BOOK 7
Minea
1
We succeeded in getting clear of the city unchallenged by the watch, for there was free access to the river at night, and I crept beneath the deck to lay my weary head to rest. But still there was no peace, for Minea had unrolled herself from the mat and was washing herself clean of blood, scooping up the river water in her hands while the moonlight sparkled in the drops that fell between her fingers.
She looked at me unsmilingly and said in reproach, “By your advice I have made myself filthy, and I smell of blood and shall surely never again be clean, and it’s all your fault. What’s more, when you carried me, you squeezed me much harder than was necessary so that I could not breathe.”
Her talk annoyed me, and I was very tired, so I snapped at her, “Hold your tongue, accursed woman! When I think of all you have made me do, I feel like throwing you into the river, where you could wash to your heart’s content. Had it not been for you, I should now be sitting on the right hand of the King of Babylon, and the priests of the tower would impart to me all their wisdom, concealing nothing, and I should be the wisest physician in the world. For your sake I have forfeited the presents I might have earned by the practice of my calling. My gold is dwindling, and I dare not present the tablets that entitle me to draw money in the temple counting houses. All this is on your account, and I curse the day I saw you; every year on this day I shall wear sackcloth and ashes.”
She trailed her hand in the moonlit river, the water cleaving before it like molten silver, as she said in a low voice and with her face averted, “If this is so, let me jump into the river as you desire. Then you will be rid of me.”
She rose and would have leaped in, but I seized and held her, saying, “Have done with this folly! If you jump in, all my contriving will have been in vain. In the name of all the gods let me sleep in peace, Minea, and do not bother me with these whims, for I am very tired.”
With this I crawled under the mat and drew it closely about me, for the night was chilly although spring had come and storks were crying among the reeds. She crept in beside me, murmuring, “If I can do nothing else, I can at least keep you warm.”
I was too weary for further argument but fell asleep and slept soundly in her warmth, for she was young and her body like a little stove beside me.
When I awoke, we had come far upstream, and the boatmen were grumbling. “Our shoulders are like wood, and our backs ache. Do you seek our death? Is your house afire that we must race to quench it?”
I hardened my heart and said, “Whoever slackens will feel my stick; you will take your first rest at noon. Then you may eat and drink, and to each of you I shall give a mouthful of date wine to revive you, and you will feel as airy as birds. But if there is any murmuring, I shall invoke all the devils against you; for you must know that I am a priest and a magician.”
I said this to frighten them, but the sun was shining brightly and they did not believe me. They said only, “He is alone and we are ten!” and the nearest of them tried to smite me with his oar.
At that moment a thunderous noise came from the bow: it was Kaptah beating on the inside of the jar, cursing and yelling. The rowers turned gray in the face and one after another leaped overboard into the river and swam away out of sight. The boat swung across the stream, but I dropped the anchor stone. Minea came up from the cabin combing her hair, and at that instant all my fear left me, for she was fair, and the sun was shining, and the storks were crying among the reeds. I ran forward to the funeral urn and said loudly as I broke the clay seal, “Stand up, you man within there!”
Kaptah stuck his tousled head out of the jar, and I have never seen a more bewildered man. He moaned, “What is this foolery? Where am I? Where is my royal diadem, and where are the symbols of my majesty? I am naked and chilled-also my head is full of wasps, and my limbs are like lead as if I had been bitten by a venomous serpent. Beware how you make sport of me, Sinuhe, for it is dangerous to jest with kings!”
I wanted to punish him for his arrogance of the day before, so I looked blank and said, “I don’t know what you are saying, Kaptah; you must still be in a fog of wine. You will remember that when we left Babylon you drank too much and became so violent in the boat and talked so wildly that the boatmen had to shut you up in that jar lest you should do them some harm. You were babbling of kings and judges and much else.”
Kaptah shut his eyes and strove to recollect himself, and at last he replied, “Lord, never again will I drink wine, for wine and dreams have led me into a terrible adventure-an adventure so altogether ghastly that I cannot relate it to you. But this I can say: It seemed to me that by the grace of the scarab I was a king, dispensing justice from my throne, also that I entered the women’s house and took exceedingly great pleasure there with a beautiful girl. Many other things happened, also, but I don’t dare think of them now.”
Just then he saw Minea. Ducking hastily down into the jar again, he said in a pitiful voice, “Lord, I am not yet quite recovered-or else I am still dreaming-for there in the stern of the boat I seem to see the girl whom I met in the women’s house.”
He touched his black eye and swollen nose and mourned aloud. Minea went up to the jar, pulled out his head by the hair and said, “Look at me! Am I the woman with whom you took pleasure last night?”
Kaptah gazed at her in terror, shut his one eye, and moaned, “All ye gods of Egypt have mercy on me and pardon me for having worshiped strange gods and made sacrifice to them-but you are she! Forgive me, for it was but a dream.”
I helped him out of the jar and gave him a bitter stomach-cleansing potion, then tying a rope about his waist I dipped him in the river despite his protests, and held him floating in the water to clear his head of the poppy juice and wine. But when I had hauled him aboard again, I relented, saying, “May this be a lesson to you for your rebelliousness toward me, your master. Everything that happened to you is true and had it not been for my help you would now be lying lifeless in a jar among all the other false kings.”
I then told him all that had taken place, and I had to tell it many times before he grasped it all and believed me. Finally I told him, “Our lives are in danger, and what has passed no longer seems funny, for as surely as we sit here in this boat, we shall hang head downward from the wall if the King finds us-and he may do even worse. Good planning is now essential, and you must hit on some way for us to escape with our lives into the land of Mitanni.”
Kaptah scratched his head and mused. At length he said, “If I have understood you rightly, all that has happened is true and no wine- born delusion. This being so, I will praise this day as a good day, for
I can now drink wine without misgivings for my head’s sake though I thought that never again in my life should I dare to taste it.”
He crept into the cabin, broke the seal of a wine jar, and took a deep draught, for which he praised all the gods of Egypt and of Babylon by name, and he also praised many other gods whose names he did not know. For each divinity he named he bowed forward over the wine jar till at last he sank down on the mat in slumber, snoring like a hippopotamus.
I was so enraged at his behavior that I would have rolled him into the water and drowned him, but Minea said, “Kaptah is right: to each day its own vexations. Therefore, why shouldn’t we drink wine and be happy in the place the river has brought us to? For it is a beautiful place, and we are hidden by the reeds. Storks are crying among them, and I see others flying with outstretched necks to build their nests; the waters gleam green and gold in the sunlight, and my heart is as arrowy as a bird now that I am freed from slavery.”
I considered her words and they were wise.
“Since both of you are mad, why shouldn’t I also be mad? Truly it is all one to me whether my hide hangs drying on the wall tomorrow or ten years from now, for all this was written in the stars before our birth, as the priests of the tower have taught me. The sun shines in glory, and in the fields along the river bank the corn is showing green. Therefore, I shall bathe in the river and try to catch fish in my hands as I did when a child, for this day is as good as any other.”
And so we bathed in the river and dried our clothes in the sun, and we ate and drank wine. Minea made sacrifice to her god and danced his dance for me in the boat so that my breast tightened as I watched her, and I
