Joseph and His Brothers, page 32
"Don't trouble yourself, son of Osiris," Jacob said. "I know that you are Anup, the guide and opener of the ways. I would have been amazed not to have met you here."
"It was a mistake," the god said.
"How do you mean?" Jacob asked.
"They conceived me by mistake," that laboring mouth said, "the Lord of the West and Nephthys, my mother."
"I'm sorry to hear it," Jacob responded. "But how did it happen?"
"She was not supposed to have been my mother," the boy replied, his mouth gradually becoming more supple. "She was the wrong one. Night was at fault—she is a cow, it makes no difference to her. She bears the sun's disk between her horns, to show that the sun enters her each time in order to beget the young day, but giving birth to so many radiant sons has never interfered with her dullness and indifference."
"I am trying to understand," Jacob said, "how that might be dangerous."
"Very dangerous," the other rejoined with a nod. "In her bHnd-ness, in her bovine warmth and goodness she embraces everything that happens within her, and out of the fullness of her dull passivity simply lets happen what happens, if only because it is dark."
"Too bad," Jacob said. "But who would have been the right one to conceive you if not Nephthys?"
"You don't know?" the dog-boy asked.
"I cannot exactly tell the difference," Jacob replied, "between what I know on my own and what I am learning from you."
"If you did not know it," came the response, "I could not tell it to you. In the beginning, not the very beginning, but more or less the beginning, there were Geb and Nut. He was the god of earth and she the goddess of heaven. They had four children: Osiris, Set, Isis, and Nephthys. Isis, however, was the sister-wife of Osiris, and Nephthys the wife of red Setekh."
"That much is clear," Jacob said. "And did these four not keep a sharp enough eye on that arrangement?"
"Two of them didn't," Anup replied. "Unfortunately not. What can you expect? We are distracted creatures, born ro live without care, inattentive and dreamy. Worry and precaution are dirty, earthly attributes, but on the other hand, just think of all the things that carelessness has caused in life."
"Only too true," Jacob agreed. "One must be careful. If I may be frank, in my opinion it is all because you are mere idols. God always knows what He wants and does. He makes promises and keeps them. He establishes a covenant and is faithful for all eternity."
"Which god?" Anup asked.
But Jacob replied, "Don't pretend with me. When earth and heaven join, that results at best in heroes and great kings, but not in a god, neither four nor one. Geb and Nut, as you've admitted, were not at the very beginning. Where did they come from?"
"From Tefnut, the great mother," came the quick, pat answer from the stone.
"Fine, you say that because I already know it," Jacob went on in his dream. "But was Tefnut the beginning? Where did Tefnut come from?"
"She was called into being by what is unbegotten and hidden, whose name is Nun," Anup replied.
"I did not ask as to the name," Jacob rejoined. "But now you are starting to speak reasonably, dog-boy. It was not my intention to dispute with you. After all, you're an idol. So now tell me about the error your parents made."
"Night was at fault," the foul-smelling beast repeated, "and he who bears the lash and the shepherd's crook was carelessly distracted. The majestic god was in pursuit of Isis, his sister-wife, and in the blindness of night inadvertently stumbled upon Nephthys, the sister of the Red One. So the great god embraced her, assuming she was his wife, and both embraced in the perfect indifference of a night of love."
"Can something like that occur!" Jacob cried. "What happened?"
"It can occur very easily," the other voice answered. "Even in her indifference, night knows the truth, and the awakened prejudices of day are nothing to her. For one female body is like another, good for loving, good for conceiving, Only the face marks the difference between one and the other, making us think that in conceiving we want the one and not the other. For the face belongs to day, which is full of awakened illusions, but it is nothing to night, which knows the truth."
"What crude and unfeeling words," Jacob said in anguish. "You have good reason to say such stupid things with a head and face like yours—why, a man must first hold a hand in front of it just to notice and concede that your outstretched leg is handsome and beautiful."
Anup looked down, placed his feet side by side, and thrust his hands between his knees. "You can leave me out of this!" he then said. "I'll get rid of this head of mine yet. So then, do you want to know what happened then?"
"What?" Jacob asked.
"In that night," he continued, "the Lord Osiris was for Nephthys like Set, her red husband, and for him she was just like Isis, his mistress. For he was made to beget and she to conceive, and night was indifferent to all the rest. And they delighted each other in begetting and conceiving, for in beUeving that they loved, they could not help conceiving. And that goddess became pregnant with me, whereas Isis, the true wife, should have been."
"Sad," Jacob said.
"When morning came they sped apart," the boy-beast said, "and things might have turned out all right if the majestic god had not left his lotus wreath with Nephthys. The red Set found it and bellowed. And ever after he sought to slay Osiris."
"You report it as I know it," Jacob recalled. "Then came the part with the casket, did it not?—into which the Red One lured his brother, using it to slay him, so that Osiris, the dead lord, floated down the river in the sealed coffin and out into the sea."
