Moses, Man of the Mountain

by Zora Neale Hurston

  She burst into the house and found her mother stretched upon the floor facing the little cave where she had hidden the baby so often, and her mother was holding one of his little garments and weeping bitterly. Then Miriam remembered, not just that she had seen the Princess and heard her speak, but why she had been posted at that lonely place on the bank of the Nile at all. She recoiled from her mother’s face in panic.

  “What happened to my child, Miriam?”

  “Oh—er—” Miriam came back to herself from her dreams of the palace. “I—I don’t know, mama.”

  “You don’t know?” Jochebed sprang to her feet in fury. “You don’t know when you were left there to find out? You stupid dunce! Why don’t you know? Didn’t you stay where I put you?”

  “Yes. Yes, mama, but I—I went to sleep. I was so tired from last night that I couldn’t help it. I went to sleep after sun-up.”

  Seeing her frenzied mother searching for something with which to strike her made Miriam come alive inside more thoroughly than she ever had done before in her life and suddenly an explanation flashed across her brain.

  “You see, mama, while I was asleep, the basket with your baby in it floated down-stream and the Princess saw it and took him home to the palace with her.”

  “The Princess? You mean Pharaoh’s daughter?”

  “Yes, mama, she’s the very one. She was bathing herself in the river down below me and the basket with the baby in it floated down to where she was after she had finished her bath and was perfumed and anointed and dressed with a whole heap of pretty things in her hair. Then when she was ready to go she saw the baby and sent and took it with her. I met the party on the road and tried to ask ’em what they was doing with your child, but they took and drawed a sword on me and made like they was going to kill me.”

  Jochebed wept bitterly. She felt her heart crowding her throat. She felt like the whole of Egypt was crowded into her middle and still she felt empty of joy.

  “Now I know my poor little baby will be killed,” she wailed and bowed herself again upon the floor. “The sea-buzzards will kill it just for fun.”

  “No, mama, she was real nice. She walked like this and smiled at me. And when some of her servants threatened me she told them to leave me alone. She had music played when she found the child and took it to the palace like she was proud. I love the Princess, mama. I wish she would take me to the palace too.”

  “Miriam, I ain’t to be fooled with today: is you telling me the truth, or is you trying to dodge a whipping for not minding the baby?”

  “But, mama, I did see her send for the casket and take it home with her. One of her ladies in waiting carried it herself.”

  “Oh, I am so sorry that I did not stay myself to watch! Maybe I won’t never know what become of my baby. Miriam, are you sure it was the same basket which we made to hold the baby?”

  “Yes, ma’am. I could see them get it even from a distance. And the Princess had on red sandals and her toenails was red.”

  “And how did she treat the baby?”

  “She made them play music and they danced for her because she was so glad because she had found the child. I could see everything they did, mama. I wasn’t far from the Princess. She told ’em she loved the child a lot already.”

  Jochebed stiffened her back and stood up suddenly. “I ain’t a bit surprised to hear the Princess loved him. He is a mighty pretty child, and smart as a whip for his age.” A glow began to gleam through her seamed face. “So my child is in the palace! I’ll go let the neighbors know.” She tied her best shawl over her head and got as far as the door and stopped. “No, I reckon I ought to tell my husband about our son getting to be a Prince of the house of Pharaoh before I tell the others.” She took off her shawl and turned back. “Get busy, Miriam, folks will be coming in to see us when they hear. The house must look better than it’s looking now for big doings like this. We is kinfolks to the Pharaohs now.” She thrust the broom into Miriam’s hands and herself began to make up a batch of honey cookies.

  Jochebed began to mix the dough. She took great care with it and all the time laboring Miriam for more detail.

  “Miriam.”

  “Yes, mama.”

  “Come here to me. You didn’t tell me whether the baby cried or not when the Princess opened the basket.”

  “No, ma’am. I did not hear him cry at all. And, mama, the Princess had a headdress of blue feathers that fell down over her shoulders in a real pretty way like this.” Miriam grabbed a shawl and draped it over her head and strutted about.

