by Mika Waltari
Then I raised my hands in mock despair, and clutching my head exclaimed, “I am but a simple man, as simple as that woman just now, and I cannot altogether grasp this wisdom of yours. Moreover it appears obscure even to yourselves since you must take counsel with one another before you can reply to me.”
They rejoined eagerly, “Aton is perfect even as the disk of the sun is perfect, and all that is and lives and breathes in him is perfect. Human thought is imperfect and like a mist, and therefore we cannot perfectly enlighten you since we ourselves do not know all but must learn his will day by day. To Pharaoh alone is his will wholly revealed-to Pharaoh his son, who lives by truth.”
The words struck home, for they showed me that these priests were steadfast in their hearts even though they dressed in fine linen and oiled their hair and delighted in the admiration of women and made fun of the simple. The element in me that had come to maturity, independently of my will or learning, responded to these words. For the first time I reflected that human thought might indeed be imperfect and that beyond it there might exist such things as the eye could not see, nor the ear hear, nor the hand grasp. Could it be that Pharaoh and his priests had found this ultimate truth and named it Aton?
5
It was dusk when I returned to my house. Above my door hung a simple signboard, and in the courtyard squatted a few grimy folk patiently awaiting me. Kaptah, looking discontented, was sitting in the porch fanning the flies away from his face and legs with a palm leaf. The flies had come with the patients, but to console him he had a newly broached jar of ale.
I bade him first send in to me a mother who held an emaciated baby in her arms. The remedy for her was a few copper pieces with which to buy herself proper food so that she might suckle her child. Next I tended a slave who had crushed some fingers in a mill, setting the bones and joints in place and administering a soothing draught that he might forget his pain. Then came an old scribe with a growth as big as a child’s head upon his neck, so that he was pop eyed and held his head awry and found difficulty in breathing. I gave him an extract of seaweed that I had learned of in Smyrna, although I did not think it could do much for him now. He brought out two copper pieces from a clean rag and offered them to me with pleading eyes, ashamed of his poverty. I did not take them, telling him that I should call upon his services when next I needed any writing done. He departed rejoicing because he had saved his money.
A girl from a nearby pleasure house also begged my help, for her eyes were so scabby that they handicapped her in her profession. I cleansed her eyes and mixed her a lotion with which to bathe them and rid them of the evil. Shyly she stood naked before me to offer me the only gift she had. Being unwilling to wound her by a rebuff, I told her that I must abstain from women on account of an important treatment I was about to give. This she believed and admired me for my self-discipline. Moreover, so that her willingness might not be altogether in vain, I removed a few disfiguring warts from her flank and belly, having first rubbed in a numbing salve to render the opera- don almost painless, and she went her way rejoicing.
Thus my first day’s work brought me less than enough to buy salt for my bread, and Kaptah sneered as he served me with a fat goose prepared in the Theban manner, a dish unmatched in any other part of the world. He had brought it from a superior wine shop in the city and kept it hot in the roasting pit. He poured into a colored glass goblet the best wine from Ammon’s vineyard, mocking me meanwhile for my profitable day’s work. But I was light of heart and happier because of the work than if I had treated a wealthy merchant and been rewarded with a gold chain. And I should add that the mill slave returned in a few days to show me his fingers, which were healing well, and to give me a whole crock of meal he had stolen for me, whereby my first day’s work did not go wholly unrewarded.
But Kaptah said, “I believe that from today your fame will spread throughout the quarter, and by dawn your courtyard will be full of patients. I seem to hear the beggars babbling to one another, ‘Hasten to the copperfounder’s house at the corner, for a physician has come there who heals the sick without payment, painlessly and with great skill, who gives copper to penniless mothers and performs beautifying operations on poor girls from the pleasure houses, requiring no gifts. Hasten thither! The firstcomer gets most, for the man will soon be obliged to sell his house and go elsewhere.’
