Ancient Evenings

by Norman Mailer

  “You can,” I said. “Sometimes you choose to do that.”

  “At a price to myself,” murmured my mother, and drew her fingertips to her eyes with a gesture so attractive that we both began to laugh for we both knew she had an image of wrinkles beginning in the corners of her eyes if she tried to squeeze back her thoughts from me. “Oh, you are a darling,” she murmured, and kissed me carefully in order not to disturb the cosmetic on her lips. Her mouth had a flavor sweet as the heat of the air when bees are drowsy, and it may have been that I had risen too quickly from my curious sleep, but her lips laid a powerful languor over me. Then I felt a curl, some velvet and voluptuous turn beneath my navel, and I lived in my mother’s memory of an afternoon and night when Menenhetet and then my father had made love to her, yes, both men in this room, one for all of the late afternoon (no matter how the walls were painted red for evening), and one for the muted red walls of this same room, seen later by the flame of a candle, and although Eyaseyab’s full lips upon Sweet Finger had left many intimations of sensuous hours to come, still how could I commence to understand what went on in Hathfertiti’s luxurious bed if I had not been inflamed by the sweet kiss of my mother’s honeyed mouth? So I knew that the day in which I had been conceived might be one of the most remarkable of her life. Then, as if this languor she laid upon me left her less able to protect her own thoughts, so did I also acquire the knowledge that on the day of my conception, on that late afternoon, Menenhetet had made love to my mother, in a manner he had made love but three times before. At once, my mother tried to chase these pictures from her brain just so quickly as she thought them, but I had a true glimpse, as clean to the sight as the white of a stalk of grass when the root is pulled from the ground, yes, as intimate to my ear as the sibilance of that stalk surrendering its life in earth, the first light on the white root like a knife in the flank—so sudden is the pain of the grass—so did I come into the deepest secret of my family. For my mother’s mind offered it up without a word, although her lips certainly trembled as these confessions poured from her mind. I learned—and all at once!—that my great-grandfather had the power to escape his death in a way no other may have ever done. For he had been able, during an embrace, to ride his heart right over the last ridge and breathe his last thought as he passed into the womb of the woman and thereby could begin a new life, a true continuation of himself; his body died, but not the memory of his life. Soon, he would show fabulous powers in childhood. So I understood why my mother could no longer keep such knowledge from me. I, too, showed such powers!

  What a disturbance did this confession produce in me! I felt as if, on a bolt of terror, I had jumped across the lip of one life into another. What a tumult of confusion! When Hathfertiti, by way of these unsprung thoughts, began to reveal how Menenhetet had made love to her in this hour, the foam and disorder of her mind was like a great rush of waves in my mind, and my thoughts did not know how to stay afloat against the current of such uproar in her, no, what did I know of how to make love!

  Of course, I was in a flood of two confusions—one from myself and the other from my mother—hers whether to tell me more; mine to grasp at what I had just been told. For if Menenhetet could die, yet become himself once more, so did I wonder if I was supposed to have been the fifth appearance—could it be said?—of Menenhetet the First. Or was I intended to become Menenhetet the Second, his true son, not his own continuation? Might I, either way, have been given his power to father oneself?

  That opened an immensity in my heart: I was given a glimpse of ambition in myself more fierce than fires of flaming oil. So I understood the woe that made me weep when I looked into the eye of the dog. For Tet-tut must have seen me dead at twenty-one. Then I thought of my poor Ka in the alcove at the center of the Great Pyramid—that same Pyramid I could now see painted on the rose wall of this room!—who was that young man there on his knees, mouth open to the force of another’s will? I looked at my mother in this confusion. Why had Menenhetet not entered his death at the moment he was ready?

  I felt doors open in her mind. Again I saw the tortured face of Menenhetet in the center of a pool and was pulled through the mills of her thoughts in that moment when she felt death commencing in his heart. She was ready to catch his child with an exultation fierce as the roar of existence itself, all luminous with the vision of his death coming forth into the life she would bear for him, her great lover Menenhetet soon to become her child, but at that instant, he did not come forth, and lay instead on her body, half-dead for many minutes.

