Ancient Evenings (16 page)

Then, with a twist to my memory as simple as pulling a lemon from a tree, so did I discover that Menenhetet was on the barge, and that was most certainly at odds with what I could remember. Yet I had only to give up the feeling—it was no longer a certainty—that Menenhetet had died in the year before I was born, and he was, yes, on the boat, and speaking to my mother. If I had seen the barge at first with my father and mother next to me, and with clarity more vivid than a temple painting, now I saw Menenhetet as well. He, too, sat beside me and his hair showed the silver of a virile maturity while the lines on his face had not yet become a myriad of wrinkles, terraces, and webs, but exhibited, instead, that look of character supported by triumph which comes to powerful men when they are sixty and still strong.

Yet to see him with us was to give me as well some confusion as to where we were on the river. I knew we were on our way to visit the Pharaoh but now I could not understand why we did not travel up the river when my parents’ villa had its grounds located a long walk downstream from the Palace. Yet now we were going with the current, no sails set, and no oarsmen at work.

There was only the boatman we called Stinking Body at the bow with his long pole to fend us off the bars, and Head-on-Backwards at the helm (that Head-on-Backwards who was also called Eater-of-Shadows for whenever we sailed upstream to the south, the tiller was in the shade of the sail). But now we were drifting down into the brunt of that prevailing breeze that came up out of the Delta, a wind strong enough to let us sail without oars upstream against the current. Today, however, we drifted down, lazily, NehaHau in the bow and Unem-Khaibitu, the Eater-of-Shadows, in the stern, while the rest of the crew—Bone-Smasher, White-Teeth, Eater-of-Blood and He-of-the-Nose—a tremendous nose—were lolling against the gunwales, an easy day for them.

I was thinking that boatmen had ugly faces when at rest. If obliged to row upstream under the worst of conditions (when the river was in flood and they were working too hard to sing in unison) then the sound of their breath came close to the anguish of weeping, and they had the maniacal expression of horses in a frightened gallop, such an intensity of expression, such torture in the effort, that they could not be wholly ugly. At rest, however, their faces usually looked swollen. Nobody knew why rivermen when ashore were always in more fights than any other kind of laborer in Memphi, unless it was that they drank more beer, but it was true. Most of them had faces which looked as if a lion had been chewing on their cheeks. Besides, there was the whip. That was forever laying the welt of new scars over the old ones on their shoulders. Now and again it flicked around their neck to reach their face. As a result, half the boatmen were blind in an eye. (If blinded in both, they went to other labor.)

Set-Qesu, the head boatman, not named Bone-Smasher for too little, was the one to apply the whip. When the winds were strong, my great-grandfather would on occasion take the lash. He could make the tip dance, crack it around a man’s waist and flick his navel, or if an oarsman ever stopped to scratch himself, sting the boatman’s armpit with such precision that a few hairs would fly off. Unfortunately, there was every reason to scratch. Where was the boatman without his lice?

That bothered my mother considerably. She had a detestation of body-insects so intense that she could lose her composure at mention of them. While this was hardly an unusual attitude for a young matron of Memphi (since many in their fear of infestations would crop their heads and wear wigs for every public appearance) my mother was proud of her hair. It was vigorous and dark, and had a wave that curled with the sinuosity of the snake. So she preferred to keep it long and live in fear of head-lice. Indeed, there had been an episode just the night before. But now as I recollected, so was it also clear why we did not row upstream toward the Pharaoh’s Palace, but rather drifted down. My mother, my father, and I had spent last night with Menenhetet who lived up the river south of Memphi in a great house one hundred paces in width, an equal number in depth, and three stories high. It was said he had fifty rooms, and I knew he had a roof garden with awnings made of the material of tents, for there was a view from that roof at evening when the sun filled the river with a million red and dancing fish, and the desert to the east turned to indigo, even as the sandstone hills to the west became pink and carmine and orange and glowing gold, like the blood-fire of an oven as the sun went into the hills.

My great-grandfather spoke to me at that moment—a rare occasion. I was used to relatives and servants recognizing that I was not an ordinary child, indeed I could even feel again the sweet purity of the admiration I used to evoke in men and women to whom I spoke, for they were usually delighting in how adult I was for six. Menenhetet, however, had never indicated I was of any interest to him. Yet, now, he put a hand on my waist and drew me forward.

“Have you looked at the colors on the palette of the scribe?”

I nodded. “They are black and red.” When I saw the light in his eye, I added, “They are like the sky at evening and the sky at night.”

