Ancient Evenings

by Norman Mailer

  “Yet in the first weeks of Usermare’s ascension, there was a night when He plunged so deep into His young bride that the beer in the jugs by Their bed began to froth. Later, when They lay beside each other, Nefertiri said, ‘Water will come out of the mountain on the road to Ekayta.’ Hearing the confidence in Her voice, Usermare ordered a well to be dug, and there, water was found, and its flow enabled the laborers to bring back much gold in the early years of the Reign of Ramses the Second. So, He took a vow upon Nefertiri’s body that He would know love for no other woman.

  “Yet, now, forsaking His right buttock for the touch of His left, so could I see Rama-Nefru as clearly as Nefertiri, and Rama-Nefru was no older now than the other had been then, and thinking of Rama-Nefru, He was as tender as a young lover.

  “Rama-Nefru might have been the daughter of a Hittite, and in Her childhood only known men with beards and been raised by women with noses more curved than a sword, but She, Herself, was like the loveliness of a clear morning on our river. So I knew why She was beloved by Usermare. In Her arms, He heard the birds at dawn, and saw the clear light of the Palace courtyard when the sun is high. By night She offered a tenderness like the smallest flowers of His garden. That much did I learn by the touch of my fingers to His left buttock. For into my heart passed the cup of His happiness. The harsh appetites of my King did not occupy all His heart. To Him, the luster of Rama-Nefru’s hair was like the light falling on the transparent Throne of Heaven. Yet, the purity of His feelings were such that He could not be with Rama-Nefru when His heart was black with fear, or She would suffer from bearing His heat.

  “Later that night, after Usermare had mounted the bodies of each of the eight little queens and took each of them with a fire to bury the fires of Khert-Neter, coming forth each time like a God, He became at last as calm as the waters of a pond and dressed with me, and we walked together in the Gardens hand in hand. He had not been so calm in a long time. His breath smelled powerfully of kolobi and I understood how near we had been to the body of Isis through the night. For all which was in the grain belonged to Her, and everything in the grape. And all that came down to us on the rise of the river.

  “This time, it was not like that occasion when He hesitated to tell me that I would no longer be General-of-all-the-Armies but Governor of the Secluded. He said, ‘I have lived in indecision for many months, but it has come to an end. Tomorrow, you will begin to serve as Companion of the Right Hand of Nefertiri.’

  “When I asked, ‘Who will be Governor?’ He replied, ‘I am giving the Gardens to Pepti. He will do well there. But you belong in My First Queen’s Palace. You have the wisdom to serve Her well, and serve Me even better.’ He nodded, as if the greatest wisdom were His own. ‘You will stay close to Nefertiri. You will not leave Her. If word should come that I am dead, you have only one instruction: Slay Her where She stands.’

  “Now He kissed me. ‘Kill Her,’ He said, ‘even if others will slay you in the next instant.’

  “I bowed. The dawn was as lovely to me as the thought of my own life. ‘That is the best death for you,’ He said. ‘You will be able to accompany Me in the Golden Boat.’

  “He was my King. So I did not dare to say that I might wander in Khert-Neter and not be welcomed by Him on any boat. I merely bowed again.”

  NINE

  Once, sitting with my mother in her bedroom, I saw her pick up a round plate of silver with a handle of gold, and hold it beneath my face. I nearly cried out. There, floating on the polished surface, was my Ka looking back at me. I had seen this face in the water of a pond on a calm day, and learned I could not touch such a Ka for it rolled away in many small waves so soon as I reached out. Now, my mother said, “This is the veil-of-the-Ka-who-stands,” and it was true. When I brought my finger to the surface of the plate, another finger came forward to meet me, but the face did not move—it stood there as solemn and respectful as my own. At that moment, I felt as far apart from a six-year-old, at least in age and wisdom, as my great-grandfather himself. I knew there was no rare thought I could not understand if I looked long enough into the silver light of the veil-of-the-Ka-who-stands. For with my face before me, I shared the wisdom of the Gods—if only in that instant.

