Ancient Evenings

by Norman Mailer

  “After he left, Tepnefer-Intef so admired his boldness that He sent out word He would pardon the fellow. Thereby, the son of Sen-Amon disclosed himself and married Suba-Sebaq and became a Prince whose wife was known by half the men of Egypt.”

  Now, Nefertiri kneeled before me, raised my skirt, seized my swollen but still sleeping snake, gave a small tug with Her slim and playful fingers, said, “Ah, this arm does not come off,” and proceeded to give Her beautiful face to my limb. As the royal mouth came down upon my honor, my desire, my terror, my shame, my glory, I began to feel the seven gates of my body with all their monsters and snares, and a great heat, like the burning of the sun, blazed in me. Then I was alone again, and the fires were subsiding. She was no longer on me with Her mouth. “You smell like a stallion,” She said. “I have never smelled an unperfumed body before.”

  I knelt and kissed Her foot, ready like a hound to slaver atrociously upon Her sandal. I wished to abase myself. The sensation of Her lips upon the head of my phallus remained, and that was like a halo. My cock felt as if it were made of gold. A glow rose in me. I could die now. I need feel no shame. The woman of Usermare had given me Her mouth, and so my buttocks were my own again, yes, I could have kissed Her feet and chewed upon Her toes.

  “Truly, Kazama, you smell dreadful,” She said in Her fondest voice and wiped Her mouth as if She would never have any more of me. But then, She knelt, and despite Herself, gave one queenly teasing lick of Her tongue, light as a feather, along the length of my shaft, down into the tense bag of my balls, and around, a fleeting lick.

  “You stink! You smell of the end of the road,” She said, which, in the Court of Usermare where people spoke so well, was the worst reference you could make to the anus, and I wondered if something out of the marrow of Ma-Khrut’s fats, some thirst of the lost Pig, or slime of the hippopotamus, must be oozing forth from me, an abomination, or so I would have said until I saw Nefertiri’s face, and another Ka was on it. Her delicate features had their own thirst. She was full of folly.

  FOURTEEN

  “Oh, I adore how dreadful you are,” She said. “Did you visit the Royal Stables? Did you rub the foam of a stallion’s mouth all over your little beauty?” She took another lick.

  I nodded. I had indeed gone to the Stables before coming here. I had rubbed myself, and with one of Usermare’s horses, no less, back from a ride with his groom and not yet rubbed down, I had managed to get my hand full of the slather of the beast, nor had I known why.

  “You are a peasant. Common as Lower Egypt,” She said, and teased what I had anointed by way of Her fingertips, clever as starlings’ wings, but with Her tongue and lips as well, a flutter into the ferment of my seed.

