Joseph and His Brothers, page 128
With a white cloak around her shoulders and a burning torch in hand, Mut-em-enet hurried up the stairs—first the flight leading from the fountain court to the low upper story, and then the narrower one that led to the roof—moving so swiftly that the concubine Meh, who was also carrying a white-flamed torch, could scarcely keep up. Eni had broken into a run the moment she left her bedchamber; clutching her garment in her right hand and holding her fiery torch high, she flung back her head, with eyes staring and mouth agape.
"Why are you running, dearest?" Meh whispered. "You'll be out of breath, and I'm afraid you'll stumble. Stop, be careful with your torch."
Petepre's first and true wife's reply came in disjointed phrases: "I must run, must run, can only make this climb by running, by storming it breathlessly—do not hinder me, the spirit commands me, Meh, and it must be so, we must run."
Panting these words and with eyes staring wide, she waved the torch above her head, scattering a few fiery sparks of flax soaked in pitch, so that her winded companion made a grab for the wobbling handle, to wrench it from her—but Mut refused to let go, which only heightened the danger. This happened on the second stairway to the roof, and in the scuffle Mut tripped and actually would have
fallen had Meh not held her tight in her arms; and so, still embracing and waving their torches, the two women stumbled up over the narrow door's threshold and out into the night of the dark roof.
They were received by the wind and the gruff voice of the priestess, who, having taken charge here, was now their spokeswoman. And she spoke continuously, never once falling silent, spoke in a boastful, dictatorial, crude bombast that was mixed from time to time with the howling of jackals from the bleached desert to the east and even with the more distant, low trembUng roar of a prowHng lion. The wind was blowing from the west, from the sleeping city and the river—where the moon dabbled in silver flashes from on high—from the shore that belonged to the dead and from its mountains. Puffing and spitting, the wind got tangled in roof vents that opened in that direction, little plank awnings designed to divert cool air down into the house. There were also a few cone-shaped granaries on the flat roof, but today there were other items, other arrangements besides these usual ones—the apparatus of their intended ritual, including some things that profited from the breeze, for both in tripods and on the roof itself were long strips of bluish, rotting meat that otherwise would have stunk, and immediately did whenever the wind fell. What else was there, lying at the ready for the grim ritual, would have been evident even to a blind man, who would have seen it in his mind's eye—or to someone who did not want to see it and did not look around, someone like Mut-em-enet, who both now and later kept staring with eyes askance up into the void, her mouth half open, its corners pulled down. For while the wind rummaged in the tufts of her gray hair, Tabubu stood there black and naked to the waist, a goatskin cinched beneath her hag's breasts—her helper was dressed in the same way—and listed everything that was there, her loosely flapping mouth revealing two lonely snaggleteeth as she cried out like a peddler the name and use of each item.
"There you are, woman!" she said, busily gesturing and pointing about as her mistress staggered onto the roof. "Welcome, you who are scorned, languishing, and seeking protection, welcome, mortar denied its pestle, infatuated minx, come to the hearth. Take what you are offered. Take grains of salt in your hand and hang this laurel at your ear, then crouch down beside the fire, whose flame in this wind
blazes up out of its hole, blazes on your behalf, pitiful wretch, so that you may find help within certain limits.
"I speak. I was speaking as priestess in charge here before you ever came. Now I shall go on speaking, in loud and vulgar words, for it is no use to be squeamish here, not as long as one grapples with these things, which must be called by their names without shame, and that is why, seeker of protection, I now call you a lovesick rag and a disdained slut. Are you seated now, the salt in your hand, the laurel at your ear? Does your companion have hers as well and is she crouching beside the altar? Then let us begin the sacrifice as priestess and attendant. For all is readied for the meal, all the trappings and impeccable gifts.
