Joseph and His Brothers, page 125
For the woman was growing worse, becoming ever less particular about her methods of laying siege to him so that they might put heads and feet together. She did not, however, return to her suggestion that they murder the master and rid the house of him so that they might live a life of bliss there as the mistress and master of love clad in beautiful raiment and flowers, for she saw only too well that he found the idea perfectly repulsive and could only fear that in repeating it she would alienate him beyond repair. Her own state of elated melancholy did not prevent her, however, from realizing that his absolute refusal to entertain this savage idea was naturally, obvi-
ously right and that it was entirely in order to reject an outrageous demand that it would have been very difficult even for her to have repeated once her tongue had healed and she no longer lisped like a child. But she bombarded him again and again with her argument that there was no point in his resisting her, that they shared a secret they might as well bring to blissful fruition—as well as with promises of the unutterable rapture he would find in her loving arms, for she had saved it all for him alone. But when he insisted on responding to such sweet wooing by simply declaring, "My child, we dare not," she moved on to provoking him by casting doubt on his manhness.
Not that she was especially serious about it—that was hardly possible. But she had a certain formal and reasonable right to mock his behavior in this way. Joseph could not really submit to her his seven reasons; she would have found most of them incomprehensible; and what he offered instead must have sounded mundane and lame to her—if not outright invention. What was she to do in her passion and plight with the moral maxim like the one he had given her as his final answer—to be put in other people's mouths just in case these events became a story: that his master had entrusted everything to him and that there was nothing in his house that he had kept from him, except herself, because she was his wife, and that he therefore could not do this wickedness and sin with her? That was threadbare stuff, of no use to her plight or passion, for even if they were in a story, Mut-em-enet was convinced that in all times and places the world would find such a pair as she and Joseph justified in putting heads and feet together despite some Captain of the Guard and honorary husband—that everyone would take far more delight in that than in some moral maxim.
What else did he say? He would say, for instance: "You want for me to come to you by night and to sleep with you. But it was by night that our God, whom you do not know, usually revealed Himself to my fathers. If He wished to reveal Himself to me by night and found me like that—what then would become of me?"
That was childish, really. Or he would say: "I'm afraid because of Adam, who was driven from the garden for so small a sin. What then would be my punishment?"
She thought that as shabby an answer as when he said: "You don't know how it is. Because of his gushing ways my brother
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Ruben lost his birthright, which father then gave to me. He would take it from me again were he to hear that you had made an ass of me."
That had to sound very feeble, indeed ragged to her ears, and he ought not to have been amazed when she broke into tears of pain and anger at such far-fetched excuses and insinuated that she was beginning to beUeve, really had no choice but to surmise, that the wreath he wore was simply the straw wreath of impotence. Once again: she did not and surely could not have meant what she said. It was more a desperate provocation of his fleshly honor, and the look with which he replied equally shamed and enflamed her, for its message was clearer and more stirring than the one Joseph put into words:
"Do you think so?" he said bitterly. "Then desist! But if it were as you think you've guessed, I would have it easy, and temptation would not be like a dragon and a roaring lion. Believe me, my lady, I have certainly thought about ending your suffering and mine by adopting the condition that you mistakenly suggest, and to do as that lad in one of your stories, who, in order to demonstrate his innocence, wounded himself with the sharp leaf of a bulrush and flung the impugned member into the river for the fish to eat. But I may not act in that fashion—the sin would be as great as if I were to succumb, and I would no longer be of any worth to God, either. For He wishes that I remain healthy and whole."
"How horrible!" she cried. "What were you thinking, Osar-siph? Do not do it, my beloved, my glorious lad, what a dreadful shame that would be. I could never mean what I said. You love me, you love me, your punishing glance betrays you to me, as does your monstrous purpose. Oh sweet man, come and save me, stanch my flowing blood, for what a pity it is to waste it."
But he replied, "It dare not be."
