Читать книгу The Pharaoh and the Priest - Bolesław Prus - Страница 18

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RAMESES passed most of the night in feverish imaginings. Once the vision of the state appeared to him as an immense labyrinth with strong walls through which no one could force a way, then again he saw the shadow of a priest who with one wise opinion had indicated to him the method of escape from that labyrinth. And now appeared unexpectedly before him two powers,—the interest of the state, which he had not felt thus far, though he was heir to the throne; and the priesthood, which he wished to debase and then make his servant.

That was a burdensome night. The prince turned on his bed repeatedly, and asked himself whether he had not been blind, and if he had not received sight that day for the first time in order to convince himself of his folly and nothingness. How differently during those night hours did the warnings of his mother appear to him, and the restraint of his father in enouncing the supreme will, and even the stern conduct of the minister, Herhor.

“The state and the priesthood!” repeated the prince, half asleep, and covered with cold perspiration.

The heavenly deities alone know what would have happened had there been time to develop and ripen those thoughts which were circling that night in the soul of Rameses. Perhaps if he had become pharaoh he would have been one of the most fortunate and longest-lived rulers. Perhaps his name, carved in temples above ground and underground, would have come down to posterity surrounded with the highest glory. Perhaps he and his dynasty would not have lost the throne, and Egypt would have avoided great disturbance and the bitterest days of her history.

But the serenity of morning scattered the visions which circled above the heated head of the heir, and the succeeding days changed greatly his ideas of the inflexible interests of Egypt.

The visit of the prince to the prison was not fruitless. The investigating official made a report to the supreme judge immediately, the judge looked over the case again, examined some of the accused himself, and in the course of some days liberated the greater number; the remainder he brought to trial as quickly as possible.

When he who had complained of the damage done the prince’s property did not appear, though summoned in the hall of the court and on the market-place, the case was dropped, and the rest of the accused were set at liberty.

One of the judges remarked, it is true, that according to law the prince’s overseer should be prosecuted for false complaint, and, in case of conviction, suffer the punishment which threatened the defendants. This question too they passed over in silence.

The overseer disappeared from the eyes of justice, he was sent by the heir to the province of Takens, and soon the whole box of documents in the case vanished it was unknown whither.

On hearing this, Prince Rameses went to the grand secretary and asked with a smile,—

“Well, worthy lord, the innocent are liberated, the documents concerning them have been destroyed sacrilegiously, and still the dignity of the government has not been exposed to danger.”

“My prince,” answered the grand secretary, with his usual coolness, “I did not understand that thou offerest complaints with one hand and wishest to withdraw them with the other. Worthiness, thou wert offended by the rabble; hence it was thy affair to punish it. If thou hast forgiven it, the state has nothing to answer.”

“The state!—the state!” repeated the prince. “We are the state,” added he, blinking.

“Yes, the state is the pharaoh and—his most faithful servants,” added the secretary.

This conversation with such a high official sufficed to obliterate in the prince’s soul those ideas of state dignity which were growing and powerful, though indistinct yet. “The state, then, is not that immovable, ancient edifice to which each pharaoh is bound to add one stone of glory, but rather a sand-heap, which each ruler reshapes as he pleases. In the state there are no narrow doors, known as laws, in passing through which each must bow his head, whoever he be, erpatr or earth-worker. In this edifice are various entrances and exits, narrow for the weak and small, very wide, nay, commodious for the powerful.”

“If this be so,” thought the prince, as the idea flashed on him, “I will make the order which shall please me.”

At that moment Rameses remembered two people,—the liberated black who without waiting for command had been ready to die for him, and that unknown priest.

“If I had more like them, my will would have meaning in Egypt and beyond it,” said he to himself, and he felt an inextinguishable desire to find that priest.

“He is, in all likelihood, the man who restrained the crowd from attacking my house. On the one hand he knows law to perfection, on the other he knows how to manage multitudes.”

“A man beyond price! I must have him.”

From that time Rameses, in a small boat managed by one oarsman, began to visit the cottages in the neighborhood of his villa. Dressed in a tunic and a great wig, in his hand a staff on which a measure was cut out, the prince looked like an engineer studying the Nile and its overflows.

Earth-tillers gave him willingly all explanations concerning changes in the form of land because of inundations, and at the same time they begged that the government might think out some easier way of raising water than by sweeps and buckets. They told too of the attack on the house of Prince Rameses, and said that they knew not who threw the stones. Finally they mentioned the priest who had sent the crowd away so successfully; but who he was they knew not.

“There is,” said one man, “a priest in our neighborhood who cures sore eyes; there is one who heals wounds and sets broken arms and legs. There are some priests who teach reading and writing; there is one who plays on a double flute, and plays even beautifully. But that one who was in the garden of the heir is not among them, and they know nothing of him. Surely he must be the god Num, or some spirit watching over the prince,—may he live through eternity and always have appetite!”

