Ancient Evenings (64 page)

Then as if the flowers knew how to calm the air, a peace intent with the sound of many a small sweet bird would come to us, and one could feel the cool of the day, and the murmuring of water. Now we could listen to the flowing of a brook whose stream was lifted from the Lake of the Gazelle. Beneath the songs and disputes of the birds came a steady pumping from one shaduf above another, lifting water from the pool to a stream bed that led down to another pool, a splendid sound as it reached my ear on this late night, as comforting to me, on all these borders of sleep, as the unhurried beating of my own heart, for no sound was more virtuous than water being lifted by the strength of slaves.

The streams were beautiful. The waters flowed over glazed clay bricks and over precious stones set within the bricks. The streams reflected the colors of the stones. I saw waters red as ruby, and violet streams, and a golden waterfall where the stream tumbled over plates of gold. I saw brooks with a bed that was mother-of-pearl, and one grotto was rosy as the setting sun, although here the shade was deep. By this bank, beneath the scent of an orange tree, one could see, since no lights were on the water, how the fish would pass. None was larger than my finger, and they would all turn at once if I inclined my wrist, these silver minnows looking like moonlight in the water. I could have sworn they cooled the garden with their silver light.

By one pond were no trees, but a lawn, green as the moss, and watered through the day by the black eunuchs. Too hot at noon, it was cool by twilight, and the little queens would sit on small golden chairs their servants had brought, and watch the passage of Kadima. The swan chose to pass at twilight as if she too wished to watch how the sky would draw in the night, and the birds came to settle. Then the eunuchs slaving at their shaduf could cease to turn the pumps and the water-pails moved no more. The little queens would lift the leaves from bowls of fruit. The smell of a pear ready to be tasted would join the scent of the flowers, and the feathers of the swan lifted and left ripples in the darkening air. So I knew we were in the hour when the little queens would begin to stir, some to go down to the lake to bathe, others to return to their houses, their servants and their children. Before long, the sound of lutes could be heard in every corner of the night and the laughter of their games. Some little queens were commencing their nightly beer-house. Menenhetet would walk through the gardens, following the stream from one pool to another, and the water, now that no eunuchs were turning the pails of the shaduf, made no murmur, and all the surface was dark but for the one brook whose bed was lined with gold. There, in the moonlight, shallows were bright as burnished copper, and Menenhetet, passing by the stream, would look at the silver minnows, the music all about him in the darkness, and the merriment of the beer-house. Standing by the gold bed of the stream that flowed from the Pool of Beloved Wisdom to the Pool of the Blue Lotus, he shivered at the babble of sound that came from the little queens. There was a disloyalty in their voices he could not name, an affection for each other that held no sound of awe for Usermare, as if there were happiness at His absence! Disloyalty stirred then in Menenhetet, and his breath became hushed as the water. He was ill with desire for the little queens. It was vivid as shame to be alone among so many women with not even a boy about older than ten, but then by that age, the children born here were off to the priests for schooling. All he heard were the voices of women who had no husband nor friend nor any lover but the Good and Great God Usermare. Worse. About him were all the plump eunuchs with their black muscles enriched by the air of their easy life. Thereby they were appealing to all—the hundred women and Menenhetet—attractions powerful to his senses. His loins ached, his throat was gorged, and his mouth was so hungry he would not look through their windows at the beer-house these little queens were making. In the dark, like the horse that hears a murderous beast in the rustle of a leaf, he started at each breeze. At this hour, there were eunuchs everywhere in the gardens, fondling one another with their fingers and their mouths, giggling like children, and the flesh of Menenhetet was inflamed. A desire for satisfaction came to him like the urge for carnage that follows battle. Yet he could never go near a eunuch. They gossiped like children. Every officer would hear of it. To be near a hundred queens and lie down with a eunuch. Menenhetet walked the gardens as if we were the ghost of a sentry who cannot give up old soldierly duty.

