The Egyptian (37 page)

The boat came alongside a familiar stone quay. Nothing was changed, and not many streets away was the place where I had spent my childhood, little dreaming that one day I was to lay waste my parents’ life. The sands of time, which had drifted over these bitter memories, stirred a little. I longed to hide myself and cover my face and felt no joy, though the noise of a great city was in my ears once more, and though the haste and restless movements of the people brought to my own senses the feverish pulse of Thebes. I had made no plans for my return, having resolved to let all depend upon my meeting with Horemheb and upon his position at court. But when my feet touched the stones of the quay a plan sprang ready formed into my head, a plan that promised neither fame nor wealth—no lavish gifts in return for all the knowledge I had amassed, as had formerly been my dream—but obscurity and a simple life among poor patients. Yet my mind was filled with a strange serenity when I saw my future revealed. This resolve, this hidden fruit of experience, had ripened within me unseen. When I heard the roar of Thebes about me and my feet touched the burning stones of the wharf, I was a child again, watching with solemn, curious eyes the work of my father Senmut among the sick.

I drove away the porters who noisily importuned me, squabbling among themselves the while, and I said to Kaptah, “Leave our baggage in the boat and hasten to buy me a house—no matter which—a house near the harbor in the poor quarter, near the place where my father’s house stood before they pulled it down. Do this in haste that I may take up my dwelling there today and tomorrow begin to ply my trade.”

Kaptah’s jaw dropped, and his face was a blank mask. He had fancied that we should first put up at the best inn and be waited on by slaves. Yet for once he uttered no word of protest, but having gazed into my face, he shut his mouth and went his way with a drooping head.

That evening I moved into a house in the poor quarter that had belonged to a copperfounder. My baggage was conveyed thither, and there I spread my mat on the earthen floor. Cooking fires were glowing before the huts of the poor, and the smell of fried fish floated over all that dirty, wretched, sickly quarter. Then the lamps were lit above the doors of the pleasure houses, and Syrian music began to jangle from the taverns, blending with the roars of tipsy seamen, and the sky over Thebes glowed red from the countless lights in the center of the city. I had traveled many outlandish roads to their end, gathering wisdom and fleeing eternally from myself, and I had come home.

On the following morning I said to Kaptah, “Find me a doctor’s sign to set above my door, a simple one, without ornament or paint. And should any ask for me, say nothing of my fame or ability, but only that the physician Sinuhe receives patients—poor as well as rich—and requires only such gifts as their means allow.”

“Poor folk?” repeated Kaptah in heartfelt dismay. “Lord, you are not ill? You have not drunk marsh water or been stung by a scorpion?”

“Do as I command if you wish to stay with me. If this simple house is not to your mind and if the reek of poverty offends your delicate Syrian nose, then you are free to come and go as you choose. I fancy you have stolen enough from me to be able to buy your own house and to take a wife if you so desire. I shall not prevent you.”

“A wife?” exclaimed Kaptah in still greater dismay. “Truly, lord, you are sick and feverish in the head. Why should I take a wife, who would oppress me and smell my breath when I returned from the city and who, when I awoke in the morning with an aching head, would be standing beside me with a stick in her hand and a mouth full of evil words? Why take a wife when the commonest slave girl will do my business? I have already debated this matter with you. But you are my lord; your way is my way and your punishment mine, although I had thought to reach peace and quiet at last after all the terrible hardships you have brought on me. If rushes are good enough for you to sleep on, then they suffice me also. The wretchedness about us has this advantage, that there are taverns and pleasure houses within reach. The tavern called the Crocodile’s Tail, of which I have spoken, lies not far away.

“I hope you will excuse me if I take myself there today and get drunk. All this has shaken me severely, and I need to recover. This I could not have believed! Only a madman hides a jewel in a dung heap, yet in the same manner you bury your skill and your science.”

“Kaptah,” I said. “Everyone is born naked into the world, and in disease there is no difference between poor and rich, Egyptians and Syrians.”

