The Twice Born (31 page)

I Thoth, who created purification, now speak of the birth of Heka as Atum has commanded me.

I became, the becoming became, I have become in becoming …

I did all that I desired in this non-existent world,

I dilated myself in it,

I contracted my own hand, all alone, before there was any birth.

My own mouth came to me, and Heka was my name.

Huy put out both rigid arms to steady himself. His palms touched the grass and one soft leaf from the Tree. His fingers closed around it, crushing it, but he was almost unaware of the scent it gave off.
I know this. I can see it: the non-existent world of the Nun, and Atum entering the First Duat, dilating himself in it until it ceased to be nothingness but was full of him, and then he masturbates and places his own semen in his mouth. He can do this because he has willed that he is no longer outside the Nun, he is in it, filling it, he has metamorphosed, and the moment his semen touches his tongue heka-power is conceived. He is the Hill filling the Nun. Now he is also heka. He is working, working within himself, within the Nun, and heka is now in a state of conception
. Huy’s heart was racing. Awe swept over him. “I hear and understand, Anubis,” he whispered, and it seemed to him that the rustle of the leaves above him blended in a moment of musical approval. All at once aware of the leaf he had mangled, he relaxed his grip and wiped his palm on the hem of his kilt. The motion left a smear of green on the whiteness of the linen, but a flowery aroma rose from the stain.
I am a part of the heka
, he thought suddenly.
But no—I am inside it, it is all around me right now, in the Tree, in the Book. I am sitting in the eye of a storm of magic and I am quite safe. I have the feeling that my amulets are useless here. They are mere trinkets. Yet I am protected
. He read on.

I Thoth, who has come forth from Atum, now speak of the fulfillment of Heka.

Let us call Spirit pure energy—but it is known to us only as light.

Let us call Atum consciousness—but he is known to us only through complementation.

Let us call light First—but it is known only through darkness.

Let us call the original Scission the First Becoming—but it is known only through separation.

Many are the metamorphoses that come from my mouth before the Sky had become.

I Thoth, who reckons all things, now speak of the End before the Beginning.

All that will be created will return to the Nun.

Myself alone, I persist, unknown, invisible to all …

Overcome, Huy rolled up the scroll. His head felt as though it would burst. His previous euphoria had drained away as he began to read of the fulfillment of heka. Each terse statement was worded so simply and yet encapsulated such a wealth of complex enigmas that he knew he must ponder every one very carefully and regularly and hope for more moments of enlightenment like the one that had come to him earlier on the training ground. In spite of his perplexity he was aware of an inner composure as he got stiffly to his feet and went to knock on the door.
It will all become clear to me
, he told himself as he waited for Ramose.
All I have to do is remain as free from anxiety as possible and let the gods speak to me as and when they will. I won’t fret about it anymore
.

He read and reread those two passages many times in the following weeks, content to let the words that composed such powerful concepts sink deeply below the level of his immediate consciousness. They slipped easily into his mind whenever he wished them present, and for many nights he lay sleepless but calm on his cot, pondering the meaning of each solemn phrase.

When he felt ready to continue, he unrolled the second scroll and found to his delight that its contents were a discussion of the enigmas contained in the first. The language was different, simpler, and to Huy’s eyes the long stanzas had been written in a dissimilar hand. The flavour of the prose was less majestic, less authoritative, but his conviction that it had not flowed directly from the hand of Thoth lay in the fact that he was unable to repeat the words to himself in their entirety. Only snatches came back to him.

Give me your whole awareness, and concentrate your thoughts, for knowledge of Atum’s Being requires deep insight, which comes only as a gift of grace … To conceive of Atum is difficult. To define him is impossible …

Ra-Atum is Light, the everlasting source of energy, the eternal dispenser of Life itself.

The Primal Mind, which is Life and Light, being bisexual, gave birth to the Mind of the Cosmos … First of all and without beginning is Atum …

Some mighty Seer in an age long past had studied the Book, and out of his wisdom he had attempted to clarify that which was almost unimaginable. Huy, wondering if that Seer might have been Imhotep himself, was more than grateful.