  “What did she say, Miriam, when she saw him? Tell me her exact words.”

  “She said, ‘What a beautiful child!’”

  “Did she say that? She must be a real fine Princess sure enough.”

  “Oh, she is. Maybe if I was to go and ask her, she might take me for a nurse to the baby.”

  “Hush up talking foolish! Youse too young. She would need a woman with breast milk. I will go myself tomorrow to the palace and find out if they need anybody.”

  Jochebed kneaded dough vigorously and bustled about. “Blow up the fire, Miriam. I want a bed of coals to bake these hot cakes.” She patted out the little honey cakes and put them on the fire. “Think I will run over to Rachel’s, Hur’s wife, and tell her about it. We have always been the best of friends and she would feel hurt if I kept anything secret from her like this. I’ll tell her it’s a secret and she won’t tell a soul. Mind you now, Miriam, don’t let them cakes burn.”

  When Amram entered the door that night, very tired and sore from work, he greeted his wife with “What is this I hear about the daughter of Pharaoh adopting our son?”

  “Oh, you done heard it already?” Jochebed asked with a pleased air.

  “Who in Goshen ain’t heard? That is all the folks are talking about. Well, is it so?”

  “Certainly, it is so.”

  “How do you know? Did the palace say anything to you?”

  “Why, no. Reckon they didn’t count us enough to tell us, us being Hebrews. But Miriam saw her bathing party at the river and saw them take the child.”

  “Humph! Pharaoh’s killing every Hebrew boy child he can get his hands on and his daughter taking one home for a son. Ridiculous!”

  “Oh, the Egyptians may not be as cruel as you make them out to be. Come here, Miriam, and tell your pa what you saw and what you heard.”

  Miriam told again what she had told her mother and added, “And she wanted me to come to the palace to take care of the child for her.”

  “See, Mr. Smarty!” Jochebed cried triumphantly. “Always hunting for something mean and low. You don’t even believe butter is greasy.”

  “Oh, I’m willing enough to believe if you give me something to go on. I still want to ask Miriam some questions. For instance, if Miriam was not close enough to make out any special marks on the casket, how can she know it was the same one? Millions like that been made in Egypt. If Miriam didn’t hear the baby cry how could she tell what was in the basket? It might have been the toilet articles of the Princess or a hundred other things. And then again even if she had heard a baby cry unless she was close enough to see the baby, how does she know it was the same one? Couldn’t the party have brought a baby with them from the palace?”

  Jochebed lost her good nature at that. Possibly he touched upon fears already hidden in her heart so she flew hot and turned upon Amram.

  “Oh, you make me sick with your doubts and your suspicions! Always looking for a bug under every chip! Throwing cold water on everything! As if your own daughter couldn’t tell the truth! I suppose you would rather believe that a crocodile come along while Miriam closed her eyes for a minute and et up our poor child.”

  “It could have happened, you know.”

  “Shut up!” Jochebed screamed. “You ain’t human! You ain’t got no feelings! First you wanted to kill the child yourself and—”

  “No, Jochebed, I didn’t want to kill my boy. Pharaoh passed that law, not me. I
just wanted to keep the soldiers from having the satisfaction of murdering it, that was all.”

  “And when I wouldn’t let you, you, its papa, I stopped you from killing it, you want to believe now that the crocodiles et it up or either the soldiers found it after all and drowned it. Amram, youse as hard as a flint inside. I hate you.”

  “Jochebed,” Amram said patiently, “I don’t want to rob you out of your hope. I dread to think myself. But don’t let us not raise up our hope to the throne of truth. Let us go ask at the palace tomorrow. Anyway, you had no business telling this thing all around until you had talked with me.”

  They had to stop quarreling because people began dropping in. Soon the house was full of people gloating inwardly and chuckling out loud. “Ho, ho! Pharaoh hates Hebrews, does he? He passes a law to destroy all our sons and he gets a Hebrew child for a grandson. Ain’t that rich?”