“That may be, but in the gifts they bring their doctor, there is a great difference,” said Kaptah sententiously. “Yours is a beautiful thought, and I should have nothing against it, were some other man to put it into effect, now that at last after all our miseries we are able to swing on the golden bough. This notion of yours better Suits one born in slavery; I myself had such thoughts when I was younger, until the stick drove sense into me.”

“That you may know my full purpose,” I went on, “I will tell you that should I ever come on an abandoned child I shall adopt it and bring it up as mine.”

“And for what reason?” demanded Kaptah bewildered. “There is a home for foundlings in the temple. Some of them are brought up to be low-grade priests, while others, being made eunuchs, lead a more brilliant life in the women’s houses of Pharaoh and the nobles than their mothers could ever have dreamt of. If you desire a son—which is understandable-nothing is easier to achieve. Should you not wish to buy a slave, you can always seduce some poor girl who would be happy and thankful to you for caring for her child and so freeing her from shame. But children are troublesome and the joy of them is certainly exaggerated—although I cannot say much about this since I have never seen any of mine, of whom there must be a number growing up here and there about the world. You would be wiser to buy a young slave girl this very day. She would also be of help to me, for my limbs are stiff, and my hands shake as a result of all our hardships, especially in the mornings. To look after your house and prepare your food is too much for me to do when I have also to supervise your investments.”

“I had not thought of that, Kaptah. Yet I shall not buy a slave. You may hire a servant if you wish, for it is no more than you deserve. If you remain in my house, you are free to come and go as you please because of your fidelity, and I believe that with the help of your thirst you can obtain much valuable information for me. Therefore, do as I have said and ask me no more questions, for my resolve has been formed by something within me that is stronger than myself and that may not be gainsaid.”

Upon this I went out to ask after my friends. At the Syrian Jar I asked for Thothmes, but a new landlord was there who could tell me nothing of a certain poor painter who lived by drawing cats in picturebooks for rich men’s children. I then went to the barracks to inquire for Horemheb, but the place was empty. In the courtyard were no wrestlers, no spearmen lunging at sacks stuffed with rushes, nor were the great cauldrons steaming in the cooking sheds as formerly. All was deserted.

A taciturn sergeant of the Shardanas stared at me, wriggling his toes in the sand. His face was bony and unoiled, but he bowed when I asked for Horemheb, Pharaoh’s commander who some years ago had waged war against the Khabiri in Syria. He was still commander, the man told me in broken Egyptian, but had been absent for some months in the land of Kush, where he was to disband the garrisons and release the troops from service. No one knew when he would return. I gave the man a silver piece because he seemed so dejected, and at this he forgot his dignity as a Shardana, smiled, and in his delighted astonishment swore by the name of some unknown god. When I would have left he detained me, pointing with a listless hand to the courtyard.

“Horemheb is a great officer who understands soldiers, and is without fear himself,” he said. “Horemheb is a lion, Pharaoh a hornless goat. The barracks are empty, no pay, no food. My comrades beg about country. What will come, I don’t know. Ammon bless you for the silver; you are a good man. I haven’t drunk for months, and my belly is full of dread. I left my own country for many promises. Egyptian recruiting officers went from tent to tent and promised much silver, much women, much drink. Now? No silver, no drink, no women!”

He spat to show his disgust and ground the spittle into the dust with his callused foot. He was a very sorrowful Shardana, and I was concerned for him, gathering from what he said that Pharaoh had dismissed his soldiers and disbanded the troops that had been levied abroad in the days of his father. My thoughts turned to old Ptahor, and in order to find out where he might be. I summoned up my courage and went to the House of Life in the temple of Ammon to seek his name among the records. But the keeper of the records told me that the royal skull surgeon had lain in the City of the Dead for a year and more. So I found not one single friend in Thebes.

Being already in the temple, I went to the great hall of pillars, into the holy twilight of Ammon. The fragrance of incense hung about the colored stone columns with their manifold sacred inscriptions, and far above swallows darted in and out through the stone tracery of the windows. But the temple was almost empty and the forecourt also, and in the countless booths and workshops there was less chaffering and bustle than in former days. Shaven, oily-headed priests in white cloaks regarded me diffidently, and the people in the forecourt conversed in low voices, with many sideways glances as if they feared eavesdroppers. The busy hum of this courtyard, so familiar to me in my student days, when it was like the soughing of wind through reeds, was muffled now to silence. I bore no love for Ammon but despite myself was seized with melancholy, as a man must be who thinks of his youth, whether that youth were good or evil.

