On a Balcony Read online

  But as a courtier has no choice other than to attend upon Pharaoh in this life, so must he crowd for place in the world hereafter. It was true, Pharaoh had promised them tombs out of the royal bounty. But could they rest comfortably in their tombs, if Pharaoh’s was not there near them?

  It was a very serious matter.

  Ikhnaton refused even to consider it. Nefertiti had to take the argument in hand. She explained to Pharaoh that since, as the Sun, he was the source of all life and renewed himself every day, he was also the source of the life hereafter. It would be necessary only to change the formula of mortuary inscriptions. Instead of a prayer to Osiris, a humble petition to Pharaoh asking for that eternal life he alone was capable of giving would solve the problem. Seen in this light, the tombs were not tombs at all, but only personal temples to the god himself. Ikhnaton agreed, but only on the condition that nobody should ever be buried in them.

  Being a woman, Nefertiti was content to let the matter coast, but took care to choose the chief courtiers from among those who were reasonably young, healthy, and vigorous.

  The matter of the royal tomb was somewhat more difficult, but she managed it in the same way. It was to be excavated up a far gully, and Pharaoh wished to hear nothing more about it.

  Therefore, since Pharaoh was absolute, he heard no more about it. But now the matter had been brought to his attention, he solved it in his own way. The priests of Amon, of Osiris, of Ptah, and of Isis, even of Ra, made an immense revenue out of death. It was their chief industry. He forbade it. If there was no more death, why build tombs? In Thebes alone thirty thousand mortuary workers, embalmers, guards, architects, painters, sculptors, priests, attendants, day labourers, and officials were cast out of work. The following riots were inevitable. So were the plots, the counter-plots, the intrigues. In Thebes a rabble of five thousand pulled his statues down, while Tiiy stayed in the palace and said nothing. Horemheb and Ay urged caution. Revelation, said Ay, must come by degrees. Order, suggested Horemheb, demanded that more troops be shifted from the capital.

  Ikhnaton refused to listen. Aketaten was not restive. The people had no choice but to obey. He had only to stand on the balcony of audience, to see how loyal the people were. Besides, they were going to have their portraits done, and Horemheb and Ay must come along.

  Horemheb and Ay did.

  These drives through the city were Ikhnaton’s principal recreation. The chariots stood ready in the courtyard. Nefertiti and Ikhnaton stepped into the first one, Horemheb and Ay into the others. The royal couple was almost naked. It was the new impertinence. But it was entirely logical. If god stands revealed, then he can scarcely wear clothes. Nefertiti shimmered beneath the most transparent of muslins. Ikhnaton wore an opaque kilt beneath which his genitals had the colour and confusion of the nest of a trapdoor spider. Was he not the generator of all things? There should be only a thin veil over this mystery. Nevertheless, they both wore the pschent, for majesty, god or not, never gives up its crown.

  Tutmose’s house and studio were large, for not only is asceticism prudent, but it knows how to make itself comfortable.

  Ay looked around curiously. As far as he could tell, the man had no private life, and yet the house was full of presences, and of an odd, peaceful, yet obscure vitality.

  Tutmose had not changed, yet somehow he had managed to become imposing. It was something about his face. It had very little expression, yet somehow it had become the total of all his works. It resembled anything he looked at, and also something else. It was that something else that was unnerving. It had the look people have when they are watching us and unaware that we are watching them watch, a look as though somehow they weren’t in their own bodies any more, but ours.

  It was as though he, Ikhnaton, and Nefertiti, without liking each other in the least, shared some secret, or perhaps only different parts of a secret, that no one else knew. Individually you might have understood it, but when the three of them were together, the whole thing became an enigma.

  But there was a clue. In some way, Ay saw, in some very disturbing way, they all had the same smile.

  Perhaps that was not so surprising.

