Moses

by Howard Fast

“The same man?” Moses whispered excitedly.

  “Yes—a wonderful man. A plain Egyptian peasant boy, like Seti-Keph here, but when they win through, they are our best, I sometimes think. He had a vision of building a great dam across the valley where the First Cataract falls, a project like those we did in the olden times. He felt it would require as much stone as the great pyramid at Giza, but he knew it could be done. He had planned every detail of it, and he would build sluice gates to control the floodwaters, so that never again should we have havoc when the flood was too great or famine when it was too little. He fired the imagination of the God-King, who sent him here with a thousand slaves to begin the work. But no sooner was he here than the priests came, hot on his heels, with another counter-order from the God-King, whom they had convinced that such a project would be sacrilege. It would interfere with the ordained course of the Holy Nile, and in their anger the gods would visit doom upon us.”

  “I think he was right,” Seti-Keph said solemnly.

  “I would expect you to think so. Anyway, back and forth went the messengers for half a year, while the engineer fretted away the days and almost went mad with frustration. That was when I met him and we became friends, for he was an image-breaker, as I am, and we are the closest fraternity on earth, you may believe me. We lived in an old house of sundried brick then, and more or less to pass the time, he drew the plans for this house and had his idle slaves build it. So you see, if Egypt got no dam, I at least got a house, and a very nice one, don’t you think?”

  “I think it is the most wonderful house I ever saw,” Moses agreed. “Was the man who built it called Neph?”

  The general excitement and interest over that led to Moses’ talking more than he wanted to—and after he had told them of his own experiences with Neph, the conversation died away, and they sat in silence, watching the gorgeous play of colour upon the escarpment. Yet in Moses, the turbulence of his thoughts churned parts of him unknown and untouched and the wonder of this waking dream enthralled him even more than the twilight glory of light on the cliffs. That it was Neph, his own beloved Neph, who had built this house might have seemed a far-fetched coincidence, had it not been for what the doctor said of the image-breakers,”the closest fraternity on earth.” Was it that way, then—and was Amon-Teph to live for him again and again? For it was always Amon-Teph, the first of them in his life, who appeared in his mind—whether through the caustic irony of Seti-Keph or the practical wisdom of Neph or the strange and sometimes frightening philosophy of this little doctor who lived alone on the edge of Egypt. What had they in common? Was it because they doubted? But Neph had not doubted when he proposed to build a great stone wall across the valley and hold back the River Nile. How furious Neph must have been at the priests—and it was no wonder that he hated the gods so! No, it was not doubt but questioning—always questioning. He recalled now one of the many times he had spoken to Neph concerning Aton-and Neph had said impatiently, “You think too much of the gods, Moses. Why should you have to know if Aton is the only god?” “But you know, Neph—” And Neph had looked at him with such sadness that Moses became afraid. Neph said, “The only god is truth, Moses, and that is not given to any man to know.” But weren’t men like these aware of some of the truth? Why had Neph never told him of this plan to dam the river? Was it because they were a closed fraternity, these men, and could commune only with each other? Certainly they were so different from others that they might well be a race apart.

  Aton-Moses broke the silence, saying, “I am curious, O Prince of Egypt, concerning your name—if I may be? For, unlike mine, it is only half a name.”

  Moses returned slowly from the maze of his own thoughts, and Seti-Keph said, to put the matter to rest, “The prince of the half-name. Why not? If he wants it so—”

  Moses spoke almost dreamily, “It is half a name given to me by my beloved mother, the Princess Enekhas-Amon. The other half she would give me some day—so she thought. But she died. Ramses, who calls himself the God-King, murdered her.”

  There was a strained silence after he spoke, until Seti-Keph said, “Here we are good companions, O Prince of Egypt, and we talk freely and we trust each other’s honour. But there are some things that should never be said.” It was not a reprimand; it was simply an, observation.

  “And do you know the other half?” Aton-Moses asked softly.

  “Yes—” to the only man he ever met or heard of who bore it himself. “But it died with my mother, and my half-name is enough. I am used to it.”