At that she flew into a rage, threatening him with torture and death. That was how far she had come, and it was this that was weighing on our mind when we said that the methods with which she assailed him were increasingly beyond her will to choose. He now learned whom he was deaHng with and what had been the real meaning of her resounding cry: "I alone am fear-inspiring in my love!" The giant cat raised its paw, menacingly extended its claws from their velvet sheaths in order to tear his flesh to pieces. If he did
not obey her will, she told him, and did not give her his god's wreath in exchange for the wreath of her bliss, she must and would destroy him. She urgently begged him to take her words seriously and not as hollow jangle, for she was, just as he saw her here, capable of anything, prepared for anything. She would charge him before Petepre with doing what he refused to do for her and accuse him of a rapacious assault upon her virtue. She would charge him with having forced himself upon her, and would take greatest pleasure in her accusation, would know how to play the ravished and sullied woman, so that no one would doubt her statement. Her word and her oath, of that he could be certain, would be worth more in this house than his, and his denial would be to no avail. Besides which, she was convinced that he would not deny it, but silently take the guilt upon himself; for he was to blame that things had come to this pass and had left her in such furious desperation, he and his eyes and his mouth, his golden shoulders and his rejection of love; and he would realize that it made no difference in what charge guilt was clothed, for every accusation would be true because of the truth of his guilt, and he must be prepared to suffer death for it. But it would be a death that would surely give him cause to repent his silence and perhaps even his cruel rejection of her love. For men like Petepre were especially inventive in the ways of revenge, and the death in store for a libertine who overpowered his mistress would leave nothing to be desired in its exquisiteness.
And now she announced to him the death he would die because of her accusation, painted it for him in her resounding alto—but bending close to his ear now and then, she also spoke in a murmur that might have been taken for the tender whispers of love.
"Do not hope," she whispered, "that they will make short work of you by pushing you off a cliff or hanging you upside down so that the blood swiftly rushes to your brain and you die a gentle death. Things will not proceed so mercifully, once cudgels rip your back to shreds after Petepre has spoken his sentence. For like the mountains of the east, his heart will bring forth a sandstorm when I charge you with violating me and his taunting wrath will know no bounds. It is ghastly to be left to the crocodile and to lie bound and defenseless among the reeds as the ravenous beast approaches in its hunger and rolls up on you with its wet belly, beginning its meal with your thighs or shoulder, so that your wild shrieks mix with its grunts of
greedy pleasure, for no one hears or wants to hear you in your abandonment. The same thing has happened to others—one is aware of it and of a superficial sense of sympathy, but not of any responsibility, and it passes, for it does not concern one's own flesh. But now it is you and your flesh that the greedy beast is attacking, beginning here or there—and even if you are still fully conscious, withhold the inhuman shrieks ripping your chest apart, do not scream, my beloved, for me, who wished to kiss you there where that wet-bellied monster now buries its grisly teeth. But perhaps they will be different kisses. Perhaps you will be stretched out on the ground on your back, your hands and feet held in iron clamps, while flammable material is piled up over you, which is then ignited and your flesh is slowly charred by the flame, amid agonies for which there is no name, that you alone experience, breathlessly wailing and begging as others simply look on. That, my beloved, is how it may be, or perhaps they will seal you alive, along with two large dogs, in a pit, covering it with beams and earth, and once again no one can imagine—not even you yourself, not as long as what awaits you is not yet reality—what will happen over time among the three of you there underground. And do you recall the door to the hall and its peg? And once I have leveled my charge, you will be the man who begs in loud, wailing cries of lamentation, because that peg has been rammed into his eye and the door crushes his head each time his avenger chooses to pass through. These are but a few of the punishments that will certainly be yours when I utter my accusations against you, which I am resolved to do should I be driven to final desperation. You, however, will not be able to paint yourself white after my sworn testimony. Out of pity for yourself, Osarsiph, give me your wreath."
