by Daniel Caet
“How dare you?” she said between her teeth with immense rage. “I'll make them whip you until you cannot bleed anymore.” A part of me saw something of Sadith in her when listening to her words, but, nevertheless, to see that force in her fed my hope that she would recover and little by little return to be herself.
“ And I will gladly accept my punishment, but I dare because your life is more important than mine.”
That unexpected confession caught Ankh by surprise and left her speechless making her eyes fill with tears. She turned her face and looked down, so I could not see her.
“My life? My life is not worth anything, Helel. It's like those flowers,” she said, looking at a vase of fresh flowers on a table at the back of the room that I had asked to be brought from the garden. “Their beauty adorns, it makes us happy for a brief period of time, but finally they die, and nobody remembers them. The only really beautiful things are those that we can make to endure, and that beauty has been torn from me three times already. Three times, can you hear me? Three times I have created the most beautiful thing in this world, and three times it has been torn from my hands without giving me the opportunity to make it last.”
“There will be other children, my lady,” I said almost in a whisper.
“Helel, how innocent you are! You have spent so much time with me and you have not yet seen the world in which I live. To have children you need a husband, either to make them or to believe that those made by another are his; and my husband has long ago lost interest in my bed, he prefers other pleasures.”
“But ... the little one?” I said without knowing how to finish the sentence.
“My daughter was not the result of love but the opposite. My daughter was the result of a drunkenness of my husband and his need to affirm me as one of his possessions, raping me,” she replied without being able to prevent the disgust from manifesting in her face. I was speechless. “You see, Helel, almost nothing is what it seems in this place. Anyway, it does not matter because as a result of my baby's difficult delivery, my mother has confirmed that I will never be able to conceive again, so I do not think it will be long before my dear husband finds another wife that can bear his children. That will mean that I will lose my position in the court and will swell the list of second and third wives that are sent to some distant province so that they do not disturb and age slowly without making much noise and without reminding their husbands that they once existed.”
“How bad would it be to live far from this nest of vipers?”
“My heart longs for the day when I can leave here and forget everything I've lived in this golden cage, but I always dreamed that the day it happened I would be surrounded by children, maybe even grandchildren, a family. But I suppose dreams are just that, dreams.”
Her words removed old sands inside me. Family. Ankh and I had much more in common than it seemed, we had both dreamed all our lives about having a family of our own, feeling the warmth of our children's embrace, our grandchildren, being able to feel that there is a greater love than any other, and in both cases they had taken it from us, in different ways, for different reasons, but we were both alone and we both had the same emptiness, the same darkness that slowly suffocated us. I do not know if it was at that moment, I do not know if I really knew it, but I remember perfectly the pang of physical pain in my heart when I realised that life had won me over again and I was completely and absolutely in love with Ankh.
The following days continued to be difficult for her, her seizures returned every night and the mood swings were constant, but her body was gradually admitting food and her strength was recovering. I went back to my cubicle although I continued to spend my sleepless nights listening to every noise that came from her rooms. As soon as Ankh began to show improvement, I asked that Ptehsure returned. The presence of the young woman helped to make the mood swings less marked, and that Ankh felt that her life was recovering something similar to normality. On two occasions I tried to talk to Sadith, but her servants told me that she was not in the palace and that they did not know when she would return. I still did not understand how it was possible that Sadith had turned her back on Ankh in such a fragile moment, but I did not have time to think about it, I just wanted to spend every second of my time with Ankh.
As soon as it was known that Ankh was better Sarureptah came to visit her, but far from being a visit from a worried husband to his convalescent wife, he organised it almost as if it were a state visit. The number of servants that accompanied him would have made any citizen of Thebes believe to be before the same pharaoh. But the surprise was even greater when Sarureptah did not speak to Ankh, but it was his scribe who did it. A couple of formal questions regarding her health and an even more formal farewell that included his wishes for improvement and references to that vermin’s innumerable titles. Ankh was relieved when they finally left her rooms and that was evident in her face.
“Helel, take me to the garden, please, I want to walk among the flowers,” she said as soon as they left us alone.
“As you order, my lady. I'll ask that your ladies accompany us,” I said, making the attempt to leave the room.
“Don’t!” she answered, “I beg you, only you and I, I could not stand the noise of those chickens’ clucking around me.”
I nodded understanding what she was referring to and I accompanied her to the gardens as she had requested. It took us a long time to get to the west garden, her favourite, because despite her recovery, she still could not make big efforts. When we reached the lake, which was full of water lilies and lotuses, a light breeze came from the river collecting the freshness of the water surface making the air cold and perfumed. Ankh's face changed completely, and it was as if suddenly her soul was in a different place, a better one. She was relaxed, calm, her breathing was slow, and her cheeks had recovered their colour, she was the woman I had missed so much.
“Look!” she said suddenly rising, “the lilies have bloomed.” Slowly she went to one of the plants that was a few meters away from us and that had huge, beautiful, white flowers. “They're my favourite flowers since I was little,” she said smiling. “Here they do not give flowers very often because during most of the year it is too hot. They are so beautiful! Do you know that they say that in the mountains near the delta grows a variety of these flowers of an intense red color? They call them blood lilies. How I wish I could see them!”
