The Egyptian (2 page)

Being but the wife of a poor physician, she stilled her yearnings with stories. Before we fell asleep at night she would tell me in a low voice all the tales she knew. She told of Sinuhe and of the shipwrecked man who returned from the Serpent King with countless riches, of gods and evil spirits, of sorcerers, and of the Pharaohs of old. My father often murmured at this and said she was filling my head with nonsense, but when it was evening and he had begun to snore, she would continue, as much for her own pleasure as for mine. I remember those stifling summer nights when the pallet scorched my bare body and sleep would not come; I hear her hushed, soothing voice; I am safe with her once more… . My own mother could hardly have been kinder or more tender than simple, superstitious Kipa, at whose hands blind and crippled storytellers were sure of a good meal.

The stories pleased me, but as a counterweight there was the lively street, that haunt of flies, the street that was filled with a thousand scents and smells. From the harbor the wind would bring the fresh tang of cedarwood and myrrh, or a breath of perfumed oil when a noble lady passing in her chair leaned out to curse the street boys. In the evenings, when Ammon’s golden boat swung down to the western hills, there arose from all the nearby huts and verandas the smell of fried fish mingled with the aroma of newly baked bread. This smell of the poor quarter in Thebes I learned to love as a child, and I have never forgotten it.

It was during meals on the veranda that I received the first teachings from my father. He would enter the garden wearily from the street or come from his surgery with the sharp odor of ointments and drugs clinging to his clothes. My mother poured water over his hands, and we sat on stools to eat while she served us. Sometimes while we were sitting there, a gang of sailors would reel along the street, yelling drunkenly, beating with sticks upon the walls of the houses, or stopping to relieve themselves by our acacias. My father, being a discreet man, said nothing until they had gone by; then he would tell me, “Only a Negro or a dirty Syrian does that in the street. An Egyptian goes between walls.”

Or he would say, “Wine enjoyed in moderation is the gods’ gift to us, and rejoices our hearts. One beaker hurts no one. Two loosen the tongue, but the man who drinks a jar of it wakes to find himself in the gutter, robbed and beaten.”

Sometimes a breath of perfumed ointments would reach the veranda when a lovely woman went by on foot, robed transparently, with cheeks, lips, and eyebrows beautifully painted and in her liquid eyes a glint never seen in those of the virtuous. When I gazed spellbound upon such a one, my father would say gravely, “Beware of a woman who calls you ‘pretty boy’ and entices you, for her heart is a net and a snare, and her body burns worse than fire.”

It was no wonder that after such teachings my childish soul began to fear the wine jar and beautiful women who were not like ordinary women, though both became endowed with the perilous charm of feared and forbidden things.

While I was yet a child, my father let me attend his consultations; he showed me his scalpels, forceps, and jars of medicine and explained their uses to me. When he examined his patients, I had to stand beside him and hand him bowls of water, dressings, oil and wine. My mother could not endure to see wounds and sores and never understood my interest in disease. A child does not appreciate suffering until he has experienced it. To me, the lancing of a boil was a thrilling operation, and I would proudly tell the other boys all I had seen to win their respect. Whenever a new patient arrived, I would follow my father’s examination and questions with close attention until at last he said, “This disease can be cured,” or “I will undertake your treatment.” There were also those whom he did not feel competent to treat. Then he would write a few lines on a strip of papyrus and send them to the House of Life, in the temple. When such a patient had left him, he would usually sigh, shake his head, and say, “Poor creature!”

Not all my father’s patients were needy. Patrons of nearby pleasure houses were sent to him now and again to be bandaged after some brawl, and their clothes were of finest linen. Masters of Syrian ships came sometimes when they had boils or toothache. I was not surprised, therefore, when the wife of a spice dealer came for examination one day wearing jewelry and a collar sparkling with precious stones. She sighed and moaned and lamented over her many afflictions while my father listened attentively. I was greatly disappointed when at last he took up a strip of paper to write upon, for I had hoped he would be able to cure her and so acquire many fine presents. I sighed, shook my head, and whispered to myself, “Poor creature!”

