Ancient Evenings

by Norman Mailer

  “Then she spoke of how her mother had had to assist the fat man’s family during the preparations. The widow was instructed in which kind of shabti dolls to order, and who were the best craftsmen on the Delta. ‘A shabti doll may weigh no more than your hand, but it has to stand properly on its wooden boat. This poor woman didn’t even know where to place the dolls once he was in the tomb. It is terrible when a family makes its wealth so quickly that no knowledge adheres to the gold. They couldn’t name which rolls of papyrus to buy. Nor did the widow understand that, no matter how much it cost, she was obliged to buy the Chapter-of the-Negative-Confession.’

  “ ‘The Chapter-of-the-Negative-Confession,’ I repeated wisely, but Honey-Ball knew I was as ignorant as the fat man’s family.

  “ ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘the widow complained about the cost. She was stingy! Finally my mother had to pay for it herself. She was not about to let the Ka of my little toe go wandering through Khert-Neter unless he had the Negative Confession. The night before the funeral, my mother had to hire two priests, and it took them until dawn to inscribe it properly on thrice-blessed papyrus. But now at least the merchant could show the Gods, the demons, and the beasts that he was a good man. This papyrus testified that he had never committed a sin. He had not killed any man or woman, nor stolen anything from any temple. He had violated none of the property of Amon. He had never uttered lies or curses, and no woman could declare he had committed adultery with her, any more than a man could say he had made love to other men. He had not lived with a heart full of rage, and he never eavesdropped on neighbors. Neither had he stolen desirable land, nor slandered anyone, and he did not make love to himself. He had never refused to listen to the truth, and could swear that no water destined to flow onto the property of others had been dammed up by him. He never blasphemed. He had not even raised his voice. He had committed not a single one of the forty-two sins, not one. Most certainly he had never worked any witchcraft against the King.’

  “Now Honey-Ball laughed with as much pleasure in her voice as I ever heard. ‘Aiiigh, Kazama, what a foul man we helped! There was no sin he did not commit. His reputation was so putrid that everybody in Sais called him Fekh-futi, although not to his face.’ ”

  Both Hathfertiti and Nef-khep-aukhem stirred here at the sound of this name, but neither said a word, and with hardly a pause, Menenhetet continued.” ‘Do you understand,’ Honey-Ball said to me, ‘the powers of this Negative Confession are so great that the Ka of my toe is safe.’ She nodded. ‘In my dreams, that is what I am always told. Fekh-futi thrives in the Land of the Dead, and my little toe beside him.’

  “ ‘Thrives?’ I said to her. I was much confused. The night before, seeking to impress me with how much wisdom she had acquired from these travels of her toe, she said that no priest could instruct me as well in what to say to the fiery beasts and the keepers of the gates. She not only knew the names of the serpents, but was familiar with the apes and crocodiles on the banks of the Duad, and her Ka had spoken to lions with teeth of flame, as well as to lynxes with claws like swords. She could use the words of power to take you past lakes of burning oil and had learned the herbs to eat when traveling through the quicksand in the darkness beyond each gate.

  “Moreover, she could consecrate any amulet I might need in Khert-Neter. The amulet of the heart, for example (which, properly blessed, would offer new strength to my Ka) or the two gold fingers (that would enable me to climb the ladder that ascends to heaven) she even knew how to purify the amulet of the nine steps (that led to the Throne of Osiris). Moreover, she was ready to paint onto papyrus the words of many a Chapter I would need, and began to tell me their separate titles: Of-Coming-Forth-by-Day and Of-Living-after-Death, the Chapter-of-Passing-over-the-Back-of-the-Serpent-Aapep, the Hymn of Praise for the West, the Chapter-of-Causing-a-Man-to-Remember-His-Name-in-the-Underworld, the Chapter-of-Repulsing-the-Crocodile, and the Chapter-of-Not-Allowing-the-Heart-of-a-Man-to-be-Carried-Away. I did not know if I could follow it all, there were so many: the Chapter-of-Living-upon-Air, and the Chapter-of-Not-Dying-a-Second-Time, the Chapter-of-Not-Eating-Filth, or, Holding-a-Sail (so that the vessel of one’s Ka might be blown forward through the worst of the stink). There was the Chapter-of-Changing-into-a-Prince-among-the-Powers, Into-a-Lily, Into-a-Heron, Into-a-Ram. Nor was that all. There was the Chapter-of-Driving-Evil-Recollections-from-a-Man, or Of-Not-Allowing-the-Soul-to-be-Shut-In. Also the Chapter-of-Adoring-Osiris, and then there was a Recitation for the Waxing of the Moon. Each time I thought she had come to the end, she would remember another—the Chapter-of-Coming-Forth-from-the-Net, and the Book of Establishing the Back-Bone of Osiris. She spoke softly, but these names began to sound as loud in my mind as the cries of a vendor.

