FOUR

“No risk in the Battle of Kadesh was ever the equal of this,” said my great-grandfather, “for when the battle was over, it was done, but now I would be on guard every day of my life. No matter. I could not wait for the next night. Through all that morning, as I discharged the little duties that came my way, I was also possessed of a vigor which had me near to laying hands on several little queens. I felt as if I were still on the boat—or what was left of my boat!—and sailed with the sun.

“At evening, He arrived, so I could not see her. Usermare spent His time with other queens, but still I could hardly take the chance to visit Honey-Ball. His presence kept the eunuchs awake and stirring in every bush. Besides, the little queens were also listening to each sound. The night was like a dark ear. I could still have made the attempt, yet with Usermare only a house or two away, I might find myself as inert beside her as the heat of this darkness itself, and that shame I would not risk again. So, through the night, I had to hear His loud laugh, and the grunts that came from His throat. Like Ra, He was close to the beasts, and the Gardens were filled with the lion, the bull, the jackal, and the bark of the crocodile, even the high cry of a few birds and the cooing of a dove came from His throat. When I could not sleep, my pig came back again, and breathed on my groin.

“Next night, Usermare stayed away, and I was with Honey-Ball, and ready. So soon as we lay down, I was in her, so soon as she moved, I could not stop, and before her body was in a gallop, I had ridden through. This time it was I who heard the whimper, the cry, the small moan of rage, and the fall reverberating through her.

“Still, there was a difference most agreeable for me. Until this night, I had no more than to come forth and I was ready to flee her arms. Tonight, however, I wanted to do it again and, before long did, and it was better. At last I could feel master of my feelings. The knowledge that her mouth was a slave to Usermare gave me sufficient disdain of her (and of myself) to remain within my bounds, and most nicely, able to rock back and forth as if lolling on a boat, even to take her hips through the pounding waves, indeed, took her on a voyage of both our bodies through the river of the night until the small stirrings of every caged animal in her garden became like the sounds on the riverbanks, and even the mice in fascination ceased running through the cracks in the walls. I tried this art of kissing at which she was adept, and although she was but a few days removed from the taste of Usermare’s parts (which gave me a great revulsion insofar as He was a man) still He was also a God and nothing may issue from a God that is not fit for a feast, indeed it used to be said that our flesh is formed from Amon’s leavings, and perfume is the sweet smell of His corruption. So I was able then to keep turning between admiration and disdain, bringing myself back each time I was ready to go forth, and we galloped at the end in equal bounds, throwing each other about, and afterward felt true repose in the circle of our arms around each other, the little pig at me again, but most tenderly.

“From that night on, I could speak of a sweeter warmth. For I thought she was beautiful. Even the great weight of her hips spoke of the power of large beasts, and her waist had the vigor of a tree. I adored her back. It was strong and full of the wonderful muscle I used to feel in the haunches of Hera-Ra, and her arms were like the thighs of young girls and led me to her mouth which was honeyed. Honey-Ball’s thighs when I took them in each of my arms were as full of satisfaction as the waists of two young girls I might hold at once.

“Each time, then, I knew her better, and thereby underwent more misery on those evenings when Usermare came to visit. One night when He chose Honey-Ball in company with several little queens, the sounds of their pleasure so disturbed me that I came near to bursting in. Such an end would have been peaceful compared to the cruel state of listening. For I was crawling with ants in the hot baked desert of my heart.

“On the next evening, He was there again, but I could recognize the little queens’ voices and He had not chosen her. Uncertain whether to be pleased, or to despise her lack of charms to capture Him a second time, I overcame all caution, climbed her wall, entered her bed, and knew jealousy when she spoke. She told me she had been witness to all He did last night, yet entered none of it. When He asked why she stood before Him in such chastity, she said that she had been communing with demons in preparation for a holy ceremony, and wished to avoid the risk of attaching these unseen ogres—who might be near—to His divine flesh. When He asked the purpose of her ceremony, she replied that it was for the Life-Health-Strength of the Two-Lands. At which He grunted and said, ‘You could have chosen a better day,’ but asked no more.

