On a Balcony Read online

  “Is this the way he wants to see me?” she asked at last.

  “Yes.”

  “And doesn’t he see what it is?”

  “No.”

  “So that is what he means by truth,” she said.

  He looked at her with some interest. “Truth is anything. Truth is only a lie we want to believe in.”

  “Why?”

  He did not want to answer. “You are not satisfied with it?” he asked.

  She looked at him oddly. “What do you want, Tutmose?”

  “I am a sculptor. I like to sculpt. And sculptors must eat.”

  “Oh, you will eat,” she said. “You will do me again.” She tapped the bust. “But on one condition. Keep this. Put it high on the studio wall, on a shelf, so it can look down on you. You see too much. Let it see you for a change. You please the prince, but you are only a sculptor. I think you sometimes forget that. I shall not.”

  She did not seem exactly angry, but at the door to the studio she paused. “Do I really look like that?”

  “It was the way I saw you.”

  For a moment there was the ghost of a warm smile on that face. “I think we understand each other,” she told him. “It is a pity. We could have been friends.”

  Then she left. After she had gone, he did as she had told him. He put the statue high in a niche in the wall, and knew it would travel with him everywhere. For she had caught him out. He had only wanted to flatter her. Instead he had caught the serene bitterness of that curious smile. For that she wanted to punish him, and he saw no reason why she should not be allowed to do so. He even found it agreeable to be punished in such a fashion.

  Yet perhaps she was glad he had caught it, for that smile was what she had become. It was the one thing that made life worth living, the almost invisible smile of that ultimate defeat, success. And it was as a loss that he had shown it, though perhaps even he scarcely realized that.

  Meanwhile the smile went off to play with the prince. After all, this serious game with God was to last for ever. He even had intimations of immortality. And in that case, everything had to be well planned.

  Unfortunately, though we may be immortal, our bodies are not. Another member was therefore added to the intimate circle, Pentu, a physician, a dull, odious, cringing, raven of a man, but one who did keep the prince well. He was someone else for Nefertiti to deal with, until she saw there was neither good nor harm in him. He was interested only in medicine.

  Meanwhile, even a mystery play requires an audience, and for this, too, the prince had made his preparations. He saw more of Horemheb these days.

  Nefertiti did not altogether care for that. Since he was as complex as she was, she knew she had nothing to fear from Tutmose, except knowledge. But Horemheb was a relatively simple man, and simple men are dangerous. Besides, she found him physically too attractive. She was not without curiosity. He was her mother’s lover. He must know a great many things about Tiiy that could only be repeated in bed. Yet he was so uneasy in her presence that his demeanour was an unconscious form of flattery. She was younger than he was. She found it very pleasant to treat him like a child.

  He was in truth a scrawny bear with puzzled eyes. But honesty is always treacherous, she thought, since it refuses to obey either its owner or us.

  As for Horemheb, his respect for the prince had risen. He had only to look at that precocious face, the full, moist, eager, unweaned mouth, the sad and dangerously sparkling eyes, and something androgynous and shockingly naked about the features, to see that here was no man and no Pharaoh. But on the other hand, he had only to listen to that hypnotic and elaborate voice, to be aware of something that was the more powerful for not being quite human. It was very easy now to believe that the prince knew something the rest of the world did not.

  Nor was it correct to say, as Tiiy said, that he had no grasp upon reality. He was, on the contrary, quite clever. He merely held reality from the opposite end to the rest of the world. Now he proposed nothing less than to hand the country over to the army and Horemheb. It was a dazzling offer and Horemheb took it.

  It was not necessary to tell Horemheb everything. It was sufficient to make him believe that together they were making an effort to free the throne from the domination of the priests, by means of the army. If Horemheb wished to assume that the throne would then be dominated by the army, that was his own concern. We all need our illusions. The prince recognized that.

  With Horemheb so easily won over, it was only necessary to suborn Ay. That was even easier. For without the army there would be no taxes and revenue, and without taxes and revenue, there would have been no Ay. Besides, Ay had gently opposed the Amon priests for years.

