Moses

by Howard Fast

  He wanted the story to end; perhaps he, Amon-Teph, was now impatient for the end of many things. He was tired, and he wanted to lie down and be alone with his sorrow. The rest he told briefly, and his listener, dulled with too much emotion, sorrow and heart-sickness—and the death of pride in birth and blood; for who could grow up among the lords of the Great House without such pride?—and the heart-hurting knowledge that he was a waif, a nobody, a nameless offspring of slaves, thrown by these slaves in their blind ignorance and superstition as a sacrifice to a water snake—yes, his listener also desired the story to end. He heard how Amon-Teph had challenged these people to produce the mother; and when they lied and denied that it was their babe, he told them that a royal barge of the Great House lay a stone’s throw away, and that if they insisted upon provoking him, he would return the following day with a squadron of soldiers. Then he went among them until he found a woman whose full breasts were so wet they stained the front of her gown, and he ordered her to come with him.

  “My mother,” Moses said dully.

  “Enekhas-Amon was your mother,” the priest answered him harshly. “All your life I refused to tell you this, and I could have died with it as easily. Not because you were born a slave, but because you have in all truth become a prince of Egypt, have you forced this out of me. I made this woman come with me on to the boat, where she gave suck to the child—to you.”

  Then came the rest of it—how a pavilion was set up on the shore for Enekhas-Amon, the mother and the child; how two slaves of the house were left to guard her while Amon-Teph went back for supplies and to make arrangements; how they remained there at the edge of the morass for five days, until Amon-Teph found an Egyptian wet nurse whom he could trust; how all of the slaves who were with the barge were sold in the markets of Hatti—for, as Enekhas-Amon said when she returned to the City of Ramses, after four months of quiet hiding in Memphis, the child was hers; and how, with a full measure of wit, gold and threat, the secret was kept.

  “But not entirely kept, Moses, my son. No secret is—and while you had a mother, the question of a father remained. Enekhas-Amon would never name a father-she could have—myself, or others of better blood and station who loved her—but she would not. She held that Aton was your father.”

  “And she believed it?” Moses asked.

  “I think so,” the old man sighed. “We all believe what we want to believe or what we have to believe. just as I think that Ramses, the God-King”—his scorn was mixed with fatigue and disinterest—“believes that you are his son.”

  “No!” Moses cried. “Spare me that!”

  Amon-Teph shrugged. “There is much that I would have spared you, but this is the way things are. Ramses, from all I could gather, believes that Enekhas-Amon was waiting for the moment when it would be ripe to proclaim you. Ramses did not wait.…”

  “Wéll, there it is, all of it; and as for you, my dear son, my dear son”—he had to fight to control his voice; the tears were running from his eyes now, falling strangely upon his loose, pouchy cheeks—“live.” His voice was a hoarse whisper. “Live and be strong and good and just. You have been all the life that your mother left to me, and you two gave me what to love and what to live for. You are as noble as any man in Egypt, and when it’s finished, as it is now for me, you realize that we are all brothers, all of the same wit and folly—slave and freeman, noble and peasant. You are what we who loved you desired you should be, and it is the poor, foolish pride of Ramses that makes him claim you for his seed. Let him think so, Moses, and he will not stain his hands with your blood; for whether he faces Osiris or Aton, such a stain would destroy him. Live,” the old man gasped, “so that your mother and I can live in you.”

  Then he kissed Moses and left him; and Moses stood there watching the priest walk slowly and uncertainly into the night.

  [17]

  “SO I AM the son of slaves, of the dirty, dying wretches who live in the Land of Goshen,” went through him, hour after hour, day after day, cutting apart his grief, filling him with anger and frustration and hatred of himself-and building resentment against his dead mother. Yet there was something in him, a core of solidity that allowed him to fight this resentment, to cling to the image of his mother as his mother—and not to turn against her the corroding humiliation that was eating out his heart.

