by Mika Waltari
I also raised my goblet and let a drop fall on the ground.
“In the name of Ammon! May his boat leak to all eternity, may the bellies of his priests rupture, and may the pestilence destroy the ignorant teachers in the House of Life!” But I said this in a low voice and looked about me lest a stranger should overhear my words.
“Have no fear,” said Thothmes. “So many of Ammon’s ears have been boxed in this tavern that they have had enough of listening-and all of us here are lost already. I could not find even bread and beer if I had not hit upon the idea of making picture books for rich men’s children.”
He showed me the scroll he had been working on when I came. I could not help laughing, for there he had drawn a fortress defended by a quaking, terrified cat against the onslaught of mice, also a hippopotamus singing in a treetop while a dove climbed painfully up the tree by means of a ladder.
There was a smile in Thothmes’ brown eyes, but it faded as he unrolled the papyrus further and disclosed the picture of a bald little priest leading a big Pharaoh on a rope to the temple, like a beast of sacrifice. Next he showed me a little Pharaoh bowing before a massive statue of Ammon. He nodded at my questioning look.
“You see? Grown people laugh at the pictures, too, because they’re so crazy. It is ridiculous for a mouse to attack a cat or a priest to lead a Pharaoh-but those who know begin to reflect upon a number of things. Therefore, I shall not lack for bread and beer-until the priests have me clubbed to death in the street. Such things have happened.”
“Let us drink,” I said, and drink we did, but my heart was not gladdened. Presently I put my question to him. “Is it wrong to ask why?”
“Of course it is wrong, for a man who presumes to ask ‘why’ has no home nor resting place in the land of Kem. All must be as it has been-and you know it. I trembled with joy when I entered the art school-I was like a thirsty man who has found a spring, a hungry man clutching at bread. And I learned many fine things…, Oh, yes. I learned how to hold a pen and handle a chisel, how to model in wax what will be hewn from stone, how stone is polished, how colored stones are fitted together, and how to paint on alabaster. But when I longed to get to work and make such things as I had dreamed of, I was set to treading clay for others to handle. For high above everything stands the convention. Art has its convention no less than writing, and he who breaks with it is damned.
“From the beginning of time it has been laid down how one should represent a standing figure and how a sitting one, how a horse lifts his hooves, how an ox draws a sled. From the beginning the technique has been fixed; whoever departs from it is unfit for the temple, and stone and chisel are denied him. O Sinuhe, my friend, I, too, have asked why-and only too often. That is why I sit here with bumps on my head.”
We drank and grew merry, and my heart lightened as if a boil in it had been lanced, for I was no longer alone.
“Sinuhe, my friend, we have been born into strange times. Everything is melting-changing its shape-like clay on a potter’s wheel. Dress is changing, words, customs are changing, and people no longer believe in the gods-though they may fear them. Sinuhe, my friend, perhaps we were born to see the sunset of the world, for the world is already old, and twelve hundred years have passed since the building of the pyramids. When I think of this, I want to bury my head in my hands and cry like a child.”
But he did not weep, for we were drinking mixed wine in brightly colored goblets, and each time the landlord of the Syrian Jar refilled them he bowed and stretched forth his hands at knee level. From time to time a slave came to pour water over our hands. My heart grew light as a swallow on the threshold of winter; I could have declaimed verse and taken the whole world into my arms.
“Let us go to a pleasure house,” said Thothmes laughing. “Let us hear music and watch girls dancing and gladden our hearts-let us not ask ‘why’ any more or demand that our cup be full.”
We walked along the streets. The sun had set, and I met for the first time that Thebes where it is never night. In this flaring, noisy quarter torches flamed before the pleasure houses, and lamps burned on columns at the street corners. Slaves ran here and there with carrying chairs, and the shouts of runners mingled with the music from the houses and the roarings of the drunk.
