The Egyptian by Mika Waltari

Posted by admin_akashic on Mar 4th, 2022 in Stories

young and simple though you are, and what I have stolen from you, I have stolen with due regard to your advantage and means. I have run about the streets on my old legs in the midday heat, shouting out your name and healing merits, though the servants of other physicians have beaten me with sticks and cast dung upon me.”

My heart was as if filled with salt, and I had a bitter taste in my mouth as I looked at him, but I was touched, and gripping him by the shoulders, I said, “Get up, Kaptah!” That was his name on the bill of sale, although I never called him by his name so that his self-esteem would not increase nor would he start thinking himself equal to me. So I always shouted ‘slave,’ ‘dumb ass,’ ‘drifter’ or ‘thief’ when I needed him.

Hearing me use his name, he cried ever more bitterly and touched my hands with his head and then put my feet over his head until I got angry and kicked him and told him to get up. “Of what use is all this outcry,” I said. “It is not from displeasure that I dismiss you, for I have been content with your service, though you have often shown your temper in a shameless manner by slamming doors and clattering the dishes when something has vexed you. And your pilfering has not angered me, for it is a slave’s right. That’s the way things are and always will be. I have been forced to hand you over against my will, for I had nothing else to give. My house is gone, too, and all that I possess so that not so much as the clothes upon my back are my own. You lament in vain in front of me.”

Then Kaptah got up and tore his hair and groaned, “This is an evil day.” He mused heavily for a time and said, “You are a great doctor, Sinuhe, despite your youth, and the world lies before you. It will be best, therefore, if I make haste to gather up those things that are of most value, and when darkness comes, we can fly and hide in a ship whose captain is not too pernickety and sail down the river. There are many cities in the Two Kingdoms, and if the bailiffs recognise you or I am found on the list of run-away slaves, we can make our way to the Red Lands, where no one knows you, or to the islands in the sea where the wine is fresh and the women joyful. In the land of Mitanni, and also in Babylon, where the rivers flow in the wrong direction, the arts of Egyptian physicians are highly regarded so that you may grow rich and I may become the servant of a respected master. Hasten, therefore, my lord, that we may pack up your belongings before dark.” He tugged at my sleeve.

111

“Kaptah, Kaptah!” I said. “Spare me this witless chatter for my heart is grieved to death, and my body is no longer my own. I am bound with fetters that are stronger than copper chains though you do not see them. I cannot fly, for to be absent from Thebes is to be in a glowing furnace.”

My servant sat on the floor, for his feet were afflicted with painful swellings that I treated from time to time when I had leisure. He said, “It is clear that Amun has abandoned us which I cannot wonder at since you so seldom go to make sacrifice to him. Nevertheless, I have faithfully sacrificed one fifth of what I have stolen from you in thankfulness for having been given a young and simple master, but now he has abandoned me also. Well, well! We must change gods and hasten to make sacrifice to some other who will perhaps divert the evil from us and make all well again.”

“No more of this nonsense,” I said and already regretted having called him by his name, for he had become too intimate. “Your talk is like flies buzzing in my ear, and you forget we have nothing to sacrifice since all we own is now another’s.”

“Is it a man or a woman?” Kaptah asked becoming curious.

“A woman,” I said, for what need was there to conceal it. When he heard this, he burst out in fresh lamentation and tore his hair and cried, “Oh, that I had never been born into this world! Oh, that my mother had strangled me by my navel cord at birth! For there is no bitterer fate for a slave than to serve a heartless woman — and heartless must she be who has done this to you. She will have me jump and run all day from dawn till dusk with my sore feet, and she will put needles in me and beat my old back with a stick until I yell and cry. All this shall happen to me, even if I have blessed Amun for making me a servant of a young and inexperienced master.”

“She is in no way heartless,” I answered him for so foolish is man that I needed to talk of Nefernefernefer even to my slave, having no one else in whom to confide. “Naked upon her couch, she is more beautiful than the moon. Her limbs gleam with costly oils, and her eyes are green as the Nile in the heat of summer. Happy would you be and enviable, Kaptah, if you were permitted to live near her and breathe the same air as her.”

112