Darkness, I

by Lee, Tanith

  Flowers were everywhere. Flames.

  A scent of perfume, and wine.

  A priest-figure strode between the crimson stalks of the pillars. His head was a shaven nut, and a spotted leopard-skin—was it real?—hung along his right side. He bore a ladle of perfume or oil or alcohol to Isis under her moon. He poured the fluid before her, touching his lips with his right hand, then bowing low.

  The guests did not pay attention.

  The offering steamed in the firelight under the goddess’s knee.

  Mesit was beside Anna now.

  Mesit leaned forward with a bluish, exquisitely lopsided glass jug, something from a museum...

  ‘Shall I fill your cup, lady?’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘This is a French red wine. Or there is another from America. Or you may want Ksantha, the yellow wine diluted with honey.’

  Anna held out the pastel cup on the table. It had dancers on its sides, naked and smiling.

  ‘I’ll have this. Thank you,’ she added.

  Mesit swayed like a vine and was gone.

  Anna looked about at the sea of distances, flames, and unknown persons laughing.

  She did not show fear.

  The wine was hoarse and dry.

  Someone laughed, loudly.

  Anna glanced up. A shower of tiny sparks fluttered from a lamp in Nuit’s girdle, and failed before they reached halfway down the tall height of air.

  Another slave had come.

  She said, ‘Permit me.’

  And when Anna did not resist, the slave dropped scent into her blue wig from a conical flash like a pepper-pot.

  Anna remembered seeing these pots or cones in the reproductions of tomb paintings, set on the heads of feasters, taken for domes of scented wax. It was a symbol, of course. The symbol for scent at the feast, and so of pleasure. As the filled spilled cup was the symbol of love-making.

  Music began to play.

  It was old, reedy, breathless. Small bells, flutes, a harp with an acid twang.

  Anna had never heard such music. Or had she?

  The musicians were half seen among the pillars. They looked, yes, like the ones in the tomb paintings. But something else was happening. A soft, feral disturbance. She turned her head, and saw that now they came. The master and mistress, lord and lady of the feast. The Woman. The Man.

  Lilith.

  Cain.

  Other men and women rose from their tables, and, perhaps defensively, Anna rose.

  She watched them walk through the red shadows, across the flowery floor. Someone had strewn lilies, or lotuses, the bloom of the land of death.

  Lilith crushed flowers with her feet, and the pads of the two albino tigers, which walked on either side of her, crushed them again. She too wore gaufred linen, but it was black. Through the smoulder of it were glimpses of a pale, firm serpent body. Opacity at her loins. On her head was a golden head-dress that hid her hair, flashing and spitting with brilliance.

  He walked by her, beyond the darker of the two big cats. He had not apparently succumbed to the dynastic mood. His long robe was dark red—the marriage colour of the Scarabae, Althene had said, in a time before this.

  But his collar was Egyptian, sumptuous. Silver, more precious than gold, and cornelian, with blocks of orange jasper, a scarab of turquoise. On every finger he had a ring of gold. Three on the third finger of the left hand.

  He smiled graciously. He seemed benign, rational, as if this preposterous and gorgeous, and in any case anomalous and unmatched, scene was simply normal and correct.

  As he passed by Anna, he stared at her.

  The light from her little table caught his eyes.

  They were like velvet. Midnight blue. Tranquil. He said nothing.

  Together, these two called Lilith, Cain, went up the steps of their dais.

  The woman seated herself, and a milky scrawl of tigers curled about her legs.

  Cain stood. He raised his hand, and the music lessened.

  His voice was more beautiful than the music, and better tuned.

  ‘May he, who is life-in-death, bless this meal. May any malign thing fall upon me, your father. Let me take it from you. All who eat in my house shall be safe.’

  Cain’s guests—captives—what were they?—raised their cups. They drank.

  He had spoken in English. Had they understood?

  The music sprinkled out again and Cain sat on his iron chair, and lifted the sombre cup, already filled, and sipped.

  He did not look at her again, the girl re-named Ankhet Persephone.

  Did she wish that he would?

