Ancient Evenings

by Norman Mailer

  “Tonight, she sang a ballad of the love of a farmgirl for a shepherd, a sweet and innocent song, and Usermare drank kolobi to the sound of it, and wiped His eyes. Like many powerful men, he liked to weep a little on hearing tender sentiments. But not for too long. Soon Honey-Ball sang the next verse. The melody was the same but now the shepherd had no interest in the girl, and looked instead at the buttocks of his sheep, a wicked ballad. Honey-Ball began to cry out in the pleasurable cries of the beast as it was taken. ‘Oh,’ she groaned, in a voice to wake us all, ‘Oh,’ and the air throbbed.

  “Usermare was now ready. ‘Come,’ He said to her. ‘You, Heqat, Nubty, Oasis!’ With a voice that did not bother to conceal the heat of His slow fires on this night, He added, ‘Let it be in the house of Nubty.’ Then as if a thought had come to His hand, even as Hera-Ra used to stand by His side and lick His fingers, Usermare said, ‘Meni, you are to come with Me,’ and He took my hand, and that way, we walked together.

  “It is curious, but in His eyes, I had become Hera-Ra. It was to the lion, not myself, that He offered friendship. To myself, therefore, I now became absurd. Beneath all my vows that I would know revenge, I had been so starved through these years for one sign of His affection, that I was ready, doubtless, to roar like a lion if it would only keep His hand in mine a little longer.

  “Yet, now, as we walked, strange events occurred. If I was like Hera-Ra to Him, I can only say that beside me, I could feel the hoofbeat, quick, of a wild pig. What a companion! If my first thought was that this pig had to be a gift from Honey-Ball, I do not know that I was wrong, and I can say that after the night which was to follow in the house of Nubty, the wild pig was often at my side until it was killed, about which I will also tell You, but that is later. Certainly on the next day when I walked along the lawn where the black swan sailed by at twilight, so was the wild pig with me, and when I would stop at the house of a little queen to watch one dress the hair of another, then, too, was the pig at my side. I came to know his face and know it well, but no one else could see the creature. Everywhere he walked with me, yet I could not summon him. While to think of his face was enough to make the pig appear, sometimes he would not, and on those nights when I was alone, I could not bear the sounds of the beer-house. The noises made by the little queens proved offensive to me. Indeed, once accustomed to the companionship of this silent creature, I became most censorious without him.

  “I already knew that these hundred little queens did not always wait for an offering of pleasure from our divine Ramses, but sometimes ended by making love to each other. This discovery was objectionable to me, even if it should have been familiar. I grew up in a crowd of boys who were always on each other. Our expression for a powerful friend was ‘he-who-is-on-my-back.’ So as a boy, there was nothing I did not know of being on the others’ bodies, although my pride, since I was strong, had been that nobody was on mine. Still I could not bear to think of these women with one another, nor the way by which the most powerful of the little queens often treated the gentler ones as if they were slaves. On those nights when His Chariot did not enter the gates, and you would not hear the thunder of His fornication, there would rise up instead the sweeter cries and harsher screeches, the moans and music of many a woman in many a room. It was common whenever women were at such play that one would pluck a harp to accompany the others. And I, hearing such sounds, could not, in my mind, forswear the sights. To see a little queen at the sweet-meat of another was to gorge my blood. But then I did not have the royal disregard of my Monarch. We all knew that He liked to watch His little queens romp with one another. ‘Oh, yes,’ He would say, ‘they are the strings of My lute and must learn to quiver together.’

  “I, however, especially when I was without the pig, used to think of this as part of the filth that rose on the flood, a pestilence out of these women, and I sometimes dared to wonder if they loved Him as much as they came to love each other. Sometimes two little queens would virtually live in one house like husband and wife, or brother and sister, and their children would speak equally of either little queen as their parent. It seemed to me that for a woman to love another woman more than her Pharaoh was equal to praying for the plague. So marched the legions of all those thoughts in me that were loyal to Usermare, but when I walked through the gardens with the pig, I became another man and was tolerant to their games and coveted the little queens for myself. Indeed, I even liked to observe their eating and their dancing, the songs they sang as they brushed each other’s hair, or searched through each other’s chests for finery to wear. Indeed, there was a time when I, like Nef-khep-aukhem, could name every cosmetic they used.”

