Ancient Evenings (103 page)

Usermare said aloud:

“Let there be terror of Me,

    “like the terror of Thee,

“Let there be fear of Me,

    “like the fear of Thee,

“Let there be awe of Me,

    “like the awe of Thee,

“Let there be love of Me,

    “like the love of Thee.”

Bak-ne-khon-su lifted the Red Crown of Lower Egypt and the White Crown of Upper Egypt and placed them on His head.

Usermare touched His Sceptre, His Flail, and His Double-Crown. “You have come forth from Me,” He said, “and I have come forth from Thee.” Now He stood in silence, and looked about the room staring at many of us, one by one, until the silence was equal to a great commotion, and His heart was beating like a stallion. Then, I knew myself at last, and I was indeed “Master of the Secrets of the Things Only One Man Knows,” for I knew His heart, and the terrible fear in it, and the great pride, and when He looked at me, I also knew for the first time that He loved me and valued me. For with His eyes, He asked, “What shall I do?” I felt His fear again. There is no magic whose terror is more powerful than the fear of a Pharaoh before the strength of His Son. To choose Nefertiri would calm every force that might rise against Him. With Rama-Nefru, He would only possess the radiance that is in the light of far-off lands. Yet His pride that He was the One was great, and He hated to bow before His fear of Amen-khep-shu-ef. In that uncertainty, as He stood there, Rama-Nefru was thinking of Her child. I saw the ringlets of Prince Peht-a-Ra, the black curly Hittite hair, and felt Her great fear. She whispered to me, “Tell Sesusi to take the other—I fear everything if He chooses Me.” It was good that She spoke in Egyptian, for Her own head was a Hittite babble of sounds I did not know, and then I felt the heart of Nefertiri with its two hearts: one like a rose in the petals of its love, and the other a flame, and I did not know whether to send the thoughts of Rama-Nefru to Usermare, for if the Pharaoh were to choose Nefertiri, I would be like a finch, picking worms out of the crocodile’s lazy jaws. No, I could not suffer that again.

In this moment I did not understand why He decided to do what He did, but I know now. In the embrace of Your mind, Great Ninth of the Ramses, I see Him, and understand that He could never make His choice from fear, or He would be no longer divine. The Gods could bless His power, or withdraw Their blessing, but no Pharaoh would ever decide a matter by the cheers or groans of His people—no, He must be true to the honor of Kadesh!—and so He looked away at last from Nefertiri, and extended His arm to Rama-Nefru. She stood up with a small sob and walked across the floor. Heqat was weeping openly, and I did not need to look in the direction of Amen-khep-shu-ef. Temple walls, I was certain, could crumble before His eyes.

The musicians played, and Rama-Nefru was seated in the Ancient Throne of Amon. Even as Her buttocks came to rest, much as if She had disturbed a small pool, so did the beer in my mug begin to froth. I do not know what songs were sung, nor how soon it was that the nobles began to leave, I do not even remember whether Honey-Ball passed before my table with her family, or did not, for I sat like stone, and was certain all the light in the room had altered. I could no longer see the golden illumination of each candle in the million and infinity of candles that decorated the Pavilion, but rather witnessed all before me through a red haze that was like the darker fires on a battlefield at night. and it was in this hour, although no one at the Collation would learn until later, that Peht-a-Ra, much disturbed by the unspoken excitements of the night, ran from His bed into the garden, there to step into the covered coals of a fire and screamed so piteously that Rama-Nefru writhed on the Throne of Amon. All who saw it said that the ancient gold of the God sent forth tortures to Her skin, but it was the flesh of Her child She felt, and I did not learn for many years, not until well into the middle of my next life, that these burns so crippled the legs of the child that the young Prince walked like Horus and had no strength in His feet, and died before He was three years old.

But I knew none of this. I sat in the light of the red haze that had come down upon me, and in my heart was the greatest panic, and the largest determination I had ever known. So I knew what Usermare felt. At last I took a breath and told myself again that I would guard against my death no longer, but like Nefesh-Besher would be ready to enter it, and would not turn back, no, I would not turn back. Yet my decision had no more conviction than the weight of a feather. But then I may have been close to my next life already, and, like a priest, was telling myself that the difference between a great truth and a dreadful lie might in the moment of greatest anguish weigh no more than a feather upon one’s thoughts, and so I conceived of a feather and watched the flutter of its fall and knew a stirring of beauty in my heart. Was that the knowledge of truth?

I left the Pavilion of the Collation. Even as the Pharaoh had come in first, so would He be the last to leave, and I did not take farewell of Him nor of Rama-Nefru, but walked past the pool of the Eye of Maat whose surface now reflected the full moon tonight, and thought of the Hittite Sappattu. The white of my linen looked as brilliant to me as the pale wealth of the moon, and I could see the lands across the Very Green. For the first time in my life I thought of those lands much to the North where it must be as cold as the moon, and I do not know if it was the silence in which I traveled, or whether like a man already dead, I passed between Nefertiri’s soldiers like a ghost, but I slipped into Her chambers, and the beer had not frothed in my mug for too little—She was waiting for me.

