The men must have been observing me since two of them laughed gently when they saw my reaction — I suppose I must have gone a little pale. I handed the gourd back, thanked the man vaguely, and returned to my place in the procession without a backward glance.
The dead man, lying on the slabs, had looked like a sleeping giant to me, a hood pulled over his head by mischievous children. For some reason, I would have liked to be there when he woke.
Dawn…. The purple hue of the eastern sky, as stars still shone in the West, then that uncertain colour, between pearl and azure, just before the arc of the sun rises above the horizon — O Amun-Re, your golden brightness at dawn, your warm light when the night is over!
I had never left the valley before. I had never even crossed the River, when my father took me for my first trip, at the age of 12. How impressed I was to see that mountainous horizon, sand and rock stretching to infinity, under the blinding morning sun. And there, far away, a serpent, no; another caravan, wavering in the heat of the desert.
Traveling for days and days with my even-tempered father, until that evening when the sea lay before us. It was the gulf, its other shore visible at the horizon. But such a vast expanse of water was beyond my comprehension. The Red Sea, the real one, lay much farther to the south. Our ships ventured there, bringing back copper, turquoise or garnet from the Sinai, gold, porphyry and emeralds from the coastal mountains. Beyond them, much farther away, Amenhep had explained to me, where the sea touches another shoreless sea, lay the land of Punt, from which our first navigators had returned after months of travel, loaded with ebony and ivory.
It was, claimed my father, even farther than Nubia.
And I watched him leave, on board one of our ships that resembled the river-bound skiffs, upswept at both stern and bow, but much larger, and rigged with masts and sails.
Then I went back to Men-nofer with the caravan, to await my father’s return. In the evening, I would look East, beyond the rich colours with which the setting sun painted the fields and fig orchards; I would look at the highlands where the desert starts. The precious few caravans I spied would keep me awake until the next morning, when I would fret on the shore until the ferries arrived.
Time passed slowly, I believed then, and I could conceive of no longer wait than that one.
The sand, dazzling … whiter than salt, as if the very light of the sun had been ground to powder and sprinkled over the desert. That was my impression as I exited from the vertical shaft and tottered for a moment on the upper rungs. Athep, who had climbed up ahead of me, reached down and grabbed me by the shoulder until my dizzy spell passed. Around us, the workers were silent on the site of the mastaba, ready to lower the vertical slab that would close the pit, and then fill the shaft.
I turned, arms slack, and allowed my eyes to roam over the necropolis where the mastabas stood in rows, low and squat, as large as nobles’ mansions.
Father was not noble enough to have his mastaba in the sacred enclosure, in the shadow of Djeser’s pyramid, but the pharaoh had made him a gift of a sarcophagus carved in diorite, as a reward for an entire lifetime of loyalty. It was Father we had just looked at for the last time, in his tomb, the flame of the torches gleaming on its polished surface, kindling the golden and turquoise ornaments in the dark.
In keeping with tradition, we had left only a few objects down below, those which my father had cherished the most: the ebony palette and the gold-ringed brush with which he re-did his scribes’ accounts certain evenings, and the exquisite bronze lamp he lit at such times.
Just the day before, the painters had made the final touches to the frescos where Tsehout, my youngest sister, indifferent to the solemness of the moment, had entertained herself by identifying each of us among the painted figures.
We made our way back to the city. Weeks would go by before we would be able to return to the completed mastaba and place our offerings in the funerary chapel.
“What will he eat until then?” asked Tsehout, and my brother explained to her that the meal scenes of the frescos in the tomb would be enough to nourish his ka for some time.
Under our steps, the ground had returned to its natural colour, alternatively light, then dark as the shadows of mastabas in their rows followed one another. Everything was in order. Yet tears flowed from my eyes without end.
Molten copper…. Oh how I loved that far too brief instant when the vermillion sun burned into my gaze, leaving green circles on the inside of my eyelids when I shut my eyes.
