Nefertiti Read Free

bake.
    And lastly my Tanefert, my heart, with your hair the black of a moonless night, and your strong nose and long eyes. Forgive me for leaving you. If I have done nothing else with my life I have at least made this family. My bright girls. May they be given back to me at the end of this story. I will lay anything on the libation table for this. One knows the things one loves when one must leave them.
    As is my habit and working method, I will keep a journal through the time to come. I shall record at the end of each day or night what I know I know, and also what I do not. I shall record clues and questions and conundrums and enigmas. I shall write what I please and what I think, not what I ought to write. In case something happens to me, per-haps this journal may survive as a testament, and return to its home like a lost dog. And perhaps the mystery will unfold from the bits and pieces, the shards and apparent irrelevances, the dreams and chances and impossibilities that make up the evidence and the history of a crime, into a successful, well-ordered and, who knows, sensible, logical, brilliantly deduced conclusion. But it would not be true. In my experience, things do not add up so easily. Things are, in my experience, a mess. So in this journal I will record the digressions, the thoughts that do not fit, the unrefined, the nonsensical and the inscrutable. And see what they tell me. And see if, from the broken evidence (for I normally deal in what is unredeemable), the outline of truth will emerge.
    And then I did the hardest thing I have ever done. Dressed in my finest linens, and with my authorizations in my case, I made a brief libation to the household god. I prayed, with unusual sincerity (for he knows I do not believe in him), for his protection, and for the protection of my family. Then I embraced my girls, kissed Tanefert, who touched my face with her hands, put my feet into my old leather sandals and, with shaking hands, closed the door on my home and my life. I walked away towards a future where nothing was certain, every-thing at risk. And I am ashamed to write here that I felt more alive than ever, even though my heart was broken glass in my chest.

    2
    Great Thebes, your lights and shadows, your corrupt businesses and your chattering parties, your shops and your luxuries; your rotten, squalid quarters and your youthful, fashionable beauties; your crimes and miseries and murders. I never know whether I hate or love you. But at least I know you. Above the low rooftops of my neighbourhood I can see the blue, gold, red and green of the temple fac ades, their colonnades and pylons standing to the sun. The holy sycamore groves around them like dark green candles. Orchards and hidden gardens. And next to them rubbish in piles between dark shacks, and in dangerous passageways. Behind the costly villas and great palaces and temples lie the shanties made from the cast-offs and detritus of the rich where the multitudes scrape meagre livings. The niches of the house-hold gods, each dish with its daily offering. They say there are more gods than mortals in the city, yet I have never seen one that was not shaped from the materials of this world. No, I do not hold with gods. They are selfish, in their temples and heavens. They have too much to answer for, in their relish of our sufferings and misfortunes, and their neglect of the petitions of our hearts. But this is sacrilege, and I must silence my thought - although I will write it here, and who reads this must honour my stupid trust.
    I walked down the streets towards the docks, beneath the dusty white awnings that protect us from the noon sun. I saw the local kids running along the rooftops, shouting and darting between the piles of drying crops and fruit, jostling the cages of birds causing tiny uproars of shrieks and songs, jumping over the afternoon sleepers and leaping the crazy gaps between the buildings. I passed by the stalls piled with colourful produce and walked