The Egyptian by Mika Waltari

Posted by admin_akashic on Mar 4th, 2022 in Stories

Upon our arrival in the harbour, we put ourselves up at the foreigners’ inn, which was the most luxurious of any I have seen — though not large so that Ishtar’s House of Joy in Babylon, with all its dusty magnificence and its loutish servants, seemed a very barbarous place in comparison. There we washed and dressed, and Minea put up her hair and bought new clothes that she might show herself to her friends; I was astonished to behold her for she wore on her head a tiny hat like a lamp and on her feet high-heeled shoes that were awkward to walk in. I would not vex her by any remark but gave her earrings and a necklace of different-coloured stones, which the merchant told me was fashionable that day in Crete, though he could not say if that was the case tomorrow. I surveyed also with astonishment her bared breasts with nipples painted red, which swelled forth from the silver sheath about her body so that she avoided my eyes, saying defiantly that her breasts were nothing to be ashamed of but would stand comparison with those of any woman in Crete. After closer inspection I did not deny this, for she may well have been right.

Next we were carried up the hill to the town itself that with its gardens and airy houses was like another world after coming from the crowds, noise, fish smells and chaffering of the port. Minea took me to an elderly man of some distinction who was her special patron and friend and staked money on her in the field of bulls, so that Minea stayed with him and used his house as her own. He was studying his lists of bulls and noting the bets he would make on the following day when we came, but when he saw Minea, he forgot his papers in his joy and embraced her without reserve and said, “Where have you been hiding since I have not seen you for so long a time that I fancied you must already have entered the house of the god. Yet I have chosen no protégé to take your place, and there are no changes in your room, that is if my servants have remembered to keep it so and my wife has not had it pulled down to make room for a pool for she has just now a fancy for breeding different kinds of fish and can think of nothing else.”

“Is Helea breeding fish?” exclaimed Minea in astonishment.

“It is Helea no longer,” the somewhat embarrassed old man said. “I have a new wife, and she is right now in the company of an uninitiated bull youth to whom she is showing her fish, and I do not think she would want to be disturbed. But introduce your friend to me that he may be my friend also and that this house be his house.”

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“My friend is Sinuhe, the Egyptian, He Who Is Alone, and by profession he is a physician,” said Minea.

“I wonder how long he will remain alone here,” the old man jested. “But surely you are not ill, Minea, that you come in company with a physician for that would distress me, since I am hoping you will dance before the bulls tomorrow and turn my luck. My steward down at the port has been complaining that my income no longer covers my expenses, or expenses my income, or whatever, for I can make nothing of his complicated accounts, which he constantly thrusts before me in the most tedious manner.”

“I am not ill,” said Minea. “But this friend has rescued me from many perils, and we have journeyed far to return to my mother land for I was shipwrecked on my way to dance before bulls in Syria.”

“Indeed? Is that so?” said the old man uneasily. “I hope that despite your friendship you have remained untouched, or you will be excluded from the competitions, and there are also other vexations as you are well aware. I am indeed distressed, for I note that your breasts have developed and grown bigger in a suspicious manner and your eyes have a moist shine in them. Minea, Minea, you have not cast yourself away?”

“No,” said Minea in wrath. “And when I deny it you may trust to my word and need not examine me as they did in the Babylonian slave market. You seem scarcely to understand that it is thanks to my friend here that I have returned to my mother country safely after many perils, and I thought my friends would rejoice to see me, but you think only of your bulls and your wagers.” She began to weep with rage, and her tears left streaks of eye colour on her cheeks.

The old man was greatly disturbed and cast down, and he said, “I doubt not that you are overwrought from your travels, for in foreign countries you may not even have been able to take your daily bath, did you? Nor do I think that the bulls of Babylon can be compared with ours. That reminds me that I should long ago have been at Minos, though the matter escaped my mind so that I had better go at once without changing my clothes. I don’t think anyone pays attention to my

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