The Twice Born

by Pauline Gedge

  Placing the box on the ground, Ramose prostrated himself reverently to the Tree three times and Huy followed suit, then the High Priest indicated a large cushion at its foot. Shaken by a fit of unsteadiness, Huy lowered himself onto it, and in a moment of dislocation he glanced to the side to see the hyena. He was in exactly the same position as Imhotep had been. Ramose settled beside him.

  “The Book is written on forty-two scrolls. They are divided between this temple and the temple of Thoth at Khmun, as I have told you. Each scroll sits in a tube of leather. Be very careful in your handling of them, Huy. Their value cannot be overestimated.” He lifted the lid of the box and began to extract the tubes, their white leather so scored and soft that they seemed ready to fall apart at his touch. “The stitches are sound,” Ramose commented absently, “but perhaps it is time I set my priests to the task of making new tubes. The hide of a white bull must be used. You will notice that the tubes are numbered, I do not know by whom. Perhaps by Thoth himself, and it may be he who keeps the leather from rotting and the stitches from fraying. The Book divides into five parts. Parts one, three, and five are here. I give you only the first part. When you have read it and learned what you can from it, you must go south to Khmun for the second part. Don’t worry, it will be arranged. There are three scrolls containing the first part. May Atum protect and guide you in this sacred task.” Then he was gone, saluting Huy and striding to the door with the easy, long-legged gait Huy had come to recognize so well. The door closed, and Huy distinctly heard a key turn in the lock. After a moment there was the sound of the guard’s footsteps approaching and stopping and the faint thump of his spear butt hitting the tiling of the passage. Huy was alone.

  And yet not alone. For a long time he sat there immobile, one hand on the warm leather tube marked One, and it gradually began to seem to him as though, beneath the constant rustle of the leaves, a voice was murmuring, so low as to be almost indistinguishable. He knew it was possible that he was simply conjuring it out of his own apprehension and the blending of his memories. Sexless and continuous, it did not pause for breath, but when he tried to concentrate on it the sound abruptly ceased and there was only the gentle, mysterious utterance of the Tree itself. I could pretend to read it. I’m devious enough to compose some high-sounding nonsense for the High Priest every day. I am becoming desperate for my freedom. But Anuket’s tiny face swam before his mind’s eye, full of an innocent and trusting admiration, and with a sigh of resignation he withdrew the first scroll.

  9

  THE PAPYRUS ought to have been so brittle that unrolling it produced splits, but it moved smoothly under Huy’s hand, revealing a density of tiny hieroglyphs so beautifully executed that he caught his breath. He had forgotten to bring his scribe’s palette and the High Priest had not remarked on its absence. The scroll lay across Huy’s knees, supported lightly by his kilt linen. With a fearful reluctance to begin he stared at the wall opposite, at its moving pattern of leaf shadow, at the door to the passage and the one to the palm grove, looked up at the square of bright blue sky; but at last he forced his gaze to drop to the perfectly formed characters in his lap and brought his mind to bear on the first words.

  I Thoth, greatest of heka-power, giver of the sacred gift of language to man out of my own Hu, set down these mysteries at the command of Atum so that he who is possessed of the gift of wisdom may read and understand what is the will of the Holy One. Let him who desires this knowledge take care that his eyes be diligent and his reverence complete. For he without sia will read to his harm, and he without diligence will enter the Second Duat.

  Here Huy paused. His pulse had settled into its regular rhythm and he was calm enough to be already puzzled. Thoth uses his Hu, his creative utterance, to give us language. Every student knows this. Every scribe says the prayer of thanks to him for this great gift before setting pen to papyrus. Whether or not I have sufficient perception to read safely remains to be seen, but what is the Second Duat? Surely there is only one, a place of terror inhabited by djinns in the pools and rivers and full of demons with human bodies and the heads of animals, insects, even knives, through which the dead must pass in order to reach the Paradise of Osiris. The echo of Hapzefa’s voice rang in his ears and once again he was three years old, lying on his cot while she said the nightly prayer over him that his mother usually forgot, a plea for protection against a death that would plunge him into the realm of The-blood-drinker-who-comes-from-the-Slaughterhouse and The-backward-facing-one-who-comes-from-the-Abyss. Not to mention The-one-who-eats-the-excrement-of-his-hindquarters. Huy’s exorcism with the Rekhet sprang into his mind and he shifted uneasily against the Tree’s rough bark. That place is the Duat, his thoughts ran on. One Duat, yet according to Thoth there is another. He wished he had remembered to bring his palette so that he could make a note of the enigma, but he had the depressing idea that many more awaited him in these precious documents. He read on.

