anxiously talk with people, like during the first days of the journey. I already knew that the return to Thebes would not solve the troubles in my heart, and it would have made no difference if I stayed in any of the cities along the river, bought a house there and started practicing my profession. But I had to meet with Horemheb, and that was a reason as good as any to continue all the way to Thebes.
So I saw again the peaks of the three mountains against the eastern sky, the eternal guardians of Thebes. Inhabited places increased, poor villages with their mud huts took turns with rich suburbs until the city walls rose up as magnificent as mountains, and I saw the roof of the great Temple of Amun and its pillars, the countless buildings about it and the sacred lake. Westward, the endless City of the Dead stretched away to the hills, and the death temples of Pharaohs glowed white against the yellow slopes, and the rows of pillars in the Temple of the Great Queen bore up a sea of still flowering trees. Beyond the mountains lay the forbidden valley with its snakes and scorpions where, in the sand at the entrance to the Tomb of the Great Pharaoh, the dried bodies of my parents Senmut and Kipa lay in eternal rest inside an oxhide. Further south along the shore rose the golden, airy house of Pharaoh, hazy amongst its gardens and walls. I wondered whether my friend Horemheb dwelt there.
The boat came alongside a familiar stone quay. Nothing had changed, and not many blocks away was the place where I had spent my childhood, little knowing that by the time I reached manhood, I was to lay waste my parents’ life. The sands of time, which had drifted over these bitter memories, stirred a little, and I longed to hide myself and cover my face and felt no joy, though the noise of the harbour of the great city surrounded me once more, and I sensed the Thebes fever in people’s eyes, their haste and restless movements. I had made no plans for my return, having resolved to let all depend upon my meeting with Horemheb and upon his position at court. But when my feet touched the stones of the quay, a plan sprang ready formed into my head, and it promised neither doctor’s fame nor wealth nor lavish gifts in return for all the knowledge I had amassed, as had formerly been my dream, but obscurity and a simple life amongst poor patients. Yet my mind was filled with a strange serenity when I saw my future revealed, and again
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that proved how little a man knows his heart even if I already thought to know my heart profoundly. Never had I thought about it before, but perhaps everything that I had experienced had ripened this decision within me, unseen. When I heard the roar of Thebes about me and my feet touched the burning stones of the wharf, I was a child again: watching with solemn, curious eyes my father Senmut’s work while he saw the sick in his work room. I drove away the porters who noisily importuned me, squabbling amongst themselves, and I said to Kaptah:
“Leave our baggage in the boat and hasten to buy me a house, no matter which, near the harbour in the poor quarter, near the place where my father’s house stood before they pulled it down. Do this in haste that I may take up my dwelling there today and tomorrow begin to ply my trade.”
Kaptah’s jaw dropped, and his face was a blank mask. He had fancied that we should first put up at the best inn and be waited on by slaves. Yet for once he uttered no word of protest, but having gazed into my face, he shut his mouth and went his way with a drooping head. That evening, I moved into a house in the poor quarter that had belonged to a copper founder, and my baggage was conveyed thither, and there I spread my mat on the earthen floor. Cooking fires were glowing before the huts of the poor, and the smell of fried fish floated over all that dirty, wretched, sickly quarter until the lamps were lit above the doors of the pleasure houses, and Syrian music began to jangle from the taverns, blending with the roars of tipsy seamen; and the sky over Thebes glowed red from the countless lights from the centre of the city. I had travelled many outlandish roads to their end, gathering wisdom and fleeing eternally from myself, and I had come home.
4
On the following morning, I said to Kaptah, “Find me a doctor’s sign to set above my door, a simple one, without paintings or ornaments. And should anyone ask for me, say nothing of my fame or ability, but only that the physician Sinuhe receives patients, also poor ones, and requires only such gifts as their means allow.”
“Also poor?” said Kaptah in genuine dismay. “Oh, my lord, you are not ill? You have not drunk marsh water or been stung by a scorpion?”
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