The Egyptian by Mika Waltari

Posted by admin_akashic on Mar 4th, 2022 in Stories

He babbled on, but his one red-rimmed eye was fixed upon me with a look of horror until I said at last, “Tell me all, Kaptah. My heart is already a stone within my breast and incapable of further pain.”

Then, raising his arms to express the deepest woe, he declared, “I would have given my one remaining eye to spare you this grief. But evil is the day, and it is well that you came. Your parents are dead.”

“My father Senmut and my mother Kipa,” said I, raising my hands as custom demands, and my heart stirred in my breast.

“This day, the servants of the law broke down their door, having yesterday given notice of eviction, but found them lying upon the bed and no longer breathing. Today, therefore, you must bring them to the House of the Dead, for tomorrow their house is to be pulled down by order of the new owner.”

“Did my parents know why this happened?” I asked and could not look my slave in the face.

“Your father Senmut came to seek you,” said Kaptah. “Your mother led him, for he could not see. They were old and frail, and they trembled as they walked. But I did not know where you were. Your father said that it was better that way. And he told how the servants of the law had thrown him out of his house and set seals upon his chests and all his property so that he and his wife owned no more than the rags they had upon them. When he asked the reason for it all, the bailiffs laughed and said that his son Sinuhe had sold house and property and the tomb of his parents for gold to give to a bad woman. After long hesitation your father begged a copper piece of me, that he might dictate a letter to you through some scribe. But the new man had come to the house, and just then the mother of this man came for me and beat me with a stick because I was wasting my time in company with a beggar. Perhaps you will believe me when I tell you that I would have given your father the piece of copper, for though I have not yet been able to steal anything from my new lord, still I have copper and silver left of that I stole from you and my previous masters. But when I went back to the street, your parents had already gone. The mother of my new master forbade me to run after them and shut me into the roasting pit for the night so that I might not run away.”

“So, my father left no message to me?” I asked. And Kaptah said,

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“He left no message, my lord.”

Though my heart was a stone in my breast and did not move any more, my thoughts were serene as birds in cool air. Having reflected for a while, I said to Kaptah, “Give me all the copper and silver you have. Give it to me quickly, and it may be that Amun or some other god will reward you if I cannot. I must carry my parents to the House of Death, and I no longer have any means of paying for the embalming of their bodies.”

Kaptah began to weep and lament and raised his arms several times to express deepest sorrow, but at last he went to a corner of the garden, looking this way and that as a dog does that has buried a bone. Lifting up a stone, he drew forth a rag in which he had knotted his silver and copper, less than two deben, though it was the savings of a lifetime. He gave me all of it, though with many tears and in deep sadness, blessed be he, therefore, to all eternity and may his body preserve forever.

I still had friends, and Ptahor and Horemheb might have borrowed me gold, and even Thutmose could have helped me, but I was young and believed that my shame was already widely known and I would rather have died than faced my friends. I was accursed in front of men and gods for what I had done. I could not even thank Kaptah, because at that instant the mother of his new master came to veranda to call her slave with mean voice, and her face was that of a crocodile, and she carried a stick. Therefore Kaptah quickly left me and started moaning already on the stairs of the veranda before the stick even touched him. And he did not need to pretend this time, because he cried bitterly for the sake of his copper and silver.

I hastened to my father’s house, where I found the doors smashed and bailiff’s seals placed upon all that was within. Neighbours were standing in the garden, and they raised their hands as a sign of grief and shrank from me in horror, uttering no word. In the inner room Senmut and Kipa lay on their bed, their faces as rosy as when they were alive, and on the floor stood a still smouldering brazier in whose fumes they had perished, having tightly closed the shutters and the doors. I swathed their bodies in the shroud, heedless of the seals on it, and sought out a donkey driver, who agreed to carry away the bodies. With his help I lifted them on to the ass’s back and brought them to the House of Death.

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