Pan's Flute

by J. -H. Rosny aîné

  Gaila did not reply immediately. She traced new circles on the ground, murmuring words in the language of her homeland. Then she resumed, in a guttural voice: “The gods do not want to speak more clearly. It seems that the man has encountered you already and will soon encounter you again. That is all I can tell you now, but if you wish, I will wait on the road another day...”

  The princess was disturbed. Daughter of a superstitious land, and credulous by temperament, she had no suspicion of the slave from the Gulf. An image that had not displeased her floated before her. She saw the plain of Thebes again, and the chief of the phalanx with sparkling eyes. Desire swelled her young, sighing breast. Noticing then that the seeress had a seductive mouth, she said: “I do not forbid you to wait for me on the road. But fear lying. I know how to attain you!”

  She put a piece of silver in Gaila’s hand, and said: “Give me a kiss with your mouth, as a sign of sincerity....”

  She drew the slave’s head toward her and, assuring herself that the red lips were as tender as they were beautiful, she said, with a hint of disturbance: “Yes you should come back. I order you to be here on the eighth day that will follow this one.”

  But that was not the day that Gaila had chosen. She replied: “I cannot come before the fifteenth day, daughter of Hatsheput; the gods oppose it; we must not disobey them.”

  Aoura hesitated momentarily, impatient at being opposed in a desire, but her piety and her natural mildness prevailed.

  “You will come on the fifteenth day, then. If you are free, you will follow me; if you are not, I will have you bought by King Thutmose for my service.”

  Gaila watched the princess and her escort disappear into the enclosure of the temple of Amenemhat. She smiled mysteriously, with a sort of indulgence, content to have succeeded in her first attempt. Then, even though she was not jealous, she thought sadly about the beauty of Thutmose’s sister. She took out her little copper mirror and looked at herself alternately in the water of the lake and the metal, taking pleasure in her face.

  VII

  Gaila did not give Setne any account of her conversation with the princess. In disguise, she prowled around Thumose’s palace, and succeeded in conversing with royal slaves. She learned a hundred things about Aoura’s past from an old Nubian woman, and discovered actions, steps and projects from which she might obtain advantage for her master.

  Setne came back one afternoon exhausted by heat and fatigue, for Thutmose, who was planning a war, was keeping his troops breathless throughout the land of Egypt.

  The young chief sat down in his garden in the shadow of an awning, in an enclosure of date palms and sycamores. White and pink lotuses raised their delicate heads over the water of a little pool, while a heron, ibises and wild ducks slept in the heat of the day.

  Setne was dozing in that fashion when he heard a light footstep on the grass. He raised his eyelids and saw Gaila enveloped in a hyacinth fabric, her hair still damp from the bath. An odor of aromatics floated around her; her eyes distilled a fire, sometimes veiled and sometimes as bright as topaz; her breasts protruded partly from the cloth, pure, ardent and luminous, uplifted by an intoxicating emotion.

  The soldier forgot his fatigue then; he forgot his cares and he forgot himself. He wanted to melt into that delicious flesh. He advanced with tender eyes, his mouth tremulous with lust. The slave slipped away from his arms, laughing. With a slight anger, he pursued her, as in Ankhi’s gardens. But she, clever and full of a sure instinct, as silent in running as the warriors of her tribe, divined each of the man’s movements merely by the sound of his body or his footfalls, and remained invisible. Sometimes he perceived the reflection of the hyacinth robe, sometimes a wave of hair in the penumbra. His desire increasing by the minute, he shouted in a tone of command: “Stop, Gaila!”

  But there was silvery laughter among the palms. He shouted louder. She replied: “You’re scaring me, Master!”

  He said, in a softer voice, but imperiously: “Stop! I wish it.”

  She sprang abruptly from the foliage. He placed her quivering, upon his breast, and bit her with a devouring kiss. She was no longer laughing. Her large eyes sparkled with audacity and pride.

  “Return my kiss,” he said. “You’re as cold as a granite figure.”