Never in my life had I set foot in a pleasure house, and I was a little scared. The one to which Thothmes led me was called the Cat and Grapes. It was a pretty little house, full of soft, golden lamplight. There were soft mats to sit on, and young-and in my eyes lovely-girls beat time to the music of flutes and strings. When the music stopped, they sat with us and begged me to buy them wine, as their throats were as dry as chaff. Then two naked dancers performed a complicated dance requiring great skill, and I followed it with interest. As a doctor I was accustomed to the sight of naked girls and yet had never seen breasts swaying or little bellies and bottoms moving so seductively as these.
But the music saddened me again, and I began to long for I knew not what. A beautiful girl took my hand and pressed her side to mine and said my eyes were those of a wise man. But her eyes were not as green as the Nile in the heat of summer, and her dress, though it left her bosom bare, was not of royal linen. So I drank wine and neither looked into her eyes nor felt any wish to call her “my sister,” or take pleasure with her. And the last I remember of that place is a vicious kick from a Negro and a lump I got on my head when I fell down the steps. So it came about just as my mother Kipa had foretold: I lay in the street without a copper piece in my pocket until Thothmes drew my arm over his strong shoulder and led me to the jetty, where I could drink my fill of Nile water and bathe my face and my hands and my feet.
That morning I entered the House of Life with swollen eyes and a smarting lump on my head, a dirty shoulder cloth, and without the smallest wish to ask, “Why?” I was to be on duty among the deaf and those with ear diseases, so I washed myself quickly and put on the white robe. On the way I met my chief, who began to upbraid me in phrases I had read in the books and knew by heart.
“What is to become of you if you run along the walls by night and drink without keeping tally of your cups? What is to become of you if you idle away your time in pleasure houses, smiting wine jars with your stick to the alarm of honest citizens? What is to become of you if you shed blood and run from the watchmen?”
But when he had done his duty, he smiled to himself with relief, took me to his room, and gave me a potion to cleanse my stomach. My spirits rose as I realized that wine and pleasure houses were winked at in the House of Life provided one stopped asking why.
6
So, I, too, was smitten with Thebes fever and began to love the night more than the day, the flickering of torches more than sunlight, Syrian music more than the moans of the sick, and the whispering of pretty girls more than crabbed old writings on yellow papers. But no one had anything to say against this as I fulfilled my tasks in the House of Life, satisfied my examiners, and kept a steady hand. It was all part of the initiate’s life; few students could afford to set up house on their own and marry during their training, and my teacher gave me to understand that I would do well to sow my wild oats, give rein to my body, and be of a merry heart. But I meddled with no woman though I thought I knew that their bodies did not really bum worse than fire.
The times were full of unrest, and great Pharaoh was ill. I saw his shriveled old man’s face when he was carried to the temple at the autumn festival adorned with gold and precious stones, motionless as a statue with his head bowed beneath the weight of the double crown. The physicians could not longer help him; rumor had it that his days were numbered and that his heir would soon succeed him-and the heir was but a stripling like myself.
There were services and sacrifices in the temple of Ammon, and Ammon could not help his divine son though Pharaoh Amenhotep III had built for him the mightiest temple of all time. It was said that the King had grown wroth with the Egyptian gods and that he had sent swift messengers to his father-in-law, the king of Mita
nni in Nahara, desiring that the miracle-working Ishtar of Niniveh be sent to heal him. But to the joy of the priests even foreign gods could not cure Pharaoh. When the river began to rise, the royal skull surgeon was summoned to the palace.
In all the time I had been in the House of Life I had not once seen Ptahor, for trepanning was rare and during my training period I had not been allowed to attend the specialists at their treatments and operations. Now the old man was carried in haste from his villa to the House of Life, and I was careful to be at hand when he entered the purifying room. He was as bald as ever, his face had grown wrinkled, and his cheeks hung lugubriously on either side of his discontented old mouth. He recognized me, smiled and said, “Ah, is it you, Sinuhe? Have you come so far, son of Senmut?”
He handed me a black wooden box in which he kept his instruments and bade me follow him. This was an unmerited honor that even a royal physician might have envied me, and I bore myself accordingly.