  “Are there any I do not know?” asked Hathfertiti.

  “There is no oil of a flower you have not decanted,” he replied.

  “But what of the herbs?” she insisted.

  “Only the finest and sweetest perfumes were chosen. They had no need of the bitterness of galbanum or cassis.”

  “Yes,” said my mother, “but what of the ointment of spikenard?”

  “That they used, and saffron and cinnamon and the sweet wine that leaves the very odor of love when it is rubbed into the thighs with oil and a little of the gravy of roast meat.”

  Now, Ptah-nem-hotep stirred with annoyance. “To tell too little,” He said, “is becoming your sin. I wish to know: What was done in the house of Nubty?”

  “I have no way to inform You,” said Menenhetet, “without presenting myself as a fool.”

  “That is hardly possible,” said Ptah-nem-hotep. “If I listen to you for so long, it is because you are not. But I can hardly expect that you were the master each night of your four lives. Even a Pharaoh may play the fool. There, I have made the most intolerable remark.”

  “If I tell it, well then, it will be done quickly,” said my great-grandfather, and he leaned forward, as if, even to begin this unwilling engagement, he must go in at a gallop.

  “The little queen, Nubty, had a statue of Amon whose belly was no larger than my hand. Yet the staff that rose between His golden legs was not hidden, no, to the contrary, it was half as long as the God Himself was high, and Usermare knelt before this little God, and raised His own hands as if to say that all of Him, Himself and each Ka of His Fourteen, were in service to Amon. Then, He put His mouth around the gold member, the very staff of the God Amon.

  “ ‘No man has ever penetrated My mouth,’ said Usermare, ‘but I am happy to kiss the sword of Amon, and know the taste of gold and rubies.’ Indeed, on the tip of this gold member, on the knob itself, was a large ruby.

  “Then, He rose, and Heqat and Oasis removed His chestplate and His skirt of linen. ‘Here, Meni,’ He said to me, ‘pray to Me as if I am the sword of the Hidden One,’ and His phallus was in my face, and I swallowed it, and felt the flood of the Nile rise in Him. My head was bobbing like a boat and the little queens giggled as the heat of His kolobi rushed into my throat and down the inside of my chest. Through it all, down to my navel, I knew now why the pig was with me. None of the little queens would have dared to touch one of their painted nails to my skin, but the pig had his thick nose between my cheeks and would have liked to swallow the semen of my King if it could have passed through me so fast. So I was not scorched by the heat of Usermare’s loins, only the contempt. There, I have told you the worst,” my great-grandfather said, “the first of the humiliations I was to know on this night before my Pharaoh, and that after I swore He would never shame me again. It is this which has delayed me, this which is difficult to tell. Yet now I feel as if a stone is lifted. So I will tell you the rest. For much was done.

  “They anointed Usermare. On this night, as on others when I had not been there, He would sit like the God Amon, while the little queens would serve Him in the manner of Tongue and Pure, by which I mean that they would wipe His face most carefully and apply new cosmetic to His eyes. They would take off His garments, and dress Him in fresh linen, then speak verses over the jewelry they laid on Him. Each piece
removed was kissed by one of the little queens, as well as each garment they laid on Him. Since in those days I did not fully understand the difference between kissing and eating—which peasant could?—I thought they were making these small sounds with their lips to show that the taste of the linen of the Pharaoh was good.

  “Now, on this night as on others, they sprinkled perfumes on His brow, and into their mouths, each one of these queens, one by one took His sword while the others murmured, ‘The Gods adorn Themselves and Thy name is Adornment.’

  “To my astonishment He gave Himself up to the little queens as if He were a woman. He lay on His back with His powerful thighs in the air, His knees farther apart than the width of His great shoulders, and my hand was held in His with such force I could hardly have freed myself. Yet that was only at the commencement. I was still full of fear and expected the house of Nubty to roar up around us in flames, yet the walls only staggered, as from shock, and still were standing; indeed, it could have been my own body that was quivering. I still lived then as I say in fear of catastrophe, but when it did not happen, my terror grew less, and so, too, did His grip relax.

