The Red Tent (28 page)

The journey from the house of the scribe to the house of the baker took only one day, but the passage measured the difference between two worlds. The ferry was crowded with valley residents in a gala mood, on their way home from market. Many of the men had paid for the ministrations of open-air barbers, so their cheeks gleamed and their hair glistened. Mothers chatted about the children at their sides, petting them and scolding them in turn. Strangers struck up conversations with one another, comparing purchases and trying to establish a connection by comparing family names, occupations, and addresses. They seemed always to find a common friend or ancestor, and then clapped one another on the back like long-lost brothers.

They were at ease with themselves and one another like no other people I had ever seen, and I wondered what made it so. Perhaps it was because there were no lords or guards on the boat, not even a scribe. Only craftsmen and their families, heading home.

After the ferry, there was a short, steep climb to the town, which sprawled in the entrance to the valley like a giant wasp nest. My heart fell. It was as ugly a place as I’d ever seen. In the searing heat of the afternoon sun, the trees along the deserted streets looked limp and dirty. Houses crowded together, side by side, by the hundreds, each one as unremarkable and drab as the next. The doorways led down off the narrow pathways into darkness, and I wondered if I would be too tall to stand erect in the largest of them. The streets gave no hint of gardens, or colors, or any of the good things in life.

Somehow, Menna recognized one street from another and led us to the doorway of his brother’s house, where a small boy stood watching. When he saw us, he shouted for his father, and Meryt’s second son, Hori, rushed into the street, both hands filled with fresh bread. He ran to Meryt and lifted her up by the elbows, swinging her around and around, smiling with Meryt’s own smile. His family gathered and clapped their hands as their grandmother laughed into her son’s face and kissed him on the nose. Hori still had a house full of children, five in all, ranging from a marriageable daughter to the naked toddler who first spied us.

The family spilled into the street, drawing neighbors to the doorways, where they smiled at the commotion. Then Meryt was led through the antechamber of Hori’s house and into his hall, a modest room where high windows let in the afternoon light on brightly colored floor mats and walls painted with a lush garden scene. My friend was seated on the best chair of the house and formally introduced, one by one, to her grandchildren.

I sat on the floor against a wall, watching Meryt bask in the glory of her children. The women brought food in from the back rooms, where I caught sight of a kitchen garden. Meryt praised the food, which was well spiced and plentiful, and declared the beer better than any she had tasted in the city of the nobles. Her daughter-in-law beamed at those words, and her son nodded with pride.

The children stared at me, having never seen a woman quite so tall or a face so obviously foreign. They kept their distance, except for the little sentinel, who clambered up on my lap and stayed there, his thumb in his mouth. The weight of a child on my chest reminded me of the sweetness of the days I held Re-mose so. Forgetting myself, I sighed with such longing the others turned toward me.

“My friend!” cried Meryt, who rushed over to my side. “Forgive me for forgetting you.” The child’s mother came and took him from me, and Meryt drew me to my feet.

“This is Den-ner,” she announced, and turned me around, like a child, so that everyone would see my face. “Menna will tell you that she is a friendless midwife he has taken in out of compassion. But I tell you that I am her friend and her sister, and that I am her student, for I have never seen nor heard tell of a more skilled midwife. She has Isis’s hands, and with the goddess’s love of children, shows the compassion of heaven for mothers and babies.”

Meryt, her cheeks flushed with the attentions of her family, spoke about me like a merchant in the marketplace selling her wares. “And she is an oracle, too, my dears. Her dreams are powerful, and her anger is to be feared, for I have seen her blast an evil man out of the prime of his life for harming a young mother. She sees clearly into the hearts of men, and none fool her with fine words that conceal a lying heart.

“She comes from the east,” said Meryt, now intoxicated with the sound of her own voice and her children’s attention. “There, women are often as tall as the men of Egypt. And our Den-ner is as clever as she is tall, for she speaks both the language of the east and our tongue. And she gave birth to Re-mose, a scribe, the heir of Nakht-re, who will someday be a power in the land. We are lucky to have his mother among us, and the house of Menna will find itself lucky when she sleeps under his roof.”

