On a Balcony (13 page)

It was ridiculous. She caught the undertone of quiet amusement in that voice, and for some reason it made her blush.

“Don’t you know why I asked you to come here?”

“I know the reason you gave,” he said. His hand paused for an instant, holding its wine cup.

Irritably she swept the wine cup to the ground. The lamps flickered in the unexpected draught and then were still. The dark-brown wine spread over the faces of the captives, but here and there the floor must be oily. Over those places the fluid parted and the eye of a captive showed through.

“Men would sometimes like to make love to me,” she said, to her own surprise.

“I can quite believe it,” he said easily. “And were you an ordinary woman, no doubt they would do so. May I go?”

It was almost as though he had slapped her. And yet instead of making her angry, it made her sad.

“Yes, go,” she said, and watched his retreating back. The hall was empty. She sat there until the lamps began to splutter, and then made her way to the garden. She would cross it to her own apartments, and the night air might restore her calm.

The question was, would he speak of it? She was sure he would. He had always hated her, and not everybody can refuse a queen. It would make a good anecdote in barracks.

Seeing a figure slip out of the Harem wing, she went forward to challenge it.

It was Ikhnaton. He would not speak to her. He brushed right by. In her own apartments she soon found out the reason. He had been making his own experiments in the harem. He had got farther than she, only to be humiliated the more. Without those special skills she had developed to rouse him he was impotent. It was quite certain. He could never have heirs.

She had the girl sent away. In the morning, however, when she would have talked to her further, the girl was missing. No one was ever to hear of her again.

In the same week, without comment, he gave orders that the painted banqueting hall was to be shut off from the rest of the palace and boarded up. That really disturbed her. No doubt Horemheb had talked.

Yet it was a pity to shut off that hall. It was the first step down, the first sign that the glorious and eternal reign was shrinking.

*

Two days later he sent for her. It was unexpected. He wished her to participate in a ceremony at one of the public altars, in the desert between the cliffs and the town. She could scarcely believe she was taken back into favour, and yet she seemed to be. Perhaps he was lonely. After all, he had to talk to someone. His voice even became a little animated, as they paced down the double line of courtiers on either side of the carpeting which led to the altar.

She watched his intent face and it made her
thoughtful
. She had made a mistake. After all, they had been married for almost ten years. She could not be girlishly attractive for ever. Therefore maybe theology was the better way to hold his attention. Certainly nothing else ever had.

It happened she was right. Ikhnaton had turned back to the only fascination he had ever known, the one that made his isolation not only excusable, but valid. Theology filled up the cracks.

In one form or another the worship of the Aton now took up every moment of the day. It had to, if Ikhnaton was to be kept from thinking. Every moment must have its ritual purpose, to conceal the fact that it had none of its own.

The household rose at dawn. No household in the city but had its obligatory altar. Pharaoh worshipped standing up, and sat down on his throne only in order to be worshipped. He went to the temple early, for he took some amusement from arranging the flowers. He
did not do so himself, of course, but he liked to stand near by and tell others where to put them and how.

There were now four fixed religious ceremonies a day, each of which took two hours, not counting the
morning
and sunset services, at which Nefertiti presided alone.

It made life very difficult. True, one could talk to Pharaoh along the route, but just as it seemed he might give some definite answer, the pylon was reached and he vanished alone into the inner shrine.

In such circumstances those with private petitions were forced to make use of Meryra or Nefertiti. It
enhanced
both their folio wings. Meryra had as a
consequence
grown quite rich, and therefore now had many enemies. He had also been foolish enough to deputize too many of his offices to his chief assistant, a man called Pa-wah, with the result that Pa-wah also had a petty court around him, and was only waiting for the chance to make it a larger one.

If anyone wished to speak to Pharaoh directly, as Ay and Horemheb did, the only way they could do so was to become as devout as he was. Up and down the avenues, the approaches, the ramps they would
ceaselessly
move, while secretaries came and went with despatches that somehow never did get delivered, for at the moment when they were to be delivered Pharaoh would always dodge into the inner shrine. Nor did he give an answer when he returned, for his worship was a form of sunbathing, and who can give a clever answer when his head is addled by the sun?

