Читать книгу Joseph in Egypt (Vol. 1) - Thomas Mann - Страница 11

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Day by day they plodded patiently through the bad lands, to the sound of the bell on the leading camel, from well-station to well-station, until nine days had passed; and they counted themselves lucky. The guide had not boasted when he said he knew his business. He did not lose his way nor get off the road even when it passed through wild mountain country where there was no good going, but merely a confusion of frightful sandstone boulders, grotesque shapes and towering masses, that glistened blackly, more like bronze than stone. Their sombre gleam suggested a tall city built of iron. The guide held on his way all day long, even when there could be no talk of a road in any upper-worldly sense at all. For it was like a country of the damned, like the illimitable floor of the sea, shutting them in with corpse-coloured sand up to the hot bleached horizon, and they rode over mounds of dune with ridges ruffled by the wind into unpleasant sharp-edged patterns. Across the plain the heat vibrations looked as though near to bursting into tongues of flame, and sand whirled in the air so that the men wrapped their heads before this evil dance of death and tried not to look, but rode blindly on to get past these horrors.

Bleached skeletons often lay by the way, the ribs and thigh-bones of a camel and the parched limbs of a human being stood up out of the waxen-coloured dust. They looked at it dazed and kept on trying to hope. Two half-days long, from midday to evening, a pillar of fire went on before and seemed to guide them. They well knew the nature of the phenomenon, but their attitude toward it was not conditioned by their knowledge. These fiery pillars were, as they were aware, small cyclones in which the whirling dust was turned flame-coloured by the sun. But to each other they said with due awe: “A pillar of fire leadeth us on.” If the sign were suddenly to collapse before their eyes it would be frightful; for in all probability a dust Abubu would follow. But the pillar did not collapse, only changed its shape like a jinnee and slowly flickered away on the north-east wind, which prevailed throughout the nine days. Their good luck banned the south wind that it was quiet and could not parch their water-skins and drink away the moisture on which their lives depended. But on the ninth day they were already out of danger, escaped from the horrors of the desert, and could count themselves fortunate; for the region now before them was colonized and administered by Egypt. Bastions, breastworks, and watch-towers by the wells extended for some distance into the desert, with little companies of soldiery, Nubian bowmen wearing ostrich feathers in their hair, and Libyan axe-bearers with Egyptian captains, who called out harshly to the oncomers and questioned them whence they came and whither they went.

The old man had a shrewd and cheery way of talking with the military to put beyond doubt the innocence of his designs; and of giving them little presents out of his pack, knives, lamps, and Ascalon onions to win their goodwill. So they passed well pleased through all the formalities from watch to watch; for it was much better to be exchanging jokes with the guards than to be going through the brazen city and across the bleached sea-floor. Our travellers, however, knew that only the preliminaries were over with the passing of these frontier stations and that they had still to prove their harmlessness and their innocence of any designs against civilized society. The real test would come at the mighty and ineluctable barrier which the old man called the sovereign’s wall, which had been built ages before across the neck of land between the Great and Little Bitter Lakes, as a protection against the savages of Shosu and the sand-dwellers who thought to drive their cattle upon Pharaoh’s soil.

From the rising ground where they halted at sunset they overlooked these menacing precautions and arrogant measures of defence. The old man had succeeded several times, by dint of his harmless garrulity, in passing them in both directions; wherefore he did not now fear them all too much. Tranquilly he lifted his hand and pointed them out to his train: a long marching wall, notched with battlements, broken by towers and running behind canals which connected a chain of lakes great and small. Somewhere about the middle a bridge crossed the water, but at this point, on either side of the passage, rose the sternest barriers of all: castellated forts enclosed in their own ring walls, two-storeyed, massive and tall, whose sides and ajutments rose in ingenious broken lines to the parapets to make them yet more secure against siege. They bristled with square battlemented towers, bastions, sally-ports, and ledges for defence on all sides; narrower structures had grated windows. This was the fort of Thel, the powerful offensive and defensive structure set up by the refined and fortunate and vulnerable land of Egypt against the poverty and rapine of the East. The old man named it to his followers by name and was not afraid before it. But yet he said so much about it, asserting how easy it would be for his utter harmlessness to get past once more, that one might have thought he was talking to keep his courage up.

