A God Against the Gods (30 page)

Nefertiti

I am dressing now for the Window of Appearances. The ladies have bathed me in oils and unguents, perfumed my body (which will be clothed, this time, in sheath of gold; it will
not
be naked, whatever he says), dressed my hair, placed my blue crown carefully upon my head. Now it is time for gentle Anser-Wossett, still my faithful friend and helper though she has never understood or really approved of what we are trying to do in Kemet, to rouge and paint the skin, to shadow the eyes with malachite, to pencil in the eyebrows and the long lines above and below the eyes that elongate them almost to the temples, to touch the lips with ochre and highlight the perfect cheekbones—to make me, in short, what I am, the most beautiful woman in Kemet and in all the world.

Even on the days when I do not show myself in public, I devote two hours to this: it has always been, in a sense, my principal weapon. I am fearful now that it may become my only one.…

“Window of Appearances!”

Appearances are what we mostly maintain, nowadays.

I accompany him here, I accompany him there: we worship with the girls at the Aten’s temples, we show ourselves to the people, we hold our picnics, we make our occasional visits to Memphis and Thebes, we have earnest old Bek and rising young Tuthmose portray us in informal domesticity as no Pharaoh and his family have ever been portrayed. We live in truth … and my heart cries for him, even as I feel him turning against me.

Two things cause it, I think. One is this damnable boredom, which seems to be both effect and cause, as it seems to drain his energies and hinder him from advancing more rapidly and decisively toward his objective of establishing the Aten as Sole God over all the other gods of Kemet. The other is my cousin Smenkhkara, who, quite innocently at first, but now I fear not so innocently, plays upon boredom to achieve—what?

I do not know, really, for he already has everything. He is as near physical perfection in his way as I am in mine. He is a prince of the blood and thereby automatically a god himself. He is presently heir apparent and unless we have sons will remain so and—if he lives—will in due time succeed my husband on the throne. He will soon—very soon, if I have anything to say about it—be married to Merytaten, that jealous and ambitious girl, and that will confirm his succession beyond all challenge. Why cannot he not be content with all this? Why must he do me the ultimate insult of trying to take my husband from me?

But let me, of course, be honest also: let
me
,
too, live in truth. No one is ever taken from anyone who does not want to be taken. Smenkhkara is, I think, both thrilled and delighted with his new role; but he would not have it were it not the will of Akhenaten to give it to him.

Why this is I do not know. I have been his love and he mine since childhood, I have supported him unflinchingly through his illness, I have given him six daughters, I have been his faithful and unflagging companion in all his adventures of the mind and of the spirit, I have been at his side without a moment’s rest or hesitation in ten years of attempting to raise the Aten to its rightful place as Supreme Ruler of the universe. I have adored him always and I have felt that he always adored me. I would like to think that he still does. I
do
think that he still does. But there is a withdrawing, a retreating, a subtle but growing reserve in our relationship. Behind it I see the gleaming smile and laughing eyes of my glittering cousin, who goes about the world attracting the adoration of all as naturally as he breathes.

So, once, did I. So, still, do I. But I begin to fear it is not enough to hold the one heart beside which all others are as dust to me.

In truth, you might ask, why should I care about it so much? See him as the people see him, see him as even faithful Bek and Tuthmose and gentle Anser-Wossett see him: see him as the grotesque about whom all Kemet secretly jokes, even as they come out in dutiful thousands to watch him pass. See him as the evil jest that Anser-Wossett, with fear and trembling but with the courage of her love for me, placed before me just a day ago: a child’s toy she had purchased from a vendor in the street, the man of course all unknowing her connection with the Palace, else he would have fled in terror.… A tiny chariot, drawn by tiny horses; a tiny woman and six tiny girlish figures at her side; and holding the reins, the figure of—a monkey.

See him as he is, the grotesque, the malformed, the monstrous, the awkward One who shuffles as he walks, who can barely rise without assistance, whose belly is fat, whose breasts are pendulous, whose hips are as broad as though he had borne ten children himself, whose shanks and arms are spindly, whose face and head are narrow and elongated—“Horse Face,” my spies tell me they call him in the bazaars—whose voice is either near falsetto in normal conversation or near croaking when filled with emotion. And see how such a One misgoverns Kemet, letting all drift while he pursues his crazy dream of the Aten!

