The Egyptian (11 page)

He smote the table with his whip, overturning the wine cups, and my servant fled with a yelp of fear.

“Horemheb, my friend—you are ill after all. Your eyes are fevered, and you are bathed in sweat.”

“Am I not a man?” He smote his chest. “I can lift a brawny slave in either hand and crack their heads together. I can bear heavy burdens as a soldier should, I can run long distances without becoming breathless, and I fear neither hunger and thirst nor the desert sun. But all this is shameful in their eyes, and the women in the golden house admire only such men as do not need to shave; they like them with slender wrists and hairless chests and hips like girls’. They admire the ones who carry sunshades and paint their mouths red and twitter like the birds in the trees. I am despised for being strong and for having sunburned skin and hands, that show that I can work.”

He fell silent, staring before him. At length he emptied his goblet.

“You are alone, Sinuhe—and so am I, for I guess what is to come. I know that I was born to a high command and that one day both kingdoms will have need of me. But I can no longer bear to be alone, Sinuhe. There are sparks of fire in my heart; my throat feels tight; I cannot sleep. I must get away from Thebes—the filth stifles me, and the flies soil me.”

Looking at me then, he said in a low voice, “Sinuhe, you are a doctor. Give me a remedy that will conquer love.”

“That is easy. I can give you berries that when dissolved in wine will make you strong and hot as the baboon so that women sigh in your arms and roll their eyes. That is easily done.”

“Nay, you misunderstand me, Sinuhe. There is nothing wrong with my strength. I want a remedy for folly. I want a remedy to quieten my heart—and turn it into stone.”

“There is no such remedy. A smile—a glance from green eyes—and the physician’s arts are powerless. This I know. But the wise say that one evil spirit can be driven out by another. Whether this is true I know not—but I fancy the second might be worse than the first.”

“What do you mean?” he demanded irritably. “I am weary of twisted phrases.”

“Find another woman to drive the first from your heart. That is all I meant. Thebes is full of lovely, seductive women who paint their faces and wear the thinnest of linen. You may find one among them to smile upon you, being young and strong with slender limbs and a gold chain about your neck. But I do not understand what keeps you from the one you desire. Even though she be married, there is no wall too high for love to surmount. When a woman desires a man, her cunning can remove all barriers. Stories from both kingdoms prove that. The love of women is said to be as constant as the wind, blowing always and merely changing its direction. Women’s virtue, they say, is like wax and melts in the heat. So it has been and ever will be.”

“She is not married,” snapped Horemheb. “You are beside the mark with your prattle of constancy and virtue. She does not even see me though I dwell under her eyes nor take my hand if I stretch it forth to help her into her chair.”

“She is then a lady of some distinction?”

“Vain to speak of her. She is lovelier than the moon and the stars and more remote. Truly I could more easily grasp the moon in my arms. Therefore, I must forget—therefore, I must leave Thebes or die.”

“You have surely not fallen victim to the charms of the Queen Mother,” I exclaimed jestingly, for I wanted to make him laugh. “She is too old and fat to please a young man.”

“And she has her priest,” returned Horemheb with contempt. “I believe they were adulterers while the king yet lived.”

I stopped him with my raised hand and said, “You have drunk from many poisoned wells since you came to Thebes.”

“The one I desire paints her lips and cheeks yellow red, and her oval eyes are dark, and no one has yet touched those limbs veiled by the royal linen. Her name is Baketamon, and in her veins flows the blood of the Pharaohs. Now you know all my madness, Sinuhe. But if you tell anyone or remind me of it with so much as a word, I will seek you out and slay you wherever you may be—I will put your head between your legs and throw your body on the wall.”

I was greatly alarmed at what he said, for that a man of low birth should raise his eyes to Pharaoh’s daughter to desire her was a dire thing indeed. I answered, “No mortal may approach her. If she is to marry anyone, it will be her brother, the heir, who will raise her up to be his equal as royal consort. And thus it will be, for I read it in her eyes at the deathbed of the King when she looked at no one but her brother. I feared her as a woman whose limbs will bring no warmth to any man, and emptiness and death dwell in her glance. Depart, Horemheb, my friend; Thebes is no place for you.”