When I stepped out between the pylons and the gigantic statues of the Pharaohs, I observed that a new temple had grown up beside the old, of massive proportions and utterly strange in its design. There were no enclosing walls, and when I entered, I found that the colonnade surrounded an open court, on the altar of which offerings of grain, flowers, and fruit had been placed. A great carven relief showed Aton showering his rays on Pharaoh, who made sacrifice, each ray ending in a hand of benediction that held the cross of life. The heads of the white-robed priests were not shaven; most of these men were but youths. Their faces glowed in ecstasy as they sang that holy song whose words I remembered having heard once before, in far-off Jerusalem. But more impressive than priests or images were the forty huge pillars from each of which the new Pharaoh, carved in proportionate size, gazed at the observer with his arms tightly crossed over his breast, holding in his hands the crook and the scourge of majesty.

That these sculptured pillars were representations of Pharaoh I could plainly see, for I recognized that haunting, passionate face, that broad-hipped form with its slender arms and legs. I was seized with awestruck admiration for an artist skilled enough and bold enough to carve these statues, for the free art that my friend Thothmes had once longed for was apparent here, in sinister perversion. All deformities in Pharaoh’s body had been unnaturally emphasized—the swollen thighs, the slender ankles, and the thin, fanatical neck—as if they possessed some occult significance. Most terrifying of all was Pharaoh’s face-that queerly long face with the slanting eyebrows and prominent cheekbones, with the secret, ironical smile of the dreamer and blasphemer hovering about the thick lips. In Ammon’s temple the stone Pharaohs sat on either side of the pylons, majestic, godlike giants. Here, this swollen, gangling creature in human shape stared down from forty pillars on to the altars of Aton, a man who saw further than other men. The whole of his stone-imprisoned form was instinct and tense with fanaticism.

I trembled to the depths of my being when I beheld these pillars, because for the first time I was seeing the fourth Amenhotep as he may have seen himself. I had met him once when he was a frail, puny youth, racked by the holy sickness. Surveying him with the eye of a physician—albeit a callow one—I had taken his words for the ravings of delirium. Now I saw him as the sculptor had seen him, with mingled love and hatred—a sculptor unrivaled in Egypt for courage. For if any forerunner of his had dared to create such a likeness of Pharaoh, he would have been mutilated and hung head downward from the wall for treason.

There were but few people in this temple. Some of them, to judge by the royal linen, heavy collars, and jewels they wore, were nobles and members of the royal household. The common folk listened to the chanting of the priests with dull, stupid faces, for the words were new and differed widely from the ancient invocations that had been handed down for two thousand years—ever since the building of the pyramids. The ears of the faithful were accustomed to these old prayers since childhood. The people could understand them with their hearts though they might not often reflect upon their meaning.

Yet when the hymn was over, an old man, who from his dress seemed to be a countryman, stepped reverently forward to speak with the priests and to buy an appropriate talisman, or protecting eye, or strip of paper inscribed with some magic text if these were to be had at a moderate price. The priests told him that such objects were not sold in their temple since Aton required neither magic, gifts, nor sacrifices but came freely to everyone who believed in him. The old man, outraged, went his way muttering of lies and foolery, and I saw him enter the old familiar gateway of Ammon.

An elderly fisherwoman next approached the priests, and looking at them with benevolent respect, she asked, “Does no one offer rams or oxen to Aton, so that you poor, skinny lads can get a little meat now and then? If your god is as strong and powerful as he is said to be—stronger even than Ammon though this I cannot quite believe—his priests should be fat and gleam with good living. I am but a simple woman and know no better, but from my heart I could wish you much meat and fat.”

The priests laughed and whispered among themselves like mischievous boys. The eldest of them regained his gravity and said to the woman, “Aton desires no blood sacrifices, and it is not fitting that in his temple you should speak of Ammon, for Ammon is a false god whose throne is soon to fall and whose temple will crumble in ruins.”