“Did I tell you I have a letter from a business friend at Gilead across the Jordan,” he said, “to his business friend in Djanet, also called Zoan, which was built seven years after Hebron? Well, I have; and you will see, it will open for us gate and door. The great thing is to have a document to show and that the people of Egypt have in their turn to write something and send it somewhere to be copied down again and keep the record. For without something written you do not get through; but if you can show a potsherd or a roll and document, then they brighten up. They say, of course, that Amun is the highest, or Osiris, the Eye Enthroned; but I know better, at bottom it is Thoth, the writer. Believe me, if only Hor-waz comes on the wall, the young officer-clerk who is an old friend of mine, and I can get speech with him, then there will be no trouble at all and we can pass. Once we are inside, nobody tests our innocence again and we can go freely through all the districts up the river as far as we like. Let us set up huts here and pass the night, for my friend Hor-waz will not come on the wall any more today. But tomorrow before we go thither and beg for entrance at the fort of Thel we must wash ourselves and dust the desert from our garments and wipe it out of our ears and scratch it out from our nails that we seem to them like men and not like sand-rabbits; also you young ones must pour oil on your hair and paint your eyes and make yourselves look wanton; for to them misery is suspect and lack of elegance an abomination.”

Thus the old man, and they did after his words, stopped where they were for the night and made themselves beautiful in the morning as well as they could after so long a journey through the waste. During these preparations, however, they were surprised to find that their guide, whom the old man had hired at Gaza and who had guided them so safely, proved to be no more among them, without anyone being able to say when he had gone: whether back in the night or while they were adorning themselves for Thel. Anyhow, when they looked round for him he was no more there, though the bell-camel was, on which he had ridden; nor had the guide collected his pay from the old man.

That was no cause for lamenting, but only for surprise, since they no longer needed a guide, and the man had been a distant creature at best, and chary of speech. They wondered awhile, and the old man’s satisfaction over the saving of money was diminished by his lack of understanding and the disquiet caused by unfinished business. He concluded that the man would turn up again some time to get his pay. Joseph thought it possible that the guide had privately taken to himself goods instead of pay and instigated an examination of the stock; but it proved him in the wrong. It was Joseph who wondered the most, especially over the inconsistency in the character of his acquaintance and the indifference in money matters which seemed not to fit with the covetous nature. For services voluntarily offered he had paid himself extravagantly. Now it seemed he heedlessly let slip a covenanted wage. But Joseph could not talk with the Ishmaelites about these discrepancies, and words that are not uttered are soon forgotten. They all had other things to think of besides the guide and his caprices; for when they had washed their ears and painted their eyes they advanced toward the water and the sovereign’s wall and came before midday to Thel, the fort on the bridge.

Ah, it was even more alarming from near by than at a distance, double and unassailable by force, with its irregular line of walls, towers, and defence platforms, the battlements filled all round with warriors of the heights, clad in jerkins with shields of hide on their backs, who stood with lances folded in their fists and on their fists their chins, looking down right contemptuously on the little caravan as it approached. Officers were there in half-long wigs and white shirts, with leather stomachers in front over their skirts, and little canes in their hands; they moved to and fro behind the men. The latter paid no heed to the advancing train; but the foremost posts raised their arms, curved a hand round their mouths, their lances lying in the hollow of their arms, and cried out:

“Back! Turn back! Fort of Thel! No passage. We will shoot!”

“Pay no heed,” said the old man. “Only be quiet. It is not half so bad as it looks. Let us give evidence of peace by advancing slowly but undisturbed. Have I not the letter of my business friend? We shall get through.”

Accordingly they moved straight up to the gap in the walls where the entrance was, and behind it the great bronze gate which led to the bridge. Here they indicated by signs their peaceful intentions. In the wall above the gate, graven deep in the masonry and painted in glaring colours, was a huge figure of a bare-necked vulture with pinions spread, the ring of the cartouche in its claws. Right and left of it out of the brick structure sprang a pair of stone cobras on sockets, four feet high, with spread hoods, erected on their bellies, horrible to see, the symbol of defence.

“Turn round!” cried the watch on the wall above the outer gate, above the vulture. “Fort of Thel! Back, sand-rabbits, into the desert! Here is no road.”

“You mistake, Egyptian warriors,” answered them the old man from his camel, among his group of retainers. “Just here is the entrance and not elsewhere. For where else could it be in this bottle-neck? We are well-informed people, who come not to the wrong quarter but know exactly where one enters into the land, for we have already been across your bridge and back again.”

“Yes, back!” cried those above. “Always back and nothing but back with you into the desert, that is the order. No rabble shall be let into the land.”