  Setep-Aton spoke, the first, the only time, her voice as gentle as the cool desert breeze that comes at nightfall, “But we old ones have kept these children long enough, listening to our sombre nonsense. We talk of life, but youth lives. Go now, O Prince of Egypt, and my daughter will show you the house and the terraces. There will be a moon tonight, and sweet Lady Isis will light your way.”

  [13]

  HE FOLLOWED THE girl in silence, and she led him down a limestone path that moved snakelike along the edge of the escarpment. A balustrade protected on the river side, while a planting of pink Anu cactus formed the other border. Occasionally, a step dropped the level, and after about a hundred paces they came to a pocket in the escarpment where a tiny temple stood, gracefully proportioned, a black, basalt floor some twenty feet square, surrounded by pillars of pale pink sandstone. The columns were roofless, and in the very centre of the floor, there was a simple altar of white limestone.

  In the desert moonlight, the place had a truly unworldly quality, a haunting charm that made Moses feel he was full to overflowing with emotions he could neither identify nor control. He was aware of a sweet yet painful happiness, and he seemed to know at once all the joy and grief in the world. When Merit-Aton’s bare arm or shoulder brushed against his flesh, his heart beat wildly.

  “I brought you here first, O Prince of Egypt,” she said, looking at him in that grave manner of hers, and perhaps thinking how strange it was that this tall and handsome young prince should be with her at all, “because it is the most beautiful place we have. My mother wanted it. She is very religious in the old way—which I suppose is different from the Delta way. Your gods are very magnificent and powerful and they have humbled our gods, but we have not cast our old gods out. Where could they go? We love them and pity them for the glory they brought us in the olden times.”

  “Why does the temple have no roof?”

  “Always, in the olden times, our temples had no roofs, O Prince of Egypt.”

  “Will you always call me Prince of Egypt, Merit-Aton?”

  “Always? You are here tonight, and tomorrow you go away. That isn’t always, is it?”

  “Will you call me Moses tonight?”

  “If you wish me to,” smiling slightly but not looking at him. “Shall we go into the temple? It is a holy place—Moses—and peaceful.”

  “Then you too worship the gods?”

  She turned and faced him, looking long and keenly into his brown, high-boned face. Then she said, in a way that reminded him of her father,

  “How shall I know you, Moses? You are a prince of Egypt. Never before have I seen one who wore the holy neckpiece upon his breast, the golden and jewelled emblems of kinship with the gods, and upon his head the royal circle. But I know this. From the House of Seti and the House of Ramses, we of Upper Egypt have had only misery and death. You came upon our land like locusts and your priests were like locusts, and you ate up all that was fine and beautiful. And because we had dared to think, to reach out, to break through old and ugly superstition, you destroyed us. You killed and killed until the blood ran ankledeep in the streets of Karnak, and in beautiful, wonderful Amarna—the city our fathers built as an offering to truth and brotherhood-there you made a waste and devastation that put even the Hittites to shame, so that not even the memory of good and gentle people and their work should remain. When your army marched up the Nile, between here and Karnak, it was like going through an empty land, wasn’t it?”


  Moses nodded dumbly.

  “Yet once there were hundreds of prosperous villages there. But Seti and Ramses needed slaves and more slaves, and since we were marked evil—as you no doubt heard from your childhood—you dragged our people away to work on your monuments’ to butchers, and to dig in your mines. And then you ask me, so slyly, do I worship the gods?” She stood panting and trembling as she finished, something unspoken working inside her.

  “But believe me, I did not mean that,” Moses protested. “How can you think that I wanted to trap you into some admission? Do I look like that sort of person? Do you think I hate you, Merit-Aton?”

  “I don’t know what to think. I think one thing, and then another. You are a guest in our house. I never spoke to a guest like this before. Any guest.”

  “And does your father think of me so?” Moses asked desperately.

