On a Balcony

by David Stacton

  Decay is too stealthy to have a historian, and few people realize that buildings, like history, have a physiology. No one saw or heard the first piece of plaster fall. No one could date that event. But the floors were soon littered with the chips.

  There was no one to draw the curtains now. They grew rotten and the wind pulled them down. The wind was everywhere. It blew through corridors and courts, and burst exultantly into chamber after chamber, as the roofs fell in.

  The gardens left to their own devices went back to natural law and choked themselves to death. The animals in the zoo starved. Those greyhounds in the kennels who could make their escape did so, and now slunk through the city in ravenous, shuddering packs, until even they were thinned out, for being overbred, they were no match for the common curs. However, a few of the wilier ones survived.

  Mice came out one by one and then in bolder, hungrier groups, to scurry across the painted floors. And spiders, too, spun desperate webs among the columns, all to catch a single fly.

  The merchants left next. It was no longer to their advantage to stay. And with the merchants gone, who was to pay the workers? The glassworks were the last to close. Tutankaten, who was called Tutankamon now, did not care for glass, so neither did his court. Those in the Delta did. The glassmakers migrated there.

  The craftsmen were siphoned off, ordered to Thebes, for the new temple works Tutankamon undertook to placate the priests and to please himself. Even those sculptors cleverest at the new style went back to the old with a sigh of relief. The old had been so much easier.

  Tutmose remained. He had no desire to go anywhere else. He had enough to live on, and his work was still here. He had always worked for himself, and now he did not even have to flatter his sitters, for there were no sitters. It was better that way. He liked the peace and quiet of the deserted city, and he had much to do.

  The guards left. Without any traffic at the customs house, Nefertiti lacked the money to pay them. The priests went last. They belonged to a heresy and were interdicted. But even they had to eat, interdicted or not. A year later and there were only fifty left, where once there had been thousands, fifty to rattle about in three major temples of vast proportions and fifty or sixty of more modest size. So one by one the temples were shut off, of course, for the time being, until only that smaller one was left, in itself too vast for merely fifty, where Nefertiti worshipped, fifty, of course, and Pa-wah. There was indeed nowhere else for Pa-wah to go.

  Tutmose never saw her. But he wondered why she bothered to go through that mockery of a service. Perhaps she needed the discipline.

  Soon there was no one left in the city but the caretakers, a curious body of taciturn creatures, never to be seen outdoors. In the second year, however, there was considerable activity. Hammers and chisels did not make a cheerful noise in those abandoned streets.

  The nobles had at last settled down and sent to Aketaten for their precious wooden pillars and doors. However, that excitement was soon over, and nobody, as yet, except Hatiay, Ikhnaton’s Royal Contractor, had so far dared to remove wood from the public buildings. He, it was true, had taken four royal pavilions and six peristyle halls for resale, secretly, in the Delta, before he left.

  Often now, with a cane to protect himself against dogs, Tutmose would wander through the grass-and weed-strewn city, and one of these ambles brought him to the temple of Hat-Aton, where Nefertiti persisted in holding services. Attracted by the thin sound of one harp, he went inside.

  Though smaller than that of any of the other great temples, the outer courtyard was sixty feet long. Its raised ramp was lined with small sphinxes alternated with withered trees in tubs. The whitewash, though dazzling on that hot day, was now grubby. Formerly the way would have been lined with priests. Now they were spaced out thinly. They did not notice his presence. Nefertiti was half-way to the inner shrine. She seemed feeble, and leaned heavily on Pa-wah. She reached the inner pylon and disappeared from view. The others sighed, turned around, and marched to the priests’ houses near the outer gate.

  Tutmose hesitated and then walked through the inner pylon, around the baffle, and stood in the shadow of the platform, to watch.

  The inner shrine was barren and glaring. All but one of the offering tables were empty. Some of them had cracked, so that the tops had slid off the bases. She was not worshipping. Twitching her robes nervously to her, she was talking earnestly to Pa-wah, as though asking a question. On the immense silver slab of the altar lay a small wilted bouquet.

  Watching her, Tutmose realized suddenly that she believed it. That was understandable enough. What else was left of that city in which she could believe? But it was terrible to see her reduced to the nagging superstition of an old woman, forced to believe in a fool like Pa-wah, and to beg him for an answer to anything. It was too soon. Was it to this that the folly of that inspired child had reduced her?

  Yet from this distance she was still beautiful, or worse, one could see that she had once been. He was deeply moved and very angry. He turned and slipped away.

  That afternoon something happened that had not occurred in Egypt in all the seventeen years of Ikhnaton’s dominion. It rained, and did not merely rain, but poured down, with the helplessness of a cloud-burst.

  It was magnificent. The light caught the rain, so that one stood in a mesh of silver threads. But no one had repaired anything in that city for at least ten years. One-fourth of the buildings simply washed away. Stucco gave. Parts of those royal murals of Nefertiti, Ikhnaton, and the children came loose and fell from the walls, so that where they had been sitting, now no one sat at all.

  As rapidly as the water had destroyed everything, beating down even the plants in the deserted gardens, it drained off and the earth was dry.

