Joseph and His Brothers, page 82
"Ha, ha, Sheshi!" the guard cried. "I'm called Teti!"
"That's what I meant," the old man rejoined. "If I spoke it differently, that's only because of my pronunciation and because I am missing teeth at my age. And so, Chechi—ah, that was no better—do let me see if there is not a dry ford across this river and perhaps a winding road around the mountain steeps. You mistakenly called me a cutpurse, but here," he said, reaching into his robe, "is a bit of real cutting, and a pretty one, too, and it belongs to you if you will hop to it and announce me and bring Mont-kaw back here. There, take it from my hand. It is but a small example of my treasures. Behold, its casing is of hardest wood, beautifully stained, and it has a slot, from which you can pull a cutting blade hard as diamonds, and see how the knife holds fast. But if you push the blade back toward the handle, it snaps into place before you have pushed it all the way and rests secure in its sheath, so that you can conceal it in your apron. So then?"
The lad came forward and examined the clasp knife. "Not bad," he said. "Is it mine?" And he pocketed it. "From the land of Mosar?" he asked. "And from Ma'on? Midianite merchants? Wait here a while!"
And he went inside through the gate.
Smiling and shaking his head, the old man watched him go.
"We overcame the fortress of Zel," he said, "and made short shrift of Pharaoh's border guards and military scribes. We will surely press our way through here as well to my friend Mont-kaw."
I
And he gave a cluck of the tongue that signaled his animal to lie down so that he could dismount, and Joseph lent him a hand. His other riders got down as well; and they all waited.
After a while Teti returned and said, "You are to enter into the courtyard. The overseer will come."
"Good," the old man replied. "If he attaches importance to seeing us, we shall take the time and comply with his wishes, although we must move on yet."
And led by the young watchman they passed through the echoing, covered gateway and into the courtyard, which was paved with well-trodden clay, and found themselves opposite a set of open doors to a gate flanked by shading palm trees and leading through a brick wall with slits for archers, inside whose quadrangle stood the house itself, with its portal of decorated columns, fine moldings, and triangular west-facing vents on the roof.
It lay in the middle of the estate, bordered on two sides—to the west and south—by the green bands of gardens. The courtyard was spacious, with ample open area between the various south-facing buildings that stood, with no extra walls of their own, in the northern part of the grounds. The most important of them extended away to the right of the new arrivals—a long, airy, graceful structure with its own guards and maidservants who passed in and out of its door bearing bowls of fruit and tall pitchers. Other women were seated up on the roof, spinning and singing. Farther back to the west, set against the north wall, was another building from which steam was rising, while out in front of it people were tending to brewing vats and grain mills. Yet one more building lay still farther to the west behind the orchard, and workmen were busy in front of it as well. At the rear, in the northwest corner of the enclosing wall were barns and granaries with ladders.
An estate of blessing without doubt. Joseph's eyes hastily scanned it, trying to probe it everywhere, but he was not yet permitted to claim it as his own, for he had to help with the task to which his master put them immediately upon entry: to unload the camels, then unpack and set up shop on the courtyard's clay floor, spreading out their wares between the covered gateway and the master's house, so that the steward, or anyone of his staff with an urge to trade, might have an alluring overview of the Ishmaelite's merchandise.
The Dwarves
Indeed this display was soon encircled by a good many of the people who had seen these Asiatics arrive and, though this was hardly a rare event, saw in it a welcome diversion from their labors—or from mere idling about. There were Nubian guards from the women's house and maidservants, their female figures clearly visible, as was the custom in Egypt, under the sheer batiste of their garments; menials from the main house, dressed either in just a loincloth or, depending on their rank in the domestic hierarchy, in a longer skirt worn over that plus a short-sleeved tunic; people from the out-kitchen, some half-plucked item in their hands, stable boys, craftsmen from the servants' quarters, and gardeners—they all came over to look and chatter, bending down to the wares, picking up this or that and asking about its value in trade, expressed in silver and copper weights. Two little people found their way over as well— dwarves; the fan-bearer's household included two of them, but although neither man was more than three feet tall, their comportment showed them to be very different—the one a buffoon, the other a figure of dignity. The latter came over first, from the main house, striding with studied prudence on legs that looked even more stunted than his torso, holding himself so erect that he even leaned back a Httle, glancing about him from time to time, and rowing with stubby arms, palms turned backwards. He wore a starched skirt that stood out at an angle in front of him. His head bulged out at the back and was large in relationship to the rest of him and covered with short hair that grew low into his brow and temples; the nose was strong, the face bore a steady, indeed determined look.