  I, Thoth of the twenty-two titles, Representative of Atum, He who Accomplishes Truth, He who hath made Eternity, speak thus of the nature of Atum.

  The Universe is nothing but consciousness, and in all its appearances reveals nothing but an evolution of consciousness, from its origin to its end, which is a return to its cause.

  How to describe the Indescribable? How to show the Unshowable?

  How to express the Unutterable?

  How to seize the Ungraspable Instant?

  How indeed, Huy thought in a panic. Gods, I am just a boy, just a twelve-year-old pupil at school in Iunu under the rule of Ma’at and the mighty King Thothmes, living in this blessed land of Egypt. I am nothing, I am no one! Only the oldest and wisest of Seers could begin to understand these words! By what right am I here? How have I deserved this subtle chastisement? Thoth have pity! The voice had begun to whisper again, and now he could discern his own name weaving with the music of the quivering leaves, “Huy, Huy, Huy.”

  “Be silent!” he shouted, and at once there was quiet. Grimly he bent over the archaic script.

  Before there was any opposition, any yes and no, positive and negative; before there was any complementarity, high and low, light and shadow; before there was presence or absence, life or death, heaven or earth: there was but one Incomprehensible Power, alone, unique, inherent in the Nun, the indefinable cosmic sea, the Infinite Source of the Universe, outside any notion of Space and Time.

  This was a little easier. The one Incomprehensible Power was obviously Atum himself, and everyone knew that before anything was made there was the Nun, the place of un-being.

  I Thoth, who Beholdeth What Cometh Afterwards, now speak of the Divine Will of Atum in few words but potent meaning.

  Hail Atum, he who comes before himself!

  Hail, him who enters the First Duat!

  You culminate in this your name of “Hill,” you become in this your name …

  Huy’s throat was dry, as though he had been reciting some text set by his teacher for many hours. His head had begun to ache. Allowing the scroll to roll up, he slid it into its tube, put the tube in the box, and closed the lid with deliberate slowness, his body rigid with the resentment he was feeling. I will never understand, he thought fiercely. Why should I care what the First Duat is, or why Atum’s name is Hill, when all I want to do is wrestle with Thothmes and drink beer on hot afternoons and inhale Anuket’s perfume while she bends over her garlands? Give me the life of my senses, not this cold, incomprehensible, ancient muddle that has no significance to me! I wish I could go to my cell, summon Pabast, order wine, and get thoroughly drunk, but even that avenue of escape is closed to me. The gods have made sure of that. Or god. To both the First and the Second Duat with everything!

  The guard on the door answered his loud knock with a muffled acknowledgment and went away. Huy could hear his footsteps receding. He waited impatiently, his back turned deliberately to the Ished Tree, until the High Priest’s key turned in the lock and the door swung open. Huy thrust the box into the man’s hands. “I can
not do this,” he half shouted. “I don’t care what choice I made, a choice in innocence, without awareness of the consequences, High Priest, it is all far beyond my ability to understand, no matter how sharp my sia!”

  Ramose patted him sympathetically. “You are tired and hungry, Huy. Go to your courtyard. The evening meal is being served. Play sennet with your friend. Tell him what you have read if you like. It will mean little to him, but the burden may lift from you.”

  “How will I be able to tell him what I have read when I can’t remember any of it?” Huy began, but suddenly he realized that the words were indeed still there, embedded like a crystal in the rough stone of his mind. The knowledge plunged him even further into despair, and he took his leave of Ramose with a perfunctory bow, hurrying through the darkening passages to the newly lit lamps of his courtyard as though Anubis himself were on his heels.

