The Egyptian by Mika Waltari

Posted by admin_akashic on Mar 4th, 2022 in Stories

I was greatly weary of Kaptah at this time, for he persisted in stuffing me with food although I felt no hunger at all and desired only wine. I suffered from a continual and unquenchable thirst that only wine could satisfy and I was calmest when I had drunk enough to make everything appear double. At such times, I became aware that things might not be quite as they seem; for the drinker of wine sees everything double when he has drunk enough, and to him this is true vision even while he knows that it is false. To me this was the very essence of truth, but when I sought to expound this with patience and self-mastery to Kaptah, he would not listen but bade me lie down, close my eyes and compose myself. I however thought I was totally calm and cold-blooded like a dead fish in an oil jar, and I didn’t want to close my eyes which made me see unpleasant things like human bones gnawed white in rotting water and a version of Minea I once knew a long time ago, dancing with great skill before a bull-headed snake. I had no desire to keep me eyes closed and I tried to get my stick to hit Kaptah, whom I was most weary of, but wine had made my hand weak, and he had no trouble wresting it from my hand. Also he had hidden from me my most expensive knife that I had got as a gift from the Hittite harbour master so that I could not find it when I was eager to see blood running from my artery.

In his impudence, Kaptah did not invite Minotaur to visit me even if I very persistently asked him many times to do so, because I wanted to talk with Minotaur and felt he was the only person in the world who could fully understand me and my great thoughts about gods and truth and fantasy. Kaptah did not even bring me a bloody head of a bull to talk with about bulls, the sea and the dance of the bulls. Not even that small request he complied for me, and I was indeed weary of him.

Afterwards, I understand I must have been sick at that time and cannot recall everything that I was thinking any more since the wine tended to confuse me and darken my understanding. Yet I think the good wine saved my reason and helped me through the worst when I had lost Minea forever, and with her my faith in the gods and in the

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goodness of men. Therefore when someone comes to me with ashes in his hair and clothes torn, I always say to him, “There is no grief that wine cannot cure. There is no misfortune that wine could not soothe. There is no loss that wine could not comfort. So drink wine, and your sorrow will drown in wine like a mouse in an oil jar, and care not if the wine is bitter in your mouth at first, for the more you drink, the better it tastes, and soon your sorrow is but a distant cloud in the sky.”

But if someone comes to me with a garland in his hair and about his neck, anointed with expensive balms and dressed in the best clothes, with tears of joy in his eyes, then I say, “Beware the excess of joy, my friend, for joy is more dangerous than grief and misfortune, and your joy is like a snake gleaming in light — beautiful to behold but sheds lethal poison in your veins. Beware joy, my friend, and drowning your joy in wine, for there is no joy that wine could not drown; and care not if the wine makes your joy riotous and tastes sweet in your mouth at first, for the more you drink, the more bitter it tastes until there is nothing left of your joy but a ragged cloth in dry sand — and that is best since joy is the most treacherous gift a man tempted by fantasies can have.”

This way, something in me evaporated in the fumes of wine like before when in my boyhood I saw the priest of Amun spit on the face of the god in the innermost sanctuary and rub its face with his sleeve. The river of my life was choked and its waters spreading into a wide pool whose surface was fair like a mirror to the starry heavens, but if you thrust your staff into it, the water was shallow and its bottom filled with mud and carcasses.

So one morning I awoke in the inn to see Kaptah sitting in a corner of the room, weeping silently and rocking his head between his hands. I bowed my head over the wine jar with shaking hands and, having drunk, said angrily, “What do you weep for, dog?” It was the first time for many days that I had troubled to speak to him, so weary was I of his solicitude and stupidity. He raised his head and said, “A ship is now lying in the harbour ready to sail for Syria, and it probably is the last that will leave before the winter gales set in. That is all I weep for.”

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