I would have stroked her soothingly, but she drew back.
“Keep your hands away from me, Sinuhe, for you must be weary after rolling on the soft mats of the palace. I have no doubt that they are softer than my mat and that you found there younger and more beautiful companions than myself.”
So she went on, piercing my heart with small, smarting wounds until I thought I should go raving mad. Only then did she leave me, forbidding me even to accompany her to the Crocodile’s Tail. I should have suffered more keenly still at her going if my thoughts had not been raging within me like tempestuous seas and if I had not longed to be alone with them. I let her go, and I fancy she was amazed that I did so without protest.
I lay awake all that night, and as the hours went by my thoughts became clear and detached with the melting away of the wine fumes, and my limbs shook with cold because I had no one to warm me. I listened to the gentle trickle of the water clock. The water did not cease its flow, and time went by unmeasured so that I felt remote even from myself.
I said to my heart, “I, Sinuhe, am what my own actions have made me. Nothing else is of any significance. I, Sinuhe, brought my foster parents to an untimely death for the sake of a cruel woman. I, Sinuhe, still keep the silver ribbon from the hair of Minea, my sister. I, Sinuhe, have seen a dead sea monster floating on the water and the head of my beloved moving as crabs tore at her flesh. Of what importance is my blood? All was written in the stars before ever I was born, and I was predestined to be a stranger in the world. The peace of Akhetaton was a golden falsehood and this most terrible knowledge is but salutary; it has roused my heart from its slumber and convinced me that always I must be alone.”
When the sun rose in gold beyond the eastern hills, the shadows fled, and so strange is the heart of man that I laughed bitterly at the phantoms of my own brain. Every night abandoned children must have drifted with the current in boats tied with fowler’s knots, nor was the ashen color of my skin any evidence since a physician passes his days under roofs and awnings and so remains pale of complexion. No, in the light of day I could find no conclusive proof of my origin.
I washed and dressed, and Muti served me with beer and salt fish. Her eyes were red with weeping, and she despised me because I was a man. I then took a chair to the House of Life, where I examined patients, passing afterward by the deserted temple and out between the pylons, followed by the squawk of fat crows.
A swallow sped past me toward the temple of Aton, and I followed. The temple was not empty now. Many were there, listening to the hymns of Aton and raising their hands in his praise, while the priests instructed the people in Pharaoh’s truth. This in itself was of no great significance. Thebes was a large city, and curiosity might bring together a crowd in any part of it. I saw once more the carvings on the temple walls, and from the forty pillars Pharaoh Akhnaton gazed down on me with that face, which was so disturbing in its passion. I saw also the great Pharaoh Amenhotep sitting, old and frail, on his throne, his head bent beneath the weight of the double crown. Queen Taia sat beside him. Then I paused before a representation of Princess Tadukhipa of Mitanni making sacrifice to the gods of Egypt. The original inscription had been hewn away, and the new one declared that she was sacrificing to Aton although Aton was not worshiped in Thebes during her lifetime.
This image was carved in the old convention and showed her as a young and lovely woman, scarcely more than a girl. The little head beneath its royal headdress was beautiful, and her limbs delicate and slender. I gazed long upon the statue, while the swallow darted above my head with joyful twitterings, and I wept over the destiny of this lonely girl from a foreign land. For her sake I could have wished to be as beautiful as herself, but my limbs were heavy and soft and my head bald beneath the doctor’s wig. Thought had plowed furrows in my forehead, and my face was puffy with high living in Akhetaton. I could not imagine myself as her son. Nevertheless, I was profoundly moved and wept for her loneliness in Pharaoh’s golden house. And still the swallow darted joyfully about my head. I remembered the fine houses and the plaintive people of Mitanni; I remembered also the dusty roads and the threshing floors of Babylon and knew that youth had slipped past me forever and that my manhood had sunk into stagnation at Akhetaton.
Thus my day was spent, and when evening came, I went to the Crocodile’s Tail to eat and to be reconciled with Merit. She received me coldly and treated me like a stranger when she served me. When I had eaten, she asked, “Did you meet your beloved?”
I retorted irritably that I had not gone out after women but had worked in the House of Life and visited Aton’s temple. To make clear to her my sense of insult, I described minutely every step I had taken that day, but she regarded me throughout with a mocking smile.
“Never for a moment did I fancy that you had gone to visit women, for last night you were exhausted and are capable of nothing further, bald and fat as you are. I meant only that your beloved was here to ask for you, and I directed her steps to the House of Life.”
I sprang up so violently as to overturn my seat, and cried, “What do you mean, idiot woman?”
“She came here to seek you, arrayed like a bride; she had adorned herself with glittering jewels and painted herself like a monkey, and the reek of her ointments wafted as far as the river. She left you a greeting and a letter also, in case she should not find you-and from my heart I wish you would tell her to keep away, for this is a respectable house and she had the air of a brothel keeper.”
She handed me an unsealed letter, and I opened it with shaking hands. When I had read it, the blood surged into my head and my heart thudded in my breast. This is what Mehunefer wrote to me:
Greetings to Sinuhe the physician from his heart’s sister Mehunefer, Keeper of the Needle Case in Pharaoh’s golden house. My little bull, my dove, Sinuhe! I woke alone on my mat with an aching head and a still more aching heart, for my mat was deserted and you were gone.
Only the scent of your ointments clung to my hands. Oh, that I might be the cloth about your loins or the essence in your hair or the wine in your mouth, Sinuhe! I journey from house to house seeking you, and I will not cease this labor until I find you, for my body is full of ants at the thought of you, and your eyes are to me a delight. Hasten to me when you receive this-hasten on the wings of a bird, for my heart longs for you. If you do not come, I will fly to you more swiftly than any bird. Mehunefer, the sister of your heart, greets you.
I read this terrible effusion several times without daring to look at Merit. At last she snatched the letter from my hand, broke the stick on which it was rolled, tore up the paper, and stamped on it, saying furiously, “I could have understood you, Sinuhe, if she were young and fair, but she is old and wrinkled and ugly as a sack though she slaps paint on her face as upon a wall. I cannot imagine what you are thinking of, Sinuhe! Your behavior makes you a laughing stock all over Thebes, and I, too, am made ridiculous.”
I rent my clothes and clawed at my breast and cried, “Merit, I have committed an appalling blunder, but I had my reasons and never dreamed that I should be visited with so terrible a retribution! Seek out my boatmen and bid them hoist sail. I must fly, or this abominable hag will come and lie with me by force, and I am powerless to keep her at a distance. She writes that she will fly to me more swiftly than a bird, and so I believe she may!”