The Blood of Kings

by John Michael Curlovich

  “Danilo, I—”

  He kissed back, hard, deep. “Jamie, do you know what I’m giving you?”

  “Yourself, I hope.” He meant something else, something more. He always did in our intimate moments. I only half guessed what he might mean. We lay across the tiny desk in my office and kissed and held each other. When I stood up there were scarabs stuck to my cheek and arm. We both laughed and he brushed them off.

  As passionate as we had been, we had never made love, not real love. I was beginning to wonder if… I put it down to his position, and mine. If there was a scandal we could always say, quite truthfully, that we had never… But I wanted him so much.

  * * *

  There had been some talk among the other students in my class when Danilo announced he had hired me. A few of the girls in particular shot me unpleasant glances; one of the guys looked like he wanted to spit on me. But that passed.

  I had spent a lot of time in the museum library working on my research paper. Naturally I chose to write about the Set cult, what I could learn about it. There was plenty of material about the god but nothing explicit about the secret cult Danilo had mentioned, at least nothing in the open stacks. But what I found tantalized me.

  Set was the brother of the great god Osiris, the greatest of the Egyptian deities. Horus, the son of Osiris and the divine embodiment of the king, was his nephew. And Set and Horus made love.

  There was a long mystical text called “The Contendings of Horus and Set.” At one point in it… yes, uncle and nephew became lovers, but only briefly. It seemed to be more a matter of them trying to get one-up on each other than anything else. Typical relationship. Set was the seducer.

  I asked Danilo about it. “You would find that text.”

  “Yes,” I was pleased with myself, “I would.”

  “Have you also learned about the ‘negative confession’?”

  I hadn’t come across that. “No, what was it?”

  “When an Egyptian died his heart was taken out and weighed in a balance, to see if he was fit to enter heaven. Part of the ritual was a long list of sins he had to assert he had never committed.”

  I knew what he was going to say.

  “And one of those sins was same-sex love.”

  It didn’t seem to make sense. “But Danilo, the gods made love. Set made love to his nephew.”

  “Yes.” He shrugged. “Egyptian religion was hardly the last to be caught in that contradiction.”

  “It doesn’t make sense.”

  “Like all religions, the Egyptian belief system was a crazy-quilt of ideas and attitudes that accumulated over centuries. How could there not be contradictions?”

  I found myself wondering how seriously he himself took the old gods. When he talked about Set, he always sounded… But before I could think of a way to ask, he shifted tone.

  “I’ve been ignoring you, Jamie.”

  “No.”

  “Well, not spending as much time as I’d like. It’s been a busy summer. For both of us.”

  “I don’t mind.” I minded.

  “When the term is over, let’s go away somewhere. Be together, just you and I.”

  I was completely surprised. “Where?”

  “Does it make any difference?”

  “Not if we’re together, Danilo.”

  “Let me think about it, then.”

  “I thought that was a definite invitation.”

  “Let me think about where, I mean, not if.”

  I kissed him. “Someplace romantic.”

  “We won’t be staying in Pittsburgh, then.”

  * * *

  Roland seemed quite pleased that I was warming to twentieth century music; he didn’t make it a secret it was his favorite. A lot of it was beyond me, though. Some of it for technical reasons—it was simply too difficult for someone at my level. I tried Stravinsky’s piano version of Petrouchka and made a complete mess of it. It would be ages before I was that good.

  Other pieces I tried—like the second Shostakovich sonata—were simply beyond my understanding. On the surface the music was fairly simple. But there was something there, between the notes, that I couldn’t hear. I played recordings of it and listened as carefully as I could, and the music was filled with passion. When I played it myself it was so flat…

  “You need to keep working on it,” Roland told me. “It’s not a young man’s music, but you’re beginning to find its heart.”

  I had no idea what he meant, and I said so. “I feel like I’ll never play it properly.”

  “Do you know much about Shostakovich?”

  I told him I didn’t. I should have; I should have learned what I could.

  “He was the quintessential outsider, Jamie. Isolated, lonely, never knowing who he could trust.”

  “I’m not sure I want to understand that.”

  “You will anyway. Sooner or later, we all do.”

  I wanted to ask him who exactly he meant by “we.” Before I could, he changed gears. “Why don’t we work on the Poulenc for a while?”

  A week before finals Danilo took me to dinner, an expensive place. I was moving up in his esteem, it seemed. Even though I was underage he ordered a bottle of wine for us. I resisted making any jokes about him trying to get me drunk. He didn’t have to.

  The place was dimly lit. I thought I saw touches of grey at his temples. We mostly made small talk. Halfway through dinner he reached across the table and took my hand.

  It made me a bit nervous. I found myself thinking about Justin, Tim, my scholarships. But it felt so warm.

  “I’ve never invited you to my house, Jamie.”

  He hadn’t. It didn’t bother me. I had always put it down to how busy we both were. “That’s okay.”

  He took my hand and kissed it. “Tonight. It’s high time.”

  I had never had anyone do that before. It felt… it felt as exhilarating as all Danilo’s kisses felt. For just the briefest instant I was self-conscious about it. Then I didn’t care.