  For every artist, even the most depressing, or, as the case may be, what is even less attractive, the profound, for when will people learn that profundity is no more than a cleverly concealed set of false bottoms designed to return one to one’s initial superficiality, has a never-never land of his own. And his popularity depends not upon the depth of his message, the skill of his fingers, or the resemblance of his works to whatever need may be crying on that particular day, but quite simply, upon whether or not his never-never land happens to be a superior version of one’s own.

  So the appeal of the profound artist only shows us how superbly we should suffer, if we wanted to, and could at the same time remain untouched. For the most touching image is the one that leaves us essentially untouched. That is the ultimate flattery. It was also the secret of Tutmose’s grip upon their emotions.

  He knew how to show them as they thought they looked. He had, quite unconsciously, even though he made use of the skill, the ability to show them beautiful in the midst of the most dolorous distress.

  Since they did not see the significance of what they did themselves, they could scarcely be expected to see it as he reflected it back to them, and this was his margin of safety. That was because they still saw his portraits as portraits. It never occurred to them that they were in themselves little more than animated symbols of their own beliefs, and if it occurred to him, it was a knowledge he deemed it wiser to share only with posterity. Let them have their little now. It was all they were up to.

  But he found them charming. He had amused himself by doing all of them.

  There they stood in the studio, heads without bodies, in a precise row along one wall, Ikhnaton, Nefertiti, and the three children. The effect was not altogether agreeable. It was as though someone had made the same thing over and over again out of less and less material. The head of the youngest princess, Anke-senpa’aten, was little larger than a persimmon.

  Ay wondered why he thought of a persimmon, when this little head was of green stone. He glanced up at the opposite wall, feeling that someone was staring at him.

  It was that bust Nefertiti had insisted that Tutmose keep. It was set high on a shelf. It could not possibly see anything. Yet Ay did not like the look of it, nor the way Tutmose and the Queen exchanged what looked like, and yet was not, a smile.

  With a shrug Tutmose turned their attention to the new work in the centre of the studio, under the light that poured down from an opening in the roof. The statue thus seemed to be in the act of rising into a column of light. It was an uncanny effect.

  It was a statue of Ikhnaton, kneeling, or rather, caught in the instant before rising straight up. His head was raised. His arms were also raised, as though the light were helping him to his feet. The belly and thighs were full, the back covered with fatty tissue, like the back of a middle-aged woman. The expression of the head was precocious. The statue showed that moment at which the light was about to revive him.

  Ikhnaton inspected it with the same look with which Nefertiti studied the great cats in the garden. So then, as Nefertiti drew some sort of knowledge from animals, Ikhnaton came to Tutmose to be fitted with gestures, as though with artificial limbs.

  Ay glanced at Nefertiti. Remove only the breasts, and the two of them had the same body.

  Quite suddenly he understood something, which was the secret both of their charm and power. It was sexual, in so far as real sexuality is beyond either sex. It sips at both, but partakes of the nature of neither. That overwhelming directive force which in most of us pushes each sex on towards the confluence of both in middle age, was to them something they rode on, a cart on a double track. Thus they could use a man’s weapon against women, a woman’s weapons against men, and goodness only knew what they did to each other. But seeing the world in their own amorphous image, of course they could not pos
sibly know what the world was like, since the world is divided and can only be one sex at a time. It explained a great deal about many things.

  This curious androgynous power had one serious limitation. It could not reproduce itself. They could only make sexless, infertile copies of themselves, such as the royal princesses. No wonder they had to stay young, for they would never have heirs. They could only die. The knowledge of that must make them a little desperate.

  Ay glanced quickly at Tutmose, and saw that, yes, this was indeed their secret, and that this was what Tutmose knew. But knowing someone else’s secret is not the same as having to live with one’s own. Ay felt oddly compassionate. At least Tutmose could make images.

  Ay also looked at Horemheb. As far as he was concerned, Horemheb now had an importance he had not had before.

  When the royal party left, Ay stayed behind. There was a flicker in Tutmose’s eyes at that, but he said nothing. He busied himself around the studio.

