Ancient Evenings

by Norman Mailer

  “I confess, however, that the sudden playfulness of my horses was a common sight in Old Tyre. I do not know why foul-smelling places have such peculiar appeal—although Nut, we must remember, was able to fall in love with no one but Geb—yet in this first life with my quick eyes, I never failed to find lovers busy with each other in caves and ditches, under bushes, in the cellars of vaults, and here in Old Tyre, down every dank alley. Never was I in a city where people fornicated so frequently in public. Maybe it was the sun on the hot beach in the daytime, and the glistening purple of the walls under moonlight, or something intimate in the nature of the snail turning in upon itself, but I remember my proud shaft was full of blood from the hour I entered.

  “Tired of the battered virtues of my homely chariot, and the stupidity of my horses, I left them in the keeping of the stable boy in the courtyard of the House of the Royal Messenger of Ramses the Second, at least so soon as I could find his street. Indeed there were few people I approached in Tyre who did not understand what I said and they spoke back to me in a hoarse and somewhat guttural use of our language that rubbed agreeably on the lining of my ear and stirred some cockles of good feeling in my chest, although with it all, I still felt like striking them for how they disturbed the ceremony of our well-spoken tongue.

  “The Royal Messenger, I soon learned, was not in Old Tyre. He came to the House once a year to pick up tribute from the Phoenicians, and then went on to collect in other places; I could see, however, that his arrival in this place would be like a visit by one of the sons of the Pharaoh. The Royal Messenger certainly had the largest place on the beach. Even compared to the villas of the wealthy of Tyre, it was near to a palace, and the servants of the Royal Messenger, many of whom were Egyptian, kept the House ready for his return. Never before had I seen such scruples in servants when the master is away, but then I came to understand that just about every Egyptian trader who passed through Old Tyre paid a call here to pick up the gossip of other merchants. In one room, I even saw a wall with cubbyholes in regular rows, containing many a roll of papyrus with a gold string and a seal of wax—letters left by the last Egyptian or Phoenician ship to come from the Delta. Certainly, the servants kept the place up and I was content to rest there.

  “A day went by, then another day before I was ready to take a boat from Old Tyre to Tyre, indeed, that much time I needed to recover from my trip. I was not tired so much as confused. There was gossip to pick up in the home of the Royal Messenger, but after I heard it, I did not know whether the King of Kadesh was weak or powerful, cautious or aggressive. The only matter of which I could be certain was that everyone had information to offer, spoke in a voice that was full of authority, and contradicted what the last fellow had said.

  “Of course, I was also curious to see this Old Tyre. I had never visited such a town. While the poor quarters were old and, with the stink, more miserable than anything you could find in Thebes, yet much was interesting, and the new streets made you think of a mouth with missing teeth. On every new street there were so many empty plots. Even the town wall had breaches, and there were breaks in many a fence. The best streets often had ruins. Yet the town was prosperous. A trader explained it to me. The new Tyre out in the bay, having been built upon three islands, was impregnable. No army that marched in by land could take it, since such armies would be without boats when they arrived. Nor, for that matter, was there a navy who could defeat the fleet of Tyre. So that city on its three islands was equal to a fortress with a moat, and if it came to siege, they could never starve. Food would be brought in by sea—as was done already. So the people decided never to defend Old Tyre on the shore inasmuch as New Tyre could make more in trade than it would cost to rebuild Old Tyre after an army came through. That was why I saw so many empty plots and so much new building. Old Tyre had been taken by the Hittites two years ago. Yet, the old city, I heard a lot of people say, looked newer than the new city.

  “All the same, New Tyre paid tribute to Egypt. I concluded that this was not from fear, but for profit. Every utnu they gave us brought back a hundred in trade with the Delta. Yes, they were certainly the first people I met who did not think themselves inferior to us.

  “On the third day, I took the ferry to New Tyre, and watched the oarsmen take us up the back of each rolling serpent, then slide down the other side. There were tears in my eyes from the wind, and I felt much consternation in my legs at the pitching of the boat. These were no thousand limbs of water, but more like twenty bodies in a beer-house shoving you about, and the spray slapped my face. For that matter, it washed so far up my nose I could smell the end of the snail all over again. Yet when we got to New Tyre, it was like nothing on shore.