"Are you the leader of this merchant caravan?" he asked, stepping up to the old man, who was now crouched on his heels beside his merchandise, which the dwarf obviously welcomed, since he wished to speak to him more or less man-to-man. His voice was muffled, he pitched it as low as possible, pushing his chin against his chest and pulling his lower lip down over his front teeth. "Who admitted you? The guards outside? With the permission of the overseer? Then it is all right. You can stay and wait for him, although it is uncertain when he will find time for you. Do you bring useful
things, lovely things? Probably all just trumpery, isn't it? Or are items of some value included, serious, seemly, and solid things? I see balsam, I see walking sticks. I could presumably use a walking stick myself, if it were of hardest wood and sensibly fitted out. Above all, do you have trinkets—chains, necklaces, rings? I am the keeper of the master's wardrobe and jewelry, the warden of the dressing room. Dudu is my name. And I could also bring delight to my wife with a solid piece of jewelry—to Zeset, my wife, in gratitude for her having borne me children. Do you carry items in that department? I see glass, I see gewgaws. What would interest me would be gold, elec-trum, would be fine gems, lazule, carnelian, crystal..."
While the one little man went on talking and demanding in this vein, the other came bounding from the direction of the harem, where he had probably been amusing the ladies with his antics. News of these events had been late in reaching him, it appeared, which was the reason for his childish, eager haste—for he ran as fast as his pudgy little legs would carry him, now and then interrupting his two-legged progress to simply hop on one of them, all the while gasping and shouting in a thin, sharp voice, as if in spasms of joy, "What's up? What's up? What's happening in the world? A hubbub, some great hurly-burly? What's there to see? What's the cause of wonder in our courtyard? Men of commerce—and wild men at that—men of the sand? That's enough to frighten this dwarf, enough to fill him with curiosity, hop, hop, and here he comes running ..."
With one hand to his shoulder he was steadying a rust-colored meerkat that stared from its perch, neck outstretched, fierce eyes wide with terror. There was something ludicrous about the little fellow's garb, for it was a kind of festive costume that he apparently was fool enough to wear every day, leaving the entire outfit—the finely pleated skirt that fell well below his calves and had tassels at its waistband fold, the transparent camisole with pleated sleeves— looking rumpled and soiled. Around his embryonic wrist he wore golden spiral rings, around his neck was a bedraggled garland of flowers, linked to a few more wreaths that stuck out at his shoulders, and on his little head was a woolen wig of brown curls, topped by a cone for ointment, which instead of containing a fragrant salve, was really just a felt cylinder drenched in perfume. Unlike the dwarf who
had first appeared, this one had the face of a childHke old man—of a wrinkled, shriveled mandrake.
Dudu, the guardian of the wardrobe, had been greeted respectfully by those miUing about, but the arrival of his companion in misfortune and brother in brevity evoked a merry response. "The vizier!" they cried—this evidently was his nickname. "Bes-em-heb!" This was the name of an imported comical foreign god, Bes the dwarf—with the added tag of "at the feast" in reference to the little fellow's permanent gala attire.
"Do you want to buy, Bes-em-heb? Look at him take his legs under his arms! Fly, Shepses-Bes, fly!" (That meant "splendid Bes," "glorious Bes.") "Fly and buy, but catch your breath on the sly. Buy yourself a sandal, vizier, and attach little oxen legs to it, that'll make a bed for you to stretch out in, but you'll have to add a step so you can climb up."
