Joseph and His Brothers, page 106
As for Enti, the kindhearted can only note—not without bitterness—how easy she found it to move beyond the moment when it would not have been too late and she would not yet have been lost. A blissfully horrible premonition that she already was came to her in the aforementioned dream she dreamt about Joseph—and, to be sure, it came as a shock. But, of course, she also told herself that she was a woman endowed with reason, and she acted accordingly— which is to say, she imitated a woman endowed with reason and automatically acted like one, but not really as one. She took steps that in truth she could no longer want to succeed—confused and
unworthy steps, to which the kindhearted would do best to close their eyes if they do not wish their pity to be misplaced.
It is almost impossible to tell about dreams and put them into words, because a dream is far less about its narratable substance and almost completely about its aroma and aura, its ineffable meaning, that sense of horror or happiness—or both—pervading it, the effects of which often fill the dreamer's soul for long afterward. Dreams play a decisive role in our story—its hero dreamed grand and childish dreams, and there will be others yet who will also dream. But in what predicaments they all landed by trying to share with others some rough sense of that inner experience, how unsatisfactory for them were the results of every such attempt. One need only recall Joseph's dream about the sun, moon, and stars and how incoherently the helpless dreamer imparted it. We have some excuse, then, if in telling Mut-em-enet's dream, we should fail to make completely comprehensible the impression it made, and left, on its dreamer. In any case we have alluded to it so often that we cannot be allowed to hold back its contents now.
She dreamed, then, that she v/as sitting on the dais in the hall of blue columns, eating dinner there on her low stool beside old Huya, amid the tactful silence that always reigned during this routine. But the silence was especially considerate and deep this time, for not only did the four diners refrain from saying a single word, but they also tried to keep every action associated with eating soundless, so that in the hush one could clearly hear the intermingled breathing of the busy servants—so clearly, in fact, that it would have been audible had the silence been less tactful, for it sounded more like panting. Their hurried, soft pants were unsettling; and perhaps because Mut was listening for them, or perhaps for some other reason, she was not paying close attention to what her hands were doing and hurt herself. For she was about to segment a pomegranate with a bronze knife, but was so distracted that the well-honed blade slipped and cut her hand, slicing deep enough into the soft flesh between thumb and four fingers that the wound began to bleed profusely. The blood was as ruby red as pomegranate juice, and as she watched it flow, she felt both shame and concern. Yes, she was ashamed of her own blood, despite its beautiful ruby red, probably also because inevitably it at once spattered on her petal white attire, but even beyond that, quite apart from these stains, she felt inordinately
I
ashamed and tried as best she could to conceal her bleeding from the others in the hall; and with success it appeared, or perhaps was meant to appear, for everyone made a great—more or less natural and credible—show of having not noticed Mut*s accident, so that no one paid the least attention to her plight, which only added to the wounded woman's distress. In her shame, she did not want to call attention to her bleeding; but she was also truly and profoundly outraged that no one wanted to notice, that no one lifted a finger to help her, but, as if by common agreement, left her to look after herself. Her waitress, the demure slave clad in gossamer, bent down hastily to Mut's little one-legged table as if something there urgently required her setting it to rights. Grabbing a gilt thighbone in his aged hand to spear pieces of ring cake that he then dunked in wine, old Huya at her side munched toothlessly away, waggling his head and acting as if munching were his sole concern. Petepre, the master, held his goblet up over his shoulder so that his Syrian cup-bearer and personal slave could refill it. And with her broad white face and blind slits for eyes, his mother, old Tuya, even gave the helpless woman an encouraging nod, though it was uncertain just how she meant it and whether she was aware of Eni's distress or not. In her dream, however, Eni went on bleeding shamefully, staining her dress, and feeUng silently embittered by this general indifference—but also, quite apart from all that, distressed at the sight of her own bright red blood, for its steadily oozing and bubbling crimson was a source of indescribable regret. How sorry, how very sorry she felt, deeply, unutterably sorry—not for herself or because of her plight, but for the sweet blood flowing out of her like that—and in her sadness she heaved a quick, tearless sob. Then it occurred to her that because of her wound she was neglecting her duty on Amun's behalf to keep a reproachful lookout for the offense to her house, for that Kenanite slave, whose ascendancy was so unseemly; and she scowled and gazed sternly across to the offender behind Petepre's chair, to young Osarsiph. But as if summoned by the austerity of her glance, he left his post and came toward her, ever nearer. And was now so near that she could feel his nearness. But he had come nearer in order to stanch the flow of blood. For he took her wounded hand and put it to his mouth, so that four fingers lay against one cheek and her thumb against the other, but the wound rested against his lips. And in her rapture, the flow of blood stopped and was stanched. Even as
she was healed, however, the mood in the hall turned hostile and fearful. The servants, and there were a good number of them, ran about in a flurry, still on hushed bare feet, to be sure, but panting in random chorus. Petepre, the master, had veiled his head, while the woman who had borne him groped with splayed hands for his lowered, covered head and rocked her upturned bHnd face back and forth above him in despair. Eni saw old Huya, however, stand up and threaten her with that gilt thighbone—munched free of its last piece of cake—while his mouth, opening and closing above his tarnished beard, uttered soundless insults. The gods alone knew what ghastly words his toothless mouth and the tongue working inside it were saying, but their meaning was probably the same as the panting of the servants running about helter-skelter. For their breathy chorus now took on whispered shape, repeated over and over: "To the fire, to the river, to the dogs, to the crocodile." Eni's ears were still ringing with this dreadful whisper as she reemerged from her dream, cold with horror, but turning hot again at once in the rapture of healing—and was well aware that she had been struck with the rod of life.
