The 22 Letters (2 page)

He counted the trunks on the piles. Twenty-nine. He went round the edge of the clearing, looking for the crosses scored on the barks of the chosen trees, and eventually found eleven. Eleven and twenty-nine make forty, the total his father was expecting. Well, that was that. It was all he had been asked to find out. He was tired and hungry, but above all he was thirsty. He could see water in the bottom of the valley, so he would have to go down before he could drink, and then he could eat.

But it was strange, all the same, that the lumbermen should leave twenty-nine trunks by the road, eleven trees still standing, and just abandon the camp. And as he took a last vague look round he noticed something.

The newest tracks of the oxen led away from the tethering place—not
down
but
up
the mountainside.

He stood blankly for some time looking at the message printed in the earth by the hooves of the oxen, then he wandered around the clearing. True, the ground was mostly stony, but in the ashes of a fireplace, in a soft bank of fallen cedar needles he read the same sign, though still it seemed to have no meaning. He walked down the main track for some distance until he came to a sandy stratum of the mountain. Here there was no doubt at all. He could see clearly the tracks of men and oxen pointing up the mountain, but not one leading down.

He found that his brain was stupidly turning round the idea that he, Aleph the Ox, the slow-witted, had been left a message by his brothers the oxen, and that it was for him to make sense of it. Well, it was no use neglecting even the dumbest of ox-brains. He needed water, rest, and food. He followed the sound of tinkling water until he came to a small spring, plunged his burning face into a rock pool, drank until he was satisfied, and sat down in the shade of a rock to eat his bread and olives, sharing the crumbs with the pigeon.

As his stomach filled his brain cleared. After all there was no great problem. The lumber teams had come up the mountain to cut the forty trees ordered by Resh. They had nearly completed the job, and then had abandoned the clearing, and instead of going down the mountain they had gone up.

Why had they done it and where had they gone? There was no way of answering these questions yet. Aleph had heard that it was possible to cross the mountains by continuing upward from this valley, but it was a difficult pass and few had reason to use it. Beyond the crest of the range lived people who were no friends to Gebal. He had heard rumors of armies passing over the flat plains—Egyptians from the South, Assyrians from the East, Hittites from the North. But the people of Gebal were snug in their coastal city, protected by the great mountain wall. Why should they want to cross the pass?

Why indeed? Beyond lay nothing better than slavery. And yet these log-men had apparently chosen to go. Aleph suddenly stood up. He would have to find out. It was no devotion to duty that turned his footsteps up the mountain, it was not heroism. It was just burning curiosity.

If Aleph had known that he was as yet only halfway up to the top of the pass he might not have set off so lightly. The track was easy enough to follow, through the edge of the cedar grove, emerging the other side on to the slopes of a valley from where more and more high peaks could be seen. Skirting the edge of this valley, up another crest, over and down again before climbing steeply up the other side. Many times, as he paused for breath on a steep slope or stood on a crest appalled to see yet more rugged terrain appearing before him, he wondered whether he should not turn back. But as the deeper valleys began to fill with black shadows he knew that even if he did turn back he could not possibly reach the town by nightfall. He was in for a night on the mountain anyway, and he felt that he would rather pass it in the company of the loggers, whatever had happened to them, than spend it alone.

Rather than puzzle vaguely about the mystery of the disappearing log team, and to save his mind from imagining wild and improbable fates for them, he tried setting himself the sort of problem which he preferred to think about, and it was this. The only clear message that had been left for him at the clearing had been made by the hooves of the stupid oxen. The prints in the soft soil said unmistakably: “We went this way.” Now if the unthinking oxen could leave this for him to read, why could not Kaph, the overseer, an intelligent and experienced man, have left some indication of
why
they had gone? Because Kaph could not write. Of course he could not. Nobody expected him to be able to write. Writing was a mysterious skill known only to priests and scribes. They spent many years learning the meanings of the hundreds of symbols and their combinations, and once they learned them they took good care that no part of their secret was shared by the common people. The very idea that a simple overseer of a lumberman should have any knowledge of writing was absurd. Blasphemous, even. Writing was for the stories of the gods, and the affairs of great kings who represented the gods on earth, not for tradesmen's messages. So? So an ox could print in the ground a sign which anyone could read as “Gone this way.” But though a man had a burnt stick and a piece of white bark to hand, there were no signs that he could make that mean “Back tomorrow morning.”