  She returned the kiss, without ardor. Her body was soft and passive. Carried away by the fore of passion, however, her forgot everything and embraced her violently.

  He detached himself from the embrace with a hint of humiliation and asked: “It’s quite indifferent to you, then, to be mine?”

  “I’m not yours. My will is absent. I lend myself; I don’t give myself.”

  “Why?”

  “I only want to give myself by virtue of amour—and I can only love the man who loves me.”

  “You’re very presumptuous! Who can guarantee that they will not love in spite of themselves?”

  “Me! Brutal males have taught me my own character. I know of myself that which you must be ignorant of yourself. In any case, no man can know what a woman violated a hundred times can know. There is always a will, however feeble it might be, a desire, however paltry it might be, in your caresses. That blinds you. But a slave delivered to purchasers learns to regard amour as an enslaved miner regards the wall of his prison...”

  She changed her tone abruptly. “Why do you care about that petty thing? If the master commands his slaves to turn a water-pump, does he desire that his slaves enjoy it? It is sufficient for him that the water irrigates his land. And if he demands that a slave give him pleasure, what does it matter to him whether the slave shares it? I am your slave, made for your labor and your will.”

  He did not reply, for that argument seem peremptory to him.

  After a long silence, Gaila said: “Listen; I have been laboring for you...”

  She twisted her hair, assembled it with copper pins, and full of a languorous softness, considered her master, sprawled on a grassy bank.

  “I’ve seen Princess Aoura. I’ve spoken to her. I know many things that it’s better not to tell you.”

  He had shuddered. The image of the sister of Thutmose rose up in his soul with a quiver of beauty.

  “You’re quite mad!” murmured Gaila. “What hope could you have? A man who lives without a goal resembles those gnats that lose themselves in the gulf...”

  He was listening impatiently; she started to laugh.

  “If you can, tomorrow morning, at the hour of the repast, approach Thutmose’s son and talk to him. Ten days later, when the gnomon marks the second hour before sunset, go to visit Heth the priest. From the terrace of his garden one can see the river and the road that leads to the temple built by Amenemhat III. When an escort approaches, conducting the princess, go out on to the road.”

  “And what should I do?”

  “Nothing. Fate, and your slave, will regulate the outcome of these encounters. Are you content?”

  “Yes,” he said, “and I have confidence in you.”

  She smiled, with a hint of melancholy. She feared the future. But, shaking her fine, imperious head, she looked her master in the face, tender, malicious and resigned.

  “It’s in yourself that it’s necessary to have confidence. The man who doubts destiny should not emerge from his nome.”

  VIII

  Setne found Heth in the shade of a tamarind, where he was tracing figures on a papyrus.

  “Doubtless you’re seeking an enchantment or the signs of an arcanum?” the young man said.

  The priest looked at him, smiling with a mouth where everything seemed a mystery. He said: “I’m not seeking any enchantment other than that which measures things, for in the time when men can fix exactly the dimensions of round or straight figures, weight the wind that stirs the sea or the springs that descend from the mountains, the arcana will be pale that can only weave words. Little things are made in the image of large things; the man who learns to calculate by a figure the length of a garden or the height of a tree, will one
day be able to measure by a figure the height of the mountains of Kush, and that of the moon. Such are the reliable enchantments. For a long time I have seen that I might be able to discover others.”

  The chief listened with interest. Although he believed in the gods of his homeland, he had an inclination for coherent and clear things. He remembered the ennuis that had once rendered magical science fatiguing for him.

  “Our ancestors doubtless possessed more confidence in the gods than we do,” he said, “but many of their formulae are obscured.”

  Irony appeared beneath the priest’s eyelids; he replied evasively: “They have transmitted astonishing things to us; many of their words hide a wisdom that eternity will not contradict.”

  He spoke in a bitter tone, in which some rancor was evident, for he had never been able to discover an important arcanum: neither those that command the lightning, nor those that make shadows appear, not those that stop the course of water or disperse the flight of locusts. Nevertheless, he dared not open his soul to the young man.

