Free The Pyramid by Ismaíl Kadaré Page B

sudden Cheops saw the silver platter laden with excised tongues that the High Priest Hemiunu had brought to his father Seneferu one morning. At the time he was only thirteen, and his father explained to him that the tongues had belonged to people who had spoken ill of the State. “It made you go pale,” Seneferu remarked, “but you will do the same one day. If you don’t cut them off, in the end those tongues will have the better of you and your reign.”
    But it was now probably too late for it. Wicked tongues had proliferated to such an extent that even a thousand platters would not suffice.
    He raised his head, intending to bring his perusal of the reports to an end.
    He could not take his eyes from the column of dust. He had hated its sinister dance to the heavens, not thinking that one day he would miss it. Even now, and in spite of his still undiminished revulsion for it, he was already horrified to imagine that one day it would not be there. Together he and his tomb had wielded power in concert, and now, after twenty years, the tomb was on the point of completion. Soon its infernal animation would cease. It would begin to cool day by day beneath its polished limestone facing panels before congealing forever. It would have begun by clearing out of the sky (Cheops felt almost at fault now for having sworn at all that dust) and then after taking leave of the sky it would take leave of life.
    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