On a Balcony (8 page)

“My divine father, the Aton, has commanded I build him a city,” said Pharaoh uncertainly, and looked at Meryra out of distant eyes, his body trembling
like that of a stalking cat. “And there I shall build him a temple, for Meryra, his High Priest.” It was an
out-and-out
bribe.

But it was a most convenient one, and who could tell? Meryra had lost his equanimity. Perhaps the Aton did exist. After all, he had not precisely made it up. He had only enlarged upon it a little. Who knew what powers he may have released?

He told himself it was not panic he felt, but
inspiration
. He told Pharaoh he would spend the night in prayer. The site would be revealed.

And he spent the night in prayer. The courtyard was deserted, the guards restive, the altar empty, and the floral offerings wilted. Meryra was in despair. For of course where was no Aton. There never had been.

Yet there was something here. Something did move in these corridors, and there was something wrong with the night. If one has arthritis, one tires of waiting for revelation. It is easier to improvise.

In short, he was terrified, and inspiration came.

The rustling resolved itself into those gentlemen to whom he had been so unwise as to hint much on the strength of the very little that Nefertiti had said. And they arrived with an ultimate irony, for it appeared that they had come too late. Tadukhipa had died a natural death. Forcible dieting had ruined a heart already strained to the breaking point by obesity.

But no one would believe that. Tiiy would not
believe
it. Nefertiti would not believe it. The Amon priests would not believe it. And besides, Nefertiti was pregnant for the third time. She was a virtual prisoner in the palace, because of that, and so she could not help him.

Under the circumstances it seemed better to leave. Meryra told Pharaoh the Aton had indeed spoken.

Five days later, under heavy guard, they were sailing northward down the Nile, no one knew why or where.

Thus was founded the city of Aketaten, the city of the Horizon of the Sun Disk, which was to endure for ever and ever. It endured, all told, for exactly
seventeen
years, which was a year or two longer than that glorious god, the Sun, its founder.

But how were they to know that then?

T
he city was waiting to be founded. Cities do. For cities are like the demons of darkness: they can do their worst only after someone has evoked them. They sit waiting invisible for the right tribe to cross the
watershed
or ford beside which they are latent.

In the beginning they are charming, and pampered, and a little spoiled, for they are always the favourite child of someone. Their founders dote on them. And then, when they are strong enough, they develop a life of their own and devour those who created them. Then their servants they keep in fattening pens, called slums. They swallow down whole generations. Their founder lies forgotten. The purpose which brought them into being has long been lost sight of. But if they survive their adolescence, they are enormously long lived. Thebes was like that. One did not say Amenophis or the prince lived at Thebes. One said that Thebes was where Pharaoh lived.

But even cities die at last. The world is littered with their exoskeletons. Some cities die young, and they have the pathos of the grave of a talented child. If you have ever wandered through a city at three in the morning, you realize very quickly how well they get along
without
their inhabitants. But wander through Fatehpur Sikri, and you realize the sadness of a city nobody ever believed in. Cities of this sort never escaped the mind of their creator, and so died when he did. Such cities, in that case, are like casts taken from the brain. The brain decayed centuries ago. But here these streets faithfully reproduce its convolutions. Such a
city, you see, has had no time to develop illusions of its own.

But at the moment the city had not yet come into view, and the prince was becoming impatient. In
actuality
the Nile is by no means a fascinating river, and all the best sites seemed to have been taken already.

The party consisted of ten boats, for the prince, whose organizing abilities were remarkable, had
provided
stonemasons, architects, priests, sacred utensils, a squad of designers, three chariots, six horses, Meryra, and Tutmose. Tutmose was, as usual, calm and
interested
. He had never been present at the fulfilment of a prophecy, and he waited upon the event with the
liveliest
expectation.

Meryra was nervous. He knew nothing of geography, to sail down had seemed easier than to sail up, and he hoped for the best. There would, he assured the prince, be a sign. But so far, on the fifth day out, there had been no sign.

The prince rose early each morning, scanned the river ahead, and by afternoon had become fretful. But now, on this morning, the little birds’ flight of barges, rounding a curve of the Nile where the cliffs rose steep from the river, came suddenly to an open place. The oars dipped in the water, lifted, scattered slimy drops, and paused. Caught in a gust of wind, the sails hooped out. And with the vast chattering of a plague of anguished mice, shore birds large and small flowed in a smooth sheet off the water, flapped for an instant, turned with a shriek, hovered, and then scattered once more into constituent birds, as though someone had smashed a curtain and it fell tinkling down again like glass. Swooping and rising over the plain, the black loose-piled carpet of birds curved and arced into the distance. The boats were ordered to halt. The sign had been made known to the prince. Aketaten had been founded.