  He wanted to retreat into himself, into a cave, into shelter against the whole world. However, there was too much to be done. The woman who died was his mother to the world, and he lived in the world. To him they came—and he had to talk to them. The business of death was not a simple matter in his land, and the higher one’s station, the more complicated did death become. Sulking, hurt, filled with pity and grief and self-pity, reverting to the boy who was still so much a part of him now, at seventeen and a half, he would imagine himself raging at them, “I am a slave, and such matters don’t concern me! Do what you wish!” This he left in his mind; he remained a prince of Egypt, and he did what he had to do.

  All of the hours during the days after his mother’s death were filled with the funerary proceedings. He had to discuss with the royal embalmer the details of the process—a procedure which, if normally consoling, was now disturbing and distasteful to him. A dutiful son was expected, in the way of lasting love and concern, to observe some of the steps of funerary preservation; but to Moses the thought of seeing his mother’s body disembowelled, the skull empty, floating in the stinking tanks of subcarbonate of soda deep under the Great House, the place of horror and frightened whispers in his childhood, was more than he could tolerate. Let the ghouls, of which there were always a sufficient number, exhibit the preoccupation with the soaking and washing and stuffing and binding that went under the name of piety. When the royal embalmer suggested eight weeks of soaking and then began to enumerate the various herbs he would use—the myrrh, cassia, balsams, peppers—brought from the Ganges Valley at such cost and trouble, as he pointed out—he seven salts from Arabia, Kush, Libya, and on and on, like a lessons in geography—Moses told him coldly to do what had to be done.

  “But the arteries,” he insisted. “There are three methods of injecting the arteries. I never fail to discuss the advantages of one method, the disadvantages of another, with those responsible for the deceased. Forgive me, Prince of Egypt, but the responsibilities of those beloved of the deceased do not end with death; rather, as our holy scribe and teacher, Kafu-Re, put it in the time of Amon-em-Het, the deceased finishes one trial to be ordained into another. My own justice forces me to put it to you thus. Now, the injection of the arteries—”

  So Moses bowed his head and listened to the discourse on the manners of injecting the arteries of a corpse. There was no escape; and more and more he was beginning to realize what Amon-Teph meant when he spoke of the prisons men build for themselves—from which a key or a door provides no exit.

  With the master sculptor, he had to discuss the finish of the stone sarcophagus which Enekhas-Amon had ordered ten years before. It bore her likeness, but the final finish remained to be completed. Did he, the divine prince of Egypt—and may the gods will that he never be troubled with such details in his grief—desire a natural finish of unsurpassed smoothness? And with or without a worked plate of bronze? On the other hand, some in the Great House preferred enamel with the stone? Further, would the body be placed in the sarcophagus here or at the tomb?

  Vaguely Moses knew that the tomb of his mother was in Upper Egypt, somewhere near Karnak. He would have to discuss that, too. Meanwhile the sculptor would have to meet with him and the coffin-maker. The chief of the staff of royal artists would also be concerned—and of course, one Seti-Moses, the major-domo of the Great House.

  He was a relative by blood—a first cousin two or three times removed—to the God Ramses, and it was often said that while Ramses was God-King of Egypt and the Empire, Seti-Moses was god-king of the Great House; and himself, Seti-Moses was wont to describe as the busiest man in all of Egypt. Which perhaps he was, for with a
staff of almost a hundred scribes and clerks, he kept the famous papyrus rolls upon which were listed not only the nobility and priesthood of Egypt, but their wealth, their land-holdings, their estates and mines in foreign places, their slaves, their horses, their cows and sheep and goats, their gold and silver and bronze and iron and linen, their sons and daughters and wives and concubines, and—as some wits held—their performance in bed and out of it and their innermost thoughts as well. All this was kept up-to-date with an incredible number of entries and deletions each year—and even a scribe in the service of Seti-Moses was a man to be feared and reckoned with.

  Moses did not doubt the industry of the pig-eyed, enormously fat man who waddled into his chambers and confronted him after the death of Enekhas-Amon, for in all his life he had never before spoken to Seti-Moses and he had seen him closely only once, on an occasion when the major-domo was leaving their apartment. To Moses’ eyes, he had not changed; time left him untouched, and as he entered, a scribe and clerk following, his huge face fixed in an expression of influential condolence but devoid of sorrow—as if he, so close to the gods, would see that things went well—his huge body swathed in transparent linen, Moses experienced a final capitulation to pomp and circumstance.

