ONE

Our way brought us back to the Pyramid of Khufu. It was hard to pretend I felt calm. My fear of all that was yet to come now lay on me like a slab of stone, and the sight of the Great Pyramid did not reduce my turmoil. With each of Menenhetet’s steps I felt more woe for he walked ahead of me with the quick pace of someone trying to escape a bad odor, and I remembered the grave robber who fled as I approached the door to my tomb. He had loathed my breath even as I had detested his—a sign the wretch was in another realm than my own. But if this were true, what conclusion should I draw about Menenhetet and myself?

Could he be my Khaibit? That was a thought to leave its echo! My Shadow? Who could be more at odds than the Khaibit and the Ka? The Ka might be one’s last poor means of continuing to exist, but it could not bear the weight of much memory. The Khaibit, however, knew all that had happened to you. So it could distort what the Ka did remember. An instrument for evil!

This conviction that Menenhetet was my Shadow came on me with such force that I was about to ask, “Are you the Khaibit of Menenhetet Two?” but did not from the fear that he would only confuse me further by some such remark as, “No, you are the Ka of Menenhetet One and I am the Khaibit.”

So I did not speak, and only continued to travel behind him at his quick rate. It must be said he moved like my guide, his white robe wrapped about him in disdain for casual contact with beggars or bats, yes, everything in his posture spoke of a servant who leads his guest, and will not suffer any distracting encounter. Even as we emerged from the Necropolis, a man was standing at the gate with his palm open, a beggar’s palm with no fingers. Not missing a stride, Menenhetet struck him a sharp slap on the arm to make it clear no approach would be tolerated. Indeed, the man flinched as we passed, and I realized I must look like a noble to him.

But then I had not contemplated my clothes until now. When had I first come to wear these clean white pleats, this jeweled breastplate? A memory returned of a promenade taken by the banks of the Nile, and multitudes bowing before me. The picture was so clear as for me to believe it, and my pleasure was not unlike the satisfaction I had just known before the respect of the beggar. Warmed by such tokens, my mood took a quick turn for the worse, however, so soon as I began to ponder my great-grandfather’s remarks about Horus and Set, for I had to suppose that Menenhetet, given the occasion, would try—put no fine word on it—to bugger me. The quiet arrogance of the old man that he could bring off such a feat was curious. I did not know whether to think of him as laughable. After all, the muscles of my hips spoke of pride—nothing was broken in my back. Even as we walked, I felt quietly of my arms and legs and was reassured. My means might be one-seventh of what once it had been, but I still did not see how that foul old man could be the first to take carnal ownership of me. I was remembering how my friends and myself used to think of ourselves as virgin to other men until some fellow was brave enough to grab us from the rear. Of course, once your body was broken into by another, that was a true turning. An aristocrat would allow himself to be used in such a way but once, as if, truth, we had one royal flower to offer. We were determined that no one we did not admire in every way could even begin our seduction. Some of us went on in such chastity for years. That could become a vice. One might grow into a spinster who has waited too long and so is vulnerable to any passing lout. The balance of Maat is in the choice.

Now I wondered if I had been one of those who waited too long. What a horror if Menenhetet One became the first. No, not conceivable, I thought, not as I watched him walk before me in a flapping old man’s step, his head covered against a chill although it was a warm night. Nonetheless, he did not move altogether like an old man.

I was uneasy. We were now near the foot of the Pyramid of Khufu, and as though my reluctance to go on was evident, Menenhetet came to rest and began to speak again, although I could hardly listen. His breath was so mingled with mine. I do not know what he sniffed in my throat, but I thought I had stepped into the scalding odor of urine. It was like a cave of bats—a fair guide to the corruptions of the Duad. Yet in the act of suffering his fumes, so was I delivered of the worst of them. His breath was now endurable, and not much worse than old garlic and old teeth.

“The common entrance to the Duad,” he said, as he shivered in the warm moonlight, “is far beyond the First Cataract—a long journey, and not the route for us. We will go in by way of a cave that can be found in the sky.”

I would never have understood this last remark if the Pyramid had not been there before us, but in the moonlight these limestone slopes were gleaming bright as marble, and their shadows looked dark as velvet. I remembered the chamber of Khufu in the center of this Great Pyramid. Was that a cave in the sky by which I had once been ready to enter the Duad, and by myself? Had I taken the wrong turning? But I had no taste for such questions.

