The Egyptian by Mika Waltari

Posted by admin_akashic on Mar 4th, 2022 in Stories

She seized me by the arms fiercely, and her eyes blazed and her breath came quick as she said, “I forbid you to make merry amongst my friends while I am absent. For my sake you should wait until I have gone, Sinuhe. And though doubtless in your eyes I am too thin, which never occurred to me before, yet do this out of friendship for me since I ask it of you.”

“It was only a jest,” I said, “and I have no wish to trouble your peace since you have doubtless much to do before you enter the house of god. I will return therefore to my inn and heal the sick, for in the harbour are many who need my help.”

I left her, and for a long while afterward the smell of the bulls was in my nostrils, and never shall I forget the smell of the Cretan house of the bulls — and to this day, when I see a herd and catch the scent of it, I am seized with sickness and cannot eat, and my heart aches in my breast. Nevertheless, I left her and received patients at the inn and treated them and soothed their suffering until darkness fell and lamps were lit in the pleasure houses of the harbour. Through the walls came the sound of music and laughter and all the sounds of the nonchalance of man, for even slaves and servants of Crete had caught the carefree manners of their masters, each living as if he would never die and as if pain, grief and longing had no existence.

It was dark, and I sat in my room in darkness — where Kaptah had already spread my sleeping mat — for I would have no lamp lit. The moon rose large and bright but not yet quite full, and I hated the moon because it was to sever me from the only one in the world who was my sister; and I also hated myself for being a coward and weak and uncertain of my own desires. Then the door opened, and Minea came in cautiously looking around and behind herself as was her habit, and she was no longer dressed in the Cretan manner but wore the same simple dress in which she had danced for the mighty and the humble of many lands, and her hair was bound with a golden ribbon.

“Minea,” I said in amazement. “Why have you come to me, since I thought you were preparing for your god.”

283

But she said, “Speak softly, for I do not want others to hear us.” She sat close against me and, staring at the moon, she said capriciously, “I do not like my sleeping place in the house of bulls, and I am not as happy amongst my friends as I was formerly. But why I should come to visit you at this inn in the harbour, which is so unseemly a thing to do, I cannot say. Should you wish to sleep, however, I shall not disturb you and will go, but since I could not sleep, I felt a craving for the old smell of drugs and herbs, and I wanted to pinch Kaptah’s ear once more and pull his hair for the nonsense he talks. Travels and strange peoples must have distracted me so that I no longer feel at home amongst the bulls nor elated at the applause on the field, and I do not even long for the god’s house as before, and the talk of those about me is like the babbling of silly children, and their mirth is like sea froth on the beach, and their pleasures are no pleasures to me. My heart is a void, and my head is also empty, and there is no single thought that I can call my own; but everything is pain, and I have never in my life known such distress. I beg you, therefore, to hold my hand again as you used to do for I fear no evil and not even death as long as you hold my hands, Sinuhe, though I know only too well that you would prefer to look on plumper and more beautiful women than I am and hold their hands.”

I said to her, “Minea, my sister, my childhood and youth were like a clear, deep-running brook, but my manhood was a great river which spreads and covers much soil, but its waters were turgid, and they settled into foul, stagnant pools. But when you came to me, Minea, you gathered up all these waters, and they poured joyously down a deep channel so that all within me was cleansed, and the world smiled at me, and evil was easily brushed aside like a spider’s web with a wave of hand. For your sake I sought goodness and healed the sick without regard to gifts they gave me, and the dark gods had no power over me. Thus it was when you came — but now that you go away from me, everything becomes dark around me, and my heart is like a lonely crow in the desert; and I bear good will to no one any more, but I hate men, and I hate the gods and will not hear them spoken of. So it is with me, Minea, and therefore I tell you: In the world are many countries but only one river. Let me carry you with me to the Black Land by the shores of that river, where wild ducks cry in the reeds and every day the sun rows across the sky in his golden boat. Come with me, Minea, and we will break a jar together and be man and wife, never more to part from one another, and life will be easy for us, and when we die, our bodies will be preserved so that we may meet in the Western Land and live there together forever.”

284