  When, later, he withdrew, he said with a smile, “I do not know why I changed my mind.” He even put a finger to her chin and murmured, “On another occasion.” And departed from the body of his granddaughter, departed from that place where he had been ready to send his death, and I, comprehending this, could hardly know how much of me was similar to him—I knew only that I was kin to my great-grandfather in a hundred ways I could not name, my powers first, and remembered my mother saying, “Nef-khep-aukhem is your father and yet he is not.” So I had a hint of the toils of her body on that long day when I was conceived. For she must have been so certain a child would come to her by Menenhetet that what she would contribute herself was swimming already in her blood. Yet it was my father who must have put the seed into her that evening. I had a view of a night full of fevers as my father and mother rode from the bed to the floor and back again, my father slamming upon her skin with such savagery and such wild gusto—so much did he hate her, and adore her—that she was ablaze with a lust coming right out of the smelting of all contempt. My father’s lack of every quality a brave noble might possess made her desire him even more for his sly smells. At his best, he was something between a dog and a horse to her, there to enjoy and send back to his stall, as in fact she had enjoyed him from the time he was six and she was eight—used him for what he was, a younger brother. She could hardly endure his airs, his vanities, his weaknesses, his few brutal strengths. Yet the hair between her legs would stir when her brother was in the room. I was learning more about my father and my mother than she had ever wanted me to learn—I felt it now through Hathfertiti’s efforts to close her mind from mine. But I was forcing her—as if this was the only seduction I could perform—to strip away each thought. So did I penetrate into one more secret she might have wanted me not to find, and I could tell by the spasm in my chest, yes, the thrill and nausea of this recognition, that what I was about to learn was, by the first hand, awful, and next that I was jealous. If for the first time, I was nonetheless jealous. For I realized that my father was powerfully attractive to my mother because of his father, Shit-Collector. Now, I understood, as if engraved in the stone of my heart, that my mother had grown up in the shade of her mother’s desire for Fekh-futi—that uncontrollable desire!—and although I did not know how Fekh-futi looked, still my imagination insisted that he was one of the boys I had seen in my sleep this afternoon when I lived within Bone-Smasher’s eyes—and I saw those boys in the alley fighting again for the balls of manure. So could I see Fekh-futi fighting other boys for every piece of dung he could find in the city until he was enthroned on a heap, and ordering about the whores in his brothels as they went by with their transparent dresses and long blue wigs—I did not know if these were my thoughts now, or my mother’s, but I would certainly have been disgusted if not also near some old thrill as though I were two years old once more and still learning how not to soil myself (although mightily tempted).

  Was it the pain of discovering my mother’s appetite for Fekh-futi? At this point, I realized that I had certainly lost her. Hathfertiti’s mind was closed.

  She took me by the arm then. “It is time to return to the Pharaoh,” she said, and quick as that, as if I had just entered this rose-colored room for one glance, we departed and walked along that courtyard across which she had carried me an hour or two ago, screaming and upside-down.

  SEVEN

  What I had just learned was bound to affect me forever, yet th
e subject was so strange I might as well have awakened from a dream. Maybe that is why my confusion began to clear on our return to the Pharaoh’s balcony. There, everything was much as I had left it. While Menenhetet was now sitting on the other side of Ptah-nem-hotep, so, too, had my picture of where I had expected him to be also shifted. There was nothing to startle my eye.

  Below, on the patio, a Councillor was speaking of work in the quarries. I could see by the look on my father’s face that these were not matters of grave importance. I had often heard my mother say that my father never had a thought of his own, and so his face could reflect everyone else’s. I know I did not understand what she meant until the day she told him that his manners were superb because he was never bothered by the manners he had been born with—instead, he imitated the best manners he saw. That was a true description of my father. The angle at which one nobleman might cock his wrist quickly became—if my father thought it just—his own turn of wrist. So did he copy the delicate touch by which Ptah-nem-hotep brought a finger to the side of His nose when He was contemplating which fine remark to make, but then my father would even imitate the irony with which my great-grandfather might bow his head to indicate that he did not agree with what you just said.

