Ancient Evenings

by Norman Mailer

  At that moment, He looked in my direction across all the festivities of this room, and it was not the eyes of Amen-khep-shu-ef I stared into, but the door to the Land of the Dead. Those eyes were the gates through which I would pass. I thought, “Yes, this is the night on which I will die. It is at least a great and memorable night.” I felt again those sentiments I had known in the beer-house, but now the tenderness of my fear came even closer, and every breath was fine with awe for me, for the air offered the simple happiness that no danger could approach until the party was done. I had these hours of celebration to enjoy.

  Now, the Apis bull sacrificed this morning was served, the meats delectable, dripping with the juice of the Gods, and a rare fish, seldom taken from the Nile, was also served, and—being ready to count every taste of what might be the last of all the meals I would know this side of the Land of the Dead—I can tell You that there were nine different kinds of meat and six of poultry set before us, four kinds of bread and eight cakes, many sweets and more fruits than I could count. All the while, a countless group of musicians played reed pipes, a harp, drums, tambourines, cymbals, and at times, every last one would pick up a sistrum until it sounded like all the snakes of the Delta were among us, and you could feel how this party was taking place everywhere in Thebes, and, for all I knew, through all of the Two-Lands. So it felt to me, and I might as well have held the heartbeat of every married man and woman outside the Palace walls, since out of these five days just passed, as in no other time of their lives, what a number of faithful wives had been unfaithful! I could hear all that had been wild in the freedom of this Festival by the whirring of the sistrum and the hilarity of the voices, heard it everywhere but at our own table where Rama-Nefru sat in thoughtful gloom, barely able to give a passing smile to each passing noble eager for a sight of how She felt after the greeting Nefertiri received.

  The entertainments began. We were offered a surprise. Pepti, honored this day by his release from the Gardens of the Secluded and promotion to the rank of Chief Scribe, was now given the additional honor of serving as the first diversion. So soon as he began, many were ready to laugh. For, as I explained to Rama-Nefru, he was reciting a story all had heard in their childhood, a sermon from a tutor whose pupil could not learn to write. I, who had never seen even one crude accounting on a shard of pottery until I was in the army, had to remain apart as I listened. I had other memories. When I was young, nobody I knew could write.

  Pepti, in the best of moods for the best reasons, showed, however, much of his cleverness, and soon added new words to the story. He began, “My father, who was also a scribe, said to me, ‘I shall make you love writing more than your own mother.’ My father was wise, for I came to love it even more than my own wife.” Here Pepti did not actually lift his kilt, but he did put his hands over all he no longer possessed, and the crowd—for there was no one in this audience who did not know of his daring surgery—roared with approval.

  Having coaxed forth this happy if shameless beginning, Pepti now recited the sermon. His voice, which was as high in pitch as a child’s, reedy as a pipe, and humorous in its quick and nasty shifts, entertained them greatly. Laughter roared up in everyone. He had the ability to suggest that he might mock himself, but laughed even more at others who thought they were laughing at him. Since his size was small and his plump and pompous manners most ridiculous, it was also comic. He was so arrogant. This, too, he knew, and besides, whenever they were ready to stop laughing at him, he began, in his easy fashion, to weep. Since the story he told was sad, his tears made it funny, and many nobles were slapping their thighs and pounding the tables, while a few of Amen-khep-shu-ef’s officers, coarse as wild goats, fell to the ground and pounded the carpets. Just so funny to some did he seem. “Oh, what does it mean,” Pepti cried out in scolding tones, “to say that an army man has a better life than a scribe? It is not so. Let me tell of one poor fellow whose life is full of trouble. As a child, his parents brought him to the barracks and he was shut up there.”