  Now, something of the knowledge I had then must have come into my breath, for when I opened my eyes on this patio, expecting—I do not know why—to see my own face, I was staring instead into the eyes of my great-grandfather, and we looked at one another unti I lost all sense of where the horizon might be on this dark night. Now I could not be certain I belonged here any more than on my knees in some chamber of stone in the center of a mountain of stone, and my mouth was open, and my great-grandfather’s eyes remained motionless on me. All was still

  I began to know the emptiness of this late great hour of the night. I could feel the darkness upon us until I did not believe I would see the sun again. The fireflies hardly stirred and so dim was their light that one could barely see the cloth of their cage. Now my father moved in his sleep, and a groan came from his lips. For the first time, I felt near to him, and then—I do not know if he was wide awake or spoke right out of his sleep—but his hand reached out for mine, and the current of all his feelings ran from his fingers into mine, although with no similarity to the heart of the Great Sesusi. My father was in all the pure simple pain of a throat as sore as Menenhetet’s after he swallowed the bone, and I knew we had entered the hour when Ptah-nem-hotep and my mother lay deep in each other’s embrace, while the touch of their flesh, naked to each other, lay directly on my father’s feelings, as cruel and copious as an onrush of blood. So I knew then how powerful was my father’s adoration for the beauty of my mother. Nor was the depth of his anguish lessened by the excruciating pleasure of knowing that she gave herself (and all the wealth of herself) to the man (and the God of all the Gods) to whom my father was nearest. So it was as if my father, out of love for my mother, and love for Ptah-nem-hotep, now met the scorching onslaught of one adoration fallen upon another, and thereby suffered like a lion devouring its own entrails. Yet—how much like a lion!—his heart also knew glory.

  It was then, as I say, that I entered his thoughts. I had grasped a few before this night, but only in the way a throwing-stick may strike a bird as it rises overhead. So many impressions are in the air that you bring one down merely by making the effort even as the stick cannot fly through a cloud of birds without breaking a wing. Tonight, however, I learned that if one could be true-of-voice like Ma-Khrut, so could one also be true-of-thought and be borne on the stream of another’s meditation. In that manner I was carried on my father’s dreams and realized that he saw the same throwing-stick (curved like a serpent, and of splendid ebony) just hurled into the sky by my thoughts. Yet so fine are these tricks of the mind when it is not one’s own eye that sees what is before you, but another’s thought, that the same black throwing-stick became on its trip down the marvel of my mother’s pleasure. She exclaimed at the skill of Ptah-nem-hotep, and would have jumped for delight if she had not been standing next to Him on the most fragile little skiff of papyrus, its sheaves delicately lashed together.

  Yet it was only after I saw the stick come down and go up again that I also knew my mother was younger than I had ever seen her, and alive with the sauciness that gleams in the eyes of a young Princess when she enjoys much pleasure, yet has learned it at no cost. Even then, it was not until I saw her sandals, made of palm leaves and papyrus as fine as the skiff, and put together to endure no longer, that I realized (and only by way of my father’s hand in mine) that I was seeing the sunshine of an afternoon seven years ago and Ptah-nem-hotep, to match her sauciness, was still a young Prince crowned as Pharaoh in the same year, and with the same regal fastidiousness of a very young King, so that as He flirted with her, and they spoke with their heads close together, so did He still stand, even on the skiff, with His back straight and His eyes smiling more than His mouth. For to His chin was attached the long thin beard that only the Pharaoh may wear. />
  “Oh, look,” she cried, “at the monkeys.” As they rested for an instant, the skiff drifting through the reeds (while the birds they roused settled into other grass) the sunlight dazzled along the length of the tall stalks at the border of one of His gardens. Up in the trees, monkeys were picking figs for the eunuchs and busily throwing them down. One could not tell who was laughing more, the gardeners or the monkeys. Both saluted Him as He poled by, and that encouraged Hathfertiti to laugh in her turn. Down in the marsh, the sun was lighting on the water-pads, and on the flowers at the head of the papyrus stalks. Silence came again. They were near to another flock of birds, and standing erectly, side by side, their balance as keen as the tilting of the skiff, He ran into the reeds, the air quivered, the ducks flew upward with an ongathering cry like a herd of horses trumpeting up the hill, and His stick flew with them. A bird fell down.