Grotesque, malformed, incompetent dreamer! Why should I love such a One or care what happens to him or be worried if he removes his ungainly presence from my side and foists it on someone else? Why should I care, I, Nefer-Neferu-Aten Nefertiti, Chief Wife, Queen of the Two Lands, most favored, most lovely, most serene, most beautiful woman in all the world?

Why should I love to joke?
Why, by the Aten, should I care what happens to him?

But I do.

I do: I do. And it does not ease the pain in my heart one bit to realize that the emotions that motivate my cousin Smenkhkara are undoubtedly very close to mine: an adoration complete from childhood, an implicit belief in what his brother is trying to do for his god, a very fond and genuine love—and pity, the final ingredient which in the end crushes at last all resistance and leads on to whatever the beloved desires.…

Were Smenkhkara a street boy or a soldier, I could deal with him better. But he is not: he is my own blood, and him, too, I have loved, in a different way, since he was a baby. And about him, too, I care, for I understand, and I respect, the impulses that are driving him—may already, I fear, have driven him—into his brother’s arms. For his brother’s need for love and affection is desperately great, and if I have somehow failed him, then in one part of my heart, though it kills me, I can say: if there does exist someone who can satisfy that need where I have not, then for his sake I wish them happiness.…

But it is hard: it is very hard. I must pretend, I must go about the cares of family and affairs of state as though all were as before. I must never permit the mask to crack, I must always be calm, composed, serene, unchanging … and so I am. I have only broken down once, and that in secret and with my father, who knows all and tells no one. He comforted me as best he could, but I know he too is very worried: for once, his enormous strength of character was not enough to quiet my heart. If anything, I only disturbed the balance of his, which is not good for the Two Lands or our House, since so much depends upon his steadiness.

Anser-Wossett adds an extra touch of kohl beneath my eyes and gives me her sweet and gentle smile, as understanding as she dares permit it to be: There are dark circles she wishes to hide, and I think she begins to suspect the reason. All Kemet must be wondering, now that I have asked for my own palace. It indicates something, certainly. I am sure the speculation runs through the nobility’s houses, the peasant huts, and all the bazaars and market squares from the Delta to the Fourth Cataract

I shall probably have to give some public reason soon, if only in order to quiet all this; it will be no help to the Co-Regent or to me to have it rumored that we are on the verge of an open break—if indeed we are. I do not feel that way: I feel curiously lightheaded, remote, almost detached. I cannot believe the situation to be as serious as my request for a separate palace would seem to indicate. Therefore the public reason will be of help to me too: perhaps I can partially believe in myself, and thereby negotiate more easily my passage through the days.

I think I shall let it be known that I have decided that the upbringing of the older girls now requires some separation from their younger sisters. It can also be publicly put about that Merytaten and Smenkhkara will soon be married, and that I wish to instruct Merytaten—as if anyone can instruct that cold little fish!—in the duties of wifehood. I must also separate, if possible, Meketaten from her father, before he attempts to do with her what he did with Merytaten—one more pathetic and no doubt equally foredoomed attempt to beget the son I have not so far been able to give him. (I believe his plan would be to declare the child, if a boy and if it lived,
my
son.)

Also, I need to supervise Merytaten and Ankhesenpaaten more closely, because already there is a fierce rivalry between the two girls, not only competition for their father’s affection and mine, but looking forward to the time when they may be vying for the throne itself. Meketaten we will marry to Tutankhaten in due course, if she lives—but she is a sickly girl, and it may be, particularly if she is forced by Akhenaten to bear his child, that she will not survive. Ankhesenpaaten is as tough and strong-willed a child as Merytaten (though she conceals it better under a smiling manner), and I rather suspect that both sense that it is they who will be the survivors. They seem to fight over everything, and the battles which are so bitter now, when Merytaten is only ten and Ankhesenpaaten only eight, are not going to decrease, I am afraid, as they grow older.