“Yes,” he said, “that is one reason they are black and red. Can you give me another?”

“Our deserts are red, but the best earth is black once the flood has passed.”

“Excellent. Can you offer another reason?”

“I can think of none.”

He took out a small jeweled knife and put the point to my finger. A drop of blood came forth. I would have cried out, but something in his expression kept me still. “That is the first color to remember,” he told me, “just as black is the last.” He said no more, merely patted me, and left, but, later, I heard him chatting with Hathfertiti and he mentioned my name. I could tell by my mother’s low sensual laugh that his words were kind. She always took physical pleasure in a good reference to me as though her own body were being admired, and if I happened to be in her sight, a musk of affection would come from her. Under that loving look, my body felt bathed in flowers. I had learned to gather such love as if it were a perfume equal to the breath of recollection. Nothing was more beautiful to me as a child than this power of memory. Fortified by the pleasure my mother took in me, each sight I recollected came back with luster. I could look at the red hills across the river on this sunset and have dreams of the wonders of the desert as I fell asleep, and the silver water of an oasis.

Tonight, since there was almost no wind, the torches at the corners of the roof were lit and a servant stood by each torch with a pot of water. That was my great-grandfather taking his enjoyment of the fire in face of the ever-present danger of the servant falling asleep and a wind springing up. Every few years a great wooden house would burn that way. On the consequence, the torches were a luxury: one needed good servants to guard such fires. Of course, the torches did give a light that was more exciting than our candles.

By one of the torches, a woman was dancing. She moved with slow undulations of her body as lascivious as the curve of Hathfertiti’s hair, and the sistrum with its singing wires was played by a dwarf wearing nothing but a gold purse and a few bracelets on his stunted biceps. He played with a tiny man’s frenzy and her hips quivered to the sound he made.

In fact, Menenhetet’s little orchestra brought a stir to the guests when they appeared. The harper, the cymbal player, the piper, and the drummer were all dwarfs, no taller than myself, and all exceptionally skillful except for the one who played the harp since his arms were too short and therefore left his longer runs full of peril.

They also spoke in strange languages, being descended from prisoners captured in old wars with the Kings of Arvad, Carchemish, and Egerath, and their voices together with their little faces roused a stir of applause or everything they played. It was all received with exaggerations of attention from Menenhetet’s guests, who were priests and judges, rich merchants and neighboring nobles from the best temples and good society of the land just south of Memphi, prosperous people certainly, but not so prosperous that they did not feel honored to be asked to my great-grandfather’s house and honored again by being invited up to his roof garden, although I heard a few murmur in disappointment this night that the most illustrious guests were not so celebrated as expected, and no one, but for my father, was a high official from the Palace.

All the same, Menenhetet’s reputation was renowned from the Delta to the First Cataract. Even my nurse used to giggle lasciviously at the mention of his name, and the gossip I heard among the guests (for I was considered too young to comprehend their jokes) concerned which women had already had an affair with Menenhetet as opposed to those he was considering. It must have been a disappointing evening for the wives (and a relief to more than one husband) that he spent most of his time sitting next to my mother. I stayed away. Sometimes, when they were near one another, I could feel a force so powerful I would not dare to walk between them, as if to interrupt their mood could strike you to the ground.

This evening, Menenhetet did not leave her side. They sat unmoving through the music. My father could hardly decide where to go. Sitting near them, he was not given much for his attempts at conversation, and when, on the confidence of his own fine features, he proceeded to charm one wife or another, the attempt soon ran out. For nothing came back to him from Hathfertiti—she sat side by side with Menenhetet in a silence that spoke of their attention for one another. Hathfertiti held a tuft of black hair in her fingers, and with it she stroked the black curls of her head. The tuft, taken from the tail of a sacred bull, prevented the onset of gray hair, and my mother continued this ritual with self-absorption, as if these intent caresses to herself would increase her inestimable value.