  So the afternoon passed. As quickly as a cloud passing beneath the sun. The sounds of my mother’s laughter scraped twice on my father’s heart. He had made love to her almost every night of his fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth years and had always known he would marry her and yet as she stood in the skiff, the slim upright grace of her body matched to the balance of the poised body of Ptah-nem-hotep, her happiness offered a delicacy Nef-khep-aukhem had never glimpsed for himself. All the while he watched from the branches of a tree at the edge of the swamp, his cheeks became more swollen from the bites of mosquitoes. She would laugh again when she saw him in the evening. For these ludicrous lumps on his face spoke of an afternoon so absurd that he had been trapped in a tree by mosquitoes. Besides, she was savage. There had been the illimitable disappointment that Ptah-nem-hotep, having brought back the skiff, did not pursue her very far although her thighs quivered for Him with a beating more rapid than the wings of the birds. Then, after the lingering of their farewell, she had been seized in the twilight by her grandfather, who, having made love to her since she was twelve, now made love to her again on this day with all the passion of four Pharaohs, and Menenhetet would have died even as he was about to come forth if he had not realized how much she desired the still silent smile of Ptah-nem-hotep. Twice denied, once for too little, once for too much, Hathfertiti had laughed at last in full cruelty at the face of her brother, while he took her with an anger and appetite as great as her grandfather or any Pharaoh, and they traveled over much of the floor of that room with their bodies. It may be that I was made in that hour. Or it may be that I was made in the hour before by my great-grandfather. Or was I also conceived on my mother’s side by the love of the young Pharaoh’s eye? All I knew at this moment was the pain in my father’s heart. He still gazed back into the sunlight of the swamp and wept within, for he saw my mother and Ptah-nem-hotep together in their embrace, and was overcome that his Pharaoh, uplifted by the vigor of His ancestor, was tonight, if not the equal of Usermare, at least His descendant. The exquisite happiness of my mother’s cries scratched like a dagger on my father’s ear.

  By now, of course, I was so immersed in my mother’s heart as to be able to do without the intercession of my father. So I saw my father as my mother did, knew the meat and pleasure of their matrimony, and understood that my mother enjoyed my father more than she wished, indeed, they were glued to one another. Therefore, my father—and this was part of his pain—had to be aware that my mother might enjoy all the riches of Egypt when he was in her, yet with so low a longing that the slap of their bodies resounded in her ear like the smacking of riverbank mud. So there was never a time when she did not look to betray my father with my great-grandfather. In Menenhetet’s arms she knew more of the Gods on one night than she saw with my father in a year. The odor of Menenhetet might be strange to her, as perfumed and dry as the remote dust that lies upon the loneliest sunbaked rocks, but he could be many men. Afterward, she would tell Nef-khep-aukhem (for my father always understood that it was part of her pleasure—with all the spite of an older sister—to tell him, yes, to tell him) that she not only made love to Menenhetet but that her grandfather was like a Pharaoh, and so she could be the Queen of a Pharaoh, whereas with her husband, ah, dear man, it was just his low appeal. With him, she felt as comfortable as a field in the afternoon sun, but then she could see nothing better than peasants trodding the seed. Saying this, she would poke her full breast into his hungry mouth, considerably parched by the truth of listening to her confessions, and my father would suck hungrily on her tit, like a baby, like a younger brother, like a wounded husband, and grasp her buttocks with the desperation of a lover who can find no mastery in the force of his grip. Hathfertiti would meow in imitation of her favorite cat, and grasp his wretched half-erect little limb, weak in this hour, and draw it in and out of her mouth with all the languor and sweet teasing wit of a tongue that could and would tell him how she had done as much for Menenhetet and more, and the cream of my father’s coming-forth would be tasted by her, and thoughtfully, indolently, wiped on her face and breasts, while still smelling the spit of his mouth and her mouth and all the other mouths in a bond that sealed them to each other still, and reminded both of all the joys they had known when she was fifteen and he was thirteen and they did it in every hidden place. In those days, she used to believe that she betrayed her grandfather with her brother. Now, were both men betrayed, and even I lived like them in my mother’s flesh while the Pharaoh was inside her, full of the feast of our Pig, our good Pharaoh, Ramses the Ninth, in no ordinary joy after listening to the stories of Menenhetet. Like Usermare, Ptah-nem-hotep was feeling an army of Gods in His body. Uplifted by the times without number my father had been joined to the body of Hathfertiti, yet had given his kisses, my poor father, to the feet and buttocks of his Pharaoh over these seven years, yes, the fields and heavens of all His subjects and His ancestors were joined as my Pharaoh grasped the full near-to-bursting flesh of Hathfertiti, and came forth from the source of the Nile, came up, Ptah-nem-hotep, behind the cataracts and felt Himself roaring down in flood into the mouth of the Delta there to be buried in the Very Green with Hathfertiti moaning beneath Him like a lioness. Then He was done, and she was still thrashing about with abandon enough to flow over the banks of any river, sealing His mouth with a kiss.

