The Egyptian (26 page)

The eunuchs perceived the wisdom of my words, and after bargaining with them for a while, I gave them half the silver they declared to be the price of a new girl. They brought me a mat in which I rolled Minea, and they helped me to carry her across the dark courtyards to the chair already occupied by Kaptah in his jar.

When we reached the river bank, I bade the porters lift the jar down into the boat, but the mat I carried myself and hid below the deck. Then I said to the porters, “Slaves and sons of dogs! This night you have heard and seen nothing, should anyone ask you. To remind you of this I give each one of you a silver piece.”

Prancing with delight they shouted, “Truly we have served an illustrious lord, but our ears are deaf, and our eyes are blind, and we have seen and heard nothing this night.”

I let them go, well knowing that they would get drunk without delay, as has been the way of porters in all ages, and that in their cups they would babble of all they had seen. As there were eight of them and they were burly men, I could not kill them and throw them into the river as I might have wished.

As soon as they were gone, I woke the boatmen. In the light of the rising moon, they unshipped their oars and pulled away from the city, yawning and cursing their fate, for their heads were dizzy with all the beer they had drunk.

Thus I took flight from Babylon, though for what reason I did all this I cannot say; doubtless it was written in the stars before the day of my birth, and was inevitable.

WE SUCCEEDED in getting clear of the city unchallenged by the watch, for there was free access to the river at night, and I crept beneath the deck to lay my weary head to rest. But still there was no peace, for Minea had unrolled herself from the mat and was washing herself clean of blood, scooping up the river water in her hands while the moonlight sparkled in the drops that fell between her fingers.

She looked at me unsmilingly and said in reproach, “By your advice I have made myself filthy, and I smell of blood and shall surely never again be clean, and it’s all your fault. What’s more, when you carried me, you squeezed me much harder than was necessary so that I could not breathe.”

Her talk annoyed me, and I was very tired, so I snapped at her, “Hold your tongue, accursed woman! When I think of all you have made me do, I feel like throwing you into the river, where you could wash to your heart’s content. Had it not been for you, I should now be sitting on the right hand of the King of Babylon, and the priests of the tower would impart to me all their wisdom, concealing nothing, and I should be the wisest physician in the world. For your sake I have forfeited the presents I might have earned by the practice of my calling. My gold is dwindling, and I dare not present the tablets that entitle me to draw money in the temple counting houses. All this is on your account, and I curse the day I saw you; every year on this day I shall wear sackcloth and ashes.”

She trailed her hand in the moonlit river, the water cleaving before it like molten silver, as she said in a low voice and with her face averted, “If this is so, let me jump into the river as you desire. Then you will be rid of me.”

She rose and would have leaped in, but I seized and held her, saying, “Have done with this folly! If you jump in, all my contriving will have been in vain. In the name of all the gods let me sleep in peace, Minea, and do not bother me with these whims, for I am very tired.”

With this I crawled under the mat and drew it closely about me, for the night was chilly although spring had come and storks were crying among the reeds. She crept in beside me, murmuring, “If I can do nothing else, I can at least keep you warm.”

I was too weary for further argument but fell asleep and slept soundly in her warmth, for she was young and her body like a little stove beside me.

When I awoke, we had come far upstream, and the boatmen were grumbling. “Our shoulders are like wood, and our backs ache. Do you seek our death? Is your house afire that we must race to quench it?”

I hardened my heart and said, “Whoever slackens will feel my stick; you will take your first rest at noon. Then you may eat and drink, and to each of you I shall give a mouthful of date wine to revive you, and you will feel as airy as birds. But if there is any murmuring, I shall invoke all the devils against you; for you must know that I am a priest and a magician.”

I said this to frighten them, but the sun was shining brightly and they did not believe me. They said only, “He is alone and we are ten!” and the nearest of them tried to smite me with his oar.