  I knew what a mighty revenge She was taking upon Usermare. She never left the crown of my shaft, indeed She called it that, “the crown,” and in a crooning voice, almost so pure as one of Her blind singers, said, “Oh, little crown of Upper Egypt,” and laid on the butterfly wings of Her light tongue, “Oh,” She said, “doesn’t the Upper Crown like to be kissed by Lower Egypt,” whereupon Her tongue curled like the cobra that comes forward from the Red Crown, and She laughed at the mating of the two, as if She would laugh again when the White Crown and the Red of Usermare were together on His head, and He was solemn with His ceremony. “Oh, don’t you spit at Me,” She said, “don’t you dare, don’t let that wickedness of yours begin to shine, don’t let it leap, don’t let it dance,” all with the sweetest little kisses and tickles of Her tongue, trailing the fingertips of one hand like five little sins into my sack and over my shaft, and all the while She played with words in the way I had so often noticed among the most exalted, but all such games were nothing to what She said to me now. It was as if Her heart had tasted no pleasure in so long that She must croon over my coarse peasant cock (and She called it that) and called it by many other names, for after each tickle of Her tongue, I was “groaner,” and “moaner,” “knife,” and “stud,” “inscriber,” and “anointer,” and then, as if that were not enough, She spoke of my “guide” and my “dirty Hittite,” my “smelly thickness,” and lo, they were all much like the sound you hear in mtha, although a little different each, and then using a word so common as met, which I heard every day, now came such sweet caressing sounds as “Do you like the way I tickle your vein, My governor,” and She gave me a nip with Her teeth, “or is it death?” Yet, if it were not for the cleverness of my ears after the Gardens of the Secluded, I might have thought She said, “Do you like the way I tickle your governor, My death, or is it the vein?” some such nonsense, but we were laughing so much, and enjoying ourselves so freely that She began to flip my proud (and now shining) crown against Her lips, and She cooed at it and called it “Nefer” but with a different meaning each time so that it was sweet. “Oh My most beautiful young horse,” She said, “My nefer, My phallus, My slow fire, My lucky name, My sma, My little cock, My little cemetery, My smat,” and She swallowed as much of my cock as Her royal throat could take, and bit at the root until I screamed, or near to it, but then She kissed the tip. “Did I hurt My little hen, My provider, My hemsi, My dwelling place? Oh, is he coming forth?” and indeed I would have been all over Her face and spewing on the woven-air across Her breast, and there to watch Her rub it into Her skin slowly and solemnly as if painting the insult to Usermare upon Her flesh—such was all I saw in Her mind—but the coming-forth turned upon itself with all rude force, clear up my fundament, into my cave, seizing my heart, and drew all the joy in the head of my cock right back into my sack, and I knew we had made no small commotion. Yet I had small fear of that. Her Palace was not like the Secluded where every house had its walls yet every sound belonged to all. Here were no walls around Her rooms. Her bedroom opened to a patio that gave on a garden which ended in an arbor beyond which was a pool. So royal was the air, however, and so sweet and heavy the music of birds, and the cawing and barking of Her falcons and greyhounds, that She had no concern for gossip. Who would care to carry such a tale? Her body servants were not only eunuchs, plump as geese from rich food, but silent as fish. For they were also without their tongues—a considerable cruelty, to be certain, but done, I learned later, not to silence their speech, although it did, but by order of Usermare so they could not lick Her. Indeed, if it would not have made them too hideous in appearance, He would have cut off their lips as well. Of course, He did not protect Himself altogether. Once, later, She whispered to me, “They have marvelous fingers, these Nubians.”

  I speak of such matters, but by now the desire aroused in me was like a fire that could melt a stone. As I stood before Her, trembling, all but flinging myself and my seed in all directions at once, a fire in my stick, and honey in my bowels, my mind was aflame with the stories She had told, and I had to seize myself at the brink before the cream of my loins was shining on Her queenly face. But I had another desire now, large as Usermare Himself. It was to fuck Her, fuck Her good, good and evil. She was murmuring, “Benben, benbenben,” but with such little twists and stops of Her mouth, such a beat of Her breath that as I heard it, benben said all too many words, “Oh, come forth with Me, you little God of evil, you fucker, give Me your obelisk”—for that was also a benben—and then Her gown of woven-air was gone, and Her field was open before me, Her thighs like slim pillars, and Her altar wet with the passions of my tongue. “Hath, hath, hath,” She panted like a cat in heat, “Let us fuck, let us fly. Come into My flame, My fire, My hath, My cunt, come into My snare, enter My sepulchre, Oh, come deep into My cemetery, My sma, My little cemetery, unite with Me, copulate with Me, come to your concubine, O heaven and earth, hath, hath, hath!”

  We kept looking at one another, She on Her back, I on my knees, and I drew into myself all I could remember of the most reverent moments I had known—anything to hold me from shooting every white arrow at once—I saw the solemnity of Bak-ne-khon-su when he sacrificed the ram, and the grandeur of Usermare as He received the hands of the Hittites, and all such thoughts I took in upo
n my fires like smoke, my lust steaming on the hot stones of my will. I knew all the madness of the lion. “Would You like,” I said to Her, my lips as thick as if they had been beaten, nay, scourged, “would You like my obelisk in You, Queen Hat-shep-sut?”

  “In my cunt, yes, in My weeping fish, oh, speak to My weeping fish, enter My mummy, come into My spell, work your oars, work your spell, slaughter Me, shet, shet, shet, oh, come into My plot, come into my ground, come to My pool, yes, fuck your Ka-t, fuck your cunt.”

