Cheops had only a vague memory of the arguments of the opposing faction. All he recalled was that they stood firmly by the contrary view, in other words, they defended time’s need to relax. According to them, if humanity persisted in living so intensely, then it would end up losing its reason.
Gobbledygook! Cheops thought. It had been an inspired idea to send half of them off to the Abusir quarries. If people would stop bothering themselves with such nonsense then the affairs of state would run all the more smoothly. But they were incorrigible. After wracking their brains with all sorts of visions, the Egyptians were now doing their best to unhinge the rest of the world. That’s what his ambassador in Crete had reported. The Foreign Minister had brought the dispatch to him, puffing with pride. The other viziers were also glowing: the Egyptians’ worldwide impact was steadily increasing. Crete, and, beyond that island, the Pelasgians and the peoples who had settled there just recently, had been struck by a great confusion. They had learned from the Egyptians that another life existed, and it had quite turned their heads. We were ignoramuses, they said, we were blind, thinking life was so short and simple, whereas it is infinite!
The ambassador had reported just how excited the Cretans were. They were grateful to Egypt for a miracle that they held to be the most important discovery ever made by mankind. From now on everything would change — ideas, mentalities, even the earth’s dimensions. It was no trifle, no, it was not a mere appendage or outbuilding tacked on to life. No, what had at last been brought to light was life a hundredfold, a thousandfold, not to say everlasting.
Cheops listened to his ministers in silence. To begin with, even he had not understood whence came the chill that he felt. Then when they had left he went out on the balcony of his palace and gazed for a time at the dust rising from the building site. The thought came to’ him, more clearly than before, that if Egypt had not made the discovery that so bedazzled the rest of the world, then there would be no pyramid either. There would be no pyramids, he thought again and again. And that horrible dust cloud would not darken his days.
Two decades previously an inner voice had advised him not to have this kind of tomb built. But his ministers had ended up convincing him of the opposite. Now, even if he had wanted, he could no longer detach himself from his pyramid.
“I did it for you!” he was about to shout out loud. “I have sacrificed myself for you!” Now they had left him alone with his pyramid, while they did nothing but banquet and carouse. Yes, he was alone before his tomb, swelling up and crouching down by turns before leaping high as if to take possession of the whole sky.
For a long while he tried to think of nothing at all. Then he felt drawn once again to the scrolls. He hoped that the sky-blue one would help to dispel his gloomy thoughts, but it was the scroll he was trying to avoid that attracted him irresistibly. He knew what was in it. But he raised its leather casing with the kind of sudden start that you use to open a door onto a group of whispering detractors.
They were there as they always were, in their insatiable thousands. From robbers and street urchins’ to educated ladies and lounge lizards, whose venom was all the more intolerable. Informers had faithfully copied down everything, and these unordered inventories of things said in vulgar and in polished language gave a more accurate picture by far than any report of the degree of Egyptians’ loyalty to their state, and of their disaffection… It sucks, I swear, it sucks up everything, it ain’t never satisfied, the black widow, it’s left our stomachs in our sandals, it’s squeezed the seeds out of us, and not just the seeds, it’s all down to that thing, you can’t have a laugh any more, or have fun, on my mother’s soul the devil take Egypt, let me never hear its name again, not Egypt’s nor the name of that bloody pyramid!… People are damned right to claim that the building of this new temple is impoverishing everything, even life itself. Half of the taverns have been closed since construction work began, dwellings have gotten smaller, men’s love of their craft and their pleasure in entertainment have been extinguished, fear has spoiled and shriveled every kind of thing, and only one has grown: the line at the bean seller’s stall. People have now realized that the pyramid not only devours everyday life, but is consuming the whole of Egypt. Its blocks of masonry have crushed the palm trees and the autumn moon, the excitement of the early evening in the city, laughter, dinner parties, and feminine sensuality. . Even if the pyramid were to swallow it whole, Egypt should consider itself lucky to make such a sacrifice!… But hang on, there’s no point in crying wolf! The pyramid may have petrified our existence, but one day it could also depetrify it, bring liberation, release us from the weight of its stones. . Hell, that’s just daydreaming! Have people lost their wits? Can a witch regurgitate all that she has eaten? To make her do so you have to put her to torture, cut her up into little pieces — come on, witch, spit it all up, or 111 knock up your mother too! But that’s just nonsense. Supposing you did get hold of it and squeeze it hard, what would come out of it? — A huge fart and nothing more.
Cheops’s jawbone hurt For a second he felt completely empty. Then he blinked. They don’t like you, he said aloud, It wasn’t yet compassion that he felt. All the same, now that people were foulmouthing the pyramid, he felt less ill-disposed toward it.
He was naturally entitled to despise it. He could even detest it. But they had no right… no right to go so far…
He had fallen into the grip of some devilish tool. It was hard for him to understand what he should like and what he should abhor. Sometimes he felt as though it were he himself who bore that horrible lump on his back, yet it was the others who were complaining of it.
He felt no bitterness. He and his ugly hump stood together, together against the world.
Cheops raised his eyes. What he could see spread out against the sky was his own dust. That’s what it was. The dust of kings. Alas! he sighed. Sometimes he regretted not having adopted another means of crucifying Egypt. One of those immemorial devices that his ministers had come up with from the ancient archives, about twenty years ago, on that unforgettable November morning. He could have set people to digging that great underground hole that would have been undetectable on the surface… Involuntarily, he often found himself thinking of how such a hole could be designed. First darkness, second darkness. On down to the fifth, the seventh darkness, the darkness of darknesses. Pitch dark. That’s what the Egyptians deserved. They weren’t worthy of his uprightness. They had always preferred shameless manipulation and occult oppression. Whereas his own pyramid rose up right there, in the very heart of the State, as if to say: Here I am!
They don’t like you, he repeated silently. His exasperation with the pyramid had now given way to a kind of pity for it. “But I’ll show them. . I’ll show them. . No, you don’t need them to like you!”