On a Balcony

by David Stacton

  “The prince, I suppose.” Ay frowned. “I had not known it had been done.”

  It was not comforting to see Ay disturbed. Ay was never disturbed.

  At last the prince reappeared, talking to the priest of the temple, a fat, unctious fool called Meryra. He had a list and a roll and a squeaky voice, and his skin was the colour of lard. They could not hear what he was saying, but the prince was smiling back and answering eagerly.

  Ay shifted from one foot to the other. “I do not like that man,” he said.

  Neither did Horemheb, but the visit was soon over, and none of his concern.

  *

  Half an hour later and they were crossing the river, towards the palace on the western side. He looked towards it eagerly. Ay and the prince were too much for him, but Pharaoh and the Queen he understood. Whatever happened, he always knew he would be welcome there.

  The palace, at some distance back from the shore, was only in its second generation. Tutmose IV had invented it. Now Amenophis III had extended it until it encroached upon the necropolis. It was built of wood and whitewashed brick, and though it still had the power to dazzle, already, nowadays, large areas of it were walled up and boarded off. It was possible to come across rooms in which no one had sat for years, and courtyards where the water plants had grown top-heavy in the ponds and reached the level of the roofs above. A colony of half-starved greyhounds lived, and nobody knew what they ate, in an abandoned garden of persea trees, even though, south of the deserted harem, the plane trees were clipped as tidily as ever along the borders of the private lake.

  Yet in that vast rambling palace the courtiers still circled in and out as aimlessly as flies, though, like the motions of flies in a summer room, their movements betrayed a certain mathematical periodicity. These seemingly irrational motions could be plotted against the lust for sugar and the fear of being hit, the two constants which controlled, however remotely, and it was never too remotely, their actions. It was beautiful to watch, in a way, as beautiful as any other mathematical certainty, for even flies are controlled by necessity.

  Horemheb went at once in search of the Queen.

  Tiiy, they said, was on the Royal Lake. He might go to her, for who, so long as she preferred him, would gainsay Horemheb, since it was the Queen, not Pharaoh, who ruled here. Only his attendants saw Pharaoh, who was a legend in his lifetime, and therefore kept properly remote.

  Pharaoh had had the lake dug years ago. It was a mile and a half long and two-thirds of a mile wide, surrounded by a wall, its shores trimmed with plane trees, pavilions, flowers, water plants, lotuses, reeds, water-stairs, and sometimes an audience. Nowhere was it more than five feet deep, in order to prevent drowning, should anyone fall into it drunk. When he was younger, Pharaoh had even used it for hunting, shooting on one occasion three out of the four pink baby hippopotami provided. But that was long ago.

  He stood on the shore, by a flight of water-stairs, and waved. Someone must have told the Queen, for her barge was already skimming across the water towards him. It was perhaps a quarter of a mile away. Of ebony and gold, it gleamed agreeably on the water. Horemheb removed his sandals and his wig, went down the water-stairs, slipped smoothly into the water, let it hold him voluptuously for a moment, and then stroked towards the boat. The water inshore was flaccid and warm, but farther out it was cooler and fresher. The foam of his movements caught at his high, muscled shoulders and rilled there as though around rocks, before subsiding out behind him.

  As he was beginning to tire, he came abreast of the boat and the boat abreast of him. He stood up in the water, which was shallower here and lapped at his nipples, and blinked in the sun. The boat was the Gleams of Aton, the barge Pharaoh had built for the Queen when the lake was first flooded.

  Tiiy was sitting in a chair, watching him and laughing. ‘Get him aboard,” she called, clapping her hands. Her voice was not beautiful. If anything it was a little harsh. But it was full of warmth and amusement, and was always at least politely lively. It was her voice, more than anything else, that he missed when he was away, for now they had been friends so long, who had once only been lovers.

  Two of her attendants hauled him aboard. He could feel the resilient hardness of their breasts, as their dresses rubbed against him. They also pinched the skin under his armpits as they hauled. He stood on the deck and shook himself like a dog, innocently proud of the way his wet body must look, but much more concerned with Tiiy.

