THREE

The longest courtyard I had ever seen was before us. If a grown man took a stone and hurled it as far as he could, picked up the Stone and hurled it again, he would not have reached the middle.

Nor was it a handsome place. There were no pools nor statues, and the road of paved stones down the middle by which the sedan-chair carriers brought us was no wider than would be needed for four chariots abreast. On either side, an open red-clay square stretched to the walls, and I remember my mother speaking of how the Pharaoh paraded thousands of troops on this hot ground. Then, even as I looked across the space, a portal opened in a low barracks at the other end of the courtyard, and a company of Sherdens in heavy blue capes marched out to practice maneuvers. In the other corner of the courtyard were armories, and storehouses and sentry boxes, and even a huge cauldron of soup on a great fire, the smell of its broth passing to us across the clay.

As if Menenhetet’s entrance had stirred activity, I could see targets of straw being set up against the wall to the side of the barracks, and archers were flexing their bows. A troop of chariots began to form and reform their lines. From four files of seven they would elongate into two files of fourteen, then wheeling, shift into two ranks of fourteen, then extend into one long and near-to-perfect line of twenty-eight chariots galloping on the instant across the field, no wheel ever more than a few fingers ahead of another. On a sharp cry, they came to a sudden stop, dust rolling off like a wave toward the river wall, and it may have been fortunate for their captain that the cloud did not come near us, since Hathfertiti turned with annoyance in her chair, and said to my great-grandfather, “Promise we do not stay here watching them.”

He shrugged, but I saw his eye reach to the captain of these charioteers across the distance of the parade ground, and in response, that man raised both forearms in salute, and came galloping toward us, the soldier by his side trying to maneuver his leather shield against imaginary arrows, a set of gestures that took up all his balance, while the captain of the charioteers, having wrapped his reins around his waist, was now turning the horses to left or right by leaning from side to side. Pressing backward, he would slow them; coming forward, he let them gallop, swaying his body to make the horses wheel, stop, turn, or charge, and if one could not foretell what his next maneuver would be, all were nonetheless smooth. Meanwhile, his arms free, he unsheathed his bow, and put an arrow in it. When the captain swept around us in a flourish, that gave my father a stir.

“Fool,” he shouted. To which Hathfertiti gave a chill laugh. “I think he’s charming,” she said.

“If the horse tripped, he could send the arrow in our direction,” said my father.

The captain, having circled away from us, returned in a leisurely trot, came to a halt, leaped out of his vehicle and touched his forehead to the dust. He and Menenhetet began to speak to each other in a strange language, strange as the language of the Sherdens I soon guessed, and after a minute or two—with a last phrase in Egyptian: “As you say, General”—the soldier raised his arm in salute, smiled at all of us, at my mother most particularly, remounted, and walked off slowly with his horse in order not to raise the dust.

“I told him I’d watch maneuvers later,” said my great-grandfather.

“Thank you,” said Hathfertiti.

Now we came to a smaller gate. A sentry let us through without a word. We had reached another courtyard.

“It is splendid how they use their reins,” said Hathfertiti.

“But it is our grandfather who developed the style,” said my father.

“Not really,” she exclaimed.

“Certainly,” said Menenhetet. “In the years before the Battle of Kadesh. That is why we triumphed on that day.”

He said this with such pleasure that my mother could not resist saying, “I thought Ramses the Second was the victor at Kadesh, not your charioteers.”

“The Pharaoh always wins the battle,” said Menenhetet.

We were passing through another courtyard, immense perhaps as the first, but I did not know how large since it was divided by walls of trees into more than a few courts and enclosures. Wading pools were surrounded by gardens. To our left was a brightly painted wooden building, and I could see women pass from time to time along its covered balcony on the second story, while a murmur of curious laughter came back to us from their sight of Hathfertiti. We were carried now to a white wooden wall on which were painted enormous portraits of a hawk, a scorpion, a bee, a lotus, and a papyrus plant, all so lifelike that I was afraid to pass through, indeed I trembled at the nearness of the scorpion.

