Joseph and His Brothers, page 122
"No, Hsten to me, Mut in the Valley of the Desert!" he said in reply. "I truly must implore you . .. for that is what people say, though here perhaps it would be better not to say 'implore' but in truth to say I 'conjure' you, or rather the demon that speaks from within you and by whom you are evidently possessed—for that is surely the case. You show your own tale little regard, I must admit, and make of yourself a woman whose name for all time will be Mother of Sin. Do consider the possibility, indeed the probability, that we are in a story, and collect yourself a bit. As you can see, I have to collect myself as well to repel your rapturous onslaught, though I find it easier to do so now because of the horror aroused in me by your mad proposal to murder Petepre, my master and your noble husband. It is indeed ghastly! All that is lacking is for you to say that we now share the secret together because you have drawn me into your thoughts and it is, alas, my secret now as well. But that it remains in your thoughts and that we do not make a story of it—I will see to that. Dear Mut! I find nothing at all pleasing in the manner of life you would demand of me here in this house, once we have murdered and dispatched its master so that we may revel in one another. When I picture it, how I would reside as a slave of your love in a house of murder, live as its master because I sleep with its mistress, I feel only contempt for myself. Should I not perhaps don a woman's garment made of byssus, so that each night you may demand plea-
sure of me, the master seduced into murdering the father so that he may sleep with the mother? For that is exactly how it would be for me: Potiphar, my master, is like a father to me, and were I to live with you in the house of his murder, it would be as if I were living with my mother. Therefore my dear, good child, I implore and conjure you with kindest words to be comforted and not to demand this great wickedness of me."
"Fool! Childish fool!" she rephed in her resounding alto. "You are a little boy responding out of a fear of love, but as a wooing mistress I will break down your fear. Every man sleeps with his mother—did you not know that? The female is the Mother of the World; her son is her husband, and each man begets with his mother—must I tell you the most basic things? I am Isis, the Great Mother, and I wear the vulture's cap. Mut is my name as the Mother, and you shall tell me your name, dearest son, there in the world's sweet engendering night..."
"No, not so, not so!" Joseph dissented fervently. "What you believe and proclaim is not right—I must correct your views. The Father of the World is the son of no mother, and He is not its master at the bidding of a mistress. I belong to Him and walk before Him, am the son of a Father, and once and for all I tell you: I will not sin against God, the Lord and Master to whom I belong, by disgracing and murdering the father and coupling with the mother like a shameless hippopotamus. And with that, my child, I now depart. Dear mistress, I beg you, let me take my leave. I do not wish to forsake you in your distraction, most definitely not. I wish to comfort you with words and to advise you as best I can, for I owe that much to you. But now I must take my leave and go, that I may look after my master's house."
He left her.
But she called after him, "Do you think you will escape me? Do you think we can flee from one another? I know, I know all about your jealous god, to whom you are betrothed and whose wreath you wear. But I do not fear this foreigner and I will rip that wreath from you yet, whatever it be made of, and crown you instead with ivy and tendrils of the grape for the Mother's feast of our love. Stay, my darling! Stay, most beautiful of the beautiful, Osarsiph, stay!" And she fell to the floor and wept.
He separated the curtains with his arms and hastily went his
way. But where he had flung the curtains aside, a dwarf now stood wrapped in each fold to right and left—one named Dudu, the other favored Shepses-Bes. Stealing up from either direction, they had found each other here, had stood side by side at the break in the curtains, eager to eavesdrop—the first out of malice, the second in trembling fear—each with one little hand braced on a knee, the other held to an ear; from time to time each had threatened the other with his little fist, gnashing his teeth and gesturing for the other to go, which increased the difficulty of eavesdropping not a Httle, but neither had yielded.
But now behind Joseph's back, as they unwrapped themselves from the folds, they struck out at each other, hissing, clenching fists to their temples, and scolding with choked rage—both as peevish as spiders, as one little man to the other, but also because they were so different in nature.
"What are you doing here?" the first one, Dudu, spouse of Zeset, snarled. "You runt, you mite, you undergrown snippet! Did you have to come sneaking up to the curtain flap, where I alone have rightful duties, and never budge from the spot, despite all my many signals that you should make yourself scarce, you tadpole, you sad little zany. I will knock the stuffing out of you so that you never move from here again, you dandiprat, you small fry, you feeble little worm! Has to come sniffing and prying, the gimcrack does, and playing lookout for his master and great friend—that pretty face, that bastard of the reeds he brought into the house, so that a bit of trash goods might abuse and lord over it, much to the disgrace of the Two Lands, and finally even make a strumpet of the mistress ..."
"Oh, oh, you blackguard, you scapegrace, you spiteful fiend!" the other chirped, his little face shattering into a thousand wrinkles of fury, the cone of ointment askew on his head. "Who is lurking and listening here so that he may spy out what he himself brought about with his slips of paper and tinderbox, and now stands at the curtain flap reveling in the torments and sweet pain of great people, so that they may be ruined according to his own shameful plan—who but you, odious brazenface, blowhard, knight of the turnspit—ah, ah! and oh, oh!—you scarecrow and whippersnapper, you monstrosity, all of it dwarfish except for one giant thing, you walking tool of manhood, you contemptible knave of the bed ..."