  She was not a beautiful woman, any more than she had a beautiful voice, but she managed to give the impression of beauty. It was difficult to believe she was over forty, for she was too much herself to be dependent upon the uncertainties of time. She had looked thirty since she was fifteen, and ten years from now, she might at last look her age. But not now.

  Sometimes, it was true, at dusk, she might become uneasy. Then she would have a dim memory of somebody she had once been, as though she were gazing down at herself through sixty feet of water. The object moved. It was hard to tell whether it was alive or dead. But it was unmistakeably one’s self. Then, just as she was trying to catch a closer glimpse of that drowned self, something would divert her attention, and she would take up the performance once again. For after all, was not the performance life? The only way we can survive is to become imitations of ourselves, otherwise the wear and tear of experience touches us, and we change and become dull. And so she made a practice of being always cheerful, for the phoenix kindles its own fire. With immortality at stake, it is not so foolish as to depend upon the rest of the world for fuel.

  For the rest she was small-boned, tight-skinned, a little lustful, a little not, a little vengeful, absolutely impossible to pin down, enormously clever, and at the moment, obviously and sincerely glad to see him, as he had known she would be, and as he was to see her.

  The boat put back into the middle of the lake. She began eagerly to question him, and he began to answer with Ay.

  “Oh, Ay. If the rest of the world did nothing, he would do very well, for he does nothing better than the rest of us. But since we all do something, he will never be anybody to be afraid of. What are these trips about?”

  He told her what the trips were about, and also of what Ay had said about them.

  She took that more seriously. “He might be right.” She was not laughing now. She was thinking. It put her in no mood for love-making. She was abstemious. She ate only when she was hungry, and it was the same with her affections. That was an attitude to life which, since he had learned it from her, he thoroughly approved of. As a result he had lasted five years, where someone else would only have lasted a week. He was very fond of her.

  “We had better go to see Pharaoh,” she said. “I wonder how Ay manages to know everything? But since he does, one may just as well relax.” She gave the order and the boat put about.

  It was really a whimsical existence they lived on that lake, if it had not also been a little sad. It was no secret that Pharaoh, who had once romped up and down Egypt, was now an invalid. And so the lake was now his Egypt. When he was well, he rowed about, while Tiiy ran the government, or a hunt was staged for him, though seldom these days, since now he preferred to watch acrobats or tumblers instead. When he was not well he spent most of his time in a pavilion attached to the palace, with steps to the water, from which he could both watch and get the best sun. It was towards this pavilion that the boat now turned.

  “About Ay,” said Tiiy unexpectedly. “He is the wisest of all of us. If you ever need someone to trust, trust him.”

  Horemheb did not know what to make of that. But apparently he was not expected to make anything of it. They had reached the pavilion.

  Though Pharaoh was ill, he still kept up the splendour of a healthy, venal man, and ran from one extreme of pleasure to another, in search of what diversion he could get. If anything he was now more interested in the refinements of such pursuits than he had been when able to pursue them. For now, since he could only watch, it was more difficult for hi
m to lose interest through sheer exhaustion. And after all, he was Pharaoh. If someone reported a curious position he had never seen or practised, he could have it demonstrated when he wished. Indeed, it had been necessary to invent a few, in order to keep up with his curiosity, and if they did not work, they looked as though they did, and that, now, was the main thing.

  Boys, girls, men, women, nubians, hunchbacks, dwarfs suffering from gigantism and giants suffering from the opposite complaint, in all their various combinations and variations, animals, talking birds, snakes accomplished at divination, and an Indian mystic with an extremely supple spine, had all been paraded before him, and to tell the truth, had bored him extremely. But once he had started, he could not stop. A certain prurient interest was expected of him. He would much have preferred to talk to Ay or Tiiy or sometimes Horemheb. He was very fond of Horemheb, where another man would only have been jealous, and this for reasons of his own.