We dismounted from the sedan chairs, and the bearers, after a nod from Menenhetet, gave a quick kiss to the seat (whose leather was marked with nothing less than the hieroglyph——which represents the Land of the Dead). My father, having handed the sedan-chair leader a copper utnu, and the officer at the door having recognized us—I could see by the look of relief on his face that he had been expecting his distinguished guest for half the morning—we passed with many a bow by the attendants into the green and verdant garden of the Pharaoh’s Court of Honor. There, trees with fruit I had never seen before grew at the edge of an oblong pool whose tiles were covered with gold.

“When these trees were young,” my mother whispered to me, “their feet were set in pots, and they were put on boats and carried across many a storm until they reached our land.”

“How does it look?” I asked, “where the river comes to the open waters?”

“There are more birds,” she said, “than you have ever seen.”

I was thinking of the squalling of those birds above that wet land, and how different they must be from the birds of this garden. Here, one flamingo had colors orange and pink and gold, and there was a black ibis, and plovers that raced from branch to branch showing feathers as brilliant as the tail of an ostrich. I remember when I was two, and still new to the thought of expressing myself, I had asked my mother why we put the heads of birds on so many of our Gods. (Having seen, long before I could read, how many of the sacred sticks our scribes drew on papyrus were of birds, I had assumed such hieroglyphs were given to us by the Gods as pictures of Themselves.) My mother had smiled then. “The child asks questions that bring peace to my mind,” she said, “I feel the feather when he speaks.” That was a reference to Maat I would understand only later—we had a saying that the edge of a feather was the closest you could come to touching the truth. Then, out of whatever composure my thought had given her, my mother said, “Birds are most respected—they fly.”

Fly they did, and in this grove, they whipped and laced from branch to branch, and seemed to dart in delight at the reflection of themselves in the gold tile of the pool where their colors flew along the shallow bottom like rainbow-colored fish, yet even in their gaiety that rollicked through the shade of these foreign trees, I could hear the distant echo of panic. The sounds of these birds were stranger to me than the grunts of animals hard at work, for in those, at least, I could hear the sound of the earth—I suppose I mean to speak of that unheard sound that connects one’s feet to the earth. Birds, however, always twittered of some unrest that was in the agitation of their flesh forever fearful of our ground, no, the earth was not a place where a bird could rest.

Nonetheless, this garden—after the glare of the courtyard—was a grove. Every smell of loam, and some I never smelled before, was in my nose, damp and mysterious as the cool I once discovered at the edge of a cave, and in this air, I felt the nearness of the Pharaoh. At the end of our walk, near to obscured by the foliage, was a small wooden villa painted in every bright color of the flowers of the garden, a peculiar building, on stilts perhaps, yet, like a house, built around all four sides of a patio, so that, walking beneath, we passed into deep shadow, then came out of the shadow to a place in the open center where the sun was shining.

I had always dreamed that the Pharaoh would rest on a throne at the end of a great hall, and visitors would approach by crawling forward on their knees, and indeed Menenhetet had told us how Ramses Two used to give vast audiences at festival time in the middle of an immense place in the old city of Thebes, but then, even as I was trying to think of how large that could have been—was it larger than where we had seen the charioteers at their drill?—we entered the patio and I felt the Pharaoh, or certainly felt His force as the sun blinded my eyes on our sudden emergence into its glare. A weight came down upon the back of my head heavy as the sun, and before I knew it, had me prostrating myself on the ground in the way I had been instructed, my hips in the air, my knees and face to the earth—was there a smell of incense to this sacred earth?—and had no idea whether it was a force from the Pharaoh on the balcony above that had laid me low, or only the hand of my father kneeling next to me on the one side and my mother on the other. In front of us, honored by his rank, Menenhetet had merely lowered himself to one knee.

