The Book Of Ian Watson, page 31
HOTEMTEP: (To Yvonne.) It is thou, without a doubt,
Whose face is painted on my heart!
YVONNE: Qu’est-ce-qu’il dit, Maman?
MARIANNE: Whatever did I say? That no one
Speaks Old Egyptian? But this man does!
(In somewhat broken ancient Egyptian.)
How is it you speak language?
HOTEMTEP: With my lips; and tongue. Which are also
The organs of love’s preliminaries.
MARIANNE: True. But I mean: how do you talk
That language?
HOTEMTEP: Why, I drank it with milk
From my nursemaid’s nipples. It is—it was—
The language of the double kingdom here.
I suppose words have changed since last I lived.
Hatshep-Siptah warned me of such a possibility.
You shall be my interpreter, strange woman.
I once had need of an interpreter
To converse with the Babylonians.
MARIANNE: Since you last lived, did you say?
TOM: Madame Bizot never told us she talks Arabic
Amongst her many other foreign talents.
HARRY: I’ve never seen anyone remotely as queer
As this chap, in the Sudan or anywhere else!
Why does he stare at Yvonne like that?
Has he stumbled upon the Ushabti?
Has he come across the lute-player?
YVONNE: I’m strangely drawn to this person,
God knows why. He’s hardly personable.
Yet there’s a vigour about him, a clarity
(Despite his smelly goat skin),
A new kind of fire—as though
He’s a freshly discovered element of nature,
Radioactive, whose rays strip me naked
To the bone. Admittedly he’s a bit
Disgusting. … Pity about his hand,
More like a crab’s claw. Yet I fancy
It could grip firmly and caress softly.
Monsieur! Effendi! How do I address him?
HOTEMTEP: She speaks to me. She knows me.
(HOTEMTEP’s virile member lifts the goat skin somewhat.)
It must be an age since last I knew
A woman, except in my shattered dreams.
My body cries out; it points.
HARRY:
(He grips the rifle at the ready.)
Good Lord! Upon my word! I say!
TOM: Positively indecent! Next thing we know,
This weird wallah will expose himself.
I bet he isn’t wearing underpants,
No more than those Masai warriors
We met outside Nairobi three seasons back,
Who laughed at us for bottling our farts up
In our breeches.
YVONNE: He’s a force of nature;
Yet also he is a man. So maybe we have met
Some desert nature-deity, a Pan of the sands?
His garments are certainly loose enough;
And he bears a resemblance to a Capricorn.
I pray Harry doesn’t go pan! pan! with his gun
In defence of modesty and repression.
MARIANNE: Tell me! What did you mean by saying
‘Since you were last alive’?
HOTEMTEP: I was dead.
The sands have turned twenty million times
Since then; and now I am alive. I, Hotemtep.
MARIANNE: Do I have a fever, or sunstroke?
Am I hallucinating? How on earth
Can a dead man come back to life?
He wasn’t even a whole corpse.
Just a ravaged, gutted mummy!
HARRY:
(He lowers his gun.)
I heard him say Hotemtep. Why?
MARIANNE: That’s who he says he is: the pharaoh,
Resurrected and reborn.
HOTEMTEP: My Ushabti
Served me well; they found me a new body.
HARRY: What’s that about the Ushabti, eh?
MARIANNE: Where are the Ushabti, Hotemtep?
HOTEMTEP:
(He strikes his chest.)
Within the new me; their duty done.
MARIANNE:
(She wipes her brow.)
But how? I don’t understand.
HOTEMTEP: Truly, it is the greatest of secrets.
I shall share it on receipt of a great sum
In gold—of which I have been robbed—
To provide for me adequately in my new life.