  “This city on three small islands had no horses, for one matter, and everybody walked or was carried. In most places only three could go abreast. The walls of a house on one side of the street were never so far away from the other that you could not touch both walls with your hands, and then I had never seen buildings that went so high. One family lived on top of another, five families high, and the walls drew nearer to each other as they went up. It was nothing to leap from roof to roof, you almost stepped across. The door on the patio of each roof, as a result, was more securely barred against robbers than the door to the street.

  “I remember that as our ferry approached a landing, I could not think of a more crowded town to visit. There was no beach to the island, nothing but heavy sea and much wind, and jetties built out by the placement of one rock on top of another. Hundreds of people stood on every dock and quay. Behind them, the city had the look of cliffs facing other cliffs and there were the most extraordinary towers on some of these roofs. You could also see every color of the palette on the painted walls. So it was the prettiest and most fearsome looking place. A thicket. These three islands were so close together that you could cross from one to the other by bridges built of wood above the water, but once in the city, you could never see the sky, no more of the sky at least than the little space between the buildings. There were no gardens, and no town squares. In the market, you could not move because the alleys were that narrow, but then, the place not only stank of snails, but the alleys curved like snails. You were always lost until you reached the outermost point of whatever little island you were on. Then you could look at the sea from the end of the alley before plunging back down another alley. I would get thirsty on these walks, but there were no shadufs nor fresh water. You had to drink what you could of rain-water from the cisterns and they were filled with the salt of the stones in that place. Everything was covered with spray that kept coming in on fogs and ended in the cisterns. I even wondered what the Phoenicians did for fresh water, until I learned the wealthy had their boats—you were not wealthy in that place unless you owned a boat and crew, which cannot be said of all wealthy Egyptians—and the lady of the house would send to the mainland for spring water. I purchased some in the market and drank it all before I could stop.

  “Never had I been in a place where land was so valuable. Even the most expensive shops were small, and the workshops were more cramped than the houses. The traders offered wares made of gold or silver or purple glassware and vases. They even sold imitations of our Egyptian amulets and I heard they could trade with them in every port of the Very Green because of the esteemed reputation of our curses and our charms. The poor fools who bought these copies in faraway ports would never know. But then you must imagine what was made in these workshops for foreign lands. Egyptian swords and daggers that never saw our Nile looked nonetheless like they belonged to us, and rings with scarabs had our cobra, or our lotus, engraved on the metal. I heard it said that you could go through Rhodes and Lycia, Cyprus and some other islands of the barbarian Greeks, and everywhere natives would be wearing Phoenicia’s jewelry, their bracelets, their collars, their damascened swords, chased swords, and every kind of material you could dye purple.”

  “But what,” asked my mother, “did such barbarians give back in trade?”

>   “Some had gold to offer. Probably they robbed it from other traders, or they paid in jewels, or bars of silver. Often, they sold their young men, their young women and their children. In some lands, that is also a crop.”

  “I have noticed,” said Ptah-nem-hotep, “that even though the Greek slave is as hirsute and rank-smelling as any Syrian when he arrives, he does seem to learn from us. And quickly.”

  Menenhetet nodded. “I can tell You that the secret whore of the King of Kadesh was a Greek, and there were few who could still teach her. But then, the prostitutes of Tyre were regarded with respect, at least the more famous ones, and while I did not enter the Temple of Astarte and can give You no account of the priests, I heard it said that, under certain conditions, prostitutes were like priestesses there and much respected. This was, however, told to me while I was still in a state of confusion from all I was seeing. Never were so many people from so many lands gathered in a single place. Going the length of one alley that ran from the quay where I landed to the Temple of Melkarth, I saw Phoenicians and Amorreans, mountaineers from Lebanon, Turks and Sagalosians, Achaeans and Danaeans, tattooed blacks, men from Elam, Assyria, Chaldea, Urati, and every archipelago, sailors from Sidon, crewmen from Mycenae, and more costumes than I could distinguish, high boots, low boots, barefoot, colored shirts, white shirts, red and blue wool capes, animal skins, our white linen, and the hair of Your head in a hundred styles. Most of the Phoenicians were, themselves, nude to the waist and wore short cotton skirts of many colors. You could recognize the rich because they had their hair done in ringlets down their back, and four rows of curls on top like four serpents of the sea, back to back. With it all, everything stank worse in New Tyre than Old. All day long, people were combing snails off the rocks of these three islands, and children would dive for them. I had never known that people could swim, yet here I saw ten-year-olds go beneath the water like fish.