Menenhetet was speaking, meanwhile, about matters so trivial I hardly listened. It was something about a Hebrew slave he had kept, and curious customs among the Hebrews. “They are demented,” said Menenhetet, “and happy to remain shepherds. They do best when talking to themselves in the hills. Nonetheless, I have observed that barbaric people, like beasts, live closer than we do to their Gods. As an example,” he said, and in truth his voice was calming the weakness of my body, “I remember the odd language of this Hebrew slave. At first I thought it a dialect spoken by an imbecile since he did not seem to have any notion of yesterday or tomorrow in anything he said. Yet he must have had a hundred words for cut, and used one for slicing reeds, another for meat, or fowl, and separate kinds of fruit, not to speak of chopping down a tree, or cutting off a hand, not stupid at all when you think that everything we cut has its spirit severed most abruptly. A good word does well to propitiate the pain. No, we would not,” mused Menenhetet, “wish to dispatch each of our enemies with the same cry. So, the variety of these words led me to study that shepherd’s language, and I began to see enigmas in his tongue. The Hebrews, I discovered, live with what is before them at every instant—their words reflect such a simple condition. ‘I eat,’ they say. Simple! But when they wish to speak of what is not before them now, why then you cannot tell (unless you know the trick of the language) whether they are speaking of what is past, or what is yet to come. It seems the same in the way they say it. They tell you, for example, ‘I ate,’ and you won’t know whether they have finished the meal or are going to eat in a while, not unless you listen so carefully as to realize they actually said, ‘And I ate.’ That means: they will eat. They know how peculiar time can be! And on their thick tongues! Conceive of it! How can we be certain that what we say we will do tomorrow has not in truth taken place yesterday, although we cannot quite remember since it was in a dream. So do not,” said Menenhetet, touching me gently by the shoulder, “feel too weak before what is to come. It could have happened to you already. Yes, dear son of my dear granddaughter, Hathfertiti, your terror may have more dignity than you know. It might belong to the remorse of your past rather than tell you of some unendurable torture to come.”

Then, indeed, I felt relief. His long speech had managed to calm me, and again I felt something like good feeling for the old man at this unexpected turn of kindness.

Now, as the moon passed over the peak of the Pyramid of Khufu, Menenhetet raised his hand delicately, and I gasped at the beauty of that white light which came down upon us from the triangular slope.

Menenhetet spoke in the quietest voice, as if the smallest quiver of his throat might distort the purity of the light: “This divine Pyramid,” he whispered, “is the exact equal of the First Hill that Temu brought up from the Celestial Waters. So it is the tomb to contain all other tombs. By entry into this Pyramid, you will descend into the currents of the Duad.”

And as I looked at the great slope before us, smooth as a sheet of papyrus in the moonlight and large to my eyes as the expanses of the desert, so did I wonder how we might ever enter. The joinings of each great block of limestone must be narrower than the space between two fingers when squeezed together. But I had not long to wait. Menenhetet walked the last hundred steps to the base, and there he threw back his head and uttered a cry I had never heard before, not the long warble of a bird nor any mysterious grunt out of a beast, but a voice as shrill in its center as the piping of a bat, and a slab of stone on the slope above us revolved in its socket like a door.

“It is time,” he said to me, and began with surprising nimbleness to mount the slope. I followed, expecting my breath to be locked with anguish; yet, I felt no fear. But then a child knows less awe before the rising of the sun than does a man. Was I entering at the moment when death could feel most natural to me? I know that as we went through the opening into the Pyramid, a change came upon the air. If I had been blind, my ears would have told me that I was passing into another domain. I listened to a delicate silence, close to the unheard quivering of a small bird’s wings. The hush of every temple was in the weight of this silence, and the lost echo of each animal sacrificed on the altar stone. I knew again the haze that rises from the dying beast, the drip of its blood bringing peace to the same air that has just been stricken by the murder of the animal. If we had wounded the stone by our entrance, the echo of our footsteps in these vaults would quiet all disorder.

Down we went along a promenade in the dark, down some low tunnel that made us stoop, and before us was the scuttling of rats, and a scattering of insects, while bats flew so near I all but heard the menace of their brain.

Yet these disturbances also ceased. There came, as we walked, a sense of calm heavy as the oily swell of the Nile on the flood, and I began to have an expectation of larger space opening before me, and, indeed, in the next ten steps, we entered a tall and narrow gallery. By the pipings of the bats, I supposed its ceiling must have been thirty feet above, and the gallery was dark. All the same, I could feel light about me. I did not see a thing, but the interior of my mind was so full of light I could recall how, on a given day in my childhood, I had passed once down the Nile with my parents in a barge under a sky of sunlight so brilliant that my thoughts felt exposed to the sun, as if all of me was in a golden barge afloat in a golden light. My father and mother were taking me to visit the Pharaoh, and I was so alive with the pleasure of my limbs that I even remember the color of saffron in the gown I wore. On that morning there would be sights to disrupt the eye and savage your nose—the corpse of a dog was rotting on the riverbank—but the day was begun in splendor, and each push of the boatman’s pole restored my calm even as the sound of our steps in the tunnel now overcame the rustlings of the insects and the bats.