In a moment, my mother and father rose with Menenhetet, their knees still to the ground, their arms extended—a position natural to my father (I could feel his happiness) and demeaning to my mother (I could sense now she detested it) but I, to my surprise, did not wish to move, as if, with mouth and nose pressed into the grit of the dirt, and my eyes not a finger’s width above, I felt the heavy peace of that great circle in which we revolve before we sleep. Not daring to look up at the Pharaoh (Who had, by His Presence, forced my mouth to kiss the ground) I did not know if the weight on my back still came from His eyes, the full heat of the sun, or both (and very much the same) since I had been told from the day I heard the name, Son of the Sun, that no man on earth was nearer to Ra than our Monarch, Si-Ra Ramses Ninth in all of His great titles: Nefer-Ka-Ra Setpenere Ramses Kham-uese Meriamon (for Ptah-nem-hotep was only the name of His boyhood by which old friends and high officials could call Him).

Then, I do not know whether I passed through vertigo or bliss, but circles of color vibrated right up from the earth into my eyes, and I felt another force summoning me to rise until I lifted my eyes high enough to look up to the balcony for the face of the Pharaoh.

He was seated between two columns, and leaned with His elbows upon a gold railing protected by a red embroidered cushion. I could see no more of His body than a collar of gold that covered His chest, and above was His great Double-Crown, high and full as two sails, and with the small jeweled body of a gold snake above His right eye. It was more like looking at a large shield than at a man, the tall white crown of the Pharaoh forming the upper arch, and His collar, the lower. Or, so I might have thought but for His beautiful face between. He had eyes that were very large, and the black lines of the cosmetic made them more prominent. As my mother had told me, His eyes were famous for change of color: now bright and clear as the sky, they would yet reflect the dark of a moonless night. He had a long sad nose, not at all like other noses. It was very thin, and His nostrils were narrow as a cat’s. As He turned His head I could see that the shape of this nose was curious, for the curve, by one view, gave to His elegant and aquiline face a fine scimitar, but from the other side, looked as mournful as a drop of water about to fall from a down-turned leaf. Beneath that narrow nose was a beautiful mouth, full and splendidly curved, and it lived in intimacy with the nose above, a most peculiar way to describe it, except it made me think of my nurse Eyaseyab standing next to me, since we did not look the least alike, and she was a slave, although I was never so comfortable as when I found myself with her, short fat Eyaseyab. As I looked at His mouth and nose, I could also see my nose against the thick skirt of Eyaseyab’s upper thigh, and recollected the smell of earth and fish and riverbank that came off her. That seemed kin to the care with which Ptah-nem-hotep’s narrow nostrils seemed to curl in the breath that came from His mouth, and I felt a strong desire to kiss Him. I wished to bury my sweet mouth—everyone assured me my mouth was sweet—on the lips of the Son of Ra, and this desire having come to me, gave permission to the next desire—and I saw myself straining at the tip of my toes to kiss the divine finger between the legs of the Pharaoh, an impulse I could hardly take in before my next thought was to do the same to my great-grandfather. There, beneath the spell of the Pharaoh’s nose, as bewitching to me as the powdered navel of my mother, I had a vision of myself in the future, and I was a young man in a dark room within a dark mountain, there on my knees before the Ka of my great-grandfather, and I do not know if all I now saw at the age of six was only a gift given back to me from the Ka of myself remembering, at last, a day of my life, or whether I was not, in truth, on the patio of Ptah-nem-hotep (for so I called Him at once in my heart as if we were old friends) and therefore I was more alive here than in my Ka on its knees at the tomb of Khufu. Then—as if I rose from a night of awful dreams into the day—I became certain I was alive and six years old when, still kneeling with my arms before me, I looked up again to the face of the Pharaoh, and He spoke in a clear and ringing voice of the most distinguished tones, indeed a voice—I most certainly heard it—that, phrase for phrase, was equal to my great-grandfather at teasing a truth with quiet mockery.

