefertiri, and Rama-Nefru was no older now than the other had been then, and thinking of Rama-Nefru, He was as tender as a young lover.

“Rama-Nefru might have been the daughter of a Hittite, and in Her childhood only known men with beards and been raised by women with noses more curved than a sword, but She, Herself, was like the loveliness of a clear morning on our river. So I knew why She was beloved by Usermare. In Her arms, He heard the birds at dawn, and saw the clear light of the Palace courtyard when the sun is high. By night She offered a tenderness like the smallest flowers of His garden. That much did I learn by the touch of my fingers to His left buttock. For into my heart passed the cup of His happiness. The harsh appetites of my King did not occupy all His heart. To Him, the luster of Rama-Nefru’s hair was like the light falling on the transparent Throne of Heaven. Yet, the purity of His feelings were such that He could not be with Rama-Nefru when His heart was black with fear, or She would suffer from bearing His heat.

“Later that night, after Usermare had mounted the bodies of each of the eight little queens and took each of them with a fire to bury the fires of Khert-Neter, coming forth each time like a God, He became at last as calm as the waters of a pond and dressed with me, and we walked together in the Gardens hand in hand. He had not been so calm in a long time. His breath smelled powerfully of kolobi and I understood how near we had been to the body of Isis through the night. For all which was in the grain belonged to Her, and everything in the grape. And all that came down to us on the rise of the river.

“This time, it was not like that occasion when He hesitated to tell me that I would no longer be General-of-all-the-Armies but Governor of the Secluded. He said, ‘I have lived in indecision for many months, but it has come to an end. Tomorrow, you will begin to serve as Companion of the Right Hand of Nefertiri.’

“When I asked, ‘Who will be Governor?’ He replied, ‘I am giving the Gardens to Pepti. He will do well there. But you belong in My First Queen’s Palace. You have the wisdom to serve Her well, and serve Me even better.’ He nodded, as if the greatest wisdom were His own. ‘You will stay close to Nefertiri. You will not leave Her. If word should come that I am dead, you have only one instruction: Slay Her where She stands.’

“Now He kissed me. ‘Kill Her,’ He said, ‘even if others will slay you in the next instant.’

“I bowed. The dawn was as lovely to me as the thought of my own life. ‘That is the best death for you,’ He said. ‘You will be able to accompany Me in the Golden Boat.’

“He was my King. So I did not dare to say that I might wander in Khert-Neter and not be welcomed by Him on any boat. I merely bowed again.”

NINE

Once, sitting with my mother in her bedroom, I saw her pick up a round plate of silver with a handle of gold, and hold it beneath my face. I nearly cried out. There, floating on the polished surface, was my Ka looking back at me. I had seen this face in the water of a pond on a calm day, and learned I could not touch such a Ka for it rolled away in many small waves so soon as I reached out. Now, my mother said, “This is the veil-of-the-Ka-who-stands,” and it was true. When I brought my finger to the surface of the plate, another finger came forward to meet me, but the face did not move—it stood there as solemn and respectful as my own. At that moment, I felt as far apart from a six-year-old, at least in age and wisdom, as my great-grandfather himself. I knew there was no rare thought I could not understand if I looked long enough into the silver light of the veil-of-the-Ka-who-stands. For with my face before me, I shared the wisdom of the Gods—if only in that instant.

Now, something of the knowledge I had then must have come into my breath, for when I opened my eyes on this patio, expecting—I do not know why—to see my own face, I was staring instead into the eyes of my great-grandfather, and we looked at one another unti I lost all sense of where the horizon might be on this dark night. Now I could not be certain I belonged here any more than on my knees in some chamber of stone in the center of a mountain of stone, and my mouth was open, and my great-grandfather’s eyes remained motionless on me. All was still