On a Balcony

by David Stacton

  He explained to her, first of all, how remarkable it was that the privilege of physical contact with Pharaoh should be extended to queens, and she agreed, quite readily, that it was indeed remarkable. He then allowed her to touch him. By massaging the muscles at the back of his neck she reduced him to the warm stupor of a newborn kitten, and though he shuddered when she began, when she had finished he asked her to go on. Her wrists ached, but she went on.

  Apparently grateful, he then told her that to be a queen also meant that she would be a god after death, which was clearly to her advantage. She agreed that it was an advantage, but her wrists were becoming tired. There was a prolonged silence. She broke it by suggesting that since the attendants were undoubtedly listening, it would be an excellent idea if they creaked and rocked the bed. This co-operative suggestion won her a quick smile, and after they had creaked and rocked the bed with some vigour, he had almost completely relaxed and decided that they were having a wonderful time. He had accepted her as fellow conspirator.

  When she blew out the lamps, however, which meant that she had to leave him for a moment, he grew nervous again, and it was necessary to creak and rock the bed some more. This time, however, it was clearly not so much fun, and somewhere outside in the corridor someone sneezed.

  “Make a noise,” she suggested, wondering vaguely what to do next. The moment, she knew, was crucial.

  He was thinking. She would always be able to tell when he was thinking, because when he was his breath grew more shallow. She could also tell that he was frightened.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  “I don’t like the dark.”

  “I’m here,” she said, without thinking of the matter, because she had often been afraid of the dark herself, and so won dominion over him quite by accident, despite all her careful planning. She could feel the difference at once. When he began to talk again, it was as one would talk to a very close friend, a little older than oneself, but thoroughly reliable. But he was still nervous about being there, so he had to trot out his little philosophy. She quite understood that.

  “But isn’t it rather vulgar to be only a man or a woman,” he said. “It seems so ordinary.”

  There was no point in telling him that even the gods must do as we do, and that though the original god Aton produced his children by auto-insemination, with the passage of time the method had unfortunately been lost. Instead, she told him that his penis had the texture and faint odour of the flesh of a ripe persimmon. High comedy has its own stench, and if we cannot get our way in one way, why then we must use another. She did not really mind, and the matter was soon over with. Further steps could be taken later, and at the end of it all he screamed like a moonstruck rabbit, which she supposed indicated pleasure.

  *

  So everything might have been well, really, had the Amon priests not been so insistent upon that ceremony with the coronation doll. It is wry to reflect that they destroyed themselves and the royal house with that same jointed horror whose only purpose was to perpetuate their own power.

  Yet in all respects the day of the coronation dawned propitiously.

  It began, according to the elaborate schedule, with an early morning exhibition of the royal family to the loyal populace, a carefully rehearsed audience of ten thousand rammed into the esplanade before the palace.

  At least one member of that audience found the spectacle extremely diverting, if sobering. This was Tutmose, a sculptor of much ability and little ambition, who wished a royal commission, but having no access to the palace, hoped that he could retain enough of the royal appearance to do a trial piece. He was less interested in Pharaoh than in the prince, for patronage, now, would lie that way.

  In front of the palace a pavilion had been set up, from which the royal family would step into their chariots, the floor of the pavilion being on a level with the floor of the chariots. It was an awkward arrangement, but they had to display themselves, and to use the balcony of audience and then go to their chariots would have been more awkward still. The spectacle was certainly fine. The jewels were dazzling, so dazzling that nobody paid much attention to the features they surrounded, except for Tutmose, who had a board before him on which to sketch.

  Royal Father Ay was the first to appear. His was a striking face, lean, Oriental, narrow-eyed, benign, and very far away. Nobody paid much attention to him. He was followed by Nebzumut, Nefertiti’s sister, a fat, plump, amiable creature with two attendant dwarfs. She blinked as though she were not accustomed to sunlight, as indeed she was not. She was only a girl and carefully kept indoors. She in turn was followed by Horemheb, who as Commander of the Armies was loudly cheered by the guards and totally unknown to anybody else. Still, it was an interesting face, there was no denying that. It was not, however, relevant to Tutmose’s purposes.

