On a Balcony Read online

  And yet he was some comfort. At least he was there, he was soothing, and Ikhnaton badly needed rest.

  Tiiy would not let him rest. She appeared with Horemheb and Ay, and Smenkara slipped unobtrusively away. He hated scenes.

  The political developments were certainly serious. The Syrian Empire was evaporating. Byblos had fallen. Old Gaza, an administrative centre, was undergoing siege, and most assuredly would fall. It was Aziru again, with the Hittites behind him. Ikhnaton must take action at once.

  Very well, he thought. Anything to get rid of her. He took action at once. He wrote a letter of admonishment to Aziru. It was all he could do.

  For Tiiy also must face realities. There was not enough money in the treasury to pay the army, even if it should march. He wrote that he would come and kill Aziru if Aziru did not behave. Since nobody in Egypt believed it, it was unlikely that Aziru would believe it either, but what else could he do? It was too late.

  Tiiy told him there was much that he could do. He must marry Smenkara and Meritaten and accept the boy as co-regent.

  Why not? He had it done at the Aton temple, with Pa-wah to officiate. When the crown first settled on his head, a light muslin pschent for summer wear, Smenkara gave a smile of shy pleasure. Apart from that he seemed totally unaffected. He continued to live in the palace, with Ikhnaton and his wife.

  For Tiiy that was not enough. A coronation in Aketaten was no coronation at all. Smenkara and Meritaten must return with her to Thebes.

  Ikhnaton refused, though even Ay and Horemheb advised the step. When he demanded why, they told him why.

  The Empire was in such peril, that those in Thebes would have to be reconciled. The Amon priests might be disbanded, but they made mischief in a thousand ways. Ikhnaton grew stubborn. The Aton religion was all he had left. He would not give it up.

  It was Ay who subtly pointed out that he need not give it up. The two religions could flourish side by side in Thebes, but with Aketaten as the religious capital of the country. This proposal made even Ikhnaton smile. That truth and dishonesty should be worshipped side by side was, to his present mood, both symbolic and agreeable. Was it not ever so?

  He let them go. He tried to think it was because, as Ay had pointed out, he could not rule without a full treasury, and that this effort at a reconciliation would replenish the treasury. A practical excuse for what we do is always more convincing and more comforting than the real reasons.

  And the real reasons were that he was tired. He longed to rest. And he knew that everything, even the affections, must be paid for, if not with cash, at least with expensive bait. And the reason why everyone became so angry when one said this, was that it was true and they knew it. They might be sorry it was true, but that would only make them the angrier. The giver was always hurt. The taker only sometimes.

  Now Smenkara was Pharaoh too, he wanted a nest of his own. Ikhnaton understood. It was what he himself had wanted. He gave in.

  “Anything,” he said. “Anything. Only leave me alone.”

  They left him alone.

  A week later they departed for Thebes. He even went down to the jetty to watch them go. Tiiy carried Smenkara and Meritaten about as though they were no more than the symbols of her own office. Perhaps that was all they were. He did not envy Smenkara. And as for Meritaten, it was better not to have any feelings about her at all, since seemingly she had none.

  Horemheb and Ay also returned to the old capital. From now on they would alternate between the two cities. As the boat moved out into midstream, Smenkara seemed frightened. He looked back out of startled eyes, and waved. It was the last Ikhnaton ever saw of him.

  Ikhnaton returned to his own quarters, slowly and reluctantly. It was now only a matter of keeping up appearances, but once one has seen through appearances, that is not so difficult to do. One has only to hold them from the back, like a shield, and they protect one quite well.

  He had sworn never to leave this glorious city of the sun, where he would live for ever and ever. But that had been a matter of choice. Now he saw that he could not leave it. He did not dare to do so.

  He moved through time as though suspended in some fluid preservative. The months went by. It a little restricted his movements, but it kept him alive. No doubt he could have learned what was happening in Thebes, but he did not wish to. Horemheb and Ay came and went, but had rather less time for him than before. When he gave orders, they obeyed them and carried them out, but with something like impatience. He saw that look on the faces of the palace servants, too, and on those of the courtiers.