“My lady can ask for them to be brought to the palace,” I said, and the sadness on her face made me understand that I had been wrong.
“Yes, I suppose so, but what would be the purpose, Helel? The most beautiful thing about these flowers is that they are free, they have decided to be red because they are free, they grow on the mountain because they are free. They are everything that I cannot be.”
“I'm sorry, my lady, I did not want to …”
“I know, don’t worry,” she said, smiling and sitting down by the lake again. “There is no point in lamenting, each one of us has the life that the gods have wanted to give us, and I am sure there is a reason for that. Sit with me, please, the conversation will help me distract myself.”
“As my lady wishes.”
“Oh, please, Helel! Don’t be so formal, will you?”
“I do not know a different way for a slave to address his mistress.”
“We both know that you are not a slave. And, I cannot help but wonder who you really are,” she said, looking into my eyes. “Who are you, Helel?”
“My lady, I'm sorry, but I do not know what you mean,” I said, lowering my face even though part of me found that game entertaining.
“Okay, let me guess,” she said smiling. “Of course, you are not Hebrew like my mother says. You do not have their traits, you do not know their customs, and nobody knows you in the village of the slaves. Am I right?”
“Yes, it's true,” I said, unable to avoid her game. “My family, my people, is much older than that of the Hebrews.”
“Well, it seems that I
have guessed right, but still you will not tell me where you come from!” she answered without losing her smile. “All right let me keep guessing. You are not and have never been a slave. You do not know how to follow orders without questioning them, you are used to order, not to be ordered. You were a nobleman, maybe a soldier. Right?”
“Yes, for my people I was a general of their armies. And one of the best, I have to say.”
“I knew it,” she continued amused. “You're not that hard to read, Helel. And all this leads me to why you are here.” Suddenly her face hardened. “My mother. She knew you from her past. She wanted you to be by my side because you are a soldier. To protect me. My mother knew ... No, she expected something to happen, she knew I was in danger. Because I'm in danger. My little one, what happened, it was not chance, something caused it.”
“My lady, I do not think you should …”
“And, nevertheless, I am right, am I not?” she asked without taking her gaze from me and I could feel her breathing begin to shake. “Of course, I'm right! You all knew that someone could try something against me, and yet you did not tell me. If I had known, I could have done something, protect myself, protect my little girl. If you had not kept it from me, my little one could be alive,” she said, raising her voice and rising from her seat as her eyes filled with tears due to impotence.
“My lady, I beg you, calm down,” I said, not knowing what to do but Ankh kept raising her voice.
“Don't tell me to calm down, Helel! I could have saved my daughter, she could be alive if it were not for you!” she shouted, becoming more and more angry, her hands trembling with tension. “You have betrayed me, all of you, my own mother, you!”
I saw how her body began to lose control, the accumulated tension was overflowing, and Ankh was not able to control it. Without thinking for a second about what I was doing, I hugged her, preventing her from moving. Her eyes stared into mine, and I saw how they opened in surprise. And then it happened. I could feel her mind inside mine, and yet it was more than her mind, it was her heart. I could feel how her emotions ran through mine, as my sadness for the family that had betrayed me, for the family that had died because of me, was poured into it along with everything else, my love and my hatred for Liliath, my craving of revenge and my love for her. She could see everything, walk the corridors of my darkness and, somehow, her presence filled everything with a soft, warm light. Until suddenly my darkness grew threatening to drown her light, extinguish it, and I released my embrace with violence. Her body separated from mine and her eyes continued to look at me half surprised and half saddened, and they were again filled with tears.
“I ... I'm sorry, Helel,” she said as her tears fell down her cheeks. “Gods, so much pain! I'm sorry, forgive me, I did not want to ... I …" I did not let her continue. My lips silenced her mouth with the kiss I had kept for so long, and I noticed how her whole being responded with the same desire, with the same passion, and then I understood, clear to me as the lake water. We were all cursed, and nothing could matter less.
In a moment I transported us to her rooms without caring who could see us appear. Her love made me unconscious, uncontrollable like only other women had done before. I undid her body cloak with the haste of the thirsty one who is offered a little water. There was no tenderness, no caresses, neither of us had time for that. Emotions that had been confined under thousands of layers of social oppression, fear and helplessness overflowed in Ankh and she surrendered to me as the rivers are delivered to the sea, in the most absolute way; and my body was never mine anymore but hers. It was not one but many times that we loved each other that day and always without a single word except when we whispered the other's name as if trying to convince ourselves that this was happening. That day no one else existed, only she and I, only Ankh and Helel, only her light and my darkness. And for a moment, we both fooled ourselves thinking that this could last forever.
During the next few days we barely left the room. Our hours passed between the time we spent loving each other and the time we spent preparing ourselves to love each other. Our bodies had developed a hunger for the other that was impossible to contain and neither of us had any interest in doing so. That meant that, when we were not abandoning ourselves to each other's body, we were embracing as if we knew that sooner or later something would separate us.
