Ancient Evenings (83 page)

“She was a mighty Queen, and great as the greatest Pharaohs,” Nefertiri said, “She attached the chin-beard to Her face that all Pharaohs wear. And even as the God Hapi has breasts, so is it said that Hat-shep-sut had the divine member of Osiris, strong, and with three branches. With it, She could make love to Her architect.” Here, Nefertiri began to laugh, and with much pleasure.

Hat-shep-sut was a Queen of strength, Nefertiri told me, because She was descended from Hathor. No Monarch who has such a Goddess for an ancestor can ever be weak. Terrible punishments would come down upon cities when Hathor would attack, and She was so fierce in Her massacres that blood would even flow uphill so much was it pushed by the blood behind. In the face of such fury, Ra saw that no one in Egypt would be left alive. So He sent many Gods to the barley fields, and They fermented grain in this blood and brought seven thousand jugs of this beer to Hathor. Her lion’s mouth crusted with gore, She was still slaying the troops of all mankind. “Pour out the beer,” said Ra, and the Gods inundated the meadows until Hathor, looking upon the new lake, began to drink and was ferocious no longer, but drunk, and wandered about, ignoring mankind until it could begin to recover.

As Nefertiri told me this tale, so did I remember the Battle of Kadesh, and smell again the field where we roasted meats in the night, and the Division of Set arrived with camp followers. I thought of all the men and women I had known by two mouths or three that night. No sword had been so strong as mine but the sword of Usermare, and He was in the other field counting hands. I could see again the tent of hands, and blood on earth, red once from the wounds and again by the light of the campfires, and I was returned to the joy of seizing lovers I did not know and entering them. So, the smoke of those fires returned to my chest, and my Queen Nefertiri had thereby warmed me further. In the mirror, Her eyes had the light of campfires. Beneath the woven-air, Her breast rose and fell. Even my awe before Her was no longer like the chill of a temple but more like the cold blue fire of the altar when salt is in the flame.

Now, She set aside the mirror, and gave Her attention to my short linen skirt, only She did not look upon it with desire, but calculation, in the way I might approach a new horse before considering whether I wished to mount. Then She gave a sigh. Whether it was at the monumental rage of Usermare if He knew Her thought, or my own not so subtle tortures, I cannot say. However, She most certainly drew a circle around Her head before proceeding to tell me another tale.

That was of still another architect. Back in the era when people were crude, and there were no monuments, there had been a sad reign of a Pharaoh Horus Tepnefer-Intef, a weak King Who stored His plunder in a vault built by the architect Sen-Amon.

Horus Tepnefer-Intef feared for these riches and so the walls of the vault were of great thickness, the stones even chosen by Sen-Amon himself, for he was a mason as well as an architect. At night, however, after his laborers had left, he polished one stone, and set it on so perfect an incline that he could draw it forth from the wall. So Sen-Amon slept with the knowledge that the riches of Pharaoh Tepnefer-Intef were, if he desired, his own. But he was old and stole nothing. He merely visited the vault with his oldest son, and counted the King’s fortune.

When Sen-Amon died, his son, however, went in with his younger brother, and they took as much gold as they could carry. Since the Pharaoh also liked to count His hoard, He soon discovered the theft. Full of consternation, He set a trap.

When the thieves returned for more, the lid of a sarcophagus fell on the younger brother, and he cried out: “I cannot escape. Cut off my head so no one will recognize me.” His older brother obeyed.

When Tepnefer discovered the headless man, He was frantic with terror. He hung the body by the wall of the main gate and told the guards to arrest whoever would weep beneath. “This was,” said Nefertiri, “a terrible act for a Pharaoh to decree. We honor the bodies of the dead. Tepnefer-Intef must have been a Syrian.

“The mother of the poor dead thief did not weep in public, but she told her oldest son to rescue the body of his brother, or she would claim it herself. When he went by the wall at evening, therefore, he fed the guards wine. Soon, they were drunk and asleep, and he cut down his brother and escaped.”

“Is that all of Your story?” I asked. I was disappointed. The stone that slid in its socket moved in me as well. As the brothers stole the gold, I had felt a first stirring in myself. Yet now, the thought of a headless body lay on me like the weight of a coffin’s cover.

