Ancient Evenings

by Norman Mailer

  Now, I recalled that Her feelings soon altered. My former father, alert, as ever, to the needs of others, soon opened a shop in Memphi for the care of ladies. As far as anyone knew, this was the first enterprise of its sort ever in the Two-Lands. Which lady, until that hour, did not have her own servant to care for her hair? Since the hands of Nef-khep-aukhem, however, were known by all to have touched the head of the Pharaoh Himself, the shop was successful at once. My first father soon became prosperous. But there was not a day at the Palace when Hathfertiti did not quarrel with Her second husband about the presence in Memphi of Her first. She was hideously humiliated, She kept telling Him. Yet She could not convince Ptah-nem-hotep to put such commerce out of existence by an edict, or, at the least, buy Nef off with an estate in some provincial nome. Ptah-nem-hotep’s old affection for His Overseer had revived. I would hear Him tell Her that unfaithfulness for one night was forgivable. Consider the provocation!

  This, of course, left the onus on my Mother. For that, She never had any patience. Like many beautiful women, She could not bear to be blamed. So She took pains to prove that the unfaithfulness of His old Cosmetic Box was considerably more serious. Nef-khep-aukhem, She declared, had not served as a spy for Khem-Usha just on this one night, but, to the contrary, had been his informant for years. Her evidence was slender, however, and Ptah-nem-hotep refused to accept it. I think the nearness of Nef-khep-aukhem was a way to remind Hathfertiti of how much She owed to Her second marriage. I expect He needed such a cudgel to keep Her in place. I could always hear Their quarrels. “You do not see how it demeans You,” She would tell Him. “People say You live with the woman of a wig-maker.”

  “On the contrary,” He would reply, “there is not a lady in Memphi who does not admire him most prodigiously.” So forth. Over the years, it soured Hathfertiti. She could never forgive Him for not yielding to Her. Then, there were other matters to take away more of Her respect. I do not know which rights were given to Khem-Usha on the first morning, as opposed to those ceded later, but my Mother remained Queen of the Two-Lands for only three years before Her powers as well as my Father’s were reduced by half. In the Tenth Year of the Reign of Ramses the Ninth, it was promulgated that Amenhotep (the new appellation chosen by Khem-Usha—and equal to four Pharaohs!) was now raised in godliness equal to Ramses the Ninth. At a great festival, confirmed by many ceremonies, Amenhotep, High Priest of the Temple of Amon in Thebes, was given full sanction to govern all of Upper Egypt. A vast array of gold and silver vessels was presented to Him, and it was declared that all revenues in Upper Egypt from all sources would now go to the treasury of Amon directly and need not pass through the vaults of the Pharaoh. Amenhotep’s figure was also inscribed on many temple walls. He stood next to Ramses the Ninth, and both Gods were equal in height—four times higher They stood on such walls than all servants and officials next to Them.

  I do not know whether my Mother kept any great love for Ptah-nem-hotep after this, but by what I now saw in my mind, I supposed that She did not. To my singular surprise, I saw Menenhetet again in my thoughts. He looked five, or might it be ten years older, and my Mother was heavier than She had been while he was still alive. So I was obliged to wonder if the story She had told me of his dismemberment had no truth. Was it a tale of horror chosen to make me wish never to think of Menenhetet again? For now, if my memory were not being fed by the eight Gods of the slime—just so slippery did it all become!—the truth seemed to be that Menenhetet had not killed himself, although doubtless given such an invitation by the Pharaoh. And I saw the intolerable agitation that my great-grandfather’s refusal caused in Ptah-nem-hotep. If He had most clearly deceived Menenhetet by offering no reward for the incalculable gifts presented to His mind on that long night, yet, like a true Monarch, He still felt betrayed. Menenhetet would not endow Him with the final gift of devotion—he chose not to serve as a substitute and kill himself.

  Not to do so left Menenhetet, however, at Khem-Usha’s mercy. The High Priest soon succeeded in stripping my great-grandfather’s wealth. His estates in Upper Egypt were purchased for ridiculously low prices by the Temple, indeed, Khem-Usha set the prices, and if Menenhetet had not agreed, the Temple would most certainly have taken his lands. Then the rest of his holdings in Lower Egypt, including the great mansion (from whose rooftop I had watched him make love to my mother) were, at Hathfertiti’s insistence, acquired with equally low reimbursement by the Pharaoh. My Mother most certainly did not wish to have my great-grandfather near, and on this occasion, succeeded in Her desires. Menenhetet was obliged to live on a poor estate on the West Bank of Thebes purchased with what little he had been left.