  There remained the courtiers. Ay said they would be difficult to win over. The prince merely looked at him out of that distant face and smiled. He proposed to enjoy himself immensely. He had put up with the shrugs and smirks of the palace cabals for too long. Now he proposed to break them by the simplest of all possible means. He had watched them for years, and if a god be also a little cynical, it does give him a certain advantage over the devout. For in looking over the heads of the worshippers, he knows what they really believe in. One then knows how to make them more seemingly devoted.

  First he summoned Meryra back from Aketaten.

  Then he held a public audience.

  A joke in good weather is certainly much better than a joke in foul, and the day was excellent. Horemheb had provided a well-behaved crowd, and the natural cupidity of the Thebans could be relied on to do the rest. It seemed to him the cream of the jest that Tiiy should also attend, with Smenkara. This idea had actually come from Nefertiti, but then Nefertiti often did have entrancingly amusing ideas.

  It was his first appearance as the new god, but this he had carefully kept to himself. The balcony of audience was at the front of the palace. It was not so fine as the one that must by now be almost ready at Aketaten, but it would serve. Tiiy was already there when, in a cloud of fan-bearers, guards, and musicians, he and Nefertiti appeared at the end of the tall, narrow corridor that led to the balcony stairs. Trumpets blown in that constricted space were deafening and Tiiy was given to migraine. Silhouetted before them, she quite perceptibly winced.

  Hand in hand he and Nefertiti came down the corridor. He was very happy. He was smiling. Nefertiti gave his hand a conspiratorial squeeze. They looked like enchanted children.

  With a particularly shattering blast the trumpeters swept by Tiiy and out on to the balcony, followed by cymbal clangers, sistrum shakers, and six particularly high-pitched harps. Tiiy looked pale, but her face was commendably expressionless. Nefertiti tugged at her skirt, gave her mother a bland, distant smile, and walked up the stairs and out into the dazzling, theatrical light of heaven. The first item on the programme, as it almost always was, was a well-rehearsed cheer.

  The prince looked down with considerable pleasure. It had been given out that he was to reward his loyal followers, and as a result the courtiers were assembled directly below him, somewhat puzzled, no doubt, by a small knot of nobodies with whom, quite clearly, they had no desire to mingle.

  They would not be nobodies much longer.

  Horemheb and Ay were also in that expectant crowd. Tiiy looked surprised, and the prince decided to improve her expression. They were rewarded with gold collars for loyal service to the Aton.

  It was a type of service of which she and the crowd had never heard, but of which they were to hear much more. The collars were handed down from the balcony. The prince caught in Ay’s eye a distinctly speculative look, and the man’s lips twitched with amusement. It never did to underestimate Ay. In his own way he had a sense of humour, which certainly improved his posture. Horemheb’s ramrod posture was utterly humourless.

  There was a brief pause.

  Below him he could see the round, sweaty, complacently expectant face of Ramose, Tiiy’s court chamberlain, a sixty-year-old place-seeker who was always rewarded at these occasions, as a matter of c
ourse, and who had in consequence grown quite rich by doing absolutely nothing. This enviable condition he owed entirely to the fact that his uncle was not only High Priest of Amon, but highly respected for the regularity with which he emitted, decade after decade, a thin diaretic stream of harmless moral apothegms. At his age Ramose must find the duties of court chamberlain a burden, and out of compassion if nothing else, it was a burden the prince proposed to lighten.

  It was time to Call forward the nobodies.

  To Pa-wah, the son of a petty scribe in the foreign office, of whom nobody had ever heard, two hereditary titles, the office of Superintendent of the Royal Harem, one-tenth of the Theban taxes on barley, and a tomb at Aketaten at Pharaoh’s expense. For services to the Aton.

  To Meryra, a nobody everybody had forgotten about, High Priest of the family cult, one hereditary title, eight honorifics, High Priesthood of the Aton in Aketaten, with Pa-wah as his assistant, a tomb at Pharaoh’s expense, for though the prince did not find the building of tombs a happy subject, still, everyone wanted one, High Priesthood of Aton for all Egypt, the estates and their revenues of eight villages in the Delta, a palace in Aketaten, and forty bars of gold. For services to the Aton.