“That was the story she told. I did not believe it. The night before, in my suffering, I had heard her laugh many times. Besides, Usermare had small patience toward anyone who could not please Him. When I was ready to tell her so, she put her fingers to my lips (though I promise you, we were speaking in tones next to silence itself) and whispered, ‘I said that if I did not touch His flesh on this night, I would be twice full of Him as a result.’ Honey-Ball giggled in the darkness. Although she had made the double circle of Isis about us many a time so that not one fleeting thought could depart into anyone else’s thought, still she did it again to protect us for laughing at Him. ‘What did He say?’ I asked.

“ ‘Oh,’ said she, ‘He told me He would pay double attention when next He looked at me,’ and with a bawdy grin, she spoke in the language of the streets, her mouth in my ear. ‘He said that since He was Lord of the Two-Lands and twice King of Egypt, He would have me by my cunt and my asshole.’

“And what did you say?’ I whispered.

“ ‘Great Two-House, it will take all of us to kiss You clean.’ He started laughing so hard He never stopped. It almost ruined His pleasure. That is the only way to speak to Him.’

“ ‘Will you do that?’ I asked.

“ ‘I will do my best to avoid it,’ she said, but with the same bawdy mirth on her mouth. I was tempted to strike her, but instead, I seized her foot.

“Now, no matter how else we held each other, she had never let me near them. They were tiny for so big a woman, that much I could see, tiny like the feet of her mother, reputed to be the most elegant among the rich and noble ladies of Sais, and delicate in her size. Honey-Ball told me that was the mark of a noble family, small feet, and when I asked why such delicacy was of importance, she looked at me with scorn. ‘If our hair is able to feel the whisper of the wind, we can have thoughts as delicate as birds,’ ‘Yes,’ I replied, ‘but by the balance of Maat, our feet should be sturdy like the earth.’ She laughed. ‘Spoken like a peasant!’ she said, and laughed again and opened the circle of her thumb and forefinger so that I could enter her thoughts. I now saw myself jiggling like a doll at the tip of Usermare’s sword. That made me angry enough to strike her, but I did not. She would never let me enter into her mind again. ‘Sweet Kazama,’ she said, ‘the deepest thoughts are held by the earth. Through our toes—if they are fine enough—enter the cries from the Land of the Dead.’

“Simple enough. A good reason for delicate feet. So I would never have touched them, if she had not mocked me again with her laughter. But that puppet who moaned and whimpered and jiggled on Usermare’s hook—I saw Him in the mirth of her mouth, and seized her foot.

“By the way she fought back, I knew at once I had committed some terrible act. But I was too busy wrestling to understand in all this silent fury (for we did not make enough commotion to wake one servant) that the foot I had grasped was the one with the missing toe. Then, since I held it with both hands, and she was kicking at my wrist and head with the other leg, it was all I could do to explore the poor missing place where the little toe had been, now as shiny to the tips of my fingers as the amputated nub on the wrist of a thief, yet so soon as I truly held it, I knew this rape was the only true seduction I would ever have of her, and feeling by now strong as a tree myself, I merely offered my skull to each of her kicks, while deliberately kissing this shiny little place. But my head was ringing so much from these blows of her leg that I saw her family pass before me in a noble boat, a golden panoply on the broad waters of the Delta, and then her fight was gone, and Honey-Ball burst into tears. Her sobbing became the loudest sound of the night in all these gardens, and it was as soothing to the heavy silence as the washing past of waters, for where was the house with a little queen who had not wept? Usermare would never be concerned with such a sound. Honey-Ball’s body became soft again, and I lay holding my captive foot and imbibed all the sorrow that came up from it, even the odor of the little caverns between her toes was sad, and so I knew with what misery she lived, and rose up at last and kissed her on the mouth to taste the same sorrow, ah, there was a feeling of tenderness in my chest such as I had never known before.

“From that hour I began to see her as a sister. We had a saying in my village. ‘You can sleep in a woman’s bed for a hundred years, but you will never know her heart until you care for her as a sister.’ I never liked that belief, I find no pleasure in sentiments that take care of matters forever, but now I believed I understood why Honey-Ball had grown so fat. One had only to touch the stump of her little toe, as I alone had done, to feel the loss within her—the nub of that toe was like a rock in a silent sea, and I could feel her thoughts beat upon it. So I came to learn how her feelings toward Usermare might have only a little love to mix with a hatred larger than mine. Holding her as she wept, her heart spoke to me, and we were of the same family—you could not find another man and woman in all of the Gardens or the Court as consumed as ourselves with the heat of revenge. It took two of us even to confess the one thought, and we did it with our breath, no other sound. Even from far away, His ears were as alive as the net to the bird, and you never knew when His nose might point toward an enemy so unwise as to say a curse aloud. Now, with the wisdom of my four lives, I can wonder at our audacity to share such dreams of revenge—why, if not for the circle of protection she put about our hearts, I think even the birds would have feared to stir.”