  And Amram hated it all. It made him feel flimsy and artificial. He felt worse because he could hear Miriam outside, the center of a large crowd, telling and retelling her story. “The child was crying and that is how she found him. So Pharaoh’s daughter asked me to bring mama to the palace to be a nurse for the child.”

  “And why not?” one elder asked. “There is plenty of Hebrew blood in that family already. That is why that Pharaoh wants to kill us all off. He is scared somebody will come along and tell who his real folks are. The country can’t get along without us. Take Joseph for example now: Did Egypt ever amount to anything until he took hold of things? I ask you, did it now? Tell me! We are going to have another great man in the palace when this boy they just took in grows up. This country can’t make out without us.”

  “You said something just now, but you didn’t know it,” another added. “The higher-ups who got Hebrew blood in ’em is always the ones to persecute us. I got it from somebody that ought to know, that the grandmother of Pharaoh was a Hebrew woman.”

  “Why, they tell me that the new commissioner of finance is an out-and-out Hebrew who renounced his race. He won’t even be seen speaking to one of us.”

  “That would be just like him to do a trick like that. Afraid of being recognized, that’s why.”

  “For my part,” one of the women said, “I think the Princess is a very fine woman. It is time we quit straining against the new order and took a active part in it.” There was hearty agreement from many women with this viewpoint.

  “Oh, you women!” Amram snorted. “You are always ready to go with the conqueror. You recognize nothing but power. If it is a woman, a cow, a ewe, a dog or whatever female it is—let the male fight and die for her, and the moment that he is thoroughly beaten or killed, she gives herself to his conqueror. Talk about men being hard! We are the sentimental fools and you are the realists. Phooey!”

  The little cakes were finally all gone and the crowd talked far into the night of the Hebrew victory over Pharaoh and went home. They did not question too closely for proof. They wanted to believe, and they did. It kept them from feeling utterly vanquished by Pharaoh. They had something to cherish and chew on, if they could say they had a Hebrew in the palace.

  So the next day, Jochebed washed herself and walked the long and dusty way to the palace gate to offer herself as nurse to the baby, but they would not let her in. There was no new baby to be nursed, they told her. The Princess had been summoned home from Assyria on the death of her husband and had brought her infant son with her several months ago. But what is that to you, Hebrew woman? Anyway, no Hebrew servants were being used in the palace. Begone with you!

  Still and all, Goshen never gave up their belief in the Hebrew in the palace. It was something for men to dream about. Jochebed became a figure of importance—the mother of our Prince in the palace. Miriam told her story again and again to more believing ears. It grew with being handled until it was a history of the Hebrew in the palace, no less. Men claimed to have seen signs at the birth of the child, and Miriam came to believe every detail of it as she added them and retold them time and time again. Others conceived and added details at their pleasure and the legends grew like grass.

  CHAPTER 6

  Inside the royal palace affairs went on unconscious of the legends of Goshen. The Pharaoh had his programs, national and international. At home he worked to reorganize the county into a unit intensely loyal to the new regime. Externally he strove to bulwark the country against outside attack. Force was his juices and force was his meat. It was his boast that his reign should make it so that outsiders trembled when they breathed the mighty name of Egypt. The very rims of the earth should bear the spread wings of the Hawk-god Horus, who signified the sun in Egypt and should bear its light to all the world.

  Inside the palace was Pharaoh’s son and daughter. The son Ta-Phar had all the self-assurance of the actual ruler without his father’s ability. He was impatient of the day when he should take hold of the rod of state. Ah, then Egypt and the world would see a Pharaoh! Crowns, state and personal robes would take on new glory. Finer chariots and horses and many more dinners of state. His tomb should outdo every pyramid that had been built or ever would be built. The stumbling stones in the path of doing these things had never occurred to him. What was the use of being a Pharaoh if one could not be lavish? Why should the wishes of a Pharaoh be opposed? So none about the court dared oppose him. In the chase and other tests of strength and skill, the courtiers learned to be a poor second to his poorer first. The arrow of the Suten-Rech, Ta-Phar, was somehow found in a vital spot in every dead lion or antelope.

