by Nick Drake
‘Or, if they’re unlucky, somewhere less romantic, a garrison town like Bubastis or Elephantine,’ I said. ‘They don’t last long anywhere. All they’ve got to offer is their beauty and their freshness. But once that’s passed…they’re only fit for the human junk-heap.’
I looked around, and saw in the young faces the damage caused by servicing all these demanding clients, night after night. Desperate, sunny faces smiling too widely, too deliberately, trying too hard to please; pretty girls and pretty boys like living dolls on the knees of the repulsive-looking men who could afford new flesh every week, or once a year. Everyone looked exaggerated and wild. A young woman with ruined eyes walked past us; her nose had been cut off. She looked as if she moved on invisible strings worked by an invisible puppet-master. She drifted away through the crowds.
‘But interestingly, many of them also carry illicit drugs across the borders or downriver as part of the deal. It’s a cheap delivery method. Everyone knows it happens, and individually the amounts are too small to bother with; and the border guards are bribed, or they’ll take a quick fuck as a backhander, and even when the odd few are caught for show, the profit far outweighs the loss.’
‘What a beautiful world this is,’ I said.
Khety chuckled.
‘It could do with some improvement.’
‘It’s getting worse,’ I said gloomily.
‘You always say that. You wouldn’t know what to say if something good actually happened,’ he replied, with his usual aggravating optimism. ‘You’re more miserable than Thoth, and he’s a dumb animal.’
‘Thoth is not miserable. Nor is he remotely as dumb as most of the two-legged creatures around here. He is thoughtful.’
I drank my wine.
‘Who owns this place?’
He shrugged.
‘Whoever owns most of this quarter of the city. Probably one of the big families, connected with the temples, who no doubt take a big percentage of the profits.’
I nodded. It was well known that the temples’ enormous wealth depended upon varied and very profitable business investments throughout the city and the nomes of the kingdom.
‘And who are we meeting?’
‘The manager. She’s a smart woman.’
‘I’m sure she has a heart of gold.’
We made our way through the braying crowds, past the blind musicians plucking at their instruments, despite the fact that no one was listening, and then slipped down a silent passageway lit by a few oil lamps.
Off this ran other passageways, with elegant curtains concealing spaces big enough for a comfortable mattress. Fat old men retreated into the cubicles to avoid us, and small girls and giggling boys slipped past like silly, ornamental fish. Despite the incense burning everywhere, the air was stale, tinged with human odours: sweat, tainted breath, stale feet and rank armpits. Somewhere someone was panting and groaning, in another cubicle a girl was sweet-talking and giggling, and from another a woman performed, low-pitched and ardent as a court singer. Further off I heard the splash of water, and laughter.
At the end was a door, and outside the door stood two thugs as big and expressionless and ugly as unfinished statues. They searched us wordlessly.
‘Can anyone smell onions?’ I said, catching a whiff of rank breath.
The thug who was patting me down paused for a moment. His face reminded me of a battered cooking-pot. The other thug put a thick, calming hand on his colleague’s broad shoulder, advising him with a wordless shake of the head to ignore my sarcasm. The thug snorted like a bull, then pointed a stubby finger right between my eyes. I smiled and pushed it away. The other guy knocked on the door.
We entered. The room was low and small, but mitigated by a vase of fresh lotus flowers on the table. The manager greeted us politely and distantly. She wore a long auburn wig in the latest style, but her fine, sculpted face was still, almost frozen, as if she had long forgotten the uses of a smile. She offered us stools and cushions. She elegantly arranged herself opposite us, her chin in her hand, and waited for what would come.
‘Please tell me your name.’
‘Takherit,’ she replied, clearly.
So she was Syrian.
‘I am Rahotep.’
She nodded and waited.
‘This is an inquiry, that’s all. You have no personal cause for concern.’
‘I feel none,’ she replied, coolly.
‘We are investigating a series of murders.’
She raised her eyebrows in a little mocking gesture of anticipation.
