Ancient Evenings (71 page)

“That was the end of the rite but only the beginning of the pleasures of that night. Now, it was I who scourged her buttocks, and they were as large as the moon and as red as the sun by the time I finished, and I say it, I learned the art of the stroke, for it was not my arm that held the scourge, but her heart drawing it in upon herself, so that I felt as if I were beating upon the swell of her heart itself, and then to my astonishment and to my horror, since I had never done this for anyone before (not even for Usermare) I grasped those great mounds of her much-whipped buttocks, and put my face into the fold of her true seat, and with a mighty voracity kissed her in the place where all that is soon to die is most redolent. And what with all these exertions, she smelled stronger than any horse. She did the same to me, and we rolled about with our faces buried in the ends of each other, and were married by this ceremony, and would never be the same. Then she gave so many kisses to the gates of my buttocks that by way of her caresses, I came to feel like a Pharaoh lying on His back, and did not know whether to claim I was the husband or wife of all Egypt. Carried on such lovely currents, I could feel again how there were purposes of which she did not speak, and I was becoming the servant of her vast intentions.

“I use the word
vast
, and it is proper. In nights to follow I could lie beside her as happy as a man asleep on a boat, yet dreams would stir in those great breasts that left our boat on a ledge of the highest cliffs, and we would come awake, clinging to the rock. For I knew the intent of our magic—it was our magic now—could be no less than to take away the strength of Usermare, and often when I looked at her face I would see the fine intelligence that lives in the eyes of that most austere God, Osiris, and that would make me feel much like Horus of the North. Indeed, staring into one another’s eyes (and like Queen Hat-shep-sut, she would often wear a long and narrow chin-beard) Ma-Khrut had all the bearing of the Lord Osiris.”

“What,” asked Ptah-nem-hotep, “was your Secret Name?” I did not expect my great-grandfather to be quick to give this answer, yet to my surprise he did. “Why,” he said, “it was ‘He-who-will-help-to-turn-the-neck-of-Usermare,’ and the name soon rebounded on me. I had to give it up.”

“And you will tell us of that?”

“I will. But later if I may. Indeed I knew it was a dangerous name. However, she was most frank about that. If I was to be the great servant of her magic, I must be ready to die. That she told me often, and always added, ‘But no longer like a peasant.’ No, now I must learn to die in the full regalia of embalming. Like the art of learning to kiss, death belonged to nobles. I used to laugh at her. I need this strengthening of the will?—I, who had looked at a thousand axes—but she knew better. She understood, as I would soon, that to die peacefully can be the most perilous way of all, since one must then be ready for the journey through Khert-Neter.

“Over and over, she wished to assure me that no servant of her body and heart, certainly not I, would lose Ma-Khrut’s protection. Neither in this world nor in the next. I told her that in my boyhood, in my village, we knew it was only nobles and the very wealthy who could travel in the Land of the Dead with any hope of reaching the Blessed Fields. For a poor peasant, the serpents encountered were so large, the fires so hot, and the cataracts so precipitous that it was simple prudence not to try, indeed never to think of it. Easier to rest in a sandy grave. Of course, as I also began to remember, many of our village dead did not accept such a rest, and came back as ghosts. They would pass through the village at night and talk to us in our dreams until the burial practice in my region became so harsh as to cut off the head of a dead person and sever the feet. That way a ghost could not follow us. Sometimes, we would even bury the head between the knees and put a man’s feet by his ears to confuse him altogether She gave a silvery laugh when I told her this. The light of the moon was in the tenderness of her thoughts, whatever they were.

“It was then she rose from our bed, and picked up a sarcophagus no longer than my finger, yet Ma-Khrut’s face and figure were painted upon the lid. Within was a mummy the size of a short caterpillar, so carefully wrapped in fine linen that it needed no resin, indeed, its touch was as agreeable as the petal of a rose. I was holding the carefully embalmed mummy of her little toe. Yet before I could so much as decide whether it was of great value, or disagreeable to behold, she began to speak of the travels of her little toe through the gates and fiery courses of Khert-Neter, and when I babbled that I did not know how any part of the body, much less a toe, could travel by itself, she gave her silvery laugh once more. ‘By way of a ceremony known only in my nome,’ she said. ‘Sometimes those who are from Sais do not know so little,’ and she laughed again. ‘My family had the Ka of this toe betrothed to the Ka of a fat and wealthy merchant from Sais. Yes, they even provided him with the appropriate rolls of papyrus.’ I knew her well enough to understand she was serious, and at last she told me the tale. On receipt of a letter from her mother, Honey-Ball learned that this merchant died on the same night she lost her toe. So, even as her toe was lying in its small bowl of natron, so was the merchant lying in his bath, and both of them to be steeped for seventy days. Messages were exchanged to make certain they were wrapped on the same afternoon, and installed in their separate sarcophagi, the large and the small, and both on the same evening, the toe in Thebes, the fat merchant in Sais ten days’ travel away on the river, yet such is the natural indifference of the Ka to any measure of distance that her toe was ready to take the voyage to Khert-Neter with him.

