Moses, Man of the Mountain

by Zora Neale Hurston

  “Tell me, and then again show me, so I can know,” was what Moses said to them about every bit of magic in the temples. “Never mind the ceremonies. They are not important. I can learn them from the other side of the altar. They are nothing anyway, but the dressing for what goes on behind the scenes. Make me know.”

  Some of them thought that Moses took seriously the things that meant so much to them, but he didn’t. He learned all of their tricks as he went along, but only to sift them through his mind to see if any of them led towards real knowledge, or the book in the river. At last he knew all that there was to be known and still he found no doors that either hinged on hell nor heaven. He called the names a thousand times, but saw no faces of gods. But he learned many things to distract the minds of unthinking people from their real troubles, and to taint men with the fear of life. In this he saw a certain mastery over people if one cared to use it or needed to use it.

  Then his mother died and he missed her very much. The Ethiopian Princess who had been brought to the palace as his wife as a sign of peace between Egypt and Ethiopia, meant nothing to him. Perhaps that was because he meant nothing to her other than what had been arranged for in the treaty. He looked at her face that seemed to come to a point at her nose like a fox and wondered if he would have loved her if he had been allowed to win her as lesser men won their wives. But it wasn’t worth thinking about too much, and so he didn’t think.

  But he knew it was not because he did not feel. Long ago before he was twenty, he had found out that he was two beings. In short, he was everybody boiled down to a drop. Everybody is two beings: one lives and flourishes in the daylight and stands guard. The other being walks and howls at night. He could be a lot of things to some woman when he found the right one. But the eye-looks of this treaty-wife in the palace was as impersonal as his own. She did not awaken the urge in him to give her the pain and tenderness that make up a marriage. He was always polite and kind. Whatever secrets her body held were no concern of his. And she was happy at being part of the court life. Some day, sometime, he would find a woman and crush from her body that essence that made men live. He would rouse her tears and her tenderness and he would give her something that she could not live without, of which his property and position was only a sign of his inward giving.

  In the meanwhile, he had a great struggle on his hands. As the actual chief of the army he was demanding that Hebrews be included in the forces of Egypt. But he was being strenuously opposed by most of the court and a large part of the officers. They argued that they were not citizens of Egypt, but enemy-prisoners, and as such, it would be rash to put arms into their hands again. Who knew when they might rise up against their conquerors and turn the tables? Moses argued that they were enemies certainly, because they were treated as such. More than a generation of years had passed since the revolution and it was time that these people either be restored to citizenship or sent out of Egypt. It was a weak spot in any nation to have a large body of disaffected people within its confines. And then again, civilization and decency demanded less harsh treatment for human beings. If they could not vote and bear arms at once, then shorten their hours of work and repeal the law that said their boy babies must be killed. It was not being obeyed anyway, and since it put Egypt in a bad light before other nations, why not strike it from the books? The anti-Hebrew party led by Ta-Phar shouted “No” to all of these proposals. If the Hebrews were sent out, wouldn’t they go and join themselves with some enemies of Egypt and return as invaders? They knew all of the back roads and the weak spots of the country. They would know when and where to strike. No, not one Hebrew was going to escape from Egypt. Pharaoh receded from his former position a little. He took off two hours from their working day and rescinded the order on boy babies. Moses took this as a hopeful sign and waited for a chance to demand other changes in the status of Goshen.

  The Hebrews heard of his efforts in their behalf and sent little presents to him in secret to return him some thanks. He took occasion to slip down into Goshen once or twice to see their actual conditions and to talk with some of the leaders. What he saw touched him so that he resolved in his heart to do whatever was in his power to better their condition. He went directly to Pharaoh for a talk, and told him what was in his mind.

  “To outside nations, Pharaoh, we seem better than we are. My idea is, if we wish to be really great is to be better than we seem.”

  “Don’t be too brash, Moses. I have been thinking too. But it is hard to go against public opinion. The Hebrews are thoroughly hated in Egypt. I don’t say that I did not intensify the feeling to a degree when I came to the throne. But I only played on the instrument I found already. Be patient and some further changes might be decreed on my death.”