‘How thrilling.’
‘These slayings have been unusually brutal. No one deserves to die in the way these young people have done. I want to try to stop any more perishing in the same manner,’ I replied.
‘In these dark times people prefer to look away from everything they would rather not see,’ she said, evasively. Her tone was so flat I could not tell whether she spoke with a rich irony, or with none.
‘I want you to understand how serious this is.’
I threw the dead face, with its tarnished crown of black hair, on to the table in front of her.
Her face remained frozen, but something altered in her gaze; a reaction, at last, to the blunt facts before us. She shook her red hair.
‘Only a monster could do this to a woman.’
‘What he has done is cruel, but it is almost certainly not meaningless. This is not some unpremeditated act of violence or passion. This man kills for reasons and in ways that are meaningful to him, if to no one else. It is a question of discovering the meaning,’ I said.
‘In that case, there are no monsters.’
‘No, only people.’
‘I don’t know if that makes me feel better, or worse,’ she replied.
‘I sympathize,’ I replied. ‘We need to discover who this girl was. We thought she might have worked here.’
‘Perhaps she did. We have many girls who work here.’
‘But have you missed anyone in particular?’
‘Sometimes these kids just vanish. It happens all the time. No one cares what happens to them. There are always more.’
I leaned forward.
‘This girl died a horrible death. The least we can do is call her by her name. She had a snake tattoo on her upper arm. Her landlord told us her name was Neferet.’
She glanced at the face, considered me, and nodded.
‘Then yes, I knew her. She worked here. I didn’t know much about her. You can never believe the stories they tell. But she struck me as one of the more innocent and trusting of the girls. She had a strange, sad smile. It made her even more attractive to some of our clients. She seemed like she belonged to a better world than this one. She claimed she was stolen from her family, who loved her, and one day she was sure they would come for her…’
‘She did not say where she was from?’
‘A farming village north of Memphis, I think. I can’t remember the name.’
‘We can assume she met the killer here. That means he is a client. He is an older man, from the elite class. Educated. Possibly a physician.’
She gazed at me.
‘Do you know how many men like that pay their discreet visits to places like this? And in any case, my workers are instructed never to ask questions about the clients’ personal lives.’
I tried another line of inquiry.
‘Are there any clients or workers who use drugs on these premises?’
‘What kind of drugs?’ she asked, innocently.
‘Soporific drugs. The opium poppy…’
She pretended to think about it.
‘We would accept no one who was notorious for it. I do all in my power to prevent such things. I run a clean business.’
‘But these drugs are everywhere…’
‘I cannot be held responsible for the private behaviour and the inclinations of my clients,’ she replied, firmly.
‘But they must acquire the drug somehow,’ I said.
She shrugged, avoiding my eyes.
‘There are always merchants, and middlemen, and suppliers. As with any business, especially where there is gold to be made.’
I glanced at Khety.
‘I have long been puzzled by how it is possible for such popular demand to be satisfied. I mean, the number of young people who are apprehended as they make the journey across the borders is small, therefore many must make it successfully to places just like this in each city. It is a route of supply, direct and convenient, and low risk. We know that the kids who come here to work are carriers. And yet even if there were thousands of them, they could still not transport a sufficient quantity of such a highly desirable luxury to satisfy the demand. It is a mystery to me.’
She dropped her gaze.
‘As I said, I do not involve myself in such things.’
I watched her carefully. I realized her pupils were dilated. She saw me looking.
‘It would be no trouble for me to bring a team of Medjay officers down here to search the place. I doubt many of your clients would appreciate the exposure,’ I said.
‘And I doubt you realize how few would appreciate your doing such a stupid thing. Who do you think comes here? Our clients are from the highest levels of society. They would never allow a low-level officer, such as you, to cause any trouble.’
She shook her head and stood up, ringing a tiny bell. The door opened and the two thugs stood there, not smiling.
‘These gentlemen are leaving now,’ she said.
