The Egyptian (7 page)

What had been written of old was true, and I said to the astonished woman, “Rejoice, for holy Ammon in his grace has blessed your womb, and you shall bring forth a child like other favored women.”

The poor soul wept for joy and gave me a silver bangle from her wrist weighing two deben* [A deben weighs approximately 3 ź ounces.], for she had long ago given up hope. And as soon as she could believe me, she asked, “Is it a son?” thinking me omniscient. I plucked up courage, looked her in the eye, and said, “It is a son.” For the chances were even and at that time my gambling luck was good. The woman rejoiced still more and gave me a bracelet from her other wrist, of two deben weight.

But when she had gone, I asked myself how it was possible for a grain of corn to know what no doctor could discover and know it before the eye could detect the signs of pregnancy? Summoning up my resolution, I asked my teacher. He merely looked at me as if I were haif-witted and said, “It is so written.” But this was no answer.

I took courage again and asked the royal obstetrician in the maternity house. He said, “Ammon is chief of all the gods. His eye sees the womb that receives the seed; if he permits germination, why should he not also allow corn to grow when moistened with water from the pregnant woman’s body?”

He, too, stared at me as if I were half-witted, but his was no answer.

Then my eyes were opened, and I saw that the doctors in the House of Life knew the writings and the traditions but no more. If I asked why a festering wound must be burned while an ordinary one is merely dressed and bandaged and why boils are healed with mildew and cobwebs, they said only, “So it has always been.” In the same way a surgeon might perform the hundred and eighty-two operations and incisions prescribed, and perform them according to his experience and skill, well or badly, quickly or slowly, more or less painfully; but more he cannot do because only these are described and illustrated in the books, and nothing else has ever been done.

There were some cases in which the sufferer grew thin and pale, though the doctor could find in him no disease or injury; he could be revived and cured by a diet of raw liver from the sacrificial beasts, bought at a high price, but one must on no account ask why. There were some who had pains in their bellies and whose hands and feet burned. They were given purges and narcotics; some recovered, others perished, but no doctor could say beforehand who would live and whose belly would swell so that he died. No one knew why this was; no one might seek to know.

I soon noticed that I was asking too many questions, for people began to look at me askance, and those who had come after me were set in authority over me. Then I took off my white robe, cleaned myself, and left the House of Life, taking with me two silver rings that to gether weighed four deben.

When I left the temple—a thing I had not done for years—I saw that while I had been working and studying Thebes had changed. I noted it as I walked along the Avenue of Rams and through the markets. There was restlessness everywhere; people’s dress had become more elaborate and costly so that one could no longer distinguish men from women by their wigs and pleated skirts. From wine shops and pleasure houses came shrill Syrian music; foreign speech was heard in the streets, where Syrians and wealthy Negroes rubbed shoulders with Egyptians unabashed. The wealth and power of Egypt were immeasurable; for centuries past no enemy had entered its cities, and men who had never known war had reached middle age. But I cannot tell whether the people were any happier on this account, for their eyes were restless, their movements hurried, and they seemed always to be waiting impatiently for some new thing and could not be content with the day that was passing.

I walked alone along the streets of Thebes with a heavy and rebellious heart. On coming home, I found that my father Senmut had aged; his back was bent, and he could no longer distinguish written characters. My mother Kipa was old also; she panted as she moved and talked of nothing but her grave. For with his savings my father had bought a tomb in the City of the Dead on the west bank of the river. I had seen it: it was a handsome tomb built of mudbricks with the usual inscriptions and pictures on the walls, and all about it were hundreds and thousands of similar graves that the priests of Ammon sold to honest, thrifty folk at a high price—a price they paid to obtain immortality. I had written out a death book to be laid in their tomb so that they should not go astray on the long journey: a fine, fairly written book, though not adorned with colored pictures like those sold in the book court of Ammon’s temple.