  I do not mean to say that my father acted foolishly. Today he had most certainly been ill-at-ease while attempting to serve the Pharaoh with my mother looking on, but on calmer occasions he would appear, to those who did not know him well, as a distinguished nobleman. The white of his linen was never soiled, and the charcoal with which he painted his eyes rarely smudged. His jewelry did not miss a stone. Since gems and beads were always falling out as their fastenings loosened, not even my mother could present so impeccable an appearance as my father.

  In Court, his manner, which is to say, his fine collection of manners, served him well. Because I heard much talk of it in my family, I knew that it was necessary for the Pharaoh to have a man nearby who could make clear, by no more than the change of expression on his face, whether the matter directed to His attention had been proposed in suitable language. What a look of exasperation would come upon my father’s face if the poor official speaking from the patio below had a hoarseness of throat, a stammer, or an inability to keep from repeating his facts. So it was not difficult to understand that my father was of good service to Ptah-nem-hotep. Certainly my father’s expressions kept me most aware of the Pharaoh’s immaculate sensitivity—how could that not be so when my father’s face showed pain at every improper sound and thereby caused me to feel how delicate were the Pharaoh’s ears. Any sudden interruption of mood made Him wince within as at the wanton collapse of the walls of a fine building. Now I knew why He had kept listening to Khem-Usha although He detested what was being said. Khem-Usha’s solemn voice might be as oppressive to the mind of the Pharaoh as the slow insertion of clay in His nostrils, but Khem-Usha never altered his tones, so no matter what other pains he might inflict, his voice would not irritate the Pharaoh’s ear.

  The man speaking at this moment, however, was another matter. I could see by the encouragement in my father’s eyes that Ptah-nem-hotep was not without sympathy for the fellow or his office. That the Pharaoh was also confident of His ability to offer good advice in this case could be told by the light but haughty touch of my father’s finger to the side of his nose. His skill was to detect each change in the Pharaoh’s attitude, and reflect that back to the Court. So he was as quick to each whim of Ptah-nem-hotep as I to the readiness of my mother to let me come into her thoughts—I could see by the look of strain across my father’s brow that the official below, while personally inoffensive, even, in modest measure, estimable to Ptah-nem-hotep, had a voice, all the same, to bother His ears.

  On the other hand, my father’s face was full of patience which told me much about the Pharaoh. The man now speaking had generations of quarrymen in his voice, all with the same powerful back and legs. It was a throat to declare that the man who spoke was sober and knew what he knew. So his speech in the main was agreeable and tasted of bread and soup and the strength of family flesh. Of course, it also had the sound of stones pounding on other stones. His brain, as a result, was sluggish—thoughts did not come to him quickly. His tongue, like a crushed and crippled leg, never knew when it would stumble; his mind, forever short of breath, would sometimes heave and fail to move. To the Pharaoh’s ear these lapses were as disturbing as the clatter of a stick smashing a jar.

  Part of the difficulty was that the quarryman did not know how to read. So he had memorized the names of the men on the labor gang, the number of their injuries, their wages, the accounts for food—he was correct, but he was slow. Besides, this recital was hardly necessary. A scribe stood beside him with a roll of papyrus, and nodded his head in confirmation at each number recited by the manager of the quarries.

  I wondered why the scribe did not read from the papyrus himself, but it was obvious, by the attention Ptah-nem-hotep was giving to the quarry official, that the bearing of the man and his ability to remember accounts could tell much about his honesty.