  “And how can it be,” Setne asked, “that one can predict by means of a figure the distance or the height of things?”

  The priest did not reply. He went to fetch from an outhouse a long, straight table charged with a box and a slender ruler measuring four cubits. At the ends of the ruler, two smaller rulers were attached, one of which turned on its support, while the other was fixed and perpendicular.

  “Would you like to choose an object?” the priest said. With the aid of this ruler, I will measure its distance—or rather, given that I do not know the distance of everything present, go and fix this staff in the ground yourself.”

  Setne took the staff and went to plant it in the garden some distance away. Then the priest moved the long ruler until the small fixed ruler was directly in line with the target Then he orientated the turning ruler toward the staff, took from the box a system of rulers much smaller than the first, the base of which was proportionally very short and adjusted the small system in the image of the first. Having thus formed a triangle, he measured the length from the base to the summit, multiplied the result by fifty and said: “The staff is eighty-seven cubits away.”

  They verified the distance together with a stonemason’s double cubit and found that the distance was eighty-six cubits and three quarters. Setne was wonderstruck.

  “One only has to take lines long enough to measure the distance that separates the banks of the Nile as accurately, or the height of the Moon.”

  “But…,” said Setne, pensively, “it’s by magic that you can thus obtain the distance of a figure?”

  “By a magic similar to that which permits bronze to be forged, or an ox to be attracted to a cart, or navigation with the aid of sails on a tumultuous sea. It’s sufficient to observe that for two similar figures with three sides, if the angles are equal, the lines of the same direction will be the same number of times greater or smaller. So, if in the large figure that you see here the baseline is fifty times greater than that of the small ruler, the side that marks the distance will also be fifty times greater. Practice will show you that it is so, and you can conclude that the longest distances can be measured, provided that one knows a single line and an angle.”

  Setne did not understand at first, and even when the priest had repeated the explanation, tracing the figures, he could only glimpse a possibility, but it was evident that, with reflection, he would be able to grasp the whole problem.

  His admiration for the work of the priest was extreme.

  “It seems to me, in truth, my father, that Ammon has made you party to a force capable of penetrating the secret of the world.”

  The priest’s nostrils flared; a vivid flame illuminated his temples and the dry shin that covered his cheekbones, for praise was accorded to him with a frightful parsimony by his contemporaries. Sages were suspicious of him, the multitude believed him to be a pernicious power, He was harshly punished for not being content to know the emptiness of formulae; each of his arguments with his fellows had led to painful aftermaths.

  In those ancient times, the work of precursors could surpass their century immensely. The simultaneity of discoveries and their expansion would not even be born with Athens. A priest or isolated dreamer might imagine theorems that were only reinvented a thousand years later, and an infinity of marvelous things were lost in the bosom of civilizations that were beautiful and grave, but inattentive. Many a time, arms and tools were found that, not giving sufficient results immediately, did not emerge from the hands of their inventors. The alarming defeat of Hipparchus is the symbol of the centuries-long gap that then intervened between discoveries.20 Without a doubt, the ingenious Chaldeans and the patient observers of Egypt found a thousand profound things of which Chaldea and Egypt remained ignorant until their decrepitude.

  Heth savored the soldier’s praise as a prophet that of his first disciples. He nevertheless had the finesse to understand that it was necessary not to weary the young man’s attention. Observing that the violet shadows were elongating before the house, he said: “In a few hours the boat of Osiris will descend into the somber waters, the pernicious abysms. Let us gather our strength to await the decline of day, and, if you wish, tell me what your projects are. I have seen the waters dry up and be reborn more often than you; my advice might be useful to you, as that of a man who has followed the caravans is to someone who has not traveled the confines of the yellow sands.

  In a bright room, poor in ornaments, cervoise, barley cakes, dates gilded like honey, cheese from Sais and a wild cock of the cataracts covered a blue table decorated with enamels.

  “This is what the river is about to bring down to the fecund earth. The wells announce it; the rats are quitting the lower ground.”

