Interfictions (19 page)

uncovering his backside: Bad. It means the dreamer will become an orphan."

—Excerpts from Egyptian Dream Book, found on
recto
, or back side, of a papyrus from the 19th Dynasty.

In the last month of his life, when his runaway liver has all but eaten his body, Lord Joseph orders his slave to set his flimsy frame upright, like the sacred pillar of the God Osiris in the annual festival of rebirth. Joseph has other things on his mind, however, than his journey to the next world. He has his servant dress him as a Phoenician trader, and then two bearers carry him alone to the dream house behind the temple of Thoth, God of magic, science, writing, celestial navigation, swindlers, gamblers, and dreams. Joseph braces himself against the red column on the outside of the building, then enters with as firm a step as he can. The two interpreters who come to him strike him as hacks, their beards unkempt, their hair dirty, their makeup cracked and sloppy, and their long coats—

It hardly matters that the coats are torn in places, bare in others. Just the sight of those swirls of color floods Joseph's heart with memory. He sees his childhood dream as if he has just woken up from it. The court magicians in their magnificent coats lined up before Pharaoh. The Burning Beard and his brother shouting their demands. The sticks that changed into snakes. And he remembers the coat his mother made for him, the start of all his troubles. And the way he screamed when Judah and Gad tore it off him and drenched it in the blood of some poor ibex they'd caught in one of their traps.

Startled, Joseph realizes the interpreters are speaking to him. “Sir,” they say, “how may we serve you?"

"As you see,” Joseph says, “I am an old man, on the edge of death. Lately my dreams have troubled me. And where better to seek answers than in Luxor, so renowned for dreamers?” The two smile. Joseph says, “Of course, I would have preferred the interpretations of your famous Joseph—” He watches them wince. “—but I am only a merchant, and I am sure Lord Joseph speaks only to princes."

The younger of the two, a man about thirty with slicked down hair says, “Well, he's sick, you know. And there are those who say the Pharaoh's publicity people exaggerate his powers.” He adds, with a wave of his hand, “One lucky guess, years ago—.—.—."

"Tell me,” Joseph says, his voice lower, “is he really a Hebrew? I've heard that, but I find it hard to believe."

In a voice even lower, the young one says “Not only a Hebrew, but a slave. It's true. They plucked him out of prison."

Joseph feigns shock and a slight disgust. “Egypt is certainly more sophisticated than Phoenicia,” he says. “In Tyre our slaves sweat for us, not the other way around."

The other stares at the stone cut floor. “Yes,” he says. “Well, the Viceroy is old, and things change."

Quickly, the older one says “Why don't you tell us your dreams?"

"Lately, they've been very—I guess vivid is the best word. Just last night I dreamed I was sailing all alone down a river."

"Ah, good,” the older one says. “A sign of wealth to come."

"It had better come soon, or I won't have much use for it. But to continue—I climbed the mast—"

"Wonderful. Your God will bear you aloft with renewed health and good fortune."

Joseph notices their eyes on the purse he carries on his belt. He goes on, “When I came down I became very hungry and ate the first thing I saw, which only afterwards I realized was the offal of animals. I haven't dared to tell anyone of this. Surely this is some omen of destruction."

"Oh no,” the younger one jumps in. “In fact, it ensures prosperity."

"Really?” Joseph says. “Then what a lucky dream. Every turn a good omen.” He smiles, remembering the fun he had making up the silly dream out of their lists. But the smile fades. He says, “Maybe you can do another one. Actually, this dream has come to me several times in my life.” They nod. Joseph knows that the dream books place great emphasis on recurrence. After all, he thinks, if a dream is important enough to come back, maybe the interpreters can charge double.

He closes his eyes for a moment, sighs. When he looks at them again he sees them through a yellow haze of sickness. He begins, “I dream of a man. Very large and frightening. Strangely, his beard appears all on fire."

He can see them race through their catalogues in their minds. Finally the old one says “Umm, good. It means you will achieve authority in your home."

Joseph says, “But the man is not me."

The young one says, “That doesn't matter."

"I see. Then I'll continue. This man, who dresses as a shepherd but was once a prince, appears before Pharaoh. He demands that Pharaoh surrender to him a vast horde of Pharaoh's subjects.” He pauses, but now there is no answer. They look confused. Joseph continues “When the mob follow the man he promises them paradise, but instead leads them into the desert."

"A bad sign?” the old one says tentatively.

