The Egyptian by Mika Waltari

Posted by admin_akashic on Mar 4th, 2022 in Stories

“There is yet another most profitable enterprise that I desire to engage in on your behalf. One of the largest slave trading houses of the slave market is for sale, and I think I may say that I know all that is to be known about slaves, having been one my whole life so that I should certainly make you rich with slave trade in a very short time. I know how to conceal faults and failings in a slave and know how to use a stick to the best advantage — something you really don’t know, my lord, if you will allow me to mention it now that I have hidden your stick. Yet I am oppressed by misgivings that this excellent opportunity will be wasted and that you will not agree to the scheme, or am I right, my lord?”

“You are quite right, Kaptah,” I said. “The slave trade is something we will not embark upon, for it is a dirty and degrading business, though why this should be so, I do not know, since everyone buys slaves, uses slaves and needs slaves. So it has ever been and ever will be, yet something tells me I could not be a slave trader, nor would I have you be one.”

Kaptah sighed with relief and said, “I read your heart aright, my lord, and so we escaped that evil, for thinking the matter over, I suspect that I might have paid undue attention to the female slaves when assessing their value and so squandered my forces — which I can no longer afford to do since I am growing old and my limbs are stiffening and my hands shake very grievously, especially in the mornings when I wake and before I have had time to grasp the beer jar in my hand. Having thus examined your heart, let me hasten to assure you that all the houses I have bought for you are respectable, yielding modest but certain profit. Not one pleasure house did I buy, nor alleys of the poor whose mouldering hovels bring in better returns than the enduring houses of the respectable families. I needed to struggle hard with myself for why shouldn’t we earn the same way as everyone else has earned. However, my heart tells me that you would not have accepted it, my lord, and with great effort I gave up these dear wishes of mine. But I have yet one favour to ask you.”

All at once, Kaptah became diffident and regarded me searchingly with his one eye to assess the gentleness of my mood. I myself poured wine into his cup and encouraged him to speak out, for I had never seen Kaptah uncertain of himself and it aroused my curiosity. At length he said:

349

“My request is impudent and presumptuous, but since by your own pronouncement I am free, I make bold to utter it, in the hope that you will not be angry, and to be sure I have hidden your stick. I desire you to come with me to that wine shop in the harbour I have told you about and whose name is The Crocodile’s Tail , of which I have often spoken to you, so that we may enjoy a measure of wine together and that you may see what manner of place it is that I dreamed of when I sucked muddy beer through a reed in Syria and Babylon.”

I burst out laughing and was not offended, for the wine had made me gentle. There was melancholy in the spring twilight, and I was very lonely. Unbecoming and singular though it might be for a master to go with his servant to a miserable harbour tavern and to taste a drink that because of its potency was called a crocodile’s tail — yet I remembered that Kaptah had once of his own free will accompanied me through a certain dark gate, well knowing that no one had ever returned through the gate alive. I laid my hand on his shoulder and said, “My heart tells me that a crocodile’s tail is the very thing to finish off the day. Let us go.”

Kaptah leaped for joy as slaves will, forgetting the stiffness of his bones. He ran and fetched my stick from its hiding place and wrapped my shoulder cloth about me. We then set off to the harbour and to The Crocodile’s Tail, while over the water the wind brought the scent of dry cedar wood and the flowering soil.

The wine tavern The Crocodile’s Tail lay in the middle of the harbour quarter, crowded in amongst big warehouses in a sheltered alley. It was built of mud bricks, and its walls were immensely thick so that in summer it was cool and in winter it conserved its warmth. Above the door, beside a beer jar and a wine jar, there hung a huge dried crocodile with shiny glass eyes, its gaping jaws full of many rows of teeth. Kaptah drew me inside eagerly, called the landlord and reserved some cushioned seats for us. He was well known in the place and quite at home so that the other customers, having glanced suspiciously at me, calmed down and resumed their conversations. I saw to my

350