“Not here,” She said. “I do not know how soon Amen-khep-shu-ef will be back from talking to His men,” and before I could think of what this meant, She led me into Her gardens and we stopped in a bower by a small fountain with the leaves of a tree overhead. There was a marble bench cool to our skin in the moonlight, but Her body was warm and most passionate and tender, for She was also weeping. When I bent to kiss the first of Her magnificent breasts, She hugged my head with both hands, and whispered, “I will make love to you tonight by all three of My mouths,” and began to laugh, the echoes of Her laughter sounding through the gardens, “Yes, I may as well,” She said, “for you are the third of three men I love, and the only one on whom I may count, is that not so?”

I grasped Her with all my strength, with too much strength. The truth is that I was weakened by love for Usermare again. I could hate Him no longer, and if, last night, I had known the strength of a bull, now I had no more than the loins of a hare, but She was washed by pain on one hand, fury in the other, and never had I known Her more passionate. If She made love to me by all three mouths, She also called on many a God to wake my limbs, and my toes, my bowels and my lips, my belly and my heart, yes, even my mind and the long bow of my back. but the more passionate She became, the colder became my own heart, for in my fear I also had my pride, and would feel no fear, so I was very cold and much like a priest, indeed, I was a priest in the embrace of a lion, and as She spoke all those words so much alike upon which She loved to play, spoke of my lips and the banks of the river, of my heart and Her thirst, of the door of my mouth and the palanquin of my belly (for now She was above me), of the limbs of my legs and the little limbs of the mouth between Her legs, She also cried out as I entered, oh, so suddenly cried out, and with harsh words of fucking and theft and murder.
“Nek, nek, nek,”
She muttered, “fuck you, kill you, murder you,
nek, nek, nek
, you are My bowels and My grave, My eyes and My mind, My death, My tomb, oh, give Me your phallus, give Me your seed, come to Me for the slaughter. Die!” She said, “See, behold, oh, die,” and we turned over, and She lay on Her back, the gates opening within Her. The Bull of Apis was in Her womb and the wings of the Divine Falcon, but in a quiet voice She asked, “Will you kill Him? Will you kill Him for Me?” and when I nodded, She began to come forth, and with such force that I, trapped like a climber in a fall of rocks, was swept along with Her, and in the fall, saw the islands of Her womb rising from the sea, and my seed rode forward in the channel between.

Yet in all the ways I could have met Her on all the great days of my life, I came forth instead in one small spurt, and my seed would never have reached Her home for I was not in it, no, it merely came out of me, and then I felt the hand of heaven on my back, a tongue of flame, a spear of anguish, seven times I felt such fire reach into each of my seven souls and spirits and the force of those blows drove me forward into my seed. Then I was beneath some water and swimming. I felt my heart divide. The Two-Lands sundered.

I rose up into the air and looked down on my body. It lay on Her body, and Amen-khep-shu-ef was above us both, wiping His dagger on my back, and there were seven founts of blood spurting forth from me. She was screaming, I think it was so, although in all my four lives I cannot swear to that, but I believe She said, “You fool, he would have done it for us,” but then the part of me that had floated upward now sank back again into my seed, and I have some memory, dim at best, of many travels taken. Sometimes I seemed to dwell in a tent with many soft winds without, and sometimes lived by the banks of a shore and crocodiles went by. But as I died, I believe I entered the life of my own seed, and was reborn again in the proper season from the belly of Nefertiri, and as a cause of all the fears with which I made love the last time, yet by virtue of the audacity of the venture, my second life became the highest compromise of my ambitions, and I ended as a High Priest. But that is another story, and has nothing to do with Kadesh.

FOURTEEN

“What happened to Amen-khep-shu-ef?” asked my mother. I knew then, if I did not know before, that by her refusal to honor the end of Menenhetet’s story with a proper silence, her feelings toward him were now void of mercy.

This rudeness inflicted upon the pain of his recollections, he only sighed, and said, “For the act of killing me, no punishment would have come. But Amen-khep-shu-ef was in a rage at His mother, and, so, with two slices of His knife, He cut away Her navel, thereby severing Her connection to Her royal ancestors. At once, in remorse for this act, He cut off His own navel. Since He was even more savage with Himself than with His mother, He collapsed in Her gardens from loss of blood.

“Now, Usermare was still in the Pavilion, yet His vision saw what had happened, and having no one at His side whom He could better trust, He sent Pepti to dispatch His Son. The Chief Scribe, finding Amen-khep-shu-ef prone from loss of blood, lost not a moment severing the spinal cord at the back of His neck. For this unhesitating deed, Pepti was made Vizier, and served Usermare well. I never estimated the man nor his abilities with proper measure.”

“And Nefertiri?”

My great-grandfather was silent. “Since She was my mother, I cannot speak of Her in this fashion. You would do better to respect my silence, for you are still no more than my granddaughter.”

VII
 
T
HE
B
OOK OF
S
ECRETS