In the morning, it was easier. The little queens sang as they brushed each other’s hair. They searched through one another’s chests for clothes to exchange. They played with their children, gave orders to their servants. Since they could not leave themselves, their cooks were sent to the market for food, and scolded on their return for any flaws in the onions and meat. At the height of the day, the little queens ate at each others’ houses and exchanged gifts of fruit and oil, then decorated each other with flowers, or sang new songs. They trained their pet greyhounds, their cats and their birds. They told each other stories of their families, and taught their children of the Gods of their family’s nome, and the names of the Gods of the planets, and of the five senses and the four winds, and the Gods of the hours of the day and of the night. And in the late afternoon, after the little queens had slept through the heat of the day, they would meditate on their books of magic or mix their perfume. They would offer prayers and some would visit other little queens.

At twilight, they might go to the pavilion to wait for Usermare. On nights when the moon would be full, He was likely to arrive at just that hour when the light would rise upon His Chariot, and Menenhetet would watch from the tower gate as the Royal Runners raced ahead of Usermare through the street, then fell to the side and kissed the stone lions as the doors flew open. Then He rode in, leaving behind the two platoons of the Royal Guard, the fan-bearer and the standard-bearer, the mace-bearers and the lancers, and they, in turn, bowed to an escort of Princes and dignitaries who wheeled in their chariots and returned to their homes through the streets of Thebes, standing beside the grooms of the chariots in the near-dark, their bodies jolting to the clatter.

He was now inside. There were times when everyone knew He was coming; other nights He surprised all but the wisest of the little queens. Yet once within, nobody could say His mood. He delighted in presenting Himself as stern when He was pleased, or might be charming to a little queen and then leave her to weep in her chamber through many a night. “Leave now,” He might tell her, “your breath is impure.”

Sometimes, when early, He would sit by the pavilion and feed Kadima as she went by, and on that lawn He would often remain, talking first to one little queen and then another, well into the night. Sometimes, it was only after the rise of the moon that he would select a woman and go to her house for the rest of the night. Of course, He might select so many as seven women and there had been festival nights when He celebrated with twice seven, but on a night much like others, it was not common for Usermare to appear too late. So the little queens who waited eagerly for Him when He did not come, having been given signs by their Gods that the occasion was favorable, were obliged now to assume that other Gods had intervened, or had prayers been spoken in an unclear voice? They would raise a hand for their servant to carry away their golden chair and, furious with the perfume they had chosen, which could also have betrayed them, would walk down to the lake and wash in the moonlight, bathing away the scent of its failure.

There were little queens who might dress every night with attention, yet never be spoken to once by the King. Then, as Menenhetet came to understand, they were at last like defeated soldiers and did not try to charm the King again for many months but would stay in their homes and teach their children and wait until another season had come. If they failed on Flood, they might even wait through all of Sowing and Harvest until the fields were bare again. Some never tried a second time. There were little queens who had lived for ten years in the Gardens of the Secluded and never saw His Splendor—it was enough if they could serve as friend to a little queen who was, for a while, a Favorite. Of course, Favorites changed.

In the dry season, after Menenhetet had been Governor of the House of the Secluded for many months, Usermare arrived one night so late at the gardens that the disappointed women were already bathing in the lake. He was drunk. Never before had Menenhetet seen him so. “I have been drunk for three nights on kolobi,” said Usermare, “and it is the strongest brandy in all of Egypt.” Here I opened my eyes long enough to see Ptah-nem-hotep nod as if the drink came into His mind with all its fiery virtue at the moment it came into mine. “Yes, drink kolobi with Me,” said Usermare as He came through the Gates, and Menenhetet bowed and said, “No honor is greater,” and gulped it out of the golden goblet passed to him. Usermare asked, “Is the kolobi hard to swallow?” When Menenhetet did not reply, He said, “Does what I say have an evil smell? Drink!”

On this night, Usermare went down to the lake. It was a place He had never visited for so long as Menenhetet had been there, and thereby He surprised the few little queens who were bathing in the moonlight. Indeed they were frolicking before the eunuchs who waited on the shore, holding their robes. Now, they gave a squeak and a cry and the splashing sound of bathers trying to hide themselves. Usermare laughed until one could smell His brandy in the air.

