But she yawned and held the back of her hand across her mouth and said, “You must never drink a single crocodile’s tails again, Sinuhe, since they make you talk so foolishly the next day. Remember that I grew up in a tavern and am no longer an innocent girl who might take you at your word and be sorely disappointed.”
“When I look into your eyes, Merit, I believe that there are good women in the world,” I said to her and touched her smooth cheeks with my mouth. “That was why I said it, that you might understand how much you are to me.”
She smiled and said, “You surely noted that I forbade you to drink crocodile’s tails, for a woman first shows her fondness for a man by forbidding him something to feel her own power. Let us not talk of jars, Sinuhe. You know that my mat is yours whenever you are too lonely and sorrowful. But be not offended if you sometimes find that there are other lonely and sorrowful men in the world besides yourself, for as a human being, I am as free as you are to choose my company, and I hold you in no way bound. And so, in spite of all, I will serve you a crocodile’s tail with my own hand.”
So strange is the mind of man and so little does he know his own heart that my soul at this moment was again as free and light as a bird, and I recalled nothing of the evil which had come to pass during those days. I was content and tasted no more crocodile’s tails that day. That was good, since that day I met Pharaoh Akhenaten again.
4
That day, Horemheb returned to Pharaoh his scourge and his crook and told that he had deposed Amun and restored order in the city. Pharaoh put the royal commander’s collar about his neck and presented him with the golden whip of the commander -in-chief, still smelling of Pepitaten’s cats. To celebrate Aten’s victory, Pharaoh wanted to ride in a parade along the Avenue of Rams to the temple of Aten on the following day, but that night he wanted to host a party for his friends in his golden house. Horemheb told him about me, and this way I also received an invitation to Pharaoh’s golden house for Horemheb greatly exaggerated my skills and work in Thebes as the physician to the poor and everything I had done bandaging the miserable and wiping the orphans’ tears.
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I dressed in royal linen and followed Horemheb to Pharaoh’s golden house. But in the boat Horemheb said, waving his golden whip, “While I remember it, let me remind you not to mix my soldiers with your affairs with women, Sinuhe, for there is great noise among the distinguished men, and it is said you stole some woman from her house last night. She has many wealthy lovers who wail and cry like sick cats — oh, dung, how my baton stinks — well, they are looking for their sweetheart but my soldiers keep their mouths shut, and just keep her hidden and take pleasure with her as long as you want, although I hardly believe you are capable to this rough act for a woman’s sake. But big fish spawn in deep waters, and my soldiers must have been right to once name you as the Son of the Wild Ass for your bravery in the heat of the battle.”
In the palace, I laid my eyes for the first time on the court women’s new summer dresses that were much talked about in the city, and I admit that, despite their strangeness, they were beautiful and cool and left a man’s eye only little to guess. I also saw how the women had painted the area around their eyes in malachite green and their cheeks and lips in tile red so that they resembled painted images which was appropriate since they moved around sluggishly and struggled to hide their yawning, having partied all night on the streets of Thebes, and many walked with their knees still wobbling because of wine so that they preferred leaning on the walls and sought support from men’s long sticks.
Horemheb took me before Pharaoh in his room, and this way I met Pharaoh again. While I had been away, he had grown into manhood, and his face was intense and pale, and his eyes were swollen from staying up. He did not wear a single jewel and had only simple white clothes, but they were of finest royal linen that did not hide the malformed feminine shape of his long, slender body.
“Sinuhe, the physician, you lonely one, I remember you,” he said, and that moment I knew that he was a person one had to hate or to love, for no one with a heart could remain cold in front of him.
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