At that moment a thunderous noise came from the bow: it was Kaptah beating on the inside of the jar, cursing and yelling. The rowers turned gray in the face and one after another leaped overboard into the river and swam away out of sight. The boat swung across the stream, but I dropped the anchor stone. Minea came up from the cabin combing her hair, and at that instant all my fear left me, for she was fair, and the sun was shining, and the storks were crying among the reeds. I ran forward to the funeral urn and said loudly as I broke the clay seal, “Stand up, you man within there!”

Kaptah stuck his tousled head out of the jar, and I have never seen a more bewildered man. He moaned, “What is this foolery? Where am I? Where is my royal diadem, and where are the symbols of my majesty? I am naked and chilled—also my head is full of wasps, and my limbs are like lead as if I had been bitten by a venomous serpent. Beware how you make sport of me, Sinuhe, for it is dangerous to jest with kings!”

I wanted to punish him for his arrogance of the day before, so I looked blank and said, “I don’t know what you are saying, Kaptah; you must still be in a fog of wine. You will remember that when we left Babylon you drank too much and became so violent in the boat and talked so wildly that the boatmen had to shut you up in that jar lest you should do them some harm. You were babbling of kings and judges and much else.”

Kaptah shut his eyes and strove to recollect himself, and at last he replied, “Lord, never again will I drink wine, for wine and dreams have led me into a terrible adventure—an adventure so altogether ghastly that I cannot relate it to you. But this I can say: It seemed to me that by the grace of the scarab I was a king, dispensing justice from my throne, also that I entered the women’s house and took exceedingly great pleasure there with a beautiful girl. Many other things happened, also, but I don’t dare think of them now.”

Just then he saw Minea. Ducking hastily down into the jar again, he said in a pitiful voice, “Lord, I am not yet quite recovered-or else I am still dreaming—for there in the stern of the boat I seem to see the girl whom I met in the women’s house.”

He touched his black eye and swollen nose and mourned aloud. Minea went up to the jar, pulled out his head by the hair and said, “Look at me! Am I the woman with whom you took pleasure last night?”

Kaptah gazed at her in terror, shut his one eye, and moaned, “All ye gods of Egypt have mercy on me and pardon me for having worshiped strange gods and made sacrifice to them—but you are she! Forgive me, for it was but a dream.”

I helped him out of the jar and gave him a bitter stomach-cleansing potion, then tying a rope about his waist I dipped him in the river despite his protests, and held him floating in the water to clear his head of the poppy juice and wine. But when I had hauled him aboard again, I relented, saying, “May this be a lesson to you for your rebelliousness toward me, your master. Everything that happened to you is true and had it not been for my help you would now be lying lifeless in a jar among all the other false kings.”

I then told him all that had taken place, and I had to tell it many times before he grasped it all and believed me. Finally I told him, “Our lives are in danger, and what has passed no longer seems funny, for as surely as we sit here in this boat, we shall hang head downward from the wall if the King finds us—and he may do even worse. Good planning is now essential, and you must hit on some way for us to escape with our lives into the land of Mitanni.”

Kaptah scratched his head and mused. At length he said, “If I have understood you rightly, all that has happened is true and no wineborn delusion. This being so, I will praise this day as a good day, for I can now drink wine without misgivings for my head’s sake though I thought that never again in my life should I dare to taste it.”

He crept into the cabin, broke the seal of a wine jar, and took a deep draught, for which he praised all the gods of Egypt and of Babylon by name, and he also praised many other gods whose names he did not know. For each divinity he named he bowed forward over the wine jar till at last he sank down on the mat in slumber, snoring like a hippopotamus.

I was so enraged at his behavior that I would have rolled him into the water and drowned him, but Minea said, “Kaptah is right: to each day its own vexations. Therefore, why shouldn’t we drink wine and be happy in the place the river has brought us to? For it is a beautiful place, and we are hidden by the reeds. Storks are crying among them, and I see others flying with outstretched necks to build their nests; the waters gleam green and gold in the sunlight, and my heart is as arrowy as a bird now that I am freed from slavery.”

I considered her words and they were wise.

