by Jerry Dubs
“The new Temple of Sobek,” King Djoser had said, nodding at the stone pillars as they passed. “It will be dedicated a few days after the river floods.” He had kept his eyes on the nearly completed temple, but Tim knew the comment was directed at him.
Whatever happened now, Tim knew his future was linked with King Djoser’s and, more immediately, with the depth of the river.
Meryt sat beside him, a light linen cloth over her head to shelter her from the sun. She was almost fully recovered from her illness. Her humor and inquisitiveness had returned, along with her energy, but exposure to the heat of the sun still tired her.
Tim touched her hand, bringing a squeeze in response. Then he turned his attention back to the journal.
We are just a few days from Abu, which marks the southern border of Kemet. There is a temple there to the ram-headed god they call Khnum. Before I left Cairo, when I was waiting in Diane and Brian’s room, I read the history of the Step Pyramid and King Djoser. According to the book, the famine ended after seven years when King Djoser made a sacrifice to Khnum and gave some land to the temple there.
I’m traveling with the king, his personal bodyguard, and with Meryt. She’s beside me now, watching me write, keeping me company. I started to tell you about her before.
She has brought color and life back to me. I used to get angry when I heard someone laugh. How could they be happy after what had happened? But now I look forward to her laugh.
I know that I was withdrawing from everything. You know, I actually quit shaking hands with people. I didn’t want to touch anyone if I couldn’t touch you. I know I was indulging myself by dwelling on my loss and pain. I wanted to never feel happy again. I think I was trying to prove the depth of my love, but I was also angry.
Maybe it’s something in the air here. Seriously, when I arrived here, I remember feeling different. It started as soon as I stepped out of the tomb. The air, the light, the colors, everything felt different. I remember drawing in a deep breath of air...
He put the pencil back behind his ear and stretched out his hand to touch Meryt’s leg. She was sitting cross-legged, her hands resting on her lap, her head cocked slightly, watching Tim and looking beyond at the riverbank. He laid his hand on her smooth thigh and traced circles with his fingers across her soft skin.
She placed a hand on top of his and lightly rubbed the back of his hand, feeling the skin drawn tight across the bones that led to his fingers.
He closed his eyes and focused his attention on his hand, feeling and being touched. He knew she was doing the same, making this small point of contact a bridge between them.
“Look over there,” Meryt said quietly.
He looked up to see her pointing past the riverbank to distant sand dunes, shaped by the wind into pyramid shapes. “I’ve never seen anything like that before,” she said. “I wonder if it’s soft like sand, or hard? Could you run up their side, oh, and roll down?” Her voice was excited, filled with the wonder that Tim saw in all her actions.
It struck him that there were no pyramids here in this ancient time. If he really were Imhotep, THE Imhotep, then he would be the man remembered for directing the construction of the first pyramid. The hills off in the distance were the shape of the true pyramids, the ones that would come later. The inspiration for those tombs, he realized now, came from nature, from these hills in southern Kemet.
He looked from the sliding river bank and the distant hills to Meryt, her face so alive and animated, her skin, even in the shadows beneath the linen scarf, so luminous and beautiful.
Then he glanced down at the journal, the dry, dark strokes against the page - a bloodless attempt to grab life and hold onto it, to pin it down like a collection of dead butterflies. Elegant lines, heart-breaking delicacy and beauty, but no life. All past, no present. And no future.
He raised his hand from her lap and grabbed the corner of the page on which he was writing. Gripping the journal spine firmly, he pulled the page toward him, listening to the ripping sound as it tore free.
He rocked forward and stood up. He slid his journal back into the backpack, but carried the torn page to the center of the boat where a small fire was kept burning, watchfully tended so it didn’t spread to the wooden ship. He touched the shoulder of the boatman who was sitting by the small fire. When he looked up Tim gave him the loose paper and nodded toward the fire.
There is so much to do, Tim thought, as he walked back to Meryt. I’m living and there is so much to do. Later, when I’ve stopped creating, stopped living; there will be time to remember.
Bata was a captive, but he was on an island in a land where there really was no place to hide. And so he roamed free, working on the temple grounds at Abu, waiting for King Djoser to arrive and decide his fate.
Three years ago he had become a member of Prince Teti’s guard, joining two other men none of them older than twenty-five, who traveled with the prince, trained with him, ate with him and hunted with him.
It was a good life. They traveled with Prince Teti up and down the river, standing guard by him during ceremonies; competing with him in races, and wrestling, and throwing spears; visiting the hundred temples along the river, and the thousand girls who longed to be close to the prince.
They had stood together along the riverbank, relieving themselves, contesting who could create the highest arch. They had emptied skins of wine and jars of beer, passing out on the floor and waking up wrenching out their guts, laughing at each other’s misery. They had been together with women, comparing their endurance and size.
They were friends, although they never forgot that Prince Teti was of royal blood.
They knew that as Prince Teti grew older and assumed more royal duties this time of wildness and adventure would end. They would grow old together, recalling their youth and laughing at the memories.
But now, now they were still young and wild, strong and fast.