Once he had arrived, he replied to their shouts in an asthmatic, cricketlike voice that seemed to come from a distance. "Trying your hand at jokes, are you, my overstretched friends? And they're tolerably successful, are they? The vizier, however, can only yawn at them—huh, huh—for your attempt at wit bores him, as does the world that a god placed him in after first making everything for giants—its wares, its wits, its ways. For if the world had been cut to his size and made his home, then time itself would be cut and trimmed for laughter and there'd be no need for yawning. There'd be speedy short years and brief double hours and swift watches of the night. Tick, tick, tick, the heart would hurtle along, and run out in a twinkling, so that the generations of men would turn over so rapidly that one would barely have time enough to make one good joke on earth, and it would be gone, and another would greet the light. What a lark that little life would be! But left here among the overstretched, all a dwarf can do is yawn. I don't wish to buy your monstrous wares and rd not accept your thumping wit even as a gift. I simply want to see if anything new in your giant epoch has come to our courtyard— strange men, men of misery and sand, wild nomads, in clothes no man wears . . . phooey!" His chirping suddenly broke off and his gnomelike face gathered into a wrinkled ball of vexation. He had noticed Dudu, his fellow dwarf, standing in front of the squatting old man and flailing his stubby arms, demanding full value for his money.
"Phooey!" the so-called vizier said. "There's the gossip himself, His Honor the Dwarf! Must I bump into him when trying to satisfy my nosiness for what's new—how unpleasant! There he stands, the warden of the wardrobe, pushing in ahead of me and mincing muffled, but most edifying words . . . Good morning, master Dudu!" he chirped as he placed one pint-size body beside the other. "A proper good morning to you. Your Stateliness, and my manifold respects to Your Robustness. Might one also inquire as to the health of your wife Zeset, whose arm embraces you, as well as that of your towering offspring, Esesi and Ebebi, those sweet children?"
Dudu turned to look over his shoulder with great disdain, but evidently without actually fixing his gaze on the other man, but letting it drift somewhere in the vicinity of his feet.
"You mouse," he said, more or less shaking his head over him and tucking in his lower lip, so that the upper stood out like an overhanging roof. "What is all this wriggling and piping? I pay you no more regard than I would a common crab or a hollow nut emitting a puff of dust—that is my regard for you. How dare you ask about my wife Zeset and at the same time conceal your private mockery in the inquiry about her and my high-aspiring children, Esesi and Ebebi? Such an interrogation does not befit you, for it is no business of yours, nor is it suitable, proper, or appropriate for you, a whipper-snapper, a fragment..."
"Why look at that," repHed the dwarf whom they had greeted as Shepses-Bes, and his little face wrinkled up all the more. "Would you rise above me—who knows how high—and make your voice sound as if coming from a barrel full of punctilious pomp, even though you, too, cannot peek over a molehill and cannot measure up to your brood, not to mention to her whose arm embraces you? You are a dwarf for good and all, of a race of dwarves, no matter how respectably you comport yourself, and you rebuke me for politely inquiring as to your family's health because I am not fit to do so. Oh, but it fits you quite well and is a fine match for your figure, this playing husband and family father before full-grown people, taking a woman of stature to wife and denying your own small kind ..."
The people in the courtyard laughed loudly at these squabbling little men, whose mutual aversion appeared to be a familiar source of merriment, and their shouts egged them on to bicker the more. "Give it to him. Vizier!"—"Make him pay for that, Dudu, spouse of
Zeset!" But the one they had called Bes-em-heb stopped arguing and suddenly appeared to lose interest in the altercation. He was standing beside the man he despised, who stood facing the crouching old man, next to whom, then, stood Joseph, so that Bes was standing directly across from Rachel's son. And when he became aware of him, his words fell away and, in fixing his gaze on Joseph, his elderly wizened face, at first still full of petty annoyance, smoothed out and took on an expression of bemused scrutiny. His mouth hung open, and the empty space where his eyebrows should have been—for he had none—was drawn up high into his forehead. That was how he looked up at the young Habiru; and the little monkey on his shoulder was as captivated as he, by the way—its neck stretched far forward, its wide eyes staring fiercely up into the face of Abram's grandson.
Joseph held up under the test. He returned the gnome's gaze with a smile, and they both remained frozen like that while Dudu, the solemn dwarf, went on making his demands of the old man and the attention of the others in the courtyard returned to the foreigners and their wares.
