by Howard Fast
“Was it for pleasure or to test me that you killed the man?”
“You have sons who have killed men. It is no new practice for the blood of the Great House.”
“I have no other son who has made such a name as you have. You have blasphemed against the gods and you have profaned holy things and holy places. You have made yourself a thing for Egypt to laugh at and mock at. No man is a thing to himself—not you, not that overseer you slew. He has family, friends in high places, priests and scribes who will never rest until you are in your tomb. You have mocked me and insulted me more than any man—and still you live to come before me without honour and without respect. The crown of Egypt is the holiest and most venerable crown on earth, yet you spurned it and laughed at it—just as you spurned my house and my blood and took yourself to live in the wretched shack of an engineer of low peasant blood, one Neph, whom we both know well. You have plotted against me, cursed the gods of my ancestors, and you have done obscene homage to the cursed Aton of Karnak. And now, to crown all, you murder a man with as little reason as you have lived your life. And this from my son!”
“Not from your son, King of Egypt,” Moses said, without fear or passion, feeling nothing—caught wholly in the grip of an inevitable finish, hiding no more, free and lost of his princeliness, free and lost of the burden of shame and pretence and of the whole lie that had been his life, free for the first time in what he was, child of the Levites, whom they would address as Moses ben Amram, child of a slave tribe of desert wanderers, not elated, not saddened, but free in a strange peace of body and soul, free to die without shame and without mysteries, yet not afraid.
“What do you mean?” Ramses demanded.
“Has no one ever told you? Have you really never suspected?” Moses asked in honest incredulity—sensing that was the cruellest punishment he could inflict upon the man, yet taking no joy from the judgment. “The throne must be isolated indeed for a king not to know what is common talk to every palace whore. Or was it your need which made it impossible for you to believe what you did know?”
“Know what?”
“That I am no son of yours and no son of Enekhas-Amon, whom I loved as my mother. But she was not my mother. I am a Bedouin of the Tribe of Levi, and when I was born, they made me a sacrifice to their god and set me afloat in the rushes in the river. There Enekhas-Amon saw me from her barge and sent the priest Amon-Teph to take me. She raised me, and it was her lie and mine too that I was of the blood of the Great House.”
For a long, long moment, Ramses was silent; but in his silence his body trembled, his bull neck thickened, and the blood rushed darkly to his face. Then he burst out,
“You lie now! It is not enough to degrade yourself—you have become bold enough to degrade me! Do you know what you have done?”
“I know,” Moses nodded.
“You have spoken your life away.”
“I know.”
“Yet you lie!”
“Look at me, Ramses,” Moses said. “Look at me and tell me whether I am lying to you.”
His rage broken by the indifference of the man before him, Ramses stared at Moses—and the moments went by and still he stared, trying to comprehend the soul and mind of a stranger. At last, he asked,
“Why did you tell me?”
“You called me your son, and I told you. Not for revenge—I want no revenge. I am tired of being a stranger. All my life I have been a stranger. I sought for gods because there were no people for me to call my own, and yesterday I went as a stranger and murdered a man who whipped the Levites, from whose seed I came. But when they fixed their eyes upon me, their eyes were the eyes of strangers, and their eyes said—Who made you, a prince of the Great House, to sit in judgment on us and our masters? What do you know of us and our toil—and the salt that waters our wounds? Have you lessened our toil? Have you brought us hope or cheer? What do you want with us, Prince of Egypt? Their eyes spoke and ripped me free from myself—and I am no longer a prince of Egypt. I killed, and there is blood on my hands. I ask for no mercy.”
His brows knit, unable to comprehend either the purpose or meaning behind this strange confession, Ramses listened, puzzled, disturbed; and then asked,
“Do you want to die?”
“I want to live,” Moses answered.
“Yet you must die,” Ramses stated, not anger but sorrow and defeat in his voice.
“I know. So that no man will laugh at Ramses for the great hoax of Moses of the half-name.”
“Perhaps. Or perhaps because I will know no peace while you live. Who else knows this?”
