Ancient Evenings (111 page)

Then we passed through a long tunnel with a bull’s mouth at the end, and in it, I saw twelve victims who lived in a lake of boiling waters. The stench of the lake was so powerful that birds flew away in panic so soon as they passed over, yet I could not smell the stench of the sulphur, although I saw many dragging their shadow behind them, and one lake was so crowded that it had two rows of forty-two cobras within, and they had no need to spit fire since the word they uttered was sufficiently terrible that the shadows of the dead withered before them.

In the Fifth Bend of the Duad, were twelve mummies. Even as I watched, a God with the head of a jackal came near and told them to cast off their wrappings, remove their wigs, collect their bones and flesh, and open their eyes. For now they could desert the caverns of Seker and rise to the great estate to which He would lead them. But farther on was only a pool of boiling water and so they were without an abode in the caverns of the dead. In the Sixth Bend of the Duad, I saw a God with the head of a fish, and He could pacify monsters of the sea by shaking out a net to His own powerful incantation. He knew the genius of the net and how to tie knots that would confound monsters and I saw the beetle Khepera and His bulk was very great, even the size of eight lions, and He moved through every fire without being scorched. I saw Khepera navigate the gold and silver Boat of Ra through the body of a great serpent, and indeed, He entered by a hole in the tail, and emerged from the mouth, and in the Seventh and Last Bend we even passed by the monster who is named Ammit, and He is the Eater of the Dead and usually rests at the side of the scales while Anubis weighs the heart of him who will be judged. So soon as the heart is too heavy for the feather of truth, then Ammit will devour it. And He was a monster with the head of a crocodile, the legs of a lion, and the most hideous smell. Indeed, it was so awful that even through the wall, a whiff came to me, and in it was the stench of all the foul hearts he had devoured. I thought again of the first time I smelled the breath of the ghost of the Necropolis, and wondered if in the hour when I approached the scales, and the truth of my life appeared, would my heart also be part of this stink? But it must. When the heart was without evil, it weighed no more than a feather, and mine felt as heavy as a Canopic jar.

In our alcove within the Pyramid of Khufu, now that there was no vision on the wall, I did not suffer much fear. While these visions of the Duad had been as thick as mists, and I could hear the screams, still they did not shiver in my Ka, nor did I cringe before the flames, and there was no great heat. I began to wonder if what I had seen was the Land of the Dead or merely its Khaibit? Could it be that Khert-Neter had ceased to exist? Had what I witnessed been no more than its memory of itself? I thought of the outraged tombs of the Pharaohs, and how Their bodies had been brought together in one cave where they were so packed in on Themselves, mummy upon mummy, that perhaps the Duad could breathe no longer. Yes, the loss of the tombs of the Pharaohs might mean the end of the great river of the dead and all its territories. Was that why Khert-Neter had only appeared before me like an image on the wall, and I knew no fear? If so, my Ka would not know how to find Anubis, nor would my heart be weighed. There would be nothing, after all, for Ammit to eat.

Yet I did not feel relief. Through my life I had listened to descriptions of what could befall you in the Land of the Dead, but now I had to wonder if one’s anguish might prove more simple. Because now I knew how I had died, and could count the waste of my life, and that was suffering enough. As if to answer my thought, I saw before me the face of Hathfertiti, and she was more disfigured than a leper. I could not say how she had perished, but by her flesh it was certain she had been allowed to decompose for many days. Before I could even wonder who had taken such revenge upon her Ka, I knew it was not revenge but simple precaution I beheld. Nef-khep-aukhem must have ordered that the body of his wife be left unattended after she expired. When a husband is jealous of a wife, there is no trust in the embalmers. To allay all fear that they will make love to the body of the deceased, the husband does not allow her to be preserved until she has begun to rot.

Or, had Ptah-nem-hotep been the one to leave such commands to treat her so? I could not even know whose heart was as hideous as this vision of her altered face. Oh, that was cause for agitation more than any sight in the Land of the Dead. My true suffering came up again. Did I have any memory? How could I prepare?

It was then that my great-grandfather put two fingers gently on my knee, as to squeeze forth the quietest attention, and began to speak.

EIGHT

“It is true,” he said. “The Duad is no more than a ghost. But then you must understand that you have been dead for a thousand years. The Pharaohs are gone. Egypt belongs to others. We only know weak Princes, and they are the sons of men from far-off places. Even the nations have changed. One hears no more of the Hittites. There is one land on the other side of the Very Green that you would not have known in the years when you were alive. It is a country far to the north and west of Tyre and yet enough time has gone by for this people to grow great, then lose their strength. That is the length of the time that has passed. Now, another great nation lives even farther to the west across the Very Green, and the people of that nation were barbarians when you were born. Our Gods, if we speak of Ra and Isis, Horus and Set, are now in their possession. If you think of the story I told of our Gods at the beginning of our travels, I will now confess that I imparted it to you in the way that these Romans and Greeks tell it to each other. That is why my tale was familiar yet different from what you know. For our Land of the Dead now belongs to them, and the Greeks think no more of it than a picture that is seen on the wall of a cave. So you will do better in the trials ahead if you comprehend the humors of their mind. In our day, Ra was neither old nor decrepit but the source of all radiance, and Horus may have been weak in the legs but He was the Lord of the sky and His feathers were our clouds, His eyes were the sun and the moon. Even Set had the power to shake the heavens with thunder. But the Greeks know less of the differences between Gods and men, and the Romans wish to despise such differences. So they tell the story in their manner. Of course, their Gods are smaller than ours. In the true account, which I did not relate, I could have described how in the hour that Set brought His last accusations against Horus and lost, the Gods most certainly did not laugh at Him, as the Greeks would have it, but dragged Set into Their great hall and threw Him on the ground. Then They demanded that Osiris sit upon the face of Set. That was necessary to declare the victory of righteousness over evil, and is our idea of a throne. Whereas the Greeks only see it as a chair for Kings so noble as to love knowledge more than the Gods.