At this moment, Menenhetet took my hand, and I noticed that my great-grandfather’s breath was perfumed; the air he exhaled from his lungs must share the intoxication of my interior light. Some of the calm of that morning remained in the warmth of his palm as if we were sharing the loyalty of family flesh, but soon, given the narrowness of the passage which made walking side by side awkward, he had to withdraw his hand. As I went on in this darkness, bathed in light behind my eyes, I seemed to pass through vales of heat and cold, the air collecting in chill pods like the void of a tomb; yet another five steps, and I was back in the balmy Egyptian night breathing the warm perfume I had first taken in on my great-grandfather’s breath, a scent that did not seem to come from him so much as from the stone itself, until I began to feel as if we were not on our way up a steep narrow ramp so much as winding our passage from tent to tent or a mysterious bazaar, and in each tent lived a presence pure to itself. One had only to offer attention, and into one’s thoughts wisdom would seep as naturally as the infusion of an herb in water will set free its essence. Within the intoxication of this light, and the gatherings of aroma, I began to feel as if I did not move with my body, but glided along in a bark. I could still reach out an arm on either side, and the walls of the gallery were there to touch, yet I felt closer to the Nile on that one golden day I could remember of my boyhood, or, rather, as if much confused, like the Hebrew who could not separate what was to come from all that he might dream, I felt as if the river was washing along the floor, and the walls were riverbanks, and I was on the Nile once more, even as on that day of brilliant sunlight I had rested on cushions of a yellow cloth brighter than the saffron of my garment. A silver filigree in the cushion still tickled intimately against my seat, so that, unseen by my parents, I was trying to rub the tender skin of my cheeks against those tendrils of silver thread—a sweet pleasure, for I was no more than six.

My parents were speaking. What they said left their lips with many a twist (since now I remember how deceitful they were often to one another) and the curve of their words must have traveled with us on the serpentine of the Nile awash in golden light upon the brown waters of the river, and we passed by green and mud-gold banks, even the gold inlay on the cedar wood of the fine seats of our barge still journeyed with me in the curve of their words and my mother was speaking, I remember, of a sacred bull (and I was hearing her voice even now as I stood with my hands on the wall of this stone gallery as near to me as a palm tree one could reach on the bank) and her voice was no ordinary voice, but full of the command of every sensuous instinct, deep as the voice of a man but full of tender and mysterious resonance. She had only to hum a note with that voice, say no more than “The crook and the flail of the Pharaoh Ptah-nem-hotep,” and my belly felt as dusky as the colors of a dark rose.

My father rarely replied to what she said. Speech between himself and my mother was not their common practice, and they were now together for excellent but separate reasons—they were each paying a call on this same Ptah-nem-hotep, our own Ramses Nine, my father on a trip that took place nearly every day, and my mother on a rare visit, although I did not know as I thought of it now why she did not, given her beauty, visit with the Pharaoh more often. But the cynicism of this thought—so far from the understanding of a boy of six—proved enough to dispel the memory. My mind was brought back to our ascent up the gallery, and I ceased to live on that morning and no longer floated within it.

Menenhetet now led me to an alcove by one of the walls. Since I still felt, in some measure, the sensation of being on a boat, it was not unlike floating into a harbor on a dark night. The presence of light in my body was certainly gone. Then I gave an exclamation. In front of me was water at the level of my waist. I could see a star within this water—had the floor become my sky? I felt a clear thrill as if I were falling into depths yet would never smash; the thrill ceased, and I realized I was looking into a large bowl of water, and the star was a reflection. The heavens were beyond, still beyond!—Menenhetet had only led me to a place in the Pyramid where a shaft came down to us at a sharp angle from the sky. When I now peered upward I could see the star in the aperture at the top. Even as I looked, it moved away from the center. In the interval I had studied it, this star had traveled enough to shift its position a palm’s width in the water. How remarkable that Menenhetet could lead me to the reflection at the instant its light lived in the center of the bowl.