"My mistress and friend," he answered her, "you are right, I cannot be made white again if you wish to blacken me in this way before my master. But Petepre will have to choose among the punishments with which you threaten me; he cannot impose them all, but only one, and that in itself sets bounds to his revenge and my suffering. And even beyond those bounds, my suffering will be limited by what humans are capable of, and whether one chooses to call that limit narrow or very wide, suffering cannot move past it, for it is finite. Desire and suffering, you paint both as unbounded, but you exaggerate, for both very quickly come up against the limits of
human capacity. The only thing one can call unbounded would be the mistake I would make in breaking with the Lord my God, whom you do not know, so that you cannot know what that is, what that means: God-forsaken. Which is why, my child, I cannot comply with your wishes."
"Cursed be your cleverness!" she cried in her alto voice. "Let it be cursed! As for me, I am not clever. I lack cleverness because of my unbounded desire for your flesh and blood, but I will do what I say. I am the loving Isis, and my gaze is death. Beware, beware, Osarsiph!"
A Gathering of Ladies
Ah, how grand she must have appeared, our Mut, as she stood before him, threatening him in her bell-like voice. And yet she was as weak and helpless as a child, devoid of all sympathy for her own dignity and story, and by now had begun to confide to the whole world both her passion and the anguish the young man caused her. It had come to that: not only Tabubu the "rubber-eater" and Meh-en-we-sekht the concubine were now initiates in her love and suffering, but also Renenutet, wife of the Chief Steward of Amun's Bulls, and Neit-em-het, consort of Pharaoh's Chief Bather, and Akhwere, spouse of Kakabu, the Scribe of the Silver Houses, from the king's House of Silver—in short, all her female friends, the entire court, half the city. This was a definite sign of how much worse off she was as the third year of her love drew to a close; without shame or inhibition she told everyone things she had at first kept proudly and shyly within her bosom and would have rather died than confess to her beloved or anyone else, but now recklessly made the concern of the whole world. Yes, not only Dudu, the dignified dwarf, degenerates in the course of our tale, but Mut the mistress as well, to the point of fully losing control of herself, of her civilized self. She was afflicted and deeply smitten, had left herself behind, no longer belonged to the civilized world, was estranged from its standards, a glassy-eyed woman running wild in the mountains, willing to offer her breast to every wild beast, gasping, exultant, crowned with a sav-
age crown and swinging the thyrsus. And to what all did this not finally lead? Just between us—and a bit ahead of ourselves—let it be noted that it led to her demeaning herself by engaging in magic with black Tabubu. But this is not yet the place for that. At this point we can only regard with wonder and pity how she chattered away with anyone who would listen about her love and ungratified longings, unable to keep this to herself, whether in the presence of the highborn or the lowly, so that it was not long before her suffering was the talk of the household, and whether it was cooks busy stirring and plucking or guards on their brick bench at the gate, they all said:
"The mistress is hot for the young steward, but he spurns her. What a shindy!"
For that is the shape such an affair assumes in the heads and on the tongues of people—the result of the sorry contradiction between blind passion's sacredly earnest, painfully beautiful awareness of itself and the impression it makes upon the level-headed, for whom weak-willed passion, in its inability to conceal itself, becomes an object of scandal and mockery, like a drunk reeling in the streets.
All versions of our story (with the exception, of course, of the shortest but most cherished)—both the seventeen Persian songs that speak of it and the Koran, both the poem to which Firdousi the Disillusioned devoted his old age and Jami's later polished rendering— all of them, plus countless depictions in brush or pencil, tell of a gathering of ladies for a party given at this juncture by Potiphar's first and true wife for her friends, the ladies of No-Amun's highest society, so that she might reveal her sufferings to them, might gain her sisters' understanding and arouse their sympathy, and envy. For love, however ungratified, is not only a curse and a scourge, but also a great treasure that one does not gladly conceal. These songs and poems slip into many an error and are guilty of numerous digressions and variant adornments, whereby the sweetness and charm to which they give such free play come at the cost of strict truth. In regard to this gathering of ladies, however, they are correct; and if here, too, for the sake of sweet effect, they also deviate from the way in which the story originally told itself—indeed, variations in each reveal the fabrications of the others—these balladeers did not fabricate this event, but rather it was the story itself that devised it, or rather, on a personal level, Potiphar's wife, poor Eni did, who cun-
ningly planned it and saw it to fruition—and it stands in the strangest, but true-to-life contradiction to her own dazed state.