“I must test the steadiness of my hand,” said Ptahor, “and open a skull or two here, to see how it goes.”
His eyes were watery, and his hand trembled slightly. We went into a room in which lay incurables, paralytics, and those with head injuries. Ptahor examined a few and chose an old man for whom death would come as a release, also a strong slave who had lost his speech and the use of his limbs from a blow on the head in a street brawl. They were given narcotics to drink and were then taken to the operating theater and cleansed. Ptahor washed his own instruments and purified them in fire.
My task was to shave the heads of both patients with the keenest of razors. Then the heads were cleaned and washed once more, the scalps massaged with a numbing salve, and Ptahor was ready for his work. First he made an incision in the scalp of the old man and pushed the edges back regardless of the copious flow of blood. Then with swift movements he bored a hole in the bared skull with a large tubular bore and lifted out the circle of bone. The old man began to groan, and his face turned blue.
“I see nothing the matter with his head,” said Ptahor. He replaced the bit of bone, stitched the edges of the scalp together, and bandaged the head; whereupon the old man gave up the ghost.
“My hands appear to tremble somewhat,” remarked Ptahor. “Perhaps one of the young men would bring me a cup of wine.”
The onlookers, besides the teachers in the House of Life, consisted of all the students who were to become head surgeons. When Ptahor had had his wine, he turned his attention to the slave, who had been bound and drugged, yet still sat savagely glowering at us. Ptahor asked that he might be bound yet more firmly and that his head might be gripped in a vice that not even a giant could have shifted. He then opened up the scalp and this time was careful to stanch the flow of blood. The veins at the edges of the incision were cauterized and the blood stopped by special medicaments. Ptahor let other doctors do this, to spare his own hands. In the House of Life there was as a rule a “blood stauncher,” a man of no education whose mere presence would stop a flow of blood in a short time, but Ptahor wished this to be a demonstration and desired also to save his strength for Pharaoh.
When Ptahor had cleansed the outside of the skull, he pointed out to us the place where the bone had been crushed in. By means of bore, saw, and forceps he removed a piece of skull as large as the palm of one’s hand and then showed us how clotted blood had gathered among the white convolutions of the brain. With infinite care he removed the blood bit by bit and freed a bone splinter that had been forced into the brain substance. This operation took some time, so each pupil could follow his movements and impress the look of a brain upon his own memory. Next Ptahor closed the opening with a plate of silver that had been prepared meanwhile to correspond in shape to the piece of bone that had been removed and fixed it firmly in position with tiny clips. Then he stitched the edges of the wound together, bandaged it, and said, “Wake him.” For the patient had long ago lost consciousness.
The slave was freed from his bonds, wine was poured down his throat, and he was given strong drugs to inhale. Presently he sat up and let forth a stream of curses. It was a miracle no one who had not witnessed it could have believed, for the fellow had previously been dumb and unable to move his limbs. This time I had no need to ask why, for Ptahor explained that the bone splinter and the blood on the surface of the brain had been the cause of the symptoms.
“If he is not dead within three days, he is cured,” said Ptahor. “In two weeks he will be able to thrash the man who stoned him. I do not think he will die.”
With friendly courtesy he thanked all who had helped him, naming me among them, though I had but handed him his instruments as they were needed. I had not understood his purpose in this, but in giving me his ebony box to carry he had singled me out to be his assistant in Pharaoh’s palace. I had now served him at two operations and was therefore experienced and more useful to him than even the royal physicians where the opening of a skull was concerned. I did not understand this and was amazed when he said, “We’re now ripe to deal with the royal skull. Are you ready, Sinuhe?”
Wrapped in my simple doctor’s mantle, I stepped up beside him in the carrying chair. The blood stauncher sat on one of the poles, and Pharaoh’s slaves ran with us to the landing stage, at so smooth a pace that the chair never swayed. Pharaoh’s ship awaited us, manned by picked slaves who rowed swiftly: we seemed rather to fly over the water than float upon it. From Pharaoh’s landing stage we were borne rapidly to the golden house. I did not wonder at our haste, for soldiers were already marching along the streets of Thebes, gates were being closed, and merchants were carrying their goods into the warehouses and closing doors and shutters. It was clear from this that Pharaoh was soon to die.
