Ancient Evenings

by Norman Mailer

  As my great-grandfather spoke, I could see him in my thoughts no longer, not his face at least, for he had begun to look to me like Bone-Smasher as I had followed our boatman on his wanderings through Memphi this afternoon, and lying there between my mother and Father, the closer I fell back into the tender lips of sleep, the more did I see the boatman, until I could even feel him making love to Eyaseyab, and in my thoughts and dreams, he and my great-grandfather were now passing each other. So did I even think I saw Bone-Smasher and Eyaseyab in a hut in some servants’ courtyard of one of the alleys down which my great-grandfather was wandering, until I realized with the languorous shift of pleasure that simple discoveries provide when one is on this side of the swells of slumber, that they were in no back street of Thebes but must be making love now in whichever little room had been given to Eyaseyab for our stay in the Palace tonight, yes, I was out of my own dear cushions, and lolling on the rise and rush of their bodies in the air of the night, yes, they were making love in the servants’ quarters of the Palace, my dear Eyaseyab who kissed Sweet Finger and drew forth all that was sweet, yes, I had deserted my great-grandfather to live in her heart and now knew nothing of him, but was rich instead with her, and fine in my limbs. Then, Bone-Smasher broke in like the lightning of Set and I heard a cracking of rock, and felt much throbbing, and maybe I even heard her cry out, for on this patio, through the light breeze of the night came many a moan, and much pleasure and woe there with the grunts and scratching and roars and cackles of the beasts in all the pens and stables far away, yet in the night, like the Gods, all sounds are near, and with her cry, if I heard it, I must have passed from Eyaseyab’s warm pleasure back into the longing of my great-grandfather for Nefertiri, since now I could hear his story better, which is to say, see it more clearly, and his voice no longer intervened in my ear so much as the breath of his thoughts.

  I was alone, he told us. I could have been, he murmured, living still on the river of my childhood, no older than the boy who went forth from my village to the army just so alone did I feel myself in the din of this beer-house in the back-quarters of Thebes. Nor could I cease to feel that Nefertiri was near, yet I would not see Her. But, then, did I truly wish to see Her? I could measure the terror. Finding Her, I could lose all I had gained in my life.

  With that thought, a weight came down upon me (in the midst of all these sour half-fermented bodies) that was like the stones of a tomb, and for the first time I saw my life without pride. I did not think of my achievements (which were the blood and bone of my good esteem each morning) but saw instead all I had not done, the friends I had never made (for I trusted no man) the family I would never have (for I had trusted no woman enough to keep a family—how criminal had been the desertion of Renpu-Rept within my heart!) and at that instant, my nostrils full of the puke of others, just as atrocious seemed the contents of my own heart. I saw then the hopelessness of growing into an old man—for me, at least! I would not like to lie in my bed and clutch the medals my Pharaoh might yet give me, nor hear my titles repeated by old servants who would listen to my cough in the middle of the night and curse me for a miser. Such a death was hideous—to cough once in this life and once again in the Land of the Dead. “I do not want to die again in Khert-Neter,” one of the drunks in the bar was singing, but then that song is the dirge of all drunks.

  I thought of the gold mines at Eshuranib and the wisdom of Nefesh-Besher, and wondered if I had the power to be reborn in the belly of a great woman. Then it was as if the Gods came down in assembly about me, and I felt the balance of heaven waiting for what I would next decide, as if the timid poisons of my blood and the bravery of my heart stood arrayed before one another like legions in the hour when the horn is blown. I did not dare to breathe and yet no breath was more pure than all that quivered in my nose above the mash of this jeering puke, for I knew then—I, who had prayed like any other soldier to a hundred Gods and heard the voice of none, trusted none—I heard one God then. Whom, I do not know, but He was in my heartbeat, waiting for me to decide. And I said to myself, “I am not afraid of death. I will dare it,” and knew that what I said was heard, oh, more than that, I would swear the light of the candles lowered in that bar as if the fires of Ra were quiet before the enormity of what I had said. It was then I left the place. I would look for Nefertiri.