  “My father is old. He says—Let the dead past rest. He says-Here in this house is sanctuary and understanding for men of all races. He says that they leave evil and shame behind them when they cross a physician’s threshold. I honour my father. But I am not he, Moses.”

  “Yet you heard me say that Ramses murdered my mother.”

  “Your mother was his sister. So they do things on the Delta. But you are the blood of Ramses.”

  “I am not!” Moses cried harshly. “And if you would not drive me away from you for ever, Merit-Aton, never again say that I am the blood of Ramses!”

  She was taken aback by his sudden fierce anger. He had stepped into the shadow of one of the sandstone columns, and he had become a tall black silhouette, his sharp face showing its strong and strange profile.

  “But your mother-and it was Seti-Keph himself who whispered that the God-King is your father—”

  “Say no more of that,” Moses sighed. “Believe me, we were taught many things in the Great House, but not to lie. I have half a name, and if my poor mother had lived to see her unhappy dreams come true, I would have been called Aton-Moses, the name your father bears. I was trained and tutored by a holy priest of Aton, a man both wise and good, who was the closest thing to a father I ever knew. And when Ramses discovered that Aton was worshipped in the Great House, he cut off this priest’s head and sent it to me as I sat mourning my mother—the better for me to reflect on the folly of belittling the gods. So if you thought, Merit-Aton, that I was some wretched spy who came to trap you into placing your life and your father’s and mother’s lives in my hands—well, here is my own life in yours. For only the God-King of Egypt could bear the name of Aton-Moses in the Great House, and whatever Ramses may have suspected, he never fully knew how my mother plotted to place me on his throne. So you need only tell that to Seti-Keph, and all his liking for me will not stop him from sending me back to the Great House in chains.”

  She was weeping now. “No—no—why did you tell me?”

  “Because my life, is not mine any more,” Moses blurted out. “It is yours. And if you can’t trust me, I don’t want to live.”

  “I forced you to tell me. I am wicked and deceitful!”

  “I told you because I wanted to tell you, Merit-Aton. My whole life is yours. Do what you wish with it.”

  Then he took her in his arms and he wondered how it could be that when all his life he had looked at women, he had never truly seen one before. He was at an age when love is pure and wonderful, a sweet well of limitless strength and a guarantee of power beyond death and life everlasting. The miracle of his being alive struck him like a revelation, and for the first time he felt that he wholly understood the meaning of all existence. His emotion was so true and singular, so far as he knew, that he firmly believed that, in all of man’s existence, no one else than perhaps the woman held in his arms had ever experienced its like. The two dark mirrors of her eyes, filled with her own tears of delight and apprehension, told him his own thoughts; and their communion was that instantaneous merging of self that occurs in the moment two people conquer and surrender simultaneously—and which can only happen wholly to the young in years. For the essence of it is a simplicity that no one carries into his later life, as Moses would come to know.

  After the first embrace and the first touch of their lips, they took their purity gently in hand, carrying it like a fragile object between them. With only their hands touching, they went to the edge of the escarpment and stood there in silence, staring at the star-swept desert sky and the glittering black ribbon of the Nile in the valley below—and reviewing the wonder of their very existence.

  For a long time, they remained in their silence, until Merit-Aton whispered, “Moses, my beloved Prince of Egypt, when did you know?”

  “The moment I saw you.”

  “Truly?”

  “Truly, I think,” he replied. “I am so filled with something like truth that I couldn’t lie to you.”

  “And it happens that way. I thought it was only in the old tales that such things could happen. My mother would read such stories to me when I was a little girl, but when I became older I learned that her marriage to my father was arranged before they ever saw each other. They have been happy, I suppose, but could they understand what happened to us tonight?”

  “No one could understand it,” Moses said softly. “I have told you nothing of myself, yet you understood me—and Iknow you, Merit-Aton, as I know my own soul.” Then, with a sudden note of fear, he cried, “You are not promised?”

  “I? No—no, who would betroth a son to the daughter of the evil Aton-Moses? And my name, will I lay it aside?”