  “My room on this island was in an inn, and my sheets were of red silk, the walls of purple fabric. The sarcophagus of an Egyptian merchant of no great wealth is larger in size than that room. You could not stand up in my abode and the hall was so narrow people were not able to pass each other. Later, I heard the sound of a couple thumping away over my close ceiling, and realized that mine was only one of two little bedrooms, one above the other. All up and down my floor, two bedrooms to one true ceiling! Of course, each sarcophagus had a window, I will say that, and through it you could pour your leavings. I had learned of that local habit already. My boots could have told you more. A true sign of poverty in Tyre was to walk barefoot.”

  “I cannot believe everything you are telling us,” said my mother.

  “On the contrary,” said my father, “I have spoken to a few who trade in Tyre and it is still the same.”

  My great-grandfather nodded. “What can we know of such a life? Here, on our desert, we have room for all. Sometimes I feel my thoughts extending out so comfortably, that all of me, that is, my thoughts and myself, could fill a tent. In Tyre, however, there is only space on the sea. Never had I felt the presence of others so powerfully, and I discovered that in the midst of such congestion, it is impossible to think. My thoughts felt bruised. Yet my heart was warm. In all the stink of those decomposing snails, human bodies were sweet. Even old sweat smelled like perfume next to such putrescence, and of course no one bathed, not when water could be measured in gold.”

  “That place is a pestilence and a nightmare,” my mother said.

  “No,” Menenhetet told her, “I came to like it. You could walk along the canals they cut into each island. They would put boats up in dry dock by the side of these canals, and the people of Tyre respected their boats as if they were Gods, and built them of the best timber from Lebanon—from the forests, indeed, through which I would soon pass—and from the oaks of Ananes. What boats they were! What crews! It was told to me that of all the ships in the Very Green, only the Phoenicians did not hug the shore and worry about making port each evening, but traveled instead through the darkness, daring every monster that came to the surface during the long night. These people could even steer by the stars, and if the one they followed was covered over by clouds, they would guide their trip by calling upon another star. Where there were none, have no fear, they would steer into the waves and wait for the sun. ‘We can sail to the land of the worst dreams,’ was one of their sayings. How can I tell you? These sailors were as proud as charioteers, and the poorest of them acted like a rich man in every beer-house. I saw fights in those dens that were good preparation for war.

  “Then there were wine-parlors with long benches where you sipped your drink, and the elbow of your neighbor was on your neck. That was all right since your own elbow was on the next neck. One could not call one’s skin one’s own, and the wine was sour as vinegar, yet we lived in a happy delirium, for on a raised platform just large enough for one girl, there was a whore who took off her skirt and—since the boy is asleep I will tell you—showed the center of herself with such readiness that your eye might have been looking through a keyhole at another eye. She was some kind of Asiatic with the darkest hair, and a body the color of leather but the lips between her thighs were like an orchid whose petals are black at the tip and pink in the center and I do not know if till then I ever desired a woman so much. Perhaps it was the look on her face. She wanted all of us. As proof, she arched her back, put her belly up, and displayed herself in turn to each man. I remember I put my desire into my eyes, and her petals quivered before my look even as a lotus plant will wave slowly when you look on it hard enough. Then more desire rose in me out of what came back from her. In the circle around that whore, men were putting gifts on the platform, and when the music finished she went off with the highest bidder. I did not show my gold. It was the Pharaoh’s and to be used only for the purchase of information. So I was desperate. How had that woman put so much into my loins?

