It was a small room built in a thick wall of excellently dressed stone. Two light armchairs of ebony inlaid with ivory were covered with a layer of dust. In one corner lay a half-rotten casket. Against the opposite wall a grey stone statue stood on a block of rose-hued granite, a full-size female figure, the lower part of which had been left unfinished.
Two lithe panthers of black stone, one on either side of the statue, stood as though on guard. Pandion carefully brushed the dust from the statue and stepped back in dumb admiration.
The skill of the craftsman had reproduced in stone the transparent material that enveloped the girl’s body. With her left hand she pressed a lotus bloom firmly to her breast. Her thick hair, braided in a number of fine plaits, framed her face in a heavy coiffure divided by a straight parting and falling over her shoulders. The charming girl did not resemble an Egyptian. Her face was rounder, her nose small and straight and she had a high forehead and big eyes set wide apart.
Pandion glanced at the statue from one side and was amazed at the strange and subtle mockery which the sculptor had given to the girl’s face. Never had he seen such an expression of verve and intellect in a statue; the artists of Aigyptos loved majestic and indifferent immobility more than anything else.
The girl was more like the women of Oeniadae or even more like the beautiful inhabitants of the islands of his native sea.
The bright, intelligent face of the statue was far removed from the sullen beauty of Egyptian works of art and was carved with such great skill that Pandion once again felt the torture of nostalgia. The young Hellene wrung his hands and tried to imagine the model from which the statue had been carved, a girl that somehow seemed near to him, a girl that had found her way to Aigyptos by unknown roads four centuries ago. Had she been a captive like himself or had she come from some distant country of her own free will?
A ray of sunlight, falling through the crack in the ceiling, cast a dusty light on the statue. It seemed to Pandion that the expression on the girl’s face had changed — the eyes blazed, the lips trembled as though a flutter of mysterious, hidden life had reached the stone surface of the statue.
Yes, that was the way to carve a statue… here was the master from whom he could learn to depict living beauty… from this master who had long been dead!
Reverently Pandion laid careful fingers on the face of the statue, feeling for the tiny and elusive details that made the statue a living thing.
For a long time he remained standing before the statue of the beautiful maiden who smiled at him in mocking friendliness. It seemed to him that he had found a new friend whose smile lightened the burden of the endless succession of joyless days.
Unconsciously the youth’s thoughts turned to Thessa, and her living image rose before him again.
Pandion’s eyes wandered over the ornament on the ceiling and walls where stars, bunches of lotus flowers and curving lilies were intermingled with bull’s heads. Suddenly Pandion shuddered: the vision of Thessa disappeared and before him, on the wall, stood a picture of captives tied back to back, being dragged to the feet of Pharaoh. Pandion remembered that it was late and that he must hurry back and take something with him to justify his long absence. He took another look at the statue and realized that he could not place it in the hands of the master sculptor. He regarded such an act as tantamount to treachery, it would be like delivering the girl into slavery for a second time. Looking round, he suddenly remembered the casket he had seen in the corner. Pandion knelt down and removed from it four faience drinking cups, shaped like lotus blossoms and covered with bright blue enamel. That would be enough. Pandion took his last look at the statue of the girl, trying to fix in his memory every detail of her face, and with a deep sigh carried the four cups outside. He looked round to make sure that he was not observed and hurriedly covered the entrance to the room with big boulders and then filled all the spaces between them with rubble so that it looked like part of the damaged wall. He wrapped the cups up carefully in his loin-cloth, made an involuntary gesture of farewell in the direction of the statue, safe in its asylum, and hurried off to join the others. The shouts of the slaves showed him the direction, loudest amongst them being the strong, resonant voice of Kidogo.
The royal sculptor met Pandion at first with threats but calmed down the moment he saw the treasure Pandion had brought him.
The return journey took three days longer as the rowers had to fight against the current of the river. Pandion told Kidogo about the statue and the Negro approved his action, adding that the girl had probably come from the Mashuashi, a people living on the northern edge of the Great Western Desert.
Pandion tried to persuade Kidogo to flee, but his friend only shook his head in reply, rejecting all the plans suggested by the Hellene.
During the seven days of the journey Pandion failed to convince his friend but he, himself, was unable to remain inactive; it seemed that he would not be able to hold out much longer and must inevitably perish. He longed for his companions who had remained on the building jobs and in the shehne. He felt that these men were the force that could bring liberation and which gave him hopes for the future. Here there was no hope of liberation and that made Pandion pant in helpless fury.
Two days after their return to the workshops the royal sculptor took Pandion to the palace of the Chief Builder, where a festival was being prepared. Pandion was ordered to fashion clay statuettes and from them make moulds for the shaping of sweet biscuits.
When Pandion had finished his work he was told to remain at the palace to carry home the palanquin of the royal sculptor when the feast was over. Pandion did not pay any attention to the other slaves, men and women, that filled the palace, but went off by himself in the garden.
It had grown dark, bright stars lit up the sky, but still the feast went on. Sheaves of yellow light piercing the darkness of the garden from the open windows illuminated the trunks of trees, the foliage and flowers of the shrubs and were reflected in patches of glowing red from the mirror-like surfaces of the ponds. The guests were assembled in a big hall on the ground-floor decorated with pillars of polished cedar wood. From the hall came sounds of music. For a long time Pandion had heard nothing in the way of music with the exception of mournful and unknown songs, and he gradually drew closer to the big, low window, hid himself in the bushes and watched what was going on.
A heavy aroma of sweet oils came from the crowded room. The walls, pillars and window-frames were hung with garlands of fresh flowers, mostly lotus blossoms, Pandion noticed. Brightly-coloured jugs of wine, baskets and bowls of fruit stood on low tables near the seats. The guests, excited with the wine they had drunk and anoint-, ed with perfumed unguents, were crowded along the walls, while in the space between the columns girls in long garments were dancing. Their black hair, braided into numerous thin plaits, swung about the shoulders of the dancers, wide bracelets of coloured beads covered their wrists, and girdles”of similar design shone through the thin material of their raiment. Pandion could not help noticing a certain angularity in the bodies of the Egyptian dancing girls who differed very greatly from the strong women of his own country. At one end of the room young Egyptian girls played on a variety of musical instruments: two girls played flutes, another played on a harp of many strings and still two others extracted harsh rattling notes from long two-stringed instruments.
The dancing girls carried thin leaves of gleaming bronze in their hands and from time to time interrupted the rhythm of the dance melody with abrupt, ringing blows on them. Pandion’s ear was unaccustomed to the abrupt changes from high tones to low, to the poignantly moaning notes with a constantly changing tempo. The dances ended and the tired dancing girls gave up the floor to the singers. Pandion listened attentively, trying to understand the words, and found that when the melody was slow and low in tone he could understand the purport of the song.