These thoughts took Aleph's mind off the tiredness of his legs and the effort of his breathing. But they went no farther. He did not say to himself, “This is wrong,” or “Wouldn't it be better if …” Indeed, alone up there among the abode of spirits, he felt uneasy when he remembered what he had told his young sister. Was that not impious? The gods might punish him for it.

He shivered in the mountain air that grew cooler and cooler as he climbed, and as the sun dropped lower in the sky. He was now coming to a mass of tortured rocks, twisted pillars standing against the skyline. He stopped. He hoped they were rocks. They might equally be the shapes of fiends and demons turned to stone—or at least, the towers and castles of mountain spirits. Or even if no supernatural beings dwelt in this desolate place, wild mountain men might. Among these pinnacles a traveler would be defenseless against ambush.

Aleph thought of his soldier brother, Zayin. Wasn't there something he said soldiers did to guard against ambush? Send out scouts? Cover their flanks? But there was only himself. And what was it that his sailor brother Nun used to say? “When in Danger and in Doubt, always keep a Good Look Out.” But he was afraid of what he might see if he did look about him among these petrified shapes.

So he shut his eyes, and he felt himself turning to stone as he heard a rough voice shout “Halt!”

He kept his eyes shut. He was certain that he was petrified, that he had become merely another of the pillars of rock that stood for ever on the desolate mountainside. That was what they were, petrified travelers. He would never move again.

He heard strange incomprehensible voices—the language of demons—about his ears. Then he jumped. Something sharp had poked him from behind. He opened his eyes and turned round. There stood a strange soldier with a naked sword.

The soldier spoke again in the unknown language. But the gesture of his sword meant “Move!” and Aleph forgot his state of petrifaction and moved, his mouth dry with fear. As he came round the base of a great rock he came face to face with a number of men. Some of them were soldiers in foreign armor. The others he knew. Among them was Kaph, the overseer, sitting on the ground in an attitude of great dejection.

Aleph's fright turned to anger, and his speech returned: “Kaph!” he exclaimed. “What are you doing here? Why did you desert the camp? And—and what are those slaves of ours doing with those chains?” For two of the men he recognized as slaves from Kaph's work party were advancing on him, carrying chains and manacles.

Kaph spat. “Ask them yourself. They're the masters now. We're the slaves.” And he lifted his manacled wrists. And as Aleph felt the fetters being put on his own legs, he began to understand what he meant.

That night on the mountain Aleph was more miserable than he had believed possible. He had not been looking forward to sharing a shelter with the rough log men at the camp. He had dreaded a night alone among the rocks. But here he was, chained to the surly Kaph, hungry, listening to the foreign soldiers laughing and eating round a fire while their captives shivered in the cold night air, wondering what the future held. He almost wished that his fantasy had been true, it would have been better to be changed to an unfeeling pillar of rock.

He could not sleep, but though Kaph, too, was wakeful, it was difficult to get him to talk. When he did, it was little comfort. “How's it feel then,
Master
Aleph, to become a slave?” he mocked. “I reckon you must have taken a fancy to it though, following us all this way just to get caught. You and your bird and all.”

Poor bird, Aleph thought. He must let it go now. No reason why it, too, should remain a prisoner. But he would have to wait until daylight, it couldn't fly in the dark.

“How was I to know you were captives?” he said to Kaph. “I saw the hoof prints of the oxen, and I followed them. I didn't know what had happened. I still don't. Who are these soldiers? Where did they appear from?”