  So fixed was I at gazing into these images that I was startled by a movement from the Ka of Menenhetet beside me. His thigh began to shake against the side of my thigh, and I could hear his agitation in the sound of his breath. It offered the conviction that we shared this memory, that it was his, and he did not lie. For this, incontestably, would be the way he recalled it, that is, with much disquiet. Then these events became so extraordinary that I could not cease watching.

  For Menenhetet did not live on his one poor estate in some solemn ingathering of the last years, no, he managed to join the thieves of Kurna, and thereby acquired another fortune while robbing the tombs of the Pharaohs. If he could not in any of his four lives wear the Double-Crown himself, and thereby enter the Land of the Dead as a God, then at least he could plunder Their crypts, and most skillfully he did, tunneling from one tomb to the next with no sign showing on the surface. Then, in the year Menenhetet felt himself close again to his death—which was late in my fifteenth year, and thereby the Sixteenth Year of the Reign of Ramses the Ninth—he slipped back into Memphi and succeeded in visiting my Mother.

  Now, upon the wall, I saw him making love to Her. It was the last time. Even as he sat beside me, he gave an oath of expiration, yet I saw him die in Her arms, and knew, from the resonance of Her profound weeping, that he had been successful, and for the fourth time, in impregnating a woman with the ardors of his last act. His force upon Her must still have been great, for my Mother, despite every objection by Ptah-nem-hotep, took all the necessary steps to see that his body was most carefully embalmed.

  In the second month of Her pregnancy, however, before my Father could be aware that She was carrying (although He would certainly have assumed it was His child, since no matter how much unpleasantness now lived between Them, one could count on the pleasure They took together) Hathfertiti, nonetheless, wrought a last revenge on Menenhetet. She took purges until She aborted the child. There would be no fifth life for my great-grandfather. He did not become my infant brother.

  His Ka was left, therefore, most cruelly evicted. If it decided to return to the embalmed body of the old man, and took up abode there—which it must have done, or how else could he now sit beside me?—still I am not certain what escaped, and what was lost. Part of him, like a ghost, knowing no dwelling, may have attached itself to me. For at the age of sixteen, I certainly became ungovernable in the eyes of my parents.

  My younger brother, Amen-khep-shu-ef the Second, an expression, I expect, of my Father’s desire that one of His Sons, at least, be a great warrior, was soon seen as He-Who-would-become-Ramses-the-Tenth. This never plagued me until my sixteenth year when Amen-Ka was nine. Then I grew defiant. Not only did I gamble and carouse, behave, in short, like a Prince, but I became impolite to Ptah-nem-hotep and was excruciatingly rude to my Mother on the subject of the chapel She built for the four mummies who made up the remains of my great-grandfather. After a good deal of expense and a long search by Her agents, She had finally been able to locate the first Menenhetet, and the second. If the third was not difficult to find—he was there in the same tomb his widow had built for him, and no thieves had yet broken in—the crypt of the High Priest was pillaged. It could not even be certain that the mummy who remained, stripped of amulets and gems, was Menenhetet until much study was given to the prayers written on the linen
wrappings, but they, fortunately, proved sufficiently recondite to belong to a High Priest. However, the Menenhetet of the first life, the Master of the Secrets, was only found because Hathfertiti, despite a separation of near to ten years, was still able to live in the mind of my great-grandfather. On his last visit, as they made love, She journeyed with him into the depths of a trance. Thereby, She saw the place of his first death, and even watched the servants of Honey-Ball rescue his body from the pile of offal on which it had been thrown. Saved from decomposition by an immediate embalming, Honey-Ball, after the seventy days, commissioned a traveling merchant from the Delta to take the coffin downriver to Sais where she had him put in a modest tomb near her family vault. It was there that Queen Hathfertiti found the mummy of this first Menenhetet (with the mummy of Honey-Ball lying beside him) and now finding Herself at last in full possession of the remains, She prevailed upon Ptah-nem-hotep to permit each of these four well-wrapped eminences, each in its own heavy coffin, to be pulled around the Palace walls by teams of oxen. Afterward She kept the mummies in a chapel surrounded by a moat, and it had, for protection, a crocodile in the water. Just so prodigious, I believe, was Her fear of the Ka of Menenhetet.