“Since both of you are mad, why shouldn’t I also be mad? Truly it is all one to me whether my hide hangs drying on the wall tomorrow or ten years from now, for all this was written in the stars before our birth, as the priests of the tower have taught me. The sun shines in glory, and in the fields along the river bank the corn is showing green. Therefore, I shall bathe in the river and try to catch fish in my hands as I did when a child, for this day is as good as any other.”

And so we bathed in the river and dried our clothes in the sun, and we ate and drank wine. Minea made sacrifice to her god and danced his dance for me in the boat so that my breast tightened as I watched her, and I breathed with difficulty.

I finally said to her, “Only once in my life have I called a woman ‘my sister,’ but her embrace was a fire and her body a parching desert that brought me no refreshment. Therefore, I beseech you, Minea, set me free from the spell in which your limbs have bound me. Do not look at me with eyes that are like moonlight on the river, or else I shall call you ‘my sister,’ and you will lead me into destruction and death as the other woman did.”

Minea looked at me curiously.

“You must have known strange women, Sinuhe—but perhaps those of your country are different. Don’t be uneasy on my account. It is far from my purpose to seduce you as you seem to fear. My god has forbidden me to approach a man, on pain of death.”

She took my head between her hands and laid it against her knees, and stroking my cheeks and hair, she said, “This is a stupid head to make you speak so ill of women, for though there be women who poison all wells, certainly there are others who are like a fountain in the desert—like dew on a parched meadow. But, though you have a thick and uncomprehending head and your hair is black and stiff, I like to hold it in my hands. There is that about you—in your eyes and your hands—that I find lovely and alluring. Therefore, I am sad that I cannot give you what you wish—sad not only for your sake but for mine if such an immodest confession can please you.”

The water rippled against the boat, green and gold, and I held her strong, beautiful hands in mine. I held them like a drowning man and looked into her eyes that were like moonlight on the river and yet as warm as a caress.

“Minea, my sister!” I said. “I am weary of all the gods whom men have raised up for themselves—for fear, as I believe. Renounce your god, therefore, for his demand is cruel and useless—and today more cruel than ever. I will bring you to a country beyond the reach of his power though we have to journey to the edge of the world and eat grass and dried fish among savage tribes and sleep on reeds till our life’s end. For somewhere there must be a bound set to the power of your god.”

She held tightly to my hands and turned away her head.

“My god has set his boundary within my heart so that wherever I go I am within his reach—and if I give myself to any man I must die. Today as I behold you, my god seems to me cruel and foolish to demand this, but I can do nothing against him. Tomorrow all may be different—you will tire of me and forget me, for that is the way of men.”

“No man knows what tomorrow will bring,” I said impatiently, for all my being blazed toward her like a bundle of reeds that has been scorched year in, year out by the sun until kindled by a spark. “Your talk is but empty evasion to torment me—as all women love to do—and you enjoy my torment.”

She withdrew her hands with a reproachful look.

“I am no ignorant woman, for besides my own language I speak that of Babylon and yours also and can write my name in three sorts of letters both on clay and paper. Moreover, I have been in many great cities, and I have danced before many different people, who have marveled at my art, until I was stolen away by merchants when our ship foundered. Ever since childhood I have grown up in the stables of the god and have been initiated into his secret ritual so that no power or witchcraft can separate me from him. If you also had danced before bulls and in the dance swung yourself between sharp horns and tickled a bellowing muzzle in play with your foot, you would understand. But I believe you have never seen youths and girls dancing before bulls.”

“I have never even heard of it. But if I am to spare your virginity for the benefit of bulls, then it is a matter beyond all understanding, though I have heard that in Syria the priests who perform the secret ritual of the earth mother sacrifice maidens to he-goats, and these maidens are chosen from among the people.”

She smote me hard on both cheeks, and her eyes burned as the eyes of a wildcat burn in the dark as she cried in a fury, “I find there is no difference between a man and a he-goat, for your thoughts turn on bodily things only so that a goat would answer your lusts as well as a woman. Sink then beneath the ground and leave me in peace; plague me no more with your lovesickness, for you know as much about it as a pig knows of silver.”