  A ripple ran through the crowd. A cheer went up, and for once it was a warm and honest cheer. Pharaoh and the Queen were emerging on the platform, accompanied by Smenkara, the youngest child, in the arms of Ay’s wife, the royal nurse.

  About that immense ruin of a man there was something altogether touching. Vast, corpulent, florid, obviously in pain, with a stoic animal nobility of feature still bony and clear in that puzzled matrix of fat, Amenophis was as always Pharaoh, a little foolish, a little absent-minded, without much head for intrigue, but forthright, clean, and obviously a ruling prince. Tiiy, beside him, nervous, assured, worried, perplexed, but very gracious, was as clearly the Great Royal Wife. It was their best role, the one they played every day, and neither they nor the crowds could have got along without it.

  Amenophis was half carried to his chariot, but once in it, and he stood erect, and would remain standing in it for so long as he had to be in public view. Of such things is character made. And only for such things, alas, is character applauded.

  Next appeared Nefertiti and the prince, also to be applauded, not for themselves, but as something of Amenophis and Tiiy’s making, as one would applaud a favourite chef’s latest dish, even before it had been tasted. At these two Tutmose looked more narrowly and with a smile.

  They had caught his attention at once. Your artist who has something he can express only through the human face, cannot say anything, unless he find the right face. And these were the faces he had been looking for. He forgot to draw. He did not have to. These faces had lain latent in his mind for years. He recognized them at once. They were so bored, and boredom prolongs beauty, for since it has no expression, so it forms no customary wrinkles. Nefertiti would never age, he could see that. She would only become more and more desperate.

  And as for the prince, he had the face of a heretic, and it only remained to see what form that heresy would take. As a problem in aesthetics his body was a fascinating riddle it might take years to solve. It only remained to meet his patron, and Tutmose’s future was assured.

  He watched with attention. They were so fragile. But it is a mistake to believe that fragile things are easily broken. Instead they are apt to be as resilient as reeds. And then they were so obviously, so very obviously, he thought narrowly, attached to each other, like a parody of their parents. The prince allowed the princess to put her arm around his waist in public. Even Amenophis never allowed Tiiy to do that, and the crowd loved it. It made them just like you and me, if we were just married and were wrapped up in each other, which we never were. They did not applaud. They roared.

  Perhaps only Tutmose realized the outrageous nature of that counterfeit. If so, it did not bother him, for in this life, he knew, the counterfeit is just as important as the real, and perhaps more essential to our survival. For he was a sculptor, a maker of faces. He knew perfectly well that, except for those essentials which if neglected turn and destroy us with self-knowledge later on, the keeping up of appearances is the only reality we have.

  Meanwhile, followed by a cloud of excited and anonymous royal relatives, the procession swept down to the river and the temples of Karnak and Luxor on the other side. The crossing w
ould be made by barge, and this, too, was a sight that no one in his right senses would have desired to miss.

  The river was clogged with the pleasure boats of the nobility, brave with pinions, statues, and musicians. On the other side the priests of Amon, confident in their ascendancy, conducted the royal party up the great sphinx avenue, around the main temple three times, and then within, on the final road to the throne.

  There they made the prince co-regent. He saw how pleasant it was to be co-regent of the world, with absolute power over Ay, Horemheb, Nefertiti, even over Amenophis, perhaps, or Tiiy. No one could interfere with him now. He might do as he pleased. He was absolute and inviolable. But what did he please?

  Even the high priest was obsequious, as so he should be. Standing there before the entrance to the Holy of Holies, slim, top-heavy with jewels, alone, as he wished to be, the prince found it not so much a triumph, as to know, that being now untouchable and omnipotent, he was at last secure. So, though tired and sweaty in the sun, he was happy. Not even the dank walls around him, or the dark shadows under the colonnades, could oppress him. Was he not now a god? Was he not now immortal?