  For he went on seeing the same familiar faces. It was merely that now he saw fewer of them. That was only reasonable. Not even Egypt had enough nobles to stock three courts. There was not only Thebes and his own, but Nefertiti had gathered a considerable party around herself and Tutankaten, mostly of those new nobles whose fortunes would stand or fall with the Aton cult, the nobles he himself had raised up, until they were big enough to leave him.

  He would almost have called her back. It was ridiculous that they should be at opposite ends of the city, with the neutral, sleeping slums between them. Her speaking in anger he could have forgiven, but her speaking the truth in anger he could not. For truth is the worst lie of all. It brings down all our illusions.

  He heard of her only through Pa-wah.

  Recently Ikhnaton had slighted the temple ceremonies. He had not felt up to them. Now he exerted himself. He asked questions. He asked Pa-wah questions about her. He would never see her again, but he did want to know what she was doing.

  Reluctantly Pa-wah told him. No one than she could be more devoted to the Aton. Even Tutankaten and Ankhesenpa’aten accompanied her to the ceremonies. He had had to ask her to moderate her zeal, on the grounds that so much fatigue was bad for the boy. But she, too, it seemed, was dedicated to the Aton. While she lived there would be no backsliding.

  “To the Aton?” asked Ikhnaton blankly.

  “To the supreme, all-knowing, all beneficent disc of the Sun,” said Pa-wah.

  “Oh yes,” said Ikhnaton hastily. “Yes, of course.”

  He had only to look at the man to know that Pa-wah believed every word of it. For some reason this glimpse into rabid belief was not encouraging. He wanted to say: “My dear man, what on earth can you possibly know about it?”

  Of course, from the gleam in his eye, Pa-wah knew everything about it, and not even Pharaoh, his own god, was any longer in a position to tell him otherwise. Ikhnaton could only wonder if when he himself had had that fervour, he had looked like that. The thought was sobering.

  And could it possibly be true that the Queen was devout? No, he gave her more credit than that, for she had started at that point of amused indulgence that he had now reached only after the fatigues of a long journey through disillusionment. Yet, when your favourite doll is battered and broken, you do not throw it away. Instead you love it more than ever, for it has been with you for a long while, and you can still remember how it used to look. It gave him a certain pleasure to listen to the ravings of Pa-wah.

  Indeed, perhaps it was better this way, with Smenkara and Tiiy in Thebes running the country to suit themselves, and he here left in peace. Why was it, then, that moving through the dusty rooms of the palace he sometimes found himself walking on tiptoe? And in the inner sanctuary of the temple, where even now he went to lay his flowers, he looked round that whitewashed emptiness and sometimes had the illusion that Nefertiti was there. He could almost hear her voice, and he still, from force of habit, used that perfume special to them both.

  His strength had rallied, and he was able to take chariot rides again. He no longer took them through the crowded noon city, for the cheering got on his nerves. Instead he would leave at night, preferably very early, just before dawn. One of his real pleasures was still to see the dawn come up. That still moved him deeply, as the first warm rays touched his face. Indeed, it was something to move the entire world, if the world were awake to see it. It had been his
great fault not to know that the world prefers to sleep in.

  It was on such a morning, clattering through the unweeded and still nocturnal streets, that something in a side alley caught his eye and he reined in to watch.

  It was the servants of some noble, carrying their master’s household furniture through the furtive streets. And those cloaked figures, surely they must be the master and his family? He could not recognize who they were.

  He galloped to the docks, got down to the ground, and leaning in the shadow of the door to a warehouse, watched. Yes, there were five boats being readied. And while he waited, not one, but three processions began to converge upon the jetty, amid the hushed orders of sailors and stevedores. He remained quite motionless. He watched it all. The three families had pooled their resources, no doubt.