One can have ghosts before their birth as well as afterwards. Before them rose the shimmering white city that was to be. Meryra, who by this time had grown desperate, said yes indeed, he recognized it, it was indeed the place.

Tutmose only smiled. If Meryra had recognized the spot, it was from the dangerously impatient gleam in the prince’s eye. But that was recognition enough. This was the place.

That people moved him so little did not mean that he was incapable of feeling. On the prince’s face he had at last recaptured the look of boyish delight he had first seen there. Truly, the site was sublime, and
Tutmose
was moved.

No doubt the prince saw it much as he, Tutmose, would have looked at a heap of clay, for its
potentialities
, not for itself. For the more clearly you see what you have to do, the less interest you have in the means whereby one does it. It is for this reason that one develops an increasingly smooth technique, or
employs
assistants to do the roughing out, for really, one cannot be bothered about details once one has thought out the idea, one wants to be on to the next thing.

And later, when one is older and much wiser, one no longer even wants to do anything so childish as to set down what one has seen. One realizes then that to give insight a concrete shape is only a form of vanity, a desire to show others that one has indeed seen. One comes to realize that the true artist is the one who does nothing at all, for by the making of vulgar images he has come into contact with something beyond images, something more satisfying, that makes the making of images unnecessary. He may occasionally make one to amuse himself or others, but once he has reached that point, his true function is to sit and watch, until he loses all consciousness of self and becomes the function of seeing itself. This, Tutmose believed, was called
mysticism, and he was interested to see whether or not the prince would go that far. He rather thought not. For though it is easy to give up everything else, to give over one’s identity it is first necessary to give over the fear of falling, and this was something religious maniacs seldom did, for it would not be necessary for them to rise, if they were not afraid of falling.

At any rate the process would be interesting to watch.

It was interesting now.

They encamped there for ten days. The entourage resembled from a distance one of those hunting
expeditions
in which Amenophis had once taken such
delight
. Indeed, that was exactly what it was, though with a different beast in view.

The first thing the prince had taken ashore was his light chariot. Once it was assembled and the horses harnessed, he stepped into it with Meryra and whirled across the plain.

Tutmose began to feel some anxiety for Meryra, for between metaphysics and too much exercise, it was a question whether terror or exhaustion would kill him first. He was the victim of a man who has taken to visions.

Yet even Tutmose had to admit that the vision was superb. Now the prince had found his bearings, he sailed into theology and city planning with the same victorious gusto and serene contempt for human
limitations
as his grandfather had applied to the conquest of Syria; and it had to be confessed that his strategy was ruthlessly as good. It was not his fault if victory in these fields was a hazardous accomplishment. Chats on theology were no longer in order. They were replaced by orders, directives, proclamations, communiqués, and, if all these failed, a temper tantrum was sure to work.

The effect on his face was remarkable. It had
suddenly
developed the glow of rotten, phosphorescent wood. This made him more interesting to depict. So far Tutmose had been simple image maker to the prince. Now he foresaw that he would be called upon to be iconographer to a myth. It was certainly a
challenge
to his skill. It absorbed him. A chance remark had given him a whole new subject to explore.

For on the prince’s part this was no longer
dilletantism
. It was mania. Tutmose had always been attracted towards those suffering from dementia, for they had one expression each, and so made perfect sitters, for like apples, pears, and the inanimate world, they decayed slowly. But mania is subtler than
dementia
, for mania grows bigger every day, until it
embraces
the whole world of experience and so becomes a mirror to all of it. While it lasts, it is inexhaustible, whereas dementia merely shrinks.

He foresaw now that he would soon be called upon to sculpt Nefertiti, and this made him thoughtful. Well, he had all day to think. The margins of the river were cluttered with a polychromed green mass of lotuses, papyrus, bulrushes, and aquatic plants. They were doomed. They would soon be replaced by buildings. But right now they were a pleasant place in which to spend an idle hour.

The prince was not idle. Every day he rattled up and down the plain, in a cloud of dust that rumbled after him like a burning fuse. Once he had driven past, the surveyors closed in behind him. They charted roads, streets, avenues, palace sites, temples, shrines. Masons built cairns wherever he imposed a building. It must all be done with enormous haste. Here would be the Great Temple. Here the Official House of the prince, here the private residence. Between them, spanning the road, would be the balcony of audience. He absolutely insisted on a balcony of audience. It was from it that the god would dispense favour, so he designed it himself.

