Ancient Evenings (98 page)

My groin could not have ached more if I had been thrust through by a spear, but when I gripped Her knee, She pushed away my hand. “Wait,” She said, “I want to ask you about Rama-Nefru,” and there, pressing against Her, I still had to stop and tell of all that was most intimate I had learned about Usermare and the Hittite, and it was not until I was done that She kissed me like a good boy, and sighed, and when I pressed forward again, said, “Wait, I want to tell you something.” Then, still scratching with the most rhythmical movement of Her wrist as if every word heard about Usermare and His Hittite had first to be digested in Her blood, She began, much to my distraction, to relate a tale I had not heard since childhood, and in no way a story you would think to hear from a Queen. In truth, I had even heard it in my village, but so long ago, I could not remember what came next, yet She insisted on telling it, and there was a determination in Her voice that made me know I must listen. Perhaps it was that She spoke with a servant’s accent. She certainly knew how people from the country between Memphi and Thebes will speak.

“This is a tale of two brothers,” She said, “and I heard it from the old woman who lives in this place. She heard it from her mother. So this is the story of the hut where we are. You listen to it.

“There were two brothers, Anup, the older, and Bati, the younger. Anup had a large house and a good-looking wife, and Bati worked for him. But the younger brother was stronger and more handsome.

“One day when both brothers were in the field, Bati was sent back for seed, and Anup’s wife saw him put the load of three men on his back, so she was much impressed. She stopped dressing her hair, and said, ‘Come, let us lie together for an hour. If you please me, I will make you a shirt.’ Bati became as wild as a cheetah of the South, and he said, ‘Do not say that to me again,’ and took up his load of seed and went back to the fields and worked beside Anup so hard that the older brother became tired and thought of his wife. So he left the field to be with her. But when Anup came back to his house, her jaw was covered with a rag. She told him Bati had beaten her because she refused to lie with him. ‘If you permit your younger brother to live,’ she said, ‘I will kill myself.’

“Then the older brother also became like a cheetah of the South, and he put an edge on his knife, and he waited for Bati behind the stable door. Yet when his younger brother came toward the shed, the heifer who led the cows began to moo, and her voice told Bati that he was in danger. So he fled, and Anup ran after him, and Bati did not escape until he crossed the river in a skiff of papyrus at a steep place where Anup could not follow because there was no other boat. Besides, there were many crocodiles. Safe on the other side of the river, Bati now shouted, ‘Why do you believe her? I will prove to you that I am innocent.’ Then, he took out his knife and cut off the part of himself that was most valuable to him, and he threw it into the river. Then Anup wept and would have been ready to cross, even if he drowned, but he had too much fear of the crocodiles.

“Now, the younger brother said, ‘I will take out my heart as well,’ and he did, and he laid it on a young acacia tree. ‘After this tree is cut down,’ he said, ‘look for my heart, and lay it in fresh water. Then I will live again.’

“ ‘How do I know if the tree is cut?’ asked Anup.

“ ‘When the beer froths in your mug, come at once, even if it is seven years from now,’ the younger brother said. And he died.”

Nefertiri looked at me with all the severity a stranger places in his eye when he is telling an important story. “Anup went home,” She said, “and he drove his wife away, and he waited. It was seven years to the day before a Queen came riding through the woods, saw the acacia, and found it so beautiful that it disturbed Her pleasure in Her own beauty. So She ordered the tree cut down. Then the beer frothed in the mug of Anup. The older brother went out to search for the heart of Bati, and found it in the topmost seed of the fallen acacia, and Anup put this seed in water until it came to life, and grew into a bull with the markings of Apis. The animal, so soon as it was full-size—which took a day and a night—even had the picture of a scarab on its tongue. This bull now told Anup to lead him to the Egyptian Court, and the Pharaoh was so pleased with the beast that He gave presents to Anup and sent him away. But, in the morning, the Pharaoh’s Queen was alone with the bull. He dared to say to Her, ‘You cut me down when I was a tree. Now I live again and am a bull.’ The Queen went to the Pharaoh. ‘Give Me the liver of that animal to eat,’ She said, and the King loved Her so much that He sent His butchers. Yet so soon as they cut the bull’s throat, two drops of blood fell by the steps of the Pharaoh’s pavilion, and grew up overnight into twin cedars like the ones much beloved by Osiris when the Lord of the Dead rested in His coffin on the shores of Byblos.

