Joseph's worst moment comes in prison. He sits on his tailbone with his legs drawn up and his arms around his knees, trying to let as little of his body as possible touch the mud and slime of the floor. He's tried so hard, it's so unfair. No matter what terrible tricks Yah played on him—his brothers’ hatred, his coat taken from him and streaked with blood—he's done his best, he's accepted it, really he has. And now this! And all because he tried to do something right. When your master's wife wants to screw you you're supposed to say no, right? Isn't that what Yah teaches (not that it's ever stopped Jacob, but that's not the point). And instead of a reward he has to sit in garbage and eat worse.
Something touches Joseph's sleeve. He screams and jerks back, certain it's a rat. But when he opens his eyes he sees two men not much older than himself. They wear linen and their hair is curled, signs they've fallen from a high place. “Please,” one says. “You're the Hebrew who interprets dreams, aren't you? Will you help us? Please?"
"No,” Joseph says. “Go away, leave me alone.” And yet, he feels a certain tug of pleasure that his reputation as Potiphar's dream speaker has followed him into hell. He tries to ignore them, but they just stand there, looking so desperate, that finally he says, “Oh all right. Tell me your dreams."
The one who goes first announces that he was Pharaoh's chief wine steward before the court gossips slid him into jail. He tells Joseph, “In my dream I saw—I was in a garden. It was nighttime, I think. I looked up high and saw three branches. They began to bud. Blossoms shot forth. There were three ripe grapes. Suddenly, Pharaoh's cup was in my hand. Or maybe it was there before, I'm not sure. I squeezed the grapes in my hand. I poured the juice into the cup. I gave it to Pharaoh. He was just there and I gave it to him and he drank it."
Joseph rolls his eyes. This is not exactly a great mystery, he thinks. He says “All right, here's the meaning. In three days Pharaoh will lift up your head. He will examine your case and restore you to your office. You'll be safe from this filth and back in the palace. Congratulations."
The man claps his hands. “Blessed Mother Isis!” he cries. “Thank you!” He bends down to kiss Joseph's knees but Joseph pulls his legs even closer to his chest.
"Just promise me something,” Joseph says. “When you're back pouring wine for Pharaoh, remember me? Tell him I don't deserve this."
"Oh yes,” the man says, and claps his hands again.
"Now me,” the other one says. He kneels down before Joseph and says, “In my dream I'm walking in the street behind the palace. There are three baskets on top of my head. Two of them are filled with white bread, but the one on top holds all the lovely things I bake for Pharaoh. Cakes shaped like Horus, a spelt bun like the belly of Hathor. Just as I'm thinking about how much the king will like them, birds come and pluck them away.” He laughs, as if he's told a joke. “Right out of the basket. Now,” he says, “tell me the meaning."
Joseph stares at him. He stares and stares at the man's eager face. Why has Yah done this to me? he thinks, but even that last shred of self-pity drains out of him, washed away in horror at such pathetic innocence.
"Go on, go on,” the man insists.
Can he fake it? Joseph wonders. He tries to think of some story but his mind jams. He can't escape. Yah has set the truth on him like a pack of dogs. In a cracked whisper he says “In three days Pharaoh shall lift your head from your shoulders. He will hang you from a tree and the birds will eat your body."
The baker doesn't scream, only makes a noise deep in his chest. “Oh Gods,” he says, “help me. Help me, please."
Joseph is stunned. No anger, no hate. No demands to change it or make it go away or even to think again. Just that trust. Without thought, Joseph wraps his arms around the man like a mother. “I'm sorry,” he says, “I'm so sorry."
Joseph will stay two years in the prison before Pharaoh will dream a dream not found anywhere in the catalogues, and his wine steward, hearing of lean cows and fat cows, will remember the man he had promised not to forget. In all those months, Joseph will think of that empty promise only three or four times. But he will see the face of the baker every morning, before he opens his eyes.
