struggled and uttered pitiful cries, called upon the watchmen to help him and vowed that the Negro meant murder. As my father Vas of no help, Thothmes and I drove the Negro off with sticks until he flew into a rage and went, swearing violently and taking comrade and chair with him.
Ptahor now emptied the beer jug over himself, asked for oil to rub on his face, and tried to bathe in the pool. Thothmes whispered to me that we ought to get the old men into bed, and so it came about that my father and the royal skull surgeon fell asleep on Kipa’s bed with arms about each other’s necks, slobbering oaths of eternal friendship to the last.
Kipa wept and tore her hair and sprinkled herself with ash from the roasting pit. I was tormented by the thought of what the neighbors would say, for the roaring and racket had sounded far and wide into the still night. Thothmes was placid, however, for he had seen wilder doings in barracks and in his father’s house when the charioteers talked of the old days and of the punitive expeditions into Syria and the land of Kush. He contrived to quiet Kipa, and after we had cleared away the traces of the feast as best we could, we, too, went to bed. The servant snored on beneath the sycamore, and Thothmes lay down beside me in my bed, put his arm about my neck, and talked about girls for he also had drunk wine. But I found this wearisome, being a year or two younger than he, and soon fell asleep.
Early in the morning I was awakened by bumping and sounds of movement in the bedroom, and on entering I saw my father still sound asleep in his clothes with Ptahor’s collar about his neck. Ptahor was sitting on the floor holding his head in his hands and asking in a woeful voice where he was.
I greeted him respectfully and told him that he was still in the harbor quarter, at the house of Senmut the physician. This quieted him, and he asked for beer in the name of Ammon. I pointed out to him that he had emptied the beer jug over himself, as his robe testified. He then rose, drew himself up with a dignified frown, and went out. I poured water over his hands, and he bowed his bald head with a groan, bidding me pour water over that, too. Thothmes, who had also awakened, brought him a can of sour milk and a salt fish. When he had eaten, he grew more cheerful. He went out to the sycamore where the servant lay sleeping and began to beat him with his stick till the fellow woke and stood up, his garment stained from the grass and his face earthy.
“Miserable swine!” cried Ptahor and smote him again. “Is it thus you mind your lord’s affairs and bear the torch before him? Where is my chair? Where is my clean robe? And my medicinal berries? Out of my sight, contemptible thief and swine!”
“I am a thief and my lord’s swine,” said the servant meekly. “What are my lord’s commands?”
Ptahor gave him his orders, and he went off to look for the chair. Ptahor settled himself comfortably under the sycamore, leaned against the trunk, and recited a poem concerning morning, lotus flowers, and a queen bathing in the river, and then related to us many things that boys love to hear. Kipa meanwhile awoke, lit the fire, and went in to my father. We could hear her voice right out in the garden, and when my father emerged later in a clean robe, he looked sorrowful indeed.
“You have a handsome son,” said Ptahor. “He carries himself like a prince, and his eyes are gentle as a gazelle’s.” Young as I was, I understood that he spoke thus to make us forget his behavior of the night before. After a while he went on, “Has your son talent? Are the eyes of his soul as open as those of his body?”
Then Thothmes and I fetched our writing tablets. The royal skull surgeon, gazing abstractedly into the topmost branches of the syca more, dictated a little poem, which I still remember. It ran thus:
Rejoice, young man, in thy youth,
For the throat of age is filled with ashes
And the body embalmed smiles not
In the darkness of the grave.
I did my best, first writing it down in ordinary script and then in pictures. Lastly I wrote the words “age,” “ashes,” “body,” and “grave” in all the ways in which they can be written, both in syllables and letters. I showed him my tablet. He found not one mistake, and I knew that my father was proud of me.
