Ancient Evenings (34 page)

“Yet no more than one faithless servant, you say, is the reason for these terrible stories.”

“I would not make that claim,” said Menenhetet. “I have done many things of which pious people—and those who are less than pious—would not approve. But in the public mind, two foul suppers equal all the rest. It is a great pity. There is so much I would teach.”

“Yes, I believe that. You may have been much slandered. Although I wonder. Is it,” asked Ptah-nem-hotep, “no more than these stories about the bats that stick to you, or is it—and I will be as frank as the license of this night—is it not the subject of excrement itself that captures your thoughts? I have heard it said that as a doctor, your cures were extreme.”

“I have led,” said Menenhetet, “by my own understanding of such matters, an upright life. I have no fear of any subject, not when I can speak to a Pharaoh as wise in His understanding as Yourself. No,” he said, “no, I feel no shame in telling of these mysteries. It is others who cannot bear to listen.”

“I know I cannot,” Hathfertiti told him. “The evening will be marred.” She said it in so strong a voice that my great-grandfather looked at her with all the force of his eyes, and the strength of his will went back and forth with hers until she could stare at my great-grandfather no longer. It was his hour.

“If you would speak,” said Ptah-nem-hotep.

“I will,” said Menenhetet, and inclined his head to Hathfertiti. “We do not know,” he said, “how such thoughts came to Egypt, but for a long time we have concocted our medicines of monkeys’ dung, the pellets of snakes, goat balls, the manure of horses, cow flop, bird droppings, even the matter of our own honey-pots.” He paused. “There came a time when I was obliged to ponder the qualities of the food we eat. Not only do we take our strength from it, but what we cannot use, or what we do not wish to use, is cast out. Excrement is full of all that is too despicable for us, but it also may contain all that we cannot afford to take into ourselves—all that is too rich, too courageous, or too proud for our bearing. If this is the Night of the Pig, then I say to You that more honesty, generosity, and loyalty to Your service is going to be found in the turds of Your nobles, grand ladies, and Your High Priest, than comes from the words in their mouths. For whichever food will nourish hypocrisy is quickly absorbed by Your royal friends, but every virtue You might wish them to guard for You is passed through.”

“Well said,” said Ptah-nem-hotep. “None of this is wholly strange to My ear.” Indeed, His voice was so thin that He must have shared some of my great-grandfather’s bitterness. There, in the lovely light of the fireflies, He argued, however, with the question. “Can you,” He asked, “ignore the wisdom of the common people? They certainly regard clean linen as a sign of rank. Whoever is immaculate can take a stick to a fellow who is filthy. We even speak of a man we do not respect as equal to dung. Yet, your logic intrigues Me all the same. I cannot dispute it instantly. It is so curious. If our excrement carries away not only the worst of us but also the best, how could you find any virtue in the bowels of a man of noble character? By your argument, the meanest poisons ought to come out of him first. In that case, is the reverse not also true? Doesn’t the poor man offer gold by way of his rear end? Why has the common wisdom of Egypt not brought everyone rushing to the meanest latrines of the foulest beggars? Think what wealth, bravery and generosity has to be found in the evacuations of such wretches.”

Now, Hathfertiti roared with laughter.

My great-grandfather was, however, undisturbed. “Yes,” he said, “like the Lady Hathfertiti, we laugh at shit—but then, we always laugh when a truth is suddenly disclosed and as quickly concealed. The Gods have tickled us with the truth. So we laugh.”

“You do not answer the question, my great-grandfather,” I burst out suddenly.

“Are you interested?” asked the Pharaoh.

I nodded profoundly. The room rang with laughter, and I wondered of which truth I had just given them a glimpse.

“Yes,” said Ptah-nem-hotep when everyone was silent again, “I, too, want an answer.”

“I would agree,” replied Menenhetet, “that a noble man would reject every foul temptation in his food. So, indeed, his leavings can offer nothing but mean poisons, and that would always be true if it were not that some noble men live with a terrible shame. When offered the opportunity to take a great chance, they do not dare. After all, one cannot welcome every trial presented by life, or the bravest of us would soon be dead. Yet, on the consequence we must recognize that each time a difficult choice is avoided, the best part of a noble man chooses to depart by way of his buttocks.”

Ptah-nem-hotep looked again at my great-grandfather. “I still do not understand,” He said in a voice that mocked the subject as much as it betrayed His interest, “why the turds of riffraff are not coveted then by My Councillors? How could anything, according to you, be more invigorating for such people than a bath in the worst slops?”

