Joseph and His Brothers, page 74
"So what became of her?"
"Of the dumb beast? Hm, it is rather a distressing matter for the likes of us first to have to play watchman over an ass to no purpose and then to give an account of what happened besides. One would like to know how it has come to that exactly. But you can put your mind at ease. My last impression tended to the conclusion that her pastern was not so bad off as we initially feared. Apparently it was only sprained, but not broken—which means, apparently broken and actually only sprained, if you understand me. While waiting for you I had nothing but time to care for the ass's foot, and by the time I had finally lost all patience, your Hulda was well enough again that she could trot, though chiefly on three legs. I rode her myself to Dothan and stabled her at a house where I have been able to be of service on several occasions to our mutual advantage—the first one in the village, which belongs to a farmer, where she will have things as good as in the stall of your father, the so-called Israel."
"Really?" Joseph cried softly and joyfully. "Who would have thought! So she stood up and walked, and you saw to it that she was well taken care of?"
"Very well," the other man confirmed. "She can happily say that I stabled her at the farmer's house, and that her lot has proved to be a happy one."
"Which means," Joseph said, "that you sold her in Dothan. And the price?"
"You're asking as to the price?"
"Yes, now I am."
"I took it as pay for my service as a guide and watchman."
"Oh, I see. Well, I shall not ask how much it was. And the baggage Hulda was carrying, full of delicacies?"
"Is it really true that you are thinking of tidbits amidst these adversities, and do you find them of comparative importance?"
"Not so much, but they were with her."
"I also reimbursed myself with them."
"Well," Joseph said, "you had already begun to reimburse yourself behind my back in any case—Fm referring here to certain quantities of onions and pressed fruit. But let it be, perhaps it was well intentioned, and in any case I wish to dwell on whatever good sides you may show. That you got Hulda on her feet again and filled her belly in the country, for that I truly owe you my gratitude and also thank good fortune that I've unexpectedly met you again to learn of it."
"Yes, and now I must guide you along your way again, you bag of wind, so that you may arrive at your goal," the man countered. "As to whether it is truly fitting and proper for someone like me, one does privately ask oneself that question in passing, but to no avail, since no one else asks it."
"Are you being peevish again," Joseph rejoined, "just as that night on the way to Dothan, when you offered to help me find my brothers, but with such ill humor? Well, this time I need not reproach myself for annoying you, for you have hired yourself out to the Ishmaelites to lead them through this desert, and by chance I happen to be with them."
"It amounts to one and the same—you or the Ishmaelites."
"Do not tell the Ishmaelites that, for they think highly of their dignity and authority and do not like to hear that they are traveling more or less so that I may come to wherever God wants me."
The guide said nothing and lowered his chin into his scarf. Was he rolling his eyes again in that way of his? Quite possibly, but darkness made it difficult to tell.
"Who likes to hear," he said with a certain reluctance, "that he is a tool? Most especially, who Hkes to hear it from a jackanapes? Coming from you, it is indeed sheer impudence, Usarsiph, young slave. But on the other hand, it is just as I say—that is, it all amounts to the same thing and it might just as well be Ishmaelites who come
along. And that once again it is you for whom I must open the ways—that makes no difference to me. I have also had to watch beside a well, not to mention that jenny ass."
"A well?"
"I had come to expect a role of that sort the whole time—that is, as regards the well. It was the emptiest hole I've ever come across, couldn't have been emptier, the more absurd for its emptiness—keep that in mind when judging the dignity and propriety of my role. In any case, perhaps it was the very emptiness of the pit that was of importance."
"Had the stone been rolled away?"
"Of course, I sat on it, and remained sitting there no matter how much that man would have liked for me to vanish."
"What man?"
"Why, the one who in his foolishness stole secretly to the pit. A man of towering stature, with legs like temple columns, but with a thin voice for such a shell."
"Ruben!" Joseph cried, almost forgetting to be cautious.
"Call him what you will, he was a foolish tower of a man. Came slinking up with his ropework and his robe to such a perfectly empty pit.. ."