People at court sometimes joke about the Viceroy's clay cup. Childish, they call it. Primitive. Hebrew. Visitors from Kush or Mesopotamia look shocked when they see him raise it in honor of Pharaoh's health. Their advance men, whose job it is to know all the gossip, whisper to them that Lord Joseph uses this cup to divine the future. Perhaps he sees visions in the wine, they say. Or perhaps—these are the views of the more scientifically minded—some impurity in the clay flakes off into the liquid and induces heightened states of awareness. The visitors shake their heads. That's all well and good, they say. He saved Egypt from famine, after all. But why does he drink from it in public?
During long dinners the Viceroy, like other men, will sometimes pause to swirl his barley wine, or else just stare blankly into his cup. At such times, all conversation, all breathing, stops, until Lord Joseph once more lifts up his eyes and makes some bland comment.
The princes, the courtiers, and the slaves all agree. The God Thoth visits Joseph at night, when together they discuss the secrets of the universe. A bright light leaks under the door of the Viceroy's bedchamber, and sometimes an alert slave will hear the flutter of Thoth's wings. And sometimes, they say, Thoth himself becomes the student, silent with wonder as Joseph teaches him secrets beyond the knowledge of Gods.
The boy Joseph curls himself up in the pit where his brothers have thrown him. Frozen in the desert night without his coat, he clutches the one treasure they didn't take from him, the cup his mother gave him, which he keeps always in a pouch on a cord around his waist. What will it be? A lion, a scorpion, a snake? Instead, before Judah and Simeon come back to sell him as a slave, a deep sleep takes him. He does not know it, but Yah has covered him with a foul smell that will drive away the beasts, for now is the time to dream. Joseph sees himself standing before a dark sky, with his arms out and his face lifted. A crown appears on his head. The crown becomes light, pure light that spreads through his body—his forehead, his mouth, his shoulders, all the way to his fingertips, light that streams out of him, through his heart and his lungs, even his entrails, if he shits he shits light, his penis ejaculates light, the muscles and bones of his legs pure light, his toes on fire with light. Joseph tries to cry out, but light rivers from his mouth.
And then it shatters. Broken light, broken Joseph splashes through the world, becomes darkness, becomes dust, becomes bodies and rock, light encased in darkness and bodies. And letters. Letters that fall from the sky, like drops of black flame.
Joseph wakes to the hands of the slave traders dragging him up from the dirt.
Does the Beard dream? Does the fire on his face allow him even to sleep? Or does he spend so much time chatting with Yah, punishing slackers, and writing, writing, writing, that he looks at dreams, and even the future, as a hobby for children and weak minds? After all, what does the Beard care about the future? He has his book. For him, time ends with the final letter.
When his brothers bully him, when they throw mud on his coat or trip him so he falls on pebbles sharp enough to splash his coat with blood, Joseph just wants to get back at them. In Jacob's tent one night he decides to make up a prophecy. “Listen, everybody,” he announces, “I had a dream. Last night. A really good one.” They roll their eyes or make faces but no one stops him. They don't want to believe in him, but they do. “Here it is,” he says gleefully. “All of us were out in the fields binding sheaves. We stepped back from them, but my sheaf stood upright and all yours bowed down to it.” He smiles. “What do you think?"
Silence. No one wants to look at anyone. At last, Reuben says “Since when do you ever go out and bind sheaves?” Inside their laughter, Joseph hears the whisper of fear.
That night, a dream comes to him. The Sun, the Moon, and eleven stars all bow down to him. He wakes up more scared than elated. He should keep it to himself, he k
nows. He's already got them mad; who knows what they'll do if he pushes this one at them? He pours some water into his cup from the gourd his mother's handmaids fill for him. Before he can drink, however, he sees in the bubbles everything that will follow—how the dream will provoke his brothers, how he will become a slave in Egypt, how he will rise to viceroy so that his family and in fact all Egypt will bow to him. It will not last, he sees. Their descendants will all become slaves, only to get free once more and stumble through the desert for forty years, forty years, before they can get back to their homeland. The vision doesn't last. Startled, he spills the water, and the details spill from his brain. And yet he knows now that everything leads to something else, that all his actions serve some secret purpose known only to Yah. Is it all just tricks, then? Do Yah's schemes ever come to an end?