“Yet, to me, her unhappiness seems excessive,” Hathfertiti now said in a voice of much authority. “Surely she was a spoiled woman to have carried on so.”

“In all deference to your understanding, my granddaughter, I would say that I have not yet told you all of her reasons. This punishment, petty to you, was nonetheless so painful to Honey-Ball that it changed her life and doubled her weight. When Usermare took out His short knife, grasped her foot—which is why, I expect, she fought so furiously when I seized it myself—and promptly took away the toe with one stroke of His blade, He then handed that bloody little half-worm back. They say she screamed and fled, all true as she told me, but she also embalmed the toe in natron for seventy days and kept it in a small gold case somewhat in the shape of a sarcophagus. That is the act of a woman who puts immense value on herself, but you must understand that to her family she was not a little queen, but a Queen. Her mother used to say: ‘After Nefertiri, comes Ma-Khrut.’ It was never true, of course, yet to the eyes of her family, it was. So the insult to her foot disturbed the heavens. So she saw it, and so she ate of many rare and prodigious fats, of swans, of large snakes, and of domestic boars to draw faraway spirits to her.”

“I still say: For the loss of a toe, she gave up her figure?” my mother persisted.

“She used to say,” said my great-grandfather, “that it was in obedience to Maat. Having gained many powers by the care she gave to this lost toe, she was now obliged to carry them. A larger house for a larger treasure. So she would explain herself to me, but I would say she felt most vulnerable. It is no small matter to descend the royal steps from First Favorite of the little queens to a woman whose name He speaks twice a year. Like a mummy I think she had to cover herself with three coffins.

“Besides, she had brought great dishonor upon her family. In Sais, she told me, the good families gossiped so much about her loss, that one of her sisters, engaged to a young noble, received word most suddenly that the suitor would now marry into another family. Honey-Ball sighed as she said, ‘They might as well have buried me in a sheepskin.’

“Now, in these days, she began to speak of what could prove to be another humiliation. She did not know if she would be invited to the Grand Councils. I did not see why this evening should have so royal a name, but, still, it was Usermare’s habit to give one small entertainment a year for a few of the little queens in His Palace, at least, in the part we used to call the Little Palace. He would even invite some of the nobles of Thebes. As evenings went—I knew, since I used to attend when I was a General, that the occasion would prove no great affair—a small feast, and singers and dancers. Yet for the little queens chosen, it was a rare opportunity to come out of the Gardens.

“Since there had not been a Grand Council in the last two years, gaiety stirred. Many little queens had hopes. So, too, did Honey-Ball. She even cast a few small spells, although the smoke had been too thick, she told me, and her thoughts too scattered. Her most powerful spirits were not appearing to her summons. She would never be invited, she said. ‘I do not know if I wish to be,’ she added bitterly. Of course, I did not believe her. It meant much to her. The last time, three years ago, still slender, still possessed of all her toes, she had been the first of ten little queens to be presented to Nefertiri, and the Queen asked her to sit nearby. Nefertiri even had a word for Ma-Khrut’s voice. ‘They say your throat is so sweet it encourages others to sing,’ the Queen had remarked. I wondered at these words, but Honey-Ball saw it as a grand evening.

“Now, when we learned who would be invited this year, I knew the blow to her heart. ‘It is a small matter,’ Honey-Ball said, ‘and yet the pain is not small.’ I felt her true woe. In this year with the Festival of Festivals approaching to celebrate the Thirty-Fifth Year of His Reign (and who among us did not know it was going to be the largest festival in anyone’s memory?) some little queens, of whom Honey-Ball was most certainly one, had needed an invitation to the Grand Councils to make certain that one would not be passed over at the Festival of Festivals.

