Moses (45 page)

“Throw yourself into the Nile,” Moses answered, laughing for the first time in days. “We want fruit and water more than javelins, and I shall need at least three fresh kilts. This will be very ceremonial, for now the God-King has convinced himself that he will live for ever as a mountain of stone, even if someone has the good luck to ransack his tomb.”

They set out in the cool of morning, and youth awakened as they took turns with the reins, raced the chariot and put it to the swirling motion of battle exercise. At a well where they stopped to drink, they were the admiration of wide-eyed peasant girls, and Nun was ready to begin the love-making when Moses ordered him away. So they journeyed, the carefree and handsome prince of the Great House with his Bedouin slave and chariot-driver….

They were late on the scene, for already the first two courses of the colossus had been set in place, and now in the desert there was a great mound, its flat, truncated top marking the point to which the monument had risen. A veritable city had come into being, overnight, as it were, shelters for the thousands of slaves, kitchens, water tanks, pavilions for visiting dignitaries who had been invited by Ramses to watch this last phase of a miracle of construction—and even one splendid and bedecked stand of cedar and painted linen, should the God-King himself decide to come here at some moment as the colossus neared completion.

While Nun saw to the horses and chariot, Moses wandered through the project. Never before had he seen so many slaves at work on a single job—and he realized why Neph had explained that this part must be done quickly; for food and water alone became a monumental problem under conditions of such heat and dehydration. Long lines of slaves were carrying baskets of sand, building up and tapering off the man-made mountain that would rise as the colossus rose, extending one side of it as a ramp, and even as they worked on the ramp side, hundreds of other slaves were grappling with the mighty block of granite that would constitute the next course. It was bound with rope, and on every rope scores of men strained and pulled, the whips of the overseers urging them on. Still other slaves, shoulder to shoulder, were putting their weight against the back of the huge stone—and more slaves guided the rollers on which it crept forward, inch by inch, foot by foot. As it moved up the ramp, a course of granite slabs was laid in front of it, that the rollers might have a firm base to turn on, the base stones themselves weighing not less than two thousand pounds; but the hundreds of slaves on the ramp who drew on the ropes had no footing other than the sand, in which they struggled ankle-deep, even while more slaves emptied baskets of sand around their feet, that the ramp might maintain its shape and surface. And always, without pause or respite, the whips of the overseers laced their skin and pricked them on.”

So vast, so confusing, so filled with sound and shout and explosion of the breath of toil beyond endurance was the scene—so full of the moan of strength tried too far, of strength broken, of anger, submission, of effort and punishment entwined—that Moses saw no people at first, no men, no individuals, but only a squirming, whimpering entity made up of thousands of parts, all radiating from a monstrous, senseless block of granite that had to be dragged up a hill and placed on top of it. The slaves were joined into a single work-beast. In sweat, heat and under broiling sun, Moses had the impression of an unholy spider with Ramses' stone midriff as its body and gut, walking in slow steps of pain on the broken legs of mankind.

Only then he was able to look at individual slaves. The pot of the Delta had been emptied for this. It was no wonder that Ramses scoured the world for slaves and more slaves, taking nations, burning cities, sending his slavebuyers to every corner of the earth; for these slaves were short-term animals, filled with death and ready to burst with it, dropping in their tracks and dying as Moses watched, kicked aside, tolled aside, rolling over and over down the man-made mountain of sand, and then covered over with sand by other slaves who made the mountain, men whose humanness had been wrenched out of them, whose souls had been seared beyond feeling, whose hearts were hardened before they cracked, and who had come to the point where they cared nothing about death, since life was so much worse.

The world was there enslaved. Moses saw black men from Kush, yellow-haired Libyans, Hittites, Babylonians, Bedouins, Egyptians sold for debt or for any one of a thousand violations of the tranquillity and dignity of the gods—as defined in the priestly codes that were the new curse of the House of Seti—and many others whose origin was as unrecognizable as their age, for dirt and beard gave these wretches a sameness that defied nation and chronology.