“When the King saw this miracle, He invited the Queen to sit with Him beneath these trees. She was much disturbed. From the branches of Her cedar came a whisper: ‘I am the one You tried to kill.’ That night, when the Pharaoh was taking much pleasure with Her, She said, ‘Grant Me what I want.’

“ ‘It is done,’ He said.

“She said: ‘Chop down Your trees. Make them into chests for Me.’

“The Pharaoh was not happy, but He sent for His best carpenters, and, while He watched, and She watched, they cut down the twin cedars. Both fell at once, and as they did, a chip flew from each tree and one entered the heart of the Pharaoh. It killed Him.”

Nefertiri was silent. “What of the other chip?” I asked.

“It leaped,” She said, “from the second cedar into the mouth of the Queen, and She swallowed it. Nine months later, a new Pharaoh was born.” She looked into my eye, but no longer was She like a stranger. I knew that all the thoughts I had had about my life in the stench of the beer-house were not far from the thoughts She had known in the clothing of a servant. She, too, was ready to die.

So She stopped scratching and lifted the skirt Herself. Yet She still carried on as if She were a servant and would offer no more than Her buttocks. On this poor cot, full of the rustling of dried reeds under the stale cloth, it was like making love in old straw with all the odors of the farm, and there was no other way She would allow me into Her but by Her third mouth. In the middle of all the vigor this took, I could not pass the gates, yet with every push upon such a door, the expression on Her face would change until I saw another Ka of Her Fourteen. Great changes truly appeared in the contortions of Her face until even by the light of this hut, I could see the prodigious ugliness of Heqat, and Nefertiri was so excited and so beside Herself, that I wondered if Her powers were confused, especially if Heqat could enter Her. Then, as if Her thoughts had certainly heard mine, there came into the cruel twist of Her mouth all the evil I used to see in the face of Honey-Ball when the most malignant of her curses were cast, and both of us gripped each other in the onset of appetites so low that, whether by Heqat or Honey-Ball, I felt as if we were both ugly, and I hated the Gods, and wished to despise Them.

It can only have been by the balance of Maat that I was now given in the midst of these stubborn efforts a sight of Usermare on Rama-Nefru’s purple bed, and Their love, in contrast to ours, was as radiant and as narrow as a beam of light, nothing, I may say, of the deep measure, no matter how ugly, that we could know here, no thunder of delights for His mighty phallus, but the string of a harp in the moment it is plucked, and Usermare quivered in Rama-Nefru’s finest light. Maybe it was finer than I could bear, for so little of me was as yet in Nefertiri, not much at all by the dry hinge She offered, that I withdrew, and tried to enter Her other mouth there between Her legs, but She would not allow me. “No,” She murmured, “not when you are made of bronze,” and forced me off by presenting Her buttocks once more. This time, I obeyed what I saw in Her face and turned around to kissing Her there, my tongue plunging like a second sword so that I must have stabbed Her many times and this brought forth so many royal groans that like a servant girl She kissed me back, and in the same place—I knew heaven then!—we were a two-headed beast for a while. She knew much of this kind of magic.

Then I could enter Her at last, although for the use of Her royal buttocks, Amen-khep-shu-ef would have done better I think as the lover. Back of the first gate was the lock of another, and She was like a siege with many walls. Still, I traveled up Her third mouth, push by push, equal to equal, and if it was Her vagina I wanted, my desire had hardly disappeared. Honey-Ball once told me how women entered by the third mouth feel the anger of Set stir in themselves, and cannot respect the man. Of course, we must respect most those who can kill us, and no woman is ever going to die trying to give birth when the cream of the man has been left in her bowels.

