“This picture is mine, even if I should pay for it with my life!”
Nafa said, laughing, “O age seventeen! You're like a blazing fire, a leaping flame. You give life and womanly qualities to stones, colors, and water. You passionately adore illusions and imaginings, and turn dreams into actualities… and you've brought us all the tortures of hell!”
The boy blushed, and fell silent. Nafa took pity on his exasperation, and said, “I am at your command, O Soldier.”
“You must never part with this picture, O Nafa,” said Djedef imploringly.
Nafa strode over to the picture, and lifting it from its place, presented it to his brother, saying, “Dear Djedef, she's yours.”
Djedef held it gently with his hands, as though he were clasping his own heart, then said like one obliged to be grateful, “Thank you, Nafa!”
Nafa sat down contented. As for Djedef, he stuck to his place without budging, absorbed in the face of the divine peasant girl.
At length he said, “How does the creative imagination captivate one so?”
“She's not a creature of imagination,” said Nafa, calmly.
The youth's heart quaked as he asked with desire, “Do you mean that the possessor of this form moves among the living?”
“Yes,” Nafa answered.
“Is… is she like your image of her?”
“She is even more beautiful, perhaps.”
“Nafa!” shouted Djedef.
The artist grinned, as the enraptured young man interrogated him, “Do you know her?”
“I have seen her at times on the banks of the Nile,” he replied.
“Where?”
“North of Memphis,” said Nafa.
“Does she always go there?”
“She used to go in the late afternoon with her sisters, and they would sit down and play and then disappear with the setting sun. I used to take my place hidden behind a sycamore fig tree — I could hardly wait for them to arrive!”
“Are they still going there?” asked Djedef.
“I don't know,” replied Nafa. “I stopped following their movements when I had completed my picture.”
Djedef looked at him doubtfully. “How could you?” he said.
“This is a beauty that I worship, but which I do not love.”
Djedef, paying no attention to what Nafa was saying, asked him, “In what place did you see her?”
“North of the Temple of Apis.”
“Do you think that she still goes there?” Djedef queried.
“And what, O Officer, prompts your question?”
A look of confusion flashed in Djedef's eyes, and Nafa asked him, “Could Fate have it that these two brothers are wounded by the arrow of love in the same week?”
Djedef frowned as he returned to regarding the picture thoughtfully.
“Don't forget that she's a peasant girl,” said Nafa.
“Rather, she's a ravishing goddess,” Djedef muttered back.
“Ah, Djedef, I was struck by the arrow and destroyed in the palace of Kamadi,” said Nafa, laughing, “but I fear that you may be struck in a broken-down hut!”
16
The day bore the seal of dreams, as around midafternoon, Djedef — the enchanting portrait next to his breast — went to the bank of the Nile, rented a boat, and headed north. He was not truly aware of what he was doing, nor could he stop himself from doing it. Simply put, he had fallen under a spell and could submit only to its commands, and hear only its call. He set off in pursuit of his unknown objective driven by an all-conquering passion that he could not resist. This magic had seized a man for whom death held no terror, who had no regard for danger. Naturally, then, he struck out boldly for his goal, for it was not his custom to shrink back — and whatever would be, would be.
The boat made its way, cutting through the waters, propelled by the current and the youthful strength of his arms. All the while, Djedef kept his eyes fixed on the river's edge, searching for the object of his persistent quest. And what should he see first but the mansions of the wealthy people of Memphis, their marble staircases descending to the banks of the Nile. Beyond them, for many furlongs, he beheld the spreading fields until there appeared in the far distance Pharaoh's palace garden in the City of the White Walls. Djedef piloted his skiff in the midcourse of the river in order to avoid the Nilotic Guards, until — at the Temple of Apis — he turned back to shore once more. He then hastened northward opposite the spot, where people were not seen except during the great feasts and festivals. He would have given up in despair if he had not then noticed a group of peasant girls sitting on the riverbank nearby, dipping their legs into the flowing waters. His heart pounded intensely as his sense of bleakness fled, his eyes gleaming with ecstatic hope. His arms grew ever stronger as he rowed toward the land; with each stroke he faced them and gazed at them intently. When he drew close enough to see their faces, a faint sigh escaped his mouth, like that of the blind man when he suddenly regains the gift of sight. He felt the rapture of the drowning man, — when his feet chance upon a jutting rock — for he had spied the girl that he desired, the mistress of the image that he bore on his breast, reposing on the riverbank, set as though in a halo of her peers. Everything was, as we have said, suffused with the spirit of dreams, as he steered the boat closer beside them. Finally, Djedef stood up in it, with his handsome frame in his elegant white uniform, which fitted over his body as though he were a statue of divine potency and seductive beauty. He was like a god of the Nile, revealed by a sudden parting of the sacred waves, as he continued to stare at her of the angelic face, of that visage transparent with love and temptation. Confusion gripped the peasant girl, who kept running her eyes back and forth distractedly among her young companions. Meanwhile, they continued watching her radiant face, ignoring Djedef, who they thought was just passing by. But when they saw him standing erect in his skiff, they pulled their legs out of the water and put on their sandals, in disbelief and denial.
Djedef leapt out of the boat and strode up to within an arm's length of them, addressing the one he had come for with a tender voice, “May the Lord grant you a good evening, O lovely peasant girl!”
She glared at him with pride and scorn as she said in a voice more melodious than those of the other birds surrounding her, “What do you want from us, sir? Just keep going on your way!”
He looked at her reprovingly. “You don't wish to greet me?” he asked.
Furiously she turned her head — crowned with hair black as night — away from him, while the group of women called out to him, “Keep going on your way, young man. We don't speak to those we do not know!”
“Do you see it as the custom in this fine country that raised you to greet a stranger so harshly?” Djedef replied.
One of them said sharply, “What shows upon your face is infatuation, not unfamiliarity!”
“How cruelly you are treating me!”
“If you truly — were a stranger, this is not a place — where strangers would come. Return south to Memphis, or go north, if you wish, and say goodbye to us in peace — for we do not speak to anyone — with — whom — we are not acquainted!”
Djedef shrugged his shoulders dismissively and said, pointing at the gorgeous peasant girl, “My mistress knows me.”
They were again seized by disbelief and looked at the lovely girl, whom they found enraged. “That is a slanderous lie!” they heard her say to him.
“Never, by the Lord's truth. I have known you for a long time, but I hadn't resolved to find you until my patience betrayed me, and I could no longer bear to miss you so.”
“How can you claim that, when I have never laid eyes on you before this moment?”
