On a Balcony (5 page)

The prince very much wanted to stick his finger in it.
When he was a child, his nurse had said, if you stick your finger in your navel, it will suck your whole body in, and you won’t exist any more. It was a gesture he still made nervously, whenever he wanted to hide. Looking at Horemheb, he did it now. He scarcely heard what Tiiy was saying. With an effort he shifted his glance and caught Nefertiti’s eye. She smiled.

He could not say that he cared for that smile. It knew too much. But he found himself smiling back at her. With a thrill it occurred to him that they had read each other’s minds. He looked at her closely. She looked different from the others, as he did himself. She was supple, where Horemheb and Tiiy were a little simple and inconvenient.

Still, they were to be married, and he did not altogether like that.

*

He liked it still less when a few days later Nefertiti came to see him alone. But he need not have worried. She came for a purpose, equipped with a good deal of thoughtfully gathered evidence. It was to his vanity she would appeal.

The prince was already married once, to Tadukhipa, a Mitannian princess, a gibbering hottentot who had arrived at court three years before with three hundred ladies-in-waiting, an indifference to daily bathing, and an entirely new way of applying kohl. She was sequestered somewhere in the ramshackle harem, and nobody ever saw her, but as the application of kohl was as exacting as it was difficult, she was far from bored, and cost no more than would have a permanent ambassador. The marriage had been a matter of
diplomacy
. The prince had not been expected to go to bed with her. Still, the matter had caused gossip, for he had not shown the slightest interest in the three hundred ladies-in-waiting, either, nor, indeed, so far as anyone knew, in anyone, of any sex. He was rumoured
impotent
.
She had heard innumerable rhymes on the subject, all specific and none polite. Perhaps he had heard them, too. Courtiers, having nothing else to do, are often cruel.

Nefertiti therefore judged that the prince would be more concerned with appearances than with facts, and it was the appearance she intended to give him, even if occasionally they would have to produce a child. She did not mind. Her interest in venery was slight and practical. For the rest, they would play out a game
together
, in return for which she expected him to grow grateful and fond. Public display they could manage very well. And really people were naïve in these matters. If it was something they wanted to believe, they would always take the appearance for the fact.

In these circumstances, their first nuptial interview was undoubtedly odd. She knew even then that
promiscuity
has nothing to do with the emotions. One reaches out in the night for a body as one would reach for a glass of water. It is a thirst or a habit, but in itself quite meaningless, as meaningless as abstention is in those who feel no thirst. In the prince she saw a new, a charming, a diverting, an altogether surprising, and perhaps a generous toy.

When he came to her apartments it was very late. He came not with excuses, but with arguments. That, too, she had expected.

The bedrooms of the palace were distressingly small. They had one door to the corridor, covered by a
curtain
, a lower level and an upper level. The bed was on the upper level. It was a large sway-backed wooden litter which both rustled and creaked. The room had no window but one high up in the wall. It was almost certain the attendants would be listening in the
corridor
. It was therefore necessary to whisper.

The attendant showed the prince into the room, left him there with one or two castor-oil lamps, and
withdrew
.
He stood in the middle of the room like a forlorn moth, and then fluttered towards the dais. There was a silence, followed by a flurry down the corridor.

The prince was rather improbably wearing the short loincloth of classical sculpture. His body, far from being majestic, looked as defenceless as freshly risen
bread-dough
and had about the same swelling curves.

He began with the arguments. She listened with the liveliest attention, and such is the power of monologue that he soon became persuaded she was agreeable to talk to. In no time they were giggling together as happily as twins.

It is necessary to remember that in those days, before the invention of original sin, venery had none of that air of perpetual novelty which makes it so beguiling to the unimaginative, the bored, or the puritan. One could then love or not love as one wanted to, but whereas a discreet matter-of-factness made the business easier to accomplish, at the same time the absence of guilt robbed it of half its charm, for it either had to be done well or not at all. Without a sense of sin to
reinforce
his pride, your bumbling amateur felt more at a loss then than now.