He can stop it, he knows. All he has to do is never tell anyone the dream. Doesn't Grandpa Isaac claim God gives all of us free will? (He remembers his father whisper, “All except my brother Esau. He's too stupid.") If Joseph just keeps silent, the whole routine can never get started.
That afternoon, Zebulon kicks him and he blurts out, “You think you're so strong? I dreamed that the Sun and Moon and eleven stars all bowed down to me. That's right, eleven. What do you think of that?"
Joseph is old now, facing the blank door of death. He has blessed his children and his grandchildren and their children. Soon, he knows, the embalmers will suck out his brains, squirt the “blood of Thoth” into his body, wrap him in bandages, and encase him in stone. He wonders—if his descendants really do leave Egypt, will they find him and drag him along with them?
At the foot of his bed lies a wool and linen coat painted in swirls of color. Joseph has no idea how it got there. By the size of it it looks made for a boy, or maybe a shrunken old man. Next to the bed, on a little stand, sits his cup, as bright as the coat. He has told his slave to fill it with wine, though Joseph knows he lacks the strength to lift it, let alone pour it down his throat.
When he dies, will he see Rachel and Jacob? Or has he waited so long they've grown impatient and wandered off somewhere where he will never find them? He is alone now. The doctors and the magicians, his family, his servants, he's ordered them all away, and to his surprise they have listened. He wants more than anything to stay awake, so he can feel his soul, his ka, as the Egyptians call it, rattle around inside his body until it finds the way out. He tells himself that he's read all the papyruses, the “books of the dead,” and wants to find out for himself. But he knows the real reason to stay awake. He doesn't want any more dreams. As always, however, Yah makes His own plans.
In his dream, Joseph sees the Burning Beard one more time. With his face even more of a blaze than usual, he and his brother accost Pharaoh in the early morning, when Pharaoh goes down to wash in the Nile. Joseph watches them argue, but all he can hear is a roar. Now the brother raises his staff, he strikes the water—and the Nile turns to blood! Joseph shouts but does not wake up. All over Egypt, he sees, water has turned to blood, not just the river but the streams and the reservoirs and even the wells. For days it goes on, with the old, the young, and the weak dying of thirst. Finally the water returns.
Only—frogs return with it. The entire Nile swarms with them. Soon they cover people's tables, their food, their bodies. And still more horrors follow. The brother strikes the dust and lice spring forth. Wild beasts roar in from the desert.
Joseph twists in agony, but Yah will not release him. He sees both brothers take fistfuls of furnace ash and throw them into the sky. A wind blows the ash over all the people of Egypt, and where it touches the skin, boils erupt. Now the Beard lifts his arms to the sky and hail kills every creature unfortunate enough to be standing outside. As if he has not done enough he spreads his hands at night and calls up an east wind to bring swarms of locusts. They eat whatever crops the hail has left standing. No, Joseph cries. I saved these people from famine. Don't do this. He can only watch as the Beard lifts his hand and pulls down three days of darkness.
And then—and then—when the darkness lifts, the firstborn of every woman and animal, from Pharaoh's wives and handmaids to the simplest farm slave who could never affect political decisions in any way, even the cows and the sheep and the chickens, the firstborn of every one of them falls down dead.
Just at the moment of waking up, Joseph sees that the finger of death has spared certain houses, those marked with a smear of lamb's blood. The Hebrews. Yah and the Beard have saved the Hebrews. Joseph's people. But aren't the Egyptians Joseph's people as well? And didn't he bring the Hebrews to Egypt? If all this carnage comes because the Hebrews have lived in Egypt, is it all Joseph's fault?
He wakes up choking. For the first time in days, his eyes find the strength to weep. He wishes he could get up and kneel by the bed, but since he cannot he prays on his back. “Please,” he whispers. “I have never asked You for anything. Not really. Now I am begging You. Make me wrong. Make this one dream false. Make all my powers a lie. Take my gift and wipe it from the world. Do anything, anything, but please, please, make me wrong."