  Inside the palace also was the Pharaoh’s widowed daughter who was not expected to do any more than she did. She must lend her support to the female robes of state. She must lend her ears to the sounds of mighty words boiling out of futile men. She must bear something in male form, for after all that is what she was born for—a passageway for boy children. If she seemed too attentive to her son and a little blank while her brother, the heir apparent, poured out his boasts, he attributed it to her jealousy that she would not be sharing the throne with him when the time came to share or not to share. She had been mated with a foreign prince and since she had the misfortune to become a widow, she must not be allowed the notion that living in the palace meant advancing the position of that misfit son of hers. Ta-Phar did not intend to break his neck in the chase nor expose himself too much in battle. Just to make way for that Moses, that little smart-aleck who was always nosing among the papyrus rolls in the library.

  Inside the palace walls was Moses, son of the Princess and second in line for the throne of Egypt. To his mother he was the most beautiful child in all Egypt. He was considered a handsome child by all. And everyone who came inside the royal enclosures was conscious of him. At first he followed the household servants about asking what and how and why until they tried to devise means of directing his attention elsewhere.

  Then it was the gardeners and the grooms who caught his imagination. He was always wanting to know about plants. Was a frog a plant? Well, if a frog was not a plant, why was it in the garden? Who put it there? Why did frogs want to come in the garden? Why was the sky blue? Who bent it up like that? Did it ever fall down? If the sun could come up by itself and could roost on the high perch of noon, why did it fall down in the evening? Where did it go at night? Where was the river going and what were the sounds it said? Who made the first day? When? Why? Some of these questions went unanswered, but not all. There was one old man who tended the horses. He had answers in the form of stories for nearly every question that Moses asked and he told stories unasked because they just came to him to tell. They were unexpected visitors, those stories were, he explained to the eager little boy, and they stood outside his door until they were asked to come in. He did not know why they called upon him and did not call on many others. They tortured him at times, these people and events who came unasked and walked about in his mind. They always seemed to want to get out where people could see them. That had puzzled the old stableman a great deal because they were not always be
autiful nor their behavior pleasant. Nevertheless one and all wanted to get out as soon as ever they could to show themselves. They always departed about their own business once they had been given outside life by his lips—for he could not write at all. So they had no home in the papyrus rolls like others who spring from the minds of scribes. These, his images and happenings of the mind, scrambled from his lips and entertained the listeners for a day, then went to join the thousands of other dreams where they dwelt. Where did they hide? He did not know. But he believed that they did not die. They were stronger and more enduring than men.

  So Moses learned how God made that first day. He had ordered the covering robe stripped from the sun. Why had He done so? Well, you see, He had made the world and the firmaments. He had hammered out the great bowl of investing firmament and starred it with rivets. Then the company of heaven had asked to see the work of His hands and He had said, “Let there be light” and flung back the blanket from the sun and the world stood revealed.

  “Then why do we have nights between days?” Moses asked.

  “Well, He is still working on the world and He must hide His hand from us humans. That is why things grow at night. Most things are born in the mothering darkness and most things die. Darkness is the womb of creation, my boy. But the sun with his seven horns of flame is the father of life.”

  Hours and hours they sat, the old hostler and the little boy behind the royal stables, in the shade of the structure. And the images arose in the brain chamber of Mentu, the stableman, and stumbled off his lips and became real creatures to Moses—to live in his memory forever.

  “You see, male man was made with five strong senses to gather the truth of things and his mind is a threshing floor to clean his truth in. This is often an unhappy thing, for man sees himself as he really is. Thus he is made very miserable. But he does not destroy himself because the female man was made with squint eyes so that she sees only those things which please her. And her threshing floor is cramped and cluttered. She cannot separate the wheat from the chaff. But she achieves a harvest that makes her happy. When she sees man fleeing from his bowl in horror of himself, she feeds him from her own dish and he is blindly and divinely happy. Ah, yes, the female companion of man has the gift of the soothing-balm of lies.”