She stretched herself out on the water, her breasts rising above the surface like two rosy flowers. She looked at me from under her green- painted eyelids and said, “Can we think of nothing for you to give me? For I weaken, Sinuhe; it is troubling to me to see you naked in my pool. You are clumsy and without experience, yet I think that one day I could teach you much that you do not yet know-tricks to sharpen a man’s pleasure and a woman’s also. Consider this, Sinuhe!”
When I snatched at her, she stepped swiftly up out of the pool and standing behind a tree shook the water from her arms.
“I am but a weak woman, and men are deceivers-you, too, Sinuhe! My heart is heavy at the thought of it and the tears very near my eyes-for it is clear that you are tired of me. Were this not so, you would never have kept from me that your parents have furnished a fine tomb for themselves in the City of the Dead and have paid to the temple the sum needful for the embalming of their bodies against death and for the things necessary to their journey to the Western Land.”
When I heard this, I tore at my breast with my hands till the blood came.
“Shall I rob my parents of immortality and let their bodies dissolve into nothingness like the bodies of beggars and slaves and those who are cast into the river for their crimes? You cannot demand such a thing of me!”
The tears were rolling down my cheeks. Though I groaned in anguish, I went up to her, and she pressed her nakedness against me, saying, “Give me your parents’ tomb and I will whisper ‘my brother’ in your ear and be to you a fire of delight and teach you a thousand things unknown to you to bring you joy!”
I had no mastery of myself but wept.
“Be it so, and may your name be accursed to all eternity-but withstand you I cannot, so powerful is the spell by which you hold me.”
“Speak not of sorcery, for that offends me. As you are tedious and out of humor, I will send a servant for the scribe while we eat and drink to gladden our hearts, that we may enjoy one another when the papers are in order.” And with a joyous laugh she ran into the house.
I dressed and followed her; servants poured water over my hands and bowed, stretching forth their hands at knee level. But behind my back they sniggered and mocked me though I pretended that their sneering was no more than the buzzing of flies in my ear. When Nefernefernefer came down, they fell silent; we ate and drank together, and there were five sorts of meat and twelve sorts of pastry, and we drank mixed wine, which goes quickly to the head. The law scribe came and wrote out the necessary papers. I made over to Nefernefernefer my parents’ tomb in the City of the Dead, with its furnishings, also their deposit in the temple, defrauding them of immortality and of their hope of journeying to the Western Land. I pressed my father’s seal upon the paper and signed it with his name, and the scribe undertook to dispatch the documents to the royal archives that same day and so make them legally valid. He handed the receipt to Nefernefernefer; she put it into the black casket and paid him for his trouble.
When he had gone, I said, “From this hour I am accursed and dishonored before gods and men-it is a high price to pay. Prove to me now that it is not too high.”
But she smiled.
“Drink wine, my brother, that your heart may be gladdened.”
When I would have seized her, she evaded me and filled my wine cup from the jar. Presently she glanced at the sun and said, “See, the day is spent, and it will soon be evening. What do you stay for?”
“Well you know!”
“And well you know which well is deepest and which pit is bottomless, Sinuhe. I must hasten to dress and paint my face, for a golden goblet awaits me, which tomorrow will adorn my house.”
When I would have gathered her into my arms, she slipped from me with a shrill laugh and called out for the servants, who instantly obeyed her summons.
“How came this insufferable mendicant into my house? Throw him out instantly and let him never come within my doors again! If he resists, beat him.”
The servants threw me out, numb as I was with wine and fury, and came again to beat me with sticks when I battered at the barred outer door. And when people began to gather about the spot because of my roaring, the servants declared, “This drunkard insulted our mistress, who lives in her own house and is not a woman to be despised.”
They beat me until I was senseless and left me to lie in the street, where men spat upon me and dogs made water upon my clothes.
When I came to myself, I was without the will to rise and lay there motionless until the morning. The darkness hid me, and I felt that I should never dare to show my face again. The prince had named me He Who Is Alone and I was assuredly the loneliest mortal in the world that night. But when dawn came, when people began to move about the streets, and merchants displayed their merchandise before their booths, and the oxcarts rumbled by, I rose and left the city and hid myself among the reeds for three days and three nights without food or drink. Heart and body were one hideous wound. If any had spoken to me then, I should have screamed aloud, and I feared for my reason.
3
On the third day I bathed my hands and feet and washed the dried blood from my clothes. Turning my face toward the city, I went to my own house. But the house was no longer mine, and at the door was the signboard of another doctor. I called Kaptah, and he came running, sobbing for joy, and threw his arms about my knees.
“Master-for in my heart you are still my master, no matter who may give me orders. A young man has come here who fancies himself a great physician. He has been trying on your clothes and laughing in his delight. His mother has already been out into the kitchen to throw hot water over my feet and call me rat and dung fly. But your patients miss you-they say his hand is not as light as yours and that he does not understand their maladies as you do.”
He babbled on, but his one red-rimmed eye was fixed upon me with a look of horror until I said at last, “Tell me all, Kaptah. My heart is already a stone within my breast and incapable of further pain.”
Then, raising his arms to express the deepest woe, he declared, “I would have given my one remaining eye to spare you this grief-but evil is the day, and it is well that you came. Your parents are dead.”
“My father Senmut and my mother Kipa,” said I, raising my hands as custom demands, and my heart stirred in my breast.
“This day the servants of the law broke down their door, having yesterday given notice of eviction, but found them lying upon the bed no longer breathing. Today, therefore, you must bring them to the House of the Dead, for tomorrow their house is to be pulled down, by order of the new owner.”
“Did my parents know why this happened?” I asked and could not look my slave in the face.
“Your father Senmut came to seek you; your mother led him, for he could not see. They were old and frail, and they trembled as they walked. But I did not know where you were. Your father said that it was better that way, and he told how the servants of the law had thrown him out of his house and set seals upon his chests and all his property so that he and his wife owned no more than the rags they had upon them. When he asked the reason for it all, the bailiffs laughed and said that his son Sinuhe had sold house and property and the tomb of his parents for gold to give to a bad woman. After long hesitation your father begged a copper piece of me, that he might dictate a letter to you through some scribe.
“But a new man had come to the house, and just then the mother of this man came for me and beat me with a stick because I was wasting my time in company with a beggar. Perhaps you will believe me when I tell you that I would have given your father the piece of copper, for though I have not yet been able to steal anything from my new lord, still I have copper and silver left of that I stole from you and my previous masters. But when I went back to the street, your parents had already gone. The mother of my new master forbade me to run after them and shut me into the roasting pit for the night so that I might not run away.”