“Think, then,” he added, “how fortunate you are that I am your guide. I have been on so many travels through Khert-Neter that now you are able to avoid the last of its fumes. Why, the worst you have known of such matters is my coming-forth in your mouth, and that was so horrible you could take no more. You are spoiled. You will never know the suffering of a true death.”

He said it, and I felt a peculiar woe. If I would never encounter the trials of the Duad, then a void would dwell in the last of my seven souls and spirits. My Ka would never encounter a true test of its courage. I might even live forever and never die a second time, but then there is no loneliness, I decided then, that is worse than being ignorant of the worth of your soul.

I sat there in the pits of a new misery. Upon me came the weight of the failure of my great-grandfather in his four lives. I could feel how the magnitude of his desire remained as large as the pain of his defeats. All he had wished to become, even his unbalanced appetite to become a Pharaoh, could be measured by the adoration he knew for Osiris. Because as I remembered from his descriptions of that Lord (try as he would to confuse me with tales of the Greeks!) my great-grandfather must live near to the sorrow that dwelt in the heart of the Lord of the Dead. Who but Osiris hoped to discover what would yet come forth from Gods unborn? Indeed how else could I comprehend the feelings of the Lord Osiris if I did not share them myself? He was the God Who longed to create the works and the marvels of the future. So He suffered the most from every high purpose that failed. He would know how bitter it had been for my great-grandfather to be so defeated that the taste of his seed was foul?

Yet I had no more than lived through the onset of such faint compassion for my great-grandfather and his Lord Osiris, when the most astonishing phenomenon began. I reached over to put my hand on Menenhetet—I was lonely indeed—and as I did so, he disappeared. Or, so I thought. It was too dark to see. Yet, where his body had been, was now a darkness deeper than the darkness that surrounded me, and I felt a faint odor in my nostrils, delightful as the perfume of the rose. Then the walls at my back ceased to feel like stone but turned soft and commenced to collapse like the muddy sides of a riverbank. I could hear water pouring into our chamber, and then all I breathed was overcome by one whole stench—no question whether I could smell it!—I was in the rush of the river. Across from me was now a sight of the Elysian Fields, and the grain was golden and the sky blue, but the current tore through my legs in a tumult of forces. The wall receded from me even as I took each step. The stench grew worse, the waters rose above my head and I did not know how to swim. By the horror of my limbs, I knew I was sinking into fecal waters. Down on me came the outrages and squalors of life. The furies of my shame were choking my breath. I had no strength to contest these waters, and was ready to give up my will. But my shame began to expire as well. A peace that was like death itself, as darkness comes to the sky in the evening, was on my heart. I was ready. I would die my second death and know no more. Even the abominable onslaught of the offal ceased to be loathsome. I could smell the odor of a rose once more, indeed it was like a rose at evening.

Then, I heard the voice of my great-grandfather. “You do not have to perish,” he said in my ear.

I knew what he meant. His thought had come already to my mind—it came with the peace that was like death itself. One might drown in the bowels of this river and be washed into the fields. The last of oneself would pass into the plants of the field.

Or—could one have a bold and final choice?—could one enter another fundament? At the center of radiance was pain.

I felt the shadow of my great-grandfather embrace my Ka. The sweet smell of the rose was no longer here. The stinks were upon us again. I loathed them. I did not wish to die a second time. Yet I did not know if I dared to enter the fundament of pain. For I was worthless, and my great-grandfather was damned and worthless, and we were beset by mighty curses. I felt the sorrow of his heart, however, come into me, and with a thought as beautiful as radiance itself: If the souls of the dead would try to reach the heavens of highest endeavor then they must look to mate with one another. But since the soul was no longer a man nor a woman, or to know it better, now contained all the men and women among whom one had lived, it might not matter in the Land of the Dead whether the vow was taken between a man and a woman, two men or two women, no, no more was required than that they would dare to share the same fate. By that blessing, for I saw this thought in great radiance, so was I also given a vision again of the absurd old man full of farts whom I had met in my tomb. His body had reeked of the Land of the Dead (inasmuch as he had had the stubbornness to swim the Duad, but not the strength to leave it) and now I perceived that in his loneliness, he wished for me to join him. The tales he had told our Pharaoh, had been told for me as well. It was I whom he wanted to trust him. And I did. Here in the Duad, in this hour, I would trust him.

I felt the Ka of Menenhetet expire. With one convulsion, the power of his heart came into me, and I knew that my youth (my demonically thwarted youth!) would be strengthened by his will, strong as the will of four men, and he was strong indeed.

Many lights appeared above my head, and they were like a ladder of lights with many rungs. I seized the first, and began to ascend from the river. The ladder twisted and was not easy to climb, but, as it swayed, the fields of gold on the other bank receded from me, as did the waters, and I took the rungs of this ladder one by one, and each rung was as strong as the umbilical cord of each person I had known well, and I felt the embrace of their bodies. They came about me as I climbed and held my arms, and I could not move to the next rung until I lived with the honest thought of how I loved them or how I did not, and recalled all I loved most in each, and all I loved least. There was every loss in my limbs as I passed again through the early love of my mother, but I had to grapple up the rungs of her fear of me when I was no longer a child but her lover, and I wept for Ptah-nem-hotep that He had not become a greater man but a smaller one, and tasted His expiring love for Himself in the fatigues of my breath, yes, and I went up on the spirits of the dead until I was high above the Pyramid.