And Moses asked himself, “How is it that I have lived among slaves from my beginning, and now I see them for the first time? What has happened to me?”

He found Neph, who had no time for more than a greeting, but questions pounded in Moses' brain, “Is he blind? He is Neph, my father, Neph, my brother. Is he blind?” “Are you ill?” Neph asked, looking into his face; and Moses shook his head, for this was a sickness that no one could talk about, and no physician could cure.

He wandered on, and Nun saw him. Nun was not blind; Nun was a slave, and he whispered, “Master, if I was one of those who toil with that stone, I would cut my throat and die.”

“We are those,” Moses said. “We are Bedouin people from the desert—we are they. There is no difference.”

They walked on. Nun said it would be better if they got away from this place, but Moses shook his head. “How do slaves go away?” he asked himself.

Nun touched his arm. They were at the edge of the sand mound, and directly before them, a score of paces away and up the side of the mound, slaves toiled on one of the long ropes that led back to the granite block. “There are the Levites,” Nun said softly.

“How do you know?”

“I know.”

“They look no different.”

“To me they do,” Nun said chokingly. “I know them.”

Moses walked forward, his feet sinking into the loose sand of the mound, and as he moved, one of the men on the rope went down on his knees, and his comrades said thickly and hoarsely, in their own tongue,

“Up! Up!”

He struggled to rise, but his strength was gone; on his knees, he hung on to the rope, his dirt-encrusted, bearded head lolling from side to side; and that way the overseer saw him and came striding with his whip. The bullwhip, broke his hold on the rope, and the overseer kicked his recumbent form so that he rolled once or twice down the slope, coming to rest at the feet of Moses. Moses looked down at the motionless man, so small at his feet, so astonishingly small, knees and ankles knoblike on the fleshless limbs; and then Moses took two long strides, tore the whip out of the startled overseer's hands and flung it away. The overseer started to say, “O Prince of Egypt—” and Moses cut short his words with a blow from his clenched fist to the man's face, a blow that would have felled an ox, a blow that snapped back the man's head with a sharp, cracking sound—so that when his legs crumpled and he fell facedown in the sand, Moses and all others within sight knew he was dead.

Numb suddenly, Moses stood like a figure of stone. Nun turned the man over, the head dangling awkwardly. “He is dead,” Nun said, not without fear in his voice, thinking that he had seen many blows, but not one so savage and awful as this. To Moses came the thought that he had killed a man for the first time. Had Kush never been, he asked himself? Had he not fought and killed in that battle? Then why did his soul scream at him, “I have killed! With my bare hands, I slew! I murdered!”

Motion and sound stopped. The slaves stood holding the rope, pulling it no longer, their hollow red-rimmed eyes fixed on Moses. The overseers came running, crying out, “Who killed this man?” But when the slaves pointed to the Prince of Egypt, they too stopped and remained silent. Soldiers came, and then this one and that one, until Moses and Nun stood over two dead men and inside a circle of the living—and then Neph came, pushing through the crowd.

He saw—what there was to see, and then asked Moses, pointing to the overseer, “Did you kill this man, O Prince of Egypt?”

Moses nodded.

“How? You have no weapons.”

“I struck him with my clenched fist,” Moses answered slowly. “He was merciless to this slave, whom he beat to death. Therefore, I was merciless to him.”

Close to him Neph came, and Neph whispered, “You did wrong.”

“I know.”

“Go back to Tanis,” Neph said hoarsely, angrily struggling for each word.

“Forgive me, Neph.”

“Go back to Tanis.”

Moses bowed his head, and with Nun following, he walked through the circle of men and away. He was a prince of Egypt. They drew back before him and they said no word, for he was a prince of Egypt. He understood now, and he understood why Neph would never look upon him with joy or pride or love again. Not as a Levite had he struck this man and exacted the toll of one life for another, not in the anger that comes of suffering and humility; but as a prince of Egypt, he had turned executioner in his wrath and murdered a man.