It was at that time of day that I had gone, with Tiout, to my father’s mastaba. We had dallied, playing hide and seek among the date palms of a plantation lying at the very edge of the cultivated land, pursuing our race into the desert, where I had pinned her to the sand-swept ground. I felt her nipples harden under the linen and I pulled the straps of her robe down to nuzzle her breasts. I tasted salt on her skin.
Tiout stopped me after a moment, protesting that it was not appropriate, but I knew that Father loved her as well and approved of our upcoming marriage.
Nevertheless, I stood up and my loincloth once again hung in its usual folds by the time we arrived at the cemetery, just as the orange disk of the sun rested on the horizon. I purchased a torch from the guardian, near his fire, and we entered my father’s tomb.
In addition to the incense, I had brought a skullcap, much like the one Father wore when he had to go down into the cellar, as an offering. His tomb, so deep in the ground, had to be much colder than the cellar under our home.
In the chapel, I recited the usual prayers, while Tiout silently examined the frescos that showed Father accepting and then consuming the offerings. I lit the incense then, solemnly, placed the skullcap on the altar. My fiancée, I believe, smiled a little at my grave countenance. A bluish daylight seeped in through the doorway, blotted out by the glare of the flame. I took the torch, held it gingerly at arm’s length through the slot in the wall behind the altar and bent forward to rest my forehead on the stone edge. The horizontal slot was no broader than the palm of a hand, just large enough to provide an airway between the chapel and the serdab. That’s where my father’s belongings had been placed, his bed, his best clothing, a precious chest, a very fine bow he had used for hunting when he was young. Just opposite the slot stood an effigy of my father, one leg ahead as if he were walking to meet me. The first time I had seen him like that I had shuddered with fear, as if Father could have stepped down from his pedestal, walked up to me and slipped his arms through the slot. Even a few months later, that image still gripped me, an illusion of movement in the torch’s flickering light, the appearance of life in the warm hue of the fire, darkness quivering in the farthest corners of the serdab, and that silence…. I could not stop myself from thinking about the crypt, twenty ells under ground, twenty ells of shaft filled with gravel and, behind the slab, the absolute darkness of the tomb, the nonexistent colours of the frescos, the dull diorite of the sarcophagus, and that silence, oh that silence…
Once again that day, I retreated hastily, withdrawing the torch, leaving the serdab in darkness. Tiout and I left the mastaba and kept the torch lit until we reached the city walls.
On our way, I thought about how cruel it was to lock someone so far away from daylight.
The Moon … when she was full and at the zenith of her course, she was almost dazzling in her whiteness. Around her, stars died from her ardour.
She was almost full, that night, as I walked into the western desert, the land of the dead. In the kingdom, we always bury the dead on the western shore of the River; it’s always on the western shore that we build their mastabas and pyramids. It is said that their ba haunts the desert.
I had to know.
At my back, the moon rose, red, swollen, diseased.
I had to know. What? I had no idea. My childhood was a matter of the past, my youth wasted in wild times, stup
id deeds and petty treacheries. Yet, the questions, doubts and anguish kept coming back to mind.
After sunset, I walked for hours carrying a gourd, a lamp, some oil, torches that I could light as needed and a heavy walking stick, which I could use as a club. Its knotty wood, gripped tightly in my hand, was supposed to ward off my fear. Yet, on two occasions, I shivered as the jackals howled in the distance.
I had enough time that night to go back over my entire life — and how naïve it was to believe my summing up was complete, that all I needed was a few hours! That morning, I had argued with Mother. She had called me a good-for-nothing and thrown a few of my escapades in my face. As if a box had been opened, all of the pranks of my boyhood came back to me. One memory was very clear in my mind. Akhem and I were 15 years old and had stayed behind in the sacred enclosure as evening fell, when Djeser’s pyramid stretched its shadow well beyond the walls. At the end of a long courtyard with a discrete door, we had spotted what we thought were the embalming chambers. A short climb, small barred windows at the top of a wall … there was no light in the room other than the dying embers under a large caldron. But the bitter odour of the naphtha, bitumen and natron left no trace of doubt.