  As dawn began to seep over the cliffs, the boats put out to the middle of the river, very quietly. Why on earth did they bother to be so clandestine about the matter? he wondered. A light breeze stirred along the water, the sails ran up, and the boats tacked towards the south. Thebes.

  With a wry smile he went back to his chariot and returned to the alley. He recognized the house, now. No doubt they had left a caretaker. The door to the garden stood open. He stepped inside, with a glance at the small Aton temple beyond the pool, and went into the house. The hieroglyphics on the door lintel told him the place belonged to Tutu, a noble in the Foreign Office. No doubt Smenkara or Tiiy had made him a better offer. The house was a shambles. He kicked aside a wine jar on the floor. The wooden columns alone were left. Perhaps they had not dared to take them yet, but they would call for them in time, of that he was sure.

  He thought it fitting that the first man he had ennobled should be the first to go over to the other side. He could even admire his courage for having been, if only in this clandestine manner, the first to leave.

  He returned to the palace and slept all day. When he woke, it was with caution, for the beautiful child of Aton was not very beautiful any more.

  Once he had asked Tutmose why he preferred to do only masks. Tutmose had thought for a while, and then said, “One morning you will wake up and discover your face is only a mask. We all do.”

  Well, he had, and it was.

  None the less, there were deceptive mornings when he felt quite healthy, mornings when the sunrise could be believed in. He persuaded himself then that life was as it always was.

  Death was getting closer, all the same. In Thebes, after a short and unforeseen illness, Tiiy unexpectedly died.

  Now it was Horemheb’s turn to discover that loneliness is the greediest guest at any feast, the one who stays on after the others have sensibly gone home. It was something he could not mention even to Ay, the way he felt. But wandering a little lost through the palace at Aketaten, he came at last to the household magazines and saw on the shelves the rotten fruit they no longer had the time to eat, that sat on the shelf and spoiled. Idly he picked up an apricot that dissolved in his hand. Why, of all fruit, is it the most rotten that has the most tantalizing smell?

  Angrily he flung it down against the wall.

  Seventeen

  They lived on that way for another six months.

  We think the upper air is inhabited no higher than the most ambitious hawk, the one with the keenest vision and the swiftest pounce, who likes to fly alone. But much higher than that, in the thin violet world between the atmosphere and that space which we like to believe contains nothing, there is a complex society of ancient bacteria.

  These are the inert husks of quite a different life, frozen out there, a crew of diseases in suspended animation, in order to survive the long voyage to their destination. Then something happens. We do not know what. Something thaws them out, and a new kind of darkness falls from the air, like the invisible ashes of a plague. And thus, after all, the sun which not only gives, but also takes away, and has given the world so much, now gives the thinning gift of a new disease.

  But we do not know this. It takes some time to learn that the enemy has landed.

  The city was already a little unreal.

  Horemheb and Ay were in Thebes, and it was they now, more than Ikhnaton, who kept Aketaten going. The others all went on tiptoe through the neglected streets.

  Yet from a distance the city still looked much the same.

  But, if a city may do such a thing, it looked thinner, and somehow defenceless at sunset, under those angry red cliffs. The sun ebbed away from the entrances to the rock tombs quite early in the day, and one might look up and see the black doorways, like small square samples of the night.

  It was a little restless. With less to do on the public works, the workers roamed the streets, followed closely by the police and army. The nobles seldom appeared in public any more, and then only on their way somewhere. The passage of the day was marked by three or four habitual processions. Nefertiti left her new palace in the northern suburb, accompanied by a sleepy and resentful Tutankaten, at dawn, moving to the Aton temple in a tight knot of nobles and guards, to celebrate the sunrise. There were also two new cermonies invented by Pa-wah, the kindling of the divine fire, and the perpetuation of the divine fire. These over, and the toy white procession moved back to the northern suburb, not to re-emerge again until sunset. Though it was difficult to find new acolytes, and several of the old had disappeared already, presumably to Thebes, Pawah was always busy.