  When the food began to come, it seemed peculiar to Anna. It was like food from a wine bar, but served another way.

  Shesat had approached, and rinsed Anna’s hands with perfumed water. Other attendants waited on the other guests. They laughed so much. The wine, perhaps. (And a shallow stemmed bowl had been set for Anna, of the Ksantha, a thick white vintage flavoured with honey, and diluted with what, for all she knew, was Evian.)

  Cain’s servants passed with censors, and the food aroma pushed between layers of this musk.

  Hot, in wide dishes bound with gold and gems, there were white shoots and beans cooked with spice, and pieces of palest melon mixed with the bulbs of small onions. Striated leeks appeared, and then porcelain containers filled with a bright red mush of lentils. These were all carried from table to table. One dipped the spears of bread in the lentils, and ate.

  Fish arrived fried to darkness, blond and pink flesh crisped. There were also meats, none of which Anna recognized, and which she did not take. She did pick out the fat, cloyed smell of roasted goose.

  Figs and dates came on salvers under leaves of thin bronze that might have been edible. Honey was poured over them and on the round reddish grapes. Sweets that looked like floury fruit.

  The process of eating went on and on. New dishes, endless. Sickening variety.

  She tired of it.

  She knew this too was a custom. Not even as modern as the prolonged Scarabae meals at the houses, which had been mentioned to her.

  She did not mean to look up at him, to see if and what he ate or drank.

  Only suddenly Anna heard one of the tigers softly growl, and Lilith’s low dark voice murmured above her. ‘No. Let him take it. See, here’s yours.’

  Lilith fed the white cats from her dish.

  Anna glanced, fleetingly. And the green light glimpsed—so that for an instant she allowed herself—and saw him. He was viewing his feast, like Nero, through the lens of the green gem. Sapphire eye to emerald eye.

  Anna removed her gaze, and as if to partner her, the lights sank. How? It was the way in which lighting was dulled in a bar.

  Something was brought into the dim pond of the Hall.

  Anna saw it, too, a huge dark and golden thing that came lumbering slowly in through the smoke and glow, like a monster in an old tale... Like the Mummy.

  It was a mummy, a mummy-case. Huge, three men supported it as it rode upright on a slender, wheeled sled. Flowers were showered about the image, which was black, encrusted by gold and studded by scarlet glinting stones. The face was painted olive, under an enamelled heavy wig. Its calm, dead, thoughtful eyes, shaped with black like two long fishes, stared over every head into the ceiling, the belly of the goddess.

  Anna heard him rise, the brush of his long tunic. The chink of some goblet put down.

  ‘See what we shall become.’ His voice sprang out. His tone was intimate, despite the English doughy words, the distance he spread them. ‘We must love and live, for life is never long enough.’

  And they were laughing again, his people, standing up, those that were not now too drunk, rolling there over the tables of flowers and sunken lamps.

  ‘See what we will become!’ She made it out. Some of them did speak English, and others something else.

  They laughed, and laughed.

  And he laughed too, briefly, as if they had pleased him.

&nbs
p; The mummy-case was drawn past Anna.

  Lotus flowers were heaped against it, they had, periodically, to be moved so it could. A web of incense burned into the air before its loaf-shaped body.

  ‘Make it an offering,’ he said, above her, and only for her. ‘A cake, Ankhet.’

  And so she picked up one of the actually gilded cakes she did not want, and dropped it down on the sled among the flowers.

  The mummy-case was tugged away.

  One of the wheels squeaked, like a mouse complaining.

  Then she saw a child was being led between the tables and the drunks, the way the mummy had come.

  It was the boy, Andrew.

  He wore his child-pharaoh clothes, and gold was all over him, and from the lock they had left of his hair, hung a silver crocodile with eyes of sea green.

  Cain was still standing above her.

  She heard but did not see that he stretched out one hand to the boy.

  Andrew smiled, and went up the steps to the platform eagerly.

  Cain spoke to them all again, ‘Here is my nephew. Harpokrates.’

  So that was the new name.

  The tables applauded.

