Huy returned her gaze. Her eyes remained hard, but he knew it was an act. Her body was inviting him. He knew that it was an invitation he would accept. He took a step towards her. Nubenehem held out her hand. ‘Pay first,’ she said.
The corridor beyond the bead curtain was long and dingy, lit every three or four paces by an oil lamp in a niche. Innumerable nights of such light had made the walls smoky. Muted sounds, and, once, a cry of pain, came from behind the closed doors that led off it on either side.
‘Here we are,’ said Kafy, stopping at a door which was open. The room beyond was cosy, lit by three lamps and heavy with dark blue drapery. Kafy slipped her hand under his kilt and closed it round his penis, smiling, pulling him into the room by it. He would not have liked to guess her age, had never seen her in anything other than half-light, and knew nothing about her beyond the fact that she came from a village to the north which, she had told him, stood in the shadow of the pyramid of Saqqara.
‘Where have you been?’ She asked.
‘Nowhere.’
‘Have you tired of me?’
‘No.’ He stopped her, taking her hands in his.
‘What is it?’ Her eyes stopped acting.
‘One question.’
She looked resigned. ‘You never stop working, do you?’
‘There was a man here a few days ago. I saw him talking to Nubenehem. Well dressed, and perhaps elderly. I thought I knew him.’
‘I didn’t see him.’
‘I think he had come for some sort of show. He paid well.’
Kafy’s eyes lit up for a moment, and then shut him out. ‘You’d better ask Nubenehem.’
‘I did. She wouldn’t tell me.’
She smiled. ‘I’d help you if I could.’ But her eyes were not smiling.
He knew he would get no more out of her, just as he knew she was getting impatient. He reached for her, pulling away the tight linen shift to expose a taut brown body with generous, firm breasts. Merymose’s story had made him want to lose himself. He could not have stayed in his empty house.
She unknotted his kilt and sank to her knees, knowing how he liked to begin. ‘It’s been a long time; too long,’ she smiled, slipping him into her mouth. As she bent forward, he saw that her left shoulder was disfigured by a terrible bruise.
* * *
A malevolent demon was standing on his head. It had buried its adze in his fontanelle, and was working the thing backwards and forwards methodically to split open his skull. Meanwhile two stonemasons inside his brain were using claw chisels to cut their way out through his eyes. He tried to sit up, but the most cautious movement threw his tormentors into a mania of activity and his stomach hurled a messy bile into his mouth. There was another taste. Figs.
Huy forced himself into a sitting position by degrees and brought the empty jar of fig liquor into vision. The raging optimism which it had instilled in him last night, under whose influence he had finally escaped from Merymose’s story, was now replaced by a simple whimpering plea to whatever god listened to self-pitying hangover sufferers just to let him be all right again, his own man, as soon as possible. The only thing he was thankful for was that it was the eleventh day, the rest day. His binge would not have cost him his work.
Having at last managed to hold himself upright for five minutes without feeling the need to vomit, he started to order his heart. At first all that would come into it were moralising precepts about drink which he remembered from having to copy them as exercises when he was a student: I am told you go from street to street where everything stinks to the gods of alcohol. Alcohol will turn men away from you and send your soul to hell; you will be like a ship with a broken rudder, like a temple without its god, like a house without bread…Whoever wrote that had never had unpleasant memories to drown, thought Huy, or been confronted with truths too horrible to face. On the other hand, when you resurfaced, there were the memories and the truths still; they had not gone away, and the only difference was that one was now less equipped to deal with them than before. That was what made men go on drinking, Huy supposed. A constant retreat; putting your senses to sleep rather than facing and destroying the cause of your distress. He wondered if Merymose ever drank heavily. Huy doubted it.
His head sang with pain and his stomach heeled over as he stood up, his hand flailing for the back of a chair to support him. Having got this far, he allowed himself another minute or so before confronting the thousand-day journey which separated him from the bathroom. Then, forcing himself to breathe regularly, he set off.
Later, having bathed and, if not eaten, at least drunk some herb tea, he felt that he might, after all, survive. He chewed coriander seeds to sweeten his breath and, feeling ready to face the world, had decided to put on his newest, cleanest kilt, with the leather sandals and the one headdress left from more prosperous days. He would try to gain access to the palace, if not to the houses of Ipuky and Reni. He did not hold out much hope that Merymose would persuade Kenamun to engage him, but there was no harm in familiarising himself with the terrain in advance if he could.
He was interrupted in dressing by a knock at the door, and opened it to a man he recognised, one of Taheb’s body servants, an Assyrian who despite years in the Black Land still wore a long oiled black beard in ringlets. He touched his right hand to his forehead, lips and chest, and without a word presented a note to Huy, from Taheb, asking him to come to her immediately.
‘Do you know what this is about?’ he asked the Assyrian.
‘No. But it is urgent. She is waiting for you, and look, she has sent her litter for you.’
By the time Huy arrived at the house he was free of the last traces of the tormentors in his head. He climbed down from the litter and the Assyrian conducted him not to the little courtyard but through the house to an upper room, whose high windows faced north to catch the wind. The room, painted a white so fresh that it seemed pale blue, was cool and soothing. Huy noticed a jug with wine and beakers set on a table made of white, polished wood and inlaid with river-horse ivory and gold. Beyond it, the west wall opened on to a wide balcony shaded by deep eaves supported on slender lotus-columns, which gave a view down across the city to the broad grey sweep of the river, sluggish and low at this time of year, but sacrificing none of its dignity. From here he could see the crowded harbour quarter, the rooftops so close together that they welded in the heat haze into one whole. Beyond them and further south sprawled the larger roofs of the palace compound, the buildings there, as he knew, separated by broad, shady boulevards paved with polished limestone kept regularly watered in case it should become too hot for the feet of the rich.
She did not keep him long. Dressed soberly in a long-sleeved, ankle-length tunic which, though cut loosely, came high up to her neck, she approached him with both hands extended in greeting.
‘I am glad you are here. Have I taken you away from anything?’
‘The Assyrian said you needed to see me urgently.’
‘I thought I had better say that, or you might not come. You smell of corianders. That means you were drinking last night.’
‘Yes. Merymose came to see me. He told me of his past.’ Taheb looked thoughtful. ‘It is a sad story. But was that the only reason?’
‘Something else, too.’
‘Will you tell me?’
‘No. Not now. Forgive me. It is nothing important. Nothing to do with Aset, either.’
She smiled a little sadly. ‘Then I will not be curious, though it runs against my nature.’
‘He wants my help. He has acquired a new chief. A priest called Kenamun.’
‘Ah yes. The martinet.’
‘He has never courted popularity.’
Taheb looked at him in surprise. ‘Oh, but he has – with women.’
‘And has he succeeded?’
‘No.’
‘What do you think of him?’