“Maybe it is really some spirit,” thought Rameses.

In Egypt good or evil spirits always came more easily than rain.

The water of the Nile from being ruddy became brownish, and in August, the month of Hator, it reached one half its height. The sluices were opened on the banks of the river, and the water began to fill the canals quickly, and also the gigantic artificial lake, Moeris, in the province Fayum, celebrated for the beauty of its roses. Lower Egypt looked like an arm of the sea thickly dotted with hills on which were houses and gardens. Communication by land ceased altogether, and such a multitude of boats circled around on the water—boats white, yellow, red, dark—that they seemed like leaves in autumn. On the highest points of land people had finished harvesting the peculiar cotton of the country, and for the second time had cut clover and begun to gather in olives and tamarinds.

On a certain day, while sailing along over inundated lands, the prince saw an unusual movement. On one of the temporary mounds was heard among the trees the loud cry of a woman.

“Surely some one is dead,” thought Rameses.

From a second mound were sailing away in small boats supplies of wheat and some cattle, while people standing at buildings on the land threatened and abused people in the boats.

“Some quarrel among neighbors,” said the prince to himself.

In remoter places there was quiet, and people instead of working or singing were sitting on the ground in silence.

“They must have finished work and are resting.”

But from a third mound a boat moved away with a number of crying children, while a woman wading in the water to her waist shook her fist and threatened.

“They are taking children to school,” thought Rameses.

These happenings began to interest him.

On a fourth mound he heard a fresh cry. He shaded his eyes and saw a man lying on the ground; a negro was beating him.

“What is happening there?” asked Rameses of the boatman.

“Does not my lord see that they are beating a wretched earth-tiller?” answered the boatman, smiling. “He must have done something, so pain is travelling through his bones.”

“But who art thou?”

“I?” replied the boatman, proudly. “I am a free fisherman. If I give a certain share of my catch to his holiness, I may sail the Nile from the sea to the cataract. A fisherman is like a fish or a wild goose; but an earth-tiller is like a tree which nourishes lords with its fruit and can never escape but only squeaks when overseers spoil the bark on it.”

“Oho! ho! but look there!” cried the fisherman, pleased again. “Hei! father, don’t drink up all the water, or there will be a bad harvest.”

This humorous exclamation referred to a group of persons who were displaying a very original activity. A number of naked laborers were holding a man by the legs and plunging him head first in the water to his neck, to his breast, and at last to his waist. Near them stood an overseer with a cane; he wore a stained tunic and a wig made of sheepskin.

A little farther on some men held a woman by the arms, while she screamed in a voice which was heaven-piercing.

Beating with a stick was as general in the happy kingdom of the pharaoh as eating and sleeping. They beat children and grown people, earth-tillers, artisans, warriors, officers, and officials. All living persons were caned save only priests and the highest officials—there was no one to cane them. Hence the prince looked calmly enough on an earth-worker beaten with a cane; but to plunge a man into water roused his attention.

“Ho! ho!” laughed the boatman, meanwhile, “but are they giving him drink! He will grow so thick that his wife must lengthen his belt for him.”

The prince commanded to row to the mound. Meanwhile they had taken the man from the river, let him cough out water, and seized him a second time by the legs, in spite of the unearthly screams of his wife, who fell to biting the men who had seized her.

“Stop!” cried Rameses to those who were dragging the earth-tiller.

“Do your duty!” cried he of the sheepskin wig, in nasal tones. “Who art thou, insolent, who darest—”

At that moment the prince gave him a blow on the forehead with his cane, which luckily was light. Still the owner of the stained tunic dropped to the earth, and feeling his wig and head, looked with misty eyes at the attacker.

“I divine,” said he in a natural voice, “that I have the honor to converse with a notable person. May good humor always accompany thee, lord, and bile never spread through thy bones—”

“What art thou doing to this man?” interrupted Rameses.

“Thou inquirest,” returned the man, speaking again in nasal tones, “like a foreigner unacquainted with the customs of the country and the people, to whom he speaks too freely. Know, then, that I am the collector of his worthiness Dagon, the first banker in Memphis. And if thou hast not grown pale yet, know that the worthy Dagon is the agent and the friend of the erpatr,—may he live through eternity!—and that thou hast committed violence on the lands of Prince Rameses; to this my people will testify.”

“Then know this,” interrupted the prince; but he stopped suddenly. “By what right art thou torturing in this way one of the prince’s earth-tillers?”

“Because he will not pay his rent, and the treasury of the heir is in need of it.”

The servants of the official, in view of the catastrophe which had come on their master, dropped their victim and stood as helpless as the members of a body from which its head has been severed. The liberated man began to spit again and shake the water out of his ears, but his wife rushed up to the rescuer.