  They both smiled at the image of good fortune, the memories evoked by the flood, and the great cry of the laborers when the mild world of the waters bathed the bathed the sighing earth.

  “The gods only water Egyptian soil thus,” observed Setne. “Other peoples must await the waters of heaven; often they do not arrive. This soil is the most beloved by the immortals, the most beautiful of all those that Osiris visits.”

  “I don’t know,” Heth replied. “it seems to me that there might be other lands more agreeable, where the summer is cooler and the trees more abundant. Woods grow with difficulty in Egypt and dry out in the wind of the desert.”

  “I don’t like woods,” said Setne. “It seems that one lives there in slavery. They’re like a sad and gigantic dwelling where nothing remains of fallen walls but the pillars, and where the foliage makes roofs as long as a day’s march. Everything there is hidden and perfidious. The plain is clear and free, beneath an uninterrupted sky; it gives confidence to the heart of man.”

  “Not to mine! I approach the forest like a habitation of the gods, undoubtedly perilous, but hospitable. The desert is no less filled with ambushes, and in addition, hunger and thirst inhabit it eternally. But tell me, has Thutmose similar to Ammon not proclaimed the departure of the troops yet?”

  “No,” said Setne. “We’re awaiting the commands.”

  “I cannot imagine,” said Heth, “since your birth permitted you to choose, why you have preferred the existence of the warrior, and its cruel fatigues, to that of priests; for your mind is not rebellious to knowledge.”

  “Believe, divine scribe, that it is no less necessary to extend one’s mind to surround an enemy troop than to inscribe sentences on papyrus.”

  “Perhaps you’re right,” Heth murmured, in whom rancor awoke against the priests who had disappointed him. “The science of scribes is even less certain than that of battles. I will give you the papyrus that I mentioned to you.”

  He went out and came back with a russet scroll, which he handed to the young chief.

  “You will find there,” he said, “all the fashions of combat of the Ninevites, the Syrians, the men of Kush, the nomads of the desert and the Sidonians, as well as lists of various weapons, projectile
s and animals of war. The book is reliable. Nothing is reported therein that had not been verified.”

  Setne’s eyes lit up with pleasure. He took the papyrus and thanked the priest ardently.

  “Be fortunate in your actions,” murmured Heth, softly. “In any case, your eyes promise success or death. And death is not redoubtable.”

  For the tenth time, Setne looked out of the bay at the back of the room, which overlooked the road. He saw a violet litter on the road, still distant.

  “If I don’t succumb,” he said, “I’ll bring you back the arcana of Asia. It’s said that the Chaldean priests have secret sciences.”

  Setne marched toward the old temple of Amenemhat. He penetrated into the first enclosure, which was ruined and no longer guarded, in order to wait for the princess. Sphinxes outraged by the Shous extended their pensive menagerie; fallen obelisks could be seen, a pylon of porphyry and the roof of the temple, above a forest of columns. The soldier’s breast was tremulous with impatience, dread and amour; but he did not think that his step was extraordinary. Another will reassured his own. He obeyed Gaila with a confidence that was naïve and firm.

  The silence was profound, almost terrible. The large sun, very yellow and already declining over the west, was roasting the dry earth. He scarcely passed anything but a scarab, an agile horned viper and a furtive rat. Meanwhile, the violet litter advanced, very slowly. The flabella were agitating on the edge of the enclosure; the slave guards showed themselves first, and then Setne saw the face of Aoura appear. It was as if the earth hollowed out around him; a vertigo seized him; his temples hardened. He felt his hamstrings relaxing like broken bowstrings. He did not move, inclined, his hands slightly extended.

  At the sight of him, Aoura had shivered. Gaila’s predictions had made her expect the presence of the chief of the phalanx, and gave that presence a troubling significance. She ordered the porters to stop. With a gracious audacity she walked toward Setne. It could not be divined that she was timid, tender and indulgent; in that enclosure, where her ancestor reposed, her young beauty seemed proud; a devouring disdain was marked in her large eyes with shady lashes.