  “Let us hope that might be a long time off. In the meantime their misery is awful. It is too terrible to look at. Go see for yourself.”

  “I am old and sick and a trip like that would have me flat on my back for months. I don’t believe the country in general would want my days shortened for the sake of those people. They brought it all on themselves anyway. Now, let’s table that subject and get back to these Persians. Do you think we got a chance against them if we invade them? Or do you think we ought to work them up to attack us?”

  “I’ll think it over and let you know. It’s a ticklish question whichever way you take it. If we go there we’ve got to figure out how to carry enough supplies for a long journey and a long stay. This living off of the countries we pass through calls for a lot of extra fighting and we lose men and animals. If they invade us, even if we win, they destroy too much property and lives. Can’t we rest from wars and turn to home problems for a while?”

  “Egypt has no home problems that I can see,” Pharaoh said coldly and turned over in bed. “What internal problems we had, got settled before you were born. Send in my nurse as you go out, and report on the Persian campaign tomorrow.”

  CHAPTER 9

  Moses didn’t have any more notion of killing that Egyptian overseer than he did of flying. It just happened. The whole thing started in the chambers of his wife. He had made his report to Pharaoh on the conduct of the Persian war and went on to his own house to tell the Princess that he was going away on a campaign. When he entered her bedroom she had shrunk away from him as if he had been a crocodile. She ran across the room to the farthest wall and covered her face. Moses stopped dead in his tracks and looked at her.

  “What is the matter with you, woman? Are you crazy?”

  “You kissed me.”

  “I kissed you?”

  “Yes, you did!”

  “When?”

  “Don’t stand there and make out you don’t know what you did. You kissed me when we—when you received me as your wife two years ago.”

  “Oh, I had to do it then. What is wrong with that?”

  “You Hebrew! putting your hands on me!”

  “Hebrew? I a Hebrew? What ever put that notion in your head?”

  “Get out of my room. The very idea of me being married to a Hebrew makes me sick at the stomach. Don’t you dare to come near me. That gang of rapists and slaves.”

  “I am not a Hebrew. I am not a slave. And so far as that treaty-kiss is concerned, if you can call that rape you have plenty of imagination. If my indifference to you in the past isn’t enough, you can take my word for it, you are absolutely safe from me.”

  “It is rape for you to even look at me. Get out of my bedroom. This is no place for Hebrew slaves. Get back to your place in Goshen.”

  “Do you realize what you are saying? As Mentu would have said, you must be blind in one eye and can’t see out of the other one. This is Prince Moses, Commander-in-Chief of the Egyptian armies, standing before you. You are here in my palace because I beat your father in Ethiopia, remember? Not because I sought you as a wife.”

  “I don’t care how many wars and battles you have won. Bragging of your conquests does not excuse you from being a Hebrew.”

  “Why do
you call me a Hebrew all of a sudden?”

  “Because everybody connected with the court is calling you a Hebrew. Your Uncle Ta-Phar says so himself.”

  “But everybody around here, and Ta-Phar especially, knows who I am—my mother, my father and my grandfather. So if I am a Hebrew they are Hebrews, and that goes for Ta-Phar too.”

  “Oh, no, they are not your relations. Your mother did have a son by the Prince of Assyria, but he died and your mother wanted to guarantee an inheritance with Pharaoh, so she took a Hebrew child and passed it off as her own. Nobody ever would have known why you are always hanging around in Goshen and upholding those Hebrews and trying to put weapons in their hands so they can slaughter the rest of us. But now we know why. You are one of them.”

  “I can prove that these are all lies whispered around by my enemies out of jealousy, no doubt.”

  “How? How can you prove it? Your so-called mother is dead. A Hebrew woman came to the palace gates yesterday and demanded an audience with Prince Moses, stating emphatically that she was your sister.”

  “My sister?”