  To Pentu, Royal Physician, the lucrative post of Superintendent of the Granary and of the Cattle of the Aton. A particularly humiliating rise to power, since he was the son of a keeper of the Theban necropolis. Chancellor, also, of Northern Egypt. For services to the Aton.

  To Huya, Harem Superintendent to Tiiy, and inseparable from her, out of sheer mischief, a tomb at Aketaten, to which his body was to be carried after his death, forcibly if need be. For services to the Aton.

  To Hiatay, a building contractor, the extremely high dignity, reserved for nobles of the first rank, of Fan-Bearer on the Right Hand of Pharaoh. For services to the Aton.

  To May, an obscure priest at Heliopolis, a cousin of Nefertiti’s chief hairdresser, the titles of Prince, Royal Chancellor, Overseer of the Soldiery, and Bearer of the Fan on Pharaoh’s Right Hand. For particular services to the Aton. Behind the scenes, he had brought the priests of Ra at Heliopolis into line. Temple rents and benefits would follow.

  And last, but most delightful, to a minor official under Ramose, Nakhtpa’aten, who had been so good as to change his name to something cognate with the new god, all Ramose’s offices, the gift of a large house in the South City of Aketaten, and a tomb at the royal expense. Ramose’s burden was at last lightened. For splendid services to the Aton.

  To the nobles loyal to Tiiy, nothing.

  He looked down at them delightedly. Already these nobodies were somebodies. It vastly improved their appearance. It gave them an assurance they had lacked before. And to underscore the lesson still more firmly he was now ready to issue his proclamation.

  No longer was he to be known as Amenophis, son of Amon. Now he was Ikhnaton, the glorious son of the Aton. A glorious sun which in this case would set on Amon utterly. He had not forgotten that dark Holy of Holies. He never would. And Nefertiti, too, was to have a new throne name. From now on she should be Nefer-neferu-Aton, co-existent with the god, the female aspect of the Divine Principle.

  Even Tiiy has never climbed so high. Nefertiti’s smile was if anything more gracious than ever, and her slim arms writhed gracefully in benediction from the balcony.

  Against all protocol Tiiy left the balcony at once.

  It was further stated that in four days the birth of the new god would be celebrated at the Aton temple. Four days should be enough. When men are confronted with decisions affecting their self-interest, they are apt to act rapidly. He was quite sure the nobles would turn out in force.

  The next day news was brought to him that Tiiy was closeted with the Amon priests. It angered him, but she could do nothing, so long as the army was loyal to him, and he had seen to it that it would be.

  The day after a riot broke out in the stonemasons’ quarter, Horemheb squelched it at once. Perhaps it even had value as an object lesson.

  The day after that a gang of Amon priests pelted Meryra with mud, as he drove through the city.

  That was a different matter. That was an act against Ikhnaton’s appointed prophet. The Amon priests would have to be taught a lesson. And he knew what that lesson would be. But first it was necessary that the service at the Aton temple should take place, and take place, moreover, in an immense display of military pomp.

  That cautionary ceremony did not proceed without a certain sense of strain. Only within the white walls of the temple, open to the sky and bathed in blinding light, was it possible really to relax. And though Meryra had been given a heavy guard, he could scarcely stumble through the service for cowardice. However, it did not greatly matter. They would not be in Thebes much longer, and in Aketaten they would all be quite safe.

  Surrounded by his new court, Ikhnaton paced through the ceremony with pleasure, with Nefertiti beside him. He was delighted to see that more than half the court was there. No doubt there were a few diehards, who would prefer to live in error. Tiiy was welcome to them. As for belief, belief is very like marriage. One undertakes it for the most practical of reasons, and then, if one is not utterly incompatible, one grows fond of it after a while, He quite understood that.