"He wanted to rescue me!" Joseph exclaimed.
"For all I care," the guide said with a ladylike yawn, holding his hand primly to his mouth and adding a delicate sigh. "He played his role too," he added indistinctly, for he had thrust chin and mouth still more deeply into his scarf and evidently wanted to sleep. Joseph heard him mutter some more ill-humored tatters of words—"Not to be taken seriously . . . mere jests and insinuations . . . jackanapes . . . expectations ..."
Nothing more useful was to be got out of him, and for the rest of their desert journey Joseph had no further conversation with the guide and watchman.
The Fortress ofZel
Day after day they moved patiently across the dismal land, following the bell of the lead camel from well station to well station, until
nine days had passed and they could count themselves lucky. Their guide had not been wrong in recommending himself, he knew what he was doing. He never lost his way, never strayed from the road, even when it passed through a maze of mountains that weren't mountains at all, but merely a jumble of ghastly sandstone boulders, grotesque and up-thrust masses that glistened with the blackness of ore instead of stone, a gloomy sheen that made them look like a towering city of iron. He did not lose his way even when for days there could be no talk of a path or road in an upper-worldly sense, and instead theirs was a world damned beyond all reckoning, a seabed enclosing them in their fear and filled with corpse-pale sand to a far horizon pallid with heat. They crossed dunes, down whose backs the wind had evidently left repulsively dainty waves and folds, while above the plain below them the hot air played and flickered as if about to burst into dancing flames and the sand was lifted in whirling vortices so that the men covered their heads in order to pass through such ghastly terrors, preferring to ride blind rather than gaze upon so vicious a delight in death.
Bleached bones often lay along the way, the rib cage and thighbone of a camel or desiccated human limbs jutting up out of the waxy dust. They blinked as they passed and went on nourishing their hope. Twice, for half a day each time, from noon until evening, a pillar of fire preceded them, seeming to lead them. They knew the nature of this phenomenon, but did not allow their reactions to be determined only by its natural cause. These were, as they well knew, whirling eddies of dust turned fiery by the sun shining through. All the same they spoke to each other of this important honor—"a pillar of fire goes before us." If the sign were to collapse suddenly before their eyes it would be dreadful, for then in all probability this would be followed by an Abubu of dust. But the pillar did not collapse and, like a kobold, merely changed its shape, slowly fluttering away on the northeast wind, which remained faithful to them through all nine days. Good fortune held the south wind captive, preventing it from drying out goatskins and devouring life-giving water. By the ninth day they were out of danger, had escaped the wasteland's horrors, and could count themselves lucky, because this portion of the desert road, for a good stretch out into the desert, was already occupied and watched over by the eye of Egypt, which protectively
guarded every step taken upon it with bastions, breastworks, and watchtowers beside the wells, manning them with small garrisons of Nubian archers with ostrich feathers in their hair and Libyan ax-bearers under the command of Egyptian captains, who called out in surly voices to the approaching caravan and officially questioned them as to their whence and whither.
The old man had a cheery and clever way of speaking with such troops, of establishing beyond all doubt the innocence of his intentions, and of winning their goodwill with little gifts from his wares—knives, lamps, Ashkelon onions. And so they moved ahead from garrison to garrison, with some bother, but smoothly enough, since exchanging jokes with guards was far better than passing through the city of iron and over the pale seabed. But the travelers were well aware that putting these stations behind them was only a preliminary step and that the sternest test of their innocence and harmlessness to the security of a civilized society still lay ahead—at the massive and unavoidable barrier that the old man called the Sovereign's Wall and that had been built ages before on the neck of land between the two Bitter Lakes to protect against Shosu savages and denizens of the dust who might try to drive their animals onto Pharaoh's fields.