Once our eyes had adjusted to the shadow, there was a lot to see: tables laden with utensils, bowls and crucibles, strips wound in rolls or soaking in vats, urns leaning against the walls, long tables too high for dining…. I felt the tension well up in Akhem. He had just recognized a long, pale form, a cadaver rolled in a clinging shroud.
I had noticed the body almost at my first glance and was only able to draw my morbid attention from it after a while, thinking back on the priest who had died the day of the ceremony, a few years earlier. Yet, what I stared at now, silent, chest tight, was the tall black statue standing against the farthest wall.
Anpu.
Anpu, his almond eyes rimmed with gold, his long ears standing erect, his pointed muzzle, bracelets and necklaces of precious metal. Black, so black, hands widespread, arms stretched partly out as if to receive … a visitor? An offering?
Anpu , who brought Asar back to life and has reigned over the underworld since.
A dark phantom standing in the shadow, I could only see one of his eyes, on the side of his head. And that eye stared back at me. I was unable to move under its gaze.
The secrets of the embalmers lay there, in that room, in those vials and sachets. But what did they know of the Mystery, the great Mystery? The god with the jackal’s head, did he speak to them sometimes?
I learned nothing about it that night, nor any of the nights afterwards, nor during the years that followed.
In the desert, a thousand steps or less from a hamada, I stopped when my legs could no longer carry me, letting my burden drop to the sand, making the effort to take a few final strides, collapsing to my knees and just barely saving the small flame of my lamp. The moon shone so brightly that my prostrate body cast a pool of shadow before me, to my right.
The silence caught up with me, kept at bay until that time by the murmur of the sand beneath my sandals. A planet shone, pink. Probably I had known its name in the days when I had been Amenhep’s best student. The rocky outcropping ahead of me was perhaps closer and lower than I had thought.
For a long time, I heard only my own breathing, harsh with fatigue. But it finally eased. The desert was silent, absolutely silent. It had been a long while since I had heard the howling of the night hounds.
Perhaps I dozed, despite my anguish, despite my hunger. Perhaps I fell asleep, as I squatted back on my haunches.
When I opened my eyes, or at least when consciousness returned behind my eyes, a jackal sat some distance away, to my left, its back dark, its ears pricked up, its eyes shining.
Under the full moon, it stared at me, alone and immobile. And I, I who had always lived in the city, I had no idea whether what it felt was curiosity, indifference, or an appetite that waited merely for the reinforcement of its pack mates to be satisfied. Carefully, moving only my head and torso, I made sure there were no other jackals coming up on me from behind. Everywhere, the sand was grey, almost white.
When I looked back at the jackal, it had not moved, apart from its head… But even that had barely moved either, not really, yet something had changed… its shape perhaps? Was its muzzle longer, its eyes stretched … or was it just a trick of the shadows? And that alteration in its gaze, surely that was just my imagination running wild? A gaze that appeared more … absent, more mineral, and yet more difficult to escape.
Then, there was nothing, nothing but a jackal trotting off, not to distance itself from me but merely to continue on its way, turning ever so slightly in order to remain out of my stick’s reach. It disappeared among the rocks that rose out of the desert a short distance north and west.
I stood up. My legs almost gave way beneath me, exploding into pins and needles, and I had to lean on my stick for a moment. Then, I took a few steps, walking in a circle, stretching my legs.
Hesitantly, I picked up my gourd, which was much lighter than when I had set out, I lit a torch from the small flame of my lamp, and I started to walk, my shadow now following behind. Where was I heading? I had no idea. But it seemed to me that it was not to the den of some simple jackal.
