by Paula Guran
It is Bak’s job to carry jars of water into the room, and to spirit away the bowls of mucus, phlegm, and blood, so that the growing crowd of family, courtiers and ministers gathering in the anteroom do not have to think too hard about the mortal parts of the king. Bak glides with purpose around the room, removing one vessel or adding another. He never stops moving. Now he is in the service rooms, discreetly depositing the humors. Now he is back again with fresh cloth or some fruit. Now he is by the window tweaking the curtains that keep out the flies.
Bak is a busy insect, scratching around the edges of a quiet tableau of death that has been composed in the center to the room.
King Mentuhotep lies on his back, foolishly clinging to life. A woman sits at his head, holding a damp cloth against his brow. Another kneels at his feet, holding a fan. Both females are dressed in the same simple robes, with their hair tied back in the same plain knots. Bak cannot decide if either of them is Hena, the one the king chose in the moments before he fell.
A scribe, plucked from the chambers of the civil service below, sits with his legs crossed and his tools ready. A stylus, some papyrus paper; wood and a knife if he needs it. It is not usual for utterances in the king’s private chambers to be noted, but this is obviously a unique occasion. Yet Bak can see that the tools are still immaculately laid out. They have yet to be used. The king has not said anything for a while.
A thick wooden chair has been dragged to the bedside. Upon it sits the king’s brother, fresh from the West. He stares straight ahead, and dares not look at the king’s face, as if he is to be reprimanded for some boyhood prank. He is scared, thinks Bak. He is far too young and slight for this. Does he have a quickness of mind? Can he command the respect of Amenemhat?
Or, for that matter, of me?
No, he does not, thinks Bak.
Most of the ministers have been banished to the reception rooms, but Amenemhat has unfettered access. Though laden with robes and jewelry, he slips into the chamber in near silence. Bak sees him enter, but the king’s brother is startled when the vizier materializes by his side.
“Anything?”
The brother shakes his head.
Amenemhat moves into the space between the prostrate king and his brother, and begins a whispered chant. Sticking to his wide trajectory around the edges of the chamber, Bak cannot hear the words, but he knows what is being said: “O King Mentuhotep, he who has revitalized the heart of this land, the Divine One who wears the white crown . . . ” Even now, Amenemhat retains his piety.
A gurgle from the king. All heads, Bak’s no exception, are pulled toward the body on the bed.
“Vizier, is that you?”
“I am here, Majesty.”
“You must begin making arrangements for my funeral, vizier.”
“I am entirely confident that Your Majesty will soon recover from this minor inconvenience,” says Amenemhat.
In response, Mentuhotep rolls over to the bowl by his bedside and coughs up a wad of black blood. A more eloquent response could not be imagined, thinks Bak, as he steps forward to clean the mess.
Amenemhat takes the point. “What funeral arrangements, O Immortal One?”
Mentuhotep lifts his arm. It is pale and the blue veins are visible through the skin, but it is still as long and as thick as it always was. He looks at Bak.
“Help me up,” says the king.
Immediately but carefully, Bak puts the clay bowl with its saliva and stomach debris on the floor, and places his arms once more under the king’s. Amenemhat has to step back to move out of the way, which means the king’s inconsequential brother has to stand and shove his own chair a few foot lengths toward the end of the bed.
“Prop me up,” says the king to Bak.
Bak doesn’t understand. He looks to Amenemhat for guidance, but the minister just shrugs.
“Prop, Majesty?” asks Bak. He does not remember ever asking Mentuhotep a question before.
“Just sit there,” commands the king. “Just sit there and let me lean on you.”
The women titter. Amenemhat’s eyes widen. “Perhaps, Your Majesty, I could . . . ”
“Oh shut up, vizier!” croaks the king. To Bak, again: “Put your back there, and I shall lean.”
Bak does as he is commanded. With caution, he lowers himself onto the edge of the bed and perches there, like a frog on the riverbank. The king sighs, and leans into him, and there they are, a God and his slave, back to back.