"Where is the sacrificial table? It is where it is, facing the hearth, properly adorned with leaves and twigs, with the ivy twigs and leafy grain that she loves, our invited guest who now approaches—dark husks, their mealy kernels locked inside. That is why they garland the table and adorn the tripods with their tempting, stinking repast. Is the rotted rudder propped against the table? It is propped. And what else is there to see? A beam is there, taken from a cross on which criminals are hoisted—and in your honor, O vile one, you who gladly cling to villains, it is propped against the table to excite you. But what about some piece of the hanged man himself, an ear, a finger—is nothing offered for your pleasure? Oh, but indeed! The table is adorned with his putrid finger, there among the lovely clumps of pitch, as well as a gristly ear from the scoundrel's head, waxy and sticky with trickling blood, just to your taste, and to bait you, monster. But as for those bunches of hair there on the table, shiny and alike in color, they do not come from that rogue, but from different heads, far and near, for we have prettily gathered the near and the far together here that the fragrance may please you, if you will help us, you who came from the night, whom we invoke.
"So hush now, let no one utter a peep! You who sit at the hearth, gaze at me and nowhere else, for one does not know from which side she will come slinking. I command the silence of the sacrifice. Put out that torch, wench! That's right. Where is the two-edged blade? Here. And that cur of a dog? He is still lying on the floor, like a young hyena, his paws bound, his muzzle tied, that moist muzzle that would so gladly rip into any sort of filth. First give me pitch.
The strapping priestess throws black chips of it into the flames, so that the fumes of its leaden smoke may rise as musty sacrificial incense to greet you, bitch from below. The drink offerings now, each vase in proper sequence: water, cow's milk, and beer—I pour them, splash them, let them flow. My black feet are standing now here in the puddle, in the pool, in the blistering pond, for I shall sacrifice the dog, a revolting act, but it is not we humans who have chosen it for you—we know, you like nothing better.
"Here to me with that sniffling, disgusting beast, and now let its throat be slit open. The belly is rent wide and hands are immersed in the hot entrails, which steam up to you now in the coolness of the moonlit night. Smeared with blood, dripping with guts, I Hft them up to you, my sacrificial hands, for I have made them in your likeness. And so I greet you and piously, properly invite you to your sacrificial meal, mistress of all people of the night. Politely, for now, and solemnly we beg you to take part in this meal and our impeccable gifts. Are you pleased to gratify our wishes? If not, then know that your priestess will strengthen herself to rise up against you, will grab hold of you more tightly and apply expertly measured force. Come near! Whether you have just slipped your noose, have been tormenting a woman in childbirth or cuddling with suicides— whether you join us smeared with blood, come strolling our way from your haunting and gnawing in a field of corpses, or come to us sullied from a three-forked crossroads where, consumed by morbid lust, you embraced your criminal.
"Do I know you, and do you know yourself in my words? And in grappling with you do I now strike better and closer? Have you noticed that I know all your doings, your indescribable habits, your unspeakable foods and drinks, and all your abysmal lusts? Or should my hands take a more knowing, more exacting hold of you yet? Should my mouth put aside niceties for good and all, give a name to your most swinish nature? I curse you as a spook, a she-wolf and whore, you pus-eyed nightmare! Tainted toadstool, greasy hag from hell, at home in slaughterhouses, where you crawl and claw and gnaw, slavering over carrion bones. You who ease the last lust of the hanged man as he croaks, your wet womb fornicating with despair—horrible, enfeebled, and enervated by vice, shuddering at every gust of wind, baffled by ghosts, cowardly prey to the creatures of the night. Bestial atrocity! Do I know you? Do I name
your name? Do I have hold of you? Do I perceive you? Yes, it is she! She has used the moon's darkening in a patch of cloud. Her coming is heard in the loud baying of the dog before the house. The flame blazes up from the hearth. Behold, a fit has seized the companion of this suppliant here. In what direction does she roll her eyes? For there where her eyes roll, from there the goddess will approach.
"Mistress, we greet you. Be content. We have given to you as best we know how. If this impure meal and these impeccably vile gifts please you, then help! Help her who languishes here, help her who has been rejected. She groans for a lad who does not want her. Help her as best you can—you must, for I have you within my charmed circle. Torment his body to come this way, torment that stubborn boy to join her in her bed, he knows not how, that he may nestle his neck beneath her hands, that for once she may delight in what she aches for, that sweet acrid odor of young male.