From a rise where they halted at sunset, they looked out across to those menacing precautionary measures, structures of anxious but arrogant defense, which the amiable, loquacious old man, having conquered them several times now, both coming and going, therefore did not fear too greatly, and so, with a calmly outstretched hand, he could point out to his company the long line of a wall, jagged with pinnacles, broken here and there by towers and set behind canals that linked a chain of larger and smaller lakes. At about midpoint in the wall a bridge spanned the water, but here too, on both sides of the crossing the precautions were prodigious, for there, surrounded by their own encircling walls, stood massive, imposing, two-storied fortified citadels, whose walls and ramparts rose to the parapets in an intricate zigzag, making them all the more invincible, and bristled on all sides with battlement turrets, sally ports, and bastions, with barred windows set into smaller structures on top. This was the fortress of Zel, the precautionary bulwark erected out of fear and strength by a refined, happy, but vulnerable Egypt against
desert, depredation, and destitution to the east—the old man spoke the name to his company without fear and then went on to talk about how easy it ought to be, would be, for his innocence to slip, as so often before, through this barrier, but spoke at such length that one had the impression he was plucking up his own courage.
"Do I not have a letter from a merchant friend in Gilead beyond the Jordan," he said, "for another merchant friend in Djanet, which is also called Zo'an and was built only seven years after Hebron? Indeed, I have it, and you will see it open gates and portals for us. It all depends on being able to present something written, so that the people of Egypt can write something else and send it on somewhere, where it will be copied yet again and entered into their ledgers. Granted, without written matter you will not get through; but if you can present a shard, a scroll, a document, they brighten up. For, to be sure, they claim that Amun or Usir is for them the highest of gods, the Eye Enthroned, but I know them better, for ultimately it is Thoth, the scribe. Believe me, if only Hor-waz, the young staff officer, comes to the wall, an old friend of mine from before, and I can speak with him, there will be no difficulty and we'll slip right through. And once we are inside the wall, no one will question our innocence again and we shall move freely upstream through every district, as far as we like. Let us set up our tents and spend the night here, for my friend Hor-waz will not be returning to the wall again today. But tomorrow, before we step forward and request passage through the fortress of Zel, we must wash ourselves with water and shake the desert dust from our clothes, dig it from our ears, and scrub it from under our fingernails, so that they may see us as human beings and not sand rabbits; and you youngsters must also pour sweet oil in your hair, add a little eye makeup, and make yourselves savory; for poverty is suspect in their eyes and a lack of culture an abomination."
Such were the old man's words, and they acted upon them, remaining there for the night and making themselves as beautiful the next morning as they could after so long and dreadful a journey. But during their preparations something unusual and surprising happened: at some point the guide whom the old man had hired in Gaza and who had led them so safely was no longer among them, though no one could say definitely when he had absented himself, whether
during the night or while they were sprucing up for Zel. At any rate, when they happened to look around for him, he was no longer there, although the belled camel he had ridden still was—nor had he collected his wages from the old man.
This was no cause for lamentation, but only for head-shaking, since they no longer required a guide and the man had also been a cool, taciturn companion. They wondered about it for a while, and the old man's satisfaction at having saved some money was sHghtly diminished by the murkiness of the matter and the unease that comes with a piece of unfinished business. He assumed, by the way, that the man would show up again at some point to claim his pay. Joseph thought it possible that he had perhaps already secretly laid claim to more than just that, and suggested they check their wares; but the result of this inventory proved him wrong. He was the one who was most surprised, in particular by how out of character this was for his acquaintance and how hard it seemed to reconcile this indifference to matters of profit with his usual manifest greed. He took more than his due for friendly services rendered voluntarily, but, or so at least it appeared, let wages honestly earned carelessly slip through his fingers. But Joseph could not speak with the Ishmaelites about these discrepancies, and what is never put into words is soon forgotten. They all had other things to worry about besides their eccentric guide; and after they had cleaned their ears and put on eye makeup, they advanced toward the water and the Sovereign's Wall, arriving around noon at the bridge to the fortress of Zel.