The sick woman gave a frightened start and looked uneasily at my father. He wrote a line in ancient characters copied from a worn papyrus scroll, then poured oil and wine into a mixing bowl and soaked the paper in it until the ink had been dissolved by the wine. Then he poured the liquid into an earthenware jar and gave it to the spice dealer’s wife as a medicine, telling her to take some of it whenever head or stomach began to pain her. When the woman had gone, I looked at my father, who seemed embarrassed. He coughed once or twice and said, “Many diseases can be cured with ink that has been used for a powerful invocation.”

He said no more aloud, but muttered to himself after a time, “At least it can do the patient no harm.”

When I was seven years old, I was given a boy’s loincloth and my mother took me to the temple to attend a sacrifice. Ammon’s temple in Thebes was at that time the mightiest in all Egypt. An avenue bordered with ram’s-headed sphinxes carved in stone led to it, right through the city from the temple and pool of the moon goddess. The temple area was surrounded by massive brick walls and with its many buildings formed a city within the city. From the tops of the towering pylons floated colored pennants, and gigantic statues of kings guarded the copper gates on each side of the enclosure.

We went through the gates, and the sellers of Books of the Dead pulled at my mother’s clothes and made their offers shrilly or in a whisper. Mother took me to look at the carpenters’ shops with their display of wooden images of slaves and servants, which, after consecration by the priests, would serve their owners in the next world so that these need never lift a finger to help themselves.

My mother paid the fee demanded of spectators, and I saw white-robed, deft-handed priests slay and quarter a bull between whose horns a braid of papyrus bore a seal, testifying that the beast was without blemish or a single black hair. The priests were fat and holy, and their shaven heads gleamed with oil. There were a hundred or so people who had come to attend the sacrifice, but the priests paid little heed to them and chatted freely to one another of their own affairs throughout the ceremony. I gazed at the warlike pictures on the temple walls and marveled at the gigantic columns, failing altogether to understand my mother’s emotion when with tear-filled eyes she led me home. There she took off my baby shoes and gave me new sandals that were uncomfortable and chafed my feet until I grew used to them.

After the meal my father, with a grave look upon his face, laid his big, clever hand on my head and stroked with shy tenderness the soft locks at my temple.

“Now you are seven years old, Sinuhe, and must decide what you want to be.”

“A warrior!” I said at once, and was puzzled by the disappointed look on his good face. For the best games the street boys played were war games, and I had watched soldiers wrestle and perfect themselves in the use of arms in front of the barracks and had seen plumed war chariots race forth on thundering wheels to maneuvers outside the city. There could be nothing nobler or grander than a warrior’s career. Moreover, a soldier need not be able to write, and this was what weighed most with me, for older boys told terrible tales of how diflicult the art of writing was and of how mercilessly the teachers pulled the pupils’ hair if they chanced to smash a clay tablet or break a reed pen between their unskilled fingers.

It is likely that my father was never a notably gifted man, or he would surely have become something more than a poor man’s doctor. But he was conscientious in his work and never harmed his patients and in the course of years had become wise through experience. He knew already how touchy and self-willed I was and made no comment on my resolve.

Presently, however, he asked my mother for a bowl, and going to his workroom, he filled the vessel with cheap wine from a jar.

“Come, Sinuhe,” he said, and he led me out of the house and down to the river bank. By the quay we stopped to look at a barge from which stunted porters were unloading wares sewn up in matting. The sun was setting among the western hills beyond the City of the Dead, but these serfs toiled on, panting and dripping with sweat. The overseer stung them with his whip while the clerk sat placidly beneath his awning, checking off each bale on his list.

“Would you like to be one of those?” asked my father.

I thought this a stupid question and gaped at him without answering. No one wanted to be like the porters.

“They labor from early morning till late at night,” said Senmut. “Their skins have coarsened like a crocodile’s; their fists are gross as crocodile’s feet. Only when darkness falls can they crawl to their miserable huts, and their food is a scrap of bread, an onion, and a mouthful of thin, bitter beer. That is the porter’s life, the ploughman’s life, the life of all who labor with their hands. Do you think they are to be envied?”

