Ancient Evenings

by Norman Mailer

  In response to this interruption, the voice of the High Priest left the throat of my Pharaoh, and His own voice came forth. “No, he said it. I was not prepared. His wit was so weak, his feelings were so pompous. I was even sorry for him. To think, he dared to say, ‘Your voice is small!’ ”

  “How,” asked my great-grandfather, “did You respond?”

  “I told him he was an ox and built for burden, and that the fate of Egypt depended more upon the tenderness with which I hold a flower, than upon the reports of a thousand of his scribes. Yet all the while I spoke, I did not believe Myself. My Gods had most certainly deserted Me. I had been chided by Khem-Usha, then insulted, but the walls of his temple most certainly did not crash.

  “To My horror, I now began to talk too much. It is due to that unhappy business between us as boys. I said to him, ‘I may be no more than the eleventh son of My Father, but My mother had one splendid virtue in His eyes, Khem-Usha, she was loyal through all those terrible times in the harem when His little queens, most certainly including your mother, tried to assassinate Him. That is why I was brought into the line of succession. Of course, that by itself does not bring Me very near to Amon, does it? Yet, this I will say, Khem-Usha, I am the Pharaoh, and your duties exist to no better purpose than to allow Me as many hours as I require each day to meditate upon the needs of the Two-Lands.’ Yet all the while I was scolding him, I kept feeling the point of his rebuke. My voice was too small! ‘Declare,’ I wished to say to him, ‘that I am not a good King. Say My third leg is as weak as Horus the boy. Dare even to say that I watch My little queens, but rarely join them. But do not tell Me that My voice is small. For I can speak in all the voices of Egypt, and most certainly your own.’ Then I rose in My anger and said aloud to him, ‘Let your duties as Vizier be given to another. Serve only as My High Priest.’ He was much agitated at what I said, especially when I added, ‘Menenhetet may be just the Vizier for Me.’ He was aghast, I assure you, and soon left.”

  “You spoke of me as Your Vizier,” said my great-grandfather.

  “I did.”

  “You meant each word?”

  “I do not know. At the moment I spoke, it made great sense to Me.”

  “For if you did not mean it,” said my great-grandfather, “we may all be dead.” He gave a shrug as if the foundation of pride was to live lightly with such thoughts.

  “I believe I know what you mean. Still, I would hear you say it.”

  “I will not deny,” said Menenhetet, “that I have thought of being Your Vizier. If the wisdom acquired in four lives cannot serve a vast purpose, then of what use is it? So I came here with the hope that we could talk of such serious matters. Yet, I cannot say I have been confident. For weeks I have heard that You will depose Khem-Usha as Vizier and replace him with Your Chief Scribe, Nes-Amon.”

  “Do you believe such rumors?”

  “He is a Libyan,” said my great-grandfather, “but then, Nes-Amon has been with You for many years. You have raised him to the rank of Prince. He is an able man”

  “I have discussed the post with him. The Libyan does not have your knowledge.”

  “Still,” said my great-grandfather, “You can depend on his loyalty. If I were Your Vizier, there would not be a day when someone did not murmur to You that I am no longer to be trusted.”

  “That is a judgment I reserve for Myself. My judgment of men—if I am given the opportunity to listen—is faultless. Of course, few men dare to speak to a Pharaoh. You do. Indeed, I have just decided to tell you the truth. Until tonight, I was ready to choose Nes-Amon as My next Vizier. He is, indeed, an able man. But there is a place in every servant’s heart where he is not to be trusted. I will admit to you that Khem-Usha, when he whispered to Me, was not speaking of our boyhood together—far from it! Rather, he said word had come to him that Nes-Amon was ready to march upon the Palace. The influence of Nes-Amon is large with My charioteers.”

  “When did Khem-Usha say this would take place?”

  “He told Me there was a good chance it would take place tonight. I laughed. ‘You do not have a nose for military matters,’ I told him. ‘No army likes to move under a full moon, and when it is the Night of the Pig—all would get lost.’ I convinced him. I said: ‘If My Palace were open to you, Khem-Usha, you still would not dare to take it. Not tonight. Depend on it. Nes-Amon feels no more confident than you.’ I believe Khem-Usha agreed. He certainly became less agitated about Nes-Amon, and it was then he began to scold Me about the extent of his duties—I think he was trying to frighten Me by demonstrating the extent of his influence over the Two-Lands. Yet I do not know why he dared to speak to Me so at the end. He was taking a terrible chance. He understands how unhappy I am already with the situation. Why double the jeopardy of his position by insulting Me?”