Husband and Wife
Having had her eyes opened, Mut decided to behave like a woman endowed with reason and to take a step she would be proud to show before the seat of reason, since its clear and indisputable purpose was to remove Joseph from her sight. She would do her best to take up the matter of this servant's dismissal with Petepre, her husband.
She had spent the day after the night of her dream in seclusion, withdrawing from her sisters and refusing to receive visitors. Seated beside the basin in her quarters, she had watched the fish dart about—"staring vacantly" as we say when a person's gaze is lost in the void, floating and fixing on no particular object but itself. In the midst of this floating, fixed stare her eyes had suddenly flared wide as if with horror, yet without freeing themselves from the void, while her mouth opened and hastily sucked air down her throat. Her wide eyes had then abandoned the horror, returned to serenity; but without her realizing it, her mouth had begun to form a smile at its deepening corners and had kept on smiling for several minutes
beneath pensive eyes, until she had noticed and pressed her hand in alarm to her vagabond lips, thumb against one cheek, the other four fingers opposite. "Ye gods!" she had murmured. Then it had begun all over again—the dreamy stare, the gasping for air, the unconscious smiling to herself, the dismayed discovery of that smile—until Eni had decided then and there to put an end to all this.
Around sunset, she inquired and learned that master Petepre was in the house and told her handmaids to adorn her for a visit with him.
The courtier was in the west hall of his house, with its view to the orchard and one side of the cottage set atop its little hill. Falling between the slender, colorful columns of the outer wall, the hues of sunset began to fill the room and enrich the more pastel tones of the wall paintings that an artist's easy hand had flung across the plastered floor, walls, and ceiling—birds fluttering above the marsh, gamboling calves, ponds with ducks, cattle being driven by a herder across a ford in a river, under the eyes of a crocodile peering up out of the water. The frescos on the rear wall, between the doors that opened onto the dining room, depicted the master of the house himself as real as life, portraying his return home, with servants diligently preparing everything for his customary reception. Framing the doors were inset glazed tiles—blue, red, and green hieroglyphics against a camel-colored background—with quotations from fine, old authors and lines from divine hymns. Between the doors ran a kind of gallery or terrace, with a low ledge in front and a back for sitting that projected from the wall, all made of white stuccoed clay, but with colorful inscriptions along the front of the gallery. It served both as a shelf for a variety of objects—works of art, all those gifts that filled the halls of Petepre's house—and as a bench; and there in the middle is where the man of many honors was now seated on a cushion, his feet placed together, the ledge as his footstool. Arranged to his right and left were rows of beautiful objects—animals, statues of gods, and royal sphinxes of gold, malachite, and ivory—and at his back were owls, falcons, ducks, zigzag lines, and other iconographic inscriptions. He had made himself comfortable, having removed his garments except for his knee-length skirt made of white linen and held by a wide starched drawstring. His outerwear and his walking stick, from which hung his sandals, lay on a lion-footed armchair next to one of the doors. But he had struck a pose that did not allow
him to relax; instead, he sat very erect, his little hands—tiny indeed in relation to his massive body—stretched out in his lap and his likewise relatively dainty head, with its elegantly arched small nose and finely chiseled mouth, held just as erect, while he gazed beyond the hall into the reddening sunset from beneath gentle, long-lashed, brown eyes—a fleshy, but composed, noble, and dignified seated statue, its mighty calves like columns, its arms like an obese woman's, its breasts like plumped-up cushions. Despite his corpulence he had no potbelly; his hips in fact were rather narrow. His navel, however, was quite striking, being exceptionally large and so stretched horizontally that it resembled a mouth.
Petepre sat there quite a long time, his dignified and motionless pose ennobling his idleness. Shrouded perhaps in the darkness of a false door in the grave that awaited him, a lifesize copy of his person would stand—forever—with this same immobile calm, its brown glass eyes gazing at his eternal household, at objects sent with him or painted on the walls for magical effect. He and his standing statue would be one; he anticipated that identity by sitting here and making himself eternal. At his back and on the ledge where his feet rested, the red, blue, and green inscriptions spoke their message; to his right and left stood rows of gifts from Pharaoh; the painted columns of his hall, through which he stared out into the evening, were the epitome of Egypt's sense of form. A surrounding of possessions reinforces one's immobility. One lets them abide in their beauty even as one abides in well-ordered composure in their midst. And mobility is more appropriate to those who are open to the world—conceiving, sowing, spending, and dying as they lose themselves in their seed— than to a man like Petepre, constituted as a closed existence. In his self-collected poise he sat there with no access to the world, inaccessible to the death that comes with conceiving—eternal, a god in his shrine.
