Ancient Evenings

by Norman Mailer

  “ ‘It will be done,’ I would say.

  “ ‘Tell Him to pay attention to the temples I have built. There, He will see how I wish all matters to continue. The inscriptions on the stones will tell Him what He needs to know.’

  “ ‘It will be done.’

  “ ‘The Lord Osiris is a very intelligent and noble God,’ Usermare would say in the last of His voice, and He sounded like two shards of pottery being rubbed together. He had added chambers, pylons, obelisks, colonnades and halls to many a great temple in Egypt, and a myriad of statues had His name, but by His last year, He was void, I can tell You, of the sense of smell, the clear sight of His eyes, the hearing of His ear and the pitch of His voice—I was one of the few who could distinguish any of His words—and He had very little memory. All the same, it took Him one full season of flood, and one of sowing, to die. For the last month, He hardly breathed. So faint was the wind from His heart that over the final three days many of us disputed whether or not He was still alive since no hair in His nose would stir and His skin was almost as cold as the stone that would receive Him. Yet His eyes, after many an interval, would blink.

  “Near His mortuary temple in Western Thebes, one pillar of rose granite is carved: ‘I am Usermare, King of Kings. He who would know who I am, and where I rest, must first surpass one of My deeds.’

  “Who could replace Him? It was Merenptah, His thirteenth son, the brother of Bint-Anath. What a pity I never knew Esonefret. That plain and stupid Queen may have had virtues no one saw if Her children did so well. Yes, Merenptah was the thirteenth of Ramses’ sons by all His Queens, and the twelve before were dead. So He was old when He became Pharaoh, bald and fat, and He had waited long. The enemies of Egypt took new courage when Sesusi was no more. If His reputation had lived among them like a lion, so for forty years there had been no true struggle. Now, all were ready to march against Merenptah. Yet, He treated the Libyans and Syrians as if He were a Hittite. Woe to those tribes He conquered! He did not make trophies of hands, but had His soldiers cast the genitals of the dead into a pile. He would attempt more than His Father! Of course, it was long since we had known a war or a victory.

  “Of little use was it to Him. Merenptah died five years later in the Tenth Year of His Reign and His tomb was built in a great hurry. Stones were taken from the sanctuary of Amenhotep the Third, and Merenptah even dared to cut His name on some of the monuments of His Father. Of course, I knew little of this Pharaoh, for my second life came to an end only a few years after Usermare’s death, and my third life was spent under many a reign. There was one who was Seti the Second, and then a Siptah, and a woman named Tiwoseret, while in between was even a Merenptah-Siptah. For a time, there were no Kings at all. Just so confused were the Two-Lands by the loss of Usermare, and for many years the river was low.”

  “You tell us nothing of yourself,” my Father complained at last.

  “He will not,” said Hathfertiti.

  It was then I felt anger. My great-grandfather had been like a Pharaoh to me and I trembled constantly in his presence, yet now, I felt pity for his exhaustion. “Can’t you see,” I cried out, “that he is tired! Even as I am weary.” My voice must have carried the echo of a grown man, for Ptah-nem-hotep began to laugh, and then my mother, and Menenhetet last of all.

  Now, Ptah-nem-hotep said more gently, “I will not insist. It is just that I am familiar with much of what you tell Me, and so would be more interested to hear of your life as a High Priest.”

  My great-grandfather nodded. I do not know if it was my defense of him, but he looked revived. Or, was it, sly? “There is justice,” he said, “in rebuking me for what I have not done. Let me attempt to be a stranger to You no more.”

