On a Balcony (4 page)

Though Pharaoh was ill, he still kept up the
splendour
of a healthy, venal man, and ran from one extreme of pleasure to another, in search of what diversion he could get. If anything he was now more interested in the refinements of such pursuits than he had been when able to pursue them. For now, since he could only
watch, it was more difficult for him to lose interest through sheer exhaustion. And after all, he was Pharaoh. If someone reported a curious position he had never seen or practised, he could have it demonstrated when he wished. Indeed, it had been necessary to
invent
a few, in order to keep up with his curiosity, and if they did not work, they looked as though they did, and that, now, was the main thing.

Boys, girls, men, women, nubians, hunchbacks, dwarfs suffering from gigantism and giants suffering from the opposite complaint, in all their various
combinations
and variations, animals, talking birds, snakes accomplished at divination, and an Indian mystic with an extremely supple spine, had all been paraded before him, and to tell the truth, had bored him extremely. But once he had started, he could not stop. A certain prurient interest was expected of him. He would much have preferred to talk to Ay or Tiiy or sometimes Horemheb. He was very fond of Horemheb, where another man would only have been jealous, and this for reasons of his own.

It is possible to be a narcissist without being in the least vain. In Horemheb he saw himself when young. That was why he had made the boy his favourite. And now that the boy was a man, and Tiiy’s lover, he saw the flattery envolved, and was rather touched, that at last she should settle down into some sort of permanent liaison with someone so exactly like himself. As for
himself
, had he been well enough or had he had the
inclination
to take any regular mistress, he supposed, she would have resembled Tiiy, if anyone could have resembled Tiiy. For they were a couple. They always had been. They could not have existed without each other, really.

Besides, he liked Horemheb, and was only sorry the man was not his son, instead of the sickly brood he had. Nor had he ever doubted Tiiy’s loyalty or affection to
himself. In a life full of uncertainty, that much at least was sure; and as for the rest, let her amuse herself how she would. In addition to which it was a delicious joke on the courtiers, who instead of battening on the
intrigues
they had hoped to promote, strengthened the very situation they had sought to divide.

Thus Amenophis III, Pharaoh of Egypt, who was more astute than one might think, if sometimes
capricious
, while he watched the tumblers and the acrobats.

But Horemheb, who had not seen him for some time, and who could remember shooting lions with him, up on the desert, only five years ago, was shocked by his appearance. No one knew precisely what was wrong with him, unless he were falling apart from within. He had for one thing grown fat and flabby, for another, feeble and nervous. Pain had drained him rapidly. He suffered from abscessed gums, for which there was no cure. His mouth stank, and he washed it constantly with an infusion of cinnamon and clove, which he spat out into an endless succession of white alabaster cups. These endless cups were disgusting even to him. He tried to ignore them, but all the same, they were there.

Music these days was provided for him only by blind harpers. He found it convenient that they could not see. A blind drummer had been harder to get, and in desperation the household steward had been forced to create one. No doubt the man had screamed, but Amenophis was cruel only at second hand. He knew nothing of such things. The drummer sat huddled wretched, without that strange gentle arrogance of the habitually blind, but rather the inhabitant of an
unfamiliar
country, tapping away an accompaniment to the dancers. These were not Egyptians, but black creatures from somewhere south of Nubia, handsomely built, sweaty men, who spoke only gibberish, and took tremendous, acrobatic leaps while white plumes waved wildly on their kinkly heads.

Horemheb and Amenophis watched. The Queen had slipped away. Then, when the dancers had been taken off, the two men were at last alone.

“Tell me about the prince,” said Amenophis, and when Horemheb had done, merely smiled. It was
disturbing
. Resignation did not suit that ardent face.

“I am making you Commander-in-Chief of the Armies,” he said.

Horemheb was shocked. To direct armies was
something
he had always expected to do, and virtually did already. But to hold that title was another matter. The title belonged to Pharaoh and to Pharaoh alone.

Amenophis made a wry face. “Yes,” he said. “I know. But you can hold the armies. I may die. It is time to make the prince co-regent. And he could never hold them.”