“Your Councillors know better. The poor and wretched have the power to put a curse on their excrement. Otherwise, not even shit would belong to them.”

“I am most impressed,” said Ptah-nem-hotep, “by this last remark.”

“It was so well said, my Lord,” said Hathfertiti. Her voice had turned coarse, and I wondered whether it was the conversation, the wine, the beer, the pig, or all of it. She was certainly less respectful to my great-grandfather, and wanton when she looked at the Pharaoh. Several times I tried to enter her head but could see little more than an uproar of naked bodies as bawdy as wrestlers in a pit. Then I recognized the face of Ravah in the swarm, and Ptah-nem-hotep, and my father, and great-grandfather, were also there, my mother among them naked and with her mouth open.

THIRTEEN

Even by the pale light of the fireflies, I could see that Ptah-nem-hotep was not calm. If at first I thought the cause for His disturbance was equal to mine, and neither of us could forgive my mother for her outrageous inclinations, I soon recognized that my great-grandfather’s conversation must have had as much effect on Him. In either case, my Pharaoh’s mind was now concerned with buttocks. In His thoughts, they were all about Him. Then they became one great pair that turned into the face of Khem-Usha.

At this moment, my Pharaoh stood up, and, to everyone’s surprise, beckoned to my great-grandfather. “Come,” He said, “there is a room I would show you.” For a moment, I even thought He would invite me as well. His eyes seemed to stare again into mine with great love—or so I believed—but then He stepped out with my great-grandfather, and, much to my mother’s vast annoyance at so sudden a departure, was gone.

She stood up as soon as they had passed between the pillars, and walked about like a panther tethered to a stake. I had once seen such an animal in my great-grandfather’s gardens, and on the instant he was thrown a piece of meat, the beast would snatch it in the air. So was my mother ready to tear at my father in the moment he said, “I speak not to upbraid you …”

“Do not speak,” she said.

“I must tell you.”

“Is the child asleep?” asked my mother.

I gave a sad whimper, as from a dream, which was not so false, for I always felt sorrow larger than myself when they would fight.

“You do not see,” said my father, “how women throw themselves before Him every day. He is bored by such excessive attentions.”

“I do not throw myself. I offer myself. And I do it to delight you. For if I succeed, what will give you more pleasure than to know for the rest of your life that every time you come forth into me, He will also be there?” She came to a stop in her pacing. “Doesn’t that moisten your little heart? Say you do not want the Pharaoh to know me for a night.”

“Please be silent. The air has echoes.”

“Everyone knows I am prodigiously faithful to you.” My mother gave her coarse laugh.

My father whispered. “I tell you to remember that you are a lady. I do not recognize the woman I see tonight. You laugh so crudely.”

“Is that your true speech? I may do what I want, but until I do, please act like a lady.”

“I do not think that is what I wish to say.”

“Yes, it is. You say it very well. You speak as well as I used to speak when we were first married. You see, old friend Nef, you stole my good manners, and left me yours—which come from your father—that horrible man. If I am too crude for your taste, it is because I, a Princess, made the mistake, when young, of liking you.”

After such a speech, my father was silent; indeed, he was always silent after their quarrels. They ended with my mother victorious and carrying herself like a Queen, but then, my father was so sly in his defeat that I often wondered if he did not make himself indispensable to my mother. Could she ever feel so powerful with anyone else?

Still, on this night, my father surprised me. He returned to the quarrel after it was lost. “I think you are stupid,” he burst out. “You are doing it all wrong. Admit, at least, that I know Him well. He is a Good and Great God, but He lives with many burdens. So He is not drawn to women who are much pleased with themselves. Such women are overbearing in His eyes.”

“You are wrong. He has no Queen, and wants one. He has not even an attractive mistress. In His heart, and I have lived in His heart on this night, He is raw. There is no Goddess to be the sole of His foot, to kiss His thigh and anoint His sword. He is a Pharaoh without a Crook …”

“Be silent.”

“… or a Flail. I would be His cunt and His rudder, His precious stone and His slave. I need to hear no more from you about my manners, you son of a shit-collector.”

“You are a fool,” said my father. “You want Him so much that you will push Him away. Then He will look at me and think, ‘I have felt fear before the woman of My Overseer.’ He will never forgive me for that.”

“I will have Him,” said my mother, “before this night is over.”

“It will turn out badly,” said my father. “If I lose my position, we will be seen as the servants of Menenhetet, and not much more.”