  Yet when I entered, Her breasts looking at me like the two eyes of the Two-Lands, all the reverence I had drawn into myself made me ache with a radiance equal to a rainbow in a storm. Having banked the fires of my balls, I entered Her with the solemnity of a priest who reads a service, and lay upon Her lips, but the lips of Her enclosure were so hot that my fires almost flamed over the river. Then all was calm again, and She was lying on Her back. My obelisk was floating on Her river. She made the sounds of a woman in birth, aq and aqaq, and yet with all the clarity of a greeting to enter, “Aq, please enter, come to My sunrise, come to My sunset, Oh, aqaq, raid Me, spy into My entrance, look on My uba, rest in My Court, read the prayer, rest in My gate. Uba, uba live in My cave, move in My den, ri, ri, ri, mover of stone, you are a mover of stone, haa, you travel by sea, be My embarcation, haa, My entrance. Oh,” she said, going suddenly still, “do not burst into flame, do not burn up, haa, paddle away, khenn and khennu, oh, slip into My snare, hem, hem, hem, crush My majesty, hu, hu, hu, let it rain”—I heard it all. She sang of the beauties of my testicles (which She held with fingers that had learned the tongueless art of the Nubian) She governed me with words of power, with heq and heha and hem, and as She sang to me, I entered the Land of the Dead that was in all the life of Her, and felt like a noble. She kissed me on the side of my mouth with those lips that had brought royalty to the head of my cock, and our mouths were on one another and our tongues met like woven-air and I felt Her voice on my ear, “Netchem and netchemu and netchemut,” She crooned, “Oh, what a merry fuck you are, ri, ra, rirara,” and on Nefertiri’s face was such tenderness that rirara rose in me and I could not enter enough into my nefer of my most beautiful Queen, my nefer-her, beautiful like rain in the fourth hour after rising, She was a Goddess, She was Her majesty, and She was shameless. Tcham, I fucked Her by Her youth, Tcham, Tcham, Tcham, by Her Sceptre and Her youth, and our hips moving together, She cried out, “Shep, shep, shepit, shepit, and all such words like shepu and shepa and shepat, Oh, light, oh, radiance, oh, brightness, oh, blindness, oh, wealth and shame, vomit and shipwreck, shef, shef, shef, ram into Me, swell into Me, give Me your weapon, give me your power, shefesh, shefesh, I have your sword, I have your gift, give Me your evil, give Me your wealth. Khut, khut, khut, tehet, tehet, tehet. Oh, by the sacred backbone of Osiris, give me tcham, tcham, tcham, qef, qef, qef, show Me to My Ka, dead white, dead black, I am a fortress, ai, ai, what light, what splendor, go deeper, you obelisk, fuck Me into glory, take Me to flame, I am rich, stop, I am fire and light, I am your filth, your offal, your devils, your friends, your guide, oh, good, good, good, give Me your benben, evil fucker, nek, nek, nekk, nekk, fuck me, slash me, murder me, aar, aar, aar, I am your lion, your bird, your lock of hair, your sin, I come, oh, I come, I come forth, I am the Pharaoh.”

  And even as I was rising into a celestial city by a field of golden reeds, there to know a change as great as death itself, I heard the deep sounds of the bowels and the high sounds from the wind in my throat, the cries of my heart roaring in the water rising in me, and I flung myself out to fly to the heavens, or crash on the rocks, and saw the legions of the Land of the Dead and a myriad of faces, all the damned and perfected souls that Nefertiri could command, and rammed into the last gate of Her womb with the moan and groan of a peasant cock, the radiance of Amon blazing in me like the Hidden Sun of my mother’s belly, and She rebounded beneath like a beast, Her limbs storming over mine with the strength of Usermare as I was borne aloft, but not by Her so much as by the wrath of my Pharaoh Who lifted me high like a feather over the flame, and slammed me down like a rock, then gave me another blow and another blow of Her queenly cavern, my tomb. I gave out within Her while the storm still blew, and She washed over me. She came out of every great space that Usermare had left in Her. “She was much more powerful than myself.”

  Saying these last words aloud, my great-grandfather Menenhetet fell from his chair to the ground, and there his body began to shake. His head rapped on the marble of the floor. Out of this seizure, he continued to speak, but now it was in the voice of Ptah-nem-hotep.