  “I think Khem-Usha wants You to dismiss him,” said my great-grandfather. “Many are loyal to him now but not so devoted that they will dare to move against You. You are the Pharaoh. But if You take away his powers, then those who serve him closely have also lost. So then they must move with him.”

  “What would you advise Me to do?”

  “I would encourage Nes-Amon to think that he will certainly replace Khem-Usha, and I would convince Khem-Usha that You will soon make him full Vizier. At the proper moment, appoint a Vizier over both of them. Leave Thebes and Upper Egypt to Khem-Usha, and Memphi and Lower Egypt to Nes-Amon. They can each be called Vizier-to-the-High-Vizier.”

  “You would be the High Vizier?”

  “It would take every skill I possess.”

  “I should think so.” Ptah-nem-hotep gave a cough, rueful as despair itself. “I do not know what to do,” He said. “Your enemies will never allow any quality in you more noble than bat shit.”

  “That is what I fear the least,” said Menenhetet. “A man with a dreadful reputation who has just been given terrible powers is treated with great respect. All nope he will not act like a tyrant.”

  “Then, what is your fear?”

  “That You will lose everything tonight. I would raise my guard to man the walls.”

  “I do not trust My officers. The half who are not close to Nes-Amon may be loyal to Khem-Usha.” Now, Ptah-nem-hotep gave a sweet smile to Menenhetet. “My situation is as follows: I detest Khem-Usha, no longer trust Nes-Amon, and do not know you at all. Yet, at this moment, I feel happy. My belief is that the Pharaoh, if He is wise enough to think only of what is before Him, whether it be His Crook, His Flail, or no more than the flower in His hand, is the greatest force in the Two-Lands. No army can move against Him when His thoughts have no fear. Do you Believe this?”

  “I do not know.”

  “I will tell you. I do not have the wisdom one needs. But I am drawn to you. If you are wise enough not to deceive Me, and tell Me all that I wish to know, then I cannot fail to increase in strength and wisdom. Of course, it is hard not to suppose that you would deceive Me.”

  “There are nights,” said Menenhetet, “when I would seek to deceive the Lord Osiris Himself.”

  Ptah-nem-hotep laughed with true merriment. “I want you to tell Me,” he said, “of My ancestor, Ramses the Second. He is the one whose strength I will need in the hours and years to come. I want to know what took place at the Battle of Kadesh, and all that followed upon it.”

  “To tell You might take every moment that is left in this night.”

  “I am awake until morning.” He hesitated. “Will you speak of the Battle of Kadesh?”

  “If I think on this matter, I want to be Your Vizier.”

  “After listening to you, I may have no other choice.”

  My great-grandfather laughed. “When I tell my story truly, You will learn so much that You will have no further need of me. You will be a Pharaoh greater than others, and Master of the Secrets. Who, but myself, has known the Great Pharaoh, Ramses the Second?”

  “You make Me grateful before you begin.”

  My great-grandfather gave a smile that showed the st
rength of his face and the youth of the sixty years of his fourth life. “The story of my first life will certainly take us through the night. That is much more certain than that I shall be Vizier. But if this—as I feel with every breath I take—is a night when much comes to an end, and much is ready to change, then let us go back to the patio. I will offer a story far better than any father ever gave a son, but I would like to tell it by the light of the fireflies. You saw them truly. They bring back thoughts of campfires after the roar of the day is done. And I would like my granddaughter to listen as well. And my great-grandson. They are now the nearest to my flesh of all four lives.”

  IV

  THE BOOK OF THE CHARIOTEER

  ONE

  My mother greeted Ptah-nem-hotep with relief enough to suppose He had just escaped the serpents of the sea. She even clapped her hands with pleasure when told that my great-grandfather had agreed to speak of his deeds in the service of Ramses the Second, although I do not believe she would have welcomed this if she knew how long the account might take. But since she did not, she sat up on the couch, and, like a girl, held her chin in her hand.

  “I will tell You the story,” my great-grandfather began, “as if we did not know each other, and had not spoken of many matters on this night. In that manner, what I say will have the simplicity of my thoughts in my first life, and so we may come to look with the same eyes upon all that happened to me.”

  “That would be equal,” Ptah-nem-hotep replied, “to offering your wisdom itself.”