  It was time for him to visit the Holy of Holies.

  He motioned Ay to him. “Come with me,” he ordered.

  Ay shook his head. “No one may go with you there.”

  Suddenly he panicked. And the high priest was not obsequious now. There was on his face quite a different look. There was nothing for the prince to do but follow, in a vast beetle-backed wave of priests that dragged him, like an aphis, down into the dark cellars of the soul, there to milk him dry.

  They had crowned him only in order to put him in one of those few ultimate situations which we have to face alone. And such situations should not exist, for they involve an unavoidable choice, and every time we make an unavoidable choice a little of us dies.

  People are dishonest. They tell us we always have a voluntary choice. And then they dump us, defenceless, into some situation where no choice is possible. All this false splendour of the priests was designed to one purpose. No wonder he had always thought the priests unclean. They were spiritual butchers. They did not save souls. They merely fattened them up for their own purposes.

  He ran over everything Ay had told him. But Ay had not told him much.

  The high priest going ahead, a row of lesser priests on each side of him, chanting and wailing, and with sistrums that rattled like snakes, they plunged him deeper into this stone charnel-house. Not even the walls had the life to echo here.

  All light had gone. Here they used naphtha flares.

  This part of the building was very old and no better than a tomb. The corridor became narrower. The priests were ahead of and behind him. They were now silent, as he was forced along.

  He had expected the priests to be friendly. After all, belief in all this mummery was all very well for the laity, but the royal family was sceptical. Surely that gave them the right to know the truth?

  On the contrary, the high priest would say nothing. The prince was sobered. It had never occurred to him before that the aweful might of this dark, vengeful god Amon might exist, that the god might actually be lurking in this holy of holies, waiting to do something horrible to him, the way shadows waited when you could not sleep at night.

  Why had no one told him that scepticism was merely a day-time amusement? Why had Ay not told him that this terrible god they all laughed at was not so laughable here?

  He turned to the priest.

  They had reached a small, square room without windows. In one wall was a door covered with seals. Not even a sistrum rattled now. The room was unpleasantly fetid from the torches. The priest forced him to break the seals. He did so, and the door swung open on absolutely nothing beyond itself at all.

  The priest forced him through the door, which then swung shut behind him, smoothly into the stone wall, by what mechanism he could not tell.

  He stood stock still. If he did not do as he had been instructed to do, he would not be let out. He found it difficult to keep from shaking.

  Somewhere there must be some concealed source of meagre light. Slowly his eyes adjusted to the darkness. At first he could make out nothing, not even the limits of the walls. He had only an impression of disease and damp.

  Then, by a faint glimmer that seemed to spring from nowhere, he saw against the deeper darkness the shadowy bulk of a closed shrine. The god had arrived.

  It was his duty to break the seals on the shrine doors. This, with trembling fingers, he did. He could not bring himself to open them, however, nor did he have to. They swung back of their own accord.

  In the glow that came from somewhere inside the shrine he could make out the black and brittle outlines of an enormous jointed doll. It was sleek and glistening, but its head and face were hidden. It seemed to stir, and there were odd angry gleams of blue and red from its jewels. Its eyes were white shell, and they stared.

  He was supposed to anoint the god from a small unguent pot inside the shrine. It was only a statue, but even so, he could not bring himself to touch it. He dipped his fingers in the slimy, greasy mass, and flecked the unguent over it.

  There was a sound as though someone had dropped a stone lid over a cistern in a stone floor, and a bright magnesium flare of light in the glare of which the giant doll became actual. It started forward jerkily, glaring at him, as the light suddenly went out. He stumbled backwards, over a groove in the floor, and heard as much as he felt the thing whirring towards him in the blackness. Something clawed at him. He felt wooden finger-nails, immensely brittle, poking and scratching across his face. He tried to brush them aside, but could not. And that must have been when he screamed.

  The statue withdrew.