  And as I heard the tones of my good King, Ramses the Ninth, so did the limbs of my great-grandfather quiet, and his body turn still. But the voice continued to speak out of his face, cultured and noble, weary and bemused as Ptah-nem-hotep Himself.

  VI

  THE BOOK OF THE PHARAOH

  ONE

  “I cannot bear the limbs of this woman. She entwines herself too much about Me. I feel wrapped in the arts of the embalmer. Her flesh suffocates. Yet, I cling to her. My fingers search her depths. My mouth is sealed with hers.”

  It was His voice. I heard it in my ear, the voice of Ptah-nem-hotep, as it came from the throat of Menenhetet, but I had dwelt for so long within the thoughts of my great-grandfather that these strange sounds came over my head in a babble.

  A sweet smell rose from the patio, a perfume sweet to me as the scent of Nefertiri, and across the hours of the night I now remembered the scent of rose on Ptah-nem-hotep’s ankles when I kissed His feet. So I knew these thoughts were His. How else could such an aroma have risen? Yes, I was being carried in the sentiments of my Pharaoh, lifted on the odor of His perfume even as water will carry the colors of a dye, and now I heard the voice of my mother as well, for she and Ptah-nem-hotep were speaking, which is to say, laughing. I could hear them fondling one another, and the small slap of His hands on her hips, the proud little smack of her mouth on His ear as if He were not only the treasure of all treasures, but dear as a child like me. The same sound of possession was there. I even knew the moment when the harsh reserve of His voice was gone, and He no longer thought of the weight of her limbs, but of bliss, and it was then I knew that my mother had succeeded in carrying off His woes, His fatigues, even His distaste, had taken it into her heart out of the force of her adoration of Him, had softened His body with her caresses until He was like a field trodden for the seed, had lain with Him while His flesh, after every panic, had begun to breathe the calm of her pores—how well I knew this power of my mother!—and now it was the voice of Hathfertiti that came from my great-grandfather although I had no need to wonder what she might say. I heard her in my thoughts, and she was speaking at this moment of the day, seven years ago, when she and the Pharaoh made love.

  She lied. I knew it by the honesty and simplicity of her voice. My mother could lie with such art that her lips trembled with truth, and Ptah-nem-hotep came near to believing what she said no matter how He remembered that they had not made love. Indeed, He could still recall the touch of His hand in hers. That was all His timidity had been able to muster on a day when His distrust of Hathfertiti had not been small. Even as a priest in the Temple of Ptah, He had heard of her license with her brother and grandfather. It was the gossip of Memphi. Of all the women who presented themselves to the Apis bull, she, the youngest, had been the most impudent. Now, His hands deep in her several treasures, He said to Himself that if gold were as malleable as flesh, her flesh was gold. For He was beginning to feel as if the best she might offer was yet before Him, just beyond His fingertips. So He did not deny her when she spoke of their act of love seven years ago on the banks of the pond after they had left the skiff of papyrus, nor did He even shake His head as she breathed into His ear, “My son was conceived in that hour.”

  But then He turned her over, and His hands upon her breasts, His mouth on her lips, He began to laugh and said, “You are in error. I became Pharaoh without ever knowing a woman, and s
o I remained for all of My first year.” He began to laugh. “There,” He said, giving a good slap to her hips, “no one has known before you.”

  “I knew it on that day,” she said. “You were so fine. I had never seen a young man who could stir me so. You know, I did not think of You as a King, but a priest.”

  “Then how do you say we made love?”

  “I must whisper it to You.”

  I lived on the whisper. I did not wish to listen to the curious sounds that came like broken words from my great-grandfather’s dreams, although my mother’s voice was in them, but I was near enough to her—no matter how many courtyards might separate us—to know she told Him now that they did not make love on that day as they did tonight. The true love—for which one must be ready to die, she said, as she was now ready to die for Him—had no, not been made, He had not entered her, that was the truth. Yet, out of the sweet touch of the water sliding beneath the skiff through all of that golden afternoon, they had felt so near to one another when they returned to the shore, and she had stood beside Him with such joy, that He left His seed within her hand. She then anointed herself. His seed in her palm had been worth more than the seed of all others.