  It seemed to him that he had been sitting below the Ished Tree for no more than a few minutes and he was shocked to find the sun already setting and the other boys lining up for their food. Thothmes was waiting for him, a question in his eyes, but Huy said, “Later.” They filled their cups and platters and settled onto the grass. Huy felt too tired to eat much. Avoiding the nightly explosion of high-spirited wrestling and good-natured loud banter, he went into his cell and lay on his cot, hands behind his head. Thothmes had joined a game of stickball. Huy could pick his voice out of the general melee, high and sometimes indignant, his small size putting him at a disadvantage to the others. Pabast was late with the lamps. Huy stared up into the gathering darkness of the ceiling and tried to think of nothing.

  The servant and Thothmes arrived together, Thothmes bleeding from a long scratch on his calf. “I got between Menkh and the ball,” he explained while Pabast set their lamp on the table, grunted a good night, and departed. “I’ll put some honey on it after we’ve been to the bathhouse. Huy, are you all right?”

  “I’m not sure.” Huy pulled himself off the cot. “I suppose we should go and get washed, although I would rather just crawl between my sheets. I’m tired and my throat hurts.”

  “Hurts? Hurts how?” Thothmes came close and peered up into Huy’s face. “You’re very flushed.” He placed a hand against Huy’s forehead, then drew back hastily. He was frowning. “Gods, Huy, you’re hot! I think we should send for a physician.”

  “No. I’m just tired,” Huy repeated. “I expect I’ll be better in the morning.” In truth his throat felt swollen and his head had begun to throb. Too many words crammed into it, he thought, not without humour, all scrambled together and banging against my skull.

  But the blessing of hot water and perfumed oil revived him enough to recite to Thothmes what he had read in the first scroll of the Book. He could not say “learned,” for he felt that he had learned nothing. In the guttering light of the untrimmed lamp he sat with eyes closed, the words flowing up through the pain in his throat and across his tongue and filling the dim, cozy space with an ancient dignity that had been absent to him when unspoken. The exercise did not take long and he marvelled again at how different his perception of time had been in the tranquil confines of the Tree’s sanctuary.

  “It seems like one of those interminable litanies the priest chants on feast days,” Thothmes said, his distorted shadow moving with him on the wall as he stirred. “A lot of pompousness around kernels of vital truth. What is the First Duat, do you think? I only know of one.”

  Huy shrugged, the gesture sending a renewed pulse of discomfort behind his eyes. “Perhaps it will be explained later in the text. I don’t know. Nor do I know why Atum should be called Hill. How can he come before himself, Thothmes?”

  Thothmes’ eyes widened. “Gods, Huy, didn’t your parents teach you anything important? The first thing every pious child learns is that before the world was made there was only the Nun, the great sea of darkness, and then out of the darkness Atum caused a hill to appear and from that came everything.”

  “My parents never cared to know such things,” Huy said slowly. “They were content to live under Ma’at and leave communication with the gods to the priests. I remember how shocked the Rekhet was when I told her that my father took no steps to protect our house from evil influences.” He managed a smile. “That was before I became the oddity that I am. In any case, Thothmes, why should Atum himself be called Hill? What does it mean, that ‘you become in this your name’?”

  Now it was Thothmes’ turn to raise one shoulder. “I have no idea. Do you read again tomorrow?”

  “I am supposed to, but it makes me so tired that I think I’ll ask the High Priest if I might do so only twice a week. Are you taking chariot practice as well as archery?” Deliberately he changed the subject. There had been a curious sense of release in repeating Thoth’s words aloud. The cryptic stanzas held a rhythm impossible to feel otherwise, and Thothmes had provided a piece of knowledge that was important. But the task imposed upon Huy was so fraught with fear, confusion, an alarming sense of dislocation from his everyday reality, and an equally unsettling fascination that exhaustion overwhelmed him. Thothmes’ voice seemed to reach him from a long way away as he talked of his lessons, and his form in the lamplight appeared distorted.

  Thothmes fell silent, then yawned. “The lamp is almost out and I need to sleep. Good night, my favourite Seer.”