  THREE

  “Great authority belongs to the High Priest,” said Menenhetet, “and yet, by the balance of Maat, such authority becomes savorless over the years. Only as a young man was I content to be a priest, but, by then, it was evident that I would rise in the Temple. No one in school could read or write so well as me, and—due, perhaps, to my physical delicacy—I showed great respect for the order and grace of each ceremony. Since nothing was prized so much as the power of memory, I did not chafe like other students at the onerous requirements of our exercises, but would repeat one prayer for the four or forty-two times entailed, or paint the same sacred words through all of a day. I was at peace as a student, and when still a young priest had the manner of an old one, and knew our devotions well. In a temple, the Gods do not act out of whim, but by law. That is why the Temple is there. We must never forget that one of our names for a priest is ‘slave-of-the-God.’ The law is so detailed that only the drudgery of a priest could comprehend it, and then only by his ceremony. That was how I desired to be. I was happy such laws could not easily be told to others, but depended on the movements of one’s hands, the posture of one’s prayer, and the authority of one’s voice within each word. Only in that way could one feel the presence of the Gods and Their true force. No surprise then, if I rose in the offices from Reader to Third Priest to Second Priest, but it was not often that one became High Priest in the Temple of Amon at Karnak much before forty. When you consider that only the son of a High Priest was expected to become a High Priest, and this was even true for the smallest temple and the least-respected God, to rise so high when you did not belong to a family of such men was rare. But then, while no longer a warrior in body, I still had the spirit of such a man in my heart.

  “I also had Honey-Ball. She was no mean advantage. She knew how to use the resources of her family! Whatever influence could pass from the Temple of Amon at Sais to ours in Thebes was invoked for me as well as the most useful precepts for advancement, all inspired by Honey-Ball. If I wished to become High Priest at Karnak, she reasoned, I must bring new splendor to the Temple. I, sharing her thought, exclaimed that Usermare must give His promise to be buried in Thebes. That would do much for us. With His withdrawal to Memphi, so, too, had passed our belief that He would ever rest in His tomb here.

  “ ‘You can succeed in making Him think,’ she said, ‘that Amon will never forgive Him unless He comes back.’

  “I was His son—at least so far as He knew—but I had a hundred half brothers like myself. In those days, He did not yet know me. Honey-Ball’s family could do much for me in the Temple, but could hardly assist my pale claims as a little Prince. So an interview with Usermare would not be easy. Yet, Honey-Ball arranged it. Not only, I am certain, did she conduct a ceremony (she was careful to conceal that from me!—I was most censorious as a young priest) but she also wrote to Him and spoke of how she felt Him walk within her heart each time she beheld me.

  “On His next visit to Thebes, Honey-Ball and I were invited, therefore, to His Court, and He took a liking to me and loved the cleverness of my answers—even as You, Great Ninth of the Ramses, were delighted with the replies of this boy, my great-grandson. Thereby, I became one of the few of His many sons who might feel able to visit with his Father when He came to Thebes. It took five years, however, before I could feel so close to Him as to speak of His burial but, there, Honey-Ball was not wrong. His fear of Amon had hardly been lost. To my surprise, He welcomed my suggestion. I think no one else had dared to propose that a Pharaoh great as Usermare rest near other Pharaohs.

  “Next I had the foresight to see that once our great Pharaoh was buried among us, a rich source of revenue would be ready for the Temple. We could emulate the City of the Dead in Abydos. I was even the priest who drew up the plans for the funerary plots of our own Necropolis. I can hardly tell You how successful they were. No wealthy man, no matter how remote his nome, could fail to understand that the eminence of his Ka in the Land of the Dead would be judged by the placement of his tomb in Thebes. I soon learned that any site so fortunate as to look out upon the mortuary temple of Ramses the Second was worth many times the price of a fine plot without such a view.

  “By such enterprise, I was most successful in multiplying our revenues, and had
the satisfaction of becoming High Priest at Karnak before the death of Honey-Ball. Be certain I had reserved for her the most splendid plot in the Necropolis at Thebes, but she made me promise that so soon as she was embalmed, I would take her down the river to her family tomb at Sais. It was then I understood how much she longed to go back to her swamps during all those years she remained in Thebes in order to be of aid to me. The nicest aspect of her death was the gentleness of it. She passed away in all her massive majesty like a ship drifting out cleanly on the rise of the tide.