We had left quietly enough, but once we were outside, the thugs looked at each other, nodded, then the one I had teased punched me once, very hard. I confess it was accurate, and it hurt. The other one punched Khety less viciously, just to be equitable.
‘Don’t be so sensitive,’ I said, rubbing my jaw, as they slammed the door. We stood in the dismal and suddenly silent street.
‘Don’t you dare to tell me I deserved that,’ I said to Khety.
‘Fine, I won’t,’ he replied.
We set off into the darkness.
‘So,’ said Khety, ‘how does all that stuff enter the Two Lands? It can’t possibly be managed just through these kids.’
I shook my head.
‘I think these kids, these couriers, are a distraction. They’re irrelevant. The transportation and shipping must happen in much greater quantities. But if it comes in on ships, then harbour officials are bribed, and if it comes by land routes the border guards would be getting a backhander.’
‘Someone, somewhere is making a fortune,’ he said. ‘But whoever it is must be very powerful and very well connected.’
I sighed.
‘Some days this work we do feels like holding back the waters of the Great River with nothing but our bare hands.’
‘I wonder about that almost every morning,’ replied Khety. ‘But then I get up and go to work. And of course, I get to spend my time with you, which is some compensation.’
‘You are a very lucky man, Khety,’ I said. ‘But think: at least the connections are becoming clearer. Each murder has involved stupefying the victims, most likely with the drug. The girl worked here. Most likely the carriers deliver the drugs here. Probably they are distributed from places like this throughout the city. That is something.’
‘And remember also that the killer is keeping you dancing between two worlds,’ he said, and smiled wryly.
If we were right, and the same man was responsible for both crimes, then all I was doing was leaping from clue to clue, like a dog following a trail of food, eyes focused on the ground, not seeing anything else.
I bade Khety good night, and turned wearily away towards my own home for once.
21
The white sun of late morning exonerated nothing and no one from its terrible gaze. The city seemed baked hard and dry, brown, yellow and white, in the heat. I looked up; swooping in and out of the dazzle, I saw a falcon’s dark wings spread wide, making delicate adjustments as it drifted on the levels and currents of the hot desert air. He was Horus, with the right eye of the sun and the left eye of the moon. What did he see, staring down at our strange little world of statues and monsters, crowds and parades, temples and hovels, wealth and pigsties? What would he think of this ceremonial group of tiny figures, protected by feeble sunshades, making its slow, formal way along the Avenue of Sphinxes, lined with perfectly clipped trees, towards the Southern Temple? Did he notice me, dressed like a performer in the white robes of a priest? Did he see us all, in our green world of fields and trees, dependent on the glittering serpent of the Great River, and surrounded by the infinity of the eternal Red Land? What did he see beyond the horizon? I watched as he lingered above us for a long moment, then shrugged and tilted away in the direction of the river, before disappearing over the rooftops.
I had slept badly, again. I had dreamed of the boy. In the dream he wore the face of Neferet, the young girl, and she was smiling at me mysteriously. Then slowly, carefully, I began to peel off her face, but she continued to smile. And when I finally pulled her face off over the top of her head, I saw beneath only a mask of darkness, and smelt the sweet stench of decay. I had woken suddenly, my head pounding. Perhaps the rough wine from the night before had been even rougher than I thought. In the morning I had had no sympathy from Tanefert. And when I had returned from the barber with my head shaved, she had just shaken her head.
‘How do I look?’ I had asked, smoothing my hand over my polished scalp.
‘You look like a big baby,’ she had said, unhelpfully.
‘Not like a priest of the temple, then?’
To her credit, she had laughed out loud.
‘I don’t think so…And don’t come home until it has all grown back.’