(He plucks disdainfully at his goat skin; while Marianne proceeds at some length to explain the situation to the others)
CURTAIN
How amazed we were still to exist! Admittedly we were all lodged in different parts of Hotemtep’s new body: Musician Em in his windpipe, Ote in his heart beating time, Stonemason Te in one of his kidneys, myself in the purse of his scrotum; and so forth. We had no way to walk around and meet each other face to face. Nevertheless we could still call out and hear each other. Hotemtep’s nerves carried our voices along their subtle wires. The assorted bodily clamours—the pumping of the blood, the gurgling of the stomach, the gassy oozing of the guts—didn’t drown out reception.
To Gardener Hoë, lodged in the intestines, our present circumstances were a fulfillment, a blissful return to an innocent paradise of which the dead God, lying in his boxes of wood, then stone, inside the tomb had only been a shell, a husk. Now the living flesh of God was encysting us.
To Maidservant Emep, within God’s stomach, we were all serving at a noble banquet, all of us contributing to a grand communal task: sustaining the new life of Hotemtep.
Others—the majority—weren’t so satisfied.
From the brain-stem an angry rebel cry came down from Soldier O:
“Does Hotemtep know or care that we exist? He does not! Like mindless tools we rebuilt this body for him. And now we give up all our freedom to sustain him. By our presence we power his heart and lungs and loins. We are uttermost slaves! I can say this now that Manservant Temte is no longer with us. He was the soul of servility.”
“No, he was not!” cried Emep, from the belly. “He knew his place—and now we all know ours. The God was with us all along. Each of us was always part of him; and now we have simply restored him to himself. Where were we going, I ask you, but back to the tomb of boxes? What other desire or ambition did we have? But we had forgotten how to accomplish it. You should be guarding against any mutiny or desertion of God’s parts; not saying such things, O.”
Surveyor Oëp kept watch behind Hotemtep’s eyes. From that high eminence he could see what was happening outside.
“Friend O is right,” he said. “We need to look out for ourselves. This bondage is worse than the glass world, worse than the wooden world. What future is there for us? I should have sought us a place for us to dwell on our own—in the empty burrow of some desert beast, perhaps.”
My part of Otem spoke to me. “What future, he asks. Well, I’m the Priest. And I’m the Oracle. I’m the part of God who can guide, not through deserts but through destinies. If I’m put back together I can answer Oëp’s question.”
It transpired that all around God’s body other Otem-parts were telling the same story.
“Was I not right about the star and the Sun?” Otem went on. “What a mess you made of things on your own, without my guidance. True, I forgot much. I made mistakes. But if I’m put back together here inside Hotemtep all my skill will be restored.”
“Aye,” said I, “and maybe our independence of thought will be at an end.”
“I’m one of you. Believe me!”
Nurse Ep spoke out, from the cleansing liver. “How do we put our Priest together, when we can’t meet each other? Not even O can travel. He can only jab nerves with his spear if he wants to discipline us. Isn’t that so?”
O confirmed that it was so.
“Release me from your necks,” pleaded Otem. “Loose me all at once. My parts will enter the blood and lodge in the heart, where they’ll clot together.”
We discussed this proposal for a long time, some assenting, some dissenting. In the end it was Musician Em’s vocal support for the plan to reconstruct Otem which swayed the doubters. She had talked at length to Surveyor Oëp about what he saw outside. She, who wore a face and eyes which were not Hotemtep’s, was willing to trust to Otem’s superior vision.
ACT 4. SCENE TWO.
(The same.)
HARRY: What, the Ushabti are inside him?
Including my beauty, with Yvonne’s face?
HOTEMTEP: Failing gold, then diamonds will do.
Diamonds are lighter to carry around.
HARRY: What did he say?
MARIANNE: That hell settle for
A fortune in diamonds to stake his new life;
In exchange for which: the secret
Of Resurrection. But what kind of life
Can a pharaoh ever lead in Nineteen Thirty-Six?
TOM: Maybe the new king Farouk has a rival?
MARIANNE: There are already enough pharaohs
In the world, with Hitler and Mussolini
And that Franco creature clawing his way
Through Spain!
TOM: What’s wrong with old Adolf
And Benito? Apart from them being foreign?
You just said you speak German and Italian.