“Whoever thou art,” groaned she, clasping her hands before Rameses, “a god, or even a messenger of the pharaoh, listen to the tale of our sufferings. We are earth-tillers of the heir to the throne,—may he live through eternity!—and we have paid all our dues: in millet, in wheat, in flowers, and in skins of cattle. But in the last ten days this man here has come and commands us again to give seven measures of wheat to him. ‘By what right?’ asks my husband; ‘the rents are paid, all of them.’ But he throws my husband on the ground, stamps, and says, ‘By this right, that the worthy Dagon has commanded.’ ‘Whence shall I get wheat,’ asks my husband, ‘when we have none and for a month past we have eaten only seeds, or roots of lotus, which are harder and harder to get, for great lords like to amuse themselves with flowers of the lotus?’”

She lost breath and fell to weeping. The prince waited patiently till she calmed herself, but the man who had been plunged into the water grumbled.

“This woman will bring misfortune with her talk. I have said that I do not like to see women meddle.”

Meanwhile the official, pushing up to the boatman, asked in an undertone, indicating Rameses,—

“Who is this?”

“Ah, may thy tongue wither!” answered the boatman. “Dost thou not see that he must be a great lord: he pays well and strikes heavily.”

“I saw at once,” answered the official, “that he must be some great person. My youth passed at feasts with noted persons.”

“Aha! the sauces have stuck to thy dress after those feasts,” blurted out the boatman.

The woman, after crying, continued,—

“To-day this scribe came with his people, and said to my husband, ‘If thou hast not money, give thy two sons. The worthy Dagon will not only forgive thee the rent, but will pay thee a drachma a year for each boy.’”

“Woe to me because of thee!” roared the half-drowned husband; “thou wilt destroy us all with thy babbling. Do not listen to her,” continued he, turning to Rameses. “As a cow thinks that she frightens off flies with her tail, so it seems to a woman that she can drive away collectors with her tongue; and neither cow nor woman knows that she is stupid.”

“Thou art stupid!” said the woman. “Sunlike lord with the form of a pharaoh—”

“I call to witness that this woman blasphemes,” said the official to his people in a low voice.

“Odorous flower, whose voice is like a flute, listen to me!” implored the woman of Rameses. “Then my husband answered this official, ‘I would rather lose two bulls, if I had them, than give my boys away, though thou wert to give me four drachmas; for when a boy leaves home for service no one ever sees him after that.’”

“Would that I were choked! would that fish were eating my body in the bottom of the Nile!” groaned the earth-tiller. “Thou wilt destroy all our house with thy complaints, woman.”

The official, seeing that he had the support of the side mainly interested, stepped forth and began, in nasal tones, a second time,—

“Since the sun rises beyond the palace of the pharaoh and sets over the pyramids, various wonders have happened in this country. In the days of the Pharaoh Sememphes marvellous things appeared near the pyramid of Kochom, and a plague fell on Egypt. In the time of Boetus the ground opened near Bubastis and swallowed many people. In the reign of Neferches the waters of the Nile for eleven days were as sweet as honey. Men saw these and many other things of which I know, for I am full of wisdom. But never has it been seen that some unknown man came up out of the water and stopped the collection of rent in the lands of the heir to the throne of Egypt.”

“Be silent,” shouted Rameses, “and be off out of this place! No one will take thy children,” said he to the woman.

“It is easy for me to go away,” said the collector, “for I have a swift boat and five rowers. But, worthiness, give me some sign for my lord Dagon.”

“Take off thy wig and show him the sign on thy forehead,” said Rameses. “And tell Dagon that I will put marks of the same kind all over his body.”

“Listen to that blasphemy!” whispered the collector to his men, drawing back toward the bank with low bows.

He sat down in the boat, and when his assistants had moved off and pushed away some tens of yards, he stretched out his hand and shouted,—

“May gripe seize thy intestines, blasphemer, rebel! From here I will go straight to Prince Rameses and tell him what is happening on his lands.”

Then he took his cane and belabored his men because they had not taken part with him.

“So it will be with thee!” cried he to Rameses.

The prince sprang into his boat and in a rage commanded the boatman to pursue the insolent servant of the usurer. But he of the sheepskin wig threw down the cane, took an oar himself, and his men helped him so well that pursuit became impossible.

“Sooner could an owl overtake a lark than we overtake them, my beautiful lord,” cried the prince’s boatman, laughing. “But who art thou? Thou art not a surveyor, but an officer, maybe even an officer of the guard of his holiness. Thou dost strike right always on the forehead! I know about this; I was five years in the army. I always struck on the forehead or the belly, and I had not the worst time in the world. But if any one struck me, I understood right away that he must be a great person. In our Egypt—may the gods never leave the land!—it is terribly crowded; town is near town, house is near house, man is near man. Whoso wishes to turn in this throng must strike in the forehead.”