  “I want you to take my face,” said Ay.

  Tutmose hesitated and then nodded. “I have always wanted to.”

  “But you would not do Horemheb, would you?”

  “No one has asked me.” Tutmose stared at him gravely. “But you are right. I would rather not.”

  It was what Ay had wanted to know. Nor did he expect any answer to his next question, not, at any rate, in words.

  “Why are you doing it?” he asked.

  He could see that Tutmose knew perfectly well what he meant. “It is my subject.”

  “Yet you are only a man.”

  Tutmose took up a pat of clay. “An artist seldom finds his subject matter. I am very lucky. For an artist can have nothing else, you know. There is nothing else he can have. For he is always a little more than himself, and a little less than a human being.” He began to build up the clay.

  “And I am a little more than a human being and a little less than myself, I suppose.” Ay looked round the studio at the overwhelming sadness of those faces. “Don’t they ever frighten you?”

  “When I am frightened I sit in the garden. What else can a man do?”

  “Then you admit you are merely a man.”

  “Oh, we were all men once,” said Tutmose. “But who can remember when?”

  To that Ay had no answer. For it was true. He could not remember when. And like Tutmose, no doubt, perhaps he was no longer sure that he wanted to. It was quieting. For it meant he could only be added to the gallery, as the last of them, and that made him what he was already, a very old man.

  “So I am the last,” he said.

  This made Tutmose angry. “Everybody is the last of something,” he snapped.

  And there they let the matter rest.

  Seven

  As a result of this visit, Ay sent Horemheb back to Thebes, on a trumped-up errand to the royal estates.

  It was five years since he had been Tiiy’s lover and swam so delightedly across the royal lake. That self was gone, even though he had not had the leisure to notice when. Tiiy was now a woman of almost fifty, and a woman of fifty, moreover, without a lover. She had aged.

  Yet her skin had only tightened round the bone, and was if anything firmer than ever. It was something inside her that had aged, not something external.

  Thebes, half-deserted of favour, was an unwieldly place. It had fallen into a series of armed camps, the priests of Amon undergoing one kind of siege, and those in the royal palace another. In the palace they were barricaded against time.

  Amenophis, though approaching the business as slowly as possible, was none the less dying, and that, as far as those in Thebes were concerned, made Smenkara the heir.

  The plight of that royal child was not enviable. Tiiy made the same mistakes with him as she had made with the other one, the criminal of Aketaten. Smenkara was growing up in a world of eunuchs, women, and one old man.

  Yet Tiiy was clearly pleased with him. He was febrile. He was amusing. He hunted ducks in the gardens with a toy bow and arrow. He had respect for ritual. He accepted the Amon priests as a matter of course. And though he could not help developing a certain sense of his own graceful self-importance, he was extremely good at his lessons. It was perhaps a pity that he was too frail to attend the royal military academy, but then that could not be helped.

  However, his frailty was a source of worry, so Tiiy was determined, despite her age, to make one last attempt to produce a male heir before she reached menopuase.

  Amenophis had given her this idea. He had sudden spurts of energy, like the twitchings of a dying rabbit, and she had humoured him so long, she saw no reason not to humour him in this.

  It did not seem to her ungainly. Not only did she love him, but that love had become a habit. But she could not be sure she would become gravid, for he was very weak. It might be best to make sure, so under these circumstances she was eager enough to receive Horemheb.

  He found the palace disturbing. It was cracked and dusty, and much of it had been allowed to fall into ruin. The sedges had grown thicker in the lake. He was not so difficult as she had imagined. He was now a man of some consequence in the Empire. He had been fond of her once, and their quarrels were behind them. If this was what she wanted, he was quite willing to do her the favour. He only wished she would not try to cast a romantic glow over the proceedings.

  “What is lost?” she asked. “Only our ability to love each other. Apart from that we are totally unchanged. We can still relive old times.”

