The Egyptian (54 page)

Merit smiled, but sorrow darkened her eyes as she replied, “I do not want to cause you any vexation, but the voyage would do the boy good. I myself carried him to be circumcised and have some obligations toward him. I intended to come with the boy, of course, to see that he did not fall into the water. In this way I should have had good and sufficient reason for accompanying you. But I shall do nothing against your will; let us forget the matter.”

At this I shouted for joy and clapped my hands above my head.

“Truly this is a day of joy for me! In my dullness I never thought that you could come with me to Akhetaton, and you incur no injury to your reputation on my account if you bring a child with you as a pretext for your journey.”

“Quite so, Sinuhe,” she said, with the irritating smile affected by women in discussing matters that men do not understand. “My reputation will not be endangered if I bring a child. Oh, fools that men are! Nevertheless, I forgive you.”

Our departure was sudden because of my dread of Mehunefer, and we sailed at dawn. Merit brought the child to the ship swathed in blankets and still sleeping. His mother did not come although I would gladly have seen a woman who dared to call her child Thoth, for parents seldom presume to give their children the names of gods. Thoth is the god of writing and of all sciences, human and divine, so that the temerity of this woman was the greater. The boy slept peacefully in Merit’s arms, unburdened by his name, and never woke until the eternal guardians of Thebes sank below the horizon and the sun shone hot and golden on the river.

He was a brown, handsome, plump little boy; his hair was black and smooth as silk, and he had no fear of me but crept into my arms. I liked to hold him so, for he was quiet. He looked at me with his dark, thoughtful eyes as if he had long contemplated the riddles of existence. I grew very fond of him and made him little reed boats and let him play with my doctor’s things and smell the different drugs. He loved the smell of them and poked his nose into all the jars.

He was no trouble to us aboard ship. He neither fell into the water nor stuck his arm into the jaws of any crocodile, nor did he break my reed pens. Our voyage was all sunshine and good fortune, for Merit was with me. Every night she lay on the mat beside me, and the little boy slept peacefully nearby. It was a happy journey, and until the day of my death I shall remember the soughing of the reeds in the wind and the evenings when cattle were driven down to the water’s edge to drink. There were hours when my heart swelled with happiness as a ripe fruit bursts with the abundance of its juice.

I said to Merit, “Merit, my beloved, let us break the jar that we may be together forever, and perhaps one day you will bear me a son, like this little Thoth. You if anyone could give me just such a quiet, brown little fellow as he is. Truly I have never before desired children, but now my youth is past and my blood freed of its passion. When I look at little Thoth, I long to beget a child by you, Merit.”

She laid her hand on my mouth and turned away her head, saying softly, “Sinuhe, talk not so foolishly, for you know I grew up in a tavern. Perhaps I am no longer able to bear children. You, who carry your destiny in your heart, may find it better to remain alone and be able to order your life and actions untrammeled by wife or child—this I read in your eyes when first we met. No, Sinuhe, do not talk thus to me. Your words make me weak, and I would not shed tears when such happiness enfolds me. Others fashion their own destinies and bind themselves with a thousand bonds, but you bear your destiny in your heart, and it is a greater one than mine. I love this little boy and we have many hot, bright days before us on the river. Let us pretend that we have broken the jar together and are man and wife, and that Thoth is our own son. I shall teach him to call you father and me mother, for he is small and will soon forget, and it will do him no harm. We will steal a scrap of life from the gods for these few days. Let no grief or fear of the morrow dim our happiness.”

So I dismissed all evil thoughts; I shut my eyes to the misery of Egypt and to the starving people in the villages along the banks, and I lived for each day as it came. Little Thoth put his arms about my neck, pressed his cheek to mine, and called me “Father.” His tender body was a delight to my arms. Each night I felt Merit’s hair against my neck; she held my hands in hers and breathed on my cheek. She was my friend, and I was no longer tormented by any evil dreams. The days slipped by: swiftly as breaths they passed and were gone. I will speak no more of them because their memory catches at my throat like chaff, and dew from my eyes blurs the script. Man ought not to be too happy, for nothing is more fleeting and elusive than happiness.