  Ikhnaton did not appear. He was ill. The court did not quite know what to do, but was not unduly worried. The dynasty, in the person of Smenkara, was safe. But they moderated their adoration of the Aton. Service in the palace was slack. It was hard to find the servants, let alone to get them to do anything. In the zoo the great cats snarled restlessly, or lay under the trees. Sometimes now they were not fed. But the inertia of the installed officials was enough to keep the machine in operation, and they were as busy as ever, indulging themselves in last-minute peculation.

  Then, it was impossible to keep the matter secret, it was found out that Pharaoh had a new disease. He had Asiatic cholera. He was unable, any longer, to give orders.

  Pharaoh’s illnesses, like the headaches of a major prophet, were well known and bothered nobody. One had merely to loiter outside the closed doors of his apartments, with an ironic smile, waiting to be told what to do by the invisible presence. It had become a regular part of the day, and everyone enjoyed it, for you met your friends there, and could talk over the current gossip. But Asiatic cholera was another matter. It was neither a pretty nor a strategic disease. And now, of course, there were no orders.

  The courtiers prowled the corridors in anxious gangs, like greyhounds without either a rabbit or a master. They had run this track so long that they had almost forgotten how to run in any other. It was the absence of a rabbit that bothered them most. Automatically, at the correct hours, they found themselves tugging towards the same mechanical bait, and now it wasn’t there. The wisest of them, the most independent, retired to their own houses to await developments. And no one had seen the three princesses for days. A few, perhaps, looked at their wooden pillars and estimated the cost and trouble of shipping them to Thebes.

  In the absence of anyone else of authority, decisions rested with the chief household steward, a harassed man who had not been out of the palace for ten years. It was he who remembered to have the princesses fed. Pa-wah should have been consulted, but was not. And since Nefertiti represented an opposing faction, with her own court, it was to nobody’s self-interest to notify her.

  The chief household steward called in Mahu, the chief of police. But Mahu would do nothing. The mobs were beyond his ability to control. He did, however, post guards around the palace and sent a despatch to Horemheb, at Thebes. Then he retired to his own household and bolted the doors.

  A great many bolts shot home during that anxious four days. For that was how long the crisis lasted, four days. The chief steward caught a glimpse of Pentu’s face, as he left the royal apartments, and being a methodical man, sent for m
ortuary workers. These, unknown to Ikhnaton, were installed at once.

  Behind the palace, at one end of the store-houses and magazines, was the mortuary yard where Maketaten’s funeral furniture had been prepared. Work was resumed, on a day and night shift, for there was much to be done in a hurry. At night the adjacent courtyards were lit by the uncertain fury of the workers’ torches and flares.

  Cholera is a contagious disease. It was remarkable how suddenly that palace became empty.

  But Ikhnaton had a wily body. Weak and diseased from birth, he had learned a thousand ways to stay alive, of which epileptoid fits were by no means the least. Now, unexpectedly, he seemed to rally. Indeed, one symptom of that disease is a last-minute impulse towards wandering.

  He had been comatose, but not altogether unconscious. He saw his body subjectively from the inside. It was an echoing flannel tunnel, hollow the way a broken, fallen bronze statue is hollow. Through the tunnel a heavy plush water was ebbing away, with the illusion of running faster than it was running, constantly speeding up, until the surface, if it had a surface, became an oily blur. He did not watch this from his head, or mentally, because his head was stuffed up and wadded with the white-yellow-green offal of a lobster. He watched it from some hummock inside there, about where his lungs would be. He knew of course that this had to be stopped, because it meant that he was dying, but he did not want to stop it. Bits of the roof of the tunnel seemed to be caving in, and the echo was not so much a sound as a texture. Though he knew he should panic, his consciousness felt too humid and heavy, with a dangerous placidity that prevented him from turning to flee. The process was too inevitable not to be fascinating, and he could not help but watch it idly. Besides, it had nothing to do with him. It was just something he was watching, with a completely absorbed incuriosity. It had nothing to do with him in any way. So this, he realized cosily, was dying. He had never expected to watch the process and still live.