The Egyptian (14 page)

When he had gone, I said, “From this hour I am accursed and dishonored before gods and men—it is a high price to pay. Prove to me now that it is not too high.”

But she smiled.

“Drink wine, my brother, that your heart may be gladdened.”

When I would have seized her, she evaded me and filled my wine cup from the jar. Presently she glanced at the sun and said, “See, the day is spent, and it will soon be evening. What do you stay for?”

“Well you know!”

“And well you know which well is deepest and which pit is bottomless, Sinuhe. I must hasten to dress and paint my face, for a golden goblet awaits me, which tomorrow will adorn my house.”

When I would have gathered her into my arms, she slipped from me with a shrill laugh and called out for the servants, who instantly obeyed her summons.

“How came this insufferable mendicant into my house? Throw him out instantly and let him never come within my doors again! If he resists, beat him.”

The servants threw me out, numb as I was with wine and fury, and came again to beat me with sticks when I battered at the barred outer door. And when people began to gather about the spot because of my roaring, the servants declared, “This drunkard insulted our mistress, who lives in her own house and is not a woman to be despised.”

They beat me until I was senseless and left me to lie in the street, where men spat upon me and dogs made water upon my clothes.

When I came to myself, I was without the will to rise and lay there motionless until the morning. The darkness hid me, and I felt that I should never dare to show my face again.

The prince had named me He Who Is Alone and I was assuredly the loneliest mortal in the world that night. But when dawn came, when people began to move about the streets, and merchants displayed their merchandise before their booths, and the oxcarts rumbled by, I rose and left the city and hid myself among the reeds for three days and three nights without food or drink. Heart and body were one hideous wound. If any had spoken to me then, I should have screamed aloud, and I feared for my reason.

On the third day I bathed my hands and feet and washed the dried blood from my clothes. Turning my face toward the city, I went to my own house. But the house was no longer mine, and at the door was the signboard of another doctor. I called Kaptah, and he came running, sobbing for joy, and threw his arms about my knees.

“Master—for in my heart you are still my master, no matter who may give me orders. A young man has come here who fancies himself a great physician. He has been trying on your clothes and laughing in his delight. His mother has already been out into the kitchen to throw hot water over my feet and call me rat and dung fly. But your patients miss you—they say his hand is not as light as yours and that he does not understand their maladies as you do.”

He babbled on, but his one red-rimmed eye was fixed upon me with a look of horror until I said at last, “Tell me all, Kaptah. My heart is already a stone within my breast and incapable of further pain.”

Then, raising his arms to express the deepest woe, he declared, “I would have given my one remaining eye to spare you this grief—but evil is the day, and it is well that you came. Your parents are dead.”

“My father Senmut and my mother Kipa,” said I, raising my hands as custom demands, and my heart stirred in my breast.

“This day the servants of the law broke down their door, having yesterday given notice of eviction, but found them lying upon the bed no longer breathing. Today, therefore, you must bring them to the House of the Dead, for tomorrow their house is to be pulled down, by order of the new owner.”

“Did my parents know why this happened?” I asked and could not look my slave in the face.

“Your father Senmut came to seek you; your mother led him, for he could not see. They were old and frail, and they trembled as they walked. But I did not know where you were. Your father said that it was better that way, and he told how the servants of the law had thrown him out of his house and set seals upon his chests and all his property so that he and his wife owned no more than the rags they had upon them. When he asked the reason for it all, the bailiffs laughed and said that his son Sinuhe had sold house and property and the tomb of his parents for gold to give to a bad woman. After long hesitation your father begged a copper piece of me, that he might dictate a letter to you through some scribe.

“But a new man had come to the house, and just then the mother of this man came for me and beat me with a stick because I was wasting my time in company with a beggar. Perhaps you will believe me when I tell you that I would have given your father the piece of copper, for though I have not yet been able to steal anything from my new lord, still I have copper and silver left of that I stole from you and my previous masters. But when I went back to the street, your parents had already gone. The mother of my new master forbade me to run after them and shut me into the roasting pit for the night so that I might not run away.”

“My father left no message?”

“He left no message, lord.”

Though my heart was a stone in my breast, my thoughts were serene as birds in cool air. Having reflected for a while, I said to Kaptah, “Give me all the copper and silver you have—give it to me quickly—and it may be that Ammon or some other god will reward you if I cannot. I must carry my parents to the House of Death, and I no longer have any means of paying for the embalming of their bodies.”

Kaptah began to weep and lament, but at last he went to a corner of the garden, looking this way and that as a dog does that has buried a bone. Lifting up a stone, he drew forth a rag in which he had knotted his silver and copper, less than two deben, though it was the savings of a lifetime. He gave me all of it, though with many tears; blessed be he, therefore, to all eternity.

I hastened to my father’s house, where I found the doors smashed and seals placed upon all that was within. Neighbors were standing in the garden; they raised their hands and shrank from me in horror, uttering no word. In the inner room Senmut and Kipa lay on their bed, their faces as rosy as when they were alive, and on the floor stood a still smoldering brazier in whose fumes they had perished, having tightly closed the shutters and the doors. I swathed their bodies in the shroud, heedless of the seals on it, and sought out a donkey driver, who agreed to carry away the bodies.

With his help I lifted them on to the ass’s back and brought them to the House of Death. But at the House of Death they would not take them, for I had not sufficient silver to pay for even the cheapest form of embalming.