“Menenhetet,” said the Pharaoh, “can it be a small motive that encourages you to honor My invitation?”

“Matters of the greatest concern for myself would seem of small import to Your Majesty,” said Menenhetet in a voice that floated forth like a leaf laid on water.

“You could not have a small reason. Only a modest explanation,” said our Pharaoh, and pleased with this answer, added, “Rise, great Menenhetet. Take your family and join Me here.” He patted the cushion beside Him.

An attendant led us to a painted stairway, and from there it was ten steps to the balcony. Ptah-nem-hotep embraced my great-grandfather and kissed my mother on the cheek. She bowed and kissed His toe, but demurely, like a cat, and my father, solemnly—he was received solemnly—knelt and gave an embrace to the other toe. “Tell me the name of Hathfertiti’s son,” said Ptah-nem-hotep.

“It is Menenhetet the Second,” said Hathfertiti.

“Menenhetet-Ka,” said the Pharaoh. “An ogre’s name for a lovely face.” He looked at me carefully and gave an exclamation. “Only the beauty of Hathfertiti could give birth to so perfect a face.”

“Do not stand unmoving, my son,” said my father.

“Yes,” said Ptah-nem-hotep tenderly, “you had better kiss My foot.”

So I knelt, and saw that His toenails were painted blue, and His foot, when I kissed it, was perfumed, and like my mother’s scent, gave the odor of a dark red rose, or that I thought was the odor of His foot until I realized the floor had been washed in perfume. Kissing the space between the big toe and the next, my nose was pinched for an instant—the Pharaoh’s toes were fingering me—and I felt a flash of pain, not pain so much as a white light within my body, a light that must have come from the Pharaoh; its intensity made me feel like a flower plucked up from its roots—did a flower see this same white light? As if I lived again in more than one place at once, so did I know what it would be like to come forth into a woman, my flesh emblazoned in the white light of the God who came to meet me.

Much stimulated by this power of living in two houses, my tongue began to lick the crotch of the Pharaoh’s foot, and I came away with more than an odor of rose. The faintest smell of earth and river and fish, all kin to the smell between Eyaseyab’s thighs, was also there, and even a remote hint of the fierce manly odor of urine that could often reek from the height above Menenhetet’s knees. I even felt full of the same kind of bemusement I used to know when smelling my wet fingers after tickling a little saliva over Sweet Finger or my hips and my navel. Living in the pocket of these odors, I felt the power once more of the Pharaoh’s presence and understood, as if never before instructed, that the Pharaoh was indeed the nearest of men to the Gods, yet I also knew He was a man who smelled a little like a woman, and His smells were near my own.

I looked up, bowed my head, withdrew two steps upon my knees, and stood slowly. The Pharaoh did not take His eyes from me. “Your boy is extraordinary,” He said to Hathfertiti, “and has a sweet mouth. He will yet prove a scandal with his tongue.” Turning His look from myself to my great-grandfather in a movement just so full of the gravity of His mind as the change in mood of the sky when the sun is covered slowly by a cloud, He said to Menenhetet, “You will do well to increase every strength in this boy that sits below his mouth.”

“That may be the search of all men,” said my great-grandfather.

“For Pharaohs as well,” said Ptah-nem-hotep.

My great-grandfather responded with a most unexpected speech. “O You Who live in the night, yet shine upon us in the day; Who are wise as the earth and as the river; You of the Two Great Houses, intimate of Set and Horus, You Who speak to the living and the dead, ask of Your servant, Menenhetet, any small question he can attempt to answer, but do not ask him to ponder whether a Pharaoh has need of strength in those mysterious regions that lie above the thigh and beneath the navel.”

He said all this with such an absence of fear and such cold prowess that he separated himself from the pious sound of his praise. He had shown me once how a captured officer might hand over his sword while feeling contempt for the General to whom he surrendered—it was the only time he ever played such a game with me—and I was wondering if he showed contempt for the Pharaoh now by the words of his speech.