Moses shrugged. “My mother, Amon-Teph, the priests of Aton—they are all dead.”
“You said before that many knew.”
“It was a guess. Even your sons taunted me with a birth in water.”
“Now you are lying. Does Neph know?”
“He doesn’t.”
“You lie!”
“On my honour.”
“You sold your honour, Bedouin!” Ramses cried. “Get out of my sight. Go back to the roof of Neph, the engineer, for I will not have you profane this Great House. I give you the night to make ready—and perhaps tomorrow you will go to your death with the dignity and courage of an Egyptian. I ask no more—only that.”
“You have no right to ask anything of me, Ramses.”
“But that I have”—almost pleadingly—”for it was more than this holy throne that was betrayed! Egypt was betrayed, for I thought I gave her a son and king, and instead I gave her a dirty Bedouin assassin.” And, suddenly, he rose up from his throne and struck Moses across the face. “May you be accursed of the gods for ever!”
Moses stood rigid, the stinging pain of the blow awakening him as from a dteam, while Ramses roared, “Guards! Guards! Take this man away and out of my sight!” And then, as soldiers, priests and scribes and noblemen poured back into the room, the God-King tore the royal neckpiece from Moses and hurled the bits of gold and precious stones across the polished marble floor.
[22]
IT WAS NOT strange to Nun that a man should await his death without considering an alternative, and even if there were no soldiers stationed around the house of Neph, where he and Moses sat, the thought of flight would have been difficult, uneasy in his mind, and full of nameless terrors and impossibilities. His talk of driving the chariot to the Great House was an invention of emotion; the very stones of the Great House would have presented a barrier; and while it was one thing to serve a prince of Egypt whose golden symbols opened all doors, it was something else to serve a Levite condemned to death. Not that he loved Moses less or honoured him less; but the mind of a slave is a long time remaking, and if Moses could not leave, he, Nun, was bound as bitterly.
Thus, with the soldiers barring the doors of the house, the two men sat, each wrapped in his own thoughts, his own dreams lost, his own mystery of the strange, feckless and witless experience called life. Thus they sat while the sun dropped toward the desert and the house cast its dark-green shadow over the slow-moving Nile—and thus they were, alone, the houseslaves fled, when the door opened and the soldiers cast a body into the front room as one casts away a sack of rubbish. It was the body of Neph, the engineer, dead from the raw thrusts of a quick and brutal killing, blood-encrusted and sprawling with loose limbs, mindless and lifeless, no more to think and plan and ponder, no more to understand and pity the folly of men, no more to challenge the gods with reason and compassion, no more to challenge nature with skill and reason, no more to teach, to lead, to unravel, no more to build—no more to defy time and the elements with mighty works of stone that in generations undreamed of would be the wonder and admiration of men.
For, as Moses had come to understand, the murder done by tyrants was as witless and vile as the rule of tyrants; and when he knelt by the body, took Neph’s bloodstained, bruised face in his hands and kissed it tenderly he knew that he touched the last of Egypt.
He stood up and, even in the half-darkness, there wa
s something in his manner that filled Nun with terror. “Cursed be Egypt!” he shouted, “and cursed be Ramses the son of Seti!” His voice boomed from his heaving chest, deep and frightening, like the drums of Kush. “Cursed be this land which fattens on the blood of men! Cursed be the gods of Egypt for ever, and may they be forgotten of men! And may the day come when all that men remember of Ramses is the stone that this dead man raised in the desert!”
And then he stood in silence, his chest heaving; and the soldiers outside were silent—long silent before they were able to laugh and mock at the man condemned to death. But even their laughter and mockery were tempered by fear of the terrible curse.