As one week merged into the next, the time spent with his back against the smooth bark of the Ished Tree, papyrus across his knees and the melody of the leaves above him, gradually blended into the mundane remainder of his days and he ceased to see it as something apart. He eventually noticed, pondered, then dismissed the curious fact that although the room in which he sat was roofless, no bird ever paused on its flight overhead to perch in the branches of the Tree, nor did the foliage itself ever change colour.

He did not go home to Hut-herib for the Inundation. Ramose did not want his work on the Book interrupted or perhaps weakened by the scattering of his concentration among family members and idle pursuits, and Huy did not mind. He told himself that the temple was supporting his education and therefore he must be as accommodating as possible, but the real reason was less altruistic. Staying in Iunu meant staying close to Anuket. His passion had not abated. If anything it had grown, being fed by the more frequent visits he was able to make to Thothmes’ home during the holiday. Nakht, and particularly his wife, felt concern for the young man left to wander the empty courtyards alone, and Huy was regularly invited to sleep in the room he increasingly considered as his own. The High Priest did not seem to think such visits distracting. “They have become a part of your life here, whereas Hut-herib is increasingly alien to you, Huy,” he had said. “They provide you with just enough variety in your life to keep you fresh for your great task. Go with my blessing whenever the Governor sends for you.”

Huy was not so sure. Seeing Anuket every day, watching her eat, walk about the extensive garden to select the blooms for her wreaths and garlands, sitting almost tranced opposite her in the long evenings when they played dogs and jackals or sennet together and the light from the many lamps in Nakht’s reception hall glinted on her rings and slid over the sheen of her glossy black hair, was an exquisite torment. His body ached for her. He made love to her many times in his mind, even as he engaged her in light conversation or occasionally helped her in the herb room, stripping leaves from the stems she intended to twist into her unique designs, so that in the end the aroma of the various herbs drying above his head became inextricably intertwined with his desire for her. The scent of thyme or celery in the steam of his food could return him vividly to her presence, and soon there was no flower, wild or cultivated, that did not bear the invisible imprint of her busy, delicate little fingers.

Nasha and Thothmes were more than happy to have Huy in residence, Thothmes because Huy was his best friend and there were already eight years of close history between them, and Nasha because Huy provided a foil to the earnest young men who had begun to parade through the house at Nakht’s invitation to seek her hand. Without exception they bored her, and she turned to teasing and rough-and-tumble play with Huy after their visits as though physical and verbal aggression, no matter how mild, drove the boredom away. Her words and actions were entirely innocent, Huy knew. To her he was an adopted brother. She, he, and Thothmes spent many hours floating aimlessly on the calm flood waters, pulling up handfuls of reed grass, and later the ubiquitous pondweed that could choke the canals, and pelting each other, or searching for egret and ibis nests, or simply lying in the bottom of the skiff, somnolent with wine, while the servant poled them in the shallows under the thin, elongated shadows of the drowned palms lining the bank.

Anuket never joined them, though Huy begged her to do so. In spite of her name she had an aversion to water, and preferred to cool herself with modest dips in one of the pools on her father’s estate. Huy forced himself not to follow her about like a hungry dog. He loved being with Thothmes and Nasha, although Nasha’s horseplay tried his patience, and he did not want Nakht to see how truly lovesick he was. He knew that his attraction to Anuket had not gone unnoticed by either parent. He also knew that they trusted him to behave with decorum around her, and he would not betray that trust. Besides, Anuket, although she had lost much of her shyness with him, still held him at arm’s length so that much of the time he was unsure of her feelings for him, and he wondered often whether he had dreamed their peculiar conversation in the herb room.