Bak remembers a time from his boyhood when one of the farmers brought a dead baby goat into the village marketplace. Only it was not one goat, but two, spliced together along the back. Two heads, eight hooves, but one skin. Bak remembers an argument between the farmer and the priests about whether this meant the Gods were happy or displeased. Bak cannot remember the outcome of the argument, but he guesses the priests probably took it to be a bad sign. He remembers they forced the man to burn the goat.
Mentuhotep’s skin kisses Bak’s own. The mass of the king weighs against him. He realizes he has to lean even closer in order to keep the equilibrium.
Now that the king is comfortable, he looks up at his vizier and begins to talk. The scribe begins to write, and Bak listens. Amenemhat’s breath quickens as the king speaks.
The forklift is nowhere to be seen and the laborers have been dismissed. It has taken several hours, but the sarcophagus has been installed at the facility. The team assembles to behold their prize. Over the head stands Botha. Mourad to the east, and Ruth to the west. To the south, at the foot of the relic, Dr Stephano Lentini stands blinking behind thick glasses. Behind him, on the wall of the lab, hangs a portrait of Emir Sharif Ibn Ali Al-Maud in full ceremonial dress.
Ruth allows her hands to caress the slab of stone. It is cool to the touch. Her fingers explore the hundreds of naïf hieroglyphs, carved into neat rows. They cover every plane of the block, giving it a dappled look. Ruth tries to picture the men who put the marks there, but they have no faces, just arms in the hot sun.
She finds it easier to think of the person who wrote what is on the slab. The author. He (probably, certainly a man) has had some thoughts. Some synapses have triggered, muscles have moved, words have been said. And now they are here on this block of stone. Her fingers are tracing the marks, and neurons have connected. But are the patterns in her brain the same shape as in the mind of that man, all those years ago?
“What do they mean?” she asks.
“Jesus bloody Christ, my dear,” says Botha. “I know I have several doctorates but I can’t be doing everything. You’re the expert, ya!”
Ruth knows he is joking. She does signals, not linguistics. Statistics, cryptography, and the like. Botha knows this because it is the reason he hired her. And he holds precisely the same number of doctorates that she does, which is two.
“Hey, Mourad!” yells Botha. “Tell Ruth what the coffin says!”
Two feet away, Mourad consults a large ring-binder file, packed full of laminated cards.
“It’s mainly orations,” says Mourad, and reads off from a list on one of the cards. “He irrigated the land. He wore a white crown. He united the Kingdoms. That sort of thing.”
“Thanks, Mourad! That’s why we keep you around, eh, boyko?”
Mourad smiles and nods, while Botha rubs his hands together. “Right then: fire up the scanners. Let’s see what sort of condition he’s in.”
The word is already bouncing around the palace that King Mentuhotep has made some spectacular demands on Amenemhat by ordering strange variations to the burial rituals. Bak has neither the permission nor any excuse to step out into the antechamber, so he puts his ear to the door. The tone of the murmurings from the assembly has changed. By his reckoning, there is more movement. They are unsettled.
A half-voice stumbles through the lamplight. “They do not understand.” The king can barely speak now, his words blocked by mucus and saliva, and a ribcage that no longer rises and falls as it should.
“They are mortals. Mer
e people. They do not speak with the Gods.”
Bak is not sure whether he should say “yes” or “no” to this, so he just nods.
“I know what they are saying,” croaks the king. “ ‘Mentuhotep must be mad with his sickness, Mentuhotep does not really mean what he says.’ ”
“I do not venture into the anterooms, Majesty.”
“But this is not the disease. The people must know I formed my beliefs a long time ago, in my youth.”
Bak feels out of his depth. Where is the king’s brother? Where is Amenemhat? He proffers a bowl of water to Mentuhotep. A white hand grabs his wrist. It is cold and wet.
“They shall not disembowel me! I must submit to judgment as a whole man. I shall meet my brother Gods with my heart in my chest!”
“Yes, Majesty.”
The Divine Hand drops back onto the bed. Bak fights the instinct to wipe the royal sweat off his forearm.