However, there is such a thing as shrewd beauty, and this Nefertiti had possessed from birth. It was time to rescue the prince from his own arguments.

He explained to her, first of all, how remarkable it was that the privilege of physical contact with Pharaoh should be extended to queens, and she agreed, quite readily, that it was indeed remarkable. He then allowed her to touch him. By massaging the muscles at the back of his neck she reduced him to the warm stupor of a newborn kitten, and though he shuddered when she began, when she had finished he asked her to go on. Her wrists ached, but she went on.

Apparently grateful, he then told her that to be a queen also meant that she would be a god after death,
which was clearly to her advantage. She agreed that it was an advantage, but her wrists were becoming tired. There was a prolonged silence. She broke it by
suggesting
that since the attendants were undoubtedly
listening
, it would be an excellent idea if they creaked and rocked the bed. This co-operative suggestion won her a quick smile, and after they had creaked and rocked the bed with some vigour, he had almost completely relaxed and decided that they were having a wonderful time. He had accepted her as fellow conspirator.

When she blew out the lamps, however, which meant that she had to leave him for a moment, he grew
nervous
again, and it was necessary to creak and rock the bed some more. This time, however, it was clearly not so much fun, and somewhere outside in the corridor someone sneezed.

“Make a noise,” she suggested, wondering vaguely what to do next. The moment, she knew, was crucial.

He was thinking. She would always be able to tell when he was thinking, because when he was his breath grew more shallow. She could also tell that he was frightened.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“I don’t like the dark.”

“I’m here,” she said, without thinking of the matter, because she had often been afraid of the dark herself, and so won dominion over him quite by accident, despite all her careful planning. She could feel the difference at once. When he began to talk again, it was as one would talk to a very close friend, a little older than oneself, but thoroughly reliable. But he was still nervous about being there, so he had to trot out his little philosophy. She quite understood that.

“But isn’t it rather vulgar to be only a man or a woman,” he said. “It seems so ordinary.”

There was no point in telling him that even the gods must do as we do, and that though the original god
Aton produced his children by auto-insemination, with the passage of time the method had unfortunately been lost. Instead, she told him that his penis had the texture and faint odour of the flesh of a ripe persimmon. High comedy has its own stench, and if we cannot get our way in one way, why then we must use another. She did not really mind, and the matter was soon over with. Further steps could be taken later, and at the end of it all he screamed like a moonstruck rabbit, which she supposed indicated pleasure.

*

So everything might have been well, really, had the Amon priests not been so insistent upon that ceremony with the coronation doll. It is wry to reflect that they destroyed themselves and the royal house with that same jointed horror whose only purpose was to
perpetuate
their own power.

Yet in all respects the day of the coronation dawned propitiously.

It began, according to the elaborate schedule, with an early morning exhibition of the royal family to the loyal populace, a carefully rehearsed audience of ten thousand rammed into the esplanade before the
palace
.

At least one member of that audience found the spectacle extremely diverting, if sobering. This was Tutmose, a sculptor of much ability and little ambition, who wished a royal commission, but having no access to the palace, hoped that he could retain enough of the royal appearance to do a trial piece. He was less
interested
in Pharaoh than in the prince, for patronage, now, would lie that way.

In front of the palace a pavilion had been set up, from which the royal family would step into their chariots, the floor of the pavilion being on a level with the floor of the chariots. It was an awkward arrangement, but they had to display themselves, and to use the balcony
of audience and then go to their chariots would have been more awkward still. The spectacle was certainly fine. The jewels were dazzling, so dazzling that nobody paid much attention to the features they surrounded, except for Tutmose, who had a board before him on which to sketch.

