River god - Smith Wilbur (чтение книг .TXT) 📗

  I watched Pharaoh attentively as she sang. His eyes never left her face, and his lips moved silently in sympathy with the words that swelled from her throat.

  My heart is a wounded gazelle,

  torn by the lion claws of my grief?

  She lamented and the king and all his train grieved with her.

  There is no sweetness in the honeycomb,

  no perfume remains in the desert blossom.

  My soul is an empty temple,

  deserted by the god of love.

  In the front rank one or two of the king's wives were snuffling and blubbering, but nobody even glanced at them.

I look on death's grim face with a smile.

Gladly would I follow him,

if he could lead me to the arms of my dear lord.

  By now not only the royal wives but every one of the women were weeping, and most of the men also. Her words and her beauty were too much for them to resist. It seemed impossible that a god should show the same emotions as mortal men, but the slow tears were cutting runnels through the white powder on Pharaoh's cheeks, and he blinked his heavy, kohl-darkened eyelids like an owl as he stared at my Lady Lostris.

  Nephthys entered and sang a duet with her sister, then hand-in-hand the two women went in search of the scattered fragments of Osiris' corpse.

  Of course I had not placed the actual dismembered portions of Tod's corpse for them to find. During the intermission my helpers had retrieved these and carried them away to the'embalmers on my instructions. I would pay for Tod's funeral out of my own purse. It seemed the very least that I could do to compensate the unfortunate creature for my own part in his murder. Despite the missing portion of his anatomy that Pharaoh still held in his hand, I hoped the gods might make an exception in his case and allow Tod's shade to pass into the underworld, and that there he might not think too badly of me. It is wise to have friends wherever you can, in this world and the next.

  To represent the body of the god I had the funeral artists from the necropolis build for me a magnificent mummy car-tonnage, depicting Osiris in his full regalia and in the death pose with his arms folded across his chest. This container I had cut 'into thirteen sections that fitted together like a child's building-blocks.

  As the sisters retrieved each of these sections they sang a hymn of praise to the god's parts, to his hands and feet, to his limbs and trunk, and finally to his divine head.

Such eyes, like stars set in the heavens,

must shine for ever.

Death should never dim such beauty,

nor the funeral wrappings contain such majesty.

  When at last the two sisters had reassembled the complete body of Osiris, except for the missing talisman, they pondered aloud how they could return it to life once more.

  This was my opportunity to add to the pageant that essential element that makes any theatrical production appeal to the popular taste. There is a broad lascivious streak in most of us, and the playwright and the poet does well to bear this in mind if he hopes to have his work appreciated by the main body of his audience.

  "There is but one certain way to bring our dear lord and brother back to life.' I placed the words in the mouth of the goddess Nephthys. 'One of us must perform the act of generation with his shattered body to make it whole again and to fan the spark of life within it.'

  The audience stirred and leaned forward with anticipation at this suggestion. It had elements to appeal to even the most prurient of those present, including incest and necrophilia.

  I had agonized over how I would represent upon the stage this episode in the myth of the resurrection of Osiris. My mistress had shocked me when she had declared herself willing to carry her role through to the end. She had even had the effrontery to point out, with that impudent grin of hers, that she might gain some valuable knowledge and experience from doing so. I was not certain if she was jesting or if she would really have gone through with it; however, I would not give her the opportunity to demonstrate her good faith or lack of it. Her reputation and the honour of her family were too valuable to trifle with.

  So it was that at my signal, the linen curtains were drawn once more and my Lady Lostris quickly left the stage. Her place was taken by one of the upper-class courtesans who usually plied her trade in a palace of love near the port. I had hired this wench, from amongst several that I had interviewed, because of her fine young body that so much resembled that of my mistress. Of course, in facial beauty she could not come close to my Lady Lostris, but then I know of none who could.

  As soon as the substitute goddess was in position, the torches at the rear of the stage were lit so as to cast her shadow upon the curtain. She began to disrobe in the most provocative manner. The males in the audience cheered on her shadowy gyrations, convinced that they were watching my Lady Lostris. The harlot responded to this encouragement with an increasingly lewd display that was almost as well received as the slaughter of Osiris in the first act.

  Now came that action of the play that had given me, the author, considerable pause, for how could I contrive fecundity without a stout peg to hang it on? We had just seen Osiris forcefully deprived of his. In the end I was forced to stoop to that tired old theatrical device that I so scorned in the work of other playwrights, namely the intervention of the gods and their supernatural powers.

  While my Lady Lostris spoke from the wings, her shad-owy alter ego on stage stood over the mummiform figure of Osiris and made a series of mystical gestures. 'My dear brother, by the rare and marvellous powers granted to me by our forefather, Ammon-Ra, I restore to you those manly parts that cruel Seth so brutally tore from you,' intoned my mistress.

  I had equipped the mummy case with a device that I could raise by hauling on a length of fine linen twine that ran over a pulley in the temple roof directly above where Osiris lay. At Isis' words the wooden phallus, hinged to the god's pudenda, rose in majestic splendour, as long as my arm, into full erection. The audience gasped with admiration.

  When Isis caressed it, I jerked the string to make it leap and twitch. The audience loved it, but loved it even better when the goddess mounted the supine mummy of the god. Judging by the convincing acrobatics of her simulated ecstasy, the harlot I had chosen to play the part must have been one of the truly great exponents of her art. The audience gave full recognition to her superior performance, egging her on with whistling and hooting and shouting ribald advice.

  At the climax of this exhibition the torches were extinguished and the temple plunged into darkness. In the darkness the substitution was made once more and when the torches were re-lit my Lady Lostris stood in mid-stage with a new-born infant in her arms. One of the kitchen slaves had been considerate enough to give birth a few days previously, and I had borrowed her whelp for the occasion.

  'I give you the new-born son of Osiris, god of the underworld, and of Isis, goddess of the moon and of the stars.' My Lady Lostris lifted the infant high and he, astonished by the sea of strangers before him, screwed up his tiny face and turned bright red as he howled.

  Isis raised her voice above his and cried, "Greet the young Lord Horus, god of the wind and the sky, falcon of the heavens!' Half the audience were Horus men and their enthusiasm for their patron was unbounded. They came to their feet in a roaring tumult, and the second act ended in another triumph for me and in mortification for the infant god, who on later examination was found to have prodigiously soiled his swaddling-cloth.

  I OPENED THE FINAL ACT WITH ANOTHER of my recitations describing the childhood and the coming to manhood of Horus. I spoke of the sacred charge laid upon him by Isis, and as I did so, the curtains were drawn aside to reveal the goddess in the centre of the stage. Isis was bathing in the Nile, attended by her handmaidens. Her wet robe clung to her body so that the pale glory of her skin shone through. The indistinct outlines of her breasts were tipped with tiny rose-buds of virgin pink.