Thus I returned to Akhetaton, but now I was changed and saw the City of the Heavens with other eyes. With its fragile, brilliant sunlit houses beneath the deep blue of the sky the city appeared to me as a bubble or a fleeting mirage. Truth did not dwell here, but outside. Truth was starvation, suffering, misery, and crime.

Merit and Thoth returned to Thebes, taking with them my heart, so that I once more beheld things as they were, with cold eyes, and all that I saw was evil. Before many days had passed, truth came to Akhetaton, and Pharaoh was compelled to meet it face to face on the terrace of the golden house. From Memphis Horemheb sent a group of fugitives from Syria in all their wretchedness to speak with Pharaoh. He paid their passage, and I believe also that he bade them exaggerate their plight. They presented a hideous spectacle in the City of the Heavens. The nobles about the court sickened and shut themselves into their houses at the sight of them, and the guards closed the gates of the golden house. They cried aloud and threw stones at the walls until Pharaoh heard them and had them admitted to the inner court.

They said, “Hear from our bruised mouths the cry of your peoples! In the land of Kem power is but a shadow, and beneath the thunder of battering rams and the roar of flames flows the blood of those who trusted in you and set their hopes on you.”

They raised their arm stumps to Pharaoh’s golden balcony and cried, “Look at our hands, Pharaoh Akhnaton! Where are our hands?”

They pushed forward men whose eyes had been put out and went their way groping, and old men whose tongues had been torn out gaped emptily and howled. They cried to him, saying, “Do not ask us of our wives and daughters, for their fate is more terrible than death at the hands of Aziru’s men and of the Hittites. They put out our eyes and cut off our hands because we trusted you, Pharaoh Akhnaton!”

Pharaoh hid his face in his hands, and he spoke to them of Aton. Then they laughed at him very terribly and reviled him, saying, “We know that you sent the cross of life to our enemies also. They hung it about the necks of their horses, and in Jerusalem they cut off the feet of the priests and bade them leap for joy to the honor of your god.”

Then Pharaoh Akhnaton uttered a dreadful cry; the holy sickness seized him, and he fell senseless on the balcony. The guards would have driven away these homeless ones, but in their desperation they resisted. Their blood flowed between the stones of the inner court, and their bodies were cast into the river. Nefertiti and Meritaton, the ailing Meketaton and little Ankhsenaton saw it all from the balcony and were never to forget it. It was then that they beheld for the first time anguish and death, which are the fruits of war.

I had Pharaoh swathed in wet cloths, and when he came to himself, I gave him sedatives, for this attack had been so severe I feared for his life. He slept, but when he awoke his face was gray and his eyes were red with the pains in his head.

“Sinuhe, my friend, we must put an end to this. Horemheb tells me that you know Aziru. Go to him and buy peace. Buy peace for Egypt though it cost all the gold I have and impoverish the country.”

I protested vigorously.

“Pharaoh Akhnaton, send your gold to Horemheb and he will swiftly buy peace with spears and chariots, and Egypt need suffer no disgrace.”

He clutched his head.

“By Aton, Sinuhe! Can you not see that hate engenders hate, and vengeance sows vengeance, and blood breeds blood until we drown in blood? How are the victims served if their sufferings be avenged by the infliction of suffering on others? This talk of disgrace is but prejudice. I command you: Go to Aziru and buy me peace.”

I was aghast.

“Pharaoh Akhnaton, they will put out my eyes and tear out my tongue before I can approach Aziru to speak with him, and his friendship will avail me nothing for he will assuredly have forgotten it by now. I am unaccustomed to the exertions of war, which I greatly fear. My limbs are stiff, my movements slower than they were, nor can I order my phrases as glibly as others who have been trained to lies since childhood and who serve you at the courts of foreign kings. Send another if you would purchase peace.”

He insisted stubbornly, “Go as I command you. Pharaoh has spoken.”

But I had seen the fugitives in the courtyard of the palace. I had seen their broken mouths, their empty eye sockets, and the stumps of their arms. I felt strongly disinclined for the journey and went home with the intention of taking to my bed and feigning sickness until Pharaoh should have forgotten this fancy of his.

On the way I met my servant, who said to me in some astonishment, “It is well that you have come, my lord Sinuhe, for a ship has just arrived from Thebes bringing a woman whose name in Mehunefer; she says she is your friend. She awaits you in your house, arrayed like a bride, and the house is fragrant with her ointments.”

