Ancient Evenings

by Norman Mailer

  Cleaned, stuffed, and trussed, I was deposited in a bath of natron—that salt which dries the meat to stone—and there I lay with weights to keep me down. Slowly, over the endless days that followed, as the waters of my own body were given up to the thirst of the salt (which drank at my flesh like caravans arriving at an oasis) so all moisture, with its insatiable desire to liquefy my meats, had to leave my limbs. Bathed in natron, I became hard as the wood of a hull, then hard as the rock of the earth, and felt the last of me depart to join my Ka, my Ba, and my fearsome Khaibit. And the shell of my body entered the stone of ten thousand years. If there was nothing I could smell any longer (no more than a stone can be aware of a scent), still the hardened flesh of my body became like one of those spiraled chambers of the sea that are thrown up on the beach, yet contain the roar of waters when you hold them to your ear. I became not unlike that roar of waters, for I was close to hearing old voices that passed across the sands—if now I could not smell, I could certainly hear—and like the dolphin whose ears are reputed able to pick up echoes from the other end of the sea, so I sank into the bath of natron, and my body passed farther and farther away. Like a stone washed by fog, baked by sun, and given the flavor of the water on the bank, I was entering that universe of the dumb where it was part of our gift to hear the story told by every wind to every stone.

  Yet even as I was carried on these voyages with Meni (his lacquered case wet with my breath—so close did I hold him) I must have stirred in sleep, or gone through a space in the travels of sleep, for two clouds appeared to meet. Could it have been the touch of these clouds that rocked my sleep? I felt my body descend, breath by breath, into the case of the mummy, yes, sink into it as if the hard case were only a soft and receiving earth, yes, was melded into the case of the mummy, and my memory was one with Meni again. Once more I felt the ministrations of the embalmers, and lived through the hours when they washed the natron from my hardened body with the liquor of a vase that held no less than ten perfumes, “O sweet-smelling soul of the Great God,” they intoned, “You contain such a sweet odor that Your face will never change or perish,” words I did not hear, but their cadence had been heard before, I understood what was said, and never had to sniff the unguent with which they rubbed my skin and smeared my feet, laid my back in holy oil, and gilded my nails and my toes. They laid special bandages upon my head, put the bandage of Nekheb on my brow, and Hathor for my face, Thoth was the bandage over my ears, and folded pieces within the mouth and a cloth over the chin and back of the neck, twenty-two pieces to the right of my face were laid in, and twenty-two to the left. They offered up prayers that I might be able to see and hear in the Land of the Dead, and they rubbed my calves and thighs with blackstone oil and holy oil. My toes were wrapped in linen whose every piece had a drawing of the jackal, and my hands were bandaged in another linen on which were images of Isis and Hep and Ra and Amset. Ebony gum-water was washed over me. They laid in amulets as they wrapped, figures of turquoise and gold, of silver and lapis-lazuli, crystal and carnelian, and a ring was slipped over one gold-painted finger, its seal filled with a drop of each of the thirty-six substances of the embalmer. Then they laid on flowers of the ankham plant, and widths and windings of linen, narrow strips longer than the length of a royal barge, and folded linens to fill my cavities. In company with Meni I breathed the embalming resin that would seal the cloth to my pores of stone. I heard the sound of prayers, and the soft breath of the artists as they painted my burial case and sang to one another in the hot tent beneath the moving sun, and on a day I came to know at last the sounds of paving stones thundering beneath a sledge while I was dragged with all the weight of my case to the tomb where I would be put away in my enclosing coffins, and I could hear the quiet sobbing of the women, delicate as the far-off cry of gulls and the invocation of the priest: “The God Horus advances with His Ka.” The coffin case bumped on the steps of the tomb. Then hours passed—was it hours?—in a ceremony I could neither hear nor smell, but for the grating of vessels of food and the knocking of small instruments and the sound of liquors being poured upon the floor, but that resounded through the stone of me like an underground river in a cavernous fall, and then the blow of a rock fell on my head and was followed by the grinding of chains, but it was only the scratch of an instrument upon my face. Then I felt a great force opening my stone jaws, and many words flowed into my mouth. I heard a roaring of the waters of my conception, and sobs of heartbreak—my own? I did not know. Rivers of air came to me like a new life—and the forgotten first instant of death also came and was gone as quickly. Then was my Ka born, which is to say I was born again, and was it a day, a year, or not for the passing of ten Kings? But I was up and myself again apart from Meni and his poor body in the coffin.