My mother gave me food, and my father asked about my studies, but beyond this we found nothing to say to each other; the house was strange to me, as were the street and the people in the street. My heart grew heavier still until I remembered the temple of Ptah and Thothmes who had been my friend and was to become an artist. I thought: I have four deben of silver in my pocket. I will seek out my friend Thothmes, that we may rejoice together and make merry with wine, for I shall find no answer to my questions.

So I took leave of my parents, saying that I must return to the House of Life, and shortly before sunset I found the temple of Ptah. Having learned from the porter where the art school lay, I entered and inquired for the student Thothmes; only then did I hear that he had been expelled long ago. The students spat upon the ground before me when they spoke his name, because the teacher was present; when he turned his back, they counseled me to go to a tavern called the Syrian Jar.

I found this place; it lay between the poor quarter and the rich and had an inscription over the door praising the wine from Ammon’s vineyard and also that from the harbor. Inside there were artists squatting on the floor drawing pictures while an old man sat in sad contemplation of the empty wine bowl before him.

“Sinuhe, by all the potters’ wheels!” cried someone, rising to greet me with his hands lifted in wonder. I recognized Thothmes, though his shoulder cloth was dirty and tattered and his eyes were bloodshot and there was a big bump on his forehead. He had grown older and thinner, and there were lines at the corners of his mouth, but his eyes still held that cheerful, impudent, irresistible glint, and he bent forward till our cheeks touched. I knew then that we were still friends.

“My heart is heavy,” I said to him. “All is vanity, and I have sought you out so that we may rejoice our hearts with wine—for no one answers when I ask why.”

Thothmes lifted his apron to show that he lacked the means to buy wine.

“I carry four deben of silver on my wrists,” said I with pride. Thothmes then pointed at my head, which was still shaven because I wanted men to know that I was a priest of the first grade: it was all I had to be proud of. But now I was vexed that I had not let my hair grow and said impatiently, “I am a physician, not a priest. I think I read over the door that wine from the harbor can be had here; let us see if it is good.”

Thothmes ordered mixed wine, and a slave came to pour water over our hands and set roasted lotus seeds on a low table before us. The landlord himself brought the brightly colored goblets. Thothmes raised his, spilled a drop on the ground, and said, “For the divine Potter! May the plague consume the art school and its teachers!” And he recited the names of those he hated most.

I also raised my goblet and let a drop fall on the ground.

“In the name of Ammon! May his boat leak to all eternity, may the bellies of his priests rupture, and may the pestilence destroy the ignorant teachers in the House of Life!” But I said this in a low voice and looked about me lest a stranger should overhear my words.

“Have no fear,” said Thothmes. “So many of Ammon’s ears have been boxed in this tavern that they have had enough of listening—and all of us here are lost already. I could not find even bread and beer if I had not hit upon the idea of making picture books for rich men’s children.”

He showed me the scroll he had been working on when I came. I could not help laughing, for there he had drawn a fortress defended by a quaking, terrified cat against the onslaught of mice, also a hippopotamus singing in a treetop while a dove climbed painfully up the tree by means of a ladder.

There was a smile in Thothmes’ brown eyes, but it faded as he unrolled the papyrus further and disclosed the picture of a bald little priest leading a big Pharaoh on a rope to the temple, like a beast of sacrifice. Next he showed me a little Pharaoh bowing before a massive statue of Ammon. He nodded at my questioning look.

“You see? Grown people laugh at the pictures, too, because they’re so crazy. It is ridiculous for a mouse to attack a cat or a priest to lead a Pharaoh—but those who know begin to reflect upon a number of things. Therefore, I shall not lack for bread and beer—until the priests have me clubbed to death in the street. Such things have happened.”

“Let us drink,” I said, and drink we did, but my heart was not gladdened. Presently I put my question to him. “Is it wrong to ask why?”

“Of course it is wrong, for a man who presumes to ask ‘why’ has no home nor resting place in the land of Kem. All must be as it has been—and you know it. I trembled with joy when I entered the an school—I was like a thirsty man who has found a spring, a hungry man clutching at bread. And I learned many fine things.… Oh, yes. I learned how to hold a pen and handle a chisel, how to model in wax what will be hewn from stone, how stone is polished, how colored stones are fitted together, and how to paint on alabaster. But when I longed to get to work and make such things as I had dreamed of, I was set to treading clay for others to handle. For high above everything stands the convention. Art has its convention no less than writing, and he who breaks with it is damned.