  It was after dark when we left the restaurant. He took me home. His house was a large Victorian one with vibrant stained-glass windows. I told him how beautiful I found them.

  “I left the lights on so they’d be shining for you when we got here.”

  On closer inspection the windows had Egyptian motifs. One had a shimmering scarab at its center; another was adorned with lotuses. “Did you have these made?”

  “No, the house came like this, believe it or not. The Victorians went through a period of Egyptomania. How could I not take this place?”

  Inside there was incense burning. I had never much liked incense, but this smelled, I don’t know, pungent, almost bitter. It took a moment to get used to the aroma, but then it was fine. The rooms were fairly dark; there was only accent lighting, in one room a Tiffany lamp with more lotuses.

  I had expected his place to be filled with Egyptian things, papyri, statuettes. Instead there were beautiful antiques, heavy wooden tables, overstuffed Victorian furniture, shelves of old books. There was a first edition of Byron’s Manfred. It must have been worth a fortune. “Where are the scrolls and amulets?”

  “At the campus museum, where they belong.”

  On the walls were framed portraits of men from different ages, in different styles. I recognized some as medieval, some as Renaissance, some as more modern than that. Some of them wore crowns. The modern ones were photographs, some signed. Some of them were labeled or were familiar enough for me to know who they were; most weren’t.

  “Kings, Jamie, all of them. Richard Lionheart, James I—”

  “The king who did that Bible?”

  “Exactly. And Alexander. David and Jonathan. And Frederick the Great, Julius Caesar and his nephew Augustus, Hadrian and Antinous, Henri III, Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan… ” There were dozens of them. He told me about the lives and achievements of some of them. It became clear that they were all men who had loved men.

  And there were some women too. Queen Ch
ristina of Sweden, Queen Anne of England, and a few more that were not labeled. Christina I knew from the Garbo film.

  Another corner held portraits of men who seemed to be popes, or at any rate were dressed that way. One was labeled “Julius II.” Another was of a pope with his arms around a beautiful young boy; the label read, “Julio III et Innocenzo.”

  He began telling me about the ones I didn’t recognize and weren’t labeled. The Holy Roman Emperor Boris II. Chinese Emperors Ai, Qianglong, Xianfeng. William Rufus, the second king of England. Go-Shirakawa, Emperor of Japan, and the Shoguns Yoshimochi, Yoshimitsu, Ieyasu… There were scores of them, hundreds of them, and I found it more than a bit overwhelming.

  On one wall, prominently lit with a spotlight, was an image of the Kissing Kings.

  In other rooms there were portraits of artists. Michelangelo, Leonardo, Erasmus, Feng Wenglong, Melville, Saikau, Handel… And philosophers, Wittgentstin, Erasmus… There were signed photographs of Poulenc and Eisenstein, and others I didn’t recognize and whose handwriting I couldn’t read.

  Among them I instantly recognized Chopin. In one corner there was a grand piano. I opened the keyboard and played a few notes; the tone was richer than any I’d ever heard. Above the keys was the logo: Bechstein. The best, the cream.

  “I can have it tuned for you, if you like, Jamie.”

  It was a shrine. The whole house was a shrine. It struck me as excessive, in a way; in another way… most decidedly not. I knew Danilo was more open about himself than most of the people in my circles, and I knew he loved the past, but all this…

  I felt light-headed, almost as if I was underwater. I had no idea why.

  He touched my cheek. “I am the keeper of their flame. The last one left.”

  I had no idea what to make of all this. For the first time in Danilo’s presence I was genuinely… not uncomfortable, exactly, but a bit bewildered…

  “We have always been kings, Jamie. We have wielded power. We have made the art that shaped whole ages.”

  I stepped away from him. “Where are the athletes? Where are the scientists and the auto mechanics and the trash collectors?”

  “You tell me where they are. Would your friend Justin want his portrait here, among the others?”

  “N-n-no.”

  “And would his friend Greg?”

  “No. You know he wouldn’t.”

  He kept silent so I could realize what he was trying to tell me. I wasn’t quite sure I did.

  “We have the blood of kings in our veins, Jamie, you and I. We are part of their line. We are one with them, in a way Justin and Greg and their like will never be.”

  “No, Danilo, this can’t be right.”

  “Close your eyes and feel it…” he whispered. “It is right.”

  I looked around the room. The kings and presidents, the artists and composers all seemed to want something from me. And some of them were moving. Yes, they were moving.

  I realized that the incense must be masking something else, some drug. Unlikely as it sounds, I had never been high before. It didn’t matter. All I wanted was Danilo.

  He put his arms around me and kissed me, and I knew that we were, finally, going to make love. His bedroom had more portraits on the walls, but I hardly noticed them. He let me undress him, firm, smooth body. There was hair on his chest and legs, not much, just enough to define the muscles and make him even sexier. I kissed every part of him. Tenderly he undid my shirt, my shorts, my sneakers.

  Nothing I had ever experienced prepared me for the intensity of what I felt that night. Wave after wave of sex, engulfing me, making everything else in the world melt away.

  “Danilo.” I spoke softly. “Do you love me?”

  He kissed me again, harder and deeper than before. “Jamie, I love you.”