It was true, so there was nothing to say about it. Amenophis closed his eyes. He was tired, Horemheb took his departure and went to report to the Queen.

She could talk to him only for a minute. But she could see how serious his face was.

“So he has told you,” she said.

Horemheb was concerned with how the prince would take the news, for princes are jealous of their
prerogatives
.

He need not have worried. The prince turned out to have no interest in the army. He was at the moment interested only in religion. He had not enough political knowledge to be afraid of the power of armies, and for the rest, he was glad to have the burden off his own shoulders. He merely gave an indifferent smile and hurried off to his temple.

When told how he had taken the news, Tiiy shrugged. For, of course, they saw no danger in his little hobby. He was not fit to rule, and therefore the more seriously he took his hobbies the better. Tiiy and Horemheb and Ay could rule for him. There was no problem there.

To them religion was no more than a public duty and a death-bed necessity. If the prince had gone to the Amon priests, now that would have been a different matter. The Amon priests had quite enough power already. But an interest in Aton worship was harmless. It was no more than the family cult, something they had brought with them when they became a dynasty, which Amenophis had revived out of boredom and ancestral piety. It would soon pass. And meanwhile, if the prince amused himself in these ways, they would be able to transfer the machinery of government from one generation to the next without his inference. Later, they could perhaps educate him to his role and his
responsibilities
.

They overlooked two things. First of all, Amenophis was not going to die just yet. And second, how could they know that the prince was morbidly afraid of the dark and an hysteric into the bargain. They could not be blamed. It had never occurred to them to ask what he was afraid of, since a prince was supposed to be
fearless
, and they had never considered him as a person at all, except in so far as he constituted an
embarrassment
. And then, a level-headed lot, they simply did not know what an hysteric was. In all that city perhaps only two people knew, and unfortunately one of these was Meryra, the Aton priest, and the other Nefertiti, Pharaoh’s daughter, to whom Meryra owed his
preferment
, and whom the prince would have to marry, since though Pharaoh ruled Egypt, it was through his sister that his right to rule descended.

Meanwhile, in that still palace, when once Pharaoh was sleeping, Horemheb and Tiiy went off to bed, and what they did there was their own affair. Or so they thought, until, in enjoying themselves, they did not bother to think at all.

*

Others, however, do not have the ability so
completely
to forget themselves in experience. Others can never forget themselves at all, and so their pleasures are a little sly and never, on any occasion, altogether pleasant, which, in turn, leaves them time to think. And among these was Nefertiti, who knew perfectly well what her mother and Horemheb did together, who often spied on them, and who liked neither of them.

Her reasons were simple. She was both vain and neglected, and also afraid, with reason, of her mother. Indeed, were you not so strong as she was, Tiiy could be overwhelming, being a woman who was charming only among equals, among whom she did not count the brood she had hatched.

But though she was not strong, Nefertiti was supple. She knew perfectly well she would one day be Queen, and to this end she had spent considerable time in the study of that enigma, her brother. Nor could she be called impotent, for in Meryra she knew, as soon as she had met him, that she had found her proper
instrument
.

Nefertiti was fifteen. Her beauty would have been remarkable, had there been anybody to see it, but the royal children were not encouraged to show themselves, and were seen mostly by each other, and the prince had no eye for female beauty. Nefertiti had only her mirror, and now Meryra, to show her what she might do, given the opportunity.

People are foolish about beauty. Few of them realize how dangerous it can be. For beautiful people know they are works of art, and are so busy being the
custodians
of themselves that they have neither the time nor the inclination for anything else. And, like works of art, they are only an appearance. Underneath that
sparkling
surface the actual material from which it derives its support, the heart and soul and blood and bone, is inert.

But much rarer even than the beautiful, are those of
the beautiful whose vanity in no measure interferes with their intelligence, but is on the contrary a useful means of concealing it. And these people are truly hazardous, for they have lovely, understanding eyes, they can simulate anything, and they have no contact with the human race at all. They sip emotions as a connoisseur would sip a fine wine, only a little, but that greedily; and move unimpeded and undetected through the world, secure that only someone exactly like them will ever find them out. They can never be defeated, and short of murder they can never be stopped, and it takes them a long, long time to run down.