The cloak of Egypt had fallen from Moses. All of its splendours and wonders, its science and culture, its noble art and ancient literature, its pantheon of dark and grudging gods, its tombs of immortality, its wonderful cities and towering temples, its wealth and might, its armies and its power—all of this had let go of him, with no single thread left to deny that he was a stranger in a strange land, a wanderer out of the desert, a Levite who had never been a slave or bowed his head under the lash. No more was he Moses of the half-name. As if he had perished and been born again—so was he filled with life, his mind lashed, his soul seared with grief and loss, his memory bright and clean in anger and even clearer with the substance of his anger. No more was he a prince of the Great House, and there was no denying him or doubting him when he turned to Nun and said,
“We will go away from this place and leave it for ever. We are young and full of life, and it is not for Ramses, the son of Seti, to select the moment for our dying.”
And Nun answered, “Yes, master.”
“Go then and bring the gold and jewels we have in the house. We will need to buy bread and other things too, for when we have taken this, there will be no more. Divide it in two and put it in our hunting pouches, and if there is bread and olives and dry fruit, take as much as our bags will hold, and take a skin for water.”
“Yes, master.”
“And move quietly. They are listening outside.”
“Yes, master.”
Himself, Moses gathered weapons, an iron sword of Hatti, their war bows, their hunting knives, two quivers of arrows, and his long, Kushite stave. With strips of linen, he bound the weapons together and strapped them to his back, and then flung off his kilt, standing only in a loincloth, as Nun was. Nun appeared with the bags, which he had tied together and hung around his neck. Then, without words, Moses led him to the window at the back of the house, in the wall built on the water. Moses motioned for Nun to go over the sill, and then he took Nun’s wrists and let him gently down into the water. He himself hung from the sill until Nun grasped his feet, and handled him down and into the water. Slowly, step by step, their feet sinking into the muddy bottom, they walked downstream, keeping in the darker shadow of the house—until at last they came to their papyrus boat, moored at the little stone quay Neph had built. Here, as they loosened the mooring ropes, they saw the guards only a few feet away, but the Egyptians looked at the house, not at the river; and, soundlessly, Moses and Nun let the boat drift downstream, each clinging to one side of it.
About a hundred paces down the riverbank, in the darkness of the old and ramshackle houses that lined it, in the darkness of the night, they found footing again, tossed their gear into the boat and then climbed in themselves. Quickly and quietly, they plied the long paddles—and soon they were out in midstream, approaching the wilderness of marsh and channel on the eastern shore. They looked back now—at the dark bulk of Tanis, called the City of Ramses, at the flicker of lights that outlined the Great House of Ramses, son of Seti, at the Land of Egypt.
“We are safe now,” Moses said, and Nun answered simply.
“The air is sweet.”
Moses let Nun steer the boat, and the Levite steered by feel and instinct, even as the helmsman of Neph’s work barge had guided it through the marshes so long ago. Hooded by the tall papyrus, they crept through channel after channel, slowly at first and then with more speed when the moon rose and gave them light to see by. Instead of steering due east, toward the Land of Goshen, Nun headed into a maze of channels that bent toward the south, riding sometimes so shallow that the bottom touched their boat, but always able to find water to go on.
They were both of them without any desire for sleep, wide-awake and strong of body and elated with the promise of life and the excitement of their escape. Hours of their long, sweeping strokes did not tire them, and as dawn greyed the sky, they pushed through stunted reeds into a wide, brackish marsh.
“Here,” Nun said, “is the northernmost lake of the Red Sea, and here alone are no border guards. Here Egypt ends.”
“But not the power of Ramses.”
“No, master—he has a long arm.”
The sun was up, burning into their faces when they reached the farther shore; and there they broke up their boat and threw the pieces into the lake. They divided the gear between them, Nun taking the iron sword of Hatti and Moses the long black stave of Kush.
“To the east,” Moses said, “are the cities of men and civilization, the Land of Hatti and the Land of Canaan, cool water and wine and savoury food. But in every city will be the men of Ramses to seek us out and slay us, for if I know him at all, he will put gold on our heads and never rest until he finds us.”
“And to the south?”
They gazed to the south—and in the distance they could see the grey mass of mountains, grim, bare desert mountains, forbidding even in the light of the morning sun.
“The Wilderness of Sinai, where there are no cities and no roads, where there is nothing to call the armies of Ramses, nothing to conquer, nothing to take.”