Then said I to the corpse washers, “I am Sinuhe, the son of Senmut, and my name is inscribed in the Book of Life, though a hard destiny has deprived me of silver enough to pay for my parents’ burial. Therefore, I beseech you in the name of Ammon and of all the gods of Egypt; embalm the bodies of my parents, and I will serve you to the best of my skill for as long as it takes to complete their preservation.”

They swore at my stubbornness and cursed me, but at last the poxeaten foreman accepted Kaptah’s money, hitched a hook under my father’s chin and slung him into the great bath. He did the same to my mother, throwing her into the same bath. There were thirty of these baths. Every day one of them was filled and one emptied so that the bodies of the poor lay for thirty days steeped in salt and lye to preserve them against death. Nothing more than this was done for them though I did not know it at the time.

I had to return to my father’s house with the shroud, which bore upon it the seal of the law. The foreman washer mocked me, saying, “Come back before tomorrow, or we will drag out the bodies of your parents and throw them to the dogs.”

By this I saw that he fancied me a liar and no doctor.

I returned stony hearted to my father’s house, though the crumbling mud bricks of its walls cried out to me, as did the sycamore in the garden and the pool of my childhood. Therefore, I turned swiftly away when I had put the covering back in its place, but in the doorway I met a scribe who plied his trade at a street corner by the spice dealer’s. He said, “Sinuhe, son of Senmut the Just—is it you?”

“It is I.”

“Do not run from me, for I have a message to you from your father. He did not find you at your house.”

I sank to the ground and covered my head with my hands while the scribe brought out a paper from which he read aloud:

The stone of my heart was melted and flowed out in tears upon the dust. The scribe said, “Here is the letter. It does not bear your father’s seal, nor could he see to write his name, but you will surely believe me when I tell you that I wrote it down word for word at his dictation; moreover, your mother’s tears have blurred the characters here and there.”

He showed me the paper, but my eyes were blinded by tears and saw nothing. Rolling it up he put it into my hand, and continued, “Your father Senmut was a just man and your mother Kipa a good woman—if rough-tongued at times, as is the way of women. So I wrote this for your father though he had not the smallest present to give me, and I will give the paper to you though it is good paper and could be cleaned and used again.”

I reflected for a little and then said, “Nor have I any present for you, most excellent man. Take my shoulder cloth, for it is of good stuff though now dirty and creased. May all the gods of Egypt bless you, and may your body be preserved forever, for even you do not know the merit of the deed you have done.”

He took the shoulder cloth and went, waving it above his head and laughing for joy. But I went to the House of Death clad only in a loincloth, like a slave or an ox driver, to serve the corpse washers for thirty days and nights.

As a physician I fancied I had seen all there was to see of death and suffering and had hardened myself to foul smells and the handling of boils and festering wounds. On beginning my service in the House of Death, I found I was a child and knew nothing. The poor, indeed, gave us but little trouble. They lay peacefully in their baths in the sharp smell of salt and lye, and I soon learned to handle the hook with which they were moved. But the bodies of those of the better class required more elaborate treatment, and to rinse out the entrails and put them in jars called for a hardened mind. Still more hardened must it be to witness Ammon’s plundering of the dead, exceeding that of the living. The price of embalming varied according to means, and the embalmers lied to the kindred of the dead, charging for many costly oils, salves, and preservatives that they vowed they used, though all was but one and the same sesame oil. Only the bodies of the illustrious were prepared with the full measure of skill. The others were filled with a corrosive oil that consumed the viscera, the cavity being then stuffed with reeds steeped in resin. For the poor not even this was done; after their removal from the basin on the thirtieth day they were allowed to dry and were then handed over to their relatives.

The House of Death was supervised by the priests. Nevertheless, the body washers and embalmers stole all that they could lay their hands on and looked upon this as their right. Only those accursed of the gods or criminals fleeing from authority took service as corpse washers, and they could be recognized far off by the smell of salt and lye and cadavers inseparable from their trade so that people avoided them and would not admit them to wine shop or pleasure house.

Since I had volunteered to work among them, the corpse washers supposed me to be like one of themselves, and they hid none of their actions from me. Had I not already witnessed worse things, I should have fled appalled at the way in which they defiled the bodies of even the most distinguished, mutilating them in order to sell to sorceresses the organs these had need of. If there is a Western Land—which for my parents’ sake I hope there may be—I believe many of the dead will marvel at their own dismembered condition when they start upon their journey, despite the sums paid to the temple for their burial.

But the greatest rejoicing in the House of Death occurred when the body of a young woman was brought in, no matter whether she were beautiful or plain. She was not immediately thrown into the bath, but for one night was kept as the corpse washers’ bedfellow; they squabbled and cast lots as to who should have her first. For these men were so abhorred that not the wretchedest prostitute would submit to them, though they offered her gold. Not even Negresses would have them but held them in great dread.

When once a man had entered the House of Death and taken service there as a corpse washer, he left the place but seldom because of the abhorrence in which his caste was held, and he lived out his life among the carcasses. For the first few days they all seemed to me to be under the curse of the gods, and their talk as they mocked and defiled the bodies outraged my ears. Later I found that among even these there were skilled craftsmen who held their trade in high honor, regarding it as the most important of all, and among the best of whom it was hereditary. Each of them specialized in some branch, as did the physicians in the House of Life, so that one dealt with the head, another the belly, a third the heart, a fourth the lungs, until each part of the body had been treated for its eternal preservation.