“But the blockheads are wrong. By good fortune you are the possessor of gold, which I shall cunningly set to work for you. Never in your life need you suffer want but may eat goose every day if you wish and drink the best wine and still prosper, provided you are content to remain in this modest house. But since you never conduct yourself as others do, I shall not be surprised to wake one morning with ashes in my hair because you have sold the house and me with it-such is the fatal restlessness of your heart. Truly, it would not nstonish me; therefore, lord, it would be as well to record on paper that I am free to come and go as I please, and to dispatch this paper to the royal archives. The spoken word is forgotten and vanishes, but paper endures forever if it bear your seal in clay and if you offer suitable gifts to the King’s scribes. I have a special reason for this request of mine, but I shall not at this time trouble your head and waste your time with it.”
It was a mild evening in spring; the fires of dung crackled before the mud huts, and from the harbor the wind bore the scent of cedar- wood and of the perfumed waters of Syria. The fragrance of the acacias blended sweetly with the reek of fried fish. I had eaten goose prepared in the Theban manner and drunk wine, and I was full of contentment.
I bade Kaptah pour wine for himself also in an earthenware cup, and I said, “You are free, Kaptah, and have long been so as you know, for notwithstanding your impudence you have been my friend rather than my slave since the. day when you lent me silver and copper, believing that you would never see it again. Be free, Kaptah, and be happy! Tomorrow the King’s scribe shall make out the legal papers upon which I will affix both my Egyptian and my Syrian seals. But tell me now in what manner you have invested my fortune so that it works for me though I earn nothing. Did you take the gold to the temple coffers as I bade you?”
“No, lord!” answered Kaptah, looking me straight in the face with his one eye. “I did not do your bidding as it was foolish, and I have never obeyed your foolish orders but have acted according to my own good sense. I can safely tell you this now that I am free and you have drunk wine in moderation and will not be wroth. Moreover, knowing your hasty and impulsive nature, which age has not yet mellowed, I have taken the precaution of hiding your stick. I tell you this so that you may not attempt to find it when I have begun to relate what I have done. Only simpletons send their gold to the temple for safekeeping, for the temple pays them nothing for it but rather exacts gifts for hiding it in cellars and setting a guard on it. It is stupid for this reason also: The taxation department then knows the amount of your gold, with the result that it dwindles rapidly away where it lies until there is none left. The only reasonable purpose in amassing gold is to put it out to work so that one may sit with folded hands and chew lotus seeds roasted in salt to induce a pleasurable thirst. I have run about the city all day on my stiff legs to inquire as to the best manner of placing your funds, while you took your walks abroad.
Thanks to my thirst I learned a great deal, among other things that Amnion is selling land.”
“Therein you lie!” I exclaimed, for the mere notion was absurd. “Ammon never sells-he buys. Ammon has always bought and now owns one fourth of all the land in the country. And what he has once held he will never relinquish.”
“Of course, of course,” said Kaptah soothingly, pouring more wine into my glass beaker and-with less ostentation-into his own earthenware one. “Every sensible man knows that land is the only property that endures and maintains its value, provided one remains on good terms with the surveyors and has the wit to reward them after each floodtime. Nevertheless it is true that Ammon is selling land hastily and in secret to any of t
he faithful who have money. I also was greatly dismayed to hear of this and inquired into it more closely. Ammon is indeed selling land, and cheaply. You know that he owns the most fertile tracts, and if matters stood as ‘they did formerly, nothing would be more tempting than such a purchase, for profit is sure and speedy. Ammon has sold very extensive areas of land and amassed in his vaults all the ready gold in Egypt, so that the price of real estate has dropped to a marked degree. But all these matters are secret, and I should have heard nothing of them had not my most serviceable thirst brought me among the very men who know.”
“Do not tell me you have bought land, Kaptah?” I cried in dismay, but he reassured me.