On the twenty-sixth day of Khoiak, when the flood had reached its highest and had ceased to flow, Nakht gave a party to celebrate the Feast of Sokar. A massive raft was tethered to the mooring poles at the foot of his watersteps, decorated with banks of flowers, and laden with food and wine. Over a hundred of Nakht’s relatives, friends, and fellow nobles crowded onto it, ate, drank immoderately, and watched Anuket perform a stately dance in honour of the god, a wreath of ivy and blue lupines on her head and systra in her hands. With downcast eyes and bare feet, tiny bells on her ankles, she measured out the slow steps of the ritual, fingers twirling, the thin red linen of her sheath moving with her. Each time she passed one of the many lamps set around the perimeter of the raft, the contours of her slim body could be glimpsed and Huy, cold sober even after drinking four cups of wine, was forced to turn his gaze to the dark, placid water lapping below.

He knew that his chances of ever possessing the flesh he craved were practically non-existent. Notwithstanding her family’s affection for him, her father would never offer her to a commoner. She would go to a son of one of the perfumed and bejewelled guests surrounding him, with their kohled eyes, their gleaming skin, their hennaed palms and soles of their feet denoting their aristocratic station.
Besides
, he thought gloomily while Anuket sank to the deck and a storm of applause broke out,
the High Priest did not answer my question regarding the preservation of my own virginity
. Lifting his eyes, he found her looking directly at him, a faint smile on her lips. He smiled back, feeling cold and slightly sick.

When he was not at Nakht’s house or with the Book, he wandered freely through the temple complex, enjoying the empty courtyards, the silence of the schoolroom, the bare expanse of the training ground. He spent a few moments of every day with Lazy White Star, bringing slices of cucumber dipped in honey from the vast temple gardens. The horse would whinny at his approach, butting its long nose against his chest and nuzzling softly at his neck. Holding the sweetened vegetable on his flat palm, Huy would offer it respectfully, but most often the animal would take it, suck off the honey, then spit the cucumber onto the ground at Huy’s feet. There was something comforting about its warm smell and the feel of its coat under his fingers. Putting his head against the horse’s wide forehead, he would talk to it until with a snuffle and a nudge it backed away into the coolness of its stall.

Huy wrote dutifully to his parents, speaking of the small events making up his life during this hiatus, but he did not mention the Book or his attachment to Anuket. He reserved those privacies for his letters to Methen, who wrote back to him regularly, telling him of the state of his town before addressing both his sacred task and the purely secular tangle of his near worship of Anuket. “Your emotions in that regard are entirely natural for a young man of your age,” Methen replied in much the same vein as Ramose had done. “Enjoy them, but try not to take them too seriously. This is first love, Huy. It will die as rapidly as it sprang to life.” Huy doubted that it would, but the priest’s words comforted him.

He also paid a visit to the Rekhet. She, like Anuket, was seldom out of his thoughts, though for very different reasons. Thothmes had provided him with a willing ear after his hours spent poring over the Book, but his friend was not particularly interested in the concepts Huy was finding increasingly vital. He needed an experienced mind, and besides, he did not need to pretend with the Rekhet, to make himself appear less intelligent or less astute than he was to put his fellow students at their ease. He liked them, liked to be one of them, liked to join in their banter and share jokes with them, but he could not escape the foreign thing inside him that set him apart regardless of his efforts to be just another twelve-year-old schoolboy. It demanded company, and Huy needed understanding. Accordingly, he asked the High Priest for Henenu’s address and set off one bright morning to find her.

He was surprised, given her acknowledged wealth, to be drawn away from the river on Ramose’s instructions. He had imagined a home much like Nakht’s for her, something gracious set down amid groves of trees with a high wall paralleling the river road and a gate porter, but he had only followed the road a short distance, to the centre of the city’s vast watersteps, crowded as usual, before he was forced to turn into the heart of Iunu. He walked for a long time, at first striding along pleasant avenues lined with stately buildings, but gradually his route began to take him through narrowing, dusty streets that occasionally opened out into small shrines or untidy markets raucous with noise and full of the stench of garlic and unwashed bodies.