Mentuhotep nods toward the window. “The curtains.”
Bak is thankful for a task that involves moving his feet. He all but skips over to the window and draws back the sheet, revealing the twilight. A thousand torchlights glitter, as if reflecting the stars above. Beyond the city, Bak can make out the dark shapes of the monuments that mark the entrance in the great burial valley. The vast walls of stone have forever changed the mountains. They flaunt the power of the kings who have been before.
And now there is Mentuhotep, who has not yet laid one rock on a mausoleum for himself.
The king raises his head and catches Bak looking at him. “You pity me?” he asks. Inside, Bak recoils once more. Why does Mentuhotep keep trying to engage him in conversation? Can’t he just leave me alone to do my job, thinks Bak, and I will leave him alone to die? And where is Amenemhat?
And yes, if he is honest, Bak does pity the king, sunk into the bed, fading from life and from history. He would rather be a slave with his health than a God with bleeding lungs.
Mentuhotep is about to enter the next life, where he will reign again alongside Horus and Osiris with a thousand new slaves to see to his every need. But this bit, this gasping for breath, it looks painful. Right now, I wouldn’t swap places with the king for anything, thinks Bak.
He is certainly not going to say that to his master, however.
“No, Majesty, I do not pity you. I admire your spirit. If I could take on some of your pain, I would do so gladly.”
That should do it.
“Your concern for my condition warms my heart,” says the king, coldly. Bak wonders if he may have been too enthusiastic. Perhaps the king really is of sound mind, if ill in body.
“But, do you not think I should have a great mausoleum, for my voyage to the afterlife?”
By the sun and the moon and the stars! Why does the king keep talking to him? Will this plague of the lungs not do its task and carry the king away? And if it will not, then let the heavens open and strike me down now, thinks Bak. And again: Where is Amenemhat? Where is anyone that is not me?
“You are a great king, Majesty. You should have a palace as large as that of Khufu . . . ”
The king roars, then coughs, then inhales, then coughs again, and finally leans over his bowl. Saliva and blood seem to drip out of his teeth. Bak thinks he may have said the wrong thing.
“But I do not need another Giza! Those were kings like me. I am of their line. Royal blood. Divine blood. When my people see those pyramids, they think of one word, and that word is ‘pharaoh.’ I do not need to build more. Those monuments are already mine.”
Lentini is ecstatic. He points to the ultrasound images. “I am not believe it. Look at definition in muscles. And here—” his thumb presses against the screen “—look at lobes in brain. Look at medulla, Ruth!”
Ruth is secretly aghast. She never expected the mummy to be anything other than mush in a dry skin shell. But now Lentini is saying that a four-thousand-year-old body is in good condition?
“How? How did they do this?”
“The body is covered in a sort of wax. It is an aldehyde . . . ”
“Formaldehyde?”
Lentini chuckles. “Formaldehyde, this is too toxic. But this wax has similar to formaldehyde. It preserves in same way, locks in RNA strings. Younawhamsayin?” Ruth has no idea how Lentini has picked up that idiom, but it sounds very odd coming from the lips of this anxious zoologist. Nor does she really understand what Lentini means when he talks about strings of RNA protein. That’s not her department, and she gave up trying to decipher Lentini’s private language a long time ago. Botha can keep up, of course, but she is sure that Mourad is as stumped as she is. The local Arab technicians stare at Lentini with dead eyes when he speaks. His instructions for them have to be filtered through Botha.
“So this aldehyde was put over this pharaoh after he died, yes. And now there is preservation of each organs.”
“Okaaaay . . . So what can you do?”
Lentini whispers his secret. “It will take time, yes. All cells require some Reinvigoration, a long time. Is not like with the monkeys or the horse. But I have already told Doctor Botha my answer. Our science is ready. We can make it happen, is my opinion. The Triple ‘R’ procedure. Even if is only for a short while, we can make it happen.”
Mentuhotep is slumped back on the bed, yet still he insists on speaking.