Those of us who know about the eye-opening dream that Mut-em-enet dreamt at the start of these three years of love can see quite clearly the connection between dream and plan, can follow the train of thought that lead her to this poignantly ingenious idea of opening her friends' eyes; and for us the reality of her dream—which obviously bears all the marks of authenticity—is the best proof for both the historicity of this gathering of ladies and why it is only out of laconic economy that the venerable tradition closest to us remains silent about it.
In prelude to this gathering of ladies, Mut-em-enet fell ill. Although familiar to us in merely rough outline, it was the illness that in so many tales befalls princes and princesses when they love in vain and that invariably "mocks the skill of the most famous physicians." Mut fell victim to it first of all because such tales require it, because it was the fitting and timely thing to do, and it is hard to resist what is fitting and timely; and secondly, because her one great concern (which also consistently seems to be a principal reason behind the maladies of princes and princesses in those other stories) was to create a stir, to set the world into an uproar, and to be questioned —to be urgently asked universal, life-and-death questions, even though the changes that had altered her appearance for a good while now had previously given rise to isolated and more or less sincerely worried inquiries. She grew ill out of a compelling desire to involve the world in her own affliction, in the happiness and torment of her love for Joseph. That, in terms of rigorous science, there was not all that much to her illness is evident from how, when it came time to give her party for the ladies, Mut was perfectly capable of rising from her bed and playing hostess—and no wonder, since the gathering had been part of the plan of her illness from the beginning.
Mut, then, became seriously ill, though for rather indeterminate reasons, and took to her bed. Two elegant physicians, the doctor from Amun's House of Books, who had been called in once before to treat the old steward Mont-kaw, and another temple scholar, attended her; her sisters from the house of seclusion, Petepre's concubines, cared for her; and her friends from the high Order of Hathor and Amun's Southern House of Women visited her. The ladies Re-
nenutet, Neit-em-het, Akhwere, and many others came in their sedan chairs to look in on her—as did Nes-ba-met, head of the order and consort of the great Beknechons, Chief Priest of the Priests of All the Gods of Upper and Lower Egypt. And all of them, whether they came singly or in twos and threes, sat at the stricken woman's bedside, pitied and questioned her in a great flood of words, partly from their hearts, partly with cold calculation, out of pure convention and even schadenfreude.
"Eni, whose voice is beloved by all when you sing," they said, "in the name of the Hidden One, what is wrong with you and what is this anguish you cause us, you wicked thing? As surely as the king lives, you have not been what you were for a long time now, and all of us who hold you dear have seen the signs of exhaustion and other changes, which, needless to say, have proved incapable of detracting from your beauty, but which nevertheless have aroused our tender concern. May no glance of the evil eye be upon you! We have all seen and remarked to one another amid hot tears how exhaustion has resulted in a loss of weight, which did not, however, affect all parts of your body—rather, some now have a fuller bloom, while others have indeed become too lean: your cheeks for example, have become gaunt, and your eyes have also begun to take on a glassy look, and torment has settled upon that renowned meandering mouth of yours. We, who love you, saw all this, and wept as we spoke of it. But your exhaustion is now so far advanced that you have taken to your bed, you do not eat or drink, and your illness mocks the skill of the physicians. Indeed, when we heard of it we no longer knew where we stood upon the earth, so great was our alarm. We have stormed the wise men of the House of Books, Te-Hor and Pete-Bastet, your physicians, with our questions, and they have replied that their wisdom is near its end and they are verging on helplessness. They say they know of only a few nostrums yet that might promise some result, for your exhaustion has baffled all the others thus far employed. It must be some great sorrow that gnaws and consumes you like a mouse gnawing at the roots of a tree and making it ill. In Amun's name, my dear, is that true, do you have some gnawing sorrow? Tell it to us, who love you, before that cursed sorrow attacks sweet life itself."
