House of Dreams Read Free Page B

nodded to her. Presently a tumble of children disgorged from the chamber. Each carried a drawstringed bag. Pa-ari came up to us panting, his eyes alight. Something clinked in the bag. “Mother, Thu!” he shouted. “It was fun! I liked it!” He collapsed onto the floor, folding his legs under him, and Mother and I settled beside him. Mother opened her basket, producing black bread and barley beer. Pa-ari accepted his meal gravely and we began to eat. Other mothers, sons and smaller children were doing the same. The court was alive with chatter.
    As we were finishing, a lector priest approached, his shaven skull gleaming in the noon sun, the gold of his armband sparkling. His feet were impossibly clean in his white sandals. I stared at him, bemused. I had never been so close to one of the God’s servants before. It was some time before I recognized the scribe who farmed land on the eastern side of the village. I had seen him topped with curly brown hair, streaked with the mud of the Inundation, I had seen him weaving his way down the village street, drunk and singing. I knew later that the God’s men were also farmers like my father, giving three months out of every year to temple service, wearing fine linen, washing four times a day, shaving all body hair regularly, performing the rites and duties appointed by the High Priest. My mother scrambled to her feet and bowed to him, signalling to us to do the same. I managed to describe a clumsy little obeisance. I could not take my eyes off the black kohl around his eyes, the bony surface of his skull. He smelled very good. He greeted us kindly, and put a hand on Pa-ari’s shoulder.
    “You have an intelligent son there,” he said to my mother. “He will be a good student. I am happy to be teaching him.”
    My mother smiled. “Thank you,” she answered. “My husband will come tomorrow with the payment.”
    The priest shrugged lightly. “There is no hurry,” he said. “None of us is going anywhere.”
    For some reason his words touched me with cold. I reached up and tentatively drew a finger down the wide blue lector’s sash that enfolded his chest.
    “I want to come to school,” I said timidly. He gave me a brief glance but ignored my words.
    “I will see you tomorrow, Pa-ari,” he said and turned away. My mother gave me a little shake.
    “You must learn not to put yourself forward, Thu,” she snapped. “Pick up the scraps now and put them in the basket. We must be getting home. Don’t forget your bag, Pa-ari.” We began to straggle out of the court, joining the thin stream of other families wending their way back to the village. I sidled close to my brother.
    “What’s in the bag, Pa-ari?” I asked. He held it up and shook it.
    “My lessons,” he said importantly. “We paint them on pieces of broken pottery. I have to study them tonight before I go to bed so I can repeat them in class tomorrow.”
    “Can I see them?”
    My mother, doubtless hot and irritable, answered for him. “No you cannot! Pa-ari, run ahead and tell your father to come in for his food. When we get home you are both taking a nap.”
    So it began. Pa-ari would leave for school at dawn every day, and at noon my mother and I would meet him with his bread and beer. On God’s days and holidays he did not study. He and I would slip away to the river or back onto the desert, playing the games that children devise. He was good humoured, my brother, seldom disappointing me when I made him pretend to be Pharaoh so that I could be his queen, trailing about in a tattered, discarded length of linen with leaves twined in my hair and a vine tendril into which I would tuck stray birds’ feathers around my neck. He sat on a rock for a throne and made pronouncements. I issued commands to imaginary servants. Sometimes we tried to draw the other children into our fantasies but they quickly became bored, leaving us in order to swim or beg rides on the patient village donkeys. If they did join in,