The Egyptian by Mika Waltari

Posted by admin_akashic on Mar 4th, 2022 in Stories

He patted my cheeks with his scarred hands, and hot tears fell from his eyes onto my hands, and the dull fish gutter’s smell spread from him up to my nostrils, when he said, “Go away already, my brother Sinuhe, so that the guards won’t kill you and so that harm won’t come to you for my sake. Go away, but may my tears follow your every step until your eyes open to see everything that I now see so that at the end my tears are more precious to you than pearls and jewels. At this moment I no longer cry alone, but in me cry the enslaved and the beaten since time immemorial. My tears are the tears of millions and millions that make the world old and scarred from tears. The water in the river is the tears of those who came before us, and the rain that comes down to earth in foreign lands is the tears of those who come after us. When you know that, you are no longer alone, Sinuhe.”

He fell to the ground before me, and his cramped fingers dug into the dust of the quay, and his tears rolled down like grey pearls into the dust, but I did not understand his words though I had been ready to die by his hand. I fled away from him and wiped my tear -soaked hands on my shoulder cloth, and his dull smell lingered in my nostrils. I forgot about him while I followed my feet, and bitterness consumed my heart like lye for I thought my own grief and loneliness were greater than the grief and loneliness of other people. This way, my feet carried me to the ruins of the old copper founder’s house, and I met scared children who hid themselves at my coming, and women, who were digging amidst the rubble for their pots and pitchers, also hid their faces when they saw me.

The old copper founder’s house had burned down, and its mud walls rose before me black with soot, and the water pool in the garden had dried up, and the boughs of the sycamore were black and leafless. But someone had erected a shelter, beneath which I saw a water jar, amongst the ruins, and Muti came to meet me with earth in her greying hair, limping because of her wounds, so that I thought I saw her Ka and startled before her. And she bowed before me on trembling knees, saying mockingly, “Blessed be the day that brings my master home.”

She could not utter more for her voice was strangled in acrimony, and squatting upon the ground, she hid her face in her hands so that she didn’t need to see me. Her thin body had been wounded in many places by horns, and her leg was bruised, but the wounds had already become scars, and I could do nothing for them though I examined her to help her, ignoring her resistance. I asked from her, “Where is Kaptah?”

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She said, “Kaptah is dead. They say the slaves killed him when they saw that he served wine to Pepitamun’s men and betrayed them.” But I did not believe her, knowing well that Kaptah could not die, for Kaptah always lives on, whatever happens.

Greatly incensed by my disbelief, Muti said, “It must be easy and pleasant for you to laugh now, Sinuhe, that you have got everything you wanted and seen your Aten feast. You men are all alike, and all evil in the world comes from men, for men never grow up but always remain boys and throw stones and strike one another with sticks and shed blood from one another’s noses, and their chief delight is to bring sorrow on those who love them and wish them well. Truly, have I not always wished the best for you, Sinuhe, but how am I rewarded. With a lame leg and horn wounds in my limbs and a handful of rotten corn as my gruel. Yet I do not accuse you on my account, but on Merit’s account who was far too good for you, since you are a man, and whom you knowingly and of set purpose pushed to her death as surely as you’d cut her heart open with a knife. I have wept my tears dry for little Thoth, also, who was like my own son and for whom I baked honey cakes and did my best to suppress his fierce manly nature with love. But what do you care for all this since you surely are very satisfied to come to me beaten and scabby-faced and having wasted all your wealth, to rest beneath the roof I have raised among the ruins of your house with such toil and difficulty and to expect that I may feed you. I would wager much that before morning you will be whining for beer, and that in the morning you will beat me because I do not serve you as diligently as you would wish and set me to labour for you that you may lie idle, since such is the nature of men — and it does not surprise me at all, but I think I am now accustomed to everything, and nothing that you may come up with will amaze me.”

Thus she spoke to me and reproached me passionately without considering her words, and her nagging was so home like that I remembered Kipa and Merit, and my heart was flooded with such unspeakable sorrow that tears poured from my eyes. At this, she was much alarmed and said, “You know very well, Sinuhe, you reckless

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