“I want the other,” I said to Her, and She replied, “You will not enter that place again until the beer froths in your mug.”

So I fucked Her by the ass, and saw all the faces of Heqat and Honey-Ball. Her nostrils were much contorted and She grunted like a beast, maybe this one of Her Fourteen Ka had never known such pleasure before! I beat upon Her subborn throne while the incense of every perume I had sniffed at every ceremony of the last four days passed through my head like birds, full flights of birds, and then I was left again with all the smells of sweat and swamp true to us now. We knew each other by all the odors of this hot twilight in this dark hut. I do not know if so much of Her own true odor had ever come forth before. She was much excited, more excited this time by Her asshole than by Her cunt the last, and again She began to speak but only at the end, as it all came nearer, so did She speak. Now, it did not matter that I was in Her by this low mouth, She was no longer a servant but my Queen, and “Oh,” She said, “you are so wicked, you are in My
sha
. You are on My field, you are on My estate, oh, you swim in My swamp.
Sesh
and
sesh
. Write on Me, inscribe Me,
sesh
and
sesh
, You are My mud and My
maher
, My canal, My ooze, you are a devil of a man, sweet
kheru
, My swamp, My robber, My enemy, oh, go deep into the rot, stick it deep, touch the dead, oh,
khat, khat, khat
, put it in My quarry, put it up My tomb, give it to My ancestors, fuck Them all, give it to My ass, My ass,” and She came forth with a shriek as loud as the cry She gave on the field dedicated to Amon when Usermare plunged into Her—She came forth, but it was like torture, and, by half, extorted. She was shaking beneath. I felt Her pain in my belly and thighs, and the relief She knew from releasing the pain. Then She slapped me across the face for daring to feel so close. I do not know if love of such a squalid nature would ever be known in my family again until … And here Menenhetet came most abruptly to a halt.

Our thoughts also stopped, then staggered forward and came into our heads again. For by the expression on my mother’s face and on my Father’s, it was clear that they had seen what I had seen—which was Hathfertiti and Nef-khep-aukhem making love in this manner. Was that a payment on my first father’s curse? I know that Menenhetet, with all his wisdom, had nonetheless come near to saying what must never be said—how intimate my mother and first father had been! I know my mother now gave Menenhetet one long look, not empty of enmity, to say how much she felt that he had just betrayed her.

But Ptah-nem-hotep, as if stepping back from a wave by the riverbank lifted by the passing of a barge, only said, “Please go on.”

TWELVE

Menenhetet took his breath, and continued. But, now, I listened instead to his voice, as if my thoughts were no longer so certain they wished to see into his thoughts. “Yes,” he said, “we were done, and She did not wait long to leave. At my offer to accompany Her, She refused, even said I must not follow, and in truth, we had the reek of each other that makes the heart cry out to be alone. So I did not mourn Her departure, and on leaving the hut was in so peculiar a state I did not wish to return to the gates of the Palace, but wandered instead through the city, its crowded alleys like a thicket. I kept breathing all of Her that was left on me until there was little to smell. She was truly gone, and I missed Her, even lusted after the odor of us both, like the lair of that beast which had been the two of us, yes, so exceptional was my condition (for again I felt death come near each time I used my elbows to beat a way through the crowd) that such danger was tender in my nose and offered a sweet fear to my chest, like the night on New Tyre when I stepped out of my window onto the bed of the secret whore of the King of Kadesh. Now I did not want the night nor that seductive presence still in my nostrils to cease being with me, and so I mourned the crudity of my acts with Nefertiri. For I loved Her again, loved all the sensuousness and delicacy of Her lovely appearance on that day I first came to serve when She had greeted me with the quiet but splendid sympathies of a Queen, and yet yearned for Her more after today, as if Set and Geb and all the eight Gods of the slime also held us together, and so I would know Her again, and more powerfully, and I felt once again the marriage of Her desire and mine.