The Twice Born (40 page)

But he found no comfort in the unknown sage’s caution.

If you shut your soul up in your body and demean yourself, saying, I cannot know, I am afraid, I cannot ascend to heaven; then what have you to do with Atum? Wake up your sleeping soul. Why give yourself to death when you could be immortal? You are drunk with ignorance of Atum. It has overpowered you, and now you are vomiting it up. Empty yourself of darkness and you will be filled with light.

He describes my inner turmoil exactly
, Huy thought bitterly.
Every step of this journey into the Book has been a struggle to apprehend, to understand, to try to create a whole out of pieces of obscurity. My soul is in revolt and I am tired. He read on
.

Immerse yourself in Atum and recognize the purpose of your birth. Ascend to him who sent this Book. Those that bathe themselves in Atum find true knowledge and become complete.

There was no more.

Huy flung the papyrus down. The sage had failed him at the last. He had not ventured to explain Thoth’s cryptic sentences. Perhaps he had not understood them either.
Or perhaps
, Huy thought,
he understood them only too well and saw in his conclusions a great danger for the next reader, or even for Egypt herself. Did confusion cloud his khu until he was driven mad, or did he walk away from the Book with the will of Atum clear in his mind?
Closing his eyes, Huy leaned back against the warm bole of the Tree, slowly repeating Thoth’s words to himself. Already they were etched into his consciousness. Aware that the god had said that the end curved back to the beginning, he began to recite the Book in its entirety aloud, linking each phrase into a seamless whole. It took a long time, but when he fell silent and the soft noises of the Tree flowed in to fill the vacancy his voice had left, he was no nearer to learning the will of Atum than he had been years ago. No inspiration burst upon him. No glimmer of comprehension fluttered on the periphery of his mind. Laying the scrolls back in the casket, he picked it and himself up, went to the door, and knocked to be released. His head had begun to ache with a dull, enervating pounding, and all he wanted to do was sleep.

He entered the High Priest’s spacious cell to return the scrolls. Ramose got up from behind his desk, picking up a small leather bag as he did so and holding it out to Huy. “You look exhausted,” he commented kindly. “We will not talk of what you have discovered just yet. Go and rest. The Rekhet has sent this to you, for your birthday.” Huy took the bag and thanked him, glad that he would not be forced to endure a long conversation with the man. Bowing, he left and made his way to his cell, grateful for the atmosphere of unburdened silence imbuing the empty halls.

His courtyard was, of course, deserted, the grass long and lush, for the gardeners still watered it. Huy sank onto its fragrant greenness, just out of reach of the fine spray emitted by the fountain, and pulled open the bag’s drawstring. Inside was a sheet of papyrus and something wrapped in linen. He withdrew them and read the note. It had been penned in running hieratic script by a firm, unique hand.

Master Huy, I have made you a sa for your Naming Day. Seeing that you are a decidedly ignorant young man, you will not know that the sa is an amulet of supreme protection although you will be familiar with its use in the hieroglyphic alphabet. It represents a reed mat, rolled up and folded in two and tied at the lower end to make a shape similar to that of an ankh. Hentis ago the folded mat was carried by marsh dwellers to place around their necks and buoy them should they fall into deep water. Cattle herders used it to protect themselves against sharp horns. You are in deep water, I sense, and the sharp horns of anger and disillusionment are pricking you. Place the amulet around your own neck and visit me within three days. I have come to my city house from my estate in order to speak with you.

Huy unfolded the linen. The charm itself had been wrought in electrum, the purplish sheen of the gold glinting in the high sunlight. The chain was silver. It had no counterpoise. Huy put it on at once. It lay lightly between his nipples, and at once Huy felt its soothing influence. Spreading his right hand, he gazed at the Rekhet’s other work, the ring amulets. The lapis eyes of the tiny frog glowed deeply blue, and the golden feathers of the human-headed hawk charm folded in exquisite detail along its bird spine.
She knows me well. She is my friend, but she is also implacable in her desire to serve the gods and see me achieve whatever destiny they have appointed for me
. A wave of depression hit him. Gathering up the papyrus, linen, and bag, he plunged into the coolness of his cell and lowered himself onto his cot. Every muscle began to loosen and his headache began to ease. With his left hand curled around the sa, he fell into a deep sleep.