I shook my head, still looking at him in wonder. It was a soldier I desired to be, not a porter, a scratcher of the soil, a waterer of the fields, or a dung-caked shepherd.

“Father,” I said as we went on, “soldiers have a fine time. They live in barracks and eat good food; in the evening they drink wine in the pleasure houses, and women smile at them. The leaders among them wear golden chains about their necks although they cannot write. When they return from battle, they bring with them booty and slaves who toil and follow trades to serve them. Why shouldn’t I strive to become a warrior, too?”

My father made no answer but hastened his step. Near the big rubbish dump where flies buzzed in a cloud about us he bent down and peered into a low mud hovel.

“Inteb, my friend, are you there?”

Out crawled a verminous old man leaning on a stick. His right arm had been lopped off below the shoulder, and his loincloth was stiff with dirt. His face was dried and wizened with age, and he had no teeth.

“Is—is
that
Inteb?” I gasped, looking at the old man in horror. Inteb was a hero who had fought in the Syrian campaigns under Thothmes III, the greatest of the Pharaohs, and stories were still told of his prowess and of the rewards that Pharaoh had given him.

The old man raised his hand in a soldier’s salute, and my father handed him the bowl of wine. Then they sat down on the ground for there was not even a bench outside the hut, and Inteb raised the wine to his lips with a trembling hand, careful not to waste a drop.

“My son Sinuhe means to be a warrior,” my father smiled. “I brought him to you, Inteb, because you are the last survivor of the heroes of the great wars and can tell him of the proud life and splendid feats of soldiers.”

“In the name of Set and Baal and all other devils!” cackled the other, turning his nearsighted gaze upon me. “Is the boy mad?”

His toothless mouth, dim eyes, dangling arm stump, and wrinkled, grimy breast were so terrifying that I crept behind my father and gripped his arm.

“Boy, boy,” tittered Inteb, “if I had a mouthful of wine for every curse I have uttered upon my life and upon fate—miserable fate that made a soldier of me—I could fill the lake that Pharaoh has had made for his old woman. True, I have never seen it because I cannot afford to be ferried across the river, but I doubt not I could fill it—ay, and that there would be enough over to fuddle an army.”

He drank again, sparingly.

“But,” said I, my chin quivering, “the soldier’s profession is the most honorable of all.”

“Honor! Renown!” said Inteb, hero of the armies of Thothmes. “Droppings—ordure where flies are bred—no more! Many a lie have I told in my time to get wine out of the goggling blockheads who listened to me, but your father is an upright man whom I will not deceive. Therefore, son, I tell you that of all professions the warrior’s is the most wretched and most degraded.”

The wine was smoothing out the wrinkles in his face and kindling a glow in his wild old eyes. He rose and gripped his neck with his one hand.

“Look, boy! This scraggy neck was once hung with golden chains—five loops of them. Pharaoh himself hung them there. Who can reckon the lopped-off hands I have heaped before his tent? Who was the first to scale the walls of Kadesh? Who burst through the enemy ranks like a trumpeting elephant? It was I—I, Inteb the hero! And who thanks me for it now? My gold went the way of all earthly things, and the slaves I took in battle ran away or perished miserably. My right hand I left behind in the land of Mitanni, and I should long ago have been begging at street corners were it not for the charitable people who give me dried fish and beer now and then for telling their children the truth about war. I am Inteb, the great hero—look at me! I left my youth in the desert, robbed of it by starvation, privation, and hardship. There the flesh melted from my limbs, my skin toughened, and my heart hardened to stone. Worst of all, the parched desert dried my tongue, and I became the prey of unquenchable thirst, like every other soldier who returns alive from foreign wars. And life has been like the valley of death since I lost my arm. I need not so much as mention the pain of the wound and the agony when the army surgeons scalded the stump in boiling oil after the amputation—that is something your father can appreciate. Blessed be your name, Senmut! You are a just man, a good man—but the wine is finished.”

The old fellow fell silent, panted a little, and sitting down again upon the ground, he turned the earthenware bowl sadly upside down. His eyes were glowing embers, and he was once more an old, unhappy man.