MARIANNE: I speak the German of Goethe and Schiller
Not of these new uniformed barbarians
And book burners; who don’t much like Jews
And Gypsies.
TOM: Oh, so that’s it!
You and your daughter are French Jews
Out in Egypt to dig up the pharaohs
Who enslaved you? Well, well, well.
HARRY:
(To Yvonne,)
Are you Jewish?
YVONNE: Yes. What of it?
HARRY: Oh nothing. Good heavens.
TOM: And your Pharaoh here’s a gypsy.
HARRY: What?
TOM: The Dukes of Egypt’ is what
The travelling people call themselves.
And their boss man is the ‘Pharaoh’ of the band.
You don’t know much about words, for a poet.
The name ‘gypsy’ comes from ‘Egyptian’.
MARIANNE: What to do? He has to survive.
YVONNE: I shall teach him French, Maman.
We must take him home secretly to Paris.
His education should begin at once.
TOM: What kind of education would that be?
A sentimental one, I’m thinking. …
Let’s hark back for a moment
From matters of morality
To the business of immortality!
The golden path to living again.
I’d say we’re on to a winner, wouldn’t you?
HARRY: Oh but my lovely lost lute-playing muse!
YVONNE: Forget her. She’s gone. Digested.
Swallowed up, incorporated, fused.
MARIANNE: The Ushabti bundled all together
Don’t add up to a single kilogram.
They must have stolen a body; invaded it.
HARRY: Odd sort of body to find wandering round.
YVONNE: Remarkable! Full of animal magnetism!
MARIANNE: Hotemtep, whose body did your Ushabti
Take? Who did they kidnap for you?
HOTEMTEP: That is part of the great secret.
MARIANNE: He won’t say.
TOM: I’m wondering if Jesus
Had Ushabti disciples—or angels—
With him in his tomb? After all, his Dad
Did visit Egypt not long after the Magi
Brought three boxes of rare gifts.
YVONNE: We’ll find out the truth in Paris.
We can hide him in our apartment
Till he’s fit to stroll the boulevards.
TOM: Unless your concierge gossips!
YVONNE: Madame Laval?
Maman and her are two peas in a pod.
TOM: Laval, indeed? And might she be
Any relation to Prime Minister Laval?
YVONNE: No fear! Maman despises that man.
MARIANNE: So should any Jew with sense.
Laval encouraged fascists and Nazis.
Oh the rumours that are leaking out of Germany!
It’s no world for Jews, I fear. Or gypsies.
HOTEMTEP:
(To MARIANNE)
I’m waiting;
(To YVONNE)
face of my heart.
CURTAIN
I cast loose my part of Otem’s head. Throughout Hotemtep’s body everyone did likewise with their amulets. These were quickly swept away by the processes of the body. Timeskeeper Ote, who was stationed at the heart, counted the pieces as they arrived there and began to congregate.
Within a dozen or so turns Otem was complete again, save for the part which scorpion-slain Temte had worn: half of the priest’s left hand.
Soon Otem spoke.
“Brothers and Sisters,” he called out, “I foresee terrible things for Hotemtep, even worse than any we have known! I see him travelling to a city which is a hundred times the size of Thebes or Memphis. I see him hidden in the top story of a huge house, while he learns to speak a new language. Then for a time there is happiness. Exploration of the city, love, drunkenness on wines the like of which he never imagined, meals such as he never dreamed could exist; though not too much wealth. I see him becoming a local character, consorting in cafes with painters, poets, philosophers and clowns. I see a painting by one Pic-As-So called Man with Goat’s Head. I see a book written later by one Jon-Pol-Sart called Monsieur Hotemtep, Pharaoh and Faker.
“Then I see war. I see iron birds dropping eggs of death from the sky. I see iron bulls goring fields and cities. I see armies of men with iron helmets riding narrow iron chariots which bound forth tirelessly like hunting dogs.
“I see Hotemtep hiding again at the top of that house, hiding from the iron men wearing the sign of the crooked cross and from the men in long leather coats, who smash on doors. I see his mistress and his mistress’s mother hiding with him.