After the music was done, a few guests began to leave. Here, anyone could have recognized how immense was the reputation of my great-grandfather since he did not even speak to them as they approached his chair, knelt, and touched their foreheads to the floor. Only a Pharaoh, a Vizier, a High Priest, or one of the most honored Generals of the nation would act in such a fashion. Indeed, Menenhetet presented his indifference to the departure of his guests with such a natural concentration upon his own thoughts, so equal in gravity to Hathfertiti’s immersion in the stroking of the bull’s hair upon her head, that the guests moved away without a sign, and yet were not displeased, but rather, looked honored that they had been allowed to stand before him, as if now they could hear the echo of his great feats in the boredom he showed in the presence of those he had invited. Standing in silence before his silence, so they could feel steeped in tales of his wickedness and knowledge of magic, and indeed these feelings came over them with such power that it left me feeling most alive until I could as well have existed in two abodes of time. I was not only standing in a corner of the roof garden near the slaves who guarded the torches, but was returned as well to the black alcove in the Pyramid with the light of the star on the water, able to know from this memory of childhood that my guide for the Land of the Dead had been a man of great esteem when he was among the living. And learning this, I was carried along on that stream of sensation which came to my hand from his bent fingers, and leaned forward, and to my great surprise gave him a kiss, there in the darkness, on his withered lips.

They opened like the dirty skin of an apricot Just pulled from a dusty tree, and I felt the ripe warm flesh of a mouth so rich with sensuous promise that the kiss even lingered on the air after I drew back, and by that movement must have turned in my mind to Menenhetet and my mother sitting together on the roof garden in carnal silence.

I do not know how long it was before they were alone, but now the guests were gone, and my father had departed as well—where to, seemed hardly to my mother’s concern—and even I was gone so far as anyone might know, for I had wandered to the other side of the roof, and, in fascination, was looking down on the last of the guests strolling through the avenue of flowers in the long garden below. The moon had risen and by its light the water in the wading pool was so brilliant that I could nearly see the captive fish. The servants of Menenhetet had searched the marshes and swamps with their nets that afternoon to find the most brilliant examples of the sun and the moon in gold and silver fingerlings.

My great-grandfather’s gardens were much talked about in Memphi. But for the estates of the Pharaoh, there may not have been another superior to it. The pool was renowned for the work of the craftsmen who had laid out decorations in tile that looked like flowers but were composed of rare stones—garnet and amethyst, carnelian, turquoise, lapis-lazuli and onyx were some. I knew their value when the servants who guarded the pool looked back at me with the eyes of falcons: they were responsible that none of the gems came loose from their setting or were stolen. Such a loss would have been worth one of their hands.

In fact, there were white wooden posts in the fields of vegetables beyond the avenue of flowers, and you could find more than one withered hand nailed to a post, or even showing the white of the bone next to the white of the post. They made an atrocious sight at the head of these fields of wheat and barley and lentils, these plots of onions and garlic, cucumber and watermelon, but the fields prospered. There was a gaiety in the fields like the prosperity of Gods, as if the marrow of merriment came up from divine bellies, up through the earth.

That afternoon I had wandered past the lanes and arbors of my great-grandfather down to the ferns and eel-ridden marshes at the rear of his lands. His high ground was an island now in the flood, and the marshes looked like lakes with no trail through them, so I came back by way of the vineyards and picked the grapes and wandered through arbors of oranges and figs, past lemon trees and olive trees, acacia and sycamore, and ate a pomegranate and spit out the seeds still thinking of the dry bloodied hand nailed to the post and wanted to splash in the pool again and piss my own water onto the gold and silver fish—excitement came to me at the thought they would drink my offering. Or did such excitement rise from the barnyard cries of sheep and goats that came to me like the groaning of a stone hinge in a large door? It was a sound to match the heat of the day and the fermentation of food, and it gave pleasure to my thighs. I lived in moldering smells on a slow and heavy wind from the livestock sheds, an unpleasant odor and yet not all unpleasant. I felt drawn by the heat in this afternoon to a full taste of the feast beneath my feet—as if the Gods, now merry, were at a banquet in the earth below. Even the braying of the donkeys and the cries of the hens became part of this heavy marrow of the air. Later in the night, watching my mother and Menenhetet on the roof, there was less mystery to me at the force between them. Indeed those buddings I had felt in my heart and my thighs had all come together this afternoon and I had felt my first transformation that was like the Gods’. For in that hour, wandering down the avenue of flowers, such was the magic in the groupings of geranium and violet, of dahlias, irises, and wondrous flowers whose names I did not know, all burgeoning like a garden in me, that I was overpowered at last by the smell of flowers. As I breathed their perfume, so did other flowers open petals in my flesh, and a green stem rose from the center of my hips to my navel. I was inhaling musk into my heart and the power of the earth rose up once in my belly, and fell back again like another body coming alive within my body, and rose once more, and I was wet all over and in some river rich and white, like a cream in the heat, and did not know where the blooms of these flowers ended, and I began.