Ah, it was even more terrifying from close-up than from a distance, doubly impregnable, with its zigzag ramparts, towers, and bastions, its high parapets occupied all round by warriors clad in battle tunics and carrying shields made of hides on their backs; there they stood, spears clenched in fists, chins resting on fists, and stared in contempt down at the approaching caravan. Officers fitted out in half-length wigs, white shirts, and skirts with leather groin guards could be seen walking back and forth behind them, a cane in one hand. They paid no attention to the approaching band, but the first line of sentries raised their arms and then, cradling their spears in their arms, cupped their hands to their mouths and called out, "Back! Turn back! Fortress of Zel! No passage! We will shoot!"
"Pay no heed," the old man said. "Just stay calm. It's not half so
bad as it looks. Let us show gestures of peace, while advancing slowly, but undeterred. Do I not have the letter of my merchant friend? We shall get through."
Following his instructions and signaling that they came in peace, they moved ahead to the loopholed wall, directly in front of a gate, behind which was a great portal of iron that led to the bridge. Above the portal gHstened a deep carved reHef, painted in bright fiery colors—the giant figure of a bare-throated vulture with outspread wings, a joist ring in its talons; and jutting out from the bricks to its right and left were four-foot-high pedestals with stony cobras, their heads raised above their bellies and hoods spread—symbols of defense terrible to look upon.
"Turn back!" the sentries called down from the outer gate wall with its vulture relief. "Fortress of Zel! Return, you sand rabbits, to your misery! There is no passage here!"
"You are mistaken, warriors of Egypt," the old man replied, still seated on his camel, from the midst of his band. "It is precisely here that one finds passage and nowhere else. Where else could one find it on this neck of land? We are knowledgeable people, who do not knock at the wrong smithy door, but know exactly how one passes into the country beyond, for we have crossed this bridge many times, going both forward and back."
"Yes, back!" they shouted from up top. "Just keep going back, it's nothing but back to the desert with you, that is our order—let no riffraff into the country!"
"To whom do you tell this?" the old man replied. "To me, who not only knows it well enough, but also expressly approves of it? For I despise riffraff and sand rabbits as fervently as you and have only high praise for how you prevent them from ravaging the land. Do but examine us closely and study our faces. Do we look to you like marauding thieves and Sinai's rabble? Is our appearance such that it could awaken the presumption we come to reconnoiter the land for some evil purpose? Or where are our herds that we intend to drive onto Pharaoh's pastures? Not for a fleeting moment can there be any question of that. We are Minaeens from Ma'on, traveling merchants, of particularly honorable intentions, and we carry with us charming wares from abroad, which we would spread before you, hoping to trade for them among Keme's children, that in return we
may bring the gifts of the Yeor, which here is called the Hapi, to the ends of the earth. For it is an age of commerce and of exchanged gifts, and we travelers are its servants and priests."
"Tidy priests you are! Dusty priests! All lies!" the soldiers shouted down to them.
But the old man did not lose his courage and only shook his head indulgently.
"As if I did not know all this," he said in an aside to his followers. "They always act like this on principle and create difficulties just so that people may decide to toddle off instead. But I have never turned back here, and will pass through again this time as well.... Listen, warriors of Pharaoh," he called up to them again, "you doughty men of reddish brown hue! I particularly enjoy speaking with you here, for you are merry men. But the man with whom I would really rather speak is your youthful staff officer, Hor-waz, who let me in the previous time. Be so good as to call him to the wall. I wish to show him the letter for Zo'an that I carry with me. A letter," he repeated. "Written matter! Thoth! Djehuti, the baboon!" He smiled as he called to them in the way we do when speaking to people we know not as individuals but as representatives of a given nationality familiar to the world at large, and half in teasing, half in flattery invoke some name of popular fancy, the recollection of which, by way of proverb or fable, provides everyone with an amusing link to their conception of that people as a whole. And then they laughed, too, if only perhaps at the standard prejudice of foreigners who believed every Egyptian to be totally obsessed with writing and written matter, but at the same time they were impressed by the old man's familiarity with the name of one of their leaders; for they consulted among themselves and called down to the Ishmaelites that staff officer Hor-waz was on an official trip, was at present in the city of Sent, and would not return for three days.
