“Why?” I asked. “Why needs the human body be preserved after death, even when it’s cold and has no feeling?”
Ramose glanced at me with his small, round turtle eyes, wiped his hands on his apron and drank beer from a jar, which was next to the brain jar.
“So it has ever been and will ever be,” he said. “Who am I to explain what has always been since time immemorial. But they say that in the grave a man’s Ka, who is his soul, returns to his body and eats the meal sacrificed to him and rejoices the flowers that were brought in front of him. But Ka consumes very little, so little that a human eye cannot see it. Therefore the same sacrifice can be done to many, and the sacrifice of a King is carried from his grave to the front of the nobles’ graves, and finally the priests eat it when the night falls. But Ba, who is a man’s spirit, flies on the moment of man’s death from his nostril, but where it flies, I cannot say. Many witnesses throughout time have assured that this happens. But Ka and a man have no difference other than that Ka casts no shadow in light, but a man has one. In all other things they are alike. So it is said.”
“Your words are nothing but buzzing of flies in my ears, Ramose,” I said. “I am not an entirely simple man and there is no need for you to babble me old things that I have grown weary hearing and reading in scriptures. But what is the truth?”
Ramose drank once more from the beer jar and watched absent-mindedly small parts of brains floating in the oil of the neighbouring jar. “You are still young and anxious to ask a thing like that,” he said and grinned to himself, opened his mouth and laughed silently. “Your heart is inflamed to ask a thing like that. But my heart is old and scarred, and your many questions do not hurt it. I cannot tell — and nobody else can either, not even the priests, — if a man benefits from having his body preserved after death. But since that has always been done and will ever be done, it is best to keep doing so, since at least it brings no harm. I only know that no one has ever returned from the Western Land to tell
133
what it is like. Some say that a Ka of a loved one returns to them in their sleep to guide, teach and warn them; but dreams are but dreams, and in the morning they are no more and they have evaporated. But it is true that once a woman was revived in the House of Death and returned to her husband and her parents and lived until old age before she died again, but perhaps this happened because she was not really dead, so I believe, and someone had enchanted her to be like a corpse to steal her body and control it, because things like that do happen. The woman told others that in death she entered the gorge of the underworld, which was dark and had various horrible creatures harassing her, such as male baboons who hugged her, and crocodile- headed monsters, who bit her breasts. They have written a story about this, kept in the Temple, and they read it to whomever pays a fee. But who believes what a woman says? In any case, death had such an impression on this woman, that for the rest of her days she lived a pious life and visited the temple every day and spent her dowry and also her husband’s fortune in sacrifices, so that her children became poor and they had no money to prepare her body for death when she finally did die. But then the Temple donated a grave to her and preserved her body. They still show her grave in the City of the Dead, as you may know.”
The more he talked, the ever more firmly I wanted to preserve the bodies of my parents. Having now lived in the House of Death, I did not know if they benefited from it or not, but I owed it to them. The one hope and joy of their old age had been that of their own eternal preservation, and in my desire to fulfil this hope I embalmed them, with Ramose’s assistance, and bound them in strips of linen, remaining for this purpose forty days and nights in the House of Death. My stay was thus prolonged in order to steal enough for the proper treatment of the bodies. But I had no tomb for them — not so much as a wooden coffin — and I could do no more than sew them up in an oxhide so that they could live together until eternity.
When I was ready to leave the House of Death, I became irresolute and my heart thudded in my breast. Ramose, who had noted my skill, invited me to remain as his assistant. I could then have earned and stolen much and lived out my life in the burrows of the House of Death without the knowledge of any of my friends and free from the vexations and sufferings of a normal life. Yet I could not stay in the House of Death, and I cannot tell why I did not, since after getting used to its burrows I had no complaints and I did not long for anything.
134
Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213 214 215 216 217 218 219 220 221 222 223 224 225 226 227 228 229 230 231 232 233 234 235 236 237 238 239 240 241 242 243 244 245 246 247 248 249 250 251 252 253 254 255 256 257 258 259 260 261 262 263 264 265 266 267 268 269 270 271 272 273 274 275 276 277 278 279 280 281 282 283 284 285 286 287 288 289 290 291 292 293 294 295 296 297 298 299 300 301 302 303 304 305 306 307 308 309 310 311 312 313 314 315 316 317 318 319 320 321 322 323 324 325 326 327 328 329 330 331 332 333 334 335 336 337 338 339 340 341 342 343 344 345 346 347 348 349 350 351 352 353 354 355 356 357 358 359 360 361 362 363 364 365 366 367 368 369 370 371 372 373 374 375 376 377 378 379 380 381 382 383 384