And who was the God?

He was the God.

This had been revealed to him so suddenly, that he did not have the time to doubt it. Yet he was not
without
humility. He was not, it was quite true, literally the God. But he was the physical embodiment of the God, who was of course invisible, and in the absence of the actual deity, he was prepared to represent Him to the best of his ability.

No more was Meryra expected to deliver oracles. Yet the poor man began to lose weight and add to his wrinkles, since if anything, to receive oracles was even worse than to have to make them up, for now he was expected to fulfill them. He was given a corps of labourers and told to build the Great Temple at once. The prince paced out the dimensions himself, stalking over the rough rubble of the site, while surveyors and stonemasons followed immediately behind him.
Everything
was to be white. Everything was to be sumptuous. And it was to be built in a great hurry.

Then it was Tutmose’s turn. He was to direct the sculptors, all of them. And it was necessary to have images of the Queen. Tutmose must do Nefertiti as soon as they returned to Thebes.

It was the last thing in the world Tutmose wanted to do. He did not want to direct the works. He wished to be private. Let Bek or Auta supervise. They were both good men in their own fashion. Eventually he got his way. He would provide only the prototypes, from which the other men would work.

Tutmose sighed. Very well, then. He would do Nefertiti. In a way it would be a challenge to his powers. Being a woman, she would be more difficult to flatter than the prince had been.

They returned to Thebes, leaving Meryra and the workers stranded in the middle of nothing. He had two years to build.

Tutmose could only await developments. The prince had left Thebes an impotent fool. He returned a fanatic of genius, and a fanatic can neither stop
himself
nor be stopped. He moves too rapidly to be stopped. Willy-nilly, he goes on to the end of the night, and if he be a demagogue as well, then he will draw the world after him.

Unfortunately the prince was no demagogue. He had nothing on his side but absolute power.

W
hile they were away, Nefertiti had given birth to her third child, another girl, to be called Ankesenpa’aten. Tiiy pretended to dote on it, and was delighted, and Smenkara found himself a person of new importance. She was planning the throne to the second generation. She had only to be patient to get her own way. Nor did she think the prince would impede her. She had only to reach around him to grasp the reins of
government
again, a gesture perhaps awkward, but which would do nothing to imperil her grip.

All this she would do, she was convinced, for the good of the country. She had always ruled for the good of the country, even when Amenophis had been well enough to rule for himself. She believed firmly in the altruism of her own acts, and she took it for granted that Horemheb would believe in it too. Ay, of course, was different. Ay believed in nothing. Nefertiti was also different. But then Nefertiti had no power and so did not have to be reckoned with.

Tiiy made two mistakes in all this: Nefertiti was not in the least interested in the good of the country, she was interested in herself, and so anything done for the good of the country left her totally unmoved,
particularly
if Tiiy happened to be doing it. And Ay, though he might not believe in anything, really was concerned about the good of the country.

Nor was Tiiy any longer dealing with the prince, but none of them could know that, so the mistake was
understandable
. She was dealing with somebody nobody had ever heard of before, named Ikhnaton, who
though outwardly still the prince, was inwardly the earthly representative of a minor cult figure who had unexpectedly seized absolute theological power. In other words, the god of the family had been turned against them all.

Not knowing this, Tiiy was trying to persuade Horemheb to bring the army back into some sort of alignment with the Amon priests. The prince had caused a rupture there, and if the breach was not healed, the political consequences would be serious.

Horemheb refused.

She gazed at him open-mouthed. She simply could not believe it. She had long ago seen the decay of any sexual passion between them. But she had taken his loyalty to herself for granted. He had never swerved before.

There she was reasoning, for once, as a woman. Loyalty had nothing to do with it. Horemheb was as fond of her as ever. But he was also Commander of the Armies, and if the army could diminish the power of the Amon, that would be to the advantage of the army. In this matter, whatever he might think of anything else, he was on the prince’s side.

She complained to Amenophis. Amenophis merely chuckled. She sent for Ay. Ay in turn pointed out that there was so much unrest in the Empire that the army was essential to the collection of taxes, and that though the breach between the prince and the priests of Amon was certainly serious, a little skill and tact might heal it. Nefertiti had great influence over the prince. He would speak to her about the matter. He then took courteous leave and went to pay his court to Nefertiti, who, to tell the truth, bored him.

