Ancient Evenings (58 page)

With these words, Menenhetet shut his mouth and did not speak again.

ELEVEN

We were left with much curiosity. The silence broke, but only into another silence, and our Pharaoh gave a wise look at the fireflies and said, “I hope you will continue. I would like to know of the next day.”

Menenhetet sighed. It was the first sound of fatigue he had uttered on many a breath, and the insects quivered behind their fine linen. Did I see what was not to be perceived, or did the glow of these mites fade in salute to the dawn that came outside the walls of Kadesh when the fires were burning down and exhausted soldiers began to sleep? It is certain that their light was less. But then I could remember Eyaseyab telling me that the finest food for these fireflies was themselves, and they ate each other.

“I do not know how much there is yet to tell,” said my great-grandfather. “Metella must truly have been cursed by his secret whore; he did not come out in the morning with his eight thousand infantrymen, nor with what were left of his chariots. Even when we took a captured officer, tied his arms to his chariot, and drove him into the river so that he drowned under their noses, Metella did not come out. I thought he was a fool as well as a coward. He should have attacked. We were so festered and unruly that morning, so entangled in a million and infinity of evil spirits that Metella could have overrun us—unless his troops had also had a night like ours.

“We held a council. Some of our officers spoke of siege, and tried to tell how Thutmose the Great had cut the fruit trees in the groves surrounding these hills in order to build the siege-walls that He brought forward against the walls of Kadesh. In the months ahead, if we did the same, the city could be taken. My Ramses listened, and looked affronted, and said at last, ‘I am not a slayer of trees.’ By that afternoon, camp was broken.

“It proved no easy departure. First, our dead had to be buried, and our wounded gotten ready for the trip. It took a lot of digging before the bodies were covered over, and the pits were never deep enough. These dead men were pressed down so tightly that a hip, an elbow, or even a head would push up and the birds must have had their pick. Of course, the insects devoured the other half. Seeing those myriads swarm over the pits before they were even covered, I knew the answer to one question forever. I learned why the beetle Khepera is the creature closest to Ra. In the middle of any hot night, beneath the silence, give a moment’s attention: You will hear the mightiest sound of them all. It is the drone of insects. What multitudes! They possess the silence.

“Needless to say, a few of our dead were saved from the birds and the maggots. Each division had a platoon of embalmers who carried a sacred table with their wagon, and they soon wrapped the Princes and Generals who had fallen. Even if you were no more than an officer (but also happened to be the dead son of a rich merchant) there was a good chance someone would speak up for your remains. No embalmer could be unaware of the award he would receive in Memphi or Thebes if he delivered a well-wrapped son back to the family. Before it was all over, a hundred officers were stacked with care on the different work carts, and though the task was done in the field, only a few of these wrapped bodies began to stink.

“The wounded were worse. Some lived. Some died. They all stank. The Divisions of Amon, Ra, Ptah, and Set traveled behind each other in so long a line that it took a day to move from the van to the rear. Now we were truly like a worm cut in four pieces. Yet the smell connected us. We moved slowly, a thick river, full of rot, and the screams of the wounded were terrible when their wagons shuddered over the rocks of the gorges.

“Of course, we were all in pain. Who did not have foul cuts and scrapes? I soon grew a dozen boils to meet my other afflictions, and you could feel the poison of these wounds growing in new places even as they were being worked out of the old. Some of us were demented by fevers after the third day, and in the heat of our march, what had seemed a victory quivered before us like a defeat. By the fourth day, we were being attacked. A few of Metella’s best troops began to follow, not enough to matter, but in sufficient numbers to raid our rear. They would kill a few, wound a few, and ride away. We would lose time in chasing them, more time in burying our dead. Since the carts for the wounded were filled, foot soldiers were now used as litter-bearers and some dropped from the heat and were left behind and had to catch up again. Others were lost altogether.

“One of the Hittite raids even tried to steal a few of the donkeys transporting the hands. We used more than ten for this purpose alone and each carried two large bags, one for either side of their back. The smell was not atrocious unless you came close—there is finally so little flesh on a hand that the skin dries quickly and by itself—although the odor from one of those baskets (if you were fool enough to put your head in) was as clear to the nostrils as rotten teeth. A true curse. Leave it alone and it would hardly stir. Go too near, and the stench lived in the lining of your nose. Hera-Ra could not keep away. Untethered, he would bother these donkeys in the worst way. Trying to bolt, they tangled in their harness, nearly strangling—donkeys in doubt always climb over one another—and in the confusion, a bag broke. Hera-Ra made a meal of what fell to the ground. I came running up to pull him away since I was the only one he obeyed besides our Pharaoh, but I was late. He had gorged on a dozen of those hands, and then more. Pictures of the Pyramids danced in his brain, then sights of great cities. I had never seen buildings like the ones Hera-Ra now envisioned in his head. They showec thousands of windows and great towers and went to vast heights. It was as if a part of great buildings yet to come was in the knowledge of those hands he ate. Yet what a dreadful meal! Hera-Ra had teeth strong enough to break your bones, although not quite—his mouth was happier in soft flesh which he liked to tear to strings. Now he broke one of his own teeth, and whimpered like a baby at the pain, yet kept on eating—all that unspeakable swallow of leathery skin, cursed smell, dried flesh, together with those little bones of the hand that crunched so hard. All the same, something in their odor drove Hera-Ra to more. He growled in real rage at me when I tried to pull him back. He wanted to take this curse Some curses we dare—we wish to penetrate them. A dull anger went up from these mutilated hands at this second destruction. But then, that was why Hera-Ra took on such a fury. It gave him visions of the future Again, I saw buildings high as mountains.