"Now the shaven hair, wench, be quick! I shall perform the sacrifice of love, the magic burnt offering, in the presence of the goddess. Ah, what pretty locks, from heads far and near, lustrous and soft. Waste of the body, samples of its stuff—I, the priestess, twist, tangle, knot, and wed them, again and again, with fervent, bloody sacrificial hands, and let them fall into the crackling flame that devours them swiftly. . . . What is this that wrenches your face with pain and disgust, my suppliant? I believe you are sickened by the foul odor of burning hair? That is his and your stuff, my fine lady, the vapor of bodies aflame—the smell of love. Enough of this!" she said in her usual voice. "The rite has been performed perfectly. May you relish his taste and enjoy him, your beautiful lad. The mistress bitch has consecrated him to you, thanks to Tabubu's arts, which are worth their wages."
And stepping back, the baseborn woman laid aside her arrogance; her task completed, she wiped her nose with the back of her hand and then plunged both hands, still sullied by the sacrifice, into a basin of water. The moon stood clear in the heavens. The concubine Meh had recovered from having fainted in terror.
"Is she still here?" she asked, still trembling.
"Who?" Tabubu asked, washing her black hands like a doctor after bloody surgery. "The Bitch? Calm yourself, concubine, she has already vanished. She did not come at all gladly and was obedient to me only because I treated her insolently and know precisely how to
encircle her nature with words. And she cannot do anything here except carry out what I have forced upon her, for beneath the threshold I buried a threefold charm against evil. But she will carry out her task, there is no question of that. For she accepted the sacrifice and is also bound by the magical offering of woven hair."
At this point they heard Mut-em-enet, the mistress, heave a deep sigh and saw her stand up from where she had been crouching by the hearth. Still in her white robe and with laurel at her ear, she stood facing the carcass of the dog, her hands clasped together beneath her raised chin. Ever since she had smelled the odor of burning hair, hers mixed with Joseph's, the corners of her half-open, masklike mouth, had been drawn further down in bitterness, as if heavy weights were tugging at them, and what a mournful sight it was when she began to speak with that mouth, the lips touching and parting stiffly and sadly as she lifted up her alto voice in lamentation:
"Hear me, you purer spirits, whom I would have been so happy to see smile upon my great love for the Ebrew lad Osarsiph, hear and behold the pain I feel in my abasement, how sick unto dying is my heart at this horrible and heavy loss, which I have chosen, for good or evil—because, Osarsiph, my sweet falcon, your mistress in her deep despair had no other choice. Ah, you purer spirits, how heavy the disgrace of this loss, this renunciation, weighs upon me. For I have renounced his soul, because I saw myself forced at last to accept the seduction of magic. I renounced your soul, Osarsiph, my beloved—and how grievous and harsh for my love is that loss. I have abandoned any claim to your eyes, so great was the pain, I could not do otherwise, I had no choice in my helplessness. Your eyes will be closed and dead when we embrace, and only the swelling lips of your mouth will be mine—and abased by my bliss I shall kiss it again and again. The soft breath of your mouth means more to me than anything, that is true—and yet beyond that, beyond all else, the gaze of your soul would have meant still more. This is my deep lament rising up within me. Hearken to it, you purer spirits! I send it up to you out of deepest bitterness, here beside the hearth of this black woman's magic. Behold how I, a woman of high rank, was forced to sink beneath myself for love, how I had to forgo happiness for lust, in order to have that at least—for if I am not to know the happiness of his eyes, I would know the lust of his mouth. But how grieved and sickened I am by this loss—the daughter of a prince can-
not conceal that from you, purer spirits. I must raise my loud lament before atoning for lust attained by the artifice of magic, before delighting in the soulless bliss of his sweet corpse. Leave me some hope in my abasement, good spirits, some innermost secret hope that lust and happiness may not in the end be so precisely separated and kept apart, that happiness may blossom from lust, if only it is deep enough, and that amid my irresistible kisses the dead boy may yet open his eyes to grant me the gaze of his soul—that by some means or other the strictures of magic may be deceived and undone. You purer spirits to whom I lift my lament, allow me this silent secret even in my abasement, do not begrudge me the hope of this deception, this one small deception ..."
And Mut-em-enet raised her arms and, continuing to sob violently, threw herself around the neck of her companion, Meh the concubine, who led her down from the roof.