  My mother’s mind, when I tried to enter it again, was closed to me, or should I say closed to all I would wish to ask. With her skill—was it equal to mine?—of knowing what was in my thoughts, she had chosen to give all her attention to that poor quarry official. So, by placing myself in her mind, I was given over to nothing better than an admirable introduction to the difficulties of mining rock. She took the numbers offered by this chief workingman and tried to see what his men were doing. Yet, by the time it passed from her head to mine, my toes were wriggling. Nonetheless, by such a roundabout method of instruction, I came to understand why the Pharaoh listened so carefully, and by a worthy and most serious effort I passed beyond my boredom and came to recognize that this crude official, Rut-sekh, was respected, even as his father and grandfather before him. They had all been Overseers at the great quarries to the east of Memphi where, shortly after the Ascension of Ramses IX to the Throne, a road was begun across the desert to a great sea called Red, the Red Sea. Since we were now in the Seventh Year of the Reign, I decided that the road was as old as I was, at least if you counted the months I had lived within my mother. So this increased my interest. I now began to comprehend that the problems on this road were curious. Ptah-nem-hotep wanted to keep it a royal road, that is, wide enough for two royal carts to pass in opposite directions, which meant a breadth of eight horses. While such a width would be nothing grand in Memphi where the Avenue of Ramses II offered a breadth of twenty horses from the marketplace to the Temple of Ptah, still, the Road of Ramses IX would find difficulty as it went through the mountains. Given the steep slopes, great rocks that could have been used for monuments tumbled into the ravines below. In one place, said Rock-Cutter, they had lost a week trying to raise a large block high enough to insert a sledge beneath. Rock-Cutter confessed that the sledge, once inserted, had collapsed from the weight, and tilted the rock toward the ravine. After much consideration, they had to push it over. No sound, he confessed, was so filled with the thunder of the Gods as the echoes of that stone falling.

  “It was a great loss, my Pharaoh,” stated Rut-sekh, “yet I did not know another way. One hundred eighteen men had been employed in just that place for seven days and could not proceed farther without removing the stone. During this delay, there was an expenditure of ten bags of grain, two large amphorae of oil, three amphorae of honey, twenty-two small bags of onions, five hundred forty-one loaves of bread, four amphorae of the wine of Buto …” His forehead creased with each figure recited, as if each item had been sniffed for rot, hefted for weight, and tasted for value. My father nodded gravely to indicate that Ptah-nem-hotep respected the honesty of Rock-Cutter at confessing to such mistakes.

  “It is to your honor,” the Pharaoh now said, “that you present the unfinished aspects of your task as quickly as the well-faced. The virtue of your character is as fresh to Me as the virtuous odor of the pine trees in My innermost courtyard.”


  “He will,” went a thought from my mother’s mind to me, clear as if she had said it aloud, “He will now certainly begin to brag about His imported pine trees.”

  “In the first year of My Reign,” said Ptah-nem-hotep, “I had twenty-one young pines from the mountains of Syria brought across the sea to be planted in My innermost courtyard. There, fourteen now stand, still alive, although it was said that all would perish in a season. They are trees of the mountain and cold air, but they have a spirit of honest virtue, like your own, Rut-sekh, that speaks of clear mornings and hard work—yes, I will let you smell the fragrance of their virtue when the road is done.”

  “I am honored,” said Rock-Cutter, looking at his feet. He seemed more than a little confused at the interruption of his recital. For the facts he had memorized must have been coming forward in his brain like oxen, one by one, each carrying a measured load, and whipped just often enough to keep from stopping.

  “Yes,” said Ptah-nem-hotep, “it is honest to confess one’s errors. With other officials”—He swept the courtyard with His look—“I must find My way. To listen to their presentation, nothing is wrong, nothing will ever be wrong. Yet all is wrong. Yes,” said Ptah-nem-hotep.

  Rock-Cutter bowed again.

  “Nonetheless,” said our Pharaoh, “progress on the road is slow, injuries are numerous, and the losses in the labor force are discouraging.”

  “Yes, my Lord. Many of my men have gone blind.”

  “Is it from dust, or from splinters of stone?”

  “It is the second, Great Two-House.”

  “When you gave your last report to Me in the month of Pharmuti, I recall that we talked about the scraping of the rocks. I asked you then to employ cedar chips to make the coals.”

  “I obeyed You, My Lord.”