  “Shut up,” yelled a few soldiers in delight at their humor and the wisdom of drink, but Pepti gave a smile to the Pharaoh with all his teeth—they were as white as the teeth of any eunuch!—and proceeded. “Poor boy,” he said. “The army is so cruel to him. Each time he speaks, he receives a blow in the belly. When he is slow in responding to an order, they kick his feet. If he smiles, his mouth is split by a slap. Officers beat on him until he is too sore to sit. Anything he learns is taught by the art of flogging. If he is ugly, they ignore him. But if he is a pretty boy, they abuse him. ‘I would die,’ he cries out, ‘but what help can the Seat-Maker be to me, if all are stealing my seat?’ ” There was wild laughter at this addition.” ‘Take heart,’ said Pepti in a stern voice, imitating an officer,” ‘the way to become a man is by way of learning first how to be a woman.’ ” Truly, the Chief Scribe commanded the gates of laughter among these nobles. I felt my own annoyance that I would never know how to make others laugh so well.

  “Hear further,” said Pepti, “of these adventures. This boy, at last a grown man, and a good soldier, is obliged to travel to Syria over the mountains, but has to carry his food and water on his back. He is like a donkey. His bones are ready to break, and the water he drinks is filthy. When he faces the enemy and sees the anger in their eyes, he feels no better than a bird in a snare. Yet should he come back to Egypt alive, he will be treated like the wood that the worms eat. His clothes will be stolen and his servants will run away.”

  “Why do they roar at it so?” asked Rama-Nefru of me. “It is wearisome.” She was watching Usermare bellow with enjoyment, while Nefertiri and Amen-khep-shu-ef laughed heartily. Many of the soldiers now began to show themselves in the fullness of their young muscles and smiled at the most beautiful women, daring already to flirt with them.

  “I tell you, little scribe,” said Pepti, “change your opinion that soldiers are happy and writers are miserable. It is not true. The scribe goes where he wishes in the Court and is fed and honored, while the soldier is so hungry he cannot sleep at night.” Pepti bowed, and the guests roared at him, and gave their applause.

  The musicians played again, and jugglers came out and acrobats and dancers, but I did not watch them. My eyes were on Nefertiri. Not once in this evening had She looked toward me. I could not come near Her thoughts and felt new animosity toward Amen-khep-shu-ef as I watched the adoration with which They fed each other and passed a goblet back and forth. If I was the Master of one Secret, it was the heat in the blood of Usermare: I felt His fear of Amen-khep-shu-ef, and the weight it put upon His pleasure that on this night He must control His wrath before wife and son.

  Now a handsome young man came forward to be joined by a beautiful girl who wore no more than a small chain below her waist. Hand in hand, they approached the Pharaoh, knelt, and when his head touched the ground, the young man asked permission to offer a song.

  “What is it about?” asked Usermare.

  “O Beloved of Amon, in my song I will speak as a wild fig tree who begs a flower to enter the shade of his leaves so that he may talk to her.”

  “Well, tell her what you know, Wild Fig Tree,” said Usermare to the happy uproar of the court.

  The young man sang to the girl in a loud rich voice, full of great confidence in his ways with women:

  “Your leaves are drops of dew,

  “Your bower is green,

  “Greener than the papyrus

  “And more red than the ruby.

  “Your petals are honey

  “And your skin is opal,

  “Oh, come to me!”

  He paused. The girl came forward until he could put his arm around her waist and he did this with skill, moving his wrist and elbow like the limb of a tree. Then he gave a wicked smile to the ladies, and sang the last two phrases:

  “Oh, I do not tell what I see,

  “No, I do not tell what I see!”

  The Wild Fig Tree embraced the girl, lifted her up and carried her o
ff, taking his way between the tables in the midst of great laughter while the Notables touched the girl’s breasts and patted her buttocks.

  The singer was followed by a group of dancers who, like the girl, wore nothing but a thin chain about their hips, and they danced not only before the Pharaoh but went their way between the guests, removing wreaths from the wine jars, filling the goblets, then setting back the wreaths. All the while, whenever they did not serve nor dance, they stood among us tapping their hands in concert with the music, their hips meandering through such undulations that I saw the serpentine of the whitewalls at Memphi.