“Then she spoke of how her mother had had to assist the fat man’s family during the preparations. The widow was instructed in which kind of shabti dolls to order, and who were the best craftsmen on the Delta. ‘A shabti doll may weigh no more than your hand, but it has to stand properly on its wooden boat. This poor woman didn’t even know where to place the dolls once he was in the tomb. It is terrible when a family makes its wealth so quickly that no knowledge adheres to the gold. They couldn’t name which rolls of papyrus to buy. Nor did the widow understand that, no matter how much it cost, she was obliged to buy the Chapter-of the-Negative-Confession.’

“ ‘The Chapter-of-the-Negative-Confession,’ I repeated wisely, but Honey-Ball knew I was as ignorant as the fat man’s family.

“ ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘the widow complained about the cost. She was stingy! Finally my mother had to pay for it herself. She was not about to let the Ka of my little toe go wandering through Khert-Neter unless he had the Negative Confession. The night before the funeral, my mother had to hire two priests, and it took them until dawn to inscribe it properly on thrice-blessed papyrus. But now at least the merchant could show the Gods, the demons, and the beasts that he was a good man. This papyrus testified that he had never committed a sin. He had not killed any man or woman, nor stolen anything from any temple. He had violated none of the property of Amon. He had never uttered lies or curses, and no woman could declare he had committed adultery with her, any more than a man could say he had made love to other men. He had not lived with a heart full of rage, and he never eavesdropped on neighbors. Neither had he stolen desirable land, nor slandered anyone, and he did not make love to himself. He had never refused to listen to the truth, and could swear that no water destined to flow onto the property of others had been dammed up by him. He never blasphemed. He had not even raised his voice. He had committed not a single one of the forty-two sins, not one. Most certainly he had never worked any witchcraft against the King.’

“Now Honey-Ball laughed with as much pleasure in her voice as I ever heard. ‘Aiiigh, Kazama, what a foul man we helped! There was no sin he did not commit. His reputation was so putrid that everybody in Sais called him Fekh-futi, although not to his face.’ ”

Both Hathfertiti and Nef-khep-aukhem stirred here at the sound of this name, but neither said a word, and with hardly a pause, Menenhetet continued.” ‘Do you understand,’ Honey-Ball said to me, ‘the powers of this Negative Confession are so great that the Ka of my toe is safe.’ She nodded. ‘In my dreams, that is what I am always told. Fekh-futi thrives in the Land of the Dead, and my little toe beside him.’

“ ‘Thrives?’ I said to her. I was much confused. The night before, seeking to impress me with how much wisdom she had acquired from these travels of her toe, she said that no priest could instruct me as well in what to say to the fiery beasts and the keepers of the gates. She not only knew the names of the serpents, but was familiar with the apes and crocodiles on the banks of the Duad, and her Ka had spoken to lions with teeth of flame, as well as to lynxes with claws like swords. She could use the words of power to take you past lakes of burning oil and had learned the herbs to eat when traveling through the quicksand in the darkness beyond each gate.