“Are you trustworthy?” asks the king.
“Yes, Majesty.”
“You will fulfill any task I give you?”
“Yes, Majesty.”
“You will see your king’s wishes done?”
“Yes, Majesty.”
And would you like your freedom?”
Is this a trick? Is this a joke?
“If Your Majesty saw fit to grant me . . . ” Mentuhotep is restless.
“Your freedom. Do you want it or not?”
This is definitely a trick question, thinks Bak. And if in doubt . . .
He prostrates himself before his wet rag of a king.
“You have heard of my request for burial?”
To be encased in wax? The entire kingdom has heard the story, and two-thirds of them are appalled. The other third just think it odd.
“You must see it done, Bak.”
This is just ridiculous. The king knows he has no influence. Why give this task to a slave?
“If Your Majesty would honor me to dictate a message, I will pass it to the vizier . . . ”
“No, no. It is you who must perform the ritual. You must pour the wax and send me whole into my next life. I will leave orders that you will be part of the delegation.”
More wet, hacking, royal coughs.
Bak gives in. “Yes, Majesty.”
“Call Hena.”
“Who, Majesty?” That is two questions he has asked the king, in as many days.
“Hena. The woman.”
He remembers, and walks backward toward the servants’ exit. Thanks be to all the pharaohs that have gone before, thinks Bak. At last I have some respite!
Bak slips behind the curtain, ready for a hike down to the women’s quarters, which will be fun because that place is usually off limits to the likes of him. But now he is on the king’s business, so who can stop him? Bak is interested to see what the rooms are like. Will they have the same lonely squalor as the male slave quarters?
Bak stops in his tracks. On the other side of the curtain, the way is blocked. Hena, the woman he has been sent to fetch, is already there, sitting quietly on a low stool. Behind her, one of the scribes—the same man as yesterday, Bak notes—is slouching against the bare wall. How long have they been waiting there? They look at Bak, and then each other. Hena is calm but Bak can see how nervous she is. The scribe is more agitated. They are complicit in something. Is Bak being set up? Does the king know how long they have been waiting there?
Bak gathers himself. “You are wanted. The king has asked for you.”
Hena says nothing, just rises from the stool. It is a single, graceful movement, a levitation. She glides
past Bak, slices the curtains apart delicately with her hand, and enters the Divine, if ailing, Presence.
Bak says nothing to the scribe, but he pushes himself upright and strides after Hena. Bak can tell he is not a man working on his own initiative. He has orders from someone.
Bak follows them through the curtain, and bumps into the scribe, who has paused on the threshold.
Of the three servants, the scribe is the only one who is not a slave. That counts for little against the absolute power of the king.
Nevertheless, he is technically the most senior of the three. Bak leans over and whispers in the scribe’s ear: “Say it . . . ”
The scribe tiptoes forward. “O King Mentuhotep, he who has revitalized the land, the one who wears . . . ” he stumbles over the recitation “ . . . the Divine One, who wears the crown, the white crown, I mean . . . ”
Mentuhotep puts the scribe out of his misery.
“Enough. Stick to writing.” He can manage only a whisper, but the scribe falls to his knees as if crushed under the weight of a boulder.
The reprimand seems to have sucked energy from the king. He takes a few deep breaths, before mustering enough strength to turn his head toward Bak.
“You shall seal my coffin. You shall deliver me to my brother Gods.” He closes his eyes. Is that it?
No, there is more.
“You are my chosen one, Bak. This is my decree.”
Bak watches the scribe take down what Mentuhotep has said. The king beckons Hena forward. “The gift?”
From within the folds of her cloak, Hena finds a knife. It is short and ceremonial, with a stubby blade no longer than Bak’s little finger. There are bands of gold set into a dark wooden handle. She cradles it in both hands, and offers it to Bak, with as much deference as Bak would give to the king, when he presented water or fruit.
“Take it,” commands the Divine One. “This seals the pact.”
I do not remember agreeing to any pact, thinks Bak.
“Keep it with you,” says Mentuhotep.