  It is possible to be a narcissist without being in the least vain. In Horemheb he saw himself when young. That was why he had made the boy his favourite. And now that the boy was a man, and Tiiy’s lover, he saw the flattery envolved, and was rather touched, that at last she should settle down into some sort of permanent liaison with someone so exactly like himself. As for himself, had he been well enough or had he had the inclination to take any regular mistress, he supposed, she would have resembled Tiiy, if anyone could have resembled Tiiy. For they were a couple. They always had been. They could not have existed without each other, really.

  Besides, he liked Horemheb, and was only sorry the man was not his son, instead of the sickly brood he had. Nor had he ever doubted Tiiy’s loyalty or affection to himself. In a life full of uncertainty, that much at least was sure; and as for the rest, let her amuse herself how she would. In addition to which it was a delicious joke on the courtiers, who instead of battening on the intrigues they had hoped to promote, strengthened the very situation they had sought to divide.

  Thus Amenophis III, Pharaoh of Egypt, who was more astute than one might think, if sometimes capricious, while he watched the tumblers and the acrobats.

  But Horemheb, who had not seen him for some time, and who could remember shooting lions with him, up on the desert, only five years ago, was shocked by his appearance. No one knew precisely what was wrong with him, unless he were falling apart from within. He had for one thing grown fat and flabby, for another, feeble and nervous. Pain had drained him rapidly. He suffered from abscessed gums, for which there was no cure. His mouth stank, and he washed it constantly with an infusion of cinnamon and clove, which he spat out into an endless succession of white alabaster cups. These endless cups were disgusting even to him. He tried to ignore them, but all the same, they were there.

  Music these days was provided for him only by blind harpers. He found it convenient that they could not see. A blind drummer had been harder to get, and in desperation the household steward had been forced to create one. No doubt the man had screamed, but Amenophis was cruel only at second hand. He knew nothing of such things. The drummer sat huddled wretched, without that strange gentle arrogance of the habitually blind, but rather the inhabitant of an unfamiliar country, tapping away an accompaniment to the dancers. These were not Egyptians, but black creatures from somewhere south of Nubia, handsomely built, sweaty men, who spoke only gibberish, and took tremendous, acrobatic leaps while white plumes waved wildly on their kinkly heads.

  Horemheb and Amenophis watched. The Queen had slipped away. Then, when the dancers had been taken off, the two men were at last alone.

  “Tell me about the prince,” said Amenophis, and when Horemheb had done, merely smiled. It was disturbing. Resignation did not suit that ardent face.

  “I am making you Commander-in-Chief of the Armies,” he said.

  Horemheb was shocked. To direct armies was something he had always expected to do, and virtually did already. But to hold that title was another matter. The title belonged to Pharaoh and to Pharaoh alone.

  Amenophis made a wry face. “Yes,” he said. “I know. But you can hold the armies. I may die. It is time to make the prince co-regent. And he could never hold them.”

  It was true, so there was nothing to say about it. Amenophis closed his eyes. He was tired, Horemheb took his departure and went to report to the Queen.

  She could talk to him only for a minute. But she could see how serious his face was.

  “So he has told you,” she said.

  Horemheb was concerned with how the prince would take the news, for princes are jealous of their prerogatives.

  He need not have worried. The prince turned out to have no interest in the army. He was at the moment interested only in religion. He had not enough political knowledge to be afraid of the power of armies, and for the rest, he was glad to have the burden off his own shoulders. He merely gave an indifferent smile and hurried off to his temple.

  When told how he had taken the news, Tiiy shrugged. For, of course, they saw no danger in his little hobby. He was not fit to rule, and therefore the more seriously he took his hobbies the better. Tiiy and Horemheb and Ay could rule for him. There was no problem there.

  To them religion was no more than a public duty and a death-bed necessity. If the prince had gone to the Amon priests, now that would have been a different matter. The Amon priests had quite enough power already. But an interest in Aton worship was harmless. It was no more than the family cult, something they had brought with them when they became a dynasty, which Amenophis had revived out of boredom and ancestral piety. It would soon pass. And meanwhile, if the prince amused himself in these ways, they would be able to transfer the machinery of government from one generation to the next without his inference. Later, they could perhaps educate him to his role and his responsibilities.