  “Without her, I was for the first time lost in the solitude that gives such fear of our tomb. The Temple was never wealthier, and my renown as a High Priest was not small, yet I knew terrible boredom. There was so much power, yet only small satisfaction in the exercise of it. The restlessness of the high Temple official came to me, and little matters became more important than large ones. I scolded the cooks for spoiling a meal as fiercely as I upbraided the priests for an error in prayer. To serve as the instrument of the Gods is a powerful vocation for a timid youth with a weak body and a fine mind, but it is not intoxicating for a grown man.

  “Echoes of my past life, moreover, were returning. Now that Usermare and Honey-Ball were gone, those walls of the mind that kept me enclosed in the duties of my second life gave way. I had known from the time I was six how I had been conceived, yet for so long as Honey-Ball and Sesusi were alive, I did not seek to know any more of my first life—it was enough that I was different from others.

  “Now, to alleviate my boredom, came intimations of the other man I had been. In the midst of conducting a high ceremony, I would see Honey-Ball before me, and she was young and her skin was red from the fires of her altar, and the excitement of her magic. Those great breasts swung before me.

  “It was known among us that Set could disturb a prayer by sending lewd images, but these pictures came, I knew, from my memory, not my dreams. For they seemed natural to me, and that could not have been true if an unhappy God were attacking my ritual. Then I remembered how I used to feel in my young days when learning to write. At such times, a strong man seemed to stir within me and stare with yearning at symbols he could hardly decipher. Yet I could read them with ease. One day, fully awake, I felt as if I were in a dream for I found myself fighting at Kadesh, and knew the arms of Nefertiri. While I cannot say that my first life returned with clarity, still enough came to mind to leave me most unsatisfied. I felt superior to others. Now a High Priest, and in command of more wealth than any man could amass, I still did not have a gold cup I could call my own. Wealthy men became interesting to me, therefore. To have our Pharaoh reigning in one city but our great temples in another, was to open the gates to great wealth. Why, I cannot say, unless it is that rich men do not dare to show their gains so openly when they must remain in awe of the nearness of the Pharaoh. Now, however, in Thebes it was easier for the wealthy to purchase indulgences. It can be said that a thousand rich men near the Temple, while not equal to the Pharaoh, are a substitute. I became absorbed in their pleasures, and was a most improper High Priest, indeed, I could not sleep at night for thought of the wealth being buried every day in the Necropolis of Western Thebes. I not only knew of the protections taken for these tombs of the wealthiest men, but had a list in the most beautiful hand—the writing of our best Temple scribes was elegant!—of just which jewels and pieces of gilded furniture had been sealed in their crypts.

  “I also knew some of the chief brigands of these parts. I had not forgotten the description of the thieves of Kurna that Usermare gave me and, when one of those fellows would be captured from time to time, I would send messages to his family before he was punished. There came a night when I rose from my sleepless bed and crossed the river on our Temple ferry, much to the amazement of our ferryman. That night, I walked all the way to Kurna by myself to make arrangements. Before these thieves would trust me, I had to arrange for one of their brothers, just captured, to be released from his shackles and made my servant. More than a few tombs were broken into, and some fine objects were brought forth. The courage of these thieves was increased by the exorcisms I could offer against the curses of each vault. What a scandal it would have been if I were discovered!

  “Still, the hand of Pepti had not been on me for too little when I was an infant, and I grew more audacious. I remember one splendid gold chair plucked from the tomb of an old merchant that I sold through agents to a Nomarch from Abydos. When this fellow died, his mummy was sent to Thebes—from Abydos!—and he was entombed with his wealth, and soon robbed. Lo, I sold the same chair again!

  “I can tell You that by the end of my second life, I had become an immensely wealthy man, and took care to conceal these treasures in the cliffs of the Eastern Desert. Since trips to my cave would often take me away from the Temple for all of a day, there was grumbling at my laziness in high office. Be assured I never worked so hard.”

  “But what,” asked Ptah-nem-hotep, “was the reason for burying such wealth?”

  “I had every intention,” said Menenhetet, “of enjoying this treasure in my third life.”

  “You were thinking in such a manner? You have not told us.”