Along the Avenue of Sphinxes, well-managed crowds stood mutely and in conformity in the searing stillness of the air, crying out praises as the King and Queen passed by in their chariot. Tutankhamun was wearing the Blue Crown, and was carefully surrounded by a tight phalanx of palace guards, headdress feathers nodding bright in the light, bows and arrows polished and glittering. Theban army soldiers stood all along the Avenue. Simut was doing his job, using all the resources under his command. Ay followed in his chariot. Simut and I rode together. He watched everything with intense attention for any detail out of place, any sign of a problem. Then came a long, shuffling train of many other palace officials and priests, Khay among them, all in identical white robes, each with their sweating servants holding sunshades over their masters. I noticed a street dog running along beside this strangely sombre cavalcade, roving in and out of the shadows of the trees and the marching soldiers. He barked and barked, baring his teeth as if he had seen the shadow of an enemy, or an intruder. Suddenly one of the Theban soldiers shot it dead with an arrow. The crowd turned in fear; but no one panicked, and the cavalcade continued.
By the time the procession arrived at the temple entrance, sweat was running down my spine. A linen awning had been set up before the huge double doors, decorated with gold and silver, which led to the new Colonnade Hall. The King’s grandfather had begun its construction in my own youth, with an ambitious plan to replace the warren of small, ancient shrines with what was to be a vast, dark modern structure, with towering stone columns big enough to hold crowds of people on their broad tops. It was to be the wonder of the world, and today I would be exceptionally privileged to see it with my own eyes.
The area before the temple was crowded with thousands of priests in robes–so many they made the immense open space look like a great white lake when they prostrated themselves. The temple musicians struck up a new rhythm and melody. Simut’s gaze was everywhere, considering all the contingencies, checking the position of his archers on the perimeter walls, the precise formation of his guards that flanked the King and Queen in protection, and examining everyone and everything with his dark eyes. This time there could be no mistakes, no surprises of blood, and no mass panic.
Finally, to a fanfare from the temple trumpets
, raised and shining in the light, we processed through the great doors, under the huge carved stones of the outer walls, and into the great colonnade. My first impression was of a realm of shadows. Perfectly carved columns, of a much greater circumference than any palm tree–of the circumference of ten trees–soared up into the cool, dark, mysterious air; fourteen of them, in two great rows, each perhaps thirty cubits high, holding up the massive roof span, like a colossal arcade of stone under a night sky of granite. Thin shafts of light slanted down from the high, narrow clerestory windows, in slices and slivers of intense brightness; insubstantial motes drifted and danced for a brief instant of glory. Wherever the intense light touched the stone, it illuminated the detail of the painted carvings that covered every surface.
The long train of dignitaries and officials shuffled in behind us, all gathering, pushing and complaining to find a place to stand under the vast columns. The grand architecture of the hall made them seem diminished and unimportant. They sounded like a herd of goats, breathing, coughing, shuffling and whispering their little comments of amazement at their first view of this new wonder. Yet these were the men who controlled the power and the glory of the kingdom. The men of the royal domain, the men of the bureaucracies, and the men of the temples; all those who had lost their power and wealth under Akhenaten, the King’s father, and now had it back, claiming to have restored maat to the Two Lands. Of course, what had truly been restored was their implacable authority and licence to control and develop the infinite resources and business opportunities of the lands for the benefit of their own treasuries. And the King himself, however passively, was the icon of this restoration. In another temple precinct, at the Karnak Temple, early in his reign, he had ordered–or rather, Ay had ordered in his name–a stone stela to be set up on which was carved a statement for all time, and its words were well known: ‘The land was turned upside down and the Gods had turned their backs on the entire land. But after many days my majesty rose upon the throne of his father and ruled over the territory of Horus, both the Black Land and the Red Land being under his control.’ And so it now seemed, for what was left unfinished by the grandfather was completed in the presence of the grandson; and that strange interregnum of Akhenaten had become a piece of great forgetting, his buildings unattended, his images ignored, his name unspoken, his memory unworshipped, as if he had never been. Only the memory of his religious enlightenment, and his attempt to take all power from the traditional priests, remained, repressed but powerful for many.