“That star has not been seen in this place for three hundred and seventy-two years,” he told me now. “We have a night for wonders between us all,” and for some reason this pious thought put a stimulation on my loins, and a curl of the happiest anticipation commenced at the root of my spine and curled upward like incense. An incantation came to me, from where, I do not know, but I said aloud: “The Pharaoh takes the blood of His beloved, and He plants therewith by the light of the sun.

“What grows from the earth,” I heard myself say, “is the blessed plant of papyrus, and beneath the hands of men it becomes a field for scribes. And they plant their messages on this field. All the plants of the papyrus dwell in the clamor of all the writings that will ride upon that field like chariots, yet the field remembers a riverbank and every bud is like the lips of a mouth and every leaf a tongue of honey.”

I saw the Nile again, and the heats were rising off the indolence of the river.

This incantation, out of impulses as curious as I had ever known, for I had never heard the words before, produced a power sufficient to draw back into me the golden light of the Nile. Then I said, “Papyrus is a plant abhorred by crocodiles,” and had one moment of childish joy merry as the desire long ago to sprinkle flowers with the golden waters of my urine, and clear as that day, I also saw the flutter of a tiny spurwing as she nibbled at river worms embedded in the mouth of a crocodile, yes, saw that armored beast on the muddy banks, its mouth open in good-humored languor at the cleaning of its teeth by the spurwing, an improbable couple, but domesticity was in the fanning of her wings and the sleepy grunts of the great lizard. Some boatmen were singing on the Nile, “Oh, papyrus is a plant abhorred by crocodiles,” and nodded as they rowed upstream. Our boatmen, reduced by the heat to no more than a breechcloth to cover the purse of their penis and testicles, pushed against the long poles guiding us downstream, and the marvelous tickling in the skin of my seat began again, and I, in my turn, pushed against the silver filigree of the cushion. “Mud,” said my mother then, “is in my nostrils and my pores,” and she turned the fine curve of her nostril to the sight of a chariot, a horse, and a rider galloping in the heat of the day and in the dust of the road beside the riverbank, and I had then, as a child of six, even while full of delight at the passing of the charioteer, a clear glimpse forward into myself at twenty-one, as if I was not only the child but could see the life I was yet to live.

As I stared at that star which hovered in the mirror of the water, the sentiment became so real that the past came back to me as if I were truly six, and yet could see myself at twenty-one, and I was again with that priest at his sister’s house and saw a view of the Nile from her window and heard the sounds of river water stroking the bank even as the body of the priest gave intent slaps against her flesh.

I, next to Menenhetet, looking down through the darkness at the star, was overcome with the force of two such memories, myself at six, myself at twenty-one, and felt faint. It was then that my great-grandfather took my hand again. A vine grew foliage in my belly, curled along my limbs, and flowed out of my hand into the knuckles and thumb of Menenhetet, and my mind turned back to that gilded barge that drew my mother, my father, and myself down the Nile so that I understood at last why our Egyptian word for the eye is most certainly the same as our word for love and both are identical to our word for tomb. Whether love or the depth of mood which arose from such a tomb, the sensation that came from his fingers was certainly carrying me along the river, and belonged more to the brilliance of that long-departed day than to this niche off a pitch-black gallery in the depths of the Pyramid of Khufu.

Then, with a twist to my memory as simple as pulling a lemon from a tree, so did I discover that Menenhetet was on the barge, and that was most certainly at odds with what I could remember. Yet I had only to give up the feeling—it was no longer a certainty—that Menenhetet had died in the year before I was born, and he was, yes, on the boat, and speaking to my mother. If I had seen the barge at first with my father and mother next to me, and with clarity more vivid than a temple painting, now I saw Menenhetet as well. He, too, sat beside me and his hair showed the silver of a virile maturity while the lines on his face had not yet become a myriad of wrinkles, terraces, and webs, but exhibited, instead, that look of character supported by triumph which comes to powerful men when they are sixty and still strong.

Yet to see him with us was to give me as well some confusion as to where we were on the river. I knew we were on our way to visit the Pharaoh but now I could not understand why we did not travel up the river when my parents’ villa had its grounds located a long walk downstream from the Palace. Yet now we were going with the current, no sails set, and no oarsmen at work.

There was only the boatman we called Stinking Body at the bow with his long pole to fend us off the bars, and Head-on-Backwards at the helm (that Head-on-Backwards who was also called Eater-of-Shadows for whenever we sailed upstream to the south, the tiller was in the shade of the sail). But now we were drifting down into the brunt of that prevailing breeze that came up out of the Delta, a wind strong enough to let us sail without oars upstream against the current. Today, however, we drifted down, lazily, NehaHau in the bow and Unem-Khaibitu, the Eater-of-Shadows, in the stern, while the rest of the crew—Bone-Smasher, White-Teeth, Eater-of-Blood and He-of-the-Nose—a tremendous nose—were lolling against the gunwales, an easy day for them.

