Scroll of Saqqara(138)

Khaemwaset seemed oblivious to it all. Most days he disappeared in the afternoons, unremarked by all save Nubnofret, who did not comment, and he would return for the evening meal bemused and monosyllabic. Nubnofret suspected that he spent the time on Tbubui’s couch, and she abhorred the breaking of the mourning rules, but proudly said no word. Khaemwaset would have liked to order the work on the addition to continue, but that stricture he dared not break. The workmen went back to their villages and the half-finished, unpainted walls stood amid a tumble of waiting bricks and rank grass, baking in the summer sun.

Sheritra had sent a letter to Harmin with her love and an apology and had received a short note in return. “Be assured of my deepest devotion, Little Sun,” it had said. “Come and see me when you can.” She had carried it about with her for days, tucked into her belt, and when the forlornness that had become the predominant mood of the house threatened to overtake her, she would pull it out and read it, raising it to her lips. At those times she would feel a resurgence of the anger that had shaken her on the morning she had, in all ignorance, come home to see Hori.

The remainder of the seventy days of mourning dragged to a close, and Nubnofret began to make plans for the impending journey to Thebes. She remained encased in frigid correctness, and Khaemwaset left her alone. Before he and the rest of the family walked up the ramp into the capacious barge he received word from Ptah-Seankh in Koptos, letting him know that the work was progressing satisfactorily, his father was being beautified with all due care and respect, and he would not be delayed in returning to Memphis with the information his master had requested. Khaemwaset was relieved. He had somehow irrationally believed that some disaster would befall Ptah-Seankh also, that he was fated never to welcome Tbubui into his home with all clauses of the contract fulfilled, but this time all was going smoothly.

Nevertheless, he stood on the deck of the barge and watched his watersteps recede with a great resentment. He did not want to go, and was surprised to hear his feeling expressed aloud by a pale and moody Sheritra, who was leaning on the rail beside him. “I should be happy to perform this last duty for Grandmother,” she said, “but I hate it. Hate it! I just want it to be over so that I can come home again.” There was no shamefacedness in the words, no suggestion of selfishness in the inflection she used. She was flatly stating a fact. Khaemwaset did not reply. He glanced behind them to where Si-Montu’s barge was following, Si-Montu himself and Ben-Anath standing side by side in the prow. Seeing his look they both waved, and he reluctantly waved back. Si-Montu seemed like a stranger now. All his relatives were strangers. Did I ever know these people? he wondered as the riverbank slipped by under his unseeing gaze. Did I ever greet them familiarly as kin, perhaps as friends? When was the last time I spoke to Si-Montu? Then he remembered, and a feeling of being smothered gripped him. The family is broken, he thought. Si-Montu, Ramses, they probably believe that they have received no communications from me because I have been fearsomely busy. They do not know that everything has changed, everything is broken. That the pieces cannot be welded together again because I am a piece, Nubnofret is a piece, Hori and Sheritra are pieces, sharp, jagged, grinding against each other, because there is no one to take us and fit us one into the other again And I simply do not care. He heard Hori swear loudly at one of the sailors, then silence descended on the deck once more. Sheritra sighed beside him and fell to picking a flake of golden paint from the rail. I do not care, Khaemwaset thought lazily. I do not care.

Dazed and quiet, they settled into their cramped quarters in the palace, for the royal residence in Thebes was smaller, too small to comfortably hold all the inhabitants of the mighty city within a city at Pi-Ramses who had come out of respect for Astnofert. “I feel as though I have been drugged,” was Sheritra’s comment as her sandals tapped an echo from the gleaming floor. Khaemwaset watched Bakmut follow her and the door close behind them. “What nonsense!” Nubnofret snapped before disappearing herself. Hori had already slipped away.

Khaemwaset stood for a moment, listening to the soughing of the desert wind in the wind-catchers. Drugged, he thought. Yes, it is like that. The palace vibrated around him with snatches of music, formal cries of soldiers changing the guard, the high laughter of young girls, the aroma of food and flowers, the pulse of life. He himself felt as though he had been ill and was still very delicate. His bewildered senses were being assaulted by so much vitality, so much carefree energy, and he had an absurd desire to burst into tears. But he shook off the weakness and, after sending a herald to acquaint his father that he and the family had arrived, he went in search of Si-Montu. His brother, however, was nowhere to be found, and Ben-Anath greeted Khaemwaset cheerfully but absently, already surrounded by her friends. Disconsolately, Khaemwaset wandered back to the suite, through crowds that recognized him and parted for him, bowing. He hardly noticed them. Tbubui’s face was not among them, therefore they did not exist.