BOOK 3
Thebes Fever
1
A great concourse of people from every walk of life had gathered by the walls of the golden house, and even the forbidden foreshore was thronged with boats-the wooden rowing boats of the rich and the pitched-reed boats of the poor. At the sight of us a whisper ran through the crowd like the rushing of distant waters, and the news that the royal skull surgeon was on his way sped from mouth to mouth. Then the people held up their hands in grief, while cries and lamentations followed us up to the palace; for everyone knew that no Pharaoh had ever lived until the third sunrise after his skull had been opened.
Through the gate of lilies we were taken to the royal apartments; court chamberlains were our servants and prostrated themselves before us, for we carried death in our hands. A temporary cleansing room had been prepared, but after exchanging a few words with Pharaoh’s own physician, Ptahor raised his hands in sorrow and performed the cleansing ceremonial in but a perfunctory manner. The sacred fire was borne after us, and having passed through a series of splendid rooms, we entered the royal bedchamber.
Great Pharaoh lay beneath a golden canopy; the bedposts were protecting gods, and the bedstead was supported by lions. His swollen body was naked, stripped of all the symbols of sovereignty. He was unconscious, his aged head hung sideways, and he breathed stertori- ously, saliva running from the corner of his mouth. So shadowy and ephemeral is mortal glory that he could not have been distinguished from any of the old men who lay dying in the reception hall of the House of Life. But on the walls of the room he was depicted as speeding in a chariot drawn by swift, plumed horses; his powerful arm drew back the bowstring, and lions, pierced by his arrows, fell dead about his feet.
We prostrated ourselves before him, knowing-as all who had seen death must know-that Ptahor’s arts were useless here. But since throughout the ages the skull of Pharaoh has been opened as a last resort, if natural death has not already supervened, it must be opened now, and we set about our task. I lifted the lid of the ebony box and in the flame purified once more the’scalpels, bores, and forceps. The court physician had already shaved and washed the head of the dying man, and Ptahor ordered the stauncher of blood to sit upon the bed and take Pharaoh’s head in his hands.
Then the roya
l consort Taia stepped to the bed and forbade him. Hitherto she had stood by the wall with her arms raised in the gesture of grief, motionless as an image. Behind her stood the young heir to the throne, Amenhotep, and his sister Baketamon, but I had not yet dared to raise my eyes to them. Now that a stir ran through the room I looked, and recognized them from the statues in the temples. The prince was of my own age but taller. Princess Baketamon had noble and very lovely features and large, oval eyes. But more majestic than either was the royal consort Taia, though she was short and plump. Her complexion was very dark and her cheekbones broad and prominent. It was said that by birth she was a woman of the people and had Negro blood in her veins; I do not know if this is so, for it is but hearsay. Even if it be true that her parents bore no honorable titles in the records, yet her eyes were intelligent, bold, and piercing, and her whole bearing radiated power. When she moved her hand and looked upon the stauncher of blood, he seemed dust beneath her broad, brown feet. I understood her feelings, for the fellow was an ox driver of low birth and could neither read nor write. He stood with bent head and hanging arms, with his mouth open and a vacant expression on his face. Unskilled, untalented though he was, he yet had the power to stop the flow of blood by his mere presence. Therefore he had been called from his plow and his oxen to be paid his fee in the temple, and despite all cleansing ceremonial the smell of cattle dung clung about him. He himself could not account for his powers. He possessed them, as a jewel may be found in a clod of earth, and they were such as cannot be acquired through study or spiritual exercises.
“I do not permit him to touch the god,” said the Queen. “I will hold the god’s head if it be needful.”
Ptahor protested that the task was an unpleasant and bloody one; nevertheless, she took her place on the edge of the bed and most carefully raised the head of her dying husband into her lap, heedless of the saliva that dripped onto her hands.