  He found that horrible.

  “We shall have no new ones, so we may as well make do with those,” she added lightly, and saw she had appalled him. She had forgotten. He was still young. “It is such a pity”, she said, “that our bodies grow older than we do. You have no idea how that feels.”

  It satisfied neither of them, but at least it was done. She even told him why it had been done. That shocked him, but he said nothing. Instead he made much of Smenkara.

  He did not altogether like Smenkara. The boy was too girlish and too soft. But he played with him out of duty, hoping his own presence would be a good influence. He even took the boy hunting and to military reviews.

  Unfortunately Smenkara was reserved and shy. There was no way of getting at him, and Horemheb could only do his best.

  As a matter of fact, or so it seemed, he had already done his best. Nine months later the child was born, a male, named Tutankaten, at Ikhnaton’s request, but that could be changed later.

  Amenophis was delighted. His almost toothless mouth broadened into a grin. The child was a testimony to his vigour. “Now I shall be remembered,” he said. “That’s something.” He poked at the tiny curled hands, like fern fronds, and looked at Horemheb and Tiiy with relief. To him the child was a sign that he would not die for a long time.

  It would have been difficult to say why such a ruin of a man should be so intent upon living. Perhaps it was because he was a realist, and had seen too many men die to want to repeat the process himself. True, there was the promise of eternal life, but he was Pharaoh. He knew that promises are often broken.

  Looking down at Tutankaten, Horemheb knew that it was not his child. He was relieved. For of course it would take after Tiiy, as all the royal children did. There was something in her too dominating for any man.

  Of this even she seemed uneasily aware. As she watched the child she looked frightened. “I don’t like the way they look at you,” she said. “As though they would remember you later, when they were big enough to strike back.”

  She also could see it was not Horemheb’s child, and she had been trying at the last moment to break the pattern of a dynasty. So of the three of them, only Amenophis was pleased, and perhaps Smenkara, flitting unnoticed through the garden. Smenkara was by no means averse to having a younger brother over whom to tyrannize, and had his own ideas of power.

  “If the son accepts what his father says, no plan of his miscarries,” say the instructions of Ptah Hotep. Unfortunately Amenophis III had never said anything to his so
ns. They were thus cast adrift.

  Of this Horemheb was aware when he returned to Aketaten. He found the atmosphere there subtly changed, he could not quite say how.

  The truth of the matter was that Ikhnaton was having one of his occasional fits of boredom, that temporal vertigo with which the spiritual so often have to contend. The building of cities was beginning to pall. Of this Nefertiti knew nothing, so she was unprepared for it, with the result that he was left most unwisely alone. They had all become so clever at managing his illusions, that they forgot that he sometimes had real thoughts as well, and these he confided to no one. And there are moments when even our illusions turn into illusions, and we are left indecisive, with nothing more substantial on our hands than reality.

  It was in this mood that he took to wandering at night about the gardens, and would often come to one of the piers out into the Nile and stand there for a long time, looking up at the stars. For something was missing. Being a god was too easy. There must be something beyond godhead, then, which could somehow be reached. But what?

  Whatever it was, it sounded rather like a distant music.

  For there are some sad little melodies which do not exist in time. Instead they throb in space. They come from nowhere, and one never realizes they existed until after they have gone. They glitter like sudden stars, but they are tender for all that, and they make us want to cry.

  So we go to the terrace, lean our cheeks against the furry whitewash of a column, and wish that things were otherwise. Where is that missing thing?

  Look, there it is now, and it falls like a star. And stars are an omen. They presage great events. Yet when the awaited event comes it fails to satisfy. And, like the comet, it may not return again until long after we are dead, so we have missed our only opportunity to see it. Or perhaps we fall asleep. Dawn comes. The sun flows gently over our closed eyes. We smile in our sleep, for there it is again: the little melody. It was not after all so sad. It was the only happiness we ever knew, the one we knew we knew only afterwards.