  And I told him I loved him too.

  The words had been said.

  I knew there was no turning back.

  What he was trying to teach me, I wanted to learn.

  * * *

  In class we learned about the heretic pharaoh Akhenaten. He had dismissed all the priests of the traditional gods and instituted a new religion, the worship of the god he considered the one, true One. He even moved the capital to a new place called Amarna, to diminish the priests’ influence even more. It caused an upheaval in Egypt, 20 years of chaos and unrest.

  “The more romantic historians like to believe he worshipped the Judeo-Christian God,” he told us. “But Akhenaten was more original than that and more subversive. Here is an image of him, with his son and successor.”

  He showed it to us. It was the Kissing Kings.

  There were giggles around the room. One of the girls, Jane, spoke up. “So, he was a fag?”

  “If you want to be picturesque about it. He was also married to one of the most beautiful women in history, Nefertiti.”

  “Then why was he gettin’ it on with his kid?”

  Danilo smiled a faint smile. “We all have to be true to our natures.”

  “Not fags.” She was becoming more and more upset by what she’d learned.

  But Danilo had had enough of her. “To deny your nature is to commit a kind of suicide. To deny your nature is voluntary death. Are there any other questions?”

  No one seemed to want to know more about the pharaoh’s personal religion. But I had understood what Danilo was telling me, alone among the students: the “heretic pharaoh” was the key to understanding the Set cult.

  * * *

  A few afternoons later I was working in my little office, sorting through some scrolls. Professor Feld knocked on my door. “Have you seen Semenkaru?”

  “Danilo? No, not for a couple of hours.”

  “He’s never here when I need him.”

  Lucky Danilo, I thought. Feld had never quite stopped being suspicious of me. He obviously regarded me as a potential thief, and maybe not so potential. I decided to bait him. “Do you know anything about the black market for antiquities?”

  “No. Why?”

  “I’m just curious, that’s all. I mean, I wouldn’t know where to begin to sell a hot mummy, but people do. It’s hard not to wonder.”

  “If I were you, I’d be careful, young man.” He left, slamming the door loudly behind him.

  The Antiquities Department only had four professors, Danilo, Feld, a Greek specialist and a specialist in Persia and Babylon. There was no chairman; they operated independently and made decisions democratically. It gave Danilo a lot of autonomy. But as much as Feld disliked me, he couldn’t do much about the fact that I worked in his department. Even so, I knew toying with him wasn’t the smartest idea. But I could never resist.

  One of the scrolls I was working on puzzled me. It was in a style I hadn’t seen before. I knew that besides formal hieroglyphics the Egyptians had had a less arty, less ornate writing called hieratic. This scroll wasn’t like that. I’d have to ask Danilo what to do with it. He said he’d be down in the catacombs.

  This time I was able to step over the cordon without fear of being stopped by anyone.

  The basement was filled with Greek and Roman objects. The first sub-basement held a group of smaller things from those societies and several rooms of Babylonian relics. The second was where the Egyptian collection began. It was by far the largest collection and extended two levels further down. Danilo told me the university had been caught up in that same Victorian Egyptomania and had amassed a considerable collection, back when.

  I switched on the light and descended. On the first level I heard voices and paused. It was unlikely Danilo would be there, but… After a moment I was able to make out what I was hearing. It was Feld, talking to himself. In Latin.

  I continued downward and reached the second sub-basement, the place where Danilo had shown me those mummies way back when. It seemed a thousand years ago. I had been down there a few more times, mostly just looking for Danilo, but once or twice I had had to work there, sorting through stacks of papyri, recording the inscriptions on
mummy cases. That kind of thing. So it wasn’t exactly familiar, but it wasn’t as unsettling as it had been that first time.

  I paused at the landing. The electric lights, as always, didn’t provide much illumination. But at least I was used to the dim place by now. I stood and listened. Everything was perfectly silent. The doors to the various rooms were all closed.

  After a moment I decided to call out. “Danilo?”

  My voice echoed down the corridor.

  A bit louder. “Danilo?”

  He wasn’t there, it seemed. I took a few steps down the passageway and knocked lightly on the doors, knowing it was useless.

  And it was. There was no one.

  I headed back to the stairs. No use lingering down there when there was work to be done. I switched off the lights in the corridor and put my foot on the first step.

  There were voices.

  It took me a moment to realize where they were coming from: below.

  I called down the steps. “Danilo?”

  There were whispers, just at the limit of my hearing, so faint I wasn’t even quite certain I was hearing them. Not at all sure it was the right thing to do, I took a few steps down. “Danilo?”

  The voices went silent. Then in a moment they began again. I shouted his name still again, and again they became quiet.

  I had to see. Danilo had always been so emphatic that I wasn’t to go below the second sub-level. But there was someone there. If it was him, he’d be angry, but I had seen his anger before and I knew he wouldn’t stay that way very long, not with me. And if it was someone else, someone who shouldn’t be there… I had to see.

  Carefully I descended, a few steps, pause, a few more, pause. Listening. Voices. I knew better than to call his name. There would be no answer. Among the murmurs I thought I heard my own name.

  The lights strung along the stairs were farther apart the lower I went. Still I continued.