“Moreover, she could consecrate any amulet I might need in Khert-Neter. The amulet of the heart, for example (which, properly blessed, would offer new strength to my Ka) or the two gold fingers (that would enable me to climb the ladder that ascends to heaven) she even knew how to purify the amulet of the nine steps (that led to the Throne of Osiris). Moreover, she was ready to paint onto papyrus the words of many a Chapter I would need, and began to tell me their separate titles: Of-Coming-Forth-by-Day and Of-Living-after-Death, the Chapter-of-Passing-over-the-Back-of-the-Serpent-Aapep, the Hymn of Praise for the West, the Chapter-of-Causing-a-Man-to-Remember-His-Name-in-the-Underworld, the Chapter-of-Repulsing-the-Crocodile, and the Chapter-of-Not-Allowing-the-Heart-of-a-Man-to-be-Carried-Away. I did not know if I could follow it all, there were so many: the Chapter-of-Living-upon-Air, and the Chapter-of-Not-Dying-a-Second-Time, the Chapter-of-Not-Eating-Filth, or, Holding-a-Sail (so that the vessel of one’s Ka might be blown forward through the worst of the stink). There was the Chapter-of-Changing-into-a-Prince-among-the-Powers, Into-a-Lily, Into-a-Heron, Into-a-Ram. Nor was that all. There was the Chapter-of-Driving-Evil-Recollections-from-a-Man, or Of-Not-Allowing-the-Soul-to-be-Shut-In. Also the Chapter-of-Adoring-Osiris, and then there was a Recitation for the Waxing of the Moon. Each time I thought she had come to the end, she would remember another—the Chapter-of-Coming-Forth-from-the-Net, and the Book of Establishing the Back-Bone of Osiris. She spoke softly, but these names began to sound as loud in my mind as the cries of a vendor.

“ ‘You’re equal to the Royal Library of Usermare,’ I said.

“ ‘I would do all of this for you,’ she told me. I could hear how much love was in her voice. She would, indeed, take true care of me in the Land of the Dead. She wished me to have no fear of that place. That way, I would have less terror in her ceremonies.

“I was now altogether confused. She had spoken of the need for me to have all these amulets and Chapters, yet with it all, Fekh-futi had still been given one little piece of papyrus full of lies, blessed by who knew which drunken priests fondling one another through the night.

“ ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘the thrice-blessed Negative Confession was not written for Fekh-futi alone. It is also for the Ka of my little toe.’

“ ‘Can you say that you have committed none of those forty-two sins?’

“ ‘The virtue of the papyrus is not to be found in its truth but in the power of the family who purchases it,’ she admitted at last.

“Her words sat heavily on me. Ma-Khrut might claim to be able to do much for me, but the more likely truth was that we were both in peril.

“I told her this. I hardly had to. She knew my thoughts.

“ ‘We could be killed together.’ She said this calmly, even as we lay side by side in her bed.

“ ‘Then why do you tell me the names of all these Chapters? You would not be left behind to write them for me.’

“ ‘That,’ she said, ‘is why you must commit the words to memory.’

“ ‘All of them?’

“ ‘It can be done.’

“ ‘You have done it,’ I agreed.

“Ma-Khrut might know how to memorize the prayers she would need, but her memory was mightier than my muscles. I did not even feel the desire to try such feats. She might be as wise as the Royal Library, but she was also so stupid as not to know there was going to be no bath of natron for me. Usermare would cut me into forty-two pieces, and strew the parts.”

It was at this point that my mother (whose thoughts had strayed into her own childhood) now asked, “Who is this Fekh-futi?”

Menenhetet, annoyed at the interruption, did not look back at her. “Not the same man,” he said, “but another Fekh-futi in an earlier life, even as I am not who I was yesterday.” With no more than that, he went on, “It was in this hour, I tell you, that I recollected the wisdom of the Hebrew, Nefesh-Besher. Maybe I, too, in my last breath, ought to leap out of myself into the belly of my woman and be born with a new body and a new life. But so soon as I had this thought, I wanted to return to my own bed. There I could draw a circle around my head forty-two times in order to keep such thoughts from traveling. Indeed, so soon as I left her side and was back in my own house, I began to drink from a jar of kolobi and soon swallowed all of it. The sad truth was that I did not know if I wished to end as a child in her belly. Did I want to be the son of a woman who had tasted the leavings of another man?

“It was then I knew how much I was married to Honey-Ball, and how much I was oppressed by her. Even in my own room, I did not dare to have any thoughts. Saying this to myself, the near-empty jar of kolobi in my hands, feeling as drunk as the Good and Great God Usermare, I made the circle forty-two times about my head and fell away from vertigo. The trials and ambushes of the Land of the Dead had become as twisted in my mind as coils of entrails.

“When I awoke next morning in the stupors of kolobi, I turned over on my bed and said to myself, ‘The evil spirits of the night are abroad.’ For behind the protection of my forty-two circles, I still hated Honey-Ball, and was most happy with the few thoughts she could not reach.