“Tell Me, lovely Hathfertiti,” said our Ramses Nine, “does he speak of Me in this fashion when I am not with you?”

“He lives,” said my mother, “for word of Your smile and mention of Your approval.”

“Tell Me, great General,” the Pharaoh went on, with only a shrug of His fine shoulder for Hathfertiti’s reply (which had been too quick) “is this the manner in which you once spoke to My great ancestor?”

Menenhetet bowed. “It was a young voice then. I have an old one now.”

“Besides, the ancestor was a great Pharaoh,” Ptah-nem-hotep said.

“The difference,” said Menenhetet, “between Ramses the Second and Ramses the Ninth is as the difference between Great Gods.”

“Of which Great Gods do you speak?”

“If I dare to name Them …”

“I give you permission.”

“Ramses the Second was called Horus-the-strong-bull-Who-loves-the-truth. Yet He would remind me more of the Great God Set.” Menenhetet took a pause for the effect of such boldness to be appreciated, and added, “Even as you, great Ninth of the Ramses, encourage me to invoke the presence of He Who is without compare, and is Osiris.”

Menenhetet had made a splendid remark. Ptah-nem-hotep gave a rich laugh, almost as rich in the sound of its pleasure as the amusement I would sometimes hear in my mother’s voice, and I wondered then if Ptah-nem-hotep could also groan with the same profundity of expression as Hathfertiti.

“They speak usually of Ptah, not Osiris,” He said. “I am most delighted you are here.” At an inclination of His head, servants brought cushions, and He beckoned for us to sit beside Him, even sharing the space on His own large cushion with my great-grandfather who, indeed, was embraced and kissed grudgingly on the mouth as soon as he sat down, after which Ptah-nem-hotep all but inquired of the taste left on His lips by a turn of tongue to the corner of His beautiful mouth. The Pharaoh, now inclining Himself to Hathfertiti, said, “While the servants anoint us, I will go on with this day’s work. I have audiences yet to give but must tell you that they can prove tedious. Would you prefer to be taken to your rooms?”

“I would like to listen as the problems of the Two-Kingdoms are presented to Your wisdom.”

“It will be a pleasure to have you at My side,” He whispered to her, and my father immediately gave a signal. A few servants came up with alabaster bowls of scented water that they set at the feet of Ptah-nem-hotep, Menenhetet, my mother and myself. It was then the Pharaoh indicated a fifth cushion for my father. “You need not oversee the eunuchs, Nef-khep-aukhem,” the Pharaoh told him.

My father had a spark in his eye at this mention of himself. It suggested he was not always given such a gift as to hear his full name. “Good and Great God,” he replied, “I breathe the spirit of Your divine kindness but cannot rest upon my cushion for fear the eunuchs will commit an unpardonable error.”

While my father did not often explain much of himself to me, once, unforgettably, I was told how his work as Overseer of the Cosmetic Box and Pencil could on occasion be as important as the post of the Vizier. For whenever times of trouble came to the Two-Lands, then the bearing of the Pharaoh, that is to say, His body, the clothing He wore, and the cosmetics put upon His face, was vital to the good fortune of Egypt. Any gesture that the Pharaoh might make on such a day could shift the course of battles in distant places. The perfection of His eyes, painted pale-green and black, could give magnitude to each inclination of His head. When the Pharaoh was seated on His throne (which always faced the river) He had only to incline the royal neck to right or to left and a breeze would begin in the Upper or Lower Kingdom. So did He need no more than to turn the handle of His crook, and benedictions could be sent to shepherds in valleys we did not see, even as the smallest shake of His flail would inspire field-overseers to whip their labor-gangs. His sunshade, made from an ostrich tail, promoted the health of flowers; the great necklace that covered His chest was the golden ear of the Sun; and His crown of feathers (when He chose to wear it) gave joy or solemnity to the song of birds. My mother had frowned as my father instructed me in these stories. “Why don’t you tell the boy that it is only the ancient Kings Who could put on a leopard’s tail and stir the animals in the jungle. Our Ptah-nem-hotep does not possess such power.”