[21]

HE SAT WITH Nun in Neph's house, waiting. He sat with his thoughts, his dreams and his ghosts. He sat and said to himself, “I am Moses of the half-name, enemy of the gods, despised of the gods, and cursed by the gods. I am Moses of the half-name, who destroys what he touches. I am the wanderer who has no home nor homeland. I am the man of no country and no god.”

“Master, what are we waiting for?” Nun asked him.

“Go away, Nun,” he said. “Run from me. Death is on whatever I touch.”

“Now is that any way to speak? Your heart is the heart of a Levite, master, but your head is filled with this Egyptian nonsense about death. It is not enough for Egypt that death comes when it comes; they must fill their houses with it from the day they are born. It seems to me that instead of these wild thoughts that come when one has nothing to do, we should harness the horses and look at the pyramids at Giza, or something of the sort, and stay away until this business of the overseer blows away. The overseers are a stink in the nostrils of any honest man, and I don't see what difference one more or less makes. You sit there and brood as if you had slain the High priest of Isis.”

“I have slain a man.”

“Not a man, a swine. We slew better men in Kush.”

“It was not like this. In Kush, the blood washed off, but now the stains remain.” He stared at his hands, and Nun shook his head bewilderedly….

And then the time of waiting was finished, and Seti-Moses, the steward of the Great-House, came, not alone but with a guard of soldiers—and with his own short-winded exhaustion to underline the importance of an occasion that had taken him through the streets of the city to the home of Neph, the engineer.

“You will come with me, O Prince of Egypt,” he said to Moses, “for the God-King summons you.”

Moses rose but said to Nun, “Go away now,” to which Nun smiled and shook his head. Then Moses asked Seti-Moses whether he might have a word alone with his slave.

“Very well, but shortly. It is not good for the God-King to wait on us.” He left them alone then, and Moses faced Nun, his servant and friend, and said to him,

“Of all men, it is you who are closest to me now. I give you now your freedom, which I swear upon all that
macaat
meant when I was an Egyptian. I am an Egyptian no longer. I want you to take half of all the gold and jewels in this house that are mine, and take your weapons, and take my iron knife with the silver handle, and go away where you can make a good life for yourself, where you can build a house and marry a maiden of your own and have children of your own. I want you to go to Babylon or to some city in Canaan, where the cursed king of this land can never seek you out or hurt you, and live there and have whatever happiness a man can find in this life.”

“You forget that I am your brother—our blood is mixed and one blood, O Moses of the half-name,” Nun answered, more tenderly than he had ever spoken before.

With great and significant formality, Moses said, “You call me by my name, Nun, the son of Ephala,” giving him the address used in the speech of the Levites, “and does that mean that you accept your freedom?”

“It was always mine, Moses, my brother, for I swore in the slave pens that I would die before another man owned me. I chose to be your servant. In the old days among the Levites, when a child was born beautiful and full of promise, they anointed him with olive oil and sweet scents. So it seemed to me that you were anointed, and I made an oath with myself that I would never leave you, so long as there was life in your body and in mine.”

“Was it a strong oath?” Moses asked, tears filling his eyes. “If it was an oath by Nehushtan, I cast it aside. Neither do I serve nor do homage to any of the dark gods that are born out of the fears and the agonies of mankind.”

“It was an oath to no god, but only to myself,” Nun said.

“Then I will honour it.”

“And I will sit here until you return.”

“And if I don't return?”

“Then I will take your chariot and arm it with the weapons of war and ride up against the Great House and either hew my way into it or die.”

“Now you talk as wildly as I do, O Nun—and you know that I have turned my face from this business of war and slaying. Wait here for me, if you will, and I shall come back.”

“I know that, my brother,” Nun said. Then Moses went to Seti-Moses, and told him that he was ready; and with the guard of soldiers around them, they went to the Great House and into the glittering throne room of Ramses, the God-King of Egypt.

In the desert, the stone visage of Ramses sat upon the sand, neck and head without body, waiting to be the last crowning glory of the mighty colossus, when the sand mountain the slaves built was finally high enough; and this face of the God-King was like the stone face that lay in the desert, calm and terrible, aloof from Moses and from itself too, but calm and terrible.