City of Dreams (8 page)

Huy cast around for something to say, and found nothing. When he did, it was awkward and inappropriate: ‘You must hate us.’

‘I hate no one. You cannot hate when you have died inside.’

After Merymose had gone, Huy closed up the house and walked down to the City of Dreams. 

‘Do you never sleep?’ he said to Nubenehem, who was rooted to her couch in her half-reclining posture. There was a jar of thick yellow palm wine on the table beside her.

‘Never when there is a living to be made,’ she grinned. ‘What do you want?’

‘You mentioned a girl you said was my type.’

‘Little Nefi? You’re out of luck. She hasn’t been back.’

‘Did you give her work?’

‘She was keen, but had no experience. To be frank I was going to give her to you to break in.’ Nubenehem offered Huy the jar but he waved it away.

‘Tell me what she looked like.’

‘I did. Young. Innocent. Puppy fat on her cheeks. Plump young body. Very willing to show it off, she was. I wouldn’t have minded turning her over myself.’

‘Did you?’

Nubenehem’s look became less friendly. ‘No. These days I stick to less exhausting pleasures.’ She indicated the wine jar.

‘Why?’

‘No reason.’

‘Like to watch some of that, would you, women together?’ Huy paused. ‘I am going to describe a girl to you. As exactly as I can. You tell me if that’s the girl I missed.’

Summoning up as many details as he could remember, and trying to breathe life into her, Huy described Iritnefert.

‘That’s her,’ said Nubenehem. ‘So you found her after all. What was she doing? Working the docks?’

He was about to leave when the bead curtain was drawn aside and Kafy stood there. She looked at him resentfully. ‘Well, well. Don’t I know you from somewhere?’

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?’

Taheb looked inwards before replying. ‘He is a difficult man to impress. Not that I have ever tried.’

‘I may have to.’ 

‘Merymose is a braver man than I thought, if he is going to Kenamun of all people for the help of a former scribe of the Great Criminal!’

Taheb poured wine, which Huy was bound by etiquette to accept, though his heart resisted it. But to his surprise the drink was light, young, and faintly flavoured with honey, together with another taste, so subtle that he could not identify it. When he drank, the liquid flooded through him like sunlight.

‘To life,’ she said, toasting him.

‘To life,’ he replied.

She looked at him enigmatically for a moment, and then said, ‘I have kept you from something. You look furtive.’

He smiled. ‘I was planning to get into the palace.’

‘Then you should have come to me first. They would never let you in alone, even though you are wearing your best clothes. Who were you hoping to pass yourself off as?’ The same words might have been spoken through tight lips by the old Taheb. Now they came out spiced with delicate, ironic humour. Huy found it impossible not to relax.

‘I should have thought,’ he said. He was as sure as he could be of anything that Taheb was an ally to cultivate. Perhaps it was the effect of the enchanted drink, but he suddenly knew that what had made him hesitate before, her social rank, now seemed a ridiculous objection.

‘I know Ipuky through Amotju, and Reni and my father were business associates.’

‘Reni? You know about his daughter, then?’

‘Yes. It is a tragedy. She was so trusting. Who can be doing this? Why?’

‘There does not have to be a reason.’ But Huy looked inwards.

Taheb smiled at him. ‘You might as well ask me your questions, Huy. You are wondering how much I know, and
how
I know. It is because the rich in this city are in a club — news travels fast between families. It is hard to keep anything private but in this case privacy wasn’t desired. People are frantic. Those with half-grown children are beginning to panic, especially those with girls.’ 

‘Where are your children?’

‘I have sent them to my brother in the Northern Capital until you solve this for us.’

‘You have great faith.’

‘If it is not the work of bad gods, you will solve it.’

‘Chance is my only ally.’

‘It is not such a terrible one.’

Their words hung in the air between them. Now they were silent. The atmosphere in the room became palpable, as if it had changed to clear, viscous fluid. It was not unpleasant, and Huy wondered whether it was the effect of the wine. Every pore of his skin felt aware, as sensitive as it did after the luxury of a hot bath. He was standing by the balcony. Taheb put down her wine, stood up, and crossed towards him. She took his beaker away and placed it on the balcony wall. Now her arms rested loosely on his bare shoulders, skin against skin. It burned.

‘It’s funny,’ she murmured. ‘Amotju was so slim and tall, and you are built more like a warrior or a boatman than a scribe.’

‘My nickname at writing school was Bes. What did you put in the wine?’

‘Just a little mandrake fruit. You haven’t been in touch with me for an age, and I have wanted you since I saw you again at dinner. I wanted to be sure of you, you see.’

‘Did you take some?’

‘Of course. It heightens the fun. So they tell me. I have never tried it before.’