Up close, the outcropping of rocks turned out to be nothing more than a few large stones, and the hamada, a modest cliff that children could have scaled in a minute. I stopped. Those black spots I saw in the rock, were they the shadow of a few projections on the rock face, were they vertical bands traced by moonlight, or were they caves at the foot of the cliff? It was that possibility that stopped me in my tracks as if some icy hand had grabbed me by the throat, and I felt my heart pound. If I had wanted to make sure, I would have had to carry my torch to within a few steps of those dark hollows. Those grottos, were they not doors into the underworld? The idea became certainty as soon as it was formulated in my mind.
I fell to my knees. Or possibly, terror cut my legs out from under me. Beside me, the torch cast a yellow circle on the sand. I looked, a little to my right, in an effort to make something out among the large rocks where the carrion beast had disappeared.
When I looked back to the cliff once again, a human silhouette stood a few feet from the caves, as tall as a statue, completely black in the moonlight. The ears that rose from its head were those of a jackal.
The light…. All that remains of it are memories, and they seem paler and paler to me as time passes. Yet, I picture the small golden flame of a lamp being waved before my eyes by someone as if to determine if I were lucid, to see if my eyes would track it.
I was home, in the dwelling that had been my father’s where my mother still lived. Mother and my wife, Tiout, busied themselves around me, in a room where the sun filtered in through a curtain of palms. I had returned to Men-nofer delirious, after an absence of two days, and they feared for my sanity. The fever had finally broken, but the delirium seemed to persist, a nervousness that caused me to babble and grasp at anyone who bent over me.
Over time, I learned to keep quiet, not to speak about He who, at night, walks the lands of the setting sun, among the hyenas and jackals. He who stands at the gates to the underworld. I no longer knew, in fact, if the vision had preceded the delirium or was born out of it. At the time of my death, I told myself, it would all become clear to me.
I still know nothing.
Time passes. I’m aware of the years, vaguely, but I haven’t counted them in quite some time. I’m waiting. I’m waiting to see the light again.
Ah, the light! A moment of light, nothing more than a moment, a brief glimmer, which would consume me merely by shining on me, I’m so dry and brittle. Then I would rise like smoke and dissipate in the void. All my memories of light would blaze in an instant of glory and then expire, and I with them.
Up above, the mastaba is long gone, no doubt, or it ha
s been buried under ells of sand, which the centuries have blown over the necropolis.
I have neighbours. I vaguely sense their mute presence. But their slumber is so deep. One of them, a most fortunate bastard, was visited by pillagers, sometime during the first millennium of our stay. Perhaps faith had vanished up above? Still, his tomb was looted and he was able to see the light. I can only hope for as much. I care no more for the few baubles of my past life, that ever so brief slice of life out in the open. Perhaps my crypt has collapsed more entirely than his. Perhaps the sand has buried it more completely. No mortal has ever made his way to my tomb.
Centuries have made way for millennia and only the occasional deep rumble leads me to think that there are still kingdoms on the surface of the Earth and that, possibly, people are still building pyramids.
The Singing
by Dan Rubin
Larlaluk knew her time had come. She awoke, feeling the wind pulsing against the sides of the skin tent. The sun must be hiding, but it did not matter to her. She had learned to see with her hands, now that her eyes had grown dim and clouded. Over all things there was a feeling of waiting; she felt as if she were already sitting in that high place with the sun warm upon her face.
Quietly, she rolled over and sat up, reaching for her leggings, then finding the skin shoes her son’s wife had made. She felt the softness of fur against her wrinkled old feet as she pulled them on. She drew her parka from beneath her head and unrolled it, pulling it on with difficulty, laughing under her breath at the pain in her joints, knowing it would not last. Just as in the throat singing, when your opponent’s voice falters, while your own surges and continues, she knew with a delicious certainty that today would be her day.
Reaching for her drum, she breathed the warm, familiar smells one more time, before crawling out and closing the tent flap behind her. Outside the light was still dim, but the warbles of the earliest birds confirmed that the sun was not far away. The moss beside the tent was soft beneath her feet as she shuffled down the rocky path to the cove to check one last time.
Tesseracts Nine: New Canadian Speculative Fiction Page 17