He retorted impatiently, “All this I know better than you, and your chatter is as the buzz of flies in my ear. Let us rather return to what you said of the evil spirits, for my heart is full; and, when I have drunk wine, I long for some woman to smile at me, whoever it be. But her robe must be of royal linen; she must wear a wig and paint her lips and cheeks yellow red, and to awaken my desire her eyes must be curved like the rainbow.”

I smiled. “You say wisely. Let us therefore debate the matter like friends.”

“Listen! Among my fellow officers is one Kefta from Crete, whom I once had occasion to kick. He now respects me, and he invited me to go with him today to a reception at a house near the temple of some catheaded god. I have forgotten the name of the god, having felt no inclination to go.”

“You mean Bast. I know the temple, and the place is in all likelihood well suited to your purpose, for light women pray much to the catheaded one and make sacrifice to win wealthy lovers.”

“But I do not go without you, Sinuhe. I am of low birth, ignorant of behavior in Thebes and especially among the women of Thebes. You are a man of the world and were born here, and you must come with me.”

I was flushed with wine, and his confidence in me was flattering; I would not confess that my knowledge of women was as slight as his. I sent Kaptah for a carrying chair and bargained with the porters while Horemheb drank more wine to give himself courage. The men carried us to the temple of Bast. When they saw that torches and lamps burned before the doors of the house we were to visit, they began to complain loudly of their payment until Horemheb slashed at them with his whip and they fell into injured silence.

I led the way in, and no one seemed surprised at our coming. Cheerful servants poured water over our hands, and the aroma of hot dishes, of ointments and flowers, was wafted out as far as the veranda. Slaves adorned us with garlands, and we stepped boldly into the great hail.

When we had entered, I had no eyes for any but the woman who came toward us. She was clad in royal linen so that her limbs gleamed through it like the limbs of a goddess. On her head she wore a heavy blue wig, and she had much red jewelry; her eyebrows were blackened, and beneath her eyes was painted a green shadow. But greener than all green were the eyes themselves, like the Nile in the heat of summer, so that my heart was drowned in them. For this was Nefernefernefer, whom I had once met in the colonnade of Ammon’s great temple. She did not recognize me but smiled at Horemheb, who raised his officer’s whip in greeting. Kefta, the young Cretan, was there also; he ran up to Horemheb and embraced him, calling him his friend.

No one heeded me, and I had leisure to gaze at the sister of my heart. She was older than I remembered, and her eyes no longer smiled but were hard as green stones. They did not smile though her mouth smiled, and they rested first upon the gold chain about Horemheb’s neck. But my knees were weak as I beheld her.

There was much shouting and laughter; overturned wine jars and crushed flowers lay about the floor, and the Syrian musicians handled their instruments to such purpose that no conversation could be heard. It was evident that there had been a great deal of drinking, for one woman vomited. A servant handed her a bowl too late so that her dress was befouled and everyone laughed.

Kefta the Cretan embraced me, also, smearing salve all over my face as he did so and calling me his friend. But Nefernefernefer looked at me and said, “Sinuhe! I once knew a Sinuhe; he also was to be a physician.”

“I am that Sinuhe,” I said, looking her in the eye and trembling.

“No, you are not he.” She made a gesture of denial. “The Sinuhe I knew was a young boy with eyes as clear as a gazelle’s—but you are a man with the ways of a man. There are two furrows between your eyebrows, and your face is not smooth like his.”

I showed her the ring with the green stone that I wore on my finger, but she shook her head, pretending to be puzzled, and said, “I must be entertaining a robber in my house, who has killed that Sinuhe and stolen the ring I once gave him in token of our friendship. His name also you have stolen, and the Sinuhe who pleased me no longer lives.”

She raised her hands in the gesture of grief, and in my bitterness I took the ring from my finger and handed it to her, saying, “Take back your ring then, and I will go and vex you no longer.”

But she said, “Do not go!” and again, laying her hand lightly on my arm as she had done once before, she said softly, “Do not go!”