  So I was out in the street again, my arms like shields against the elbows of others, and a calm came to me of a sort I had never felt before. It had no peace in it, but for the quiet that comes when you know that no matter how many tortures lie in wait, at least you will never suffer impatience again. My life was before me, I felt. Whatever of it was left, was at last before me. I would not die in the grinding exasperation of the aged turned to stone by their fear of the stone that will lie on them, no, I would find Nefertiri and I would fuck Her. The thought of my cock in Her, my agony in Her honey, my fatigue in Her wealth, my pride in Her royal privacy, my beating heart in Her sweet quiver, my peasant meat in the sauce of a Queen, my sword in Usermare’s skin!—every high and low passion I ever felt came together, and my life was simple. I would fuck Her or die in the attempt; or I would be with Her and no one would know; or was it that I would be with Her and we would love each other so well that I would dare what no one would dare: if She wished me to kill the Pharaoh, I would. I took a great breath then. Having said it to myself, I knew that I was like no Egyptian of common blood in the Two-Lands. A few might be found to kill a Pharaoh for their lord, the next Pharaoh. But none would do it for themselves, except me. I would dare to be Pharaoh if She were my Queen. His blood was no finer than mine. Descendant of the Superintendent of the River Mouths!

  So I knew the peace of understanding. Never again would I protect myself for too little, nor fear catastrophe too much. Let it come. Let it come down upon me. I would be the Pharaoh, or no more than Her lover, or dead, or in Her belly, or none of these. But I would fear no man or thought any longer. In that moment, I felt as young and as strong as in my day at Kadesh and decided that if I were not the Pharaoh in this life, it would be in another.

  Ptah-nem-hotep now spoke so quickly that I was lifted from the fine place between my great-grandfather’s voice and my own sleep. “You made that day,” said my Father, “a most curious promise to yourself. I must ask: Dear Menenhetet, how can I ever trust Myself to sleep if you are Vizier?”

  “Good and Great God,” said Menenhetet, “I have given to You a respect I offered no other Pharaoh. You ask me to tell all that I know and I honor Your need and the wisdom of Your mind. I tell myself that Your mind and mine can trust one another more closely than brothers since neither of us can abide stupidity. So I tell the truth. Not because I love You—I love no creature on earth but my great-grandson who is now Your son”—and here I felt a love come from him to me that was as rich in the good marrow of its feeling as all that passed between Bone-Smasher and Eyaseyab—“but because I honor You, You of the Divine Two-Houses, and believe that no Pharaoh ever had Your subtlety of mind nor Your rare power to honor the truth. I speak then to Your face, and say: Because Egypt is not strong today, there is no Vizier You can trust. I, at least, will never bore You.”

  “I am delighted by Your candor,” said Ptah-nem-hotep, “if not altogether happy with the truth of what you say.” He sighed, but then He laughed. “Go on with your story,” He said, “I trust you in spite of Myself,” and He laughed a little more as He said this and an astonishing kindliness went out from His body until I could feel it touch my great-grandfather, who, in turn, was so pleased by this warmth that he tapped his forehead with two fingers in an old charioteer’s salute, a gesture he might not have used in a hundred and fifty years or more. I, however, could not continue to share what passed between them because I saw my mother’s mouth and it revealed what her thoughts kept hidden. Some pain must have gripped her in this moment. I felt a malevolence on us, yet so faint only my mother and I could detect it. Then, I knew that if Nef-khep-aukhem were by now on the other side of Memphi,
his curse was not. So I understood how an animal can stir when one hair in the million and infinity of his fur is askew.

  Therefore, I did not listen to my great-grandfather as easily as before, and many moments must have gone by before I could settle back into the embrace of my near-sleep and follow how he searched for Nefertiri by way of Her limp. It was that, my great-grandfather said, he was looking for, that is, looking for a woman of great beauty who, no matter how disguised, would show a small limp.