Bata had no idea why he was being punished. They had been in the river, Prince Teti high on a rock when suddenly he fell, silently, arms unmoving. Bata could see it clearly, remembering it happening slowly, implacably. He had run toward the spot in the river where the prince was falling, but got there too late to catch him.
Fortunately the river was deeper there. The prince’s arm hit a rock, Bata could hear the sickening snap as the bone broke, but his head and the rest of his body landed in open water. Bata had run to Prince Teti and lifted him up, careful to avoid the mangled arm, holding the prince’s head above water.
Before he could even shout for help, Nesi had appeared, splashing from behind the boulder from which Prince Teti fell. Bata had looked to Nesi for help, but suddenly his friend was yelling, calling out that Bata was trying to kill Teti.
How could such a thing happen?
And so Bata waited at Abu, waited for King Djoser to judge him. Waited and wondered why Nesi had accused him,
He was cutting papyrus stalks along the water’s edge when he saw Sekhmire coming toward him, accompanied by a tall, thin man who wore a pleated white kilt and a wide, beaded necklace. When he got closer, Bata recognized the necklace as menat, sign of a healer.
Bata straightened up, tossed another stalk on the growing pile on the riverbank and stepped out of the soft mud. In his right hand he held a wide knife used to hack at the fibrous stems.
Sekhmire ignored the weapon.
“Bata,” he said, he voice friendlier than Bata expected. “This is Imhotep, adviser to King Djoser. He wants to talk to you.”
“Hello, Bata,” Imhotep said, his accent strangely flat, the words said clearly and sharply as if he paid great attention to each sound.
Bata nodded. “Yes, lord,” he said, guessing at the proper greeting from the menat around Imhotep’s neck. He wondered where Kanakht was, wasn’t he adviser to the king? Or did the king have several advisers. Bata shrugged away the questions and asked Imhotep, “What can I tell you?”
Imhotep motioned toward a nearby tree.
�
��Come to the shade,” he said.
Under the tree, Imhotep sat and motioned for Bata to sit with him. Sekhmire stood, leaning against the tree, listening and watching.
“Tell me about Prince Teti’s accident: the speed of the water, the wind, the sounds, where everyone stood, the color of the stones, what you talked about before the accident. Start when all of you were together on the shore and then tell me everything that happened.”
As Bata told the story, Imhotep interrupted to clarify an unclear statement, to have Bata explain again how deep the water was, how much flotsam was in the water, what color the rocks were. His idea was to have Bata relate every detail, especially those that did not matter so that only the truth would fit the weave of the story.
With Imhotep asking questions about everything, Bata gave up trying to guess what was important. He closed his eyes and saw the day again, felt the cold water around his ankles and then his knees. He remembered Teti falling limply and silently toward the water, and he told Imhotep everything.
“Either Prince Teti fell asleep while he was standing on top of that boulder or Nesi threw a rock at him and knocked him unconscious,” Tim told Meryt later that day.
“That’s what you thought when you examined him at Waset,” she said.
Tim nodded and bent down to pick up a stone along the river’s bank. He bounced it in his hand a few times, and then threw it out into the river. He picked up another and threw it again, harder and farther.
“What is wrong?” Meryt asked him.
He turned to her, his mouth pulled into a frown, his eyes angry. “I don’t have proof,” he said. “I can’t accuse Nesi of trying to kill Prince Teti without proof. I know he did it. I’m positive. But I can’t prove it.”
Meryt looked confused.
“I don’t understand, Tim. Why would you have to prove it? If you know he did, then that is enough. King Djoser will believe you.”
Tim stopped walking and looked at her. “That’s true,” he said. He thought about what that meant. Because Hetephernebti had taken an interest in him, because he had successfully reduced the swelling of Prince Teti’s arm leading King Djoser to add him to his court, Tim’s, or rather Imhotep’s word carried the weight of authority.
If he accused someone, they would be guilty. If he defended them, then they were innocent. Was justice here simply a matter of which person was more important? Was influence the coin of truth?
He thought of the world he had left behind with local, state and federal police; with district judges, county courts, state courts and federal courts; with courts for criminal cases and others for civil cases; lawyers who specialized in drunk driving cases, in suing other people, in criminal defense, in bankruptcy suits.
It was a huge system with so many layers, so many checks and balances - appeals, sequestered juries, rules of evidence, written records, highly trained professionals to handle every aspect.
Yet when he thought of cases that he knew about, none of them seemed to lead to justice: a famous football player walks away from a double murder charge despite blood stains and everything but a confession, a basketball player rapes a girl and his lawyers frightened her away from testifying, a retarded boy is tricked into admitting a murder he didn’t commit so police can close a case, businessmen steal life savings of their employees and never go to jail, a politician runs over a man and kills him, lies about it and spends less time in jail than a shoplifter.
The rich could afford the best lawyers and so they could do what they pleased without fear of punishment. A poor man who stole a thousand dollars with a gun would go to prison for twenty years. A wealthy man who stole millions through fraud would delay and exhaust the court system while living like a king.