Indeed, they are so different from the rest of us, and so secure, that they would not impinge on our lives at all, were it not for one thing, which is, that though they are impervious even to their own vanity, none the less, they are vain, and vanity, alas, is not impervious to us.

Thus Nefertiti, an observant and calculating woman of fifteen, with a peculiarly memorable smile and an enormous knowledge of her brother based on the
entirely
false assumption that he was much like herself, but weaker and easier to control.

Surely no dynasty ever built itself a better ruin. But then the dynasty had no say in the matter. It had bred true to its vices. These were its heirs. And though Amenophis had done his best, he had forgotten that loyalty is not always a virtue, and Horemheb was loyal.

I
t so happened that astute as he was, Ay had developed an affection for the prince. It was not surprising. One must be sentimental about something, and the more hard-headed and judicious one is, the more unlikely the thing on which one’s sentiments will light. For, of course, in those days Ay did not exactly regard the prince as a person. Nor was he one. He had been a
person
when he was a child, which no one had bothered to notice, and he might be one later on, when life was through with him, but at the moment he was a
personage
of some importance, and that is not the same as being a person at all.

However of this indulgent attitude Ay showed
nothing
, for he had early learned that it was wiser to keep one’s affection for others to one’s self, since they are not apt to understand it, nor is there any reason why they should.

It was Ay’s duty to inform the prince of those
ceremonies
which a personage of importance would be expected to endure during the next few weeks, for a personage of importance is not the same as a
non-entity
. He cannot be expected to find things out for himself.

Amenophis, needless to say, had not bothered to see his son, for he found him too distressing, and neither, for that matter, had the prince shown the least interest in seeing his father. They would meet on the day of the coronation, three months from now, but in the
meantime
the great deal that had to be done would be done by Ay.

The apartments set aside for the prince, which Ay had never seen before, were at the north end of the palace. He found what he saw surprising but on the whole informative.

He had always assumed, since that was what the court thought of him, that the prince was a weakling and a booby. Now he saw that this was not so. It was merely that the prince was physically weak, had a strong mother, no interest in sports, and the wrong kind of intelligence. He clearly had a stubborn, feral mind. To talk to him was to talk to some decadent animal, a lemur say, with its great liquid giddy eyes. The
impression
was bewildering and somehow frightening.

But then the full mouth under those eyes would twitch shyly at the corners, not without irony, and Ay would feel that the world had righted itself again. There was nothing wrong with the prince. It was only that he was ignorant of the right things and entirely too knowledgeable about the wrong ones.

For instance: “If I am Pharaoh, why then must I take directions from the High Priest?”

A difficult question to answer, requiring more
knowledge
of history than it would be wise to display before the vanity of a ruling prince, and a devout one at that.

Or was he devout? At times it was hard to be sure. For example: “Then if this idol is only a device for delivering the opinions of the High Priest, why is not Amon also a device for maintaining their power?”

They were talking about that scene, at the end of the coronation, when Pharaoh must enter the Holy of Holies and commune with the god alone. They had been talking about it, to be precise, for the past five days.

Which was how Ay discovered that the prince was afraid of the dark, though he did not say so, and afraid too of death, almost as though the fear of death were
a form of claustrophobia. He was too young to be afraid of death. There would be plenty of time for that later, when he was old enough, should he live so long. For really he was very frail. His toughness was not of a physical sort.

All of which made him more human, somehow; and looking around his apartments, Ay could see the reason for such fears. On this neglected shambles the prince had somehow imposed a curiously fastidious order, that had about it something rather sad. For example, when Ay shifted a curved wood stool from its aligned place, the prince would put it back again; which in turn led Ay to notice that the furniture was all arranged just so, into a pattern. The Royal Nurse, Ay’s second wife, had told him, when he asked her about the prince, that even as a child he had not been able to sleep without a night-light, or until the furniture had been arranged just so.