I was mortified to have so many eyes upon me. “Thanks,” was all I could say. “Thank you,” I said, bowing to Menna and Shif-re, and then to Hori and his wife, Takharu. “Thank you for your generosity. I am your servant, in gratitude.”

I returned to my corner by the wall, content to observe the family as they ate and joked and enjoyed one another. As the light began to fade, I closed my eyes for a moment and saw Rachel holding Joseph on her lap, her cheek pressed against his.

I had not thought of my brother Joseph for years, and I could not place the memory exactly. But the scene was as vivid as my recollections of Leah’s touch, as clear in my mind’s eye as the tents of Mamre. Even as a child, I knew that Joseph would be the one to carry the family story into the next generation. He would be the one to change into someone more interesting and complicated than simply a beautiful man born of a beautiful mother.

Meryt’s family thought I napped as I sat by the wall, but I was lost in thoughts of Joseph and Rachel, Leah and Jacob, my aunties and Inna and the days before Shechem. I sighed again, the sigh of an orphan, and my breath filled the room with a momentary melancholy that announced the end of the welcoming party.

Night was falling as Menna led Meryt and me through the moonlit streets to his house, which was nearby. Although it was larger and even better appointed than Hori’s, it was hot and airless inside, so we carried our pallets up a ladder to the roof, where the canopy of stars seemed only a handbreadth away.

I woke just before sunrise and stood up to see the entire town dreaming. They lay alone or in pairs, or in clusters with children and dogs. A cat walked down the street below, carrying something in her mouth. She placed it on the ground, and I saw it was a kitten, whom she began to lick clean. As I watched, the sun turned the cliffs pink and then gold. Women stirred and stretched, and then climbed down the ladders. Soon, the smell of food filled the air and the day began.

At first, Shif-re would not permit me or Meryt to do anything in her kitchen or garden, so the two of us sat useless, watching her work. Meryt had a horror of becoming a meddling mother-in-law, but her hands ached to be busy. “Only let me press out the beer,” she asked. “I could sweep the roof,” I proposed. But Shif-re seemed insulted by our offers. After a week of sitting, I could bear it no longer. Picking up a large empty jug, I announced, “I’m going to the fountain,” and walked out the door before my hostess could object, surprising myself as well as Meryt. After years of fearing the street in Thebes, I rushed into this one, not entirely sure of where to go. But since there were always other women on their way to and from the fountain, I quickly discovered my route.

As I walked, I peered into doorways and smiled at naked children playing in the dust. I began to see differences between one house and the next; flowers planted here and there, lintels painted red or green, stools set up by the doorways. I felt like a girl again, my eyes open to new scenes, my day empty of work.

Near the fountain, I overtook a pregnant woman waddling in front of me. “This is not your first, is it?” I asked brightly as I reached her side. When she spun around to look at me, I saw Rachel’s face as it must have appeared in the long years before Joseph was finally born to her. The woman’s face twisted in anger and desperation.

“Oh, my dear,” I said, ashamed. “I spoke before I understood what this means to you. Fear not, little mother. This boy will be fine.”

Her eyes widened with fear and hope, and her mouth dropped wide. “How dare you speak to me so? This one will die like the others before. I am hated by the gods.” Bitterness and anguish colored her words. “I am a luckless woman.”

My answer came out of me with the assurance of the great mother herself, a voice that came through me but not from me. “He will be born whole, and soon. If not tonight, then tomorrow. Call me and I will help you upon the bricks and cut the cord.”

Ahouri was her name, and after we filled our jars, she led me back to the baker’s house. She lived only a few doorways east of Menna, and when her time came the following night, her husband came seeking the foreign-born midwife.

With Meryt, I attended as easy and straightforward a birth as any I ever saw. Ahouri sobbed with relief as she held the third child of her womb, but the only one born breathing. It was a strapping boy she called Den-ouri, the first to be named in my honor. Her husband, a potter, gave me a beautiful jar in thanks and kissed my hands and would have carried me home in his arms had I permitted it.