  The ceremony over, the party retired to the palace. For a month now they would pack. And packing un-nerves courtiers as much as it does any other kind of household pet. They do not want to be left behind. Their sense of security destroyed, and therefore too anguished to plot, they do everything they can to please, and do not breathe easily until they are safely installed in the new quarters.

  Even Tutmose packed, but more calmly. He had been careful to accept neither dignities nor titles. He was going only because he had to follow his subject matter, placidly eager to see what would become of it. He was an indispensable part of this new world, for it was he who had given it a face. Nevertheless the expression of that face would be its own, and to find out what that expression would be, he would have to take its death-mask, too.

  Tiiy was stranded. For Ikhnaton had an advantage. He was portable. Whereas all the wealth and splendour of Thebes, its temples, tombs, and the vast responsibility of its necropolis, was rooted down. It would become provincial, as soon as he sailed away from it.

  He was not ready to sail away from it just yet. There was still one last thing to do, before he could rest easily. Even a god of light is not secure until he has destroyed the powers of darkness. The army would not support him in this. So he did not bother to ask the army to do so. He went instead to the grave robbers of the necropolis. They were the suitable men for what he had in mind.

  And when they told him that what he had ordered to be done had been done, he believed them. For it never occurred to him that what he ordered to be done might not be done. Not only was he god. He was also Pharaoh. For two thousand years Pharaoh had been obeyed. Absolute power so long maintained naturally assumes that to give an order is the same as to see it carried out.

  Besides, had he not heard the sounds of rioting by night, and a vast wail over the buildings, a lament for the destroyed god? That at least was convincing.

  He forgot that priests are the best of actors, having but one role to perfect. He had ordered these grave robbers to penetrate to the Holy of Holies and smash that horrible black, brittle god into a thousand pieces. It had been done.

  But the priests were wilier than that. Distributing an ample bribe to the assassins, they had merely rolled the god away and given out that it had been destroyed. For though gods die, the priesthood goes on for ever. It always survives the god it pretends to worship and it always will. Priests are of necessity cynics. Unlike divinely inspired persons, they know that men are mortal, and with a little care can be made even more mortal yet. So they could afford to wait. The new god was physically frail and limited to one mortal body. When he had died they had only to roll the old god out again, to regain their power.

  When Tiiy heard the news of this supposed destruction,
it sobered her. She had thought Ikhnaton had merely been playing. She was resigned to ruling Thebes in his absence, until he or somebody else came back. But now she was nonplussed. “My God,” she said, “he believes it.”

  She was quite right. He did. It was now too late to stop him. Alone, she could only patrol the shore, in an empty palace, with a dying king.

  The court was sailing away.

  In its own way that was an unique and a glorious event. It was something that had never happened before in history. Dawn rose like a glass curtain on that scene. An orchestra was absent, but does not dawn have its own sound? True, the music of the spheres is something we no longer believe in. If stars make a noise, we feel it must only be like the whirling of a gyroscope. But the harmony of the world is something to which we always return, after each period of experiment, the ground base of our existence, on which we improvise.

  For listen to silence for a while, and you soon discover that mere sound is nothing but a vulgar substitute for what music ought to be. With what ultimate capacity does silence give meaning to the small and furtive, as well as to the loud, sounds the world can make. Restive, the boats squeak down at their berths in the harbour. In a rusted ring a rope lifts against the echoes of all dead voyages. A stone expands. A chorus of frogs provides the ornament.

  Almost unnoticed, the vast arpeggiatura of light flies out from the sun until it fills the sky. Then, slowly, as it dies away into every nook and cranny of the sky, from here, from there, from everywhere, a vast chorus of reflections states the theme of day, and vanishes in its development, only to reappear, inverted, at evening, when the work is done, and the world gives way to the stately choral movements of the night.

  It is an enormous work, this harmony of the world. It can get along without us very well. Wherever one enters it, one is always at the beginning. One did not hear it five minutes ago. One cannot remember, though one has heard it all one’s life, what it will do next, for it has not done it yet. Always the same, it is yet always new. Concerted, it is yet diverse. It has a beginning and an end we think. And yet, like music, it occupies not time, but space. It is always simultaneous. It is always now.