But even as a child, I could see that my father, despite his desire for perfect decorum, was most practical. “The Pharaoh,” he answered, “would have infinite power if He were not constantly attacked by other powers who are also infinite.”

“Why,” she asked, “is He attacked?”

“Because of the weakness of the Pharaohs Who came before Him.” He looked back at me. “For this reason, it is more important than ever that any ornament which touches His body be without flaw, or His power is weakened further.”

I thought there had to be some error in my father’s argument. Certainly, he was not always to be found in the presence of the Pharaoh. He was often at home. So he could hardly oversee every last cosmetic. Wondering about this, I saw that my father now stood to the side and did not really interfere with the work of the eunuchs who had come in with all the friendliness of puppies and all the grace of dancing girls while two of them began (humming little tunes and smiling at us) to wash Ptah-nem-hotep’s feet with great playfulness, as if indeed like puppies they had something of a right to nip and gnaw on His ankles. Three others served Menenhetet, my mother, and myself. With a considerable amount of merriment, their teeth shining, they tickled the soles of our feet and wiggled their fingers like minnows between our toes, only to scourge the dead skin from our heels with their blunt fingernails.

After a while, they finished with our feet and began to massage our legs. They were handsome men and probably had been chosen from the same village in Nubia or Rush for they were all about the same size, and of the same deep black, and their resemblance to one another was increased by the shining ivory pin that passed through their nose, each pin set at the same angle to their mouth as if they had all been born with one decoration from one womb.

They knew their work and, with or without my father, would hardly make an error. Soon they were massaging not only our legs, but our necks and shoulders, and the eunuch serving Hathfertiti began to rub an oil in exquisite circles around her navel to which she gave unabashed grunts of pleasure, curiously clear and loud as if such a forceful sound was certainly part of a noblewoman’s etiquette.

“I must purchase this eunuch from You,” she said to Ptah-nem-hotep, Who smiled agreeably. “Are they not delightful?” He asked, and looked at the dark bodies of these five slaves with the same love I had seen my great-grandfather give to a team of matched horses or twin white bulls, and indeed, since the slaves wore nothing, one could see not only their plump and muscular haunches, but the shiny stump where their testicles had been and this gave them a nice resemblance to geldings.

Ptah-nem-hotep remarked, “You cannot imagine what joy these boys bring to My harem. If I were still a very young man, I might suffer a lover’s jealousy at the thought of what their hands can give to My little queens, but fortunately, I am sensible and appreciate that the eunuch is a blessing for a Prince. No woman can soothe a man as well, nor massage him into the same peace,” Ptah-nem-hotep sighed. “Yes, they even pacify the animals.”

“They sound,” said Menenhetet, “more agreeable than the Gods.”

“They are certainly,” said Ptah-nem-hotep, “less wicked.”

Menenhetet nodded profoundly.

Hathfertiti said, “It is only in Your presence, Twice-Great-House, that I can listen to such conversation without trembling.” But her words were too flattering. Ptah-nem-hotep replied, “Even as a slave may relieve the boredom of his master by teasing him, so may we speak lightly of the Gods,” but now He looked captured by boredom.

My father chose this moment to say, “To be in the presence of the Twice-Great-House is to live without fear,” except he looked not at all free of fear as he said it, for at just this moment, a servant came in to present a cooling drink, and Ptah-nem-hotep, making a gesture of annoyance, waved it away. “You and Hathfertiti,” He remarked to my father, “certainly speak like brother and sister,” and His enormous eyes lifted in the gentlest curve of surprise as if He could not comprehend how a Princess like my mother, so perfect in her manner (except for her occasional descent into piety) was not only married, but half sister, to a man so common in his birth as my father. I winced with certainty that the Pharaoh was thinking this, but knew whether He did or not that I would still think it because my mother had told me this was the first cause of shame in our family.