“You have not asked me about what you saw the other day in the garden.”
“What I saw? Do you mean what I saw in you?” she said a little surprised by my question.
“Yes, I imagine you'll have a thousand questions.”
“No, I do not have questions. Should I?” I was surprised, and she detected it. “Let me explain. I'm sure you already know from my mother that all the women in my family have some kind of gift, special abilities, powers that we never know in which form they are going to manifest. Sadith always remembers that my other mother, the one who bore me, had an incredible gift for clairvoyance, the vision as she calls it. But that vision was also a punishment because as soon as she got pregnant she could see that she would die in childbirth. She could have decided to end the pregnancy at that moment, but she decided to go ahead knowing the sacrifice she should have to make for me to be here. If she did it because her vision showed her something else, something of my future, she never said.” For a moment she fell silent and I respected the silence that I did not know if it was caused by pain or uncertainty. “My gift is not that of vision, Helel,” she continued, “I cannot see in the minds of men, or in their future or their past; I can see in their hearts, or rather, I can feel. When I touch someone, all their emotions come to me, every feeling accumulated in their heart, every fragment of love, hate, anger, peace, desire or boredom comes to me clear like the song of the birds in the morning. And, if necessary, I can modify those emotions.”
“Moses,” I said suddenly.
“Exact. When Moses and Aaron began to argue, my hand on their shoulders was all I needed to be able to calm them down.”
“It's a wonderful power,” I said sincerely.
“It is a power that, like my mother's, is accompanied by a curse. Every emotion, every fragment of feeling that I read in someone, I feel in myself as if it were mine, as if whatever has taken place in that person's life had really happened in mine. Can you imagine the damage that emotions such as hatred, anger, thirst for revenge or perversion provoke in me?” A new silence filled the room and Ankh got up from the bed, her naked body in all its glory in front of the light that entered from the terrace. “But returning to your question, no, I have not been able to see anything of your past, but I have been able to feel what you have suffered, what you still suffer. And also, your darkness,” she said, turning to look at me very seriously.
“Does that darkness scare you?” I asked.
“I'm not scared of you, Helel, but maybe you should.”
I did not know what to answer to that statement. I had experienced in the past an iota of what that darkness could do to me and I knew that she was probably right.
“You do not belong to this world, Helel. I do not know who you are, but you are not a man, not like me or like Ptehsure, and that means that I cannot know how that darkness will affect you, but I know what that shadow would do in one of us, and I do not want to think that this could happen to you.”
I got up from the bed and took the mantle to cover her body though what I wanted was to make her lie on the bed again.
“What are you doing, Helel?” she asked amused. “It is too hot.”
“Not in the place where we are going.”
I embraced her and in a second everything around us had changed. We were in the mountains, next to a stream that fell between the rocks like a small waterfall. Around us the rock walls were covered with vegetation as if they had been covered with beautiful curtains. The air was cold and there was a slight wind that accentuated the sensation.
“What are we doing here, Helel?” she said, laughing as she wrapped herself in her cloak and press
ed against me.
“Look!”
At her feet, only a few steps away, the blood red of large flowers broke the green of the vegetation.
“Blood lilies!” she said almost shouting. “I cannot believe it, they are so beautiful!”
“Not half as beautiful as you.” I made the attempt to bend down to pick up one, but she stopped me putting her hand on mine.
“No, I beg you!”
“I thought you would like to keep one.”
“These flowers have chosen this place to grow because here nothing can harm them, here their beauty can last as long as their lives allow it, here they are free, I already told you. Let me fill my eyes with this image, with this freedom to accompany me in my own prison,” she said, crying and I never knew if those were tears of happiness or sadness.
Two days later I woke up alone in Ankh's bed. It was early, but the sun coming in from the terrace had awakened me. I got up and went to my cubicle to put on a clean gown and clean up. I had barely finished when Ptehsure appeared by the door.
“Ah, you're ready! Perfect, my lady Sadith wants to see you.”
“Do you know where the lady Ankh is?” I asked.
“She got up a little while ago and went to see my lady Sadith, I did not see her later. I guess they'll be talking about the preparations for the festivities.”
“Festivities? Which festivities?”
“Really, Helel,” she said, looking at me with a face of tremendous surprise. “How long have you been living in Egypt? Heb nefer en inet, the festival of the Valley, the festival in honour of the dead. The pharaoh and his entourage must perform the procession from Karnak temple to the funeral temples on the west bank. It is a great event.”
That festival that was so relevant to the young Ptehsure, for me obviously meant nothing, but I tried not to let it show and went to Sadith's apartment. When I was about to open the main door, it was suddenly opened, and I was almost run over by Ankh with red eyes, a damp face and a fury that I had never seen in her. She was so upset that even though she almost knocked me off, she did not even realise who I was. I called her by her name and tried to stop her, but Sadith's voice behind me stopped me.