She did not reply, but I could feel such a large greed live next to such great fear in her, that I did not wish to be near them any longer. Since I could not discover Ptah-nem-hotep nor my great-grandfather in my thoughts, nor have any idea of where they had gone, so did I slip down the first steps into sleep, but my eyes had barely closed before I met in my wanderings no one other than the High Priest Khem-Usha, and he drew close, and his face was as large and round as the moon. He smelled like the incense that is laid into a winding cloth. Although, by opening my eyes, I could still see my parents, they were not in my dream. Instead, the Pharaoh now came forth and stood beside Khem-Usha.

“Speak to us of spells,” said the High Priest to me.

A small force, felt as clearly as a finger pushing on my forehead, brought my eyes up into the large round face of Khem-Usha, and I said, “To set a spell, one must walk around the walls. One must encircle the foe.”

“Hear the child,” said Ptah-nem-hotep. “You will learn much from him, Khem-Usha.”

I do not know why what I had said was worthy of praise, but I spoke the next thought so soon as it came to me. “After you have made a tour of the walls,” I said, “you may look for a way to enter them.” I did not know what I meant so much as I understood that I was now, and most certainly, in some kind of spell. For by its power, Khem-Usha disappeared and I saw my great-grandfather and Ptah-nem-hotep in a strange room, and listened to their conversation.

Of course, I could not be certain whether my Monarch and Menenhetet had been silent during my parents’ quarrel and only began to speak now, or whether all that I would soon hear should have been lost, if not for the power of my spell to bring back their voices.

I do know that I could still see the fireflies in their cages, and my parents lay apart, reclining on separate sofas, the sense of disagreement between them as still as a wall. I continued to lie on my couch but could barely keep before me the pillars of this patio, for I was seeing another room more clearly and it was like the place where painted fish had swum along the floor beneath my feet. Here, however, were paintings of the fields in time of sowing, and the faces of many peasants leading their cattle. I even saw the hooves of these animals spattered with mud, and among them, leopard’s tail in His left hand, the golden crook in His right, was Ptah-nem-hotep standing with His golden sandals on a field of mud, but I knew the mud was painted for His feet remained immaculate.

“You spoke,” He said to Menenhetet, “with such clarity that I decided to take you here. Since no noble other than yourself has entered this chamber, you will be the first to witness what I have brought forth. Come, I will show you,” and He took my great-grandfather by the elbow, a most exceptional courtesy, and led him over to the dais on which was a golden throne. Beside it was a golden trough, and above, a golden shaduf. Now Ptah-nem-hotep lifted the golden seat of the throne to reveal a seat of ebony beneath and it had a hole.

“You were not as alone in your thoughts,” He said to Menenhetet, “as you supposed. You could not know it, but each morning it has been My habit to meditate while I sit on the Golden Bowl. For years, I have been contemplating the afflictions of My Two-Lands, yes, our lack of rain and our beneficent flood (on those rare years, at least, when it chooses to be beneficent!). I brood upon our valley so deep in its black soil, so incomparable in its fertility, and so narrow, such a little strip of cultivation between the desert of the East and the desert of the West. Then I sometimes think that our Egypt is not unlike the crack between two great buttocks. Do you know, that curious thought enabled Me to feel a little veneration for the custom of the Golden Bowl. As you know, everyone says of Me that I am lacking in sufficient piety to be a good Pharaoh, but a wise leader does not look to feel false respect. Each morning when the Overseer would take that little golden pot with its contents—My contents—out to My herb garden, I would be cheered by the observation that the Gods know how to take care of many matters through one Pharaoh. So They would employ My leavings as carefully and usefully as My thoughts, My words, the grace of My gestures, or My decrees. As you spoke, it therefore became clear to Me—and most agreeably, most warmly—that My thoughts which had always seemed so curious to Me, so near to unacceptable (even if I am a Pharaoh) were shared by you. I felt stronger in all that I already believed. Each morning, you see, I had told Myself that whatever in Me was failing to serve the interests of the Two-Lands, whatever I might lack in dedication, piety, raw bravery, and martial spirit—for, alas, I am a prudent man—were, nonetheless, all present in My stool. By that path could My gardeners bring forth the most splendid herbs and vegetables and flowers and spices to enrich those priests, officers, and overseers I consider most devoted to the Life-Health-Strength of our Egypt. For years that has been a most reassuring thought. I have made lists of particular men and women who deserve to receive this produce. Even today, I told a scribe to send eight tomatoes to Rut-sekh, that worthy rock-cutter. Contemplate, then, My horror when I discovered in this last year that the Overseer of the Golden Bowl was a thief. On torture, he confessed that he was selling to sorcerers. My garden had been receiving
his
excrement in substitute for
Mine!