Yet, with an obvious concern for His guests—as if His mood might also wither if conversation did not improve—our Pharaoh now turned to my mother and said, “Do you favor the shade of blue in the wig I am wearing?” and asked the question with enough force in His voice to strike a spark of fire in her, so that she replied, “It is not as blue as the sky,” at which they both laughed. My father gave a hurried signal to his assistant, the Overseer of the Royal Wig, who promptly came in with a large silver platter on which rested two black wigs, one straight, one with curls, and two new blue wigs, of which one was curled. I was cheered by the gaiety shown now by my mother and Ptah-nem-hotep. If the warmth of the Pharaoh’s greeting had been put into misery by just one of her remarks, it had now been restored by way of what she last said, as if it were natural for Him to balance the gloom with which He responded to a flaw in manners by quickness to applaud any exhibition of skillful speech, even an acceptable—that is, very small—insult, at least when the mood, like a soup, was in need of some stirring.

Now He picked up a wig with straight fine hair and held it aloft for examination. “Nothing,” He said sadly, “will come close to the blue of the sky. The best of pigments are ugly next to the hue I would like to place on My head, but cannot find.”

“The child may have Your answer,” murmured Menenhetet.

“You must be as clever as you are beautiful,” said Ptah-nem-hotep to me.

My head was empty except for the powerful impulse to say yes. So I nodded.

“Do you know the source of blue dye?” He asked.

I would not have to wander far for an answer. It came to me by way of my great-grandfather. My mind felt like a bowl of water, and the least movement in Menenhetet’s thought rippled through it.

“Why, Divine Double-House, the berry that is blue is the source of the liquid dye.” My tongue felt empty after the remark, and I waited for what might come next.

“Excellent,” said Ptah-nem-hotep. “Now tell me of a light-blue dye that is not a liquid but a powder. Where could you find its root?”

“Good and Great God,” I said, “it is not in a root but in the salts of copper that such a powder can be found.”

“He speaks as well as yourself,” said the Pharaoh.

“He is my second house,” said Menenhetet.

“Explain to me, little Meni, why My wig can never reveal the same blue as the sky.”

“The color of the wig, Good and Great God, comes from the earth. Whereas the blue of the sky is composed of air.”

“Then I will never find the blue I desire?” He asked. His voice was full of a sympathetic mockery that drew me near to Him. Even as I answered, “Never,” I went on to add as easily, “Never, Great Pharaoh, until You find a bird with feathers as blue as the air.”

Menenhetet struck his thigh in surprise. “The boy hears only the best voices,” he said.

“He hears more than one voice,” said Ptah-nem-hotep, and flicked my great-grandfather with His flail. “It’s splendid you are here,” He said. “And you,” He said, now touching Hathfertiti with the same flail.

She responded with her best smile. “Never have I seen You looking more handsome,” she told Him.

“I confess,” said Ptah-nem-hotep, “that I am like a dead fellow, well wrapped. I am bored.”

“That cannot be so,” said Hathfertiti, “when Your eyes are like the lion, and Your voice is the companion of the air.”

“My nostrils smell everything,” He said, “including the oppression of every breath I take.” He sighed. “When alone, I utter bird cries in order to amuse Myself.” He gave a sharp little hoot in imitation of a bird protecting her nest. “Does that amuse you?” He asked. “Sometimes I think it is only by amusing others that I escape for an instant from the smell of everything. Here, little boy, little Meni-Ka, would you like to hear a dog speak in our tongue, not his?”

I nodded. At the simple look of amusement on my face, Ptah-nem-hotep added, “Even your great-grandfather cannot make a dog speak.”

He gave a special clap to His hands, and called out. “Tet-tut!”

I heard a dog stirring beneath the house, then moving slowly up the stairs to the balcony with steps that, for an animal, were as full of decorum as two servants ascending on four well-trained feet.

A silver greyhound came into view. He had a most intent and serious expression.

