Ismail Kadare - The Pyramid

Every time that they mentioned the visible form of the work, they alluded once again to the possibility of a general collapse. Cheops then recalled the autumn morning when he had believed that his courtiers’ consternation over this pyramid business had been only a symptom of their servility. Now he saw the extent of his mistake. Their distress had been quite genuine. He was henceforth convinced that the pyramid would not just be his own, but equally, if not more, theirs.

He raised his right hand to let them know that he wished to bring the audience to an end.

With their hearts in their mouths, they listened for the Pharaoh’s brief, dry, and sober judgment.

“Let the pyramid be built. The highest of all. The most majestic.”

NEWS of the pyramid’s construction spread with amazing speed, for which two explanations were offered: the people’s joy after long waiting for such tidings; or, on the contrary, the dismay felt when a much-feared misfortune that people hoped never to see happen finally rises over the horizon.

Ahead of its announcement by public criers, the news had already reached the thirty-eight different provinces of the kingdom, had spread everywhere, like sand blown by yesterday’s wind of disquiet.

“The Pharaoh Cheops, our sun, has decided to grant the people of Egypt a grandiose and sacred mission, the most majestic of all buildings and the most sacred of all tasks, the construction of his pyramid.”

The drum rolls echoed from village to village, and even before the voices of the heralds had died away, provincial dignitaries put their heads together to deliberate on steps to be taken on their own initiative before instructions reached them from the capital Their faces seemed lit with joy as they left the square for their homes, repeating, At last, as we had foreseen, the great day has come! From that day on there was something new in their stride, in their gestures, in the way they held their heads. A kind of hidden exultation tended to contract their muscles and to tighten their fists, The pyramid entered their existence so readily that in barely a few days they began to mutter. How the devil did we manage without it up to now?

Meanwhile, without waiting for the arrival of directives from the center, they acted as their predecessors had acted for all previous pyramids: they stifled the voices of the malcontents. The mere idea that thousands of people, instead of rejoicing at the news, could wail despairingly, “Woe! Another round! ” put them beside themselves with anger.

“Did you think you were going get away with it? Did you believe that everything had changed, that there would be no more pyramids and that you could live as you liked? Well now, you see how things are! So bow your heads, and grouse to your heart’s content!”

In the capital the situation had become perceptibly more tense. Not only the mien and bearing of the functionaries but the buildings themselves seemed to have grown stiffen Coaches shuttled between the White House, as the Finance Building was called, and the Pharaoh’s palace, between the palace and the building that was said to house the secret service, and even to unknown destinations, toward the desert.

Architects in the leading group directed by Hemiunu worked overtime. The plan seemed ever more complex to them, and each of them imagined that, when he finally managed to comprehend it in its entirety, his brain would burst from the pressure. What contributed above all to the mental torture was that everything hung together, A minor correction to the height or the base dimension led to an infinite number of other changes. Items that were apparently distinct from the overall plan — the decoy galleries, the air vents, the sliding doors that gave onto nothing, the secret entrances that unfortunately led to blank walls, the false escape routes, the pressure on the gallery that led to the funereal chamber, the gradient, the sinkholes, the axis, the number of stones, the horror of the center, not one of these things could be conceived in isolation. The famous phrase of the father of the pyramids, Imhotep, “The Pyramid is One” (Hemiunu had reminded them of it at their first meeting), remained lodged in their minds like a driven wedge.

Each time they recalled it, Imhotep’s pronouncement seemed ever more appropriate, but instead of feeling relief, they were ever more dejected. It was a truth that bared itself progressively day by day, revealing itself, in all its blinding obviousness, as a curse falling upon them.

The pyramid could only be what it was, that is to say, total. If one corner were imperfect, it would crack or begin to subside somewhere else. So, whether in suffering or in joy, you could only dwell in it by becoming part of the whole.

They now felt that the pyramid had broken free of their calculations. When they first heard it described as “divine,” they had difficulty in hiding their smiles. However, they were now convinced that it concealed some other mystery. They were obsessed with the worry that the mystery might be “the secret of the center,” they lost sleep over it, they wore a gloomy countenance, but, in their heart of hearts, they took pride in the extreme complication of their fate, until, one day, something unheard of occurred: though the pyramid only existed on papyrus and not a single stone had been cut for it nor even the quarries selected, yet the Theban whip factories, without waiting for orders from the State, had already doubled their rate of production!

As chariots heavily laden with their heaps of whips slowly approached the gates of Memphis, people expected the factory owners to be punished for spreading panic. But not a bit: as people soon learned, the owners received not a punishment but a letter from the highest authorities congratulating them on their foresight and their understanding of current needs.

The architects in the leading group grew even more downcast. The idea that the pyramid could have been conceived outside of their circle, and even before their drawings were complete, was a terrible blow.

Meanwhile, foreign ambassadors, feigning indifference, had communicated the news to their capitals, each in his own way. They changed their ciphers each season, so that the spies disguised as customs officials found it hard to discern whether the vases full of garlic, the stuffed sparrow hawks, or the singlets embroidered with forks and tridents that the Phoenician ambassador was allegedly sending to his mistress in Byblos were effectively vases, garlic bulbs, and women’s underwear, or just the puzzle pieces of some coded report.

Only one of the ambassadors, the emissary from the land of the Canaanites, continued to send his messages in the ancient manner, in signs carved on stone tablets. The others, and especially those from Crete and Libya, and more recently the Trojan ambassador, used ever more diabolical devices. The envoys from the Greek and Illyrian peoples who had just settled in large numbers in the Pelasgian lands were still too backward to have a clear idea of what a report, not to mention a secret report, should be; they found all these devices bewildering, had a permanent headache from them, and sighed. What misfortune it is to be so ignorant!

The one most hated by the secret police was, as always, the Sumerian ambassador Suppiluliuma. Not long before, a system of evil signs had been discovered in his country that was called “writing.” Almost indistinguishable lines and dots were traced on clay tablets, looking like the marks of crows’ feet; apparently these lines and dots had the power to mummify the thoughts of men, just as bodies could be embalmed, And as if that were not quite enough, these tablets were baked in ovens and then sent from one to another as messages. You can imagine what happens in their capital, the Egyptian ambassador gloated when home on leave. All day long chariots full of clay tablets trundle around from one office to another. A letter or a report takes two or three chariots. Street porters unload them, and when perchance a tablet is broken, then there’s a riot! Then other men carry the message to the minister’s office. A whole half-day of unloading in dust and muddle. Upon my word, the country is off its rockers!