I was thinking that boatmen had ugly faces when at rest. If obliged to row upstream under the worst of conditions (when the river was in flood and they were working too hard to sing in unison) then the sound of their breath came close to the anguish of weeping, and they had the maniacal expression of horses in a frightened gallop, such an intensity of expression, such torture in the effort, that they could not be wholly ugly. At rest, however, their faces usually looked swollen. Nobody knew why rivermen when ashore were always in more fights than any other kind of laborer in Memphi, unless it was that they drank more beer, but it was true. Most of them had faces which looked as if a lion had been chewing on their cheeks. Besides, there was the whip. That was forever laying the welt of new scars over the old ones on their shoulders. Now and again it flicked around their neck to reach their face. As a result, half the boatmen were blind in an eye. (If blinded in both, they went to other labor.)

Set-Qesu, the head boatman, not named Bone-Smasher for too little, was the one to apply the whip. When the winds were strong, my great-grandfather would on occasion take the lash. He could make the tip dance, crack it around a man’s waist and flick his navel, or if an oarsman ever stopped to scratch himself, sting the boatman’s armpit with such precision that a few hairs would fly off. Unfortunately, there was every reason to scratch. Where was the boatman without his lice?

That bothered my mother considerably. She had a detestation of body-insects so intense that she could lose her composure at mention of them. While this was hardly an unusual attitude for a young matron of Memphi (since many in their fear of infestations would crop their heads and wear wigs for every public appearance) my mother was proud of her hair. It was vigorous and dark, and had a wave that curled with the sinuosity of the snake. So she preferred to keep it long and live in fear of head-lice. Indeed, there had been an episode just the night before. But now as I recollected, so was it also clear why we did not row upstream toward the Pharaoh’s Palace, but rather drifted down. My mother, my father, and I had spent last night with Menenhetet who lived up the river south of Memphi in a great house one hundred paces in width, an equal number in depth, and three stories high. It was said he had fifty rooms, and I knew he had a roof garden with awnings made of the material of tents, for there was a view from that roof at evening when the sun filled the river with a million red and dancing fish, and the desert to the east turned to indigo, even as the sandstone hills to the west became pink and carmine and orange and glowing gold, like the blood-fire of an oven as the sun went into the hills.

My great-grandfather spoke to me at that moment—a rare occasion. I was used to relatives and servants recognizing that I was not an ordinary child, indeed I could even feel again the sweet purity of the admiration I used to evoke in men and women to whom I spoke, for they were usually delighting in how adult I was for six. Menenhetet, however, had never indicated I was of any interest to him. Yet, now, he put a hand on my waist and drew me forward.

“Have you looked at the colors on the palette of the scribe?”

I nodded. “They are black and red.” When I saw the light in his eye, I added, “They are like the sky at evening and the sky at night.”

“Yes,” he said, “that is one reason they are black and red. Can you give me another?”

“Our deserts are red, but the best earth is black once the flood has passed.”

“Excellent. Can you offer another reason?”

“I can think of none.”

He took out a small jeweled knife and put the point to my finger. A drop of blood came forth. I would have cried out, but something in his expression kept me still. “That is the first color to remember,” he told me, “just as black is the last.” He said no more, merely patted me, and left, but, later, I heard him chatting with Hathfertiti and he mentioned my name. I could tell by my mother’s low sensual laugh that his words were kind. She always took physical pleasure in a good reference to me as though her own body were being admired, and if I happened to be in her sight, a musk of affection would come from her. Under that loving look, my body felt bathed in flowers. I had learned to gather such love as if it were a perfume equal to the breath of recollection. Nothing was more beautiful to me as a child than this power of memory. Fortified by the pleasure my mother took in me, each sight I recollected came back with luster. I could look at the red hills across the river on this sunset and have dreams of the wonders of the desert as I fell asleep, and the silver water of an oasis.

Tonight, since there was almost no wind, the torches at the corners of the roof were lit and a servant stood by each torch with a pot of water. That was my great-grandfather taking his enjoyment of the fire in face of the ever-present danger of the servant falling asleep and a wind springing up. Every few years a great wooden house would burn that way. On the consequence, the torches were a luxury: one needed good servants to guard such fires. Of course, the torches did give a light that was more exciting than our candles.