  Of course, it was never wise to attempt to comprehend my Mother. She was faithful at maintaining the chapel, even to keeping Ptah-nem-hotep amused about it and thereby tolerant—She would make dreadful jokes to the effect that She could feel well protected by Her four Canopic jars!—and while She certainly kept up the care of it after His death, She decided, so soon as I died, even, indeed, while I lay in my bath of natron, that Menenhetet-of-the-fourth-life, which is to say, his mummy, sarcophagus and jars, was to be moved by some peculiar logic of Her heart to the same mean tomb to which I would be sent. But, then, much had changed in Her life after Ptah-nem-hotep’s death.

  Toward the end, He aged grievously. As my royal Father grew older, so did He lose that handsomeness of feature which had set Him apart from other men, and His cheeks grew heavy and His neck thickened. He was forever dejected. In the Sixteenth (and next to last) year of His Reign, it was discovered that several tombs of old Pharaohs in Western Thebes had been despoiled. The boldness of the brigands was demeaning to Him. The thieves seemed all too ready for the wrath of any Pharaoh, living or dead. The mummy of Sebekemsef, hundreds of years old, had been stripped of its gems and His Queen violated as well. When the culprits were captured (and proved to be workmen in the Necropolis) Ptah-nem-hotep discovered that many of His officials were implicated as well. The mayors of West Thebes and East Thebes accused each other. There was no end to the inquiries. Nes-Amon (who survived as Chief Scribe after his dreams of higher office were ended by Khem-Usha) was even sent to Thebes to keep a record of the commission.

  That was the year Ptah-nem-hotep began to age so noticeably. And I began to feel a desire for my Mother which proved so difficult to restrain I know it could only have risen from the Ka of Menenhetet’s unborn child. When my Mother also proved affected by these passions, we began to feel as blessed by the Gods—or, was it despised?—as Nefertiri and Amen-khep-shu-ef.

  It was then, in the six months before His death, that my Father raised Amen-Ka to be a co-regent with Himself. He even gave my brother the title of Ramses the Tenth, Kheper-Maat-Ra, Setpenere Amen-khep-shu-ef Meri-Amon. Thus was I deprived of my birthright, if my weak claim can so be called, considering how I was conceived. Yet even in that year, so soon as Ptah-nem-hotep died (and how my Mother wept at His funeral) so did my brother, not ten years old, have to contend with a greater scandal than the plundered vault of the Pharaoh Sebekemsef.

  It was discovered that the long-hidden tomb of Ramses the Second high in the hills (that place most difficult of access to which Usermare had once led His First Charioteer) had been violated. The tomb of the Father, Seti the First, was also pillaged. Was there a Pharaoh left Whose tomb had not been entered? My poor brother! In the midst of great public bewilderment, with unrest everywhere, He celebrated His tenth birthday in Memphi even as word came from Thebes that barbarians out of the Western Desert had captured the city. Khem-Usha (whom I could not think of in any way as Amenhotep) was held captive for six months and tortured. When released at last, he was no better than a frail old man. Amen-Ka had two more years on the throne and died. When He was gone, so, too, ended all royal prerogatives for Hathfertiti and me. A great-nephew of Ramses the Third became Ramses the Eleventh, and shortly thereafter, I was dead. How, I do not know. No picture chose to form in my mind. I could not even rely on the treacherous memory of Menenhetet. Other images, however, appeared on the wall. Now I could witness a most peculiar phenomenon. I began to watch the reign of those who came after me. That passed before us. The first of these strange rulers was a new High Priest named Hrihor. He ruled in Thebes, and the Two-Lands were more divided. Then came a Syrian, or some such fellow, named Nesubenedded, and he ruled Lower Egypt from Memphi to Tanis on the Very Green.