Also there is Tut himself, that tiny chunk of happiness, a little Ra all his own, always beaming upon us with inexhaustible good will. The God Tutankhaten is three, and we all adore him. His mother the Great Wife Tiye gives him such time and affection as she can, but her involvement with the government and her growing cares with the old Pharaoh as he slips ever more steadily into decline mean that she looks to me increasingly to supervise the care of both Tut and Beketaten. Tut in particular is my favorite, as he indeed is everyone’s. I find it almost impossible to refrain from hugging him too often and too much; I have to fight myself to keep from spoiling him even more than he is already … because, while my husband and the world may not give me credit for it, it is true, you know: I too hunger for sons.

But though I bewail in secret many hours the fact that neither the Aten nor any other god will answer my prayers for one, I do not want them by Akhenaten’s method.

I want them
of my own flesh
,
not that of my daughters, even though such unions are sanctioned by divinity and the blood of Ra and traditions in the royal House going back many, many generations.

They are not sufficient for me.

I
am the Chief Wife,
I
am she whom Akhenaten has loved from a child, and who has loved him. I did not deliver cold-blooded Merytaten or sickly Meketaten or sweetly smiling, determined Ankhesenpaaten to step into my place and so be able to flaunt in my face forever the fact that they could give their father a son where I, Nefertiti, could not. I was not sorry when Merytaten’s child—a daughter, so what good did it do him anyway!—died soon. I shall not be sorry if the same fate awaits any child of Meketaten by him, or any child of Akhesenpaaten.

I have, in fact, already given some thought to this. I have had several serious discussions with my stepmother Tey, whom Akhenaten and I honored some years ago with the formal titles “Stepmother, Nurse and Tutor to the Queen.” We have never expressed the ultimate thought openly to one another, but if need be, I believe she will help me. It is simply a matter of bribing the midwife, after all, and then making sure that she is either transported far away or killed, so that she will never talk. It would not be difficult to arrange.

The girls may yet realize where their steel comes from. There will be no sons from the loins of the King unless they are borne by the Chief Wife. Laughing Smenkhkara may have the throne and the King as well before any son of Akhenaten who is not also the son of Nefertiti wears the Double Crown!

But of course I never wanted it to be so, when our life together began. How far do the gods take us from our first idealistic intentions! All should have been happiness, peace and achievement for beautiful Nefertiti and handsome Amonhotep IV! Then came illness, transformation, new religion, new hopes, daughters, frustration, boredom, the stagnation of the new god, the erosion of the new hopes, the collapse of harmony, the withering of love.… Perhaps the end of love, though that I still will not accept.

My cousin is my enemy, my own daughters are my enemies: the Chief Wife has fewer friends than she did have, fewer hearts she can depend upon. I have not followed my mother-in-law’s policy, I have not made myself a co-equal on the throne, a Queen so loved by the people in her own right that it has armored her against those who would diminish her and pull her down. I have subordinated myself always to him, I have submerged myself and my life always in his. Now, if he rejects me, where will I go? What will I do?

Well: I will tell you.

I am a daughter of Aye, a Queen of the Two Lands, Nefer-Nerferu-Aten Nefertiti, “A Beautiful Woman Has Come,” and I shall not wither and die. I shall fight back. I have requested my own palace, he is going to give it to me: if I am forced to go there, I will do so. But I will not give up. I will not yield my dignities, I will not yield my crown, I will not surrender to the sadness in his heart which I know is only temporary. I will defy him if I must, for the sake of the love I bear him, though I hope he does not make me do so.…

I must have stirred. My eyes, which have been far away, have apparently reflected something of my pain. I realize that Anser-Wossett is looking at me with loving alarm. I must conceal my feelings even from her. I manage a laugh, which she does not for an instant believe, and begin to chat of gorgeous jewels and golden gowns and similar unimportant things.

Soon they will summon me to join him in the chariot. Soon we will stand together once more at the Window of Appearances.

For the first time that I can ever remember, I am as ignorant as anyone else (save possibly one) of what he plans to do.