A leader could send an army against another country, send a thousand soldiers to their deaths without fear of being made to answer. Another could steal his country’s wealth and live a life beyond dreams while his subjects lived in squalor, and still be honored because of his self-awarded titles and stolen wealth.
Justice has always been a tool of the wealthy and powerful, he thought. The Crusades, the Inquisition, the European conquest of North and South America - the victors wrote the history of large events, why would I think it was different for the small, daily confrontations.
Is this system less just?
If I lie to King Djoser and he discovers the lie, I will be punished because he can no longer trust me. His advisers are close to him and he must trust them. Because he depends on those around him, even if no law applies to him, he must be faithful to them and expect loyalty in return.
‘To live outside the law, you must be honest,’ he thought, recalling a line from a Bob Dylan song.
With a start, Tim realized that he was still walking along the riverbank, but now the water was flowing the other direction, he must have walked around the end of the island and was heading up the other side. He looked around to get his bearings and saw Meryt kneeling by the water’s edge. Her small, bare back was to him, the sun lying across the water backlit her, creating a glowing aura.
She felt him watching her and stood, turning to him and smiling. Her hands were filled with wet stones.
She walked to him, her thin arms and legs looking too long for her, her hipbones jutting out from her flat stomach, her breasts small and tight on her bare chest.
The change from his dark musings about injustice to her innocent beauty was breath taking. He felt a warmth swell from his chest, almost like a blush, but filled with joy instead of embarrassment or guilt.
He felt like laughing, like singing. All the sounds and colors and fragrances of the world suddenly seemed exactly right, precisely as they should be and he felt as if every cell in his body, every nerve, every muscle and fiber was attuned to the beauty of the world and that beauty was centered on the coltish girl who was walking toward him, with her muddy feet, dripping wet hands and flashing brown eyes.
“Some of these stones are so smooth and others are jagged. They look the same color and they are speckled the same. Why would they be so different?” she asked, looking at the stones in her hands.
His throat was so swollen with desire he could hardly speak.
She looked up and saw his eyes taking her in, saw the smile playing at his mouth.
“I thought you were thinking about Bata and Nesi and Prince Teti,” she said.
Tim reached for her, his hands caressing her shoulders and back, gently pulling her toward him. She dropped the stones and wrapped her arms around him. Tilting his head down to hers, he kissed her, softly brushing against her cheeks, moving toward her lips.
She turned her face toward his and returned his kiss. After a minute, he broke away and turned to look inland. There was nothing but rocks and sand at this end of the island. He felt her arm wrapped around his waist pull on him, urging him to turn the other way. When he did, he saw only the river.
He felt her fingers playing with the tie of his kilt and then it fell free. She took his hand and smiling up at him, she said, “Come on.” She pulled him toward the water, picking up speed as he joined her until they were running across the river’s beach.
They splashed into the water, feeling the soft riverbed beneath them. She led him into the water until it was waist deep, then she stopped and turned to him. Bending down she washed away the grit that was on her hands from gathering stones. Cupping her hands, she raised some of the water to his chest and splashed it on him, then rubbed her hands across his wet skin, feeling the firm muscle beneath and the hard line of his sternum.
Tim leaned forward and kissed her, running his hands down her side and then lifting her. She understood what he wanted to do and let the water support her, wrapping her legs around his waist as he raised her and then slowly lowered her.
She gasped as he entered her and then settled on him, holding him tight with her arms and legs as they kissed. They stood unmoving, feeling the water lap against them, feeling their skin on each other, the sun on their backs, the l
ight breeze that followed the river’s current brushing against them.
Meryt cupped her hands behind Tim’s neck and leaned away from him, arching her back and pushing deeper onto him. Her eyes were closed, her attention focused on the sensation of being joined with him.
Feeling her energy, Tim saw how immersed she was in the moment. White sunlight danced on the river’s ripples. The air gathered and held the light, shimmering with urgency. The colors of the sand, the water, the sky, Meryt’s skin, her eyes, the soft underside of her throat all grew richer and purer. He heard the distant cry of a hawk and suddenly sensed himself expanding outside his physical body, his spirit pushing through and soaring and growing, encompassing both of them, spreading across the river and the land, up through the dry desert air and into the sky itself.
He had a glimpse of the timeless procession of the sun across the sky, an endless march of kings and commoners across the unchanging land of Kemet and he felt again that rightness of being here, of being here now, of being here with Meryt.
Afterward, spent and barely able to walk, but energized and filled with the wonder of the pleasure they had given each other, he spread his white kilt on the muddy river bank for her, thinking of Sir Walter Raleigh’s grand gesture.
“No,” she said, laughing. “I want to feel the earth against my skin, not a dead cloth.”
He remembered the first time he had seen her, spreading the river’s mud over her body. He asked her about it. “I thought you were disguising yourself to go hunting or something,” he said. They sat naked together on the ground, their bodies wet and glistening from the river.
He turned to face her and traced the soft line of her shoulder, down her chest and to the tip of her breast, watching the nipple grow hard. With the side of his thumb, he brushed lightly against her skin feeling the warmth, the smoothness and the vibrant thrill of their skin meeting.