Joseph says, “They clamor for food, of course, but instead he leaves them to climb a mountain. And there, in the clouds, he writes a book. He writes it on stone and sheepskin. The history of the world, he calls it. The history and all its laws."

Now there is silence. “Can you help me?” Joseph says. “Should I fear or hope?” The two just stand there. Finally, so tired he can hardly move, Joseph drops the purse on a painted stone table and leaves the temple.

Ten-year-old Joseph wants to open a school for diviners. “Prophecy, dreams interpreted, plan for the future,” his announcements will say. And under a portrait of him, “Lord Joseph, Reader and Advisor.” Reuben, his oldest brother, shakes his head in disgust. Small flecks of mud fly out of his beard and into Poppa Jacob's lentils. Reuben says, “What does that mean, reader and advisor? Since when do you know how to read?"

Joseph blushes. “I'm going to learn,” he says. Over Reuben's laugh he adds quickly, “Anyway, when I see the future, that's a kind of reading. The dreams and the pictures I see in the wine. That's just like reading."

Reuben snorts his disgust. To their father he says, “If you'd make him do some decent work he wouldn't act this way."

Rachel is about to say something but Joseph looks at her with his please-mother-I-can-handle-this-myself look. He says, “Divining is work. Didn't that Phoenician woman give me a basket of pomegranates for finding her cat?"

Under his breath, Reuben mutters, “
Rotten
pomegranates. And why would anyone want a cat, for Yah's sake?"

But Joseph ignores him. He can see he's got the old man's attention. “And we can sell things,” he adds. “Open a shop."

"A shop?” Jacob says. His nostrils flare slightly in alarm.

"Sure,” Joseph says, not noticing his mother's signal to stop. “When people study with me they'll need equipment. Colored coats, cups to pour the wine, even books. I can write instruction books. ‘The Interpretation of Dreams.' That's when I learn to read, of course."

Jacob spits on the rug, an act that makes Rachel turn her face. “We are not merchants,” he says. “Dammit, maybe your brothers are right.” He ignores his wife's stagy whisper “Half brothers,” and goes on, “Maybe you need to get your fingers in some sheep, slap some mud on that pretty face of yours."

Before Joseph can make it worse Rachel covers his mouth and pulls him outside.

Over the laughter of the brothers, Judah yells, “Goodbye,
Lord
Joseph. See you in the sheep dung!"

Rachel makes sure Joseph wraps his coat around him against the desert's bite. Even under the thin light of the stars, the waves of color flicker as if alive. What wonderful dreams this boy has, she thinks. She remembers the morning he demanded the coat. Needed it for his work, he said. Leah's brats tried to stop it being made, of course, but Rachel won. Just like always. She says, “Those loudmouths. How dare they laugh at you? You
are
a lord. A true prince compared to them."

But Joseph pays her no attention. Instead, he stares at the planets, Venus and Jupiter, as bright as fire, hanging from the skin of a half-dead Moon. Images fall from them, as if from holes in the storage house of night.

He sees a lion, a great beast, except it changes, becomes a cub, its fur a wave of light. Seraphs come down, those fake men with the leathery wings that Joseph's father saw in his dream climbing up and down that ladder to heaven and never thought to shout at them, “Why don't you just fly?” The seraphs place a crown like a baby sun on the lion's head. And then they just fly away, as if they have done their job.
No
, Joseph wants to scream at them,
don't leave me
. For already he can see them. The wild dogs. They climb up from holes in the Earth, they cover the lion, tear holes in his skin, spit into his eyes.

Joseph slams his own eyes with the heels of his hands. The trick works, for suddenly he becomes aware of his mother beside him, her worry a bright mark on her face as she wipes a drop of spit from his open mouth. Vaguely, he pushes her hand away. Now the tail comes, he thinks. The bit of clean information after the torrent of pictures. Just as his brothers begin to leave their father's grand tent, it hits Joseph, so hard he staggers backward. They want to kill him. If they could, they would tie him to a rock and slit him open, the way his great-grandfather Abraham tried to kill Grandpa Isaac, and even struggled against the—seraph?—that held his hand and shouted in his ear to stop, stop, it was over, Yah had changed His mind. And yet, in all the terror, Joseph can't help but smirk, for he realizes something further. Reuben,
Reuben
, will stop them.