  They overlooked two things. First of all, Amenophis was not going to die just yet. And second, how could they know that the prince was morbidly afraid of the dark and an hysteric into the bargain. They could not be blamed. It had never occurred to them to ask what he was afraid of, since a prince was supposed to be fearless, and they had never considered him as a person at all, except in so far as he constituted an embarrassment. And then, a level-headed lot, they simply did not know what an hysteric was. In all that city perhaps only two people knew, and unfortunately one of these was Meryra, the Aton priest, and the other Nefertiti, Pharaoh’s daughter, to whom Meryra owed his preferment, and whom the prince would have to marry, since though Pharaoh ruled Egypt, it was through his sister that his right to rule descended.

  Meanwhile, in that still palace, when once Pharaoh was sleeping, Horemheb and Tiiy went off to bed, and what they did there was their own affair. Or so they thought, until, in enjoying themselves, they did not bother to think at all.

  *

  Others, however, do not have the ability so completely to forget themselves in experience. Others can never forget themselves at all, and so their pleasures are a little sly and never, on any occasion, altogether pleasant, which, in turn, leaves them time to think. And among these was Nefertiti, who knew perfectly well what her mother and Horemheb did together, who often spied on them, and who liked neither of them.

  Her reasons were simple. She was both vain and neglected, and also afraid, with reason, of her mother. Indeed, were you not so strong as she was, Tiiy could be overwhelming, being a woman who was charming only among equals, among whom she did not count the brood she had hatched.

  But though she was not strong, Nefertiti was supple. She knew perfectly well she would one day be Queen, and to this end she had spent considerable time in the study of that enigma, her brother. Nor could she be called impotent, for in Meryra she knew, as soon as she had met him, that she had found her proper instrument.

  Nefertiti was fifteen. Her beauty would have been remarkable, had there been anybody to see it, but the royal children were not encouraged to show themselves, and were seen mostly by each other, and the prince had no eye for female beauty. Nefertiti had only
her mirror, and now Meryra, to show her what she might do, given the opportunity.

  People are foolish about beauty. Few of them realize how dangerous it can be. For beautiful people know they are works of art, and are so busy being the custodians of themselves that they have neither the time nor the inclination for anything else. And, like works of art, they are only an appearance. Underneath that sparkling surface the actual material from which it derives its support, the heart and soul and blood and bone, is inert.

  But much rarer even than the beautiful, are those of the beautiful whose vanity in no measure interferes with their intelligence, but is on the contrary a useful means of concealing it. And these people are truly hazardous, for they have lovely, understanding eyes, they can simulate anything, and they have no contact with the human race at all. They sip emotions as a connoisseur would sip a fine wine, only a little, but that greedily; and move unimpeded and undetected through the world, secure that only someone exactly like them will ever find them out. They can never be defeated, and short of murder they can never be stopped, and it takes them a long, long time to run down.

  Indeed, they are so different from the rest of us, and so secure, that they would not impinge on our lives at all, were it not for one thing, which is, that though they are impervious even to their own vanity, none the less, they are vain, and vanity, alas, is not impervious to us.

  Thus Nefertiti, an observant and calculating woman of fifteen, with a peculiarly memorable smile and an enormous knowledge of her brother based on the entirely false assumption that he was much like herself, but weaker and easier to control.

  Surely no dynasty ever built itself a better ruin. But then the dynasty had no say in the matter. It had bred true to its vices. These were its heirs. And though Amenophis had done his best, he had forgotten that loyalty is not always a virtue, and Horemheb was loyal.

  Two

  It so happened that astute as he was, Ay had developed an affection for the prince. It was not surprising. One must be sentimental about something, and the more hard-headed and judicious one is, the more unlikely the thing on which one’s sentiments will light. For, of course, in those days Ay did not exactly regard the prince as a person. Nor was he one. He had been a person when he was a child, which no one had bothered to notice, and he might be one later on, when life was through with him, but at the moment he was a personage of some importance, and that is not the same as being a person at all.