  “Yes, your sister. She came to the palace gates and asked to see you. Of course, they wouldn’t let her in. They asked her what she, a Hebrew, wanted with a Prince of the royal house and she said that she wanted to let you know that her father had been killed by the soldiers in some sort of an uprising. She thought you would do something about it—you being her brother.”

  “My sister in Goshen? Ridiculous!”

  “Yes, your sister. What a filthy trick has been played on me and my country! She says she remembers when you were born and how you were put on the river in an ark and that is how the Princess got hold of you in the first place.”

  “If you and Ta-Phar despise Hebrews so much, how is it you are so willing to take the unsupported word of one of them as gospel truth? My word ought at least to be as good as hers.”

  “Just about. One Hebrew’s word against another.”

  Moses strode out of the room. He was angry. He never remembered being so angry before in his life. This was the work of Ta-Phar. This was the answer of the court to his plea for justice against oppression. This was mob malice. He made up his mind to go straight to Pharaoh and say that since they claimed that he was a Hebrew, they did not need his despised services in the Egyptian army. Let Ta-Phar or some of the other silly, useless nobles do for Egypt what he had done. But a second thought came to him. Perhaps he ought to wait until he was calm before he went to his grandfather. One thing was certain—that Persian war could wait until he came to himself again. It would never do to take the field in his present state of mind. He decided to take a walk and think things over. Then he would ask for an audience with Pharaoh and explain his situation and his feelings. Him a Hebrew? “That is the way with people. I am finding out,” he was saying aloud to himself and the Infinite Expanse. “If they do you wrong, they invent a bad name for you, a good name for their acts and then destroy you in the name of virtue.” He kept on walking and thinking. The idea of calling him, Prince Moses, a Hebrew! If Ta-Phar thought so, why had he been so hush-mouth about it all these years? For it was no secret that Ta-Phar had never loved him. He had openly resented both his mother and him. So why did he bring the mess up now? Had some Hebrew really made such a claim? He didn’t believe it. It was too much to believe. More likely Ta-Phar had thought it up himself since his mother’s death, realizing the difficulty of proof, and the harm it would do before the proof could be had. So! The court was really angry with him for asking justice for Hebrews. “They have decided to destroy me out of hand,” Moses reflected. “They are ready to do anything to confirm them in their position, and to do that, they have to prostitute the language. They must blow out the sun and switch on a spotlight.”

  He walked and thought and felt and walked. He was outside the new city of the King, the towered city of Rameses, named for his grandfather, before he realized where he was. He was upon the new public works, a causeway, splendidly conceived, which was being built with forced Hebrew labor. He saw the men straining and striving and the Egyptian bossman striding among them and striking out with his bull whip without regards to whom he hit nor why. Moses stopped in his tracks and looked on. He looked at the straining backs of the workmen and then at the face of the foreman, and suddenly he saw all Egypt in that face. The newness come to power, the cruelty and greed. And he thought, “I have risked my life and exposed myself to a thousand dangers for such as him. Only some of them strut around the capitol in robes of state. But the same faces. And their faces got that way from keeping company with their souls.”

  The foreman saw Moses and knew him. Who was it in Egypt that did not know that face and figure? It was Moses, the Suten-Rech, the mighty man of arms. The singers said that he was the savior of Egypt, the conqueror of the world. Both oceans knew him, the ocean of the sea and the ocean of the air. His name and fame were great, his clothes were fine. It was not often that a prince looked on a foreman nor the foreman on a prince. So the foreman wanted a smile of notice and a nod of approval from so rich and just a man. He must do something to attract his eye. Aha! there was a weasly Hebrew straining with a rock that was too heavy for him. Look at him, now! His knee joints were sprung and his back was humped. His neck was stringy from straining. The lash spat derisively in the air and wrapped around the Hebrew’s shoulders, and bit into his short ribs. The sudden pain made him drop the stone he was lifting and it crushed his foot.