“And the other boy?” said Ptahor, holding out his hand. Thothmes had been sitting apart, drawing pictures on his tablet, and he hesitated before handing it over, though there was mirth in his eyes. When we bent forward to look, we saw that he had drawn Ptahor fastening his collar about father’s neck, then Ptahor pouring beer over himself, while in the third picture he and my father were singing with their arms round each other’s shoulders-such a funny picture that you could see what manner of song it was that they were singing. I wanted to laugh but dared not for fear that Ptahor might be angry. For Thothmes had not flattered him; he had made him just as short and bald and bandy and swagbellied as he really was.
For a long time Ptahor said nothing but looked keenly from the pictures to Thothmes and back again. Thothmes grew a little scared and balanced nervously on tiptoe. At last Ptahor asked, “What do you want for your picture, boy? I will buy it.”
Thothmes, crimson in the face, replied, “My tablet is not for sale. I would give it-to a friend.”
Ptahor laughed.
Good. Let us then be friends, and the tablet is mine.”
He looked at it attentively once more, laughed, and smashed it to pieces against a stone. We all started, and Thothmes begged forgiveness if he had offended.
Am I wroth with water when it reflects my image?” returned Ptahor mildly. “And the eye and the hand of the draftsman are more than water-for I know now how I looked yesterday, and I do not desire that others shall see it. I smashed the tablet but acknowledge you as an artist.”
Thothmes jumped for glee.
Ptahor turned to my father and, pointing to me, solemnly pronounced the ancient oath of the physician: “I will undertake his treatment.”
Pointing then to Thothmes he said, “I will do what I can.” And, having thus come into doctors’ talk again, they both laughed contentedly. My father, laying his hand upon my head, asked, “Sinuhe, my son, will you be a physician like me?”
Tears came into my eyes, and my throat tightened till I could not speak, but I nodded in answer. I looked about me, and the garden was dear to me; the sycamore, the stone-set pool-all were dear to me.
“Sinuhe, my son,” he went on. “Will you be a physician more skilled than I, better than I-lord of life and death and one to whom all, be they high or low, may entrust their lives?”
“Neither like him nor like me!” broke in Ptahor. He straightened himself, and a shrewd glint came into his eye. “A true physician, for that is the mightiest of all. Before him Pharaoh himself stands naked, and the richest is to him one with the beggar.”
“I would like to be a real physician,” I said shyly, for I was still a boy and knew nothing of life nor that age ever seeks to lay its own dreams, its own disappointments, on the shoulders of youth.
But to Thothmes Ptahor showed a gold ring that was about his wrist and said, “Read!”
Thothmes spelled out the characters there inscribed and then read aloud uncertainly, “ ‘A full cup rejoiceth my heart.’“ He could not repress a smile.
“There is nothing to laugh at, you rascal!” said Ptahor gravely. “This has nothing to do with wine. If you are to be an artist you must demand that your cup be full. In the true artist Ptah reveals himself-the creator, the builder. The artist is more than a reflecting pool. Art indeed may often be nothing but flattering water or a lying mirror, yet the artist is more. So let your cup never be less than full, son, and do not rest content with what men tell you. Trust rather to your own clear eyes.”
He promised that I should soon be summoned as a pupil to the House of Life and that he would try to help Thothmes enter the art school in Ptah’s temple, if such a thing were possible.
“But, boys,” he added, “listen carefully to what I say and then forget it at once-or forget at least that it was the royal skull surgeon who said it. You will now fall into the hands of priests; you, Sinuhe, will become one yourself in course of time. Your father and I were both initiated into the lowest grade, and no one may follow the physician’s calling without being so initiated. When you come among them, be wary as jackals and cunning as serpents, that you be not blinded and misled. But outwardly be as harmless as doves, for not until the goal js attained may a man appear as he is. Remember!”
We conversed further until Ptahor’s servant appeared with a hired chair and fresh clothes for his master. The slaves had pawned Ptahor’s own chair at a neighboring brothel and were still sleeping there. Ptahor gave his servant authority to redeem both chair and slaves, took leave of us, assuring my father of his friendship, and returned to the fashionable quarter of the city.
