On a Balcony by David Stacton Page A

saw life become more limited for him rather than more various. Once people had ignored him. Now they wanted to change him. It was as though people in a house wanted to shut off rooms they could not use. And indeed, he had become vastly over-populated. It was amazing how many people took shelter under Pharaoh. The only way to evict them was to ignore them.
    As a result people thought he lacked warmth. Smenkara , his younger brother, did not think so, and so he took real pleasure in playing with Smenkara. Smenkaraliked him. He took the boy everywhere, and made a friend of him, for all his grown-up friends had suddenly turned into councillors. They advised him, but they obeyed Tiiy. He was beginning to tire of Tiiy.
    “Will you put that child down and listen,” she snapped. “Aren’t you interested in what happens in Nubia?”
    “No,” he said. “I’m not.” It was the first time he had said it, and he found doing so an immense luxury. In a way it was a decision. He looked at Ay. He looked at Horemheb. He looked at Tiiy. No, he did not care what happened in Nubia. He saw that they all looked exactly alike. Why on earth must people confuse personal ambition with public conscience? During office hours they had created a new sex, called the bureaucrat , whose sexual characteristics were a lack of characteristics , and they all belonged to it.
    He had an appointment with Tutmose, and they were making him late.
    ‘You like to govern,’ he said. ‘Then govern.’ He saw a way out. ‘We are pleased with what you do in our name. Pharaoh cannot do everything. Therefore he delegates his divine authority to his proper instruments, as his father did before him, and when he is pleased with his servants, he rewards them.’
    He peered at them blandly, feeling quite pleased with himself. Tiiy had some difficulty in controlling her features. Ay was the first to give in. Over his face there spread one of those slow, warm smiles with which he greeted anything that impressed him as being clever.
    The prince was well satisfied. He went off to see Nefertiti before going on to Tutmose.
    Nefertiti was in her eighth month, and refused to be seen in public. She would not even let Tutmose see her. This displeased him. She was pregnant by him, and the world should know that. ‘Truth is in itself beautiful,’ he told her.
    In this case she seemed to feel that the truth was an exaggeration. And really, pregnancy had not improved her. It made her snappish and difficult to deal with. He was puzzled. He wanted her back the way she was. But he told her everything.
    “Tiiy will plot against you, you know,” she said.
    “Very well.” He was in a good humour. “We will plot against her.” Nefertiti was a woman. She should know how the thing was to be done.
    He had brought Smenkara with him. Nefertiti looked at Smenkara, who drew back into shadow. “You do well to encourage him,” she said. “If it is not a boy, then Smenkara will be your heir.”
    The prince let go of Smenkara’s hand at once. It was something that had never occurred to him.
    Thus began a tug-of-war over Smenkara, for Nefertiti produced a girl who was named Meritaten, after the Aton cult, an act of defiance designed to please neither the Amon priests nor the family.
    The prince was just as pleased to have a girl. He liked little girls, who were smooth and slippery to the touch as little boys, and yet who had no sex. It made them singularly charming. Besides, he had Nefertiti back again, though not for long. By 1383 she was again with child.
    This time, however, she was willing to parade the fact. Perhaps she had learned a lesson. If truth was what the prince wanted, then truth he should have, but have it only from her. Nor did she care for his continued encouragement of Smenkara, since the second child, too, was a girl, to be named Maketaten.
    Tiiy made no objection to the titulary. But she allowed herself to smile, she allowed herself to say that Nefertiti seemed able to