how sweet is the caress of a slender cane on the legs and backside. Ah, my lord Sinuhe, it is an experience that I wish that you also might share. Better than water or beer, better than incense, better than wild duck among the reeds-more eloquently than these does it speak of life in Egypt, where each fills his proper place and nothing changes. Do not wonder if in my emotion I weep, for only now do I feel that I am coming home after seeing much that is alien and perplexing and contemptible. O blessed cane that sets each in his proper place and resolves all problems, there is none like you!”
He wept a little and then went to anoint his scarab, but I noted that he no longer used as fine oil as before. Land was near, and he fancied no doubt that once in Egypt his own natural guile would suffice him.
When we berthed in the great harbor of the Lower Kingdom I realized for the first time how weary I was of brightly colored, voluminous clothes, curly beards, and thick bodies. The narrow hips of the porters, their loincloths, their shaven chins, their speech which was that of the Lower Kingdom, the smell of their sweat, of the river mud, of the reeds and the harbor-all was different from Syria; all was familiar.
The Syrian clothes I wore began to irk and stifle me. When I had finished my business with the harbor clerks and had written my name on many papers, I went at once to buy new clothes. After so much wool, fine linen was sweet to the skin. But Kaptah resolved to continue as a Syrian, for he feared lest his name might still figure on the list of runaway slaves, though he had obtained a clay tablet from the authorities in Smyrna, certifying that he had been born a slave in Syria, where I had lawfully bought him.
Next we embarked with our baggage on a river boat to continue our voyage up the Nile. Days went by and carried us further into the life of Egypt. On either side of the river lay the drying fields where slow oxen drew the wooden plows and laborers walked the furrows with bowed heads, sowing their grain. Swallows skimmed with anxious twitterings above the leisurely flowing water and the mud into which they would soon vanish during the heat of the year. Curving palms lined the banks, and in the shade of tall sycamores clustered the low huts of the village. The boat touched at the landing stages of towns great and small, and there was not a harbor tavern to which Kaptah did not run, to moisten his throat with Egyptian beer, to boast and tell fantastic tales of his travels and my skill, while his audience of dock laborers listened and laughed and jested and invoked the gods.
So I saw again the peaks of the three hills against the eastern sky, the eternal guardians of Thebes. Buildings now stood closer together; poor villages gave place to rich suburbs until the city walls rose up like hills. I saw the roof of the great temple and its pillars, the countless buildings about it, and the sacred lake. Westward the City of the Dead stretched away to the hills. The death temple of the Pharaohs glowed white against the yellow slopes, and the rows of pillars in the temple of the great queen still bore up a sea of flowering trees. Beyond the hills lay the forbidden valley with its snakes and scorpions where, in the sand at the entrance to the tomb of the great Pharaoh, the dried bodies of my parents Senmut and Kipa lay in eternal rest. Further south along the shore rose the golden, airy house of Pharaoh, hazy among its walls and gardens. I wondered whether my friend Horemheb dwelt there.
The boat came alongside a familiar stone quay. Nothing was changed, and not many streets away was the place where I had spent my childhood, little dreaming that one day I was to lay waste my parents’ life. The sands of time, which had drifted over these bitter memories, stirred a little. I longed to hide myself and cover my face and felt no joy, though the noise of a great city was in my ears once more, and though the haste and restless movements of the people brought to my own senses the feverish pulse of Thebes. I had made no plans for my return, having resolved to let all depend upon my meeting with Horemheb and upon his position at court. But when my feet touched the stones of the quay a plan sprang ready formed into my head, a plan that promised neither fame nor wealth-no lavish gifts in return for all the knowledge I had amassed, as had formerly been my dream-but obscurity and a simple life among poor patients. Yet my mind was filled with a strange serenity when I saw my future revealed. This resolve, this hidden fruit of experience, had ripened within me unseen. When I heard the roar of Thebes about me and my feet touched the burning stones of the wharf, I was a child again, watching with solemn, curious eyes the work of my father Senmut among the sick.