By one of the torches, a woman was dancing. She moved with slow undulations of her body as lascivious as the curve of Hathfertiti’s hair, and the sistrum with its singing wires was played by a dwarf wearing nothing but a gold purse and a few bracelets on his stunted biceps. He played with a tiny man’s frenzy and her hips quivered to the sound he made.

In fact, Menenhetet’s little orchestra brought a stir to the guests when they appeared. The harper, the cymbal player, the piper, and the drummer were all dwarfs, no taller than myself, and all exceptionally skillful except for the one who played the harp since his arms were too short and therefore left his longer runs full of peril.

They also spoke in strange languages, being descended from prisoners captured in old wars with the Kings of Arvad, Carchemish, and Egerath, and their voices together with their little faces roused a stir of applause or everything they played. It was all received with exaggerations of attention from Menenhetet’s guests, who were priests and judges, rich merchants and neighboring nobles from the best temples and good society of the land just south of Memphi, prosperous people certainly, but not so prosperous that they did not feel honored to be asked to my great-grandfather’s house and honored again by being invited up to his roof garden, although I heard a few murmur in disappointment this night that the most illustrious guests were not so celebrated as expected, and no one, but for my father, was a high official from the Palace.

All the same, Menenhetet’s reputation was renowned from the Delta to the First Cataract. Even my nurse used to giggle lasciviously at the mention of his name, and the gossip I heard among the guests (for I was considered too young to comprehend their jokes) concerned which women had already had an affair with Menenhetet as opposed to those he was considering. It must have been a disappointing evening for the wives (and a relief to more than one husband) that he spent most of his time sitting next to my mother. I stayed away. Sometimes, when they were near one another, I could feel a force so powerful I would not dare to walk between them, as if to interrupt their mood could strike you to the ground.

This evening, Menenhetet did not leave her side. They sat unmoving through the music. My father could hardly decide where to go. Sitting near them, he was not given much for his attempts at conversation, and when, on the confidence of his own fine features, he proceeded to charm one wife or another, the attempt soon ran out. For nothing came back to him from Hathfertiti—she sat side by side with Menenhetet in a silence that spoke of their attention for one another. Hathfertiti held a tuft of black hair in her fingers, and with it she stroked the black curls of her head. The tuft, taken from the tail of a sacred bull, prevented the onset of gray hair, and my mother continued this ritual with self-absorption, as if these intent caresses to herself would increase her inestimable value.

After the music was done, a few guests began to leave. Here, anyone could have recognized how immense was the reputation of my great-grandfather since he did not even speak to them as they approached his chair, knelt, and touched their foreheads to the floor. Only a Pharaoh, a Vizier, a High Priest, or one of the most honored Generals of the nation would act in such a fashion. Indeed, Menenhetet presented his indifference to the departure of his guests with such a natural concentration upon his own thoughts, so equal in gravity to Hathfertiti’s immersion in the stroking of the bull’s hair upon her head, that the guests moved away without a sign, and yet were not displeased, but rather, looked honored that they had been allowed to stand before him, as if now they could hear the echo of his great feats in the boredom he showed in the presence of those he had invited. Standing in silence before his silence, so they could feel steeped in tales of his wickedness and knowledge of magic, and indeed these feelings came over them with such power that it left me feeling most alive until I could as well have existed in two abodes of time. I was not only standing in a corner of the roof garden near the slaves who guarded the torches, but was returned as well to the black alcove in the Pyramid with the light of the star on the water, able to know from this memory of childhood that my guide for the Land of the Dead had been a man of great esteem when he was among the living. And learning this, I was carried along on that stream of sensation which came to my hand from his bent fingers, and leaned forward, and to my great surprise gave him a kiss, there in the darkness, on his withered lips.

They opened like the dirty skin of an apricot Just pulled from a dusty tree, and I felt the ripe warm flesh of a mouth so rich with sensuous promise that the kiss even lingered on the air after I drew back, and by that movement must have turned in my mind to Menenhetet and my mother sitting together on the roof garden in carnal silence.

I do not know how long it was before they were alone, but now the guests were gone, and my father had departed as well—where to, seemed hardly to my mother’s concern—and even I was gone so far as anyone might know, for I had wandered to the other side of the roof, and, in fascination, was looking down on the last of the guests strolling through the avenue of flowers in the long garden below. The moon had risen and by its light the water in the wading pool was so brilliant that I could nearly see the captive fish. The servants of Menenhetet had searched the marshes and swamps with their nets that afternoon to find the most brilliant examples of the sun and the moon in gold and silver fingerlings.