  Yes, I was separate, I was aware of myself, but I was ready to weep. For now I knew why Meni was my dearest friend and his death an agony to me, yes, my dim memory of his life was now nothing but the dim memory of my own life. For now I knew who I was, and that was no better than a ghost in a panic for food. I was nothing but the poor Ka of Menenhetet Two. And if the first gift to the dead was that they could add the name of the Lord to their own name, then I was the Ka of poor helpless Osiris Menenhetet Two, yes, the Ka, the most improperly buried and fearful Ka who now must live in this violated tomb, oh, where was I now that I knew where I was? And the thought of the Land of the Dead opened to me with all the recognition that I was but a seventh part of what had been once the lights, faculties, and powers of a living soul, once my living soul. Now I was no more than the Double of the dead man, and what was left of him was no more than the corpse of his badly wrapped body, and me.

  SIX

  So, I could appreciate why I had no memory. If I was the Double of Menenhetet the Second, as brave and petty as the original, I could still remember no more of him than was needed to give a proper expression to his features. A Double, like a mirror, has no memory. I could only think of him as a friend, my closest friend! No wonder I wished to lie next to his mummy case.

  Yet if my recollections could offer no more feeling than is provided by a long scar on the skin, nonetheless I was myself. My face could still give others every delight. Had I ever made love to Hathfertiti? How could I know? But I felt no embarrassment to be thinking so of my mother—a mirror hardly had a mother. Why should I not be the coldest element of Meni’s heart? Yet, standing in the litter of his—my—violated tomb, I knew that the balance to these loveless thoughts was the rage I felt for Hathfertiti. At this instant, I could have killed her. For soon, I must leave this place, soon, if I dared, I would have to take the road through the western desert that led to the Duad and the Land of the Dead—did it really exist, as the priests said, with monsters and boiling lakes? How could I endure the trials when I could not remember my deeds and so would hardly be able to explain them? A fear of dying came over me for the first time, the true fear—I understood that I could cease. To die in the Land of the Dead, to perish with one’s Ka, was to die forever. The second death was the final death. Oh, how rank were my circumstances. How unjust! Hathfertiti had done so little for my tomb!

  In this rage, I was hardly able to breathe. Anger was too powerful an emotion for the delicate lungs of the Ka. The Ka was reputed to be short of breath. That was why a sail was supposed to be painted on one wall of the tomb—it might encourage the breath of the Ka to return. But here, on these walls, was no painted sail. Suffocated by my fury I did try, nonetheless, to bring before me the image of one, and succeeded in stirring a breeze to titillate the hairs in the nostrils of my nose—how could I be dead if the hairs of my nose were so keen? Yet in taking this clear breath, the fear of dying a second time came over me with force equal to my rage. For Hathfertiti’s oversights would cost much. Where was the painted portrait to show me standing near water? What would I drink? Like an omen came a dry spot, fierce as a boil, to the back of my throat.

  Nor had any of the four doors of the winds been drawn on the sides of my coff
in. Of course I could not breathe easily if such an insult had been given to the winds. Curious mother! She had also neglected to prepare a box with my navel string. So, too, had I lost one more route through the Land of the Dead.

  Here was another oversight. So soon as I examined the rolls of papyrus packed in my coffin with me, I could recognize that the texts of important prayers were missing. I was amazed at how many I could remember: the Chapter-of-not-dying-a-second-time, the Chapter-of-not-allowing-the-soul-of-a-man-to-be-shut-in, the Chapter-of-not-allowing-a-man-to-decay-in-his-tomb. I was beginning to feel an anger so large and so fortifying that my rage was calm. I felt a great desire to summon Hathfertiti.

  As if to search for a sign, I knelt. Under the litter of linen, I discovered a dead beetle, yes, the dung beetle there before me. Just as it used its hind legs to push a ball of dung many times larger than itself up into a safe hole where this dung could feed its eggs, so did the priests used to tell us how Khepera, looking like a giant beetle, carried the Boat of Ra across the sky every day, rowing with His six legs through the heavens. That was a common explanation popular for children and peasants. I, however, had no need of such stories. I could believe that if a Great God chose to hide in a beetle, it was because Gods liked to conceal themselves in curious places. That was the first law of great secrets. Therefore I ate each of the dead beetle’s wings just as slowly as my palate could bear. The dry membranes cut like little knives, and the head, although I chewed it carefully, turned out to be only a small dry grit, but I confess that as I swallowed, I tried to picture the head of Hathfertiti. Calling upon no incantations, but most certainly filled with contempt for the iniquity of my mother, I said, “Great Khepera of the heavens, let justice prevail. Present me with the living Hathfertiti.” Through my closed eyes, I felt a sudden light and there was the muted sound of thunder through my feet. But when I lifted my head, it was not Hathfertiti I saw. Before me, instead, was the gaunt body of the Ka of old Menenhetet One. I cannot say I liked the way my great-grandfather looked at me.