  In the chill that always came upon Ptah-nem-hotep after the coming-forth, He was repelled by this cheap woman, the wife of His Overseer of the Cosmetic Box, the spouse of a servant (with the flesh of that servant all over her) and her mouth stuck to His Mouth like the jelly that came from the boiling of a bone, all repellent, a sealing fully as complete as any real marriage with its contracts written on papyrus. Like such a sealing were their mouths glued together, a slavery, an entombment, a joining of His Double-Throne with her insatiable greed.

  So did His colder sentiments also come into me, but no longer by way of my mother, no, the heart of the Pharaoh spoke to me, and was heard by the night and in the night, through the pain of my father that was like an open ear. By way of my father I learned of His feelings, and my father’s pain was doubled for knowing himself despised.

  Yet Hathfertiti felt none of these drear stirrings in her Pharaoh, only the burden of His power. She took in His royal fatigue. She had never felt more tender toward a man. These emotions I received as directly as if she had spoken, and understood, if I had ever doubted, that being possessed of two separate eyes and two ears, two arms, two legs, two lips for taste (one for the good taste, one for the bad), two nostrils by which to breathe (the male Gods to one side, Goddesses to the other), and that even as Egypt was the nation of the Two-Lands, and the Pharaoh had a Double-Crown, and a Twice-Royal Seat, the Nile had two banks, and there was day and night, so could my mind receive the thoughts of two people at once. To my mother, Ptah-nem-hotep was the sweetest sensation of love she had ever known, even sweeter than her love for me, whereas the feelings of the Pharaoh were now in a fever of fury at all the insistent pleasure of this woman’s charms, that sealing of her lips, her firm body soft in every corner it could be plundered, even the crisp brush of the
stiff hair that grew like foliage over the wet meat between her thighs, was irritating to Him. He began to make love again with all the skill He had acquired from His small harem of ten little queens, all of whom He knew better by far, He could say, than Usermare knew any of His hundred, and indeed there was no caress He had not felt, only the absence of any Goddess He might revere, and Hathfertiti was no Goddess at all, yet she was inspiring in Him the most appetite He had known in the seven floodings of the Nile since He had ascended the Double-Throne. And all the while He caressed Her flesh, Ptah-nem-hotep had more thoughts for Menenhetet than for her.

  In the chill that followed His coming-forth, He had seen again how the mighty phallus of Usermare entered the gates to His Governor’s buttocks, and that gave vigor to Ptah-nem-hotep. By the breath He took through one nostril it gave Him vigor, but it also left Him in no way superior to Menenhetet by the other, inasmuch as Usermare was also entering Him, if by no more than the tongue of Hathfertiti commencing her music again. Now, feeling her wet breast by one hand, and the crevice of her hips by the other, recollecting the view of her open thighs as He saw them in the light of a flame in a censer of oil, the Gods gleaming in the wet flesh of her hair, He knew a second pleasure, and His life stirred inside her belly and began to grow long as the Nile and dark as the Duad. The great force of the phallus of His ancestor, Usermare, covered His own phallus like the cloak of a God. At that instant His Secret Name must have opened the door for He had an instant when the Gods went in and out of Him a second time and the Boat of Ra flew past as He came forth. The Two-Lands shivered beneath. He had dared to speak to the Gods on the body of the wife of a servant, and as this terrible thought passed through, so did my mother see again the great stone obelisk we had encountered this morning on the river and felt in her belly the strength of those men rowing upstream against the great weight, for the sword of Ptah-nem-hotep was like that obelisk and possessed of a golden tip. By its light she climbed the ladder of heaven.