Tiiy shook from head to foot with rage. She sent Horemheb away, when he tried to see her, and told Amenophis that the army was disloyal. Amenophis said blandly that of course it was, for the army was a
professional
group, and professional groups are always
disloyal
to everything but themselves. And there the matter ended.

Rather than have Horemheb fall into Nefertiti’s circle, Tiiy felt it her duty to call him back into her favour. Besides, she was lonely. Inevitably her own court had begun to shrink, and she needed the
reassuring
presence of someone who was fond of her. However, she made it clear that they would never be on the same footing again. Horemheb scarcely noticed. He thought she looked old and made a special effort to be
agreeable
. Besides, Nefertiti frightened him, whereas Tiiy might almost have been his mother.

As for the nature of that footing, unwittingly
Horemheb
made it as clear as she had. For they spent the night together, and he was very tired. He was young and vigorous and she was getting older. He tried to cover up his lack of enthusiasm as well as he could, but alas, though we may lie, our bodies cannot. When he left they both knew they would never lie together again.

When he had gone, Tiiy had all the lamps in her apartment lit and did not stir out of her quarters for five days. Nor did Horemheb care for the way Nefertiti now smiled at him, as though she knew something about him that he did not. He avoided her as much as possible.

It was at this moment that the prince returned.

He was much too busy to see Tiiy. He refused to see her. He was even too busy to see Nefertiti. He had
disappeared
into a flurry of architects, builders, engineers, and experts of all kinds.

Nefertiti was not in the least discomposed. Meryra had sent a courier to tell her what had happened, and in this she saw the chance she had been waiting for. If he was now a god, then she would be a goddess. But that meant work. There would be no more children until she had the situation well in hand. She must be
with him night and day. And she was not without her sources of knowledge. Infusions of male fern, rue, sabina, and ergot of rye would keep her barren. As for the rest, Ay, whose duty it was to provide all these experts, and Horemheb, who was as quickly called upon to round up journeymen labourers, were in a position to tell her what was going on, though they did not know why. But having Meryra at her command, of course she knew why.

For it turned out that the prince needed someone with whom to discuss his plans, his gorgeous plans. Ay would not do. Horemheb would not do. Tutmose was merely a commoner. Besides they no longer had the time. But Nefertiti could discuss the plans of a temple all day long.

She not only could, but did, and so strengthened her hold over him. In return he gave her titles. By the time Tutmose came to take her portrait, she was Great Royal Wife, Divine Spouse, The One Who Walks in Beauty, the Divinely Favoured by the Sun Disk, and all the rest of it. Being both humourless and witty, she did not find it difficult to persuade herself that she was all these things. It put her in a position to dispense favour, and she believed that by favouring those whom the prince favoured, but a little more, she would win them to her side. Therefore she would favour Tutmose.

All in all, two people less inclined to like each other it would have been difficult to imagine. Their meeting was a distinct shock to each of them. For they had only to meet to know they saw through each other instantly. They had no choice but to get along, and to avoid each other as much as they could.

Perhaps one has been unfair to Nefertiti; for at bottom one feels very tender towards these people who have no tenderness, in the same way that someone who loathes cats may still be deeply moved by kittens.

With nothing to sustain them but their ambitions,
and unable to relax for a moment, they are the most pitiable when they are the least tired. They have to get on with each other, for there is absolutely no one else in the world they can talk to. There are even times when they would like to be nice. But on the whole, that is when one should trust them least. Then, at last, just when they feel most secure, they wear themselves out and are abruptly defenceless human beings again, with no one left to turn to, since they have turned away from all those who would have been their friends years ago.

It was better on the whole to be Tiiy, and be warm while one could, than always to go through life in this state of cold self-defence. The prince had no warmth either. They were together two over-bred cats, so highly refined that they could not breed with anyone but each other.

Tutmose thought that she must be very lonely. But she was also a woman. He knew better than to present her with an image of herself as she really was.
Whatever
she thought she was, she would rather be pretty.

Therefore he would make her pretty.

To tell the truth, he was angry. He did not like the way she looked at him. It threw him off his stride. It made him savage. He would rather have talked to her than to the prince. She was more subtle. But precisely because she was more subtle, they could never talk.