  “Not for me, never, my beloved—never. And I have no father or mother to give my hand away—” He held out his broad, long-fingered, sunburned hand. “It is mine to give as I please. Will you have it, Merit-Aton?”

  She took his hand and pressed it to her lips. “Thus we are betrothed,” she said, smiling at him.

  “It is still for your father to say? It is.”

  “My father,” she said gravely, “loves me so, he would give me his own life, if I asked it. Shall he deny me a prince of Egypt who is so tall and pure and beautiful?”

  “I am not pure,” Moses cried, ready to bare every indignity of his life and to demonstrate how wretched his soul really was; but she put her fingers to his lips.

  “No—how could you know your own purity? Would you be a man if you did? It shines on you and from you, like the golden collars and the red rubies you wear. I saw it the moment you appeared—”

  “And yet you accused me?”

  “I was afraid. Oh, my beloved, think of me here, and a golden prince rides up in a burnished chariot. Is it any wonder that I was afraid?”

  Her way of speaking, peculiar to Upper Egypt, and strange and antique to Moses, caused him—under the spell of the moonlight and his own emotion—to look upon her with a reverence and delight that was quite obvious. She touched his cheek with a little gesture of pleasure, the matching of his delight with hers….

  So did a moment of indescribable glory touch him. Who is to say that any truer knowledge ever comes to a man? And if the secret of man that makes him man is love, then the single complete knowledge of it is never forgotten. In the warm balm of the wind blowing from the south, they wandered in each other’s hearts and through all time. There was so much that they had to say and exchange, and however much their separation from the reality, they could not. lose the knowledge that the army marched the following day. She told him of her life, her dreams and innermost thoughts, of the strange people of so many lands who sought out her father here in his retreat, of her growing up with a fantasy of how love would come and with the realization that it would not come. And he, in turn, told her of his childhood and youth in the Great House, of his mother, Enekhas-Amon, of Amon-Teph, of his going into the marshes of the Delta with Neph, of his night-battle with Ramses-em-Seti, of his horse, of all the adventures of youth—and all of them were wonderful to her. Only the truth of who he was, he could not reveal, assuring himself that there would be time for that and putting aside the one
area of fear that he could not overcome.

  So the hours passed, until suddenly the setting moon returned to them and awareness of time. “Half the night is gone,” she said. “In a few hours, it will be morning.” “But what will you tell them?” “It is for you to explain,” she answered gently. “Talk to my father as you would to me. He has seen so much suffering that there is no room left in him for anger or intolerance. And he loves you for what you are.”

  “You love me,” Moses smiled. “How can you talk for him?”

  “I saw it in his eyes.”

  “But if he sleeps now?”

  “He doesn’t sleep. How would he sleep before his daughter or one of his guests? If I know him, he won’t sleep at all, but he and Seti-Keph will talk the night through. Never were there two men more different, for my father will step aside rather than crush an insect under his foot, and Seti-Keph lives only for war and butchery—as you will, my darling. If only you could remain here!”

  “If only I could,” Moses nodded. “But I will come back. Nothing can touch me now and nothing can hurt me now. You understand that?” She nodded. He took from his little finger a ring of filigree gold, with a tiny scarab of jade set into it. “This was my mother’s, and this is the royal scarab that a princess of the Great House wears. I set no store on that, but it was worn by the only other woman I loved deeply, with all my heart—and therefore you must wear it.”

  She took the ring, bowed slightly and formally, and said, “I thank you, O Prince of Egypt, and I will honour the ring with my love for you. Sleep well for what is left of the night, my beloved.” She turned to go, and when he would have gone with her, said, “No—let me go alone, Moses. So my father will see us alone—” And then she was gone in the night, leaving him to awaken slowly from his own dreams., He had never known that this was what they meant when they spoke of love between man and woman, and he considered himself as someone dead who has miraculously awakened. He was filled with an awareness he had never experienced and with understanding he had never possessed before. His heart went out to his mother, for he knew her now and felt her now, and in the same way his heart went out to others who had loved him and whose love he had not been able to return.