On the following evening he ordered out a litter and had himself carried to the Rekhet’s house. Although the day had been unbearably hot, he had taken out a chariot and the horse that never wanted to behave and had spent several hours on the manoeuvres of battle he was required to learn before classes reconvened in Tybi. He had washed both chariot and horse, fed and watered the animal, bathed himself thoroughly, then found he could not rest during the afternoon when a great somnolence always fell over both city and temple. Instead he sat in the shade of one of the sycamores surrounding the sacred lake and let the words of the Book roll slowly through his mind. The language was beautiful, the concepts he had already grasped both sophisticated and sublime. But there was no coherence in them for him, no great conclusion. They were like the mathematical equations the architect set his pupils. Worked out correctly, the answers were satisfyingly simple and could be practically applied.
Might there in fact be a practical application to the Book of Thoth?
Huy wondered for the first time. Something not at all abstract? Something encompassing the material as well as the divine? He played with the idea for some time, but having no clue as to how to put the whole together, he gave up. Who was the “you” Thoth was addressing? “You will become … You will go around … You flash … You have grown wings …” The terrible Turnface was the ferryman who carried those justified from the area of Paradise called the Fields of Yaru to their eternal home. Could “you” mean everyone justified? Then how did the last scroll connect with the first—the nature and metamorphosis of Atum?

After eating bread and a salad of the earliest greens, he set out for the Rekhet’s house. The city was beginning to come to life again after the torpor of the day. As Ra began to lip the western horizon and the stale summer air held the faintest promise of coolness, the stall keepers set out their wares, the soldiers began to saunter towards the beer houses, and loose groups of strollers wandered the streets, chattering and laughing. Whores, looking fresher than the noblewomen passing in their litters, emerged from the shade and strutted towards the seedier areas of Iunu. After the quiet emptiness of the school Huy drank in the optimistic bustle. He was not due at Nakht’s house for dinner until well after full dark had fallen. He had plenty of time both to enjoy his passage through the city and to share wine with Henenu. In spite of his state of mind, he had missed her.

The litter-bearers were clearly indignant at having to walk through such a poor area of the city. Setting Huy down outside Henenu’s cowrie-encrusted wall, they squatted together in its lengthening shadow and Huy approached the servant beyond, at the door. This time he was greeted with a smile and escorted at once to the pleasant little garden behind the house.

The Rekhet was sitting on a low stool in the middle of her tiny vegetable patch, bare of growth at that time of the year. As Huy came towards her, she rose with a smile. “I don’t know why I am compelled to contemplate this naked soil,” she said as she reached up to kiss his cheek. “In fact I don’t know why I plant anything here at all. An old habit learned from my father. He used to pace across his arouras, sifting the earth, long before the sowing was due to begin.” Her eyes scanned his face, and presently she nodded. “I was right,” she went on. “Come into the house and tell me about it.”

She walked away, the shells on her leather belt and around her ankles clicking against each other as she moved, and Huy followed her. He had not been inside her dwelling before and was not surprised to find it very sparsely furnished, the few chairs plain, the walls whitewashed and unadorned. For the first time in ages Huy remembered his paints, and how as a child he would stand outside his father’s walls happily making pictures on them for hours. Henenu indicated a chair. The table beside it held a clay cup of milk and a dish of dried figs.

“Undo your braid,” she ordered. Huy obeyed, pulling off the small frog clasp and unwinding his thick plait. Henenu clapped her hands. The same woman who had served them soup on Huy’s last visit appeared and bowed. “Bring oil and a comb,” the Rekhet told her. “Now Huy, I am going to oil and comb your hair and you will talk to me. The milk and figs are for you, if you are hungry.” Huy was thirsty. He drank the milk but declined the figs. At once the servant reappeared, set a phial of fragrant oil on the table, and went away. Henenu moved behind Huy, out of his sight.

“I must thank you for this sa,” Huy said, his hand going to the amulet on his breast. “How did you know that I needed it?”

“I had a feeling,” she answered briskly. “The design is simple. It did not take long to make. How did you know that you needed it?”