"Just wait!" the other yelped back. "Just wait, you nil, you hole
in the world, Sir Lack-It-All, Sir Come-Up-Short, you useless ninny. If you do not abscond at once from here, where Dudu watches and guards the honor of this house, I will shame you on the spot with my manly weapon, you miserable milksop, so that you will not soon forget it. But, when I go now to Petepre and prick him with the proceedings that occurred here in these shadows and tell him of words whispered by the steward to the mistress in this curtained chamber, the shame that will then be yours, you vermin, is inscribed on a special scroll—and you will read it soon enough. For you brought the good-for-nothing into this house and there was no end to your wise babblings to the departed steward in praise of your keen dwarfish eye for men and goods and human goods, until he bought the scoundrel from those other scoundrels despite my warnings and placed him in this house that he might abuse the mistress and make a cuckold of Pharaoh's gelded friend. You are to blame for this mess, you above all, you from the very beginning! You are due to appear on the crocodile's menu, will be fed to him as a tidbit, a last little treat, after he's been served up your bosom friend, once they have bound and beaten him."
"Ah, you foulmouth," Favored Bes wailed, quivering and wrinkled with rage, "the words on your smutty tongue come not from your reason, but rise up from elsewhere and are slavering filth. Should you dare touch me and venture the least attempt to shame my poor wizened person, you will feel my fingernails in your runt-ish face and in the sockets of your eyes, for they are sharp, and the pure have likewise been given weapons to deal with the miscreant. ... To blame, I, little I, am to blame for the torment and distress in there? The blame lies with the evil force, with the greedy affliction in which you take such swaggering pride and that, out of envy and hate, you have devilishly put to your service, so that it will become a pit dug to snare Osarsiph, my friend. But do you not see, you goatish mouse, that it has missed its mark and left no mark upon my beautiful friend? Since you had to eavesdrop, could you not determine that he was as resolute as an initiate into the mysteries and held fast like a hero to his own story? Did you hear anything at all at the flap? What witness can you bear to what was said, seeing as you lack all dwarfish subtlety and your cock-of-the-walk antics have turned your wits all lumpish? I would like to know what you can possibly hope to prick the master with in regard to Osarsiph, for your dull
ears certainly snatched up nothing of value at their listening post..."
"Oho!" Dudu cried. "Zeset's spouse is prepared to match his fine ears and delicate hearing with yours, you milksop, especially concerning a matter in which he is well versed but of which you understand not a whit, you chirping insufficiency. Were they not cooing and flirting in there, that fine little pair, prancing and preening at each tickle of love? I know all about that and was easily able to determine that the slave called his mistress 'dear child' and 'darling,' and that in her sweetest voice she named him 'falcon' and 'bull' and that they arranged in every detail how to enjoy each other's flesh and blood. So you see, Dudu can hold his own as a hearing witness, can't he? But the most precious item I heard there at the flap is that in their rutting they have conspired to bring about Petepre's death, agreeing to knock him down with a stick ..."
"You lie! You lie! You see, you understood only the sheerest nonsense there at your listening post and would carry back to Pe-tepre the crudest misconception about both of them. For my youngster called the mistress child and friend only out of pure kindness and gentleness, trying to comfort her in her distraction, and dutifully rebuked and rebuffed her for even wanting to knock down a puffball with a stick. His conduct was nothing short of wonderful for his years, and as yet he has not let his story be marred by the slightest stain, despite such rapturous importuning ..."
"And so, dupe that you are," Dudu barked at him, "you think I therefore cannot accuse him to the master and ruin him? There's the subtle twist, my trump card in a game of which a puppet like you understands not one damn whit—it makes no difference how the rascal conducts himself, a bit more respectably, a bit more wantonly, for what matters is that the mistress is smitten, in love with him up over her ears and knows nothing finer in the world than to bill and coo with him—that alone is his ruin, and it is not up to him to save himself. The slave with whom the mistress is infatuated is headed straight for the crocodile in any case, there lies the trick and trap of it. For if he is willing to bill and coo with her, I have him. But if he resists, he only goads her in her madness and makes things worse, so that either way he is headed for the crocodile, or at least the barber s knife, and that will put an end to billing and cooing and his deprivation will heal the mistress of her madness ..."
"Ah, you villain, you monster," Favored Bes screeched. "It's plain as day, your person is proof for good and all of what abominations creep forth and waddle upon earth when someone of the dwarfish race is not pious and proper as befits a dwarf, but endowed with full-grown dignity—he's sure to be a rogue and eyesore like you. Sir Breeding Stall."
To which Dudu retorted that once the barber's knife did its work, Osarsiph would be all the more suitable a match for a hollow puppet Uke him. And so Masters PiddUng and Piffling went at one another with bitter rejoinders several more times, until they drew a crowd from the courtyard. They then went their separate ways, the one to accuse Joseph before his master, the other to warn him that he must, if at all possible and as best he could, guard against the gaping pit.