  Seti-Moses settled himself in a chair that swayed uneasily under his weight, and the clerk and the scribe squatted on footstools. Always a diplomat, knowing that kings are mortal in this world if not in the next, well-aware of the conflicting rumours of the origin of Moses, and not unaware of the one which held him to be the son of the God Ramses, he opened by reciting his praise of Moses, of the prince’s bearing, intelligence and nobility—and then he explained his appreciation of a son’s grief.

  “Yet, even as one steps into life eternal,” he pointed out, “those unfortunates who remain behind must deal with practical matters. Ah. yes, practical matters, Prince of Egypt, which we would gladly dispense with, but which stand between ourselves and chaos. The barbarian eats and drinks for the day; a civilized person lays aside a little of his substance, so that those loved ones who remain may not know want and sorrow. I suppose you know you are a very rich man?”

  “I know that my mother had enough for her wants. As to my own wealth, I care little.”

  “There speaks inexperience,” Sed-Moses chided him, wagging a fat finger in front of Moses. “The fly dies with the cold weather, but the bee waxes fat and happy in its own honey.” He was a man fond of maxims. “One hundred and. fifth verse, Book of Horus. Fortunately you are a rich man, for your mother was wise in her overseers. I have here a full accounting of your holdings, which I shall read you. All accounted for. No cheats. Your blessed grandfather, the God Seti, cleansed us of administrative cheats.” He ran a pudgy finger through a fold of his neck. “Then we shall discuss the apartment—which you may use freely if you desire. Being precise in my methods, I like to prepare an enumeration of the effects you will place in your godly mother’s tomb; also, what animals you see fit to slaughter. There is also the question of approval or disapproval of the management of your property. Also, your own needs in gold reckoning—”

  His authoritative, rasping voice droned on and on, on and on, as the hours passed, on and on until darkness came, and then he made an appointment to see Moses the following morning.

  There was Neph, too, to make it plain and simple that he remained a friend, come what would.

  “The trouble is,” Moses said, “that I don’t care very much what comes.”

  “All right. Now you’re shocked and bitter and hurt. That will pass, Moses. You’re young and strong-and wealthy,” he added. “And you’re a prince of Egypt.”

  “And your God-King murdered my mother!”

  “So long as you say such things only to me,” Neph told him, “you are simply being impetuous. If you talk like that to others, it will be more unfortunate. But I didn’t come here to scold you. I came to tell you that I have a leave from the major-domo to go to Karnak and prepare your mother’s tomb. I found the location and the plans in the funerary hall, and there doesn’t seem to be too much to do. In any case, I can take that burden off your mind, and you can rest assured that when I finish and when Enekhas-Amon is entombed, no one will ever find her resting place. I think it’s best that way. I am taking a hundred workmen, and if you want me to take her household effects, I will prepare a barge for that.”

  Moses seized his hands and pleaded, “Let me go with you, Neph! Let me go with you and out of this cursed house—even for a few weeks!”

  “Gladly—and then what would you have, Moses? That your mother should go up the river alone? That all Egypt should talk about it? That what is already bad enough should become even worse? Moses—for the sake of those of us who love you, put your head up! Be a prince of Egypt! That is your only hope!”

  So more hurt was added to hurt, and now he told himself that Neph, the only friend who remained, had also turned against him. For Amon-Teph came no more, and when Moses walked through the corridors of the Great House, those who saw him stood back silent and uncommitted.

  As long as he could, he bore this; and then, half-mad with the bursting, tangled emotions inside him, he took his yellow horse and rode him into a staggering lather—himself exhausted, aching, but with the guilt of mistreatment of a dumb beast he loved added to the rest.