  Pepti came forward again, but now he carried a palette as large as a shield, and a stick in the shape of a stylus that was longer than his arm. Holding these huge instruments, he pretended to write, while an immense charioteer, the largest I had ever seen, dressed like a twelve-year-old boy in a loincloth, sandals, and a pigtail thrown in front of one shoulder, stood in front of Pepti and rolled his head in shame.

  “You have forsaken books,” said Pepti. “You have given yourself up to pleasure. You wander through the streets. Every evening you smell of beer.”

  When I saw with what merriment Usermare was laughing, I knew much about Pepti’s success in the Gardens. How he must have entertained the little queens and the Pharaoh! How much happier that abode must have been without my gloomy face. I felt the hot curse of envy and wondered how ready I could be to see my end, if my heart was still so jealous.

  “The smell of your beer,” said Pepti to the charioteer, “scares everyone away. You are a broken oar and cannot guide your boat to either side. You are a temple without its God, a house without bread.” As he uttered these words in a voice which to everyone’s amusement could not have been more pious, he made a great show of writing down all this wisdom he uttered. The stylus and palette were too ungainly, however, and he was forever dropping one, or smearing the other, until he became so amusing that even Rama-Nefru began to laugh a little.

  Soon enough, the giant charioteer put out his tongue at Pepti and walked away. Pretending to be very drunk, he blundered through the crowd and almost fell on various dignitaries, even, to the horror of many, had the high audacity, given the license of this entertainment, to weave and wander around the dais of the Pharaoh Himself. But then, before the charioteer went so far as to touch the posts of the canopy, he staggered over instead to a table of high Officials, and there came close to knocking them over. Then he rumbled up behind the Vizier and made the most convincing sounds of distress. So powerful were the groans of his insides that the Vizier could not keep himself from turning around with panic that he might be vomited upon, at which I began to laugh for the first time, and went on as if it were my last. Then the charioteer fell on his face in front of a Syrian waiter and began to kiss the servant’s feet and caress his calves until he looked up, saw it was only a flunky, spat on the ground, leaped to his feet, started to run away, and fell again. Pepti kept following with the palette large as a shield and the pen longer than his arm, all the while trying to write, and not once did he cease scolding. “Here,” said Pepti, “are your instructions. Do not forget them. Learn how to sing to the flute, recite to the sound of the pipe, intone your voice to the lyre, and give a good pluck to the harp,” but the drunk fell instead among the naked dancing girls who embraced him, sat beside his prostrate body, played with his hair, and when he pretended not to revive, poured oil over him until he was sopping, then laid a wreath of dried leaves over his body. Nearly everyone was shrieking with greedy pleasure as if with each of their spasms of laughter, they could seat the Pharaoh more firmly in His Triumph and bring these days of uncertainty to an end, whereas I, deep in the gloom of Rama-Nefru, could not laugh anymore, and therefore brooded on the nature of merriment, and wondered if we did not laugh because we had seen the face of a God we never saw before, and so, we immediately looked away. One laughed in order to see no more. Thereby, the Gods were undisturbed. Of course, I could not laugh.

  As I say, Rama-Nefru and I were the only ones. The charioteer, now patting himself with oil, tried to get up, slipped in his own pool, rose again, staggered, roused screams from the ladies at the thought of his wet body sliding over them, and landed at last on top of Pepti, crushing his palette and pen. All the while, reed pipes, drums, tambourines and sistrums played at a great rate as if the musicians were chasing demons. Then Pepti and the charioteer ran off to much applause while the floor was mopped of oil. A silence came. Usermare held up His Flail and flashed it through the air.

  Now a sledge, making a great clatter, was pulled through the Pavilion by two oxen. On it was a mummy. Screams came forth.

  “A real one?” asked Rama-Nefru of me.

  “False,” I said, and it was gone, and two sweepers came behind to clean up what the oxen had left. There was silence again. The entertainment was completed. The ceremonies would commence.

  The Vizier came forward. A few nobles even groaned aloud. I do not remember the name of this Vizier, but then Usermare had had so many. Once I heard Him say, “A long-living Pharaoh is the strength of the Two-Lands, and a good Vizier is good for kissing His feet. There are many good Viziers.”