New Year's Day
The audience's impatience to be told what everyone already knows has doubtless reached its peak by now. The hour for satisfying it has come—a great solemn festal hour and a turning point in our story, an hour established the moment it came into the world and first told its own story: the hour and the day when Joseph—Potiphar's steward of three years, his property for ten—barely avoided the crassest mistake that he could ever have made and just managed to escape from burning temptation with nothing more than a black eye, though to be sure his life would complete yet another loop, leading him into the pit a second time, the fault for which, as he surely realized, was his own, since it came as punishment for behavior that in its defiant recklessness, if not to say its frivolous wickedness, was only all too similar to his conduct in his previous life.
There is good justification for establishing parallels between his offense against this woman and his earlier offense against his brothers. In his wish to "take people aback," he had once again taken things too far, had once again allowed the effects of his amiable charm—which he certainly had every right to enjoy and to use to further the greater glory of God—to run wild, to degenerate dangerously, to get out of hand. In his first life these effects had taken the
negative form of hatred, this time they had become excessively positive, only to grow, then, into pernicious, passionate love. In his blindness he had encouraged both the former and the latter and, misled by his own responses to the woman's emotions as they ran riot, he had also wanted to play the instructor—he, who was still in such obvious need of instruction himself. There is no denying that this cried out for punishment, though, to be sure, one cannot help remarking with a quiet smile that the chastisement justly rushing toward him had been so well arranged that it would serve his future good fortune, until it was greater and more brilliant than what was destroyed. What amuses us in all this is our ability to peer into that most exalted mind that permitted this course of events. It has long been presumed—and the supposition reaches back into our story's preludes and preparatory stages—that the imperfection of the creature has always been greeted with pointed satisfaction on the part of certain higher realms, where hovering on the lips of many is the ancient reproach, "What is man that You are mindful of him?"; whereas that same imperfection has been an embarrassment to the Creator, who is then forced to remit His creatures to the Realm of Sternness and to let chastising justice reign, acting evidently less in accord with His own wishes and more in accord with certain moral pressures that He cannot easily evade. Our charming example here teaches us that Highest Goodness and Kindness understands how to yield to this pressure with great dignity and at the same time to hoodwink that petulant Realm of Sternness by practicing the art of healing even as He chastises and by turning misfortune into a fertile field for renewed happiness.
The day of decision, the turning point, was the great festival of Amun-Re's visit to his Southern House of Women, the day when the Nile began to rise, the official Egyptian New Year. The official, let it be noted; for it was a long way from coinciding with the natural New Year, the day when the sacred cycle actually flowed back into itself, when the Dog Star reappeared and the waters began to rise— in this regard disorder almost always reigned in Egypt, a land where disorder was viewed with great revulsion. It had happened in the course of the ages, during the life of men and dynasties, that the natural New Year matched the date on the calendar for once; but the reoccurrence of this lovely instance of harmony required another one
thousand four hundred sixty years, a period of approximately forty-eight human generations destined not to experience it—for which they gladly made allowances, given their many other worries. The century in which Joseph spent his life in Egypt was likewise not called upon to behold this beautiful unity of reality and officialdom, and the children of Keme who wept and laughed beneath the sun in those days knew nothing more than that the two simply did not match—it was the least of their concerns. Nor was it the case that they had to celebrate Akhet, the New Year, the beginning of flooding, at the exact same time as the harvest season of Shemu; but they did find themselves in the season of winter, called Peret, also known as the season of sowing; and although the children of Keme made nothing of it, because disorder that would last another thousand years was necessarily regarded as order, Joseph, as a man who felt an inner detachment from the customs of Egypt, found each such occurrence rather ridiculous and observed the unnatural New Year only in the same sense that he took part generally in the life and ways of people here below: with reservations and out of a conviction that his worldly participation was viewed with forbearance from on high. As a matter deserving our recognition and perhaps even wonder, it should also be noted in passing that a man who kept such a critical distance from the world into which he had been conveyed, the behavior of whose children he regarded as basically foolish, was still able to muster the sort of seriousness about Hfe necessary to advance as far among these children as Joseph did and to achieve for them those praiseworthy things he was destined to achieve.