Meryt spread the story that I had performed some sort of wonder for Ahouri, and soon we were busier than we had been in Thebes. Most of the men who worked the valley were young, with wives of bearing age, and we attended as many as ten births in a month. Shif-re no longer had idle guests to feed, and indeed, quickly gained more dainties and extra linen than she knew what to do with. Menna was proud to have such respected women under his roof and treated me like his own aunt.

Weeks and months passed quickly, and life in the valley took on its own orderly pace. Mornings were the busiest times, before the great heat descended. The men left early and children played in the streets while the women swept out their homes, cooked the day’s meals, and fetched water at the fountains, where news was exchanged and plans laid for the next festival.

While the great river was not visible from the town, it still ruled the ebb and flow of daily life in the arid valley. Its seasons were celebrated in high spirits by the craftsmen, who grew up imbibing the rhythms of farming by the Nile. After so many years in the land of the great river, I finally learned the beautiful names of its seasons. Akhit—the inundation; peril—the going-out; sJiemou—the harvest. Each had its own holiday and lunar rite, its own festive foods and songs.

Just before my first harvest moon in the valley, a scribe came to Menna’s door with a letter from my son. Re-mose wrote to say that he was living in Thebes again, assigned as scribe to a new vizier called Zafenat Paneh-ah, the king’s choice. He sent greetings in the names of Amun-Re and Isis, and a prayer for my good health. It was a formal note, but I was happy that he thought of me enough to send it. And that shard of limestone, written in his own hand, became my most prized possession and regardless of my protests, became proof of my status as a person of importance.

Not long after my son’s letter arrived, another man appeared at the door seeking the woman named Den-ner. Shif-re asked him if it was his wife or his daughter who had need of a midwife’s bricks, but he said, “Neither.” Then she asked if he was a scribe with another letter from Thebes, but he said no. “I am a carpenter.”

Shif-re came to the garden with curious news about a bachelor carpenter who sought a midwife. Meryt looked up from her spinning sharply and with a great show of disinterest said, “Den-ner, go and see what the stranger wants.” I went without thinking.

His eyes were sadder, but in all other ways he was the same. I stood for only a moment before Benia reached out to me with his right hand. Without hesitation, I placed my left hand in it. I extended my right hand and he took it with his left. We stood like that, hand in hand and smiling like fools without speaking, until Meryt could stand the suspense no longer. “Oh, Den-ner,” she called with false concern. “Are you there, or was that a pirate at the door?”

I led him back through the house to where Meryt hopped like a bird from one foot to the other, wearing the wild grin of the god Bes. Shif-re smiled too, having just learned how Meryt had spent the past months seeking out the artist who had offered me his heart along with the luxurious box that accompanied me from Thebes.

They bade him sit and offered beer and bread. But Benia looked only at me. And I returned his gaze.

“Go ahead then,” Meryt said, giving me a hug and then a push. “Menna will bring your box to you in the morning and I will follow him with bread and salt. Go, in the name of the lady Isis and her consort Osiris. Go and be content.”

Leaving my friend’s house to follow a stranger, I was surprised by my own certainty, but I did not hesitate.

We walked through the streets, side by side, for what seemed like a very long time, saying nothing. His house was near the edge of the settlement, close to the path leading up to the tombs, many streets away from Meryt. As we walked, I recalled my mothers’ stories about hennaed hands and songs for the groom and bride on their way to the bridal tent. I smiled to think of myself as being in a kind of procession at that moment, walking toward my own marriage bed. I smiled too to think of how Meryt would rush from fountain to fountain the next morning, telling everyone about the love affair between Benia the master carpenter and Den-ner the magical midwife. I nearly laughed at the thought. Benia heard the sound that escaped from my mouth as distress. He put his arm around me, placed his lips to my ear, and whispered, “Fear not.”

Magic words. I laid my head on his shoulder and we walked the rest of the way holding hands, like children.

When we arrived at his house, which was nearly as large as Menna’s, he took me through the rooms, and with great pride showed me the furniture he had built—two thronelike chairs, an ornately carved bed, boxes in many shapes. I laughed when I saw the easing stool, which was far too beautiful for its foul purpose. “I thought of you when I made these things,” he said, shrugging in embarrassment. “I thought of you sitting here, sleeping here, putting things to right in your own way. When Meryt found me I made this for you.”