  That, he told us, had become touching to him. It was the only indication in my Queen, he said, of Her true age—She still had the pain in Her hip. Yes, could be heard in my great-grandfather’s thought, one was searching for a woman with a limp, yet with such single-mindedness that it took a while on leaving the bar to realize that what was needed were not eyes that could see farther ahead but a neck clever enough to know when to look back. It was only when my spine began to tingle that I began to feel how someone was following me. Yet whenever I turned around, I could not see who was there, only what had just been there. Then, as I whirled on the instant into an alley, I saw behind me a female servant in an old dark cloak, and so I climbed with one vault onto a roof to observe her as she passed. It was the face of a severe and middle-aged servant, so dark that she must be Nubian as much as Egyptian, or could it be a very dark Syrian? But, as she passed, I knew by Her walk it was Nefertiri. There was that tiny hitch in Her step, so bottomless in its rousing of pity in me. I slipped down from the roof and followed Her, but She could sense what was to the back of Her better than me, for in the next alley She came to a hut, opened the door, and turned around between its posts to give me a smile of welcome, and I, with the simple happiness of meeting Her in this deserted alley, gave Her both my arms in an embrace and felt Her divine mouth again, at last, on mine. Yet all the while we kissed—if not for the noble sophistication of that kiss—we could have been two peasants from my village. She wore no perfume, and I could sniff the odor that came from under Her arms, healthy and simple and full of the work of walking through Thebes.

  Inside, was one dark room but there was light enough to see a few pots hung on the dirt-brick walls, and some stones in the corner for an oven, a hole in the roof for the smoke, that was all, an old woman’s hut with a cot. She was the mother of one of Nefertiri’s servants, and at the Festival, said my Queen. She would not be back until late this night. I could see it was true. There was not one person left in this alley—all were away at the Festival, mothers, infants, old people—a robber could have gone through these houses and walked off with two handfuls of grain; there was no more to steal.

  I cannot say if it was the poverty, or the sheer, simple dirt of the place, but I knew pure gusto for Her. My cock was up like a bull. Without fine cosmetic, with no more than the dark dye She put on Her face, with no attention to Her hair nor Her clothing, She was like a middle-aged woman of the servant class, good-looking but with no remarkable beauty, and much covered up, Her breasts concealed in a woolen cloak. I desired Her all the more. It gave me strength in approaching, as if we were in my palace now, not Hers. I knew I would need no fine stories to bring forth my appetite, nor any touch of Her fingertips nor Her tongue, not even the sight of Her open thighs, no, I grasped at Her and grabbed Her, hugged Her and would have lifted Her onto the cot with room for me only on top, but She was acting like a true servant girl. Not a servant woman, a girl. She was strong as She resisted me, and I may say that She did not make a sound, as servant girls never will, or so near to never will if the mistress might be listening, and She fought me off, muscular and modest, allowing no more than the sight of that full bush of hair between Her legs which I obtained by raising Her skirt one push at a time, but like a servant girl She would not remove anything else nor show Herself in any nakedness, and now after the first kiss, She would not give me Her mouth again, no, She would not let me near. I could feel her intentions, and they were as heavy as all the leaden secrets of a servant, so much stolen here, so much bad done there. Now She pushed me off and said, “Wait. I am not ready. I am not ready at all,” and to my great surprise, for I had never known any woman but a servant to act like this, began to scratch Her calves and continued to do this until Her legs were covered with white streaks, but no, She could not stop, as if this were the only way to calm Herself from the harassments of the day, and it was then I remembered how my mother and other women of my village used to do the same.

  My groin could not have ached more if I had been thrust through by a spear, but when I gripped Her knee, She pushed away my hand. “Wait,” She said, “I want to ask you about Rama-Nefru,” and there, pressing against Her, I still had to stop and tell of all that was most intimate I had learned about Usermare and the Hittite, and it was not until I was done that She kissed me like a good boy, and sighed, and when I pressed forward again, said, “Wait, I want to tell you something.” Then, still scratching with the most rhythmical movement of Her wrist as if every word heard about Usermare and His Hittite had first to be digested in Her blood, She began, much to my distraction, to relate a tale I had not heard since childhood, and in no way a story you would think to hear from a Queen. In truth, I had even heard it in my village, but so long ago, I could not remember what came next, yet She insisted on telling it, and there was a determination in Her voice that made me know I must listen. Perhaps it was that She spoke with a servant’s accent. She certainly knew how people from the country between Memphi and Thebes will speak.