  “Wisdom in that life was more like strength,” my great-grandfather began. “I was born of the poorest people, and yet became the First Charioteer of Ramses the Second and even lived next to Him in the worst hours of Kadesh.” He stopped and looked about him. As if the difficulty of embarking on such a long tale weighed upon him like a stone he was not yet ready to bear, he felt obliged to say: “Indeed, these exploits are inscribed on the temple walls at Abu-Simbel, at the Ramesseum of Thebes, and at Karnak. Also, at Abydos, although not all that is there is correct, and certainly not the spelling of my name. Ramses the Second had a voice to ring in your ear and so His scribes cut my name into the stone as Menni, not Meni.”

  “Yes,” said Ptah-nem-hotep, “I have visited the wall at Abu-Simbel where it is told how the Pharaoh was separated from His troops by the Hittites. It says that you were seized by terror. When I close My eyes, I can still see the inscription. The light is clear on it and the shadows are strong. You said, ‘Let us save our lives.’ Then, below, it is written that Ramses Mi-Amon replied, ‘Take courage, Menni, strengthen your heart. I will go among them like the hawk on his prey. I will lay them in the dust.’ It was late in the afternoon when I read those words, so I still see the shadows on the indentations of the letters.”

  “Those are the words that are written,” said Menenhetet.

  “Were you really afraid?” asked Ptah-nem-hotep. When my great-grandfather did not reply at once, He also asked, “Did the Second truly reply to you in just so bold a voice?”

  “I was afraid,” said Menenhetet, “but I would also say there was a moment when Ramses Mi-Amon knew fear. Yet He was the first to be brave. That enabled me to be brave.”

  “You were braver than is recorded, you say. And He was less brave. Can that be true?”

  “I would never say that He was not brave. The Second was the bravest man I ever saw. Yet the story is not as it is told on the temple wall. There was a moment when He knew fear.”

  “Tell us.”

  “No, Great Two-House. Not yet. My story must be long like the length of the snake. If I present the head, You will know nothing of the body. Only the smile of the snake. For now, I will say that we both knew some terror. Why, even the lion of the Pharaoh knew fear.”

  “So the lion is real,” said Ptah-nem-hotep. “He truly had this pet beast that is drawn on some of the walls?”

  “Yes, the lion fought by the side of Ramses the Second. And prodigiously.” My great-grandfather shrugged. “But if You want to know the truth of all that happened to me, I say again that I must tell the story no more cleverly than I could speak the truth in my First life.”

  “Why, as slowly as you wish,” said the Pharaoh, and inclined His hand most graciously.

  So my great-grandfather was ready once more to commence and if we wished to understand what he meant by saying he would tell the story slowly, I came to see that silence was a large part of what he would offer. He did not speak for a while, commencing once, then ceasing, and in the pause, issuing a sigh. “I must,” he said at last, “go back to what was there before I begin, even as a journey begins with preparations on the night before. So I would tell you of my childhood in that life I knew first, except I cannot say I had a childhood; I had none, at least none in the way of this beautiful boy, my great-grandson here before us, half asleep. His childhood is full of wonders, but like so many of my people, I had, when I was his age, no more in the way of thoughts than any beast, if not for one thought that left me knowing I was not like others and would never be. That much I knew before I was born. Because, on the night I was conceived, my mother saw Amon.”

  “Only the mother of a man who will yet be Pharaoh can see Amon on such a night,” said Ptah-nem-hotep. “It seems we are brothers. My mother also saw Amon.”

  Now, Menenhetet hesitated before saying, “I tell You what my mother told me, no more. My parents were poor people in the poorest peasant village, and on the night this happened they were lying in their straw, my father by my mother’s side. A golden light came to the darkness of their hut and the air smelled sweeter than all the perfumes in the House of the Secluded. Amon whispered to my mother that a great son would be born who would lead the world.” Menenhetet sighed. “As You see, I have done less than that.”

  “You believe her story?” asked Ptah-nem-hotep.

  “If You had known my mother, You would believe it. She lived with the earth in her hands. She knew no stories. She told me once and that was enough. When I grew up, we never spoke unless we had something to say. Therefore you never forgot what you were told. Our minds were like a stone and each word was scratched upon it.”

  “By this one remark,” said Ptah-nem-hotep, “I understand My peasants more closely. So, I comprehend your desire to tell the story with deliberation. I would even say that I am prepared to listen with the same repose I might give to watching the river as it drifts by.”