  It came about finally that his mother’s embalmed body was placed on a funerary boat; and, leading a procession of five other barges, it began the long, seemingly endless journey south on the Nile to Karnak. It was not as Moses had dreamt of going to Karnak—and when he came there he had no other desire than to see his mother entombed, and then to be done with the place. In any case, the God Ramses had just left Thebes to return to his name city, and the great men of Karnak were wary about pushing forth into the funerary proceedings of a sister of Ramses whose burial he specifically marked with his absence; and while Moses felt the eddy of those forces in Egypt—and specifically in Upper Egypt—that still kept alive some hope of the return of Aton, the whole god and only god, he also nourished his own contempt for their fears. In his present mood, he saw little choice between life and death; and his youth prevented any sound judgment of forces or any other distinction between foolhardiness and courage. Where he could once readily comprehend how idealistic and impractical were the plans of his mother and Amon-Teph and the other priests of Aton, his present hatred of Ramses made him feel that golden opportunities to dethrone the king had been passed over and lost. In these moods he would forget that he was the waif of a wretched slave people who lived in Goshen, and begin to believe the unfounded rumours concerning himself; and then, sliding back into the reality—the reality that became ever more marked as he matured into large-boned, long-muscled and hawk-faced manhood, he would fall prey to the black depression that had taken hold of him on the day of his mother’s death. In such case, he returned down the Nile in a great retinue of boats, slaves, priests and soldiers—but with only one friend, Neph, the builder. Yet for that he was fortunate, even though he did not know it; and talking hour after hour, night after night with this plain, practical man who built what the kings would be remembered for, he not only gathered a store of knowledge and at least a little wisdom, but he began the process of calming his soul and learning the manner of acceptance and forbearance that would be so necessary in all the future years of his life. The gentle downstream journey, the soft lapping of the water in the river that had always been for him and others in the land the mother of life, the moonlit nights when the boundary ridges of the valley stood so black and beautiful, the sight again of the pyramids at Giza—all of this healed and rested him. But the dams of his soul were only fully opened after he had returned to the Great House.

  It happened the day after he arrived there, when a slave came and set down in his chamber a large basket. Moses opened it, and there in a copper bowl was the head of his teacher, Amon-Teph.

  Then Moses put his head in his hands and wept, opened all the dams of restraint and control, and
wept, sobbing and aching—with all the grief of a boy orphaned and bereft. But when the weeping finished, he was whole again, and his anger was clear and cold and precise. He walked again like a prince of Egypt when he bore the basket in his own arms to the embalmer and told him that he must find the body and embalm both in a manner fitting, or not live long upon this earth. And when the corpse was found, Moses and Neph put the body of the old priest to its rest in a deep, rock-lined chamber in the sand, just the two of them by night.

  [18]

  RAMSES WAS BACK in his city and in his Great House, and once again it was the centre of the civilized world. The life of the Great House renewed itself, as it had with the end of summer so long as Moses could remember; and here again came the petty kings and lords and desert sheiks to pay homage and curry favour; the ambassadors and the diplomats of Hatti and Phoenicia and Babylon, of Philistia, and twenty other minor nations; the merchant-pirate-princes of Crete and the sea-islands, the factions overthrown by palace revolt and beseeching the God-King’s aid; and the factions who desired to overthrow and also sought aid. All the indescribable colour and pageantry of the Great House resumed: the beating of the drums; the music of the pipes; the array of the finest Egyptian soldiery; the barges and sea-boats at the royal quays—the hustle and bustle and whispering and conniving of the great ones of the world assembled at the heart of the world; the white linen of the Egyptians; the leopard skins of the men of Kush; the plumed brass helmets of the Sea People waving their fans of yellow and red; the purple gowns of the Phoenicians; the tall black hats of the Hittites, coneshaped and flattened on top; the striped robes of Mesopotamia; the fringed kilts of Philistia; and the striped woollen cloaks of the Bedouins.

  All this Moses saw, and yet it moved him less than it ever had. He maintained the insular superiority of the Egyptian to whom all others were barbarians; yet where Egypt had been inside him, there was now an emptiness. He who had been the least prideful of all the palace children now walked with an unconscious hauteur which would have repelled people even had they not recognized a prince from his clothes, headband and golden collar; and many a curious glance was cast at him as he strode through the palace and its gardens. Foreigners would ask who the tall, lean and bitter-faced prince was; as often as not they received no satisfactory answer. A wise man felt it was a part of wisdom, and prudence, too, not to discuss the son of Enekhas-Amon with anyone.