At the periphery of his gaze, a black shadow glided soundlessly closer from between the columns—a mere outline of darkness against the colors of sunset, it crouched very low even as it made its entry and was still silent now as it clasped its hands to its brow and touched it to the floor. He slowly turned his eyes in its direction: it was one of Mut's Moorish handmaids, a small naked animal. He blinked, gathering his thoughts. Then, merely flexing his wrist, he raised one hand from his knee and commanded: "Speak."
She snapped her head up from the floor, rolled her eyes, and in the hoarse voice of the desert blurted out her answer: "The mistress is near to the master and her wish is to be nearer still."
He gathered his thoughts again. Then he replied, "It is granted."
The little animal retreated backwards over the threshold. Pe-tepre sat there with raised eyebrows. But only for a few moments, and then Mut-em-enet was standing at the same spot where the slave had cowered. With elbows pressed against her body, she spread the palms of her hands as if spreading an offering before him. He saw that she was dressed warmly. Over her tight-fitting, ankle-length undergarment she wore something like a wide-flowing, pleated robe. The shadows of her cheeks were framed by a dark blue wiglike headscarf that fell to the nape of her neck and shoulders and was bound by an embroidered ribbon. Atop her head was a perforated cone for ointment, into which had been inserted a lotus, its stem following the curve of her head at a slight distance, its blossom hovering above her brow. The gemstones of her necklace and bracelets flashed darkly.
Petepre likewise raised his small hands in greeting and pressed the back of one to his lips for a kiss.
"Flower of the Two Lands," he said in voice of surprise, "whose beautiful face has a place in the house of Amun, who is alone in her comeliness when her pure hands bear the sistrum and when she sings in a voice beloved by all." He maintained this tone of happy surprise as he hastily recited the formulaic phrases. "You who fill this house with beauty and to whose grace all things pay homage, you who are the confidante of the queen—you know how to read my heart in fulfilling its wishes ere they are spoken, fulfilling them by your very coming. Here is a cushion," he said in a more prosaic voice, pulling out one from behind his back and arranging it on the ledge at his feet. "May the gods grant," he added, resuming his courtly tone, "that you, you yourself, have come with a wish that, the greater it may be, the greater may be my joy in fulfilling it."
He had good reason to be curious. Such a visit was most unusual and, in falling outside the customary routine of tactful consideration, it unsettled him. He presumed its purpose was some petition, which left him feeling a certain anxious pleasure. But for now she spoke only the prettiest words.
"What wish could I, your sister, still have of you, my lord and
friend?" she said in her mild voice, a melodious alto in which one could hear her training as a singer. "I have breath only through you, but thanks to your greatness all my wishes are fulfilled. If I have a place in the temple, then it is because you tower above all other enhancements of this land. If I am called the queen's friend, then only because you are Pharaoh's friend and manifest yourself as the golden radiance of the sun's favor. Without you I would be dark. But as I am yours, I have light in all its fullness."
"Since this is your opinion, it would be to no avail to contradict you," he said with a smile. "At least let us see to it that what you say of the fullness of light not be marred at the moment." He clapped his hands. "Make light!" he commanded of the aproned servant who now appeared from the dining room.
Eni, however, protested and begged, "Let it be, my husband. It is barely dusk. You sat here delighting in the beautiful Hght of this hour. You will make me regret having disturbed you."
"No, I insist upon my order," he replied. "Take it, if you like, as confirmation of that for which I am chided by others: that my will is like black granite from the valley of Rehenu. I cannot alter that and am too old to mend my ways. But how could I ever receive in darkness and dusk my dearest and true wife, who visits me and guesses at the most secret wish of my heart. Is it not a cause for celebration that you have come, and does one celebrate in darkness? All four!" he said to the two servants bearing torches, who made haste to light the five-lamped candelabra standing on pedestals in the corners of the hall. "Let them burn high, do you hear."
"Be it according to your will," she said as if in admiration and shrugged obediently. "Truly, I know the steadfastness of your resolve and will leave any chiding of it to such men as take offense at it. Women cannot but treasure inflexibility in a man. Shall I tell you why?"
"I would gladly hear it."
"First, because it lends value to any indulgence shown, making of it a gift that we can be proud to receive."
"How charming," he said and blinked, partly because of the brightness that now filled the hall—for the wicks of twenty lamps floated in a waxy oil that made them burn with a bright, dazzling flame, so that the hall was cradled in the milk of their white light and the blood of red dusk—and partly from pondering the intention of
