Nefertiti Read Free Page B

to return as demons to haunt us as we sleep. Once, they say, before time began the whole of the land was green, with herds of water buffalo, gazelles and elephants. And suddenly I remembered years ago, when my father and I rode into the desert. A great storm had changed again the landscape of the dunes. We found revealed the skeleton of a crocodile, so far from any kind of water. What else lies hidden there? Great cities, strange statues, lost peoples, their ships built to sail the Otherworld's eternal sea of sand.
    Alas, I am carried away again. I must be sober as the great serpent of water carries me away from all I know, and all I love, on its black-ness, its perpetual glittering scales, with its sightless memory of a long journey from high in the unknown stones of Nubia, down through the great cataracts, and into the fields, into the fruit and the vegetables, into the wine, into the sea; and somewhere into snow.

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I admire the neatness of a boat. The simplicity of necessity. Blankets folded in the morning and stowed. Objects made small and precise for their purpose. Everything in its place. The captain has blue eyes, a handful of crooked white teeth, a confident belly and the hands-on look of an intelligence at home on the water; an intelligence that can look through people of the land and discern their motives and thoughts as if they were as easy to read as small fish in the shallows. Then there is the boat itself, a wonderful construction, an equation between wind and water that results in sails filling to perfect curves, drawing out the ropes to an immaculate geometrical tension that brings about the miraculous power to draw the vessel and its temporary passengers through the water. Look: the perfect cut of the prow through the skin of the water that heals as we pass. The wake - blind white fingers feeling their way along the edge of some unknown material, then relenting, with little shrugs and gestures of farewell, and sinking back into the blackness whence they so briefly appeared.
    Here I am, a senior detective of the Medjay, spending my time pondering the inscrutable puzzles of the passing water as we are carried with the current of the river past Coptos, Dendera and the Temple of Hathor, and the Temple of Osiris at Abydos. My mind like a water fly, thinking of nothing, when I should be preparing myself for the urgent mystery at hand.
    The captain invited the passengers to dine together this evening, around the brazier, for it is cold on the water once the sun has descended. I hate dinner parties, and I annoy Tanefert by making sure work prevents me from attending the invitations we receive. In part, this is because I cannot talk, at the table or even anywhere else, about my work: who wants to hear about murder when they are enjoying their meat? And in part because I just cannot discuss the perils and evils of the world from the point of view of luxury, around a table set with good things, as if it were all just matter for debate.
    We greeted each other politely as we took our places, and then fell into an uneasy silence. It is true that the Great Changes have brought about more caution, and sometimes almost suspicion, into daily life. Once we spoke freely; now people think twice before they express an opinion. Once one provoked laughter and amusement for expressing a heretical point of view; now such things are met with silence and discomfort.
    I was seated next to a portly gentleman whose belly was the most notable part of his anatomy; it was like a great globe with a white moony head gazing down in constant surprise at itself. The food, which was simple and plentiful, drew from him gestures of approval and delight: his polished little hands wafted in the air to describe his pleasure. He leaned over to me, and broke the silence: 'And what, sir, is your purpose in our new City of the Horizon of the Aten?'
    I could tell he was pleased with himself for calling the new capital by its rather pompous proper name. I