  This one, like most, was old, and he, too, was drunk tonight in happiness at being chosen one of the eight Masters. He gave a great many words where he could have offered a few, and spoke of Usermare as the rising sun who chased all that was dark out of Egypt. “When You rest in Your Palace,” he said, “the words of all countries come to You, for Your ears are multitudinous and mighty. Your eye is clearer than the stars and You see farther than the sun.” Here he paused, meditated on what he had said, and added, “To all who are assembled here, I say that the ear of the One is thus mighty that I need only utter a word in a far-off place but He hears it and summons me before Him. I cannot do a deed hidden from Him who sees with the eye of the Hidden One. I dare not even think of His virtues in the fear that I will not name them all, for He also knows my thoughts.”

  “I can’t bear this,” Rama-Nefru whispered. “I must leave.”

  “You cannot,” I said.

  “I am ill.”

  Heqat, seated nearby, was attempting to soothe Her. “You do not wish to leave,” said Heqat. “In the end, He will choose You.”

  “My child needs Me,” said Rama-Nefru.

  I could feel Her fear. It came over me like the eight Gods of the slime, and all that She saw in Her mind was also in mine. I knew the Prince Peht-a-Ra was screaming. “I must go to Him,” said Rama-Nefru. Yet Heqat’s fear of the wrath of Usermare was greater than the terrors of Rama-Nefru, and Heqat calmed Her by saying, “I will bring His weeping to an end.” Whereupon she looked across the Pavilion of King Unas all the way into a far corner where I could see Honey-Ball sitting with her family—Nefertiri had kept Her promise by half: Honey-Ball was here but most certainly not sitting with Her—and now I realized that Heqat stared with no small force into Honey-Ball’s eyes. It was then I felt Rama-Nefru move more easily beside me, and She said, “He is crying no longer.” I saw the face of Peht-a-Ra once more in Her thoughts, but did not wish to look further for fear His dark hair might turn to fire as I watched. The Vizier talked on and on. Honey-Ball now looked at me, and there was love in her eye like the love I had seen in the eyes of Usermare when He had given me the award, but her love I trusted more, and as if she asked a question, although I did not know what it might be, I nodded, and the tenderness I knew at the nearness of the pale presence of death itself came back.

  The Vizier was reaching the summit of what he would say. “While we eat, and know the taste of the riches of our Two-Lands, while we drink, let us also tell each other that these ceremonies over the past five days have been the happy ties to draw the Entire Land, which is to say—the Two-Lands and the Pharaoh—together. Know then that in this hour, food is being passed forth from the breweries and bakeries of the Palace. Free bread and free beer go out to the people. May they have two new eyes for all the years to come. May Egypt be wea
lthy.”

  He sat down to a loud beating of applause from a few, and much polite tapping of hands, and then with a whoop, two wrestlers came forward. Behind each was a priest. One carried the standard of Horus, the other of Set, and these wrestlers—although their bodies were enormous—entered only into a mock contest, and that was just as well. For Set soon had his thumb on the eye of Horus, while Horus, in turn, had his hand on the testicles of Set. The two priests approached, however, each to pacify his wrestler, the priest for Horus not only lifting the hand of his man from the other’s testicles, but wiping his own before leading him off. Then the priest returned at once with two sceptres to give to Usermare. Another priest, wearing the headdress of Thoth, came forward, knelt, and said aloud, “May You, the Bull of Heaven, hold these two sceptres. Thereby, may the testicles of Set be returned to the God, and the eyes of Horus be returned to the God, and may Your power, by this gift, increase in measure.” I may say that despite my gloom, I could feel much power pass through all of us in the room, and I now knew twice the strength I could muster just before, even as Usermare now held two sceptres.

  Our Pharaoh stood up. He said: “In My city, the people are eating. On the East Bank and West Bank of Thebes, they are eating loaves of bread and drinking beer. For on this, the last of the five days, they have been given two new eyes. From the grain of the sun and the spirits of the moon, they have been given two new eyes.”