“Tet-tut,” said the Pharaoh quietly, “you may sit down.”

The dog obeyed with no sign of agitation.

“I will introduce all of you,” said Ptah-nem-hotep. “After I speak your name, please Me to keep thinking of it.” He then proceeded to point out each of us to the animal. “All right, Tet-tut,” said Ptah-nem-hotep. “Go to Hathfertiti.” When the dog took a step forward and hesitated, He repeated, “Yes, My darling, go to the Lady Hathfertiti.”

Tet-tut looked at my mother, then approached her. Before she could applaud this effort, Ptah-nem-hotep said, “Go to Menenhetet.”

The dog backed away from Hathfertiti, turned once in a circle, and walked directly to my great-grandfather. When he was within two feet of him, he knelt, put his long muzzle to the floor, and began to moan.

“Are you afraid of this man?” asked the Pharaoh.

Tet-tut gave a long whimper eloquent as the stirring of flesh in a wound. Tyiu, tyiuu, was something like the sound he made.

“Do you hear?” asked Ptah-nem-hotep. “He is saying ‘yes.’ ”

“I would complain of a lack of exactitude,” said Menenhetet.

“Tu, tu,” said Ptah-nem-hotep to Tet-tut, “say ‘tooooo,’ not ‘tyoo.’ Toooo!”

Tet-tut rolled on his back.

“You’re a scamp,” said Ptah-nem-hotep. “Go to the boy.”

The dog looked about.

“To the boy. To Meni-Ka.”

Now, he came to me. We looked into each other’s eyes, and I began to weep. I had not been in the least prepared for this—I thought I would laugh—but sorrow seemed to come right out of Tet-tut’s heart and into mine as directly as someone might pour water from a jar, no, that is not so, it was more like the kiss Eyaseyab would give my mouth when her day had been unhappy. On such an embrace I would feel myself living in all the sad stories of the servant quarter. A melancholy now came to me from the dog just so complete as the woe I felt when Eyaseyab told me about her relatives who worked in a quarry and had to load great slabs of granite on sledges and pull them up ramps with ropes. Sometimes, while working, they were whipped until they dropped because the overseer had had too much to drink the night before and was angry in the sun. Therefore, on the night Eyaseyab told me about her relatives, I lived in the sorrow of her voice. She had a heavy voice full of burden, yet it was not poor, for it spoke of the enjoyment in her muscles when she lay down to rest. She grieved for the men and women of her family she had known in her childhood and told me they visited her at night in the depth of her heart, not as in a dream where she might be afraid of them, but more as if she were able to think of them when evening came, even if she had not seen them in years, and she believed they must be sending her the messages of their twisted bones because pains that felt like tortured strings came into her limbs then and told her of their lives just as a bow can send an arrow flying.

I do not know what I remembered of her stories, nor how much came to me from the dog, but it was more sadness than I could understand. The sorrow in Tet-tut’s eyes was like the look I had seen in the expression of many an intelligent slave. Worse. It was as if the dog’s eyes spoke of something he wanted to accomplish but never would.

So I wept. I could hardly believe the loudness of my clamor. I squalled. The dog had managed to tell me of a terrible fright in a far-off place and I was more afraid than I had ever been, as if I might not live like a slave but still knew the fear that sooner or later I, too, would know a life I did not want, and be powerless to go where I wished, and this feeling was great enough to set me shaking with a force that shattered the steadiness of the light. Then it was as if I lived in the sun, and in the dark, but quickly, in the tremors, as if I were blinking. Yet my eyes stayed wide open. I saw two existences at once: myself at six debauched into tears, and myself in the dark, weeping in shame as I gorged on Menenhetet’s cock, the tears so powerful my nostrils poured two rivers all over the old man’s phenomenon of a grand member, yes, at six had a sight of myself debased in the Land of the Dead when I was twenty-one, and then Hathfertiti caught me up and shook me and suffocated me in an embrace, and removed me from the sight of the Pharaoh.