“There is more,” said Nefertiri. And She told me that this peculiar King, Tepnefer-Intef, infuriated by the cleverness of the thief, was unable to sleep. Tepnefer-Intef even commanded His daughter, Suba-Sebaq, famous for Her wide-open thighs—“they can only be Syrians,” said Nefertiri—to open Her house and receive all men, noble or common, who came to visit. Any of these men would be free to take his pleasure by way of any of Her three mouths if he could entertain Her with a true account of the most wicked deed of his life. So She learned of the escapades of the worst men in the reign of Tepnefer-Intef. Many of these stories exciting Her, the men learned much of the smell of the meat in the three mouths of Suba-Sebaq, “that slut”—now did Nefertiri’s clear voice deepen in my ear. Such was Her excitement, that Her thighs came apart and I could see in Her parted hair, the eye of Horus gleaming. Then Her voice, rapt as the oncoming of the river, went on to tell of the ingenuity of this oldest son of Sen-Amon. To prepare himself, he cut off the arm of a neighbor who had just died, and concealed it beneath his robes. Then, he went to the Princess. In Her Chambers, he told how he had rescued his brother’s body. But when the Princess tried to seize him, he gave Her no more to grasp than the arm of the dead man. It came right out of his robe, and Suba-Sebaq fell backward in a swoon. Then, while She lay beneath him, the thief made love to Her by all three mouths.

“After he left, Tepnefer-Intef so admired his boldness that He sent out word He would pardon the fellow. Thereby, the son of Sen-Amon disclosed himself and married Suba-Sebaq and became a Prince whose wife was known by half the men of Egypt.”

Now, Nefertiri kneeled before me, raised my skirt, seized my swollen but still sleeping snake, gave a small tug with Her slim and playful fingers, said, “Ah, this arm does not come off,” and proceeded to give Her beautiful face to my limb. As the royal mouth came down upon my honor, my desire, my terror, my shame, my glory, I began to feel the seven gates of my body with all their monsters and snares, and a great heat, like the burning of the sun, blazed in me. Then I was alone again, and the fires were subsiding. She was no longer on me with Her mouth. “You smell like a stallion,” She said. “I have never smelled an unperfumed body before.”

I knelt and kissed Her foot, ready like a hound to slaver atrociously upon Her sandal. I wished to abase myself. The sensation of Her lips upon the head of my phallus remained, and that was like a halo. My cock felt as if it were made of gold. A glow rose in me. I could die now. I need feel no shame. The woman of Usermare had given me Her mouth, and so my buttocks were my own again, yes, I could have kissed Her feet and chewed upon Her toes.

“Truly, Kazama, you smell dreadful,” She said in Her fondest voice and wiped Her mouth as if She would never have any more of me. But then, She knelt, and despite Herself, gave one queenly teasing lick of Her tongue, light as a feather, along the length of my shaft, down into the tense bag of my balls, and around, a fleeting lick.

“You stink! You smell of the end of the road,” She said, which, in the Court of Usermare where people spoke so well, was the worst reference you could make to the anus, and I wondered if something out of the marrow of Ma-Khrut’s fats, some thirst of the lost Pig, or slime of the hippopotamus, must be oozing forth from me, an abomination, or so I would have said until I saw Nefertiri’s face, and another Ka was on it. Her delicate features had their own thirst. She was full of folly.

FOURTEEN

“Oh, I adore how dreadful you are,” She said. “Did you visit the Royal Stables? Did you rub the foam of a stallion’s mouth all over your little beauty?” She took another lick.

I nodded. I had indeed gone to the Stables before coming here. I had rubbed myself, and with one of Usermare’s horses, no less, back from a ride with his groom and not yet rubbed down, I had managed to get my hand full of the slather of the beast, nor had I known why.

“You are a peasant. Common as Lower Egypt,” She said, and teased what I had anointed by way of Her fingertips, clever as starlings’ wings, but with Her tongue and lips as well, a flutter into the ferment of my seed.