  “ ‘You’re equal to the Royal Library of Usermare,’ I said.

  “ ‘I would do all of this for you,’ she told me. I could hear how much love was in her voice. She would, indeed, take true care of me in the Land of the Dead. She wished me to have no fear of that place. That way, I would have less terror in her ceremonies.

  “I was now altogether confused. She had spoken of the need for me to have all these amulets and Chapters, yet with it all, Fekh-futi had still been given one little piece of papyrus full of lies, blessed by who knew which drunken priests fondling one another through the night.

  “ ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘the thrice-blessed Negative Confession was not written for Fekh-futi alone. It is also for the Ka of my little toe.’

  “ ‘Can you say that you have committed none of those forty-two sins?’

  “ ‘The virtue of the papyrus is not to be found in its truth but in the power of the family who purchases it,’ she admitted at last.

  “Her words sat heavily on me. Ma-Khrut might claim to be able to do much for me, but the more likely truth was that we were both in peril.

  “I told her this. I hardly had to. She knew my thoughts.

  “ ‘We could be killed together.’ She said this calmly, even as we lay side by side in her bed.

  “ ‘Then why do you tell me the names of all these Chapters? You would not be left behind to write them for me.’

  “ ‘That,’ she said, ‘is why you must commit the words to memory.’

  “ ‘All of them?’

  “ ‘It can be done.’

  “ ‘You have done it,’ I agreed.

  “Ma-Khrut might know how to memorize the prayers she would need, but her memory was mightier than my muscles. I did not even feel the desire to try such feats. She might be as wise as the Royal Library, but she was also so stupid as not to know there was going to be no bath of natron for me. Usermare would cut me into forty-two pieces, and strew the parts.”

  It was at this point that my mother (whose thoughts had strayed into her own childhood) now asked, “Who is this Fekh-futi?”

  Menenhetet, annoyed at the interruption, did not look back at her. “Not the same man,” he said, “but another Fekh-futi in an earlier life, even as I am not who I was yesterday.” With no more than that, he went on, “It was in this hour, I tell you, that I recollected the wisdom of the Hebrew, Nefesh-Besher. Maybe I, too, in my last breath, ought to leap out of myself into the belly of my woman and be born with a new body and a new life. But so soon as I had this thought, I wanted to return to my own bed. There I could draw a circle around my head forty-two times in order to keep such thoughts from traveling. Indeed, so soon as I left her side and was back in my own house, I began to drink from a jar of kolobi and soon swallowed all of it. The sad truth was that I did not know if I wished to end as a child in her belly. Did I want to be the son of a woman who had tasted the leavings of another man?

  “It was then I knew how much I was married to Honey-Ball, and how much I was oppressed by her. Even in my own room, I did not dare to have any thoughts. Saying this to myself, the near-empty jar of kolobi in my hands, feeling as drunk as the Good and Great God Usermare, I made the circle forty-two times about my head and fell away from vertigo. The trials
and ambushes of the Land of the Dead had become as twisted in my mind as coils of entrails.

  “When I awoke next morning in the stupors of kolobi, I turned over on my bed and said to myself, ‘The evil spirits of the night are abroad.’ For behind the protection of my forty-two circles, I still hated Honey-Ball, and was most happy with the few thoughts she could not reach.