“Thoth told the reader of the Book to put on his sa. I did not know what a sa was.” He found himself reciting the few pungent sentences of the fifth part and the pieces of the commentary he could remember. As he did so he felt her hands on his head, her touch firm but gentle, loosening his hair. The comb began to glide through it. At once a sense of peace stole over Huy.

“It falls below your shoulders,” Henenu remarked. “It must be very hot. You do not wear it long merely to hide the scar, do you? What is your reason?”

“I’m not sure,” Huy confessed. “It is partly because I don’t want to look like a priest, with a fully shaven skull, or a Seer for that matter.”

“Might it also be a symbol of your virginity?” she murmured. Huy stiffened. Her grip on his hair momentarily tightened. The comb slid pleasingly over his scalp. “Let us not bandy words, my wicked young charge,” she continued. “You know perfectly well that many of your fellow students have already enjoyed their first sexual encounters. You are now fifteen—almost a man in the eyes of the law. Your state of innocence has begun to haunt you. You want an end to it. Suddenly you have become rebellious, wanting what other men have, wanting a chance to choose a wife, but most of all wanting to rid yourself of the gift the gods gave you.”

Huy felt coolness as she poured a few drops of oil on the top of his head and began to draw it through his tresses with her fingers. At once his nostrils were assailed by a sweet, heavy aroma that went to his head immediately, making him sleepy yet alert and filling his limbs with an agreeable weight. “Henenu, you are drugging me. What is that odour?”

“Reremet,” she replied promptly. “I crush the fruit and add it to the oil when I want someone to relax. Often people come to me in a state of agitation so great that I cannot work for them. A few whiffs of the reremet calms them.”

Huy had heard of the mandrake with its roots in the shape of a man with a penis. His friends at the school had made jokes about its aphrodisiac properties. “I am not agitated,” he said indignantly.

“Yes you are. You are a little maelstrom, Huy. Close your eyes and your mouth and let me speak.” Huy did as he was told, giving himself over to the wonderful lassitude of his body and mind yet fully aware of the sharpness of his mental faculties. The comb continued its slow, rhythmic course from his crown down to his shoulder blades. “It will be better for you if you realize that for you there are no large choices in life,” Henenu went on. “You may decide what to eat, what to wear, whom to befriend, but your journey was chosen for you by the gods and by you when you agreed to read the Book. Protesting your youth and ignorance will not do!” she said firmly as Huy opened his mouth. “I have heard that argument. Discard it. It avails you nothing. It is wasted words. Understand that you may try to take a wife, sleep with a whore, bury yourself in whatever anonymity you can find, but your sex will not respond. It will refuse your bidding. The sooner you accept that Atum rules your fate, the sooner you will achieve the peace that eludes you.”

“But even the High Priest had no answer to the question of my virginity and the loss of the gift,” Huy said dully. “Neither do you, Rekhet. Some Seers produce children and keep their gift. Some do not.”

“And you wish to be one who does not,” Henenu retorted. “You are close to hating the god who commanded this for you. You have decided to beg Nakht for a contract with Anuket. He will not grant it, partly because he desires a nobleman for his daughter, but mainly because he has a healthier fear of the god’s anger than you. He wants a favourable weighing, particularly since the beautification of his wife. But go ahead and try, foolish one. Be rebuffed. Find another girl to wed. It will not matter.”

“I think the gift is dead in me anyway,” Huy said sullenly.

“You lie. Nakht told me what you Saw as his wife died. The gift is in abeyance, that is all. Atum is patient. He waits for you to commit yourself totally to the Book, and until you do, your khu will surely be full of the confusion of which you spoke. Ah, Huy!” The comb hit the table with a click and she began to expertly rebraid his hair. “Some great work waits for you in a future that I cannot see. Something vital to Egypt. Your courage must not fail, for if it does then Egypt will go down into chaos!” Huy swung round, astonished. The netted lines of her face were distorted with emotion, her eyes narrowed. “I do not lie. I do not attempt to control you. I am telling you what I most strongly sense when I am near you. I choke on the power of it. It has nothing to do with the hosts of Khatyu who attack and trouble those who come to me for exorcism. They throng you. They do not want your destiny fulfilled. But they cannot touch you. This is something else, something higher and more dire.” She placed both oil-slicked hands on his cheeks. “You have Shai. You have a mighty destiny. What is a moment of orgasm compared to that?”