They were waiting now, Horemheb and Ay, for Pharaoh to leave his inner shrine. The religion was no doubt sublime, but it was not without its
embarrassments
. Ay believed in making unavoidable burdens as light as possible. For this purpose a sceptical curiosity made an excellent fulcrum. But the effect on
Horemheb
was less pleasant. He had no scepticism. He could
only remove doubt by pushing against it with his full weight, which was tiring.

Ay did not wish to see him tired. He had great plans for him. He wished him to conserve his strength.
Therefore
, as he had to all the others, he became adviser to this man, too. For though his real career seemed to be to outlive the dynasty, this man would almost certainly outlive him.

It was a pleasure, given those circumstances, to be congenial and kind. Besides, Horemheb sometimes
surprised
him by the possession of quite a different kind of nimbleness, the kind that would be needed very soon, the practical.

But right now Horemheb was grumbling and restive. “I am surprised,” said Ay. “For can’t you see, that the Aton is intensely practical?”

Horemheb could not see it.

“But you must at least grant it is all very innocent and charming.”

Horemheb saw nothing of the sort.

“But it gives him something to believe in, and that in turn gives the court something to believe in. So in a sense it prevents anarchy. And since they do not
understand
it, they cannot be sure what would happen if they ignored it, so they believe it, and so keep out of
mischief
.”

“But it’s ruining the country.”

Ay shrugged. “The country is ruined already. This makes it easier to pick up the pieces when the time comes, that’s all. And since he would not do anything about the country in any case, perhaps it is as well that he does this. Besides, he does believe it. He is quite sincere.”

Horemheb gave him a suspicious look. “And I
suppose
you believe it, too?”

Ay smiled slowly. So much hard-headed honesty was inconvenient. He did not want Horemheb to say
an incautious word and so fall from favour. “It is as easy to believe in one thing as in another. As for what one really believes in, who knows? Who would believe in it, if it were not a mystery?”

To his surprise Horemheb seemed to find this
entirely
intelligible. It was for much these reasons that one believed in the army. But still, he did not trust Ay. “What are you trying to tell me?” he asked.

“To have patience, for your own good. Believe in it while it is still here, for you will never be able to believe in it once it is over. And besides, in its own way it is rather grand and beautiful. Allow yourself to admire beauty for a little while.”

“Beauty threw thirty thousand rioters from the
cemeteries
into the streets of Thebes.”

“Undoubtedly it is a powerful force,” said Ay amiably. “But then its reign is comparatively brief. And a commander of the armies out of office is as
helpless
as an adviser with no one to advise.”

They looked at each other for a while.

“Yes,” said Ay, and glanced towards Pharaoh, who was leaving the inner shrine. In his eyes, as he watched that fluttering white figure, there was a remote but loving pity. For Pharoah was alone with his god, and no man should ever be wholly alone with himself, for of all things, the self alone is undeviatingly pitiless.

*

However, it is also remarkably clever. Its immediate duty was to cure Pharaoh of doubt, and Ay could see that there was no doubt that it would succeed in doing so. Observing which, and also the way in which Horemheb and Nefertiti avoided each other, he even found it possible to feel sorry for the Queen, though not much.

For really did the Queen not know what was wrong with her?

Apparently not. But Ay, whose medical knowledge
was if anything better than Pentu’s, and whose
admiration
of beauty was none the less sincere for being tacit, felt profoundly sad for her.

So, in his own apartments, did Pharaoh. For
Ikhnaton
, though he might be blind when it came to himself, saw the rest of the world all too clearly. He never
underestimated
a motive, or a fleeting expression in a
courtier’s
face, and so, though one deplored his stupidities, it would have been a mistake to under-rate his grip upon those whom he saw every day. Who knows, had the rebellious Syrian provinces been under his nose, he might have been able to do something about them, too, with that amazing instinct he had for playing one kind of greed off against another.