"What are you laughing at?” Reuben says as he marches past, and it's all Joseph can do not to really laugh, for it almost doesn't matter, scary as it is. He knows something about them that they don't even know themselves. And doesn't that make him their lord?

Mostly Joseph divines from dreams, but sometimes the cup shows him what he needs to know. His mother gave him the cup when he was five. She'd ordered it made two years before, when their travels took them past the old woman who kept the kiln outside Luz. Rachel had had her own dream of how it should look, with rainbow swirls in the glaze, and four knobs of different colors. It took a long time but she made Jacob wait, despite the older boys' complaints, until the potter finished it. And then Rachel put it aside until the ceremony by the fire, when Joseph's first haircut would turn him from a wild animal (one who secretly still sucked at his mother) into a human. Rachel couldn't attend—yet another boys-only event—but they came and told her what happened—how he whooped it up, jumping and waving his arms like a cross between a monkey and a bat, how his hair made the fire flare so that Jacob had to yank the child back to keep him from getting scorched. And then how Joseph quieted when his father gave him the cup, how he purred over it like a girl, how his father poured the wine. But instead of drinking Joseph just stared at it, stared and made a noise like a nightmare, and might have flung it away if Jacob hadn't grabbed hold of him (a salvation Jacob later regretted) and forced him to drink the wine so they could end the ceremony.

It took Rachel a long time to get Joseph to tell her what he'd seen. Darkness, he said finally. Darkness over all the world, thicker than smoke. And a hand in the dark sky, a finger outstretched, reaching, reaching, stroking invisible foreheads. He heard cries, he said, shrieks and wails in the blackness. Then light came—and everywhere, in every home, from palace to shack, women held their dead children against their bodies. “I'm not going to die, am I?” Joseph asked her.

"No, no, darling, it's not for you, it's for someone else. The bad people. Don't worry, sweetie, it's not for you.” Joseph cried and cried while his mother held him and kissed the torn remnants of his hair.

As much as they make fun of him, as much as they complain to Jacob about his airs and his lack of work, the brothers will sometimes sneak into his tent, after they think everyone has fallen asleep. “Can you find my staff?” they'll say, or “Who's this Ugarit girl Pop's got lined up for me? Is she good-looking? Can she keep her mouth shut?” The wives come even more often, scurrying along the path as if anyone who saw them would mistake them for rabbits. “Tell me it's going to be a boy,” they say, “Please, he'll kill me if it's another girl,” as if the diviner can control something like that, as if events are at the mercy of the diviner, and not the other way around.

At first, Joseph soaks in their secret devotions. When Zebulon ridicules him, Joseph looks him in the eye, as if to say, “Put on a good show, big brother, because you know and I know what you think about after dark, under your sheepskin.” Or maybe he'll just finger the colored stone Zeb gave him as a bribe not to say anything. But after a while he wishes they'd leave him alone. He even pretends to sleep, but they just grab him by the shoulder. Worst of all are the ones who offer themselves to him, not just the wives, but sometimes the brothers too, pretending it's something Joseph is longing for. Do they do it just to reward him, or because they really desire him, or because they think of it as some kind of magic that will change a bad prediction? Joseph tries to find the answer in his cup, or a dream, but the wine and the night remain as blank as his brothers' faces. He can see the fate of entire tribes but not the motives of his own brothers. Maybe there are no motives. Maybe people do things for no reason at all.

And Joseph himself? Why does he do it? Just to know things other people don't? To make himself better than his brothers? Because he can? Because he can't stop himself? As a child he loves the excitement, that lick of fire that sometimes becomes a whip. Later, especially the last days in Egypt, he wishes it would end. His body can't take the shock, his mind can't take the knowledge. He prays, he sacrifices goats stolen from the palace herd and smuggled into the desert. No use. The visions keep coming, wanted or not.

Only near the very end of his life does he get an answer. The half burnt goat sends up a shimmer of light that Joseph stares at, hypnotized, so that he doesn't hear the desert roar, or see the swirl of sand that marks a storm until it literally slaps him in the face. He cowers down and covers himself as best he can, and wonders if he will die here so that no one will ever find his body. Maybe his family will think Yah just sucked him up into heaven, too impatient to wait for Joseph to die. In the midst of it all, he hears it. The Voice. An actual voice! High pitched, somewhere between a man and a woman, it shouts at him out of the whirlwind. “Do you think I do this for
you?
I opened secrets for you because I
needed
you. I will close them when I close them!"