Which, Ay supposed, was because there had been no one to comfort him. Now there would be many to do so, and Ay saw no reason why he should not be the first. Therefore, if the prince chose to prattle of the Aton and the descent of kings, then Ay would prattle of them too, though that did not mean that the formalities of the coronation could be ignored. Instead, they the more had to be insisted upon.

“And it is dark in there?”

“I have never been there. It cannot be pitch dark, no.”

“And the image touches me?”

“Yes, I believe so.”

“And then what happens?” asked the prince. His face was taut. Unfortunately Ay did not know what happened then. But each day, once the prince was
co-regent
, he would have to go to the temple and anoint the god in that dark room. Not literally each day, of course, but whenever the god had a message to deliver.

“My father does not do that.” The voice was curt and sharp.

“Your father is ill.”

“None the less, the priests come to him, not he to them.”

“Even he had to go to them once,” said Ay, anxious to get on to other matters. When he left, the prince was playing blind-man’s-buff with his younger brother Smenkara.

Really, that was ridiculous. It touched Ay to see how lonely the boy was in his quarters, to be reduced to playing with a child.

*

The prince saw the matter differently. As far as he was concerned, he was about to become a god, and the prospect pleased him. His father was a god, he was going to be a god, and his children, if any, would be gods. On the whole he felt that that made life much simpler, restored his own, at any rate, to a proper perspective.

For it is not so difficult to be a god. All one needs is a mother, no father (none of the saviour gods ever have a demonstrable father, no matter what the Amon priests might say. He was the child of the sun god, Ra, not of Amenophis III), and the recommendation of at least one politically astute high priest. Of course certain conditions have to be met. A god goes away. He is either admired and not loved, or loved and not
admired
, but then few men manage to be both. A god is never what his worshippers worship, which, if he be both god and worshipper, is apt to make him difficult to deal with. Also, there comes a time when he finds it all rather ridiculous, for whether he be mortal or
immortal
, still, he must die.

So ultimately a god fails, for a god is the person we see in the mirror who never sees us. In other words, it is not so pleasant to be a god. They would deserve our
sympathy, had we any to give them. No, it is not difficult to be a god. But it is hard to be worshipped. It is even harder to be loved. That destroys us all.

We want to stand naked in the rain. The patter is reassuring. It is like silver finger-tips in the middle of the night. We want to say: I am. But those who need us will not let us be.

And so we say: farewell. I am never now. I was.

And this, alas, is true of all of us.

But then, again, the prince did not see it that way. For despite his interest in the family cult, he had as yet no inkling of the particular god he was destined to
become
. Godhead, in the sense he meant it, was only the old dynastic game the family played so well, which was only to be taken seriously in public. So he merely saw the amusing side, and tried not to think of the dark.

For to someone with a love of beautiful things, and a sense of self-importance that had been starved for years, the amusing side was certainly very amusing.

First, he could send for people and they actually came.

He could commission works of art, and it is always pleasant to have one’s portrait done. His face had
suddenly
become extremely important. The Queen
supplied
her personal sculptor, a man called Bek, who modelled his face in plaster. The sessions were stormy.

Bek turned out the standard portrait of a pharaoh, heavy-faced, fine-planed, slightly amused, and utterly impersonal. Though careful not to touch the now royal person, he took exact measurements. That was another of the amusements. As a child, he had been at the mercy of anybody’s fingers. Now he was to become Pharaoh, nobody dared to touch him, and that was restful, for he hated to be touched.

“No. No,” he said. “Not like that. More truth, more ma’at.”

Bek looked hurt. He was a good sculptor and he had
been turning out that face now for twenty years.
Nobody
had ever complained before. He submitted that pharaohs were supposed to look like that.

“I am I. Not my father. People should worship me,” shouted the prince, seized the modelling stand, and went to work. What he achieved was lop-sided and shapeless, but it undoubtedly looked different. Bek took the hint.