  “All this while, the cries of children playing outside my house were in my ears. How many there were! Retching over the ghost of the kolobi, I could hear (as I had never before) the sound of their games, larger even than the cries of the birds. These children’s shouts flew in all directions. Now I heard them as they bathed in the pools and chased the geese, or climbed high in the trees to talk to the birds. Over my head came a gabble of nurses scolding, mothers scolding, long whimpers and every kind of laughter, all these children, every one, sons and daughters of Usermare. Watching these children, there were tears in my eyes. As strange and sweet as a fall of rain in a desert, I was remembering my daughter, born of Renpu-Rept, dead for so many years. I still supposed she would look like a child. Then I was moved by the thought that Honey-Ball was one of the few little queens who had not borne any of Usermare’s children. Could it be that she was so rare as not to love His loins, and might in truth prefer mine? I felt close to my heart at this instant and could hate her no longer. She had been ready, after all, to die with me.

  “So, if I had awakened with every oppression, now I could breathe again. My heart stirred at her generosity. It was as if I understood, and for the first time, how no one would provide for my future travels so well as this woman. It brought me to understand the true power of a family. As Ra had His godly boat for travel through the dark river of the Duad, so were a wife and children one’s own golden vessel on such a trip. Honey-Ball and I had been wed by the secret ceremony of marriage—knowing each other’s buttocks, we shared the property of our flesh. Now, I would have children with her. Yes, I told myself, we must escape from these Gardens. I, like Moses, would flee with her into the Eastern Desert. From there, we might travel to New Tyre. How, with her great knowledge, could we fail to prosper in such a curious city?”

  On these words, Menenhetet looked up at my mother and at Ptah-nem-hotep to see whether they would agree with his rich belief in the virtue of marriage, but to his surprise, and to mine, for I had been listening only to my great-grandfather’s voice, I could now witness that they were most certainly gone. During his talk, they had fled. My poor father was still asleep.

  SIX

  Not only could I still feel my mother’s presence, but she was not far away, and I knew our Pharaoh was with her. Since my great-grandfather, however, had no one now but myself to listen, he no longer offered his voice. Instead, his thoughts were given to the silence of the night, out to the Gods and spirits in the darkness beyond the light of the fireflies. I knew that in whatever room, or on whichever path of the garden my mother might be, the story of my great-grandfather and Honey-Ball was visiting her by every silent path of the night, by the scent of flowers and in the breeze through the palms. I even knew that as much as my mother had desired to leave, my great-grandfather was not that much displeased for he could still feel our Pharaoh’s attention, quick with thirst to hear the story. Indeed, the night had never been more alert.

  Once again I began to lose all sense of my own age, even as the echo of a sound may wonder whether it is the sound itself. So I sat in all the power of his silence, and heard the murmur of long-gone voices, even the whisper of little queens as they passed through the royal palms on their way to the lake, yet I felt so close to my great-grandfather while he sat staring silently at me, that his meditations rose like water from a spring and I was wiser in knowledge than when he spoke aloud, and saw him on the night he crossed the gardens to ask Honey-Ball if she would flee with him to New Tyre. It was then he remembered the story Heqat told of the ugly woman who kept her husband free of every disease, and he laughed aloud. Honey-Ball’s face was beautiful as he held her, and her body was as great as the wealth of Usermare, yet he knew she must be the ugly woman of whom Heqat had spoken. He would never suffer any ill while he lived with her, nor would their children. She would protect them all. So he loved her for these riches, and when, late at night, he slipped back to his own house, he could not sleep for the clarity of the sentiments he felt. He could smell the keen air of every morning they would know in the mountains on the long road from Megiddo to Tyre, and even the perils appealed to him as pleasures. He could show Ma-Khrut the resources of his courage once they were in the forests. More than ever before, he felt bold as a God.

  On the next night, therefore, in the sweet silence that followed love, full of honor, and most content that they had embraced without a ceremony of magic on this night nor the night before, but had come forth in all the quiet yearning of a brother and sister, he held her face between his hands, much aware of the great sky above her house where the Gods might be listening, and whispered of how they would yet be wed and live with many children. And as he spoke, he knew the perils of the journey, for he perceived how much they would need her magic to reach any other land.

  She answered, “It is better here.”