Then they turned their faces south.
“It is good to live, to breathe the air of morning, and to think about tomorrow,” Moses said.
Nun looked at his companion, and saw that for the first time since they had known each other, Moses was at peace with himself. For the Prince of Egypt no longer tore at his heart.
Side by side, the two Levites set forth into the Wilderness of Sinai.
A Biography of Howard Fast
Howard Fast (1914-2003), one of the most prolific American writers of the twentieth century, was a bestselling author of more than eighty works of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and screenplays. Fast's commitment to championing social justice in his writing was rivaled only by his deftness as a storyteller and his lively cinematic style.
Born on November 11, 1914, in New York City, Fast was the son of two immigrants. His mother, Ida, came from a Jewish family in Britain, while his father, Barney, emigrated from the Ukraine, changing his last name to Fast on arrival at Ellis Island. Fast's mother passed away when he was only eight, and when his father lost steady work in the garment industry, Fast began to take odd jobs to help support the family. One such job was at the New York Public Library, where Fast, surrounded by books, was able to read widely. Among the books that made a mark on him was Jack London's The Iron Heel, containing prescient warnings against fascism that set his course both as a writer and as an advocate for human rights.
Fast began his writing career early, leaving high school to finish his first novel, Two Valleys (1933). His next novels, including Conceived in Liberty (1939) and Citizen Tom Paine (1943), explored the American Revolution and the progressive values that Fast saw as essential to the American experiment. In 1943 Fast joined the American Communist Party, an alliance that came to define—and often encumber—much of his career. His novels during this period advocated freedom against tyranny, bigotry, and oppression by exploring essential moments in American history, as in The American (1946). During this time Fast also started a family of his own. He married Bette Cohen in 1937 and the couple had two children.
Congressional action against the Communist Party began in 1948, and in 1950, Fast, an outspoken opponent of McCarthyism, was called before the House Un-American Activities Committee. Because he refused to prov
ide the names of other members of the Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee, Fast was issued a three-month prison sentence for contempt of Congress. While in prison, he was inspired to write Spartacus (1951), his iconic retelling of a slave revolt during the Roman Empire, and did much of his research for the book during his incarceration. Fast's appearance before Congress also earned him a blacklisting by all major publishers, so he started his own press, Blue Heron, in order to release Spartacus. Other novels published by Blue Heron, including Silas Timberman (1954), directly addressed the persecution of Communists and others during the ongoing Red Scare. Fast continued to associate with the Communist Party until the horrors of Stalin's purges of dissidents and political enemies came to light in the mid-1950s. He left the Party in 1956.
Fast's career changed course in 1960, when he began publishing suspense-mysteries under the pseudonym E. V. Cunningham. He published nineteen books as Cunningham, including the seven-book Masao Masuto mystery series. Also, Spartacus was made into a major film in 1960, breaking the Hollywood blacklist once and for all. The success of Spartacus inspired large publishers to pay renewed attention to Fast's books, and in 1961 he published April Morning, a novel about the battle of Lexington and Concord during the American Revolution. The book became a national bestseller and remains a staple of many literature classes. From 1960 onward Fast produced books at an astonishing pace—almost one book per year—while also contributing to screen adaptations of many of his books. His later works included the autobiography Being Red (1990) and the New York Times bestseller The Immigrants (1977).
Fast died in 2003 at his home in Greenwich, Connecticut.
Fast on a farm in upstate New York during the summer of 1917. Growing up, Fast often spent the summers in the Catskill Mountains with his aunt and uncle from Hunter, New York. These vacations provided a much-needed escape from the poverty and squalor of the Lower East Side's Jewish ghetto, as well as the bigotry his family encountered after they eventually relocated to an Irish and Italian neighborhood in upper Manhattan. However, the beauty and tranquility Fast encountered upstate were often marred by the hostility shown toward him by his aunt and uncle. "They treated us the way Oliver Twist was treated in the orphanage," Fast later recalled. Nevertheless, he "fell in love with the area" and continued to go there until he was in his twenties.