And I did not go though I knew that her body would burn me worse than fire and that never again could I be happy without her. Servants poured out wine for us, and wine was never more delectable in my mouth than then.

The woman who had been ill rinsed her mouth and drank more wine. Then she drew off her soiled gown and threw it down; she also removed her wig so that she was quite naked. She pressed her breasts together with her hands, telling the servants to pour wine between them, and she let any drink there who cared to. She reeled down the room laughing loudly—young, beautiful, reckless—and, pausing before Horemheb, she offered him the wine between her breasts. He bent his head and drank. When he raised it again, his face was dark, and he looked the woman in the eyes, seized her bare head in his hands, and kissed her. Everyone laughed, and the woman laughed with them. Then becoming shy all at once, she demanded a fresh gown. Servants clad her, and she put on her wig again. She sat close to Horemheb and drank no more. The Syrian musicians played on; I felt the fever of Thebes in my blood and knew that I was born to live in the sunset of the world—that nothing mattered any more as long as I might sit beside the sister of my heart and gaze on the greenness of her eyes and the redness of her lips.

Thus it was through Horemheb that I came to meet Nefernefernefer my beloved once again; but it would have been better for me if I had never met her.

“Is this your house?” I asked her as she sat beside me, surveying me with her hard green eyes.

“This is my house, and these are my guests. I have guests every evening, for I do not care to be alone.”

“And Metufer?” I asked, for I wished to know all, despite the pain it might cause me. She frowned a little.

“Did you not know that Metufer is dead? He died because he misused money Pharaoh had given his father for the building of a temple. Metufer died, and his father is no longer the royal master builder. Did you not know that?”

“If that is true,” I said smiling, “I can almost believe that Ammon punished him, for he mocked the name of Ammon.” I told her how Metufer and the priest had spat in the face of Ammon’s statue to wash it and how they had rubbed themselves with Ammon’s sacred ointment.

She smiled, but her eyes had a hard, distant look in them. Suddenly she said, “Why did you not come to me then, Sinuhe? If you had sought me, you would have found me. You did ill in not coming and in visiting other women with my ring on your finger.”

“I was but a boy and I feared you—but in my dreams you were my sister, Nefernefernefer, and—laugh at me if you will—I have never yet lain with any woman. I have been waiting to see you again.”

She laughed and made a gesture of disbelief.

“You are certainly lying. In your eyes I must seem an ugly old woman, and it diverts you to mock me and lie to me.” Her eyes were gay now as in other days, and she looked so much younger that my heart swelled and ached as I looked at her.

“It is true that I have never touched any woman,” I said, “but it may not be true that I have waited for you. Let me be honest. Very many women have come before me, young and old, pretty and plain, wise and simple; but I have looked upon all alike with the eye of a physician; and not one of them has stirred my heart; though why this should be I cannot tell.”

“Perhaps when you were a little boy you fell from the top of a wagon load and landed astride the shaft, so that ever since then you have been melancholy and happier alone”; and, as she laughed, she touched me lightly as no woman had ever touched me. Reply was needless, for she knew herself that what she said was untrue. She quickly withdrew her hand, whispering: “Let us drink wine together. I may yet take my pleasure with you, Sinuhe.”

We drank wine while the slaves carried some of the guests out to their chairs, and Horemheb put his arm about the woman beside him, calling her his sister. He took the gold chain from his neck and would have hung it about hers.

But she resisted and said angrily, “I am a decent woman and no harlot!” Rising, she moved away in an offended manner, but in the doorway beckoned secretly and Horemheb followed her. I saw nothing more of either of them that evening.

Those who yet remained went on drinking. They staggered about the floor tripping over stools and rattling sistra they had filched from the musicians. They embraced, calling each other brother and friend—and then fell out with blows and cries of gelding and eunuch.

I was drunk, not with wine but with the nearness of Nefernefernefer and with the touch of her hand, until at last she made a sign and the servants began to put out the lights, carry away tables and stools, and gather up the trampled garlands. Then I said to her, “I must go.”

But each word stung my heart like salt in a wound, for I dreaded losing her, and every moment not spent in her company seemed to me wasted.

“Where will you go?” she asked in feigned surprise.