Dudu's Accusation
As everyone knows, Potiphar could not endure Dudu, for he considered him arrogant, which was why the sight of the sterling little man had always annoyed Usir Mont-kaw as well. It has also previously been noted that the courtier kept the guardian of his jewelry chests at the greatest possible distance, hardly ever receiving him and employing intermediaries in his dressing chamber as a buffer between himself and Dudu—grown men who, first, for reasons of stature were better suited to place jewels and garments on his tower of flesh, whereas Dudu would have had to use a ladder, and, second, because, being full-grown, they put less weight on certain natural gifts and powers of the sun and made them less a matter of dignity than did Dudu, for whom they were a lifelong marvel and a matter of consequential, self-defining pride.
Which was why it was not all that easy for this stump of a man to achieve his goal along the byway that he had finally decided to take after so many diligent trips between the young steward and his mistress—the goal, that is, of lighting a light for his master. He certainly did not manage it immediately after his quarrel with the mock vizier outside the curtained chamber, but had to wait and keep announcing himself not for days, but for weeks, before finally receiving an audience—he, the guardian of the chamber, had to bribe and sometimes
threaten slaves, saying he simply would not hand over some article of jewelry or clothing but keep it under lock and key, thereby putting them in danger of arousing the master's displeasure, unless they repeatedly and urgently reported to him that Dudu wished to, indeed had to speak before him about a weighty domestic concern. And so for a full quarter of the moon he had to engage in such labors—begging, conniving, stamping his feet—before gaining the favor that he itched all the more to achieve because he beUeved that if he attained and made good use of it this time, it would never again present such difficulties, for the service he intended to render would surely bring him his master's eternal love and grace.
The stalwart fellow's gifts had at last softened up two slaves of the bath, so that with each pitcher of water that they poured over the chest and back of their snorting master they alternated in crying out, "Master, remember Dudu!" and kept repeating this reminder as the dripping tower of flesh emerged from the sunken basin and stepped out onto the limestone-tiled floor to be dried with perfumed towels—for even then they took turns saying "Master, remember Dudu, who still waits!" until Potiphar testily commanded: "Let him come and speak." With that they gave a signal to the slaves in charge of salves and massages, who were waiting in the bedchamber and had likewise been bribed, and they called the dwarf from the western hall, where he had almost perished with impatience, and admitted him into the room with its bed alcove. Dudu first raised the palms of his little hands high in the direction of the kneading bench, where Pharaoh's friend had stretched out to give his flesh over to the hands of massaging servants, and then, letting his dwarfish head hang humbly to one side between his raised arms, he waited for a syllable from Petepre's mouth, a glance from his eyes; but neither the one nor the other followed, for the chamberlain lay groaning softly under the bold grip of servants working oil of nard into his shoulders, hips, and thighs, his plump womanish arms and his corpulent torso; and shifting on his leather pillow, he even turned the small and noble head atop this mass of flesh in the other direction, away from Dudu's greeting—much to the dwarf's indignation. But for the sake of his promising cause, he was not about to be robbed of courage, did not dare allow for defeat.
"May your destiny last ten thousand years," he said, "you who stand at the pinnacle of mankind, our sovereign's great warrior! May
there be four jars for your entrails and a coffin of alabaster for your enduring form!"
"Thanks," Petepre replied. He said it in Babylonian, the way we might say "merci," and then added, "Does the fellow intend to speak at length?"
"The fellow" was bitter. But Dudu's cause was far too promising; he did not let his courage falter.
"Not at length, master, sun of our day," he answered, "but rather, succinctly and to the point."
And at a sign from Petepre's small hand he set one foot forward, crossed his stubby arms behind his back, and, tucking in his lower lip to let the other form a dignified roof above it, began his speech, which he knew very well he would not have to complete in the presence of the two masseurs, for Petepre would very soon dismiss them in order to Usten to him in private.
One might have called the strategy of his speech clever, had it only been more tenderhearted. He began with praise for Min, the god of the harvest, who was honored in several places as a special form of the sun's fiercest power, but who had also had to name his name to Amun-Re and together with him made up the god Amun-Min or Min-Amun-Re, so that Pharaoh found it just as easy to speak of "my father Min" as of "my father Amun"—particularly at the festivals of coronation and harvest, when the Min nature of Amun was in evidence and he became that fertile god, protector of desert travelers, tall in feathers and mighty in engendering power, the ithyphallic sun. And so with great dignity Dudu invoked Min as a means of imploring his master to approve of how, as a highly placed member of the household and scribe of the master's wardrobe chests, he had not limited his zeal for service, his concern for domestic affairs, to more narrowly defined duties, but, as a spouse and father, the author of two well-proportioned children, who bore such and such names and to which, if signs did not deceive, there would indeed soon be added, as his wife Zeset had confessed to him upon his breast, a third— which was to say, to approve of how, as one who himself had increased the number of those dwelling in the house and who felt an especial devotion toward the majesty of Min, or rather of Amun in his Min qualities, he had kept his eye upon the larger whole, particularly in respect to human fertility and propagation, just as he had assumed oversight, guidance, and record keeping for everything