  SEVEN

  He was dressed like a High Priest and for all I knew he was a High Priest. His head was shaved and he seemed to inhabit the air of his own presence, as if each morning his body was sanctified. Yet he looked like no High Priest I had ever seen. He was too dirty and very old. Ashen was the color of his white linen robes and the dust of years had beaten into the cloth. Ashen was the color of his skin, even darker than his garments, but rubbed in the same dust, and the toes of his bare feet looked like fingers of stone. His bracelets had turned to shades of green. The corrosion of his anklets was black. Only his eyes were bright. His pupils were as expressionless as the painted look of a fish or a snake, but the whites were like limestone in the light of the moon. By the light of my torch, it was only the white of his eyes that enabled me to be certain he was not a statue, for he remained motionless on a chair beside his coffin, and could have passed in age for a hundred years old, a thousand years old, if not for the fierce light of those eyes.

  I felt a return of the oppression I knew when looking at his coffin. He was so old! One could not even describe his features for lack of knowing where the nose reached the flesh of the cheeks. Just that wrinkled were the terraces of his skin. He seemed close to lacking existence altogether, yet made me so uneasy by his presence, that I thought to rid myself of him. Quickly. As if he were some noxious insect. So I took a step to the Canopic jar nearest to his coffin—it was Tuamutef—and twisted its lid. The top came off easily. The jar was empty. No wrapping of the heart and lungs was in the vase of the jackal. I turned to Amset. Also empty.

  “I have eaten them,” said Menenhetet One.

  Had the thin air of his throat not been warmed by the sun since the day he died? The echo of a cold cavern was in his voice.

  “Why,” I was about to ask, “why, great-grandfather, have you eaten your own blessing?” but the impertinence of the question was pulled from my mouth before I could ask it. I had never known such an experience. It was as if a rude hand reached into my throat deep enough for me to gag, seized my tongue, and shucked it from the root to the tip.

  It was then I felt a fear clear as the finest moments of my mind. For I was dead, so I understood once more (again as if for the first time) and being dead, might now be obliged to meet every terror I had fled while living. Of these terrors could it be said that my ancestor, Menenhetet, might prove the first? For I could certainly recall how often we talked of him in my family and always as a man of unspeakable strength and sinister habits.

  Now, as I stared at him, he spoke. “What,” he asked, “are your sentiments?”

  “My sentiments?”

  “Now that we are together.”

  “I hope,” I said, “that we will begin to know each other.”

  “At last.”

  The same keen air was in my lungs that I had known in the tomb of Khufu. The best of myself must have come back to me for I felt the curious exhilaration, even the certainty, that I was meeting my enemy. Was I meeting the enemy of my life—now that I was dead? But speak not of death. It was without meaning to me. I had never felt more vital. It was as if I had decided on some terrible day to make an end of myself and had walked to the edge of a cliff, looked down into the gorge, knew I would certainly step into the space before me and in one fall be dead. At such a moment I might know fear in every drop of my blood, yet the future would feel as alive as lightning. Just now I had that sense. It was the happiness of being next to my fear, yet separate from it, so that I could be free at last to know all the ways I had failed to live my life, all the boredom I had swallowed, and each foul sentiment of wasted flesh. It was as if I had spent my days beneath a curse, and the sign of it—despite every lively pandemonium of gambling and debauch—was the state of immutable monotony that dwelt in my heart. The sense of being dead while alive—from what could it have come but a curse? I had an inkling then of the force of the desire to die when that is the only way to encounter one’s demon. No wonder I stood before him in an apprehension as invigorating as the iciest water of a well. For on how many lovely evenings in how many lovely gardens had I told funny stories about the filthy habits of the first holder of my name? How we cried with laughter at tales of his calculation, his cunning, his sacrilegious feasts of bat dung.

  But now, as if he had heard my thought, he stood up for the first time, not a big man nor so small as he had first appeared, and dusty as the loneliest roads of the desert.

  “Those stories,” he murmured, “left my name repulsive,” and by the air of self-possession with which he said this, I began to wonder whether I was most certainly his moral superior. That he was the guide to my final destruction, I did not cease to believe, but that he might also have a high purpose now occurred to me. If, in these curious intoxications of knowing I was dead, I had begun to feel as splendid as a hero, still I could not remember my heroism. Nonetheless, I had hardly doubted that my purposes (if I could ever find them) would be noble. Now, I was not as confident.

  “Do you think,” he asked, “I am handsome? Or ugly?”

  “Are you not too old to be either?”

  “It is the only answer.” He laughed. In mockery of me, his finger idled from side to side. “Well, you are dead,” he said, “and certainly in danger of expiring a second time. Then you will be gone forever. Goodbye, sweet lad. Your face was more beautiful than your heart.” Abruptly, he gave an old man’s snigger, unspeakably lewd. “Are you content to let me be your guide in Khert-Neter?” he asked.