Finally the little man pointed with a dwarf's finger at his own chest and said in a strangely distant voice, "Se'enkh-Wen-nofre-Neteruhotpe-em-per-Amun."
"What did you say?" Joseph asked.
The dwarf intoned his phrase yet again, while continuing to point at his chest. "Name," he declared. "Name of little man. Not vizier, not Shepses-Bes. Se'enkh-Wen-nofre ..." And he whispered the words a third time, his full name, as long and splendid as he was insignificant in stature. The name meant "May the kindly being (that is, Osiris) preserve the life of the beloved (or the favorite) of the gods in the house of Amun"; and Joseph understood it, too.
"A beautiful name," he said.
"Yes, beautiful, but not true," the dwarf murmured from a distance. "Me not favored, not an heir, only a toad. You favored, you Neteruhotpe, so that is both beautiful and true."
"And how do you know that?" Joseph asked with a smile.
"See it!" came the answer as if from under the earth. "See clearly!" and he put a little finger to his eye. "Clever," he added. "Small and clever. You not one of the small ones, but vou clever.
Good, beautiful, and clever. You belong to him?" And he pointed to the old man haggling with Dudu.
"I belong to him," Joseph said.
"From when you were very small?"
"I was born to him."
"So he is your father?"
"He is a father to me."
"What is your name?"
Joseph did not reply at once. He smiled before he answered. "Osarsiph," he said.
The dwarf blinked. He gave the name some thought.
"Were you born of the reeds?" he asked. "Are you an Usir in the reeds? Did your mother wander the marshes and find you there?"
Joseph said nothing. The dwarf went on blinking.
"Mont-kaw is coming!" The word spread among those in the courtyard, and they began to disband, so that he who stood over them would not find them gawking and dawdHng. Peering between the men's and women's houses, someone had spotted him in the courtyard that opened up before the buildings that stood in the northwest corner of the estate—there he stood and now began walking, an older man dressed in beautiful white, accompanied by several scribes with reeds behind their ears, slaves who bowed low around him and took down his words on their tablets.
He approached. The staff had scattered from the courtyard. The old man had stood up now. But amid all the commotion Joseph had heard the whisper, like a voice from underground: "Stay with us, young sand man!"
Mont-kaw
The overseer had arrived at the open gate in the crenelated wall around the main house. Turning halfway toward it now, he glanced back over his shoulder at the group of foreigners and their merchandise spread out for sale.
"What is this?" he asked, rather testily. "What men are these?" It appeared that amid his other duties he had forgotten the report delivered to him, and the old man's displays of obeisance from
across the courtyard were of little help. A scribe reminded him, pointing to his tablet, on which the matter had evidently been noted.
"Yes, yes, the traveling merchants from Ma'on or from Mosar," the steward said. "Fine, fine, but I need nothing except time, and that they don't sell." And he approached the old man, who came bustling toward him. "Well, old man, how are you, after the passing of these many days?" Mont-kaw asked. "So we see you at our gate once again, here to swindle us with your odds and ends, are you?"
They laughed. Both had only their lower canines left, which jutted up like two posts. The overseer was a sturdy, stocky man of fifty, with an imposing head and the decisive bearing that came with his position, though softened by goodwill. The bags under his eyes were so prominent that they pressed up under them, making them look swollen and small, almost like slit eyes set beneath the bands of strong, still totally black eyebrows. Deep creases ran from the well-formed if somewhat wide-nostriled nose to each side of the mouth and strongly emphasized the arc of the upper lip, which like his cheeks was shaved clean and shiny. A wedge of a beard speckled with gray set off the chin. His hair had receded far back from the brow and along the sides of the skull, but formed a dense, fan-shaped mass behind ears adorned with gold rings. There was something of both ancient peasant cunning and a sailor's good humor about Mont-kaw's physiognomy, and his dark reddish brown complexion stood out against the snow white of his clothing—made from that incomparable Egyptian linen that could be folded into such exquisite pleats, like those of his apron, which began just below the navel and then fell in a flair almost to the hem of his ankle-length skirt. The wide, half-length sleeves of his tunic, which he wore tucked into the apron, were also pressed into delicate pleats. The outline of his hairy, muscular body was visible beneath the fine batiste.