My great-grandfather’s gardens were much talked about in Memphi. But for the estates of the Pharaoh, there may not have been another superior to it. The pool was renowned for the work of the craftsmen who had laid out decorations in tile that looked like flowers but were composed of rare stones—garnet and amethyst, carnelian, turquoise, lapis-lazuli and onyx were some. I knew their value when the servants who guarded the pool looked back at me with the eyes of falcons: they were responsible that none of the gems came loose from their setting or were stolen. Such a loss would have been worth one of their hands.

In fact, there were white wooden posts in the fields of vegetables beyond the avenue of flowers, and you could find more than one withered hand nailed to a post, or even showing the white of the bone next to the white of the post. They made an atrocious sight at the head of these fields of wheat and barley and lentils, these plots of onions and garlic, cucumber and watermelon, but the fields prospered. There was a gaiety in the fields like the prosperity of Gods, as if the marrow of merriment came up from divine bellies, up through the earth.

That afternoon I had wandered past the lanes and arbors of my great-grandfather down to the ferns and eel-ridden marshes at the rear of his lands. His high ground was an island now in the flood, and the marshes looked like lakes with no trail through them, so I came back by way of the vineyards and picked the grapes and wandered through arbors of oranges and figs, past lemon trees and olive trees, acacia and sycamore, and ate a pomegranate and spit out the seeds still thinking of the dry bloodied hand nailed to the post and wanted to splash in the pool again and piss my own water onto the gold and silver fish—excitement came to me at the thought they would drink my offering. Or did such excitement rise from the barnyard cries of sheep and goats that came to me like the groaning of a stone hinge in a large door? It was a sound to match the heat of the day and the fermentation of food, and it gave pleasure to my thighs. I lived in moldering smells on a slow and heavy wind from the livestock sheds, an unpleasant odor and yet not all unpleasant. I felt drawn by the heat in this afternoon to a full taste of the feast beneath my feet—as if the Gods, now merry, were at a banquet in the earth below. Even the braying of the donkeys and the cries of the hens became part of this heavy marrow of the air. Later in the night, watching my mother and Menenhetet on the roof, there was less mystery to me at the force between them. Indeed those buddings I had felt in my heart and my thighs had all come together this afternoon and I had felt my first transformation that was like the Gods’. For in that hour, wandering down the avenue of flowers, such was the magic in the groupings of geranium and violet, of dahlias, irises, and wondrous flowers whose names I did not know, all burgeoning like a garden in me, that I was overpowered at last by the smell of flowers. As I breathed their perfume, so did other flowers open petals in my flesh, and a green stem rose from the center of my hips to my navel. I was inhaling musk into my heart and the power of the earth rose up once in my belly, and fell back again like another body coming alive within my body, and rose once more, and I was wet all over and in some river rich and white, like a cream in the heat, and did not know where the blooms of these flowers ended, and I began.

Now, as I looked over the gardens and saw the light of the moon on the pool, and the lanes that led to the servant and slave houses, saw the glow of fire to melt the pitch in the boat builder’s shop where workmen for some reason were still busy this night, as I looked on the very last of the guests sauntering down the lanes and disappearing in the turns of a clever maze, so I also knew what was now passing between my mother and her grandfather, and I shivered at the mad cry of a monkey who called out from his cage in a near-human if sadly demented voice. How the moon was shining. In the heat, it seemed as heavy as the earth beneath my toes this afternoon. A gazelle gave its small cry.

Some fear was arising in Hathfertiti, some gathering of apprehension she could not locate. Even as the monkey gave his cry at the oncoming shift in the air, I felt a bolt of terror fly from my mother to me just before she screamed. Not aware that I was near, her horror was pure in its panic—I do not think I had ever heard my mother scream before. Then she began to weep like a child. “Take it off. Take it off me,” she begged, and grasped Menenhetet’s hand, pulling his fingers to her head, while whimpering with fury at the unmistakable knowledge that something was certainly crawling in the luxuriant bush of her coiffure.

He found the louse in an instant, cracked it between his thumbnails in another, while Hathfertiti was racing her fingers through her hair, crying out with a frantic petulance, “Are there more? Will you look?”

He soothed her as if she were an animal in fright, stroking her hair like a mane, holding her chin, murmuring to her in a language of meaningless words so soft they could have served for the intimate babble a man gives his horse or his dog, and she calmed a little as he drew her to the light of a torch, ignoring the servants still there, one to each torch, standing unmoving through the night—no reason why Menenhetet would have hesitated to do anything in front of them, but now, by the flare of the torch, he searched her scalp and assured Hathfertiti it was clean. At last, she calmed and he led her back to their couch.