"And Set became king of the Two Lands and sat upon Geb's throne," Anup added. "But that is not what I wish to dwell upon, nor what lends this dream of yours its stamp. For the Red One did not long remain king of the lands, because Isis bore the child Horus, who slew him. But behold, she wandered the world searching for her lost, her murdered husband, wailing without surcease, 'Come to your house, come to your house, my beloved! O beautiful child, come to your house!' and beside her was Nephthys, the wife of his murderer, whom the slain god had mistakenly embraced, beside her at every step, and they ardently shared their pain and lamented together: 'O you whose heart no longer beats, I wish to see you, O beautiful lord, I wish to see you!'"
"An amiable and sad thing to do," Jacob said.
"Indeed," the dog-boy on the stone replied, "that is the very stamp of it. For who else was beside her, lost and wailing and helping in the search, both then and later, after Set found the hidden corpse and dismembered it into the fourteen pieces for which Isis had to search in order that her lord's Hmbs might be whole again? It was I, Anup, the son of the wrong wife, the fruit of the murdered man's loins, who was with her as she wandered and searched—always at Isis's side. And she laid her arm around my neck as we went, so that I could better support her, and we lamented together: 'Where are you, left arm of my beautiful god, and where are you, shoulder blade and right arm, where are you, his noble head and his sacred genitals that appear forever lost, so that it is our wish to replace them with images of sycamore wood?'"
"You speak obscenely, as befits the god of death of the Two Lands," Jacob said.
But Anup replied, "In your situation one should have a sense of such matters, for you are a bridegroom and you shall both beget and
die. For sex is death and in death is sex, that is the secret of the crypt and sex rips open death's winding-sheets and stands up against death, just as happened with the lord Osiris, above whom Isis hovered as a female vulture, making seed flow from the corpse and impregnating herself by him even as she lamented/'
A man should best awaken at this point, Jacob thought. And in thinking it, he saw the god swing down from his stone and vanish— and the lurch of his standing up and vanishing were all one motion— and awakened to the starry night, the sheepfold at his side. The dream of Anubis, the jackal, was soon erased from his mind, the details finding their way back, so to speak, into reality's simple journey, which was all that Jacob could still recall. The only part of the dream that remained in his soul for a while was a forgiving sadness— at how Nephthys had joined Isis to search and lament for him whom she had embraced by mistake and at how she who was bereft had allowed him who had been born by mistake to protect and support her.
Jacob's Wedding
During this period Jacob frequently discussed with Laban the imminent event of the nuptial feast, asking his master's intentions in all particulars, and learned that he planned to do things on a grand scale and was making arrangements for a wedding done in style and with no regard to the cost.
"It will cut deep into my purse," Laban said, "for the farm has many more mouths to feed now, but I shall stuff them all full. With no regrets, either, for as you see my business is not doing all that badly; indeed it's doing moderately well thanks to various circumstances, among which one might certainly also mention the blessing of Isaak that you bear with you. Which is why I have been able to add some strong arms and have bought two handmaids to help the slovenly Iltani: Zilpah and Bilhah, both attractive wenches. I want to give them to my daughters on the day of the wedding—Zilpah to Leah, my eldest, and Bilhah to my second daughter. And since you are the suitor, the handmaid will be yours as well, and I shall give her to you as a dowry, and the price will be reckoned at two-thirds of a mina of silver, as in our contract."
"Accept my embrace in return," Jacob said with a shrug.
"That is the least of it," Laban continued. "For the feast I wish to hold will be at my own expense, and I want to invite people from near and far for the Sabbath and bring in musicians who will both play and dance, and I want to split the backs of two bullocks and four sheep and cheer my guests with strong drink until they see double. I shall have to dig deep into my purse for it, but I will endure it without a grimace, for it is my daughter's wedding. I intend, moreover, to present the bride with something to wear that will delight her greatly. I bought it some time ago from a traveler, but have always kept it in the chest, for it is precious: a veil to veil the bride's face, so that she may sanctify and consecrate herself for Ishtar, but you shall lift the veil. It is said to have belonged long ago to the daughter of a king, to have been the virginal garment of a prince's child, and is artfully embroidered all over with every sort of symbol of Ishtar and Tammuz. And being unblemished, she shall wrap her head in it, and be as one of the unblemished enitUy like a bride of heaven, whom the priests bring to the god each year at the feast of Ishtar in Babel, leading her up the stairway and through the seven gates of the tower while everyone watches and removing a piece of her jewelry and attire at each gate, the cloth at her loins last of all, until they lead the holy naked girl into the highest bedchamber of the tower Etemenanki. There the god receives her upon his bed by the darkest darkness of night, and the mystery is very great."
"Hm," Jacob said, for Laban's eyes were wide, his fingers splayed at both sides of his head, and in his nephew's opinion that sublime look did not at all befit a clod of earth.
"It is indeed a fine and lovely thing," Laban went on, "when the bridegroom calls a house and farm his own or is held in high regard in the house of his parents and arrives in splendor to receive his bride and lead her off in pomp, by land or water, to his own property and inheritance. But you, as you know, are nothing but a fugitive without a roof, at odds with your family, and reside here with me as a son-in-law, yet I shall be content with that, too. There will be no bridal processions by land or water, for you two will remain here with me after the feasting and revelry; but when I have stepped between you and have touched both your brows, we then follow local custom in such a case and lead you alone about the courtyard with
singing and to the bedchamber. There you sit upon the bed, a flower in your hand, and await the bride. For we then lead her, my unblemished daughter, round about the courtyard as well, with torches and singing, and at the chamber door we extinguish the torches, and I lead the consecrated bride to you and leave you both, so that you may present her the flower in the dark."
