The Egyptian by Mika Waltari

Posted by admin_akashic on Mar 4th, 2022 in Stories

I said to him, “Run away to your ship, then, before I beat you with stick again. At least I shall be spared the sight of your unendurable face and the sound of your everlasting nagging and lamentations.” Having said this, I was ashamed and pushed away the wine jar, and a bitter consolation lay in the thought that there was at least one creature dependent on me, though it was but a runaway slave.

But Kaptah said, “Truly, my lord, I, am so weary of your boozing and pigging that wine has also lost its taste in my mouth, which I would never have believed, and I do not even care to suck beer from a straw any more. The dead are dead and don’t return, so it’s better to go away from here while we may. Your gold and silver and all that you amassed in the course of your journeys you have thrown out of the window to gutters, and I do not believe you can cure anyone with your shaking hands when you cannot so much as hold a wine jar. I have to say that at first I thought it well for you to drink for the sake of your peace of mind, and I urged you to drink, continually breaking the seals of new jars, and drank also myself. Moreover, I boasted to others, saying, ‘See what a master I have! He drinks like a hippopotamus and does not hesitate to drown both gold and silver in his wine, exceedingly making merry.’ But now I boast no longer and am ashamed on my lord’s account, for there are limits to everything, and to my mind you exceed them. I will never condemn a man who drinks himself into a passion and brawls in the street and gets a bump in his head and wakes up in a pleasure house, for that is a sensible custom, which relieves the mind of many kinds of grief, and I have often done the same. The hangover should be treated prudently with beer and salt fish, after which a man resumes his labour, as the gods have ordained and decency so requires. But you drink as if each day were your last, and I fear you wish to soak yourself into your grave — but if this is your aim, you would do better to drown in a wine presser, for this is a speedier method and more pleasant also, and of no dishonour to you.”

I considered his words. I surveyed my hands, which had been those of a healer but which now shook as if they had a will of their own, and I could not control them any more. I thought of the knowledge I had accumulated in many lands and saw that excess was madness, and extremes of drinking and eating were as senseless as to give way to extremes of sorrow and joy. Therefore, I said to Kaptah:

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“Let it be as you say, but know that the matter was already well evident to me, and it is not your words that persuade me as they are as the tedious buzzing of flies in my ear. I shall leave drinking for a time and do not purpose to open another jar for a while. I have brought order to my thoughts and intend to leave Crete and return to Zemar.”

Kaptah skipped joyfully across the room and jumped with both feet on the floor like is the habit of slaves, but I continued still and said:

“This journey has been very useful to me, for here on this island of the sea I have balanced my accounts with gods and do not owe them anything any more; and the gods owe nothing to me, although I cannot say this in public as people would resent it and regard my words profane. Therefore I intend to let anyone become blessed with their own beliefs without interfering in the matters of the gods any more, were they of Egyptians or of Cretans or of people of Babylon or Hittites — who I assume will soon teach a lot to other people about the power of gods and their ways. I will myself depart for Zemar and enter any path that opens before me without giving much thought to where it leads. Maybe life is better than death, after all, and a living man better than a dead god, but I cannot say that for sure before I have died. However I think that death can be no different from being severely drunk from wine for a few weeks, so I wonder if I have already experienced death. Haste now to book us seats on the boat and gather our belongings, whatever is left of them, and help me aboard for I do not trust my feet yet, and they feel like alien artefacts, one trying to go to one direction and the other elsewhere.”

But before he left in his joy, I said to him, “All this takes place on the condition that you will never in my hearing say the name Minea which is forgotten and erased like it never was. I do not demand you to make an oath and vow in this matter for they are nothing but buzzing of flies, but I assure you that if you even once utter it, I will sell you to stone mills or copper mines and I’ll give you in as a runaway slave so that they cut your nose and ears. Remember this, Kaptah, for truer words I have never said.”

And Kaptah said nothing, but went out to arrange for our departure, and on that same day we went aboard. The rowers dipped their oars, and we glided from the harbour, past the scores and hundreds of vessels lying at anchor and past the copper-shielded Cretan warships. Once

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