“Come out of the water and amuse Me,” He said. “You’ve played long enough.”

So they emerged, some more beautiful under the moon than they could ever be in the light of the sun. Some were shivering. A few of the most timid little queens had not been near to Usermare for the longest time. One woman, Heqat, named after the Goddess of Frogs, had been, on occasion, His companion, and another, the fat one, Honey-Ball, had even been a Favorite until her toe was cut off. Now, she bowed before Him but with a flash of her eyes so intense that even in the night, the white of her eyes was whiter than linen. Although Honey-Ball was very fat, she carried herself as if she were the greatest little queen of them all, and did not look fat at this moment but powerful. Her hips were like the hips of a horse.

Then they were all out of the water, and their eunuchs put forward golden chairs so that they might sit about Him in a semicircle, but Usermare asked, “Who will drink the kolobi with Me?” and of them all, only Honey-Ball reached forward her hand. He gave it to her and she drank and handed back the cup and Menenhetet poured more kolobi for the Pharaoh.

“Tell Me stories,” said Usermare. “I have been drinking this brandy of Egypt for three days, and I would have done better to swallow the blood of a dead man. I have awakened each morning with a blow in My head from the ghost, but I do not know which ghost, although I could swear he is a Hittite, is that not so, Meni? Hittites carry axes,” and He cleared His throat, and said, “Once in the mountains of Lebanon, I came to a valley that crossed another valley and in the center was a hill. From that hill four streams flowed. There, I have told you a story. Now tell Me one.”

The smell of His brandy lay on the night air, full of the wounds of the grape. Usermare had lungs to breathe the flames of fire itself, but the little queens sat with throats full of unseen smoke. Heavy was their fear of the invisible fire of the brandy.

A little queen named Mersegert, small in size and loud in voice, was the first to answer. Named after the Goddess of Silence, she was the noisiest in every group. Where others might be silent, she would, when in panic, rush to speak, and now she tried to tell a tale of a poor King who wandered with his horse in the dark because the stars were covered. “O He-Who-brings-great-pleasure-to-the-altar-that-is-between-the-thighs-of-all-beautiful-women, listen to my tale,” said Mersegert in her funny voice that came from the nose like a reed pipe. “This King was unhappy and poor.”

“Of which country was he Monarch?” asked Usermare.

“Of a country that is far to the East,” said Mersegert.

“Get on with the story, but tell it loudly. Your voice is best when you do not lose it.”

“In the darkness, this King could not see,” she said. “He knew no direction. Yet the sky was visible beneath the hooves of his horse. It could not be seen above, but below, the stars were shining. The King dismounted from his horse, and lo, he was standing on the sky. The stars were beneath his feet. So he knelt and picked up one star, and saw it was a precious stone and had a God in its light. That told him to look for many more stones, and by their light, he was able to return to his kingdom, and was rich again.”

Usermare broke the air with a loud hiccup. Everyone laughed at Mersegert.

“I want a better story. It’s dark down here. We could use a few precious stones.” He squinted at each of the women. “Who have we? I see Harmony and White Linen and Hippo—” He gave a nod to Honey-Ball and a few of the little queens giggled at the name He had just given her—“and Nubty and Amentit, and Heqat and Creamy. And Rabbit. Rabbit, do you have a story?”

Rabbit was the tallest of the little queens and among the youngest, and shy. She merely shook her head. “Oasis, what have you to tell Me?” He asked. That was Bastet, named after Bast, the Goddess of all cats, but her eyes were beautiful and looked like two wells, so everyone called her Oasis.

She sighed. She had a beautiful voice, and used it well, and spoke of the nine full moons before a child could be born, and the nine gates through which it must pass in the belly of its mother. Usermare-Setpenere was, however, so bored that He interrupted Oasis to say, “I do not want to hear any more,” and took another drink of the kolobi. A silence came forth.

“Heqat,” He said, “it is your turn to amuse Me.” He burped again. The queens giggled. The sound might lap at the edge of His fire and soothe it. Tonight, however, He had had so much of the kolobi that they laughed in great doubt, not knowing if their mirth was soothing His temper, or inflaming it.