“Appear's the right word. That's just what they did, appeared like spirits from the forest. There we were, working, and all of a sudden we were surrounded by them,” said Kaph.

“But where had they come from?”

“Over the mountain pass, where they're taking us back now, of course.”

“What are they, though?”

“How should I know?” Kaph growled. “Foreigners. All I know is, our slaves who used to be log carriers—good workers they were though—downed tools and started hugging and kissing these soldiers like they were long-lost sisters. Then they have the nerve to come to me and say Pharaoh needs men, and the oxen and the tools and gear and all, and off they march us up the mountain.”

“Pharaoh!” Aleph exclaimed. “But these men aren't Egyptians.”

“Don't ask me! They're foreigners, and from the South, anyway, they say. What's the difference? I'm a slave and you're a slave now. We can't choose our masters.”

Aleph did not think he could sleep, but exhaustion, depression, and the thinness of the mountain air overcame him and he passed the night somehow in a state of frozen semi-consciousness. He dreamed, or at least he imagined very vividly the warm house by the seashore at Gebal, which he might never see again. But also among his dreams or imaginings were visions of fabulous Egypt. There was, perhaps, a future for him, even a life to live, in Egypt.

The prisoners were roused in the early dawn, while the sunrise was only a faint glow over the crest of the mountain range to the East. The soldiers seemed to have a little bread and water to share round and break their fast, but there was no food for the prisoners.

“One pigeon among the lot of us,” growled Kaph, looking at the bird in the cage. “Not much, but it may save us from starvation yet.” Aleph clutched the birdcage defensively, but the march moved off at once. Some of the soldiers scouted ahead, some of them guarded the prisoners and drove them on, and Aleph was too numbed and stupefied by the altitude and the cold to think of anything but the next step up the stony slope.

The sun rose above the crest as they climbed toward it. On the very top they all halted to rest and take their breath. Before and below them appeared a deep broad valley, still in the shadow of yet another range of saw-toothed mountains on the far side. Aleph turned back to look toward the sea and the coast. He was not even to be granted a last glimpse of his home.

He stood there wretchedly, holding the caged bird. If he let the bird go, he thought, it would probably find its way home through the clouds, planing down in almost a matter of minutes. Was not this the time to do it? And yet what had his sister said? His numb brain remembered slowly. “When you've got to where you're going, let him loose! He'll fly back and let me know you're there.” But he was not there yet. This windswept mountain pass was not where he was going. It was not yet time to release his messenger.

The descent down the other side was steep, but direct. Aleph had hoped it would be much easier than climbing, but he soon felt that his leg muscles would collapse every time they took the weight of his body. However, the sun at least was warming, and as they went down the air, too, lost its bite, and they came again to a belt of forest where there was soil and soft vegetation underfoot.

There was a clearing in the forest, and in it were tents and huts, and lumbermen at work, and transport wagons and soldiers. The leader of their guards paraded the prisoners in front of a tent, and out of it came the person who Aleph supposed was the officer in charge of the camp.

The officer looked over the prisoners and the oxen without great interest, until his eye fell on Aleph: then he walked over and stood in front of him, looking him up and down. Aleph's heart turned over. There was no way of telling from the haughty countenance of the officer whether it was in his favor to be singled out from the rest. Perhaps it was because he was the only one carrying a birdcage! The officer addressed him in Egyptian speech, but Aleph's tongue was slow to reply in the same language, so the officer shouted for a man wearing Egyptian civilian clothes, who came over to interpret.

“The officer says you don't look strong enough to be a woodcutter, and wants to know what is your trade,” explained the civilian, in Aleph's language.

Aleph hesitated and tried to think quickly. If he said he was a woodcutter they might let him work in the forests here, and perhaps he could escape. If he said he was a scribe they might have no use for him, and kill him. But woodcutting was hard work, perhaps he was not strong enough for it, and surely the Egyptians needed slaves with education as well. Better to tell the truth.

“I am a scribe,” he said.

“So young?” said the civilian, and raised his eyebrows.