“Art thou married?” asked the prince.

“Pfu! when I have a woman and place for a person and a half, I am married; but for the rest of the time I am single. I have been in the army, and I know that a woman is good, though not at all times. She is in the way often.”

“Perhaps thou wouldst come to me for service? Who knows, wouldst thou be sorry to work for me?”

“With permission, worthiness, I noticed that thou couldst lead a regiment in spite of thy young face. But I enter the service of no man. I am a free fisherman; my grandfather was, with permission, a shepherd in Lower Egypt, our family comes of the Hyksos people. It is true that dull Egyptian earth-tillers revile us, but I laugh at them. The earth-tillers and the Hyksos, I say, worthiness, are like an ox and a bull. The earth-tiller may go behind the plough or before it, but the Hyksos will not serve any man, unless in the army of his holiness,—that is warrior life.”

The boatman was in the vein and talked continually, but the prince heard no longer. In his soul very painful questions grew louder and louder, for they were new altogether. Were those mounds, then, around which he had been sailing, on his property? A marvellous thing, he knew not at all where his lands were nor what they looked like. So in his name Dagon had imposed new rents on the people, and the active movement on which he had been looking while moving along the shores was the extortion of rents. It was clear that the man whom they had been beating on the shore had nothing to pay with. The children who were crying bitterly in the boat were sold at a drachma per head for a twelvemonth, and that woman who was wading in the water to her waist and weeping was their mother.

“Women are very unquiet,” said the prince to himself. “Sarah is the quietest woman; but others love to talk much, to cry and raise an uproar.”

He remembered the man who was pacifying his wife’s excitement. They had been plunging him into the water and he was not angry; they did nothing to her, and still she made an uproar.

“Women are very unquiet!” repeated he. “Yes, even my mother, who is worthy of honor. What a difference between her and my father! His holiness does not wish to know at all that I left the army for a girl, but the queen likes to occupy herself even with this, that I took into my house a Jewess. Sarah is the quietest of women whom I know; but Tafet cries and makes an uproar for four persons.”

Then the prince recalled the words of the man’s wife,—that for a month they had not eaten wheat, only seeds and roots of lotus. Lotus and poppy seeds are similar; the roots are poor. He could not eat them for three days in succession. Moreover, the priests who were occupied in medicine advised change of diet. While in school they told him that a man ought to eat flesh with fish, dates with wheat bread, figs with barley. But for a whole month to live on lotus seeds! Well, cows and horses? Cows and horses like hay, but barley straw must be shoved into their throats by force. Surely then earth-workers prefer lotus seeds as food, while wheat or barley cakes, fish and flesh they do not relish. For that matter, the most pious priests, wonder-workers, never touch flesh or fish. Evidently magnates and king’s sons need flesh, just as lions and eagles do; but earth-tillers grass, like an ox.

“Only that plunging into the water to pay rent. Ei! but didn’t he once in bathing with his comrades put them under water, and even dive himself? What laughing they had in those days! Diving was fun. And as to beating with a cane, how many times had they beaten him in school? It is painful, but evidently not for every creature. A beaten dog howls and bites; a beaten ox does not even look around. So beating may pain a great lord, but a common man cries only so as to cry when the chance comes. Not all cry; soldiers and officers sing while belabored.”

But these wise reflections could not drown the small but annoying disquiet in the heart of Rameses. So his tenant Dagon had imposed an unjust rent which the tenants could not pay!

At this moment the prince was not concerned about the tenants, but his mother. His mother must know of this Phœnician management. What would she say about it to her son? How she would look at him! How sneeringly she would laugh! And she would not be a woman if she did not speak to him as follows: “I told thee, Rameses, that Phœnicians would desolate thy property.”

“If those traitorous priests,” thought the prince, “would give me twenty talents to-day, I would drive out that Dagon in the morning, my tenants would not be plunged under water, would not suffer blows, and my mother would not jeer at me. A tenth, a hundredth part of that wealth which is lying in the temples and feeding the greedy eyes of those bare heads would make me independent for years of Phœnicians.”

Just then an idea which was strange enough flashed up in the soul of Rameses,—that between priests and earth-tillers there existed a certain opposition.

“Through Herhor,” thought he, “that man hanged himself on the edge of the desert. To maintain priests and temples about two million Egyptian men toil grievously. If the property of the priests belonged to the pharaoh’s treasury, I should not have to borrow fifteen talents and my people would not be oppressed so terribly. There is the source of misfortunes for Egypt and of weakness for its pharaohs!”

The prince felt that a wrong was done the people; therefore he experienced no small solace in discovering that priests were the authors of this evil. It did not occur to him that his judgment might be unjust and faulty. Besides, he did not judge, he was only indignant. The anger of a man never turns against himself,—just as a hungry panther never eats its own body; it twirls its tail and moves its ears while looking for a victim.