  “Toward the end, He held my hand softly and I could feel His pleasures as they swelled into Him out of the cunning mouths of the little queens, indeed, even now, I can tell You, great Ptah-nem-hotep, of all that was in Usermare as He grew ready to come forth. I was able to know Him in those moments as none who is not a Pharaoh can ever know so Good and Great a God. In that pleasure when the four little queens knelt before the great and beautiful body of Usermare, I came to know Him. Heqat had taken His feet in her mouth and licked between His toes like a silver snake that winds through golden roots, and Oasis, with the skill of long practice, had given light licks and long kisses to the sword of Usermare even as Nubty knew His ears and His nose and the lids of His eyes with the tip of her tongue, yes, all of these caresses from Heqat, Oasis and Nubty had passed through His fingers into me and I felt more beautiful than all the flowers in the Gardens of the Secluded and lived in the air of a rainbow while there He lay, legs apart, His knees bent. It was then that Honey-Ball brought her lips to that mouth of Usermare which lived between His buttocks and she kissed Him there, her tongue coming forth into His gates, and she knew the entrance to His passage. He lay there, and with my hand, I was with Him. So I knew what it was to be in the Boat of Ra going up the river of the Duad in the Land of the Dead, and that was a wondrous place from such a boat with serpents and scorpions at every turn, flames in the mouths of beasts more terrible than I had ever seen, and Blessed Fields whose grass was sweet even in the night. Usermare floated through the Land of the Dead, and I with Him, the pig at my vitals. He saw the Sun and the Moon as His cousins. Then the river began to rise into the ruby of His sword there in the sweet lips of Oasis, and I heard Him shout, ‘I am, I am all that will be,’ and even as the women cried out, He came forth and the ghost of the kolobi was like a fire with red and emerald light in me.

  “So did I come forth at His side, all the powers of His own rising having surged through His fingers into mine, but then my coming forth was blasted back by the snout of that pig and thereby I felt owned from mouth to anus, great Monarch and curious pig owned the two ends of the river that ran through me, even as Osiris commands the entrance and exit to the Land of the Dead.

  “I found no cause for celebration. Usermare had no sooner recovered from coming forth as a woman than He was ready to stand as a man and now was interested in none of the mouths that lived between the thighs of His four little queens, but took my poor cheeks, rooted in all night by the snout of the pig, and before the women, made a woman again of me. ‘Aiiigh, Kazama,’ they cried with many giggles, and it was then I learned that Kazama was their name for me. Slave-Driver was the thought they held when they spoke the name to each other, but now the slave-driver had become the slave. ‘Aiiigh, Kazama,’ they cried in their laughter. But I did not. Holding His hand, I had lived in the waters of paradise. Not so with His sword. That gave me pain. I saw no vision. I swore that if this was the second time He had penetrated my bowels, there would not be a third even if He cut off all I had and left me in the compound of the eunuchs.”

  At this, Menenhetet’s voice fell silent, and I, who had been listening with all my attention, eyes shut, now opened them to see my mother across the room, and on her knees before Ptah-nem-hotep, and I thought His sword was in her mouth. Yet, whatever passed between them ceased so soon as I sat up. My mother, however, still purred like a cat. My father slept. At least, he did not move, and his eyes were closed. He snored openly and in misery. The fireflies glowed so brightly that I thought I could witness the expression on my great-grandfather’s face, and he was far from us. That was certainly true. In the next instant, he began to speak in the voice of Honey-Ball.

  THREE

  I knew they were her tones. All the while I had lived in my great-grandfather’s thoughts, I had heard her speaking. Now, his eyes rolled up like the eyes of the dead, and out of his throat came the voice of Honey-Ball.

  “Kazama, I did not see you leave,” she said. “But I laughed with the others for He made a woman of you. You jerked like a worm on the hook of His strength. Yet, now, I do not think of Sesusi, but of the injury to your proud heart. You feel soft like the earth when the river flows over. Tell me it is not so.”