I drove away the porters who noisily importuned me, squabbling among themselves the while, and I said to Kaptah, “Leave our baggage in the boat and hasten to buy me a house-no matter which-a house near the harbor in the poor quarter, near the place where my father’s house stood before they pulled it down. Do this in haste that I may take up my dwelling there today and tomorrow begin to ply my trade.”
Kaptah’s jaw dropped, and his face was a blank mask. He had fancied that we should first put up at the best inn and be waited on by slaves. Yet for once he uttered no word of protest, but having gazed into my face, he shut his mouth and went his way with a drooping head.
That evening I moved into a house in the poor quarter that had belonged to a copperfounder. My baggage was conveyed thither, and there I spread my mat on the earthen floor. Cooking fires were glowing before the huts of the poor, and the smell of fried fish floated over all that dirty, wretched, sickly quarter. Then the lamps were lit above the doors of the pleasure houses, and Syrian music began to jangle from the taverns, blending with the roars of tipsy seamen, and the sky over Thebes glowed red from the countless lights i{i the center of the city.
I had traveled many outlandish roads to their end, gathering wisdom and fleeing eternally from myself, and I had come home.
4
On the following morning I said to Kaptah, “Find me a doctor’s sign to set above my door, a simple one, without ornament or paint. And should any ask for me, say nothing of my fame or ability, but only that the physician Sinuhe receives patients-poor as well as rich-and requires only such gifts as their means allow.”
“Poor folk?” repeated Kaptah in heartfelt dismay. “Lord, you are not ill? You have not drunk marsh water or been stung by a scorpion?”
“Do as I command if you wish to stay with me. If this simple house is not to your mind and if the reek of poverty offends your delicate Syrian nose, then you are free to come and go as you choose. I fancy you have stolen enough from me to be able to buy your own house and to take a wife if you so desire. I shall not prevent you.”
“A wife?” exclaimed Kaptah in still greater dismay. “Truly, lord, you are sick and feverish in the head. Why should I take a wife, who would oppress me and smell my breath when I returned from the city and who, when I awoke in the morning with an aching head, would be standing beside me with a stick in her hand and a mouth full of evil words? Why take a wife when the commonest slave girl will do my business? I have already debated this matter with you. But you are my lord; your way is my way and your punishment mine, although I had thought to reach peace and quiet at last after all the terrible hardships you have brought on me. If rushes are good enough for you to sleep on, then they suffice me also. The wretchedness about us has this advantage, that there are taverns and pleasure houses within reach. The tavern called the Crocodile’s Tail, of which I have spoken, lies not far away.
“I hope you will excuse me if I take myself there today and get drunk. All this has shaken me severely, and I need to recover. This I could not have believed! Only a madman hides a jewel in a dung heap, yet in the same manner you bury your skill and your science.”
“Kaptah,” I said. “Everyone is born naked into the world, and in disease there is no difference between poor and rich, Egyptians and Syrians.”
“That may be, but in the gifts they bring their doctor, there is a great difference,” said Kaptah sententiously. “Yours is a beautiful thought, and I should have nothing against it, were some other man to put it into effect, now that at last after all our miseries we are able to swing on the golden bough. This notion of yours better suits one born in slavery; I myself had such thoughts when I was younger, until the stick drove sense into me.”
“That you may know my full purpose,” I went on, “I will tell you that should I ever come on an abandoned child I shall adopt it and bring it up as mine.”
“And for what reason?” demanded Kaptah bewildered. “There is a home for foundlings in the temple. Some of them are brought up to be low-grade priests, while others, being made eunuchs, lead a more brilliant life in the women’s houses of Pharaoh and the nobles than their mothers could ever have dreamt of. If you desire a son-which is understandable-nothing is easier to achieve. Should you not wish to buy a slave, you can always seduce some poor girl who would be happy and thankful to you for caring for her child and so freeing her from shame. But children are troublesome and the joy of them is certainly exaggerated-although I cannot say much about this since I have never seen any of mine, of whom there must be a number growing up here and there about the world. You