“Are you sure there was only one?” she asked.

He smiled. The wickedness of his smile was complete. Now Menenhetet kissed her, but so adroitly, with such a lingering intimation that she leaned toward him for another. “Not yet,” he told her and gave one more of his little smiles so that I could not know if he referred to the insects or the kiss. I felt again a bolt of terror spring from her to me. But then I was already frightened. I did not wish to listen to what they might say next. I knew it would be close to what I could hear on many a night in the voice of my nurse with either of her two friends, the Nubian slave who worked in the stables, and the Hebrew slave from the metal shops who sharpened the knives and the swords. One or the other was always with her in the room next to mine at night, and from there came the sounds of the barnyard and the birds’ cries of the marsh and the swamp. My nurse and her companion grunted each night like pigs or roared like lions, and sometimes they came forth with high whinnying sounds full of every muscle in their belly. Through all of my father’s estate would such cries come up in the night, the long sighs of one couple seeming to start the growl of another only to bring forth a third roaring with pleasure, thereby encouraging the animals to join with their barks and screams and lowing sounds.

Now, my mother stood up and would have left Menenhetet, but she looked instead into his eyes and their expressions were locked again. They did not speak, but the power of the attraction which had kept them looking into one another’s eyes for all of an evening was here again, as if each pressed with the power of his will against the other, and I felt ill. Except I was not sick so much as thrown about by two winds that came howling at that instant over all of my childhood, and I heard him say to her, although indeed I do not know if it was his voice that entered my ear or his thought (for just as some are deaf, so had they begun to say of me that I was the opposite of those who cannot hear since even what was unsaid could come into my mind). Whether he spoke it, therefore, or thought it only to himself, I certainly heard my great-grandfather say, “Your best opportunity with the Pharaoh is tomorrow.”

My mother replied, “What if I find what I want and you do not?”

“Then you must remain loyal to me,” said my great-grandfather.

I did not dare to look and it was just as well, since even as my eyes were closing, so did Menenhetet push my mother to her knees before his short white skirt. I felt the force of their thoughts like one chariot running full amok into another, and again I saw into his mind. She must have seen it too, for all strength broke in her, and she cried out. My great-grandfather said, “Set’s cock is in your mouth.”

I had a true sense of poison then, like a vindictiveness brooding in the intestines of the wind, and do not know if I swooned but I was living in darkness, not six, nor twelve, not twenty-one, nor even dead—was I dead?—but in the alcove off the grand gallery of the Pyramid, Menenhetet’s cock was certainly in my mouth. My jaws froze. I felt helpless in every muscle, and a rage at the core of my will. I had only to bite and he, too, would scream. I knew at that instant I was equal to my mother, and could not separate myself from her, could not say I was Menenhetet Two, the young and noble warrior, too soon dead, and feeling no fall from the heights of my own pride, for the mouth which sucked on him was not my own mouth but my mother’s in all the windings of her thought and the currents of her senses, and I knew the cock of Set as she knew it on the roof garden of my great-grandfather’s house above the banks of the Nile and his flesh was hot as the smelting pits of a sulphur mine to scorch the flesh of her palate. My mind resting in hers, so was my mouth living in her mouth, and I tasted a curse deep as the virulence in the seed of Set, and Menenhetet’s hand was still holding mine, while the fingers of his other hand clasped the back of my head. Through my mother’s ears I could hear the unspoken voice of my great-grandfather as he had spoken once to her while her mouth was engorged, and with a throbbing upon her face (my face) like the quivering of lightning in the heavy load of a murderous sky, so did something come up out of the bile of existence, some noxious marrow of the corruptions of the dead, and Menenhetet came forth into her mouth, so into my mouth, out of the loins of the dead Menenhetet, in the alcove of the Pyramid where I knelt so did his discharge come like a bolt and by the light of its flash I knew how he held her head on the garden of that roof, the iron of his last shuddering pulse dripping its salt onto the back of her tongue, and those thoughts passing from his head into hers, so was a cock withdrawn from my mouth in the dark, and I in the Land of the Dead began to feel a little happy expectation for what might be waiting next, even as Hathfertiti, lips bruised and perfumes turned by the onslaught of his carnal aroma, had a happiness nonetheless in her limbs and a scent of a rose in the finest folds of her meat since she, too, had an expectation now for the morning. On that thought, there still on my knees, I was transported with her, as by one breath of my mind, to the golden light of our trip downriver in all the splendid anticipation of an audience with our Pharaoh, Ramses Nine, while I dreamed of Him in all the morning effulgence of the Nile.