  He had a clear view through her eyes of all she would give up: the jars and boxes that held her amulets, her powders, and her animal skins. She saw them as equal to a city, even as the fortress of her powers, but so soon as he was ready to tell her that she would have all of that again in another place, she asked, “How dear will children be to you?”

  “We must have many.”

  “Then you do not want to run away with me,” she said. Her eye had no tears, and her voice no sorrow as she told the story, yet when she finished, she began to weep. The child of Usermare had been in her belly, she said. And she had lost that child, her first child, on the night Usermare cut off her toe.

  “I do not believe that,” he said.

  “It is true. I lost the child, and I lost what was in me to make other children.” Her voice was as firm as the roots of the largest tree in the Gardens of the Secluded. “That,” she said, “is the true reason I grew fat.”

  In the pain of listening to her, his thoughts ran past like riderless horses.

  She got up from the bed and lit a pot of incense. With every smoke he took into his throat, he had the certainty that his life was shorter by each one of these scents, and the hour of his most unlucky hour was coming in, even as his breath was going out. On the inside of her belly would his last seed expire.

  Unable to bear the misery of their silence, he began to make love to her again, but he felt thick with stupor. He might as well have been asleep in a swamp and lay beside her, wondering whether the power of the circle drawn forty-two times around his head might keep her from knowing how foul were the pits of his mood.

  She did not speak, but upon them, sour as the odor of old blood, was the weight of her purposes. No love would ever be so near as the triumph of her craft. Lying silently by her side, he spent the night waiting for that hour before the dawn when he must leave. He did not wish to stay, but the depth of her thoughts (which he could not enter) lay upon him like the carcass of a beast, and indeed they passed the night like two much-wounded animals.

  Yet, in the last interval before he left, she allowed him to come close once more to her thoughts. As a traveler on a barge can listen to the murmurings of the Nile and know the spirit of the water, so did he perceive that she was searching through her wisdom for a ritual that could strike Usermare with force.

  Nor was he surprised in the morning when he returned to her house and saw, by the nature of her preparations, that she would make an Address to Isis.

  Honey-Ball had spoken of how dangerous this ceremony could be. Her choice was as bold as his own plan to escape, and a breath of love returned. His daring might have inspired hers. So, Menenhetet refused all food offered to him this day, touching neither melon nor beans nor goose, and went early to the house of Honey-Ball. It was common for Menenhe
tet to take his dinner with one or another little queen, even a good omen. The appearance of the Governor might induce a visit by Sesusi Himself. On this evening, however, neither he nor Honey-Ball took more than a dish of cooked wheat on a plate made of papyrus. Then, in full view of her eunuchs, and of any little queens strolling by the house, he left. He even lingered in the lane outside her walls and spoke to other little queens and waited for the darkness. There would be no moon tonight, and a visit by Sesusi was unlikely. So soon as the eunuchs of Honey-Ball were dismissed, he came back over the wall.

  Honey-Ball was wearing white sandals and a gown of transparent linen. Her perfume spoke of white roses and her breath was sweeter than her perfume. He wondered if it was the presence of Isis rising from the wheat they had eaten. Honey-Ball had a breath that could come forth like a blossom, or reek of foul curses, and on many a night, he knew the stench of the Duad. On this evening, however, her breath was calm, and the red amulet of Isis about her waist gave composure.

  Now, she entered upon the invocation. Honey-Ball would call upon Isis in the voice of Seti the First. Ma-Khrut might be esteemed by many powers and spirits, but only a Pharaoh would be admitted to those elevations where Isis dwelled. Indeed, Honey-Ball had found a spell in the Royal Library of Usermare that would call forth the full powers of Isis if spoken by a dead Pharaoh. So she must summon such a Ka. Enveloped in His presence, she could speak like a King.

  She stepped outside the circle, therefore, to remove her gown, and took out a white skirt, golden sandals, and a golden chestplate large enough to cover her breasts. Then, to the astonishment of Menenhetet, she opened another chest and withdrew a Double-Crown of fine stiff linen made, he realized, by her own hands, and it was more than a cubit in height. She placed this upon her head, with a chin-beard to her mouth, and by the time she stepped into the circle and laid the red amulet on the altar, her full mouth was now altered into the stern lips of Seti—at least as Menenhetet knew him by many a temple drawing.