“I see the iron and leather men find them and drag them away, and crush them into a great closed wooden chariot packed with people wearing yellow stars. A dozen such chariots are chained together in a line, and pulled by a long iron chariot belching smoke; tugged by the wheels along iron tracks away from the city, through fields and towns for day after day while the people starve and cry for water. Then the chariots enter iron fences with high towers surrounding a hundred barracks of wood that stink of living death and of greasy smoke from high chimneys.
“I see worse! I see Hotemtep cry to a cruel commander dressed in black that he hides in him a great golden secret which the two women also share: the secret of resurrection.
“The black commander is mad with faith in wizardry. He has heard rumours of the streams and pools of aether. He and his brethren of the crooked cross have sent spies to Ind and Chin to hunt the source of this knowledge; in vain. He tries to discover the golden secret of Hatshep-Siptah through harsh experiments and tortures.
“But Hotemtep does not know the whole of the secret. When the scorpion destroyed Temte the keystone was lost.
“Finally the torn body of Hotemtep is tossed into an oven; and burnt. We are all burnt with him, utterly consumed. That is what I see, Brothers and Sisters. And beyond that, nothing, forever.”
So saying, Otem fell silent.
“What can we do?” Hoë called from the intestines. Many other voices took up this refrain.
“Hotemtep does not know us,” said Otem, “so he cannot hear my guidance. We could perhaps warn him in dreams, which Em could sing to him; but he would ignore his dreams, as unbelievable, until they came true. Thus we must stop him. We must stop him in the only way he can be stopped, and pray that later when the world has changed we can start again. We are the Ushabti! What we have done, we can undo!”
“We are the Ushabti!” we all cried.
“Let me tell you how,” said Otem, our true priest of wisdom once again.
ACT 5. SCENE ONE.
(The lofty lounge of a suite in Shepheard’s Hotel, Cairo. Bamboo furniture—the chairs with lace antimacassars; potted palms; an Empire sofa the size of a bed. A huge brown oil painting of shaggy Highland cattle amid rainy Scottish crags. Electric lightbulbs scintillate in a crystal chandelier. From the dark balcony, through veils of mosquito netting, step HOTEMTEP, MARIANNE, and YVONNE. HOTEMTEP is now wearing an off-the-peg creamy tropical suit, white shirt, brown tie, and patent leather shoes.)
HOTEMTEP:
(He discards his jacket and unknots his tie.)
Why do all men of importance
Wear nooses round their necks?
Is it a symbol of humility?
A sign that anyone can strangle them?
MARIANNE: How can I explain that a necktie
Is de rigeur in good society
Such as one meets at Shepheard’s?
Ah, what bourgeois hypocrisy!
He’s perfectly right. A necktie is really
A symbol of strangulation, by convention.
YVONNE: How refreshing he is! How natural.
Who cares about the Bourgeoisie? Not I.
MARIANNE: We all disguise ourselves, my dear.
We hide our feelings and our origins.
A Jew wears the guise of a citizen of France
Till something like the Dreyfus case occurs.
YVONNE: I shall not hide my feelings much longer.
Maman, it is time for his next lesson.
MARIANNE: And I must find Harry, whose title
Certainly oils the wheels of authority
Notwithstanding the scandal of the ‘robbery’
Of the Theodore Peck Gallery.
I hope we didn’t rouse Ted Peck’s suspicions
By hastening off to Cairo. … Take care, Yvonne.
(She opens the door to a corridor which could probably accommodate a train; departs.)
YVONNE: Sit down, Monsieur Hotemtep. Stand up.
Shut your eyes. Open them. Good.
What is this called?
HOTEMTEP: Your nose.
YVONNE: And these?
HOTEMTEP: Yours ears. And those, your lips.
Below: your breast. Oh face of my heart,
I must kiss you.
YVONNE: To kiss lips,
Which haven’t kissed a woman
For the last three thousand years!
