and also the crocodiles were so sated that they did not splash their tails any more but lay on the shores opening their jaws and letting little birds peck and clean their teeth from the waste of their terrifying meals. Here and there amongst the ruins and burned-down houses, frightened women and children scrabbled after their household goods in the places where their dwellings had stood, and the children of the slain slaves and porters followed Pharaoh’s chariots to pick up undigested grains from horses’ dung, for the hunger was great in Thebes. I, Sinuhe, walked the quays, which still stank of stale blood, looking at the empty baskets and ships that had no loads; and my feet took me to the ruins of The Crocodile’s Inn, and I thought of Merit and little Thoth, who had perished on Aten’s account and through the madness of my heart.
My steps led me to the ruins of The Crocodile’s Tail, and I thought of Merit, who had said to me, “Perhaps I am but the cushion to soften your loneliness when I am not your worn mat.” I also thought of little Thoth who was my son though I did not know it, and I saw him before me, with his cheeks and limbs boyishly slender, and how he put his arms about my neck and laid his cheek to my cheek. With the sharp smell of smoke in my nostrils, I walked in the dust of the harbour and saw before me the transfixed body of Merit and little Thoth’s bloody nose, his soft boy’s locks stained with blood. I saw all this before me and reflected that Pharaoh Akhenaten’s death had been an easy one. I thought that nothing in the world is more terrible and more dangerous than the dreams of Pharaohs, because the seeds they sow are blood and death and only fatten the crocodiles. Such were my thoughts when I walked in the deserted harbour, and people’s jubilant shouts reached my ears afar from the Temple’s front as they greeted Pharaoh Tutankhamun in their delusion that this potty boy — whose only dream was of a fine tomb — would root out injustice and restore peace and prosperity to the land of Kem.
I wandered thus wherever my feet led me, aware that I was alone again and that my blood in Thoth had drained away for nothing and would never come back; and there was no wish of immortality or everlasting life in me, for death was to me like rest and sleep, and death was like a brazier’s warmth on a cold night. Akhenaten’s god had robbed me of all hope and joy, and I knew that all gods dwelt in dark
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houses from whence there is no return. Pharaoh Akhenaten had drunk death from my hands, but this did not compensate anything, and with death he had drunk a most merciful oblivion. But I lived and could not forget. Bitterness consumed my heart like lye, and I felt resentment toward everyone, and I felt resentment against the people who were now bellowing in front of the Temple like a drove, as stupid and mindless as before, having learned nothing from the past.
The harbour and its ruins were desolate like death, but from amongst a pile of empty baskets came a ghost of a man who crawled at me on his hands and knees. He was a small, thin man whose limbs had already been distorted in childhood from insufficient food. He moistened his mouth with a blackened tongue and looked at me with wild eyes and said, “Aren’t you Sinuhe, the royal physician, who bound the wounds of the poor in the name of Aten?” He laughed in a horrible voice and got up to point his finger at me and said, “Aren’t you Sinuhe, who shared bread to people and said, ‘This is the bread of Aten, take and eat in the name of Aten.’ If that is the case, then in the name of all the gods of the underworld, give me a piece of bread since I have been hiding from the guards many days and haven’t even dared to go down to the river to drink. In the name of all the gods of the underworld, give me a piece of bread for my spit has already dried in my mouth and my belly becomes green like grass.”
But I had no bread to give him nor did he wait for it for he had only come to mock me for the sake of his own bitterness. He said, “I had a hut, and although it was a poor hut and stank of rotten fish, it was my hut. I had a wife, and although she was ugly and weary and skinny, she was my wife. I had children, and although they starved before my eyes, they were still my children. Where are my hut and my wife and my children now? Your god took them, Sinuhe — Aten, the destroyer of everything, the devourer of everything has taken them, and I have nothing any more except mud on my hands, and soon I will die and don’t feel sorry about that.”
He sat on the ground before me and pressed his swollen stomach with his fists, staring in front of him with wild eyes, and whispered to me, “Sinuhe, maybe our game was worth it in the end, since even though I die and my friends have died, perhaps we leave a memory in
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