“To whom say you that?” countered the old man. “To me who not only know it well but also expressly approve it? I hate rabble and sand-rabbits as much as you and praise you highly in that you prevent them from profaning your land. But look well at us and study our faces. Do we look like thieves and vagrants and rabble from Sinai? Do our looks awake the idea that we want to spy out the land with evil intent? Or where are our flocks that we thought to drive on Pharaoh’s pasturelands? Nothing like that cometh in question even for a moment. We are Minæans from Ma’on, travelling traders, proud of our rank; and bring from abroad attractive wares which we would offer you, and would sell them in exchange with the children of Kemt, that we may carry in turn the gifts of Jeor, which here is called Harri, to the ends of the world. For it is the season of trade and barter and we travellers are its servants and priests.”

“Fine priests! Dust-covered priests! All that is a lie!” the soldiers shouted back.

But the old man did not lose courage, he only shook his head forbearingly.

“As if I did not know,” he remarked aside to his people; “they always do this on principle, and make difficulties till one would be glad to turn round and go away. But I have never turned back and I will get through this time too.”

“Hearken, ye stout brown warriors of Pharaoh,” he called up again. “Gladly speak I here with you, for your words are blithe. But actually would I speak with one who is the youthful commander of the troops, Hor-waz, who let me in the last time. Call him, if you will be so good, to the wall. I will show him the letter which I am bearing to Zoan. A letter!” he repeated. “A written letter, a document. Thoth, Djehuti, the ape!”

He smiled as he called out the words.

And indeed it often happens, in speaking to those who are not known to us as individuals but representatives of some well-known nation, that we thus half tease, half flatter them by invoking some phrase or symbol by which they are labelled in popular fancy. The soldiers on the wall laughed too. Perhaps they were simply amused at the obsession of every foreigner, that all Egyptians were quite daft about writing and the written word. At the same time they were probably impressed with the old man’s knowledge of the name of one of their leaders. For they consulted among themselves and then called down to the Ishmaelites that the troop leader Hor-waz was away on duty in the town of Sent and would not be back for three days.

“What a pity!” said the old man. “How badly it falls out, ye Egyptian warriors! Three black days, three new-moon days without Hor-waz, our friend! That means waiting. We will wait here, dear warriors, till his return. Only call him, if you will, to the wall at once on his return from Sent, with the news that the famous Minæans from Ma’on are on the spot and bring written papers.”

And actually they set up their tents in the sand before the fort of Thel and remained three days awaiting the lieutenant, keeping on good terms with the people on the wall, some of whom came down to them to see their wares and drive bargains. Their numbers were increased by another party of travellers who came from the south, probably from Sinai, along the Bitter Lakes. They too would enter into Egypt. They were a right ragged crew and little polished by civilization. They waited with the Ishmaelites, and when the hour came and Hor-waz was back, all the applicants were let in through the wall into the court in front of the bridge gate. Here they had again to wait a few hours until the young officer came springing down the stair on his spindling legs and stood on the lower step. With him were two men, one of whom had his writing tools, the other a standard with a ram’s head. Hor-waz beckoned the petitioners to advance.

His head was covered with a light brown wig cut straight on the forehead and lying smooth as glass as far as the ears; behind them it consisted of tiny curls that fell down on his shoulders. The mailed doublet he wore, with an order in the shape of a bronze fly, went ill with the delicate folds of the snow-white, short-sleeved linen garment that showed underneath it, and not better with the snowy pleated skirt that hung diagonally to the hollow of his knee behind.

The travellers greeted him with circumstance; yet not more courteously—however poor they were in his eyes—than he returned their greetings. It was a foppish politeness. He arched his back like a cat, throwing back his head with a sickly-sweet smile, kissed the air, as it were, with his pursed lips, and raised toward them out of his pleated sleeve a very thin brown arm adorned at the wrist with a bangle. He did it so simply and easily that only for a brief moment did he give this picture of a graceful, fastidious, and over-expressive pose. It went as it came. But one realized—at least Joseph did—that it had nothing to do with them but proceeded from his own self-respect and his reverence for the civilization he represented. Hor-waz had the face of an elderly child, short, with a pug nose, the eyes lengthened by cosmetics, and sharp furrows graven at the sides of his still pursed and laughing mouth.

“Who are ye?” he asked in rapid Egyptian. “Men of wretchedness in such great numbers, who would enter the country?”

With the word “wretchedness” he did not mean exactly a criticism; he meant simply foreigners. But in the “great numbers” he included both groups of travellers, making no difference between the Midianites and the people from Sinai, who indeed cast themselves on the ground before his feet.