“I am not so foolish, lord, for you should know that I was not born with dung between the toes, slave though I am, but in a stone-paved street among tall houses. I know nothing of land. Ammon’s offer is so strangely tempting that a jackal must be lurking in it somewhere, and this is borne out by wealthy men’s suspicions of the temple safes. I believe that the whole affair is the result of Pharaoh’s new god. But I, seeking only your advantage, have bought for you a number of profitable buildings in the city: shops and dwelling houses, for these pay a substantial yearly rent. The purchases await only your seal and signature to be complete. Believe me, I have bought them cheap, and should the sellers make me presents afterward, that is none of your affair but a matter between myself and them arising out of their stupidity. In these dealings I steal nothing whatever from you. But I would not protest if you were to offer me a present or so since I have arranged the business so favorably.”
I reflected a little and replied, “No, Kaptah, I shall make you no presents because you plainly intend to divert to yourself a portion of the rents and also to make your own arrangements with the builders when they estimate their yearly repairs.”
Kaptah, unabashed, assented readily to my words. “That is exactly how I saw the matter, for as your wealth is my wealth, so your advantage must be mine. Yet I will admit that when I heard of Amnion’s transactions I began to take an intense interest in agriculture. I went to the corn exchange and there wandered from tavern to tavern listening and learning. With your gold and by your permission, lord, I mean to purchase stocks of grain-of next summer’s harvest-that is the most profitable way and the prices are still very reasonable. I propose to keep it in store and carefully secured, for something tells me that the price of corn will rise as time goes on. Now that Ammon is selling and every fool becomes a farmer, the harvest cannot continue to be so abundant as formerly. Therefore I have bought storehouses for the grain, dry and soundly built; when we no longer have need of them we can lease them to corn merchants on advantageous terms.”
To my mind Kaptah was giving himself unnecessary trouble and vexation, but the plans amused him and I had nothing against the investments so long as I had not to concern myself with their management. And I told him so.
Studiously concealing his satisfaction, he went on with an air of irritation, “There was a further most profitable enterprise that I desired to engage in on your behalf. One of the largest slave-trading houses is for sale, and I think I may say that I know all that is to be known about slaves, having been one my whole life; I should certainly make you rich in a very short time. I know how to conceal faults and failings in a slave and can use a stick to the best advantage-something you cannot do, lord, if you will allow me to mention it now that your stick is hidden. Yet I am oppressed by misgivings that this excellent opportunity will be wasted and that you will not agree to the scheme. Am I right?”
“You are quite right, Kaptah. The slave trade is something we will not embark upon, for it is a dirty and degrading business-though why this should be so I do not know since everyone buys slaves, uses slaves, and needs slaves. So it has ever been and ever will be, yet something tells me I could not be a slave trader, nor would I have you one.”
Kaptah sighed with relief and said, “I read your heart aright, lord, and so we escaped that evil-for, thinking the matter over, I suspect that I might have paid undue attention to the women when assessing their value and so squandered my forces. I can no longer afford to do this since I am growing old; my limbs are stiffening and my hands shake very grievously, especially in the mornings when I wake and before I have had time to grasp the beer jar. Having thus examined my heart, let me hasten to assure you that all the houses I have bought for you are respectable, yielding modest but certain profit. Not one pleasure house did I buy, nor slums whose moldering hovels bring in better returns than the snug houses of the well-to-do. But I have one favor to ask you.”
All at once Kaptah became diffident and regarded me searchingly with his one eye to assess the gentleness of my mood. I myself poured wine into his cup and encouraged him to speak out, for I had never seen Kaptah uncertain of himself and it aroused my curiosity.
At length he said, “My request is impudent and presumptuous, but since by your own pronouncement I am free, I make bold to utter it, in the hope that you will not be angry. I desire you to come with me to the wine shop in the harbor called the Crocodile’s Tail, of which I have often spoken to you, so that we may enjoy a measure of wine together and that you may see what manner of place it is that I dreamed of when I sucked muddy beer through a reed in Syria and Babylon.”