"Is that the custom and lawful usage?" Jacob asked.
"Far and wide, just as you say," Laban replied.
"Then that will be fine with me," Jacob responded. "I assume, by the way, that at least one torch will continue to burn or the wick of some little lamp, so that I can see my bride when I hand her the flower, and afterward."
"Silence!" Laban cried. "I would like to know how you can possibly speak so unchastely, and what's more to the father, for whom it is bitter and painful enough to lead his child to a man that he may uncover her and sleep with her. At least put a rein on your salacious tongue in my presence and keep your excessive lewdness to yourself. Do you not have hands to see, and must you also devour the unblemished girl with your eyes in order to sharpen your lust on her shame and trembling virginity? Think of the mystery of the tower's highest chamber."
"I'm sorry," Jacob said, "do forgive me. I did not mean it as unchastely as it sounds from your lips. I would merely have liked to behold my bride with my eyes. But if the custom far and wide is as you've described, I shall be content for now."
And so that day of perfect beauty, the nuptial feast, approached, and on the farm and in the house of Laban, the successful breeder of sheep, all the slaughtering, cooking, roasting, and brewing raised a great din and fumes that had every eye watering from the acrid smoke of the fires that burned under kettles and ovens—for Laban saved money on charcoal by burning almost nothing but thorns and dung. Masters and menials, including Jacob, set their hands to work preparing comestibles for the many guests of the prolonged banquet, for the wedding was to last seven days and during that time the household, if it was not to be shamed and mocked, had to prove its inexhaustible supply of pastries, twisted breads, and fish cakes, creamed soups, compotes, and milk puddings, beer, fruit juices, and strong schnapps—not to mention the roast mutton and haunches of
beef. As they bustled about, they sang songs for Uduntamku, the plump god of the belly who presided over all feasting. They all sang and worked: Laban and Adina, Jacob and Leah; the slovenly Iltani and Bilhah and Zilpah, the daughters' handmaids; Abdcheba, the twenty-shekel man; and the newly acquired slaves. Laban's late-born sons ran yelping through the hubbub in their shirttails, but then slipped on blood spilled during slaughtering and soiled themselves, so that their father had to twist their ears until they howled like jackals; and only Rachel took no part, but sat quietly off by herself in the house—for she dared not see the bridegroom now, nor he his bride—and examined the precious veil her father had given her to wear at the feast. It was splendid to look upon, a masterwork of the weaver's and embroiderer's arts—what an undeserved stroke of good fortune that something like this had found its way into Laban's house and chest. The man who had been forced to sell it so cheaply to him must have been hard-pressed by circumstance.
It was long and ample, both a dress and a robe over that, cut with wide sleeves, if one chose to use them, and a section that could be pulled up to cover the head or simply wound around the head and shoulders, or left to hang down the back. Weighing this virginal garb in one's hands left one strangely uncertain, for it was both heavy and light, its weight varying here and there. The pale blue fabric itself was extremely light, as finely spun as if made only of a breeze, a vapor, of nothing, so that it could be balled up into the hand until not a trace was visible; and yet heavy from the embroidered images scattered everywhere across it and filling it with shimmering bright colors, each highly ingenious symbol and image executed in a tightly worked embossment of gold, bronze, silver and in every imaginable hue of thread: white, purple, pink, olive, plus black and white and medleys of color like those fused together in glass. Ishtar-Mami's figure was displayed in frequent variation—a small nude, squeezing milk from her breasts with her hands, sun and moon at each side. Repeated everywhere in a multitude of colors was the five-pointed star that means "god"; and the silvery sheen of the dove, the bird of the mother-goddess of love, dotted the fabric. Gilgamesh, the hero, two-thirds god and one-third man, was there, throttling a lion in one arm. Clearly visible was the pair of scorpion men who guard the gate at world's end, through which the sun enters the underworld. There were several different animals, former paramours of Ishtar, but
transformed by her into a wolf, or a bat that had once been Ishal-lanu, the gardener. One brightly colored bird, however, was recognizable as Tammuz, the shepherd, her first partner in lust, for whom she had decreed weeping year in, year out; nor was heaven's fire-breathing bull missing, the one that Anu had sent out to battle Gil-gamesh at the bidding of Ishtar, wailing in her rutting. As Rachel let the garment glide through her hands, she saw a man and a woman sitting on each side of a tree, stretching out their hands for its fruit, while behind the woman's back a serpent rose up. And another holy tree was embroidered there: next to it stood two bearded angels facing one another and touching it to impregnate it with the scaly cones of male flowers; but above this tree of life, surrounded by sun, moon, and stars, hovered a symbol of the female. And mottoes had been sewn on as well, in broad and sharp-pointed characters, some horizontal, others slanted or erect, crossing at various angles. And Rachel deciphered: "I have removed my garment, shall I put it on again?"