“There are too many of you,” he went on reproachfully. “Every day come some from here or there, from the land of God or from Shu, the mountain, and want to set foot inside; if daily is saying too much, then almost daily. Day before yesterday I let some come in from the land of Upi and the mount User, for they had letters. I am a scribe of the great gate, who renders reports upon the affairs of the lands, well and good for him who sees it. My responsibility is great. Whence come ye and what would ye? Do ye design good things or not so good or even quite evil, so that you must either be driven back or else pale your cheeks in death? Come ye from Kadesh and Dubakhi or from the city of Her? Let your leader speak. If from the port of Sur, that wretched spot is known to me, to which water is brought in boats. We know foreigners too well in all conscience, for we have conquered them and taken their tribute.... Above all, know ye how to live? I mean, have ye to eat and can be at your own cost so that ye come not as burden on the state or be driven to steal? But if the first be the case, where then is the evidence and the written guarantee that ye know how to live? Have ye letters to a citizen of the country? Then out with them. Else there is naught but turning back.”

The old man approached him with studied mildness. “You are here as Pharaoh,” he said, “and if I fear not the influence you wield and stammer not in amazement before your authority, it is only because I stand not for the first time before you and have already known your kindness, O wise lieutenant!”

And he recalled to him about such a time it had been, perhaps two years ago, or four, that he, the Minæan merchant, trod the gate for the last time and for the first was passed by the troop leader Hor-waz on the ground of the purity of his intentions. Hor-waz seemed faintly to recollect; to remember the little beard and drooping head of this old man, who spoke Egyptian as though he were a human being. He listened amicably as the other answered to the questions put, that not merely had he no evil designs, not merely fair ones, but quite definitely the best; that he was come across Jordan on a business trip, through the land of Pelesheth and through the desert; and with his followers well knew how to live and to pay, as the valuable wares on the backs of his pack-animals bore witness. But as to his connections in the country: here was a letter—and he unrolled before the lieutenant the piece of polished goatskin on which the business friend at Gilead had written some phrases of recommendation in Canaanitish script to the business friend at Djanet in the Delta.

Hor-waz’s slim fingers—all ten of them, indeed—reached with a fastidious gesture for the document. He could not gather much from it, but so much he saw from his own visa in the corner, that this parchment had already lain before him.

“You bring me always the same letter, old friend,” said he. “That will not do, you cannot come in on it for ever. This paper crackles with age, I would see it no more; it is out of date, you must show something new.”

The old man retorted that his connections were not limited to the man in Djanet. They extended, he said, as far as Thebes itself, the city of Amun, whither he had it in mind to go, to a house of honour and distinction, with whose overseer, called Mont-kaw, son of Ahmose, he had been on terms of close acquaintance for many years, and often been permitted to supply him with foreign goods. The house, however, belonged to one great above the great, Petepre, fan-bearer on Pharaoh’s right hand. This mention of a connection with the court, however second-hand, obviously made an impression on the young officer.

“By the king’s life!” said he. “According to that you would amount to something, and if you lie not with your Asiatic mouth, that would indeed alter the matter. Have you nothing written concerning your connection with this Mont-kaw, son of Ahmose, who is set over the house of the fan-bearer? Nothing at all? What a pity, for that would have simplified matters no little! But still, you know this name to tell me, and your peaceable countenance gives your words a satisfactory warrant of good faith.”

He beckoned for his writing materials and the attendant hastened to hand him the sharpened rush and the wooden tablet on whose smooth clay surface the lieutenant was used to scribble notes. Hor-waz dipped the rush in an inkwell of the palette held by the soldier next to him, shook off a few drops, carried his writing hand in a wide curve to the surface, and wrote down the old man’s record as it was repeated to him. He wrote standing beside the standard, the tablet on his arm, bent slightly forward, with his mouth pursed, squinting a little—charming, self-satisfied, and with obvious enjoyment.

“Pass!” he said, handed back tablet and pen, saluted again in his absurdly fastidious way, and sprang up the stair by which he had come. The Sinai sheik, with the dishevelled beard, who had spent the whole time on his face, was not interrogated at all. Hor-waz had included him and his among the old man’s train, and the information, written out on beautiful paper and sent to the officials at Thebes, would be most incomplete. But there would be no wailing in Egypt on that account nor would any confusion come to the land. To the Ishmaelites the main point was that the soldiers of Thel pushed back the bronze wings of the gate that gave access to the floating bridge, across which they might move with beasts and burdens and enter the plains of Hapi.

Least among them, noted by none and named by no name in Hor-waz’s official protocol, Joseph, son of Jacob, came into Egypt.