Royal Father Ay was the first to appear. His was a striking face, lean, Oriental, narrow-eyed, benign, and very far away. Nobody paid much attention to him. He was followed by Nebzumut, Nefertiti’s sister, a fat, plump, amiable creature with two attendant dwarfs. She blinked as though she were not accustomed to
sunlight
, as indeed she was not. She was only a girl and carefully kept indoors. She in turn was followed by Horemheb, who as Commander of the Armies was loudly cheered by the guards and totally unknown to anybody else. Still, it was an interesting face, there was no denying that. It was not, however, relevant to Tutmose’s purposes.

A ripple ran through the crowd. A cheer went up, and for once it was a warm and honest cheer. Pharaoh and the Queen were emerging on the platform,
accompanied
by Smenkara, the youngest child, in the arms of Ay’s wife, the royal nurse.

About that immense ruin of a man there was
something
altogether touching. Vast, corpulent, florid,
obviously
in pain, with a stoic animal nobility of feature still bony and clear in that puzzled matrix of fat, Amenophis was as always Pharaoh, a little foolish, a little absent-minded, without much head for intrigue, but forthright, clean, and obviously a ruling prince. Tiiy, beside him, nervous, assured, worried, perplexed, but very gracious, was as clearly the Great Royal Wife. It was their best role, the one they played every day, and neither they nor the crowds could have got along without it.

Amenophis was half carried to his chariot, but once
in it, and he stood erect, and would remain standing in it for so long as he had to be in public view. Of such things is character made. And only for such things, alas, is character applauded.

Next appeared Nefertiti and the prince, also to be applauded, not for themselves, but as something of Amenophis and Tiiy’s making, as one would applaud a favourite chef’s latest dish, even before it had been tasted. At these two Tutmose looked more narrowly and with a smile.

They had caught his attention at once. Your artist who has something he can express only through the human face, cannot say anything, unless he find the right face. And these were the faces he had been looking for. He forgot to draw. He did not have to. These faces had lain latent in his mind for years. He recognized them at once. They were so bored, and boredom
prolongs
beauty, for since it has no expression, so it forms no customary wrinkles. Nefertiti would never age, he could see that. She would only become more and more desperate.

And as for the prince, he had the face of a heretic, and it only remained to see what form that heresy would take. As a problem in aesthetics his body was a fascinating riddle it might take years to solve. It only remained to meet his patron, and Tutmose’s future was assured.

He watched with attention. They were so fragile. But it is a mistake to believe that fragile things are easily broken. Instead they are apt to be as resilient as reeds. And then they were so obviously, so very
obviously
, he thought narrowly, attached to each other, like a parody of their parents. The prince allowed the princess to put her arm around his waist in public. Even Amenophis never allowed Tiiy to do that, and the crowd loved it. It made them just like you and me, if we were just married and were wrapped up in each
other, which we never were. They did not applaud. They roared.

Perhaps only Tutmose realized the outrageous nature of that counterfeit. If so, it did not bother him, for in this life, he knew, the counterfeit is just as important as the real, and perhaps more essential to our survival. For he was a sculptor, a maker of faces. He knew
perfectly
well that, except for those essentials which if neglected turn and destroy us with self-knowledge later on, the keeping up of appearances is the only reality we have.

Meanwhile, followed by a cloud of excited and
anonymous
royal relatives, the procession swept down to the river and the temples of Karnak and Luxor on the other side. The crossing would be made by barge, and this, too, was a sight that no one in his right senses would have desired to miss.

The river was clogged with the pleasure boats of the nobility, brave with pinions, statues, and musicians. On the other side the priests of Amon, confident in their ascendancy, conducted the royal party up the great sphinx avenue, around the main temple three times, and then within, on the final road to the throne.

There they made the prince co-regent. He saw how pleasant it was to be co-regent of the world, with absolute power over Ay, Horemheb, Nefertiti, even over Amenophis, perhaps, or Tiiy. No one could
interfere
with him now. He might do as he pleased. He was absolute and inviolable. But what did he please?