  “It is so,” said my great-grandfather speaking in his own voice out of the very heart of this spell, and yet, by the diminishing light of the fireflies, I knew he was calm once more, his voice older than any I had heard and looked one hundred years old, more than a hundred. The patio smelled like old stone. I was trying to remember some opening of my own jaws in a vault so dank I could not breathe. The voice of Honey-Ball spoke again, however, and I was back in every murmur of the night. Through the mouth of Menenhetet, I heard her say, “How I felt the pain of your thoughts. They suffered the convulsions of a belly when a child is born. Is it so, Kazama?”

  “It is so,” said Menenhetet.

  “In that hour, you could not say if you were a man or a woman. You could only wonder why men pass over into women, and women into men.”

  When the last echo of her voice was gone, Menenhetet’s head came forward, and he looked at all of us as if he had slept for a hundred years. His face came back from the old age that had lain upon it, and I never saw him look so young, a man of sixty who could have stood among us for forty and stronger than a charioteer. My father ceased his snoring to come awake, and my mother had a look of satisfaction on her lips, as if she had tasted nothing so much as the center of a secret.

  “Yes,” said Ptah-nem-hotep, “tell us more of this Honey-Ball for she sounds nearly so curious as My great ancestor, may I be welcomed by Him in the Blessed Fields,” and He made a loud smacking sound with His mouth to remind us that it was still the Night of the Pig, and piety might offer less protection than sacrilege. “Yes,” He said, “tell us before the dawn burns our eyes. Soon Hathfertiti and I may wish to find our sleep.” With a laugh of great gaiety—in the first true sound of real happiness I had heard from Him, our Pharaoh came to His feet and kissed my father on the brow.

  “It is so,” said my father.

  “Speak again in the voice of Honey-Ball,” cried Ptah-nem-hotep to my great-grandfather, as if He, too, had been drinking kolobi.

  “Divine Two-House, I slept for a moment and feel well-rested. Did You hear her voice?”

  Ptah-nem-hotep laughed.

  “It must be true,” said Menenhetet. “I think of her now.”

  “Yes, go on,” said our Pharaoh. “I would enjoy it.”

  “If I remember,” said my great-grandfather, “the night was without a moon when I left the house of Nubty, and, to my unhappy eyes, as dark as the most awful of my thoughts. I found the pond where the black swan liked to stay at night and tried to speak to her, yet I could think of nothing but my shame. It was then I took a second vow. Shame, like any other poison, needs its own outrageous cure. I decided to seek the co
urage of madness itself. I would dare what no one else was ready to dare, and put myself in the bed of one of the little queens.

  “It was bravery itself to breathe twice on one thought such as this. For it is on the second breath that others hear what you think. Yet I knew I must speak the vow clearly. So I told myself, but I was shaking so much the swan began to shudder as well. Her wings clapped, and little waves went out from her body to set the water of the pond to frothing loudly. I was certain every house in the Gardens of the Secluded would awaken. Then the pond was still again. I began to think of Honey-Ball. Out of the breasts of that round woman rose a tenderness for me that was like the rise of the river when the earth is dry, and the pig’s snout came up behind me then and nuzzled my thigh.

  “Let me not speak of the days it took until I made my first visit, nor of each fear I managed to conquer only to lose my footing on the next fear. All such tales are the same. I do not know that I could have entered her house if in my dreams, I was not always walking toward it. How I wished to lie on my back like Usermare and know her mouth at the lower gates.

  “Say that I was drawn as one bar of black-copper-from-heaven is seduced toward another, for on a night when Usermare did not visit the Gardens of the Secluded, I presented myself at her door. Although on that visit I did not even try to sit beside her, I asked on leaving if I could come tomorrow, and she agreed but said, ‘No one must see you here again at night,’ and she led me out to a tree by her own garden wall over whose branches I might climb. That way I could enter without awakening her maidservants or eunuchs. Touching the branch, I remembered a night when I sat with my back against another tree on the way to Kadesh, and I nodded, and she put her hand to my neck and rubbed it slowly. A strength came to me from her plump fingers like the force I once received from the Lebanese wood.