I burst out laughing and was not offended, for the wine had put me in a good humor. There was melancholy in the spring twilight, and I was very lonely. Unbecoming and singular though it might be for a master to go with his servant to a miserable harbor tavern and to taste a drink that because of its potency was called crocodile’s tail-yet I remembered that Kaptah had once of his own free will accompanied me through a certain dark doorway, well knowing that no one had ever come out of it alive. I laid my hand on his shoulder and said, “My heart tells me that a crocodile’s tail is the very thing to finish off the day. Let us go.”
Kaptah leaped for joy as slaves will, forgetting the stiffness of his bones. He ran and fetched my stick from its hiding place and wrapped my shoulder cloth about me. We then set off to the harbor and to the Crocodile’s Tail, while over the water the wind brought the scent of cedarwood and the green-growing earth.
6
The Crocodile’s Tail lay in the middle of the harbor quarter, crowded in among big warehouses in a dim alley. Its mud-brick walls were immensely thick so that in summer it was cool and in winter conserved its warmth. Above the door, besides a beer jar and a wine jar, there hung a huge dried crocodile with shiny glass eyes, its gaping jaws full of many rows of teeth. Kaptah drew me inside eagerly, called the landlord, and made his way to some cushioned seats. He was well known in the place and quite at home; the other customers, having glanced suspiciously at me, resumed their conversations. I saw to my astonishment that the floor was of wood and that the walls also were paneled. On these walls hung trophies from many long voyages: Negro spears and plumes, mussels from the islands in the sea, and painted Cretan bowls.
Kaptah followed my gaze with pride and said, “You will certainly be marveling that the walls are of wood as in rich men’s houses. Know that all the planks are from old ships which have been broken up, and although I do not willingly think of sea voyages, I must mention that this yellow, sea-worn plank has sailed to the land of Punt and this brown one has scraped along the quays of the islands in the sea. But if you approve, let us enjoy a ‘tail,’ which the landlord himself has mixed for us.”
A beautiful goblet was placed in my hand, molded in the form of a mussel shell, of the kind that must be held on the palm of the hand. I did not look at it, having eyes only for the woman who brought it to me. She was perhaps no longer as young as most serving girls, nor did she walk about half naked to catch the eye and the senses of the customers. She was decently dressed, with a silver ring in one ear and silver bangles about her slender wrists. She met my gaze fearlessly and did not drop her eyes as is the way of most women. Her eyebrows were plucked fine, and in her eyes could be seen both a smile and a sorrow. They were warm
, brown, living eyes, and it did one’s heart good to look into them. I took the cup she offered on the flat of my hand, and Kaptah did the same.
Still looking into her eyes I said in spite of myself, “What is your name, loveliness?”
Her voice was low as she answered, “My name is Merit, and it is not seemly to call me loveliness as shy boys do when they first seek to caress the loins of a serving girl. I hope that you will remember this if ever you honor our house again, Sinuhe the physician, You Who Are Alone.”
Mortified I answered, “I have not the least desire to caress your loins, fair Merit. But how did you know my name?”
She smiled, and the smile was beautiful on her brown face as she said mockingly, “Your fame has gone before you, Son of the Wild Ass, and seeing you I know that fame has not lied but spoken truly in every particular.”
In the depths of her eyes there lay, like a mirage, some remote grief; it sought my heart through her smile and I could not be angry with her.
“If by fame you mean Kaptah here-this former slave of mine whom today I have made a free man-you know very well that his word is not to be trusted. From birth his tongue has been incapable of distinguishing truth from falsehood but loves both equally well-unless indeed it has a bias toward falsehood. I have been unable to cure this either by doctoring or beating.”
She said, “Falsehood may be sweeter than truth when one is much alone and past the spring of life. I like to believe your words when you say ‘fair Merit,’ and I believe all that your face tells me. But will you not taste of the crocodile’s tail I have brought you? I am curious to know whether it may be compared with any of the drinks in the strange lands you have visited.”