  After death had made an appearance, the promise of new life.

  Uncle Cain had put his hand on Andrew-Harpokrates’ shoulder.

  ‘Look about at them,’ he said. ‘Look straight into their eyes. You must learn to do this.’

  ‘Yes, Uncle Kay.’ Then Anna heard the little boy say, ‘Can I stroke that woman’s tigers?’

  ‘Ask her. Call her Lilith-Eset.’

  ‘Lily Is It,’ said Andrew-Harpokrates, ‘can I?’

  And Lilith must have nodded, something, for Anna heard the boy go over and then his quick breathing as he patted and rubbed the striped albino fur.

  ‘Aren’t they tame?’ he asked.

  Lilith said, ‘They know only human things. Apart from their mother, who died. Now they can’t breed. There will be no more.’

  ‘What’re their names?’

  ‘They have no names. Need no names.’

  ‘They’re brill,’ said Harpokrates.

  One of the tigers purred. Probably the swarthier, more friendly one.

  ‘Ankhet,’ he said. ‘Now you must come up to me.’

  ‘Must I.’

  ‘Of course. They must see you.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘You’re mine,’ he said.

  Then she did turn and look at him.

  Who had said this to her? Someone had said this.

  You are mine. Until death. Until the sun dies in the River under the world. Mine.

  She did not try to resist him. His eyes, which went directly in through her own and seemed to touch, quite gently, the back of her brain, were not to be denied. Anna did not waste her strength in fruitless struggle. Had she ever?

  She went up the steps and he took her hand, and beyond him the dark queen of all mythology sat in her black chair, her head a sunburst from which a snake stood up on her forehead. And at her sandalled feet the child had laid his cheek on a purring tiger’s flank.

  But Cain held Anna’s hand and he spoke to them.

  ‘Here is my daughter’s daughter, Ankhet Persephone.’

  They caroused to her. Even the most inebriated made sure that they did.

  She said to him, ‘Am I?’

  ‘What, Ankhet?’

  ‘Your daughter’s daughter.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Rachaela,’ said Anna, doubtfully.

  ‘No,’ said Cain, with the softest scorn. ‘Your father-mother. Althene.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘She is a man,’ he said. ‘But I know. I honour her with her own lie. Daughter, not son.’

  ‘Then you’re my—grandfather.’

  ‘Yes, if you like. Do you think I’ll do?’

  She gazed out, as he had, and the mummy had, over the feasters, and overhead gold dripped from Nuit like tears.

  ‘Anna,’ he said, ‘like a little goddess already. Who has ever told you how beautiful you are.’

  She thought, Someone, once. But it was not Althene, who had alluded to beauty only as fact. No, this other—who had it been?—had valued her beauty as a wonder. As this one did?

  ‘Eset, when she rises with the new moon, Isis to the Greeks, mother, sister. Ra’s daughter.’

  Anna said blankly, remembering something else, ‘I bet you say that to all the girls.’

  He laughed, truly, properly, now. Not his actor’s laugh. It came from the pit of his lungs.

  ‘Oh, you,’ he said. ‘You. You white vixen. You devil of a girl. Were you made for me?’

  His hand was warm, close, dry and—good. It felt full of power, electricity and youth.

  Her grandfather.

  She pulled her hand from his, and looked instead back at the black chess Queen of Night, Lilith.

  Lilith did not seem to notice them.

  And he said, ‘We’ll go away.’ And then something in another language, like the sound of birds.

  Lilith had lowered her white lids stained with shade. She reached for her cup, and the paler tiger rose and shook itself.

  ‘Come with me,’ he said to Anna.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘It’s dawn. Do you like the sun?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That’s wise. We’ll go into the sun.’

  He led her down the steps. Only Andrew-Harpokrates squinted sleepily after them.

  Those at the tables who could, got up.

  ‘Who are they?’ she said.

  ‘These people? No one,’ he said. ‘Only you and I.’

  They went from the red gleam of sinking fires into the darkness of the portico.

  Venus was in the dawn sky, like a blazing pin.