Thus entered into the history of the period a new meaning for that treacherous word, truth. It was an illustrious word. It meant justice, proportion, harmony, symmetry. It was a way of looking at the world with which no one had ever quarrelled. Now for the first time it acquired in addition its modern meaning: truth is the way I look at things: truth looks like me.

Above all, truth was asymmetrical and always bathed in light. This meant that Bek had to alter his modelling, so that his faces should never reveal deep shadows. And this he did, for he had a job to keep.

When Tiiy saw these new portraits she made no comment. She was not an aesthetician, and art as a branch of propaganda deals only in expensive images of oneself for other people to look at. Out of good taste one never looks oneself. She had a flair for spotting good cabinet work, and that was that.

She had other concerns. It was time to arrange the prince’s marriage. And in view of his previous marriage, it might be necessary to explain to him the exact
process
by which it was possible to produce heirs.

When she appeared with the princess Nefertiti, the prince was in the midst of what could only be called a wardrobe conference. This startled her. But then it was only to be expected, so she smiled indulgently. Her smile had improved in the last few days, and was now a perfect expression of that withering tact by means of which she intended to go on running the government.

The princess Nefertiti had seen her brother seldom,
and his apartments never. Boyish, slim, with a narrow pelvis, which might or might not make childbearing difficult, she looked around her, and was very glad her mother was there. For now, without saying anything, or even altering her expression, she could indicate to the prince that they were both in league against their mother, and so, however tentatively, manage to
establish
an initial bond with him, as a spider casts out one thread, from which to depend the net that is already latent in its body.

For Nefertiti did not underestimate her body. To be childlike, and yet maternal, would, she thought, do best.

Tiiy did not like her daughter, either. She thought the two of them well matched, which they were, much more than she could have imagined possible.

For as well as being shy, saw Nefertiti, the prince was a little absurd. Not only was he physically embryonic, but his body seemed to have been made by somebody with no creative imagination and a shortage of raw material. Physically he would have to be cajoled on the one hand, and dominated on the other. No doubt he would feel as inadequate as he looked, but at least he would be physically undemanding, and that, in turn, she might find somewhat dull. Such things were not necessary to her, as they were to her mother, but though Nefertiti had a strong stomach, she saw there would be times when she would have to think of other things.

Involuntarily she found herself looking at
Horemheb’s
calves, for he, too, had made himself a part of this visit. He was totally unconscious of them, and this for some reason made them the more appealing. They were large, taut calves that swelled from the lower leg, as she preferred, rather than sticking out like wooden balls, and they were covered with black down whose tips had a golden sparkle whenever he shifted about in the sun;
whereas the prince had the white underbelly of a stranded ray and no calves at all. Despite herself, these brown egregious calves drew her attention. Perhaps they were another reason why she loathed her mother so.

While she watched the calves, the prince was
watching
Horemheb’s navel, as he stood on a dais, listening idly to his mother, who was a short woman and was a step below him. He had not meant to watch it, but it was easier to look at than was Tiiy. It held him
hypnotized
.

He liked Horemheb precisely because Horemheb was his mother’s lover. This was a form of hero worship not unknown to the cerebral, a mixture of wistfulness and vicarious self-indulgence. If I were not what I am, which of course I like best, but which is a tremendous responsibility, the argument goes, it would be
delightfully
relaxing to be a simple, unspoiled animal like that. And besides, he is fond of me, and that is flattering. To the prince, Horemheb was a large loyal dog of his own age, and he had an immense desire to dig his fingers into that fur and grip hard, when he was sad and wanted to cry.

Meanwhile he was hypnotized by that navel. Thebes was the navel of the world, and that was
understandable
, for since the dominant god lived there, then all acts and decisions came from there. The navel of a man, however, was somewhat different.

Instinctively he looked down at his own navel, which was little more than a crease, or structural flaw, as though he had been snapped off his placental cord like a seedpod rather than a child. Horemheb on the other hand had a flat stomach, and in it his navel was like a concave nipple. It was dark; it was warm; it was deep; and no doubt it had a very special smell. Really, in the womb people must ripen like fruit, detach themselves, and fall uneaten.