Ismail Kadare - The Pyramid

Cheops took in a sharp and painful breath. So the pyramid will leave me alone and abandoned in this vale of tears. . An ice-cold stiletto of anxiety churned his stomach.

He went up to the marble shelf and rang the bronze bell to summon the head magician.

Without looking at him or even turning around, Cheops asked the magician if he had heard the latest rumors.

“ Ah yes… Postpyramidal era… an ugly phrase, like so many you hear nowadays… I’ve spoken to the head of the security service about it.. ”

In Cheops’s mind the silver platter glinted lugubriously before running with blood.

“I know,” he said. “I also know what he thinks of the matter. . But, even if it dismays us, there will be a post-pyramidal era one day, won’t there?”

“Hm. I’m not sure what to say about that,” the magician replied.

Cheops was tempted to remind him that he had opened his heart to him once before, twenty years previously, and the magician had told him that the pyramid was the pillar of the State, light condensed into stone, and so on. But he also recalled simultaneously that all those who had witnessed the scene were now rotting in the ground. How time passes! he thought.

“Well, what will happen when it… I mean, when the postpyramidal era comes?”

“Hm. . Majesty, allow me to make one objection. . There will be no postpyramidal era, for the simple reason that the pyramid will always still be there.”

Cheops turned around abruptly.

“Djedi, don’t evade the question,” he said very quietly, though his words echoed in the magician’s ears as painfully as a scream. “You know perfectly well that the current weariness and, so to speak, the dissolution of Egypt are due to the fact that the pyramid is nearing completion.”

“A pyramid is never completed, Majesty,” the magician replied.

“What’s that?” This time Cheops really had screamed. “Am I going to have to build another one, as my father did? Or demolish half of this one so that it can be rebuilt?”

“No, Majesty! When I said that pyramids have no end, I was thinking of yours and none other. It has no need of a twin. Nor any need of rebuilding.”

“All the same it is nearly finished.”

He looked up to see if he could find the dust cloud on the horizon.

“Its body will be finished, but not its soul!” the magician continued.

He went on for a long while in such an even voice that Cheops very nearly dozed off.

“How many steps are there left to build before reaching the vertex?” he asked in a muffled whisper.

“Five, Majesty,” the master-magician answered. “But the Minister for the Pyramid was explaining to me yesterday that they get smaller as they go on. There are no more than two hundred and fifty stones left to lay, maybe even fewer.”

“Two hundred-odd stones. .” Cheops repeated. “But that means it’s almost finished!”

The shout of joy that should have been uttered with these words turned into a shudder of fear. He tried to smile, but his lower lip would not budge.

“Two hundred and a few stones,” he rearticulated in his mind. “How awful!”

Dust whirled up into the sky with ever greater force.

“A sandstorm is on the way,” said Cheops.

Inside the palace the wind’s whistling could not be heard quite so clearly. It was more like a rumble or a man’s death-rattle. If someone had not thought to put away the papyri that Cheops had left on the balcony, they would surely have been blown far away.

Actually, he thought, the scrolls could go to hell.

Sand and rumblings, that’s Egypt for you, his father Seneferu had told him the day before he died. If you master them, you master the country. The rest is just fiction.

It was especially when storms of this kind broke that these words came back to him. He listened absentmindedly to the roaring moan outside. It was as if Egypt in its wild-eyed, convulsed entirety, stirred up by the wind, was howling curses at him. He too wanted to yell: “To death with you! What demon has taken hold of you, O my mad kingdom?”