Tutmose had never been in love. He had never found anyone complicated enough to evoke the emotion. For the more complicated we are the more difficult it is to find anyone capable of holding our attention, for people of an equivalent complementary complexity are rare. For simple people, love is a physical necessity. But for complex people, a physical necessity is no more than a symbolic act. As they must have the most
pungent
sauces, so must they have the most esoteric charm in order to be charmed, for they do not really
eat the sauce. They savour it, and get their
nourishment
from it almost accidentally. Your gourmet is always a trifle underfed. It is only your glutton who bloats. Your true hedonist is an ascetic. For such people, the necessity comes afterwards rather than before, and for that matter may never come at all.

Yet something was happening under Tutmose’s fingers, something he detested. Perhaps he worked better than he knew.

No more sittings were necessary, he said. He found he did not want to see her again, just now.

If anything, she looked disappointed.

He smiled. That she should do so, was a point in his favour. But he was mixed up with these people, and he did not wish to be. He had only wanted to watch them.

That night he sat alone in his courtyard. She had reminded him of certain things. It is all very well to say we are artists. It is a form of self-delusion not far
removed
from that of the religious hysteric. We know that, too. But if we are artists, a good deal of our lives is spent at a window, looking out over the moonlight city, alone, wishing someone were with us, yet knowing we could not tolerate anyone with us.

For of course what we do and believe is quite silly. It is only what we could do and could believe that is not. And so we glimpse it alone, at the window, looking over the sleeping city, because we know that what we call understanding in this world of men and women is not understanding at all. At best it is merely
concupiscence
compassionately disguised as the will to oblige.

It is for such reasons that one makes images and is an artist at all. For though other people have all sorts of reasons for living, the maker of images has only one, his images.

He must have sat there until well on towards dawn, when the sky began to shimmer with the quick,
convulsive
,
metallic glitter of the throat of a
humming-bird
.

At dawn he went back to work, and a week later, when he was adding the polychrome, Nefertiti came unexpectedly to the studio. She looked at what he had done.

“How do you know I have to smile like that, without moving my lips?” she asked.

It was the detail no artist can ever resist the impulse to include, the one that ruins his pretty images.

“What smile?” he asked.

“You know what smile. I think perhaps your statues never look the same twice.”

When he looked, she was right, and he thought he had been so clever, to secure his own position with a pretty image. With that smile he had ruined
everything
.

“It is only a trick of the light,” he said uneasily.

She shrugged. “No. It is a trick of time.” She looked at the statue. Long, slim-necked, and a little impossible, it was still a queen.

“Is this the way he wants to see me?” she asked at last.

“Yes.”

“And doesn’t he see what it is?”

“No.”

“So that is what he means by truth,” she said.

He looked at her with some interest. “Truth is
anything
. Truth is only a lie we want to believe in.”

“Why?”

He did not want to answer. “You are not satisfied with it?” he asked.

She looked at him oddly. “What do you want, Tutmose?”

“I am a sculptor. I like to sculpt. And sculptors must eat.”

“Oh, you will eat,” she said. “You will do me again.”
She tapped the bust. “But on one condition. Keep this. Put it high on the studio wall, on a shelf, so it can look down on you. You see too much. Let it see you for a change. You please the prince, but you are only a sculptor. I think you sometimes forget that. I shall not.”

She did not seem exactly angry, but at the door to the studio she paused. “Do I really look like that?”

“It was the way I saw you.”

For a moment there was the ghost of a warm smile on that face. “I think we understand each other,” she told him. “It is a pity. We could have been friends.”

Then she left. After she had gone, he did as she had told him. He put the statue high in a niche in the wall, and knew it would travel with him everywhere. For she had caught him out. He had only wanted to flatter her. Instead he had caught the serene bitterness of that curious smile. For that she wanted to punish him, and he saw no reason why she should not be allowed to do so. He even found it agreeable to be punished in such a fashion.

Yet perhaps she was glad he had caught it, for that smile was what she had become. It was the one thing that made life worth living, the almost invisible smile of that ultimate defeat, success. And it was as a loss that he had shown it, though perhaps even he scarcely realized that.

Meanwhile the smile went off to play with the prince. After all, this serious game with God was to last for ever. He even had intimations of immortality. And in that case, everything had to be well planned.

Unfortunately, though we may be immortal, our bodies are not. Another member was therefore added to the intimate circle, Pentu, a physician, a dull, odious, cringing, raven of a man, but one who did keep the prince well. He was someone else for Nefertiti to deal with, until she saw there was neither good nor harm in him. He was interested only in medicine.

Meanwhile, even a mystery play requires an
audience
, and for this, too, the prince had made his
preparations
. He saw more of Horemheb these days.