“From the beginning of time it has been laid down how one should represent a standing figure and how a sitting one, how a horse lifts his hooves, how an ox draws a sled. From the beginning the technique has been fixed; whoever departs from it is unfit for the temple, and stone and chisel are denied him. O Sinuhe, my friend, I, too, have asked why—and only too often. That is why I sit here with bumps on my head.”

We drank and grew merry, and my heart lightened as if a boil in it had been lanced, for I was no longer alone.

“Sinuhe, my friend, we have been born into strange times. Everything is melting—changing its shape—like clay on a potter’s wheel. Dress is changing, words, customs are changing, and people no longer believe in the gods—though they may fear them. Sinuhe, my friend, perhaps we were born to see the sunset of the world, for the world is already old, and twelve hundred years have passed since the building of the pyramids. When I think of this, I want to bury my head in my hands and cry like a child.”

But he did not weep, for we were drinking mixed wine in brightly colored goblets, and each time the landlord of the Syrian Jar refilled them he bowed and stretched forth his hands at knee level. From time to time a slave came to pour water over our hands. My heart grew light as a swallow on the threshold of winter; I could have declaimed verse and taken the whole world into my arms.

“Let us go to a pleasure house,” said Thothmes laughing. “Let us hear music and watch girls dancing and gladden our hearts—let us not ask ‘why’ any more or demand that our cup be full.”

We walked along the streets. The sun had set, and I met for the first time that Thebes where it is never night. In this flaring, noisy quarter torches flamed before the pleasure houses, and lamps burned on columns at the street corners. Slaves ran here and there with carrying chairs, and the shouts of runners mingled with the music from the houses and the roarings of the drunk.

Never in my life had I set foot in a pleasure house, and I was a little scared. The one to which Thothmes led me was called the Cat and Grapes. It was a pretty little house, full of soft, golden lamplight. There were soft mats to sit on, and young—and in my eyes lovely—girls beat time to the music of flutes and strings. When the music stopped, they sat with us and begged me to buy them wine, as their throats were as dry as chaff. Then two naked dancers performed a complicated dance requiring great skill, and I followed it with interest. As a doctor I was accustomed to the sight of naked girls and yet had never seen breasts swaying or little bellies and bottoms moving so seductively as these.

But the music saddened me again, and I began to long for I knew not what. A beautiful girl took my hand and pressed her side to mine and said my eyes were those of a wise man. But her eyes were not as green as the Nile in the heat of summer, and her dress, though it left her bosom bare, was not of royal linen. So I drank wine and neither looked into her eyes nor felt any wish to call her “my sister,” or take pleasure with her. And the last I remember of that place is a vicious kick from a Negro and a lump I got on my head when I fell dcwn the steps. So it came about just as my mother Kipa had foretold: I lay in the Street without a copper piece in my pocket until Thothmes drew my arm over his strong shoulder and led me to the jetty, where I could drink my fill of Nile water and bathe my face and my hands and my feet.

That morning I entered the House of Life with swollen eyes and a smarting lump on my head, a dirty shoulder cloth, and without the smallest wish to ask, “Why?” I was to be on duty among the deaf and those with ear diseases, so I washed myself quickly and put on the white robe. On the way I met my chief, who began to upbraid me in phrases I had read in the books and knew by heart.

“What is to become of you if you run along the walls by night and drink without keeping tally of your cups? What is to become of you if you idle away your time in pleasure houses, Smiting wine jars with your stick to the alarm of honest citizens? What is to become of you if you shed blood and run from the watchmen?”

But when he had done his duty, he smiled to himself with relief, took me to his room, and gave me a potion to cleanse my stomach. My spirits rose as I realized that wine and pleasure houses were winked at in the House of Life provided one stopped asking why.