  But the temple of Hat-Aton was wanly changed. Part of the outer wall had fallen away, and much of the stucco had come loose, revealing a mass of dingy mud-brick. And the sheen of the silver altar top was gone for good. It was now dull and patchy.

  Under these circumstances he was not surprised to notice that Nefertiti did not go there any more.

  But sometimes, early in the morning, or late in the evening, he would catch a glimpse of her in the distance, a lean, uncertain figure, halting, but still erect and proud, moving this way and that, or merely standing motionless, watching. Sometimes she seemed to be calling on someone, or searching about for something.

  He was relieved when one day a greyhound trotted up to her, and he saw that at least she had a companion, and had been searching for only that. The few maids who still paced behind her were certainly no company.

  Nor, though she still had one or two petty nobles around her, did he ever see them. He had no idea what went on up at the northern suburb. Supplies, however, were becoming harder to get. He was forced to send trusted servants up and down the river for them, until he hit on the device of starting a private farm on the other bank.

  The supply of plaster, though, was inexhaustible. He had merely to regrind the stucco on the walls. That was convenient.

  Then, too, he was growing older. He did not go out much any more. No doubt most people would have found the deserted city eerie. To tell the truth he found it eerie, but he also thought, in a contrite moment, that it was just about what he deserved.

  Unexpectedly one day Pa-wah arrived on his doorstep. The man was beside himself with terror and said the Queen had died. Tutmose gathered up his tools at once.

  He had never been in the northern suburb. He found it a shambles, and utterly silent. Apparently everyone had fled as soon as she died. He entered the palace, if palace it could be called, only to find it had been sacked.

  He sent Pa-wah out of the room and did what he had to do. He took this last mask. But he could scarcely bear to see her. In a corner of her bedroom, on the floor, lay something the looters had overlooked. He picked it up, and found it was the head of Maketaten he had sent her long ago. He looked at it thoughtfully and put it in his pouch.

  Only then did he da
re to look at her. In death she was still beautiful, more beautiful indeed than she had been for years. But what had she wasted all that beauty for? She simply lay there, and she was still there. And yet she was not. It was a little more than he could stand.

  He went out to Pa-wah. Someone had to do what was necessary. There was in the house only the greyhound, and even it shied away from him. He never did find out what became of it. But Pa-wah was worse than useless. The man was a helpless fanatic hysterical with self-pity.

  It was not surprising. One man may worship an abstract principle, but ten people hoping for somewhere to take their troubles, never. Beneath the level of meditation, religion is nothing more than the sick man’s efforts to keep on a really good nurse. Pa-wah turned out to be despicable. He did not even know how to dig.

  Tutmose left him shivering against a wall and buried her himself. Somebody had to keep that body from the dogs, and as for the meaning of it, that was how they buried the poor, in a sheet, in the desert sand. Besides, there was no funeral furniture to bury with her. She must have lain helpless, with Pa-wah in the house, for a week, and during that time the furniture had been carried away, down to the last stick.

  He returned to his own house, and after some deliberation, wrote a letter to Thebes, to Tutankamon.

  There was no answer. Nor had he expected one.

  Indeed, in these two years Tutankamon did nothing notable. The Amon priests had begun to grow overbearing, so while rewarding them amply, he had annoyed them as well, by keeping up the Aton temple at Thebes. Perhaps Pa-wah went there. Certainly Tutmose never saw him again.

  Tutankamon did give orders that Ikhnaton’s body was to be burned, and this a party of silent workmen came to Aketaten, went up the valley to the Royal Tomb, and did. But even that could not be laid to theology, either his own or anyone else’s. That was idiot spleen and nothing more.

  But why had Ay or Horemheb not done something to help Nefertiti?

  The answer was simple. She had left their letters unanswered. Alone of them all, she had stayed on, out of pride if nothing else, until it was too late for her to go anywhere.

  And yet, in a way, she survived.

  Part Four

  Twenty

  In Thebes, inevitably, while Horemheb was absent at Memphis, Tutankamon sickened and died.

  There was considerable disorder as a result. Even the priests of Amon were upset. They need not have been. For though Tutankamon had no children, there was still one heir left.

  Ankesenpa’aten, but of course she was Ankesenpaamon now, for the titulary was changed, did something pathetic, that no one would have guessed she would have had the courage or the wits to do.

  She despatched a letter to Suppiluliumas, King of the Hittites, saying she was a defenceless widow and asking him to send one of his sons to marry her and assume the throne of Egypt. Thus the power of the Hittites had made its impression even on that stubborn, watchful, girlish head. She almost succeeded. Suppiluliumas actually did despatch one of his sons.

  Fortunately Ay discovered the plot and sent word of it to Horemheb in Memphis, with the result that the prince was murdered as soon as he crossed the Egyptian border. Whereupon the Hittites marched into Syria, captured the murderers, and sent them to Boghazkoy, which they would not otherwise have seen, to be hanged, drawn, and quartered, or something worse. But of that no matter, for though the Empire had fallen, at least the throne was safe.

  Ay quietly took it for himself.