A great statesman had been lost to theology, and Ay, for one, found that good cause for relief, for unlike competent bureaucrats, great statesmen are a perpetual source of endless harm, since their greatness depends upon the degree to which they change the
status
quo
.

Pharaoh had saved himself from disillusionment at the last moment, and in a quite remarkably severe way. It was a pity no one could have known how, for Ay, at least, who had had some insight into the gymnastics of which that mind was capable, would have admired the process for the contrivance it was.

The tensions of Ikhnaton’s life were too much for him. He fell down in a fit. Fortunately only Pentu was with him. The fit sobered him. He called for his chariot and sent Pentu away. He knew he had to escape the palace for a while. It was about four in the morning when he left.

The sky had the pre-dawn darkness of a man who allows himself to frown before breaking into a smile. The city was populous now, but there were still many vacant places. Grandiose buildings alternated with short sand grass, and slums with unfinished avenues. The flags of the Aton temples hung limp on their rods.
The streets were empty, except that here and there a cat or a dog yowled. Under the silence ran the steady disturbing hunger of the Nile.

Beneath the late stars, the cliffs shimmered and were still. He intended to ride to the top of them, He had not bothered to dress, and the night was cool. He whipped up the horses and raced through the city like a neglected ghost or a criminal fleeing his crime. And was that not true? Was he not called that criminal of Aketaten? And for him these fits of his were a crime, since he was helpless during them. To lose consciousness, to him, was the only crime there was.

The wind woke him up. While the chariot was moving, he was always gay. He swept through the northern suburb, past the clumsy state palace Nefertiti maintained there as High Priestess of the dawn, and took the cliff road to the ancient quarries. Above him in the rock face the doorways of the unfinished tombs gaped like the blood-clotted sockets of extracted teeth.

He knew very well where he was going. He whipped the horses at a dangerous corner, the horses whinneyed, the wheels jounced at the rim of the cliff, and he laughed. Half an hour later he was on the plateau above, bouncing along the meagre patrol road from which sentries guarded the city. He could see Aketaten below him as he drove, and really, it did not seem much.

An altar had been built up here, perhaps ten feet high and approached by ramps. He stopped the chariot, threw the reins over the horses’ heads, and ran up the ramp. The sky was already beginning to grow green, the stars indistinct. They went out like lamps that had used up their oil, though where, in this world, would you find an oil so pure?

On top of the altar the wind was almost a gale. The flapping of his wig and loincloth bothered him. He took them off. The wind stirred a little that incompetent
thing, his penis and its hair, but he did not find that unpleasant. His power, if he had any power, was not there.

The city lay six hundred feet below him, somehow pushed up by the desert sand against the green band along the river. He could see, from here, very clearly, that those triumphal avenues led nowhere. Even the altars looked like transient bedouin tents. It was inert and lifeless down there. It was not impressive and it bored him. He turned the other way, shivering slightly, to that point on the eastern horizon from which the daylight was certain to spread. Down in the plain even the light made shadows. But here it would make none. Here they were high above the shadows, “they” being himself and his god, that merciless, abstract, dangerously dazzling, and truthful disembodiment. Yet, as the sky lightened, he knew he had to believe, and so he
managed
to. It was not so difficult. The mind, finally cornered, in order to survive exerts itself, and from
nowhere
finds the strength to leap over its ultimate boundaries. Then the chase is on again. From insanity to the water wheel, all great discoveries have been made that way. As it enriches itself, the mind moves through larger and larger rooms, and confronted at last with a wall without a door, it breaks through and makes a new addition.

For even when one has seen through good and evil, there is still a moral responsibility, that which in the world of events we call keeping up appearances, a much higher one than mere good and evil. For good and evil are only toys, invented because in order to play any game it is necessary to have two sets of pieces. To tell them apart, we colour them differently, but they are made of the same stuff and have the same shapes. Good we use for evil purposes, and evil for good, and this makes no difference, for the board will be swept clean in any case. It is the board which allows us to
play our little game of good and evil. It is this which keeps up our appearances.