But he knows it will not happen. He is Joseph ben Jacob, Lord Viceroy of dreams. And he has never made a wrong prediction in his life.
* * * *
Joseph is my favorite character in the Bible—smart, gentle, non-violent, and a diviner, a seer. Stories about him and Moses are often pious and mawkish, based on Joseph's supposed longing to have his bones brought to the Promised Land, and Moses’ dedication in doing that. In my vision, Joseph loves Egypt and is horrified by Moses, and even more horrified by God, who is willing to kill vast numbers of innocent people just to make a point. The story blends the midrash tradition—fictions based on Biblical characters and moments—with modern slang and attitudes, Egyptian dream practices, references to Freud and so on. It is one of my two or three favorites among my own stories.
Rachel Pollack
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Rats
Veronica Schanoes
What I am about to tell you is a fairy tale and so it is constantly repeating. Little Red Riding Hood is always setting off through the forest to visit her granny. Cinderella is always trying on a glass slipper. Just so, this story is constantly reenacting itself. Otherwise, Cinderella becomes just another tired old queen with a palace full of pretty dresses, abusing the servants when the fireplaces haven't been properly cleaned, embroiled in a love-hate relationship with the paparazzi. Beauty and Beast become yet another wealthy, good-looking couple. They are only themselves in the story and so they only exist in the story. We know Little Red Riding Hood only as the girl in the red cloak carrying her basket through the forest. Who is she during the dog days of summer? How can we pick her out of the mob of little girls in bathing suits and jellies running through the sprinkler in Tompkins Square Park? Is she the one who has cut her foot open on the broken beer bottle? Or is she the one with the translucent green water gun?
Just so, you will know these characters by their story. As with all fairy tales, even new ones, you may well recognize the story. The shape of it will feel right. This feeling is a lie. All stories are lies, because stories have beginnings, middles, and endings, narrative arcs in which the end is the fitting and only mate for the beginning—yes, that's right, we think upon closing the book. Yes, that's the way. Yes, it had to happen like that. Yes.
But life is not like that—there is no narrative causality, there is no foreshadowing, no narrative tone or subtly tuned metaphor to warn us about what is coming. And when somebody dies, it is not tragic, not inevitably brought on as fitting end, not a fabulous disaster. It is stupid. And it hurts. It's not all right, Mommy! sobbed a little girl in the playground who had skinned her knee, whose mother was patting her and lying to her, telling her that it was all right. It's not all right, it hurts! she said. I was there. I heard her say it. She was right.
But this is a fairy tale and so it is a lie, perhaps one that makes the stupidity hurt a little less, or
perhaps a little more. You must not expect it to be realistic. Now read on....
Once upon a time.
Once upon a time, there was a man and a woman, young and very much in love, living in the suburbs of Philadelphia. Now, they very much enjoyed living in the suburbs and unlike me and perhaps you as well, they did not at all regret their distance from the graffiti and traffic, the pulsing hot energy, the concrete harmonic wave reaction of the city. But happy as they were with each other and their home, there was one source of pain and emptiness that seemed to grow every time they looked into each other's eyes, and that was because they were childless. The house was quiet and always remained neat as a shot of bourbon. Neither husband nor wife ever had to stay at home nursing a child through a flu—neither of them ever knew what the current bug going around was. They never stayed up having serious discussions about orthodonture or the rising cost of college tuition, and because of this, their hearts ached.
"Oh,” said the woman. “If only we had a child to love, who would kiss us and smile, and burn with youth as we fade into old age."
"Oh,” the man would reply. “If only we had a child to love, who would laugh and dance, and remember our stories and family long after we can no longer."
And so they passed their days. Together they knelt as they visited the oracles of doctors’ offices; together they left sacrifices and offerings at the altars of fertility clinics. And still from sunup to sundown, they saw their faces reflected only in the mirrors of their quiet house, and those faces were growing older and sadder with each glance.
Interfictions: An Anthology of Interstitial Writing Page 16