  Ah yes, Huy thought, turning onto his side and watching the starved flame of the lamp leap frenetically before it finally died. There is that also. Anuket, water goddess, apart from you my heart is so dry, my soul so thirsty. Are you asleep between your clean and scented sheets with your tiny fist clenched under your cheek and your black eyelashes resting like butterflies’ wings against your skin? Or do you lie sprawled on your back with one arm on the pillow above your head and your eyes wide open, thinking of me as I am thinking so desperately of you? All at once he became so cold that his teeth started to chatter, and at the same time an ache began at the base of his spine. Shivering, he sat up and dragged the blanket folded at the foot of the cot up around his shoulders, but almost at once he pushed it away again. He had begun to sweat. Too much, he thought dimly. I am learning too much, too fast. I am weighted down with knowledge so that my knees buckle and my back is bowed. They stab me, all these words. They are stones on my shoulders and sword blades piercing my belly. I don’t feel well at all. Not at all.

  Thothmes was shaking him gently, and Huy recoiled from his touch. “Get up, Huy! Get up!” Thothmes was urging him from somewhere far away, from the darkness of the Duat where the demons formed shapes like misshapen hieroglyphs that he couldn’t understand. “You’ll be late for class!”

  Huy turned his head on the pillow. The movement seemed to take an eternity. “Can you see the words, Thothmes?” he murmured thickly. “Can you tell me what they mean? I must know what they mean!”

  Thothmes went away. The demons came shuffling closer, shedding mysterious symbols around their feet. One of them had the features of the High Priest. It bent over him. “This is a disaster,” it said. “Have a lector priest prepare an incantation to drive out the fever demon. His linens are soaked. Pabast, bring fresh sheets and a large bowl of the coldest water you can find. He must be bathed continually. Can he swallow?” Another face loomed close.

  Huy giggled. “So I do have a demon after all. Send for the Rekhet at once!” No one seemed to hear him.

  The face shook its head. “Not yet. If I tried to force medicine down his throat, he would choke. Later, if the gods will a satisfactory climax to the illness, I prescribe belladonna for any pain, with camphor seeds to reduce the fever, and coriander of course.”

  “All of which are useless at the moment.” The Ramose-demon’s voice was testy. “I should have watched him more carefully. He returned from the House of the Dead too short a time ago. Perhaps we have given him more burdens than he could bear.” The face receded into the darkness, but the voice continued. “The servants can work in shifts. The fever must be brought down.”

  “Mast
er, I want to take care of him. I can bathe him, and with Pabast’s help I can make him as comfortable as possible. He knows my touch.” The voice was Thothmes’.

  Huy felt relieved. Thothmes could talk to the demons. He would overcome them. “Sort the hieroglyphs, my friend. Tear them from the demons’ skin and lay them sensibly before me.”

  “He muttered when he heard my name,” Thothmes went on. “Master, please!”

  “Very well. But you will do everything the physician tells you to do, and you will have to make up the school work you lose in your own time. I must send to your father. Nakht may not want you so close to illness.”

  The lip of a well was rushing towards Huy. It had fingers. It grasped his throat and head and pulled him into it. The pain was terrible. With a cry, Huy fell towards more darkness.

  He knew Thothmes’ hands in that lightless place. A damp coolness spread from them wherever they touched him. Someone was singing. “I belong to Ra. Thus spoke he: It is I who shall guard the sick man from his enemies. His guide shall be Thoth who lets writing speak, who creates the Books, who passes on useful knowledge to Those who Know, the Physicians his followers, that they may deliver from disease the sick man of whom a god wishes that the physician may keep him alive …”

  “Get well, Huy,” he heard Thothmes whisper before the well claimed him again. “Don’t you dare die, or all these sleepless nights will have been wasted.”

  At last he felt the fever begin to die. Its coils loosened, and between bouts of unconsciousness he was able to open his eyes drowsily to see his friend wringing out wet cloths or praying before his totem, or half sitting, half lying on his cot asleep. Now he knew one of the demon faces as that of the physician, who lifted his head and held a cup to his lips. The medicine was bitter. It raked his tender throat, but he swallowed it, and the day came when he croaked a word of gratitude before falling into a healthy sleep.