  “There is more to tell, after all. You see, I had fallen in love—as only a priest can—with one of the leading whores of Thebes, a woman whose beauty was considerably greater than her charm, but then I hardly knew how to look for a woman. On the other hand, much had come back to me of my last hour with Nefertiri. The more I pondered this event, the more I became convinced (from what I could remember of the carnal knowledge of my first life) that my first rebirth should not have taken place. I began to think I had been most fortunate. If I had not been stabbed in that fear-filled instant when I came weakly forth, nothing would have happened. Without such a shock, I could never have conceived myself, not in such lustless fashion! So if I was going to live again, and enjoy my third life—which was now my aim—then I must not only learn the arts of making love, but penetrate these rigors of the coming-forth. Until now, as a priest, I knew them in no better way than by my hand, or in the confusion of priestly frolics. So I went to this most beautiful and expensive whore for my study. Nub-Utchat was how she was called, and if, by one meaning of her name, she was the golden eye of the Gods, she was the golden outcast by the other, and both names belonged to her just as much as the Two-Lands belong to Egypt, for she soon found out where I kept my wealth even if I never told her. Perhaps I gave the place away while talking in my sleep, or she may have known enough to spy upon my trips to the desert, but, by whichever route, my wager that I, in my third life, would remember where my treasures had been buried came to nothing, for so soon as I was dead she found the cave. By the time I was old enough to look about in my third life, be certain Nub-Utchat had spent it all.”

  “One does not have to be told,” said Ptah-nem-hotep, “how a whore spends money, but is it clear how you performed your feat a second time?”

  “I may lack the power to explain.”

  “You will make the effort,” said Ptah-nem-hotep in a gentle voice.

  “I will try.” Menenhetet closed his eyes in contemplation. “If I was conceived on the night my father knew he would be killed, be assured the same fear was present in every ceremony I performed as a priest. Indeed it was the essence of my piety. That may be why my ceremonies were so well ordered and so grave. I was sensitive to the tender presence of death in all I did. When I began to feel this greed in myself, therefore, for all that is carnal, do not be surprised if I could soon overcome my ignorance of the arts of love since that is also a ceremony calling for fine respect. So I learned again, as I had with Renpu-Rept, how to dally for hours and wander at the edge. I could draw into myself all that was rich and foul, splendid and nasty, groaning and glorious in Nub-Utchat, and yet not go spilling forth in misery at all the thefts and corruptions her blood would ask of me, could, yes, still absorb her seven souls and spirits far up into my loins and my heart until my life became not only faint, but more and
more like a fine thread. All of me which was not in her grew ready to voyage out of my body and enter my Ka. At such moments I knew I had only to tear a thread between my body and my Ka, that silver thread—or so I saw it when my eyes were closed—and I would die. My heart would burst even as I came forth. I cannot tell you how many nights I hovered on such a brink. Yet, I always returned. I enjoyed these pleasures too much to give them up. So I never plucked the silver thread that connected my body to my seven souls and spirits, no, not until the night she betrayed me.

  “I can say that this manner of making love, while most delicate, and steeped in many sweet turns, may have lacked the vigor that was more to her taste. For, be certain, this slow penetration, not only of our flesh but of our thoughts and spirits, depended on much gentleness in our movements during certain feats of balance I would perform on the very edge.”

  “No way of making love is more divine,” said Hathfertiti, caressing Ptah-nem-hotep with a look to say how well she had known just such a pleasure tonight. Menenhetet, however, after a pause for the interruption, continued to speak.

  “On this one night when all of me was much divided, my Ka exploring the very gates of the Duad, even as the head of my member must have been deep within her womb, so must she have seen at last that cave where my wealth was buried, for she gave an inescapable pull, and I was in the fall. I just had time to say goodbye to all of me, thread, Ka, and the rest of my souls—I knew I would never have a coming-forth again so tumultuous as this, and I went: No priest ever saw the Gods in more brilliance than myself. My longings and my greed flew out of me like a rainbow. Again, I knew the great pain in my upper back, just once this time, not seven strokes, and heard her last scream, although it was mine, and no knife I felt but the bursting of my heart in that whore’s arms. While we rested, I thought of the child I had just made in her, and only later, on awakening, as I stood to urinate, did I see myself on the ground.