  For Ay was such a very old man that there was one thing about him that everyone had forgotten. Royal Father Ay was quite literally that. As he had opened the period, by siring Queen Tiiy, in whose image they had been made, so should he close it. He had served them all for such a long time, and to such little point, that he saw no reason why he should not now serve himself in this, and be Pharaoh, too.

  He would die soon, and for that he was not sorry. After all, the real question is not whether there is life after death, but whether there is death after life. If we knew for certain the answer to that, then our lives might be easier, and we, too, might stand on the balcony and watch, with a free conscience, without fear of consequences. But, as it was he who had first brought scepticism into the family, and so destroyed the faith of an empire, so it was only fitting that he should be the one to answer that question for certain by quietly slamming a dynastic door in the faces of the curious.

  As for the little princesses, they simply did not count. For the rest, he was satisfied that in this life there was nothing to be done but to make the best of what could not be helped, to act with reason himself and with good conscience towards others. And though that would not give all the joys some people might wish for, yet it was sufficient to make one very quiet.

  This was what one earned by being wily. But wiliness is not incompatible with a sense of what needs to be done. So after he had buried Tutankamon, and with him every stick of furniture and personal memento of the whole sorry succession, until the palace was stripped bare of every reminder of what they had been and were now no longer, he had the tomb sealed and sent for Horemheb.

  To Horemheb he explained exactly why he had taken the throne and exactly what remained to be done.

  “I shall live only two or three years,” he said. “But that should give you enough time to bring the army into position and between us to satisfy the priests. And then, when I am gone, you must restore order as best you can.”

  He looked at Horemheb with some satisfaction, for though time had taken away much from Horemheb, it had left his sense of responsibility, and a sense of responsibility was what was needed now.

  *

  So it came about that in the year 1360 Horemheb lost a real father, and became, he, a commoner, Pharaoh of Egypt. It cannot be said that he regarded this as any accomplishment, though he understood the irony well enough. But something, as Ay had seen, had to be done.

  He was then a man of fifty, and of good sound stock. He was to rule until he was older than Ay had been, until he was a man of eighty-two, for thirty-three years.

  And he was to be a good administrator.

  When they rolled out that jointed doll in the Holy of Holies, he took the matter with equanimity. But he also took it firmly. When the god spoke to him, he in turn spoke back, for he knew very well how to manage such things, and in particular a high priest.

  “Come out from there,” he ordered. “For we have much to do, and we cannot waste time on these dumb shows, you and I. You may save that for my successors.”

  And so to Pharaoh, from the priests, because he gave them what they wanted, Life! Prosperity! Health! and from the army, too, since he was careful to keep the gains of twenty years and play the two factions off against each other, for the country’s good, as strong men have always done, throughout history.

  Twenty-One

  He never gave a thought to Aketaten, which was a pity, for in a sense certain things still happened there.

  Not a great deal, of course. Workmen came and razed the temple of Aton, pouring over the ruins a smooth sheet of cement, as though to seal the god in for good. This was what the Theban priests wished, and if such petty acts pleased them, after all, why not? Workmen also removed all the wood from the royal buildings and from the palaces of the nobles, which meant that even the caretakers at last took their departure, to search for some other silent, mole-like sinecure.

  The props of the balcony of audience were taken out, though it did not at once collapse. It stood up for a while of its own weight, so that anyone curious to view life from that vantage point could have done so. But since nobody any longer wished to do so, in time it too fell down, and Tutmose found its ruins, in the course of one of his morning walks.

  When he returned home he did the last of his works, and it was by no accident that it was about the one of them that the others had forgotten, the one whose reputation, alone among that crew, was still glorious.

  It was at the death-mask of Amenophis III he looked, and then, takin
g a little plaster, he summed it all up and himself as well.

  What he did was a face of Amenophis at forty, a face that outstared posterity, simply because it had no choice but to stare it down, a young face, a permanent face, a transient face, and a very old one; and a face with some capacity for feeling and even for love of a sort, though that capacity was small.

  Then he laid down his tools.

  Whether he was dying, or whether the time had come for him to die, the outcome was much the same. His turn had come.

  He had nothing to complain about, since beyond our own motives, existence has no reason. It is merely phenomenal. Once we have realized that we are free to turn to other things.

  Looking round his studio he could see, as he had always felt, that art was a branch of metaphysics, older, more diverse, infinitely more subtle, tougher, and much better suited to meditation and the indication of the nature of the ineffable than any theology or eschatology, which, no doubt, was why theologians and mystics affected to despise it. At least Ikhnaton had not made that mistake. Besides, art survives, and of what theology can that be said? Theology outlives its worshippers always, but those to whom it might be of some use, never.

  Again he looked round the studio, but now for the last time. What did he believe in? This was what he believed in. And by an odd trick of patronage and neglect, he was able to leave it all behind him. From the shelf high above, the bust of the Queen stared down the future with one eye, poised and assured. But was it the Queen? Who could say? It might as easily be something that lasted, skipping from face to face, in the human animal. But to be able to transmit even that much of insight he found singularly comforting.

  So much for theodice, that science of justifying evil in the good, which like so much of science, was devoted to the justification of something that did not exist in the name of something that did not exist either.