I knew what a mighty revenge She was taking upon Usermare. She never left the crown of my shaft, indeed She called it that, “the crown,” and in a crooning voice, almost so pure as one of Her blind singers, said, “Oh, little crown of Upper Egypt,” and laid on the butterfly wings of Her light tongue, “Oh,” She said, “doesn’t the Upper Crown like to be kissed by Lower Egypt,” whereupon Her tongue curled like the cobra that comes forward from the Red Crown, and She laughed at the mating of the two, as if She would laugh again when the White Crown and the Red of Usermare were together on His head, and He was solemn with His ceremony. “Oh, don’t you spit at Me,” She said, “don’t you dare, don’t let that wickedness of yours begin to shine, don’t let it leap, don’t let it dance,” all with the sweetest little kisses and tickles of Her tongue, trailing the fingertips of one hand like five little sins into my sack and over my shaft, and all the while She played with words in the way I had so often noticed among the most exalted, but all such games were nothing to what She said to me now. It was as if Her heart had tasted no pleasure in so long that She must croon over my coarse peasant cock (and She called it that) and called it by many other names, for after each tickle of Her tongue, I was “groaner,” and “moaner,” “knife,” and “stud,” “inscriber,” and “anointer,” and then, as if that were not enough, She spoke of my “guide” and my “dirty Hittite,” my “smelly thickness,” and lo, they were all much like the sound you hear in
mtha
, although a little different each, and then using a word so common as
met
, which I heard every day, now came such sweet caressing sounds as “Do you like the way I tickle your
vein
, My
governor
,” and She gave me a nip with Her teeth, “or is it
death?
” Yet, if it were not for the cleverness of my ears after the Gardens of the Secluded, I might have thought She said, “Do you like the way I tickle your governor, My death, or is it the vein?” some such nonsense, but we were laughing so much, and enjoying ourselves so freely that She began to flip my proud (and now shining) crown against Her lips, and She cooed at it and called it “Nefer” but with a different meaning each time so that it was sweet. “Oh My most beautiful young horse,” She said, “My
nefer
, My phallus, My slow fire, My lucky name, My
sma
, My little cock, My little cemetery, My
smat
,” and She swallowed as much of my cock as Her royal throat could take, and bit at the root until I screamed, or near to it, but then She kissed the tip. “Did I hurt My little
hen
, My provider, My
hemsi
, My dwelling place? Oh, is he coming forth?” and indeed I would have been all over Her face and spewing on the woven-air across Her breast, and there to watch Her rub it into Her skin slowly and solemnly as if painting the insult to Usermare upon Her flesh—such was all I saw in Her mind—but the coming-forth turned upon itself with all rude force, clear up my fundament, into my cave, seizing my heart, and drew all the joy in the head of my cock right back into my sack, and I knew we had made no small commotion. Yet I had small fear of that. Her Palace was not like the Secluded where every house had its walls yet every sound belonged to all. Here were no walls around Her rooms. Her bedroom opened to a patio that gave on a garden which ended in an arbor beyond which was a pool. So royal was the air, however, and so sweet and heavy the music of birds, and the cawing and barking of Her falcons and greyhounds, that She had no concern for gossip. Who would care to carry such a tale? Her body servants were not only eunuchs, plump as geese from rich food, but silent as fish. For they were also without their tongues—a considerable cruelty, to be certain, but done, I learned later, not to silence their speech, although it did, but by order of Usermare so they could not lick Her. Indeed, if it would not have made them too hideous in appearance, He would have cut off their lips as well. Of course, He did not protect Himself altogether. Once, later, She whispered to me, “They have marvelous fingers, these Nubians.”

I speak of such matters, but by now the desire aroused in me was like a fire that could melt a stone. As I stood before Her, trembling, all but flinging myself and my seed in all directions at once, a fire in my stick, and honey in my bowels, my mind was aflame with the stories She had told, and I had to seize myself at the brink before the cream of my loins was shining on Her queenly face. But I had another desire now, large as Usermare Himself. It was to fuck Her, fuck Her good, good and evil. She was murmuring, “Benben, benbenben,” but with such little twists and stops of Her mouth, such a beat of Her breath that as I heard it, benben said all too many words, “Oh,
come forth
with Me, you little
God of evil
, you
fucker
, give Me your
obelisk
”—for that was also a
benben
—and then Her gown of woven-air was gone, and Her field was open before me, Her thighs like slim pillars, and Her altar wet with the passions of my tongue.
“Hath, hath, hath,”
She panted like a cat in heat, “Let us
fuck
, let us
fly.
Come into My
flame
, My
fire
, My
hath
, My
cunt
, come into My
snare
, enter My
sepulchre
, Oh, come deep into My
cemetery
, My
sma
, My little
cemetery, unite
with Me,
copulate
with Me, come to your
concubine, O heaven and earth, hath, hath, hath!”