  “Pick it up!” snarled the foreman and hit him again. By this time the foreman felt as mighty as the reputation of Moses. He fought a hundred battles on the Hebrew’s back and the Hebrew grovelled on his all-fours begging for mercy. But that did not save him. The whip kept singing. He crawled. between the knees of the overseer to protect his head and face. He was too close in for the lash to strike him but still he could not save himself. He begged for mercy, and it made a whining obbligato to go with the rhythm of the blows because the foreman turned the stock of the whip in his hand and beat him about his head and shoulders. Other workmen cowered in fear and wailed in sympathy and terror.

  Moses heard the wails and woke out of his nausea at what he was seeing. He leaped upon the foreman and snatched the whip away. With his right arm, so famous in Asia and Africa, he swung and struck the foreman between the eyes and staggered him. A terrible surprise crept to the eyes of the man and peeped out at Moses. Twice again he struck the creature of Pharaoh’s hatred and intolerance and the man lay on the sand without a quiver. Moses stooped down and saw the man was dead.

  Moses straightened up and thought came back. “I didn’t mean to kill him,” he said softly.

  “You didn’t kill him, Suten-Rech.” The Hebrews all crowded about the Prince and wept for joy. “You didn’t kill him. You just hurt him and he died from being hurt.”

  “Anyway, he is dead,” Moses said with more calm than he felt. “Bury him well in the sand and keep your mouths shut about it. Pharaoh would be angry if he knew.”

  Moses stayed until the overseer was buried and the place smoothed over. “Go on about your work as if nothing had happened. If anybody asks you what became of your foreman say that a dignitary passed and called him away, and he has not returned. That is all you know.”

  The physical exertion had given Moses a sort of release from his turmoil of spirit. He turned back feeling better. He went to see his grandfather and arranged to have the war put off for another week. He was not sorry the foreman was dead; he was only sorry that he had had to get mixed up in it at such a time and under such circumstances. If Ta-Phar and some others heard about it, they would use it to bolster up the stories they were circulating about him. He felt reasonably safe that the Hebrew workmen would not expose him. He had jeopardized his future for their sake. It would be both graceless and foolish for them to spread the report around.

  He felt lonely in the palace and he felt lonely in the camp. So he went to visit the tomb of Mentu the second day after the killing of the foreman. “A
m I a Hebrew?” he asked himself there, but found nothing to convince him that he was. But one thing had come out of it—he found a new sympathy for the oppressed of all mankind. He lost his taste for war. Warfare, under the fanfare and flattery of the court, had been his outlet. And now it had lost its glamor. He was saying to the glory of struggle and victory, “Go away, honey, you have lost your sweetness.” He was denying what he had held to be the truth. Well, he thought, he was twenty-five. His youth was behind him. Henceforth he was a man of thought.

  A week later he was drawn to pass the palace where he had killed the foreman. He was surprised to find that a Hebrew foreman had been appointed to take the dead man’s place. But things were going little better than before. Two of the workmen were having a fist-fight and paying no attention to the foreman.

  “What is the trouble?” Moses asked. “What’s the matter with you men?”

  The foreman approached Moses respectfully and shook his head sadly as he explained, “Some of them want to knock off work early to hold a protest meeting, and the others agree with me that it just wouldn’t do. It would look very bad to my over-boss that just as soon as a Hebrew got to be foreman, the men left work whenever they got ready to hold meetings.”

  “Your foreman is right,” Moses agreed, speaking to the men. “This sort of thing is what I am working for. Hebrew foremen first and keeping on up the line until you have Hebrew state officials. But if you start leaving work and creating disturbances, you will find yourselves worse off than you were, instead of better.”

  “That is what I tell them,” the foreman said, “but being one of them, my people despise me so much that they won’t pay me no mind.”

  “They had better if they know what is good for them.” Moses spoke firmly. “You must be united among yourselves and you must obey your foreman. You must respect yourselves if you want others to respect you. Now you get back to work, all of you, and do what your foreman tells you.” Moses spoke in a military tone of voice.