  “This is a tale of two brothers,” She said, “and I heard it from the old woman who lives in this place. She heard it from her mother. So this is the story of the hut where we are. You listen to it.

  “There were two brothers, Anup, the older, and Bati, the younger. Anup had a large house and a good-looking wife, and Bati worked for him. But the younger brother was stronger and more handsome.

  “One day when both brothers were in the field, Bati was sent back for seed, and Anup’s wife saw him put the load of three men on his back, so she was much impressed. She stopped dressing her hair, and said, ‘Come, let us lie together for an hour. If you please me, I will make you a shirt.’ Bati became as wild as a cheetah of the South, and he said, ‘Do not say that to me again,’ and took up his load of seed and went back to the fields and worked beside Anup so hard that the older brother became tired and thought of his wife. So he left the field to be with her. But when Anup came back to his house, her jaw was covered with a rag. She told him Bati had beaten her because she refused to lie with him. ‘If you permit your younger brother to live,’ she said, ‘I will kill myself.’

  “Then the older brother also became like a cheetah of the South, and he put an edge on his knife, and he waited for Bati behind the stable door. Yet when his younger brother came toward the shed, the heifer who led the cows began to moo, and her voice told Bati that he was in danger. So he fled, and Anup ran after him, and Bati did not escape until he crossed the river in a skiff of papyrus at a steep place where Anup could not follow because there was no other boat. Besides, there were many crocodiles. Safe on the other side of the river, Bati now shouted, ‘Why do you believe her? I will prove to you that I am innocent.’ Then, he took out his knife and cut off the part of himself that was most valuable to him, and he threw it into the river. Then Anup wept and would have been ready to cross, even if he drowned, but he had too much fear of the crocodiles.

  “Now, the younger brother said, ‘I will take out my heart as well,’ and he did, and he laid it on a young acacia tree. ‘After this tree is cut down,’ he said, ‘look for my heart, and lay it in fresh water. Then I will live again.’

  “ ‘How do I know if the tree is cut?’ asked Anup.

  “ ‘When the beer froths in your mug, come at once, even if it is seven years from now,’ the younger brother said. And he died.”

  Nefertiri looked at me with all the severity a stranger places in his eye when he is telling an important story. “Anup went home,” She said, “and he drove his wife away, and he
waited. It was seven years to the day before a Queen came riding through the woods, saw the acacia, and found it so beautiful that it disturbed Her pleasure in Her own beauty. So She ordered the tree cut down. Then the beer frothed in the mug of Anup. The older brother went out to search for the heart of Bati, and found it in the topmost seed of the fallen acacia, and Anup put this seed in water until it came to life, and grew into a bull with the markings of Apis. The animal, so soon as it was full-size—which took a day and a night—even had the picture of a scarab on its tongue. This bull now told Anup to lead him to the Egyptian Court, and the Pharaoh was so pleased with the beast that He gave presents to Anup and sent him away. But, in the morning, the Pharaoh’s Queen was alone with the bull. He dared to say to Her, ‘You cut me down when I was a tree. Now I live again and am a bull.’ The Queen went to the Pharaoh. ‘Give Me the liver of that animal to eat,’ She said, and the King loved Her so much that He sent His butchers. Yet so soon as they cut the bull’s throat, two drops of blood fell by the steps of the Pharaoh’s pavilion, and grew up overnight into twin cedars like the ones much beloved by Osiris when the Lord of the Dead rested in His coffin on the shores of Byblos.

  “When the King saw this miracle, He invited the Queen to sit with Him beneath these trees. She was much disturbed. From the branches of Her cedar came a whisper: ‘I am the one You tried to kill.’ That night, when the Pharaoh was taking much pleasure with Her, She said, ‘Grant Me what I want.’