  Sastrugi, waves of snow such as the sea would leave on a beach, the action of winds, folded the shore.

  The sky was blue chrysoprase, so clear. So terrible. As if the air had gone yet left a colour.

  Above, the white pyramid with its soaked, brackish base.

  And under them, the River.

  She had imagined an Egyptian boat, with lotus prow and triangular sail. Now here one was, they in it.

  The boat was lit with gold, and shone in the water. The sail was palest blue, like the horizon, or the ice.

  Ice scales drifted away before them, not hippopotami.

  It was so still. Not a sound beyond the whisper of the oar.

  Was Greek Charon the boatman, that servant-slave in his padded, modern, wool-lined clothing?

  They sat in the pillared cabin, but they too were clothed for the bitter freezing of this outer world, swathed as she had been for her journey here. The garments were warm and thorough, black in colour. She had been dressed in a steel cell in the mountain. He too, presumably, but that had remained invisible. He must always be a magician, coming and going magically, changing his garments behind a veil... a magician or a whore.

  Over the functional suits, further sorcery, he had spread for them a mantle of black velvet, timeless.

  All his rings were gone.

  The air, the water, rippled in slow motion.

  ‘Is it beautiful to you?’ he said.

  ‘Yes. Aren’t there any birds?’

  ‘Too cold, my dove.’

  She said, ‘Why do you want me?’

  ‘You are,’ he said. ‘Hasn’t anyone ever wanted you, Anna, for yourself?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said.

  ‘Then no one has.’

  Inside the edge of the mantle and the fur lining of the hood, his face, which had no protective covering of any sort, was matt and carved with thin architectural lines, like pencil strokes. His eyes were more blue than anything, the sky, the ice, the reflections of the river.

  ‘This is Egypt then,’ she said.

  ‘Yes, my child. In a way.’

  ‘I dreamed of a river.’

  ‘But that,’ he said, ‘would have been Nil-eh. The blue one, the lotus.’

 
‘The Nile,’ she said.

  ‘If you wish.’

  ‘Would you still want me,’ she said, ‘if I’d killed someone?’

  ‘Have you?’

  ‘I... don’t know.’

  ‘Kill whom you must, Anna. I should want you. If it was you.’

  ‘Who am I?’

  ‘Oh.’ He drew in breath, and let it go, gazing up at the sky. His breath was a cloud of white. Tiny crystals formed in it, fell. ‘You are the Beginning, Anna.’

  ‘But I want to know.’

  ‘You must give me time.’

  She looked at him again. He had asked her for something.

  Cain put his arm about her, the girl, and the boat plied on over the icy river.

  ‘Long ago,’ he said, ‘we were so young.’

  ‘You called me a child.’

  ‘You’re my child.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Yes. Mine.’

  Mine echoed from inside her brain.

  His arm was warm, as if great fires burned in him against the cold.

  Anna half closed her eyes. It was like a dream.

  He said, ‘You and I have died. You and I have lived. I can love you like no other.’

  ‘Lilith,’ she said, dreamily.

  ‘Lilith is my shadow. You’re my morning.’

  Something flew over the sky.

  ‘You said there weren’t any birds.’

  ‘Sometimes a plane. Generally they avoid this area.’

  ‘Why do you want me?’ she said again.

  ‘Do I want you?’ he asked. His voice was playful. He looked, she thought, very young, innocent, happy, at peace. No one in the world but they. He lifted aside, carefully, the thin film of her outdoor mask. The cold came. He sent the cold away. He kissed her lips, quietly, without any thrust of sex, like warm snow falling, like a mother. Like the first father she had ever had.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Harpokrates’ mother, Sharon Ferris, came down the narrow, carpeted stairs and faced the front door. She did not like the door any more. But then, she did not like anything much.

  Perhaps she need not answer. Usually they went away then. Only the Jehovah’s Witnesses were always persistent, ringing over and over on Sunday morning, as Sharon lay alone in the double bed under the duvet, eating Smarties. The duvet had not been changed for six weeks, perhaps longer. It had chocolate on it. It smelled of chocolate. That helped.