“The lion turned ill from his meal. By the next day he could not walk. His belly swelled, and his hind legs, which had suffered any number of slashes from Hittite swords, began to fester. On his shoulder, an open hole from the point of a spear turned black. He could not keep the flies away. His tail was too weak to brush them off. We built a large litter and six men carried him, but Hera-Ra’s eyes took on the dull shine of a dying fish. I knew the hands in his belly were gripping his vitals, the little bones flaying his intestines like knives.

“My Pharaoh was with us ten times a day. The royal Wagon’s golden walls and golden roof were deserted by Him, and He walked along the litter beside Hera-Ra and held the beast’s paw, and wept. I cried as well, not just for love of Hera-Ra, but in the terrible fear of knowing that the animal would not have gotten ill if I had kept him away from the donkeys’ bags.

“Once, His tears washing thin lines through the black and green cosmetic about His eyes, Usermare-Setpenere said to me, ‘Ah, if I had vanquished that Prince of the Hittites who met Me alone, all would be well with Hera-Ra!’ and I did not know whether to nod or deny His words. Who could decide whether it was better to encourage His wrath against Himself or take it on my back—I should have known the answer. My good Pharaoh Ramses the Second was not made to bear His own anger.

“Then the lion died. I wept, and more than I would have believed, and for a little while my sorrow was all for Hera-Ra. I even wept because no man had been my friend so much as that beast.

“Few of the embalmed Princes had also been granted the honor of having their organs properly wrapped. The provision wagon of the embalmers could carry a few sets of Canopic jars, but how many can you treat when it is four jars to each fellow? Even Generals were having their organs thrown to the woods. For Hera-Ra, however, the embalmers used the next to last set of jars, and his wrapping was supervised by Usermare-Setpenere Himself. Indeed, I heard the rage in His voice when He examined the intestines and found bits of broken bone protruding from the coils like arrowheads of white stone. By the look my Pharaoh cast at me, it was clear that I was out of favor again.

“My punishment, however, was not so simple this time. He had me travel with Him often in the Royal Wagon. We sat on chairs of gold and looked through open windows at the chasms of the gorge, while we rocked perilously within. Certain bumps so tipped the wagon (which was high enough inside for us to stand) that we all but went over.

“Sometimes, He would not say a word. Just wept silently. The eye-paint streaked. The Overseer of the Cosmetic Box would repair Him, a nimble fellow, nimble as Nef”—this with a nod to my father—“and we would sit in silence. Sometimes when we were alone (for on occasion the King would wipe all cosmetics from His face and dismiss the Overseer) He would speak briefly and in gloom about the campaign. ‘I did not win, I did not lose, and so I have lost,’ He said to me once. Since His eyes did not leave my own, I nodded. It was the truth. But not even the Gods love the truth when it scores each breath. Before the day was out, He said to me in the gloom of the carriage, ‘You should have given your arm to Hera-Ra before you let him eat those hands.’ I bowed. I struck the floor seven times with my head even though the floor of the carriage was bumping like a rock in a fall. It hardly mattered. A sigh, long as the sound of the death that had come out of the lion, now came from the throat of Ramses our Second, a terrible sound as though the eyes of the lion were losing their light once more. What can I tell you? I thought often of the meaning of that sigh, and realized that the death of the lion was the end of Usermare’s happiness at the sight of me. In the heart of His rebuke was the thought that if I did not know how much my good fortune depended on the health of His beast, then good fortune and I were best separated.

“We were. By the time the troops returned to Gaza, I was transferred from the Household Guards of Usermare-Setpenere to the charioteers of the Division of Amon, and I may say that no division of the four was in worse repute after Kadesh. Still, we were given a good reception by the natives of Gaza, and I was not surprised. In the last days of our return, people cheered us on the road. A runner traveled in front to tell them that the Armies of Ramses the Second had scourged the Hittites from the field.

“I think my Pharaoh must have listened to His messenger. He had healed from His wounds and looked magnificent. On the last day I would see Him for what would yet be fifteen years, He was on the parade ground at Gaza. There He displayed the winged bull of the Hittites and gave it to the city as a gift. This captured God, He told the multitudes, would protect our eastern frontier. By the next day, we began our march to the Delta, and, once there, sailed up the river to Thebes. I sat in the same crowded galley with my back pressing against the knees of the man sitting behind me, and since the winds were not steady, our trip upriver was even longer than the descent. Soon after our arrival, I was sent on duty into the depths of Nubia. That is to say, my King was banishing me to a distant place called Eshuranib. In command of a small detachment, I went up the Nile as far as a boat could go, and then had twenty-four days of march across a desert whose heat I will not soon forget.” Even as.he spoke these words, I could see such a desert before me. “In that time,” he said, “I gave my farewell to every great and exalted moment I had known. The desert was hotter than the steam that rises from the Land of the Dead, and I was an officer without a true command.” He ceased, he nodded, and said, “I think I can end my recollections here.”

TWELVE

There was a sigh.