“I must say her fear of missing this far greater occasion was not without basis. Most of the little queens would be able to leave the Gardens each day to mingle with many nobles in the newly built Hall of King Unas, or in the Great Court—a rare occasion for a little queen to invite her parents to Thebes. It all depended, however, on being one of the mothers of His children. His sons and daughters would be present to see their Father in His Godly Triumph. On the consequence, there being a great many such children, any little queen who had not borne His child could not with any confidence expect to be invited. Hence the Grand Councils might open the way. Honey-Ball’s dejection was deep.

“I think it was the failure of her magic that hurt her so. With our growing familiarity, she had become more modest and did not always seek to display her powers, indeed, there were nights when she was my sister, and spoke of small pains and miserable little sorrows. So I began to hear from her lips the old saying one heard often in Thebes about people in the Delta: ‘Those who inhabit the swamps, know not.’ The meaning had always been so obvious that I never questioned its truth—to live in the swamps was to be wet, pestered with insects, and weak with heat. Everything grew too easily. The balance of Maat was missing. One lived in stupor and knew not.

“ ‘It is true,’ said Honey-Ball. ‘It is true except for those about whom it is not true.’ And she went on to tell me how her family, of twenty generations in the city of Sais, had had the pride to overcome the apathy of their swamp country. ‘Our desire,’ she said, ‘is to stand in balance to our neighbors who know not.’ Then I would be obliged to listen as she pondered the depth of the Nile and the height of the stars, the Gods of the deep water in the river channels, and the Gods of the shallows near the banks, the warnings of the stars whose eyes never closed, and the stars who blinked. How it annoyed her that I did not even know the month of my birth. She would unroll a papyrus to show me charts that could measure the date of one’s death by the hour one was born. ‘How long will you live?’ I asked her, and she replied, ‘For many years. My life is long.’ Then she sighed and said, ‘But I will lose more than my little toe, and soon enough. So say the stars.’ Her sigh was heavy.

“Even after the Grand Councils were past, and I could assure her that it was not a grand affair, and neither Queen Nefertiri nor Queen Rama-Nefru had even been present, Honey-Ball’s spirits did not improve. For Oasis and Mersegert spoke of it as full of light and wonder, and said they received many attentions. Honey-Ball said, ‘Sesusi does not value me because I am from Sais.’ The pit of this drear mood was that in the last few days, to avenge herself against Usermare’s indifference, she had given much to her rites, and received little. Each night, she had performed a ritual to turn-the-head-of-Usermare, and had cried forth the names of Gods Who had much weight, her voice quivering with exaltation. But next day, the sum of all she had exhausted in herself, was most visible on her face.

“I began to ask myself how any magician could turn His neck? Usermare was able to call on a thousand Gods and Goddesses: He had a myriad above, and now, after His marriage to Rama-Nefru, a Hittite myriad of Gods below.

“Yet, each night, as I lay beside her, much as if her magic was able to turn my neck far better than our Pharaoh’s, I was not bored with her unhappy moods, and loved her. We could each drink in the other’s sorrow. I would lie beside her, my face between her breasts, and steep myself in the solemnity and deep resolve of her heart until I did not think she was silly for suffering over the Grand Councils, but understood that she saw it as one more injury to her family. It would be a true misery if she could not invite them to the Festival of Festivals. I was coming to understand that this family was raised higher in her heart than Usermare. In her two great breasts lived all that she would cherish, her father, her mother, her sisters, and myself. Feeling myself in her flesh, I thought that if she was slow to stir, and I might never again enjoy the liveliness and wickedness and love of the dance that women with pert breasts might bring to bed, that could not weigh against our sweet deep silence, its warning in one’s flesh that the love I would find in this massive bosom would not be small nor soon pass. Listening to the secret intentions of her heart as its beat came to me out of the depth of her flesh, I knew she had decided against all caution to trust me—which could only mean that she must work her spells from out of my heart as well as her own, bind us so closely that an error in the magic I learned could cause a great rent in hers. So I also knew that if I did not stand up straight away in the dark and leave her room, never to be alone with her again, I would lose the power to command what was left of my will. Yet so strong was the power of her heart that I felt no panic to move, and indeed, was a slave already, and close to her.

“That night she initiated me, and I took my first step toward Horus of the North. Of course, these matters are full of treachery and peril. Now, looking upon the result, I do not know if I was set properly on my way to the power and wisdom of a magician.”