  During these years, violent entries into Pharaohs’ tombs were as common as a plague, and officials came to feel so helpless that in much desperation, they shifted the royal bodies until Usermare was even placed in the tomb of Seti the First. But when Their outer rooms were again broken into, both Pharaohs, with Their wives, were now transferred to the tomb of Amenhotep the First and before long, the priests had to hide a good many of these royal bodies in an unmarked grave west of Thebes. In such a dark pit, among the cliffs, rested Ahmose, and Amenhotep the First, and Thutmose the Second, and Thutmose the Great, Who was the Third, and Seti the First and Ramses the Second and many others, packed side by side like a litter of stillborn beasts. I could not believe what I saw. The wall spoke of sights not even my great-grandfather could dare to conceive. Indeed, my Ka felt like a bottomless pit before the weight of these Pharaohs disrupted from Their tombs, and I had to wonder if the Two-Lands were now lost and without a foundation.

  All this while, the Ka of Menenhetet had not said another word to me. Yet I saw him smile at all that was before us, and wondered how many of these pictures might have come from his mind. Then, I remembered my own mummy badly wrapped, the cloth at my feet open to maggots, and gloom came to me. I still could not remember how I died. The more I pondered, the less I saw on the wall, and wondered why I seemed to be so certain that I was killed one night in a drunken brawl.

  As I brooded on this, I saw the same beer-house I had glimpsed in the hour I lay in the wondrous room where the fish were painted on the floor, and I had a glimpse of Bone-Smasher again as he came close to his own drunken fight. Much as I wished to learn about my own dying, I was obliged instead to follow my own fortunes no more, but had to witness many changes in the lives of Bone-Smasher and Eyaseyab. While I thought I would not care to watch, I soon became curious. For much passed before me rapidly. Their faces began to age soon after Bone-Smasher was made Captain of the Royal Barge as a reward for having protected me through the morning when Khem-Usha’s troops occupied the Palace.

  The helm of the Royal Barge was not, however, an office to which he was suited. Bone-Smasher was uncouth to work for a King. So he was soon moved to other tasks. Before long, he slipped further, and ended at last as he had begun—a man who drank too much and turned violent when sodden, even to Eyaseyab who had become his wife.

  Eyaseyab loved him, however; so well, and so much for every day of their life together, that she may even have been rewarded by Maat. A second prosperity began for Bone-Smasher. He went to visit Menenhetet in order to seek work, and found it. My great-grandfather had been looking for a man savage enough to serve as runner between the thieves of Kurna and himself.

  Bone-Smasher became so useful at this task that Eyaseyab was soon able to leave my mother’s service and bought a home on the Western Bank of Thebes with the good riches his labors provided. They had children, and my former nurse might have become a respectable matron with her own family tomb in the City of the Dead, but Bone-Smasher grew careless after Menenhetet’s death, and was one of the brigands arrested for plundering
the tomb of Usermare. Soon executed, he was thrown away in an unmarked grave.

  Eyaseyab never found his body. She came back to Memphi and worked once more for my mother as Mistress of All Maids. One night, however, in order to fulfill a vow to her husband, she slipped out to the Necropolis. By the illumination of the pictures on the wall, I saw her dare the ghost, that same fellow with the unbelievably evil breath I had encountered on the walk back to my tomb. It proved a fearful meeting for Eyaseyab, but she did not flee, and waited until the ghost, with all his imprecations, moved farther down the alley on his nightly watch. Then she buried a little statue which she had had made of Bone-Smasher, there, right in front of the door to my tomb. For the vow to Bone-Smasher, whispered into his ear, had promised that if he were thrown into an unmarked grave, she would have a likeness made of him, and find the tomb of Menenhetet, and bury it near. I came near to weeping as I thought of the loyalty of my old nurse, and thereby discovered that my Ka had kept Sweet Finger, for he, too, remembered her.

  Why I saw the story, I do not know, but I can say that after these tears, my sorrow began to move from concern for Eyaseyab to the misery of contemplating my own death. Now I could see my old nurse working for my mother on the last day I could remember, there, dressed in the clothes of a widow and still mourning Bone-Smasher. Yet the sight of Eyaseyab was now equal to a sight of myself in my mother’s bed. I was no longer a child, but a man, and my mother and I were lovers.

  What passed between us, I could not bring myself to recollect—except I knew there was no other woman I desired more. Yet, in that bed, even as we held each other, was the weight of our shame. For if love between brother and sister was commonplace to all our lives, the same could not be said of a passion for one’s mother. Now I remembered Hathfertiti’s fear before the gossip of Memphi, indeed it had been so great, and whispered so about us, that she had joined with Nef-khep-aukhem once more, and for a second time, became his wife.