  He found his back against the wall. He stayed there, his body very tight, shivering, looking this way and that, unable to see anything, and that was when the god spoke to him. Its voice was hollow and dead. It told him that the god was mightier than Pharaoh, that the god could destroy Pharaoh, even as it had made Pharaoh a god, and that therefore Pharaoh must follow the advice of his appointed priests, for it was not wise to contradict the oracle of a god. For just as the god had touched him now, so would the god seek him out, wherever he was, should he disobey. And every day he should come to anoint the god, and when he was in doubt how to act, the god would tell him.

  There was an absolute silence. The prince could still feel that touch. It was not the touch of life, to make him immortal, but the prurient touch of death, to make him vulnerable for ever. The silence grew longer. He heard the doors of the shrine shut. He was alone again.

  He did not know for how long. At last the panel opened in the wall. He was blinded by the glare of torches out there. The high priest stepped forward. No one else dared to approach.

  “And has the god spoken?” he asked. By the peculiar smile that hovered on his lips, the prince knew that somehow, even through stone, his scream had been heard, and that the priest knew perfectly well the god had spoken. It was not a smile he would either forget or forgive.

  He allowed them to take him back the way they had come. The false door closed smoothly behind them, but he knew the god was still in there, waiting.

  Once more he was presented to the crowds. He had been gone over an hour. Having been touched divinely by the god, he was now proclaimed Pharaoh. Life! Prosperity! Health! shouted the priests. Instead he felt like a sacrificial goat, displayed to the people both before and after the sacrifice, and then to be cut up for the priests to eat at leisure. They were only acclaiming their dinner.

  When he rejoined the family, he was very quiet, so quiet that even Nefertiti knew something had gone wrong, and wondered what. None of them had seen him so shaken before.

  It is by similar methods they break horses. Amenophis saw this and tried to be jovial. His manner was that they were now both initiates, and perhaps he had forgotten how much the rite had frightened him, in his day. As far as he was concerned, these things had to be got through,
and once they had been seen through, things went well enough. It was in this way he tried to reassure his son.

  Unfortunately the prince had seen through the scene to something quite different on the other side, and was not apt to forget it ever.

  That night he spent with Nefertiti, many attendants, and many lights. There could never be enough lights now. And though he was not supposed to speak of what went on in the Holy of Holies, she got him to tell her.

  Nefertiti had a mind as direct as her father’s, and saw through things much as he did. She knew very well what the priests had been up to. And if the prince was afraid of the dark, the best thing for her to do was to give him light. She was afraid of the dark herself, and could not know that though light may fail, darkness never does.

  She had the Aton priest, Meryra, in attendance. Now she would send for him. If the prince did not like the religion he had, then someone would have to provide him with another one. He had an interest in such things. It was necessary only to feed that interest, and her power over him would be assured.

  Thus, in the middle of the night, with five hundred lamps hissing in that otherwise silent palace, fell one god and one dynasty. But the birth of the new god was to take a little longer than the downfall of the old one, for gods have to be evoked, with much cunning, out of the hidden mind, and this takes time, skill, and ambition.

  Ambition Meryra had, though Nefertiti was mistaken to think him her creature. He was no creature at all, but like most of us, only an ambition on two legs.

  It would be a mistake to underestimate this man Meryra. He was not wicked. On the contrary, he was good whenever he was able and always willing to listen to the troubles of those by whom he might rise.

  He was forty-eight, and so far he had not prospered. That he was attached to Aton worship was no accident. It was the only job he had been able to get, for the Amon priests would have none of him. They had had others to prefer over his head. He had not been unduly ambitious, but he did know that he had certain abilities. He wanted comfort, ease, and the right to spend long hours in meditation. Without being in the least creative, or having a scrap of insight in his nature, except, occasionally, when watching the lotuses in his garden after a good meal, he was yet a man who loved a system for its own sake. He could play with theology by the hour, for diversion, as someone else would play with a particularly promising child. Sincerity was never in question. He could believe in anything for a day, a month, a year, for the sake of the game, as someone else would accept a geometrical assumption, in order to learn how a bridge was built.