The Egyptian by Mika Waltari

Posted by admin_akashic on Mar 4th, 2022 in Stories

We tarried there for a while, though it was a noisy town, full of vice and crime, for when we saw a ship bound for Crete, Minea would say, “That one is too small and will sink, and I have no wish to be shipwrecked a second time.” And when we saw a larger one, she would say, “That is a Syrian ship, and I will not sail in a Syrian ship.” And of a third she would object, “The master of the vessel has evil eyes, and I fear he will sell us as slaves in a foreign land.”

So we stayed on in the seaport, and I for one did not regret this. I had plenty to do there, cleansing and stitching up gashes and opening crushed skulls. The harbour master himself eventually came to me, for he was suffering from the harbour disease and could not rejoice with girls because it had become very painful for him, but I knew the disease from my Zemar days and was able to cure it with a remedy used by the physicians there, and his gratitude knew no limits when he could again rejoice with the harbour girls without discomfort. This was his legal benefit for every girl who wanted to practice her profession in the harbour had to rejoice with him and his scribes for free. Being unable to benefit from this had made him sad indeed.

When I had cured him, he said, “What shall I give you, Sinuhe, for your great skill? Should I weigh that which you cured with gold and give the gold to you?” But I said, “I do not want your gold. Give me the knife in your girdle, and the obligation will be mine and not yours for I shall have a lasting gift by which to remember you.” But he objected, saying, “The knife is a common one, no wolves run along its edge, nor is there silver inlay in the handle.” But he said this because the knife was of Hittite metal, and it was forbidden to give or sell it to strangers. I had been unable to buy such a weapon, not liking to insist for fear of arousing suspicion. In Mitanni, such knives were to be seen only amongst the most distinguished persons, and their price was ten times their weight in gold and fourteen in silver, and even then their possessors would not sell them because there were but few of them in the known world. But for a Hittite such a knife had no great value since he was forbidden to sell it to a foreigner.

263

The harbour master knew that I was soon to leave the country, and reflecting that he could find better use for his gold than to give it away to a doctor, he did in the end present me with the knife. It was so sharp that it shaved hair more easily than the finest flint blade and could make nicks in copper without damaging its own edge. I was delighted with it and resolved to silver-wash the blade and fit to it a handle of gold as did the Mitannians when they had acquired such a knife. The harbour master bore no grudge but was my friend because I had wrought him a lasting cure. I urged him to expel from the harbour the girl who had given him the disease, but he said he had already her impaled since such nuisance must have been due to sorcery.

In this town there was a field in which wild bulls were kept as was often the case at seaports, and the youth of the place displayed their litheness and valour in encounters with the wild bulls, hurling darts into their shoulders and leaping over them. Minea was overjoyed to see the bulls and desired to test her skill. In this way I first saw her dance amongst wild bulls, and it was like nothing I had ever seen before, and my heart froze from fear as I watched. For a wild bull is the most terrible of all savage beasts, worse even than an elephant, which is gentle when not irritated, and its horns are long and sharp as bradawls, and with one stroke it will slit a man’s body or toss him high in the air and trample him underfoot.

But Minea danced before them wearing only a flimsy garment, and she stepped lightly aside when they lowered their heads and charged at her with dreadful bellowing. Her face was flushed, and with growing excitement, she threw off her silver hair net so that her hair floated in the wind, and her dance was so rapid that the eye could not follow all her movements as she leaped up between the horns of an attacking beast, held fast to them and then, thrusting with her feet against the beast’s forehead, threw herself upward in a somersault to land standing on its back. I gazed at her performance, and I believe her awareness of this urged her on to do things I could never have believed a human being could accomplish had someone told me about it. So I looked on with my body streaming with sweat, and I could not sit still, although those who sat behind me on the benches swore at me and tugged at my shoulder cloth.

264