  “Then I learned she was not only a prostitute of this quarter who went from wine-parlor to wine-parlor along the alley but was also on this night a priestess. Before the dawn, she would fornicate on the altar of Astarte in the dark temple near the dry docks. It was the belief of these Phoenicians that in the filthiest could be found the finest, and in the most debased, the colors of the rainbow, which is why they were so happy with their stinks of snail and the royal purple glistening on every wet stone. My head felt like thunder trying to comprehend their religion. For in showing herself to all of us, she had also been serving her Goddess Astarte (whom some called Ishtar), yes, the whore was working for Astarte, collecting the lust of all of us in her black (and pink) orchid just as a flower receives the blessings of Ra, except here in the new city of Tyre, they never saw the sun in their alleys, and so it had to be the heat in our belly that was served up to the Goddess, why that whore would collect enough of you to make a sacrifice splendid and glowing right out of the heart-meat of her thighs, yes, send it up to the roof of the Temple of Astarte.

  “I was ready to burst. It was a common sight in these alleys to see people urinate, or expose their buttocks for the other relief, but my member was feeling horrendous now, and I felt so foolish and wild that I rushed back to my room to smother my fever. The truth is I was looking for a man as much as a woman. The thief had given me a taste for that. How I longed to be at Kadesh and with the battle begun.

  “Yet as soon as I lay down in my bed, I felt an impulse to get up, that is not to stand for you couldn’t, but to squat under the beams and look out my window. There, another orchid was to be seen! It belonged, as I soon found out, to the secret whore of the King of Kadesh.

  “In our own Egypt, we know what it is to live in the thoughts of another. We are famous for our power to lay the most effective curses, and this is due, of course, to the comfort with which we can leave our own mind and rest in the next. One has to know one’s enemy before one can curse him, and such power, I should think, comes naturally from our desert and our river. In great spaces, the mind can travel as well as the b
ody. On this unspeakable island of congestion, however, this damp Tyre, given the closeness of all our bodies, no thought from one mind could ever penetrate another. In Memphi or Thebes, I would not have been surprised if the secret whore of the King of Kadesh had taken abode in a house across from me—assuming she was the person I had come to find. Our minds race ahead of us and summon strangers. But in this beehive, this ant-heap, no! Later, when I pondered it, I was amazed that I came upon the secret whore so easily. I did not yet understand that in Tyre, in the absence of every message that one mind can give silently to another, the tongue substitutes for the brain. Gossip is even more common than money in Tyre. So it was known that I was a strange charioteer, and, given the cleverness of these Phoenicians, was either a deserter, or an officer on a mission for Usermare-Setpenere and must certainly be the second since I did not have that unhappy look no deserter can avoid.”

  “I agree,” said Ptah-nem-hotep, “that this woman must have heard you were in town, but how could she know you wanted to see her?”

  “That is the point, Good and Great God. She was the one who decided to meet me. Retaliation was what she wanted upon the King of Kadesh. Of course, I did not know that then. I saw only a woman who wore nothing, lying on a bed across the street from me, her window no more than an arm’s length from my window. She was beautiful in a way I had not known before. Later, over the years of my first life, and through the experience of lives I was yet to know, I would come to learn that women are as different from each other as our desert from the Very Green, but I knew nothing in those days except that there were beauties so lovely they lived in the Pharaoh’s gardens and were called little queens, and then there were the whores you found in beer-houses. Nor could I speak about ladies of good birth. I knew such noble ladies were not like other women, just as you could not speak the same word for courtesans and common prostitutes, but then, for all I knew to say to either, ladies and courtesans were more alike to me than not, by which I do not mean I was familiar with any of them, but only that ladies took pleasure in the way they spoke, and courtesans knew how to sing, and either way I was always completely uncomfortable with their splendid manners, whereas any woman who was lower than me felt comfortable, speak of the ugly farmgirls I knew when I was a boy and peasant, and the good-looking farmgirls and beer-house girls and servants when I was a soldier, I took what I could and thrust myself into all of them as if to shoot an arrow—there was hardly any difference between a man and a woman, except with a woman, you were more likely to see the face and that could be preferable. All the same, as I have said before, I made love like a soldier, simple as that.