  “Your Ear,” said Menenhetet, “has divined my next words. For I wish to speak of our Nile. It was always in my thoughts and passed through me on every breath. I was born, I may say, at the height of our flood, and the end of my first life was to come on a night when the river had just receded from its highest mark. The last sound I heard was of its waters.”

  Menenhetet’s breath was short, as if this recollection remained arduous. “Now, those who live in the cities have forgotten the extremities of drought and flood. Here in Memphi, we may feel some heat before the river begins to rise, but our discomfort is small. Our noble parks are watered through the year and surround us with their green. We are apart from the desert. But in the land from which I came, midway between Memphi and Thebes, the desert is like …” He paused. “No-dwelling-can-contain-it.”

  I noticed that my great-grandfather’s voice, which had most certainly put away its customary edge of mockery, now altered even more, and was outright solemn. But, then, no-dwelling-can-contain-it was an expression used by field workers when they did not dare to speak directly of a ghost which I happened to know because my mother had told me just two days ago, full of her rich laugh at the cautions of country people.

  But then, I also noticed that my great-grandfather, having passed through this change of manner, was considerably less like a lord to us now and more like a dignified man of the people, even a village mayor of the sort he would scorn, and I noticed how he only employed words appropriate to a simple man. “Before I tell,” he said, “of my military career which began at the age of fifteen when I
was plucked up from my village like a weed from the riverbank, I must inform You first of how we lived and the knowledge we had of the river, how it would rise and fall. That was all we knew, and it was all of our lives. I grew up by its laws. Here, in the cities, we speak of whether the flood will be a good height for the crops, and we celebrate our greatest festivals to the rise of our river, we praise it, we think we know it, but that is not like being born to the sound of it, and fearing the river when it rises.

  “So, let me try to tell You, and I will speak as if You had never seen it, for in truth to know its anger is like sleeping with Your hand on the belly of a lion.”

  I saw my mother give one small look at my father as if to say, “I hope he knows enough to amuse our Pharaoh.”

  Ptah-nem-hotep, however, nodded. “Yes, let Me hear of our great stream in such a way. I find that as you speak of matters familiar to Me, I come to know them again and they are of different interest.”

  Menenhetet nodded. “During my boyhood, the air in my country, when the Nile was low, became as dry as wood-fire. You must think of how dry was that air. We know nothing like it here, or at Thebes, but in my country which is between, the fields dried fast after the harvest. And almost immediately the earth turned old and began to wrinkle. A thin crack which in the morning was too small for your big toe was wide enough by the same night to break a cow’s ankle. We lived in our huts and watched our cracks widen, and as they did, these cracks moved toward us across the fields. Each day, sand filled them more. The desert was nearer to our scorched meadows. Then there came a day when the sand surrounded us and the leaves hung like dead fingers from the trees. The smallest wind blew a fine dust over our houses and our tables, and we breathed it in our straw when we slept. Searching over the stubble, our cattle walked with their tongues out. You could hear them cry, ‘I am thirsty, oh, I am suffering from thirst.’ We were thirstier. We had worked in the ditches, even the children, trying to clean out the bottoms of our narrow canals before the flood, repairing the dikes, smoothing their top for our carts, restoring the walls of our basins, every last one of us working while the river was low. And at night when we rested, too tired to play, you could walk from one island of reeds to another. Every kind of dead rodent was to be found in the silt of our canals, and up and down the river came the sounds of neighboring villages at the same work, all of us filling sledges with sift that our oxen would haul to the dikes. There we would pack it with straw and lay such bricks on the embankments. I tell you, an awful stink was on the land then! Everything dried with the leathery mean stench of old people. A stinginess is in such corruption, a urine!, and it takes forever. Those hard odors used to go right up the nose and live under our eyes with the dust and the heat. They said that to breathe such a smell could cause blindness, and I know my eyes would pucker. I still remember the bones of one dead fish on the riverbank by a tongue of sand—each night the crocodile who lived nearby must have blazed on it with his breath, for there was less of the fish each day, less of the dried skin near the head and the milky stones of its eyes, yet the bones had an odor so powerful you would have sworn the fish had traveled all of the river bottom for its smell to know so much. I went back day after day to walk around it. The rot in the bones of that fish Knew more evil than any I had ever encountered and I thought the moon must be in it with the river mud. Each day that skeleton became more of a withered plant until the bones themselves dried in their joints and the last of the fish blew away.