I turned swiftly about and ran to the golden house.

“Be it as you say, Pharaoh. I will go to Syria, and may my blood be upon your head. But if I am to go, let me depart at once. Let your scribes prepare the necessary tablets, certifying my rank and authority, for Aziru has great respect for tablets.”

While the scribes were busy with these, I hastened to the workshop of my friend Thothmes. I had discovered he was a sculptor in Akhetaton. He was my friend and did not spurn me in my hour of need. He had just completed a statue of Horemheb to be set up in Hetnetsut, which was the warrior’s birthplace. It was of brown sandstone and fashioned according to the new rules, very lifelike, although to my mind Thothmes had exaggerated the bulk of the arm muscles and the breadth of the chest so that Horemheb appeared more like a wrestler than the commander-in-chief of Pharaoh’s forces. But it was the custom in this new art to exaggerate all things even to ugliness, that truth be not slighted. Thothmes wiped the image with a wet rag to show me how beautiful was the sheen on Horemheb’s muscles and how well the color of the stone matched that of his skin.

He said to me, “I think I will travel with you as far as Hetnetsut and take this figure with me, to insure that it is set up in the temple there in a position befitting Horemheb’s rank and my own. Yes, I will come with you, Sinuhe, and let the river wind blow the wine fumes of Akhetaton from my head. My hands tremble with the weight of hammer and chisel, and fever frets at my heart.”

The scribes brought me the clay tablets, with Pharaoh’s blessing, and when Horemheb’s statue had been carried aboard, we set sail down the river. My servant had orders to tell Mehunefer that I had gone to the war in Syria and there perished. I felt there was but little falsehood in this, for I feared that I should indeed die a hideous death on this journey. I had further bidden my servant convey Mehunefer aboard some vessel bound for Thebes, with all due honor and if need be by force. “For,” said I, “should I, against all expectations, return and find Mehunefer in my house, I will have all my slaves and servants beaten, I will have their ears and noses cut off, and send them to the mines for the rest of their lives.”

My servant looked me in the eye and, seeing that I was in earnest, was duly frightened and promised to obey my orders. So with a mind relieved, I sailed down the river with Thothmes. Being convinced that I was bound for certain death at the hands of Aziru’s men and of the Hittites, we did not spare the wine. Thothmes declared that it was not the custom to be sparing of wine when going to war, and he could speak with authority having been born in barracks.

In my official capacity I was received with full honors by Horemheb at Memphis, but as soon as we were alone together, he began slapping his leg with his whip, and he asked impatiently, “What ill wind blows you hither as Pharaoh’s envoy, and what new maggot has hatched out in his brain?”

I told him that my mission was to journey to Syria and buy peace at any price from Aziru. Horemheb swore bitterly at this.

“Did I not guess that he would ruin all the plans I have laid with such care and cost? Know that thanks to me Gaza is still in our hands, so that Egypt holds one bridgehead in Syria for military operations. Moreover, by means of gifts and threats I have induced the Cretan battle fleet to guard our sea communications with Gaza, this being partly in Crete’s own interest since a strong and independent Syrian federation would threaten its naval supremacy. Know also that King Aziru has much ado to control his own allies, and many Syrian cities are at war with one another now that the Egyptians have been expelled. Those Syrians who have lost home and possessions have joined guerrilla forces, which are in control of the desert from Gaza to Tanis and are now in conflict with Aziru’s troops. I have armed them with Egyptian weapons, and many valiant men from Egypt—former soldiers, robbers, and runaways from the mines—have joined them. Most important of all, the Hittites have at last invaded Mitanni with their full strength; they have wiped out the people and the Mitannian kingdom is no more. The Hittite forces are detained there by this victory; Babylon grows uneasy and is equipping troops to defend its boundaries, and the Hittites have now no time to give Aziru adequate support. If he is wise, Aziru will go in fear of them since their conquest of Mitanni, which was Syria’s shield against them. The peace Pharaoh offers would be most welcome, for it would allow him time to consolidate his position and look about him. Give me half a year, or even less, and I will buy an honorable peace for Egypt; with singing arrows and thundering chariots I will force Aziru to fear the gods of Egypt.”