ONE HUNDRED and ninety-seventh stone, from the Aswan quarry. Nothing particular to report. Time taken to hoist to head of ramp: normal. Soldiers’ graffiti: no political significance, (Two vulgar words referring to female genitalia, one of an affectionate, the other of a repulsive nature,) No veining or other specific marks. One hundred and ninety-sixth stone. From the Karnak quarry. Difficulties in raising, SALS (seal authorizing laying of stone) in order. Ordinary graffiti: penis. Nothing else to report. Stonelayer Sebu’s impression of having heard a groan from inside the block was unfounded, One hundred and ninety-fifth stone. From El Bersheh quarry. Hoisting delayed owing to suicide of head stonelayer Hapidjefa. Tricked his workers into letting him use the stone to end his days. (“Leave this side to me, PU take care of it while you have a break.”) Following the west-face magician’s instructions, the block was rotated so that the death-stained side faces outward. The sun’s rays will bleach the evil out of it — presuming it has indeed been contaminated by Hapidjefa’s soul. One hundred and ninety-fourth block. From El Bersheh quarry. Caused the death of four men in the desert. In very obscure circumstances. Despite this, hoisting was straightforward. Seal and other documentation in order. No problems in placing it, apart from last-minute loss of one of stonelayer Thep’s hands. His own fault. One hundred and ninety-third stone. From the Karnak quarry. Seal in order. But setting delayed by graffiti reckoned by some to be insignificant but by others to be politically inspired. Transcribed as per rules and sent on down (that is to say, to a higher place). Copy taken for the Security. Another copy to CBPP (Central Bureau — Pharaoh’s Palace). One hundred and ninety-second stone. From Aswan quarry. Despite having no special signs, proved difficult to hoist. Indirect cause of the crushing and subsequent death of carver Shehsh. (For reasons not known, he had spat on it as it passed step one hundred.) One hundred and ninety-first stone. From the quarry at Thebes. One face speckled black. Returned to quarry by special order. During its return to its place of extraction, it obstructed the ramp for half a day. But caused no deaths. The seal-bearer maintained that the speckling had appeared during hoisting. One hundred and ninety-first stone, substituted for the preceding. From the quarry at Illahun. Nicknamed “Ruddy” during hoisting because of its reddish stains and veins. Nothing special to report. Time taken for raising: normal, Graffiti of no interest. One hundred and ninetieth stone. From Abusir quarry. Nothing particular to report.

Chronicle of Construction: third step, from the forty-seventh to the forty-fourth stone. From Security records. Marginal notes added by CBPP.

Forty-seventh stone. From Aswan quarry. Double check carried out as per latest instructions. Swearing heard during haulage: “You should burst like my heart!” “You should be smashed to smithereens!” “You should fall into the abyss!” Blessings heard: “Thank fate to have placed, you on this peak!” “I wish you a long life of stone!” SALS in order. Magician’s authorization ditto. No problem in hoisting. No graffiti. Forty-sixth stone. From Karnak quarry. A reliable seam. Cursing and praising in roughly equal measure. One of the latter kind of expressions — I sacrificed my son to the pyramid with joy — alludes to an accident that occurred during unloading of the stone. No graffiti. They have disappeared as a result of improved surveillance., a very successful measure. Forty-fifth stone. From Karnak quarry. Same curses as for the others (“You should tip off the top,” “You should disappear into the void,” etc.); praise similarly standard. Some confusion during raising because of Setka, the idiot that the foreman had permitted to sit astride the stone, shouting “Giddy-up, old nag!” The hullabaloo was thought to be of no consequence. Everything else normal [Marginal note: the idiot’s ranting may have been of no con-sequence, but some of his utterances had a double meaning, For instance, some of the urgings he uttered as he whipped the flank of the block: “ Whoa, you filthy animal, get on with it!” “You’re in luck, you are, to be going up so high!” “Where lie your father and mother? Down there, right at the bottom!” “Get a move on, slowpoke, what’s holding you up, do you mean to say you don’t want to get hoisted right up to the top? Did you think you were going to be the pyra-midion? Poor old dimwit.. ” Subsequently, after the idiot had been made to come down, he blurted out these mysterious words: “This pyramid will grow a beard one day!” Despite a full day of the rack and a beating, he provided no further explanation,] Forty-fourth stone. From El Bersheh quarry. The only one of the four stones that fell into the Nile to have been recovered. Whence its nickname of Drownee. As for the rest, seals, second check, duration of hoist, laying — no problems.