by Marek Halter
The great halls were calm and shady, their walls painted with extraordinary images, their alcoves overflowing with sculptures, fabrics, and pieces of furniture inlaid with gold and silver. From the terraces, as far as the eye could see, the view was of gardens and canals and ornamental lakes so vast that boats sailed on them. High fences surrounded enclosures of the strangest animals: elephants, lions, monkeys, tigers, gazelles, giraffes, and some especially ugly beasts called camels.
Sarai had really never seen anything to equal it. Not even the most splendid palaces in Ur, whose memory she cherished, could compare with such richness. She had felt as if she were dreaming when she was welcomed and taken into the very heart of the palace.
The handmaid Hagar approached a door with bronze fittings, guarded by two soldiers in loincloths and capes with silver leaves. Hagar waved her hand, and the soldiers glided to the side and opened the door. Sarai followed the handmaid into a high, light-filled hall.
The first thing that struck her was the strange scent, sickly sweet and pungent. Then she saw the long pool, surrounded by columns—a pool containing not water, but ass’s milk.
Hagar, seeing Sarai’s surprise, smiled. “It’s wonderful for the skin. Ass’s milk with added honey washes away fatigue and bad memories. It preserves beauty better than any other unguent—not that you need it! Pharaoh himself ordered this bath to be prepared for you.”
Sarai wanted to ask a question but she did not have time. The young girls who had followed her had already taken hold of her tunic and were undressing her. The handmaid Hagar also undressed. Her hips and breasts were heavier than those of Sarai, and her body would have been perfect but for a long scar, pink at the edges, which stood out between her shoulders.
She took Sarai’s hand gently and walked her to the steps that led down into the pool. The milk was tepid. Sarai sank into it slowly, letting herself be enveloped up to her waist by its soft caress.
“There’s a stone bed in the middle of the pool,” Hagar said, pointing.
She showed Sarai how to lie on it, flat on her stomach, her head held out of the milk by a cushion filled with sage placed on a wooden stool.
“Breathe deeply,” Hagar said. “The sage will clear the dust of the roads from your nostrils.”
She asked the young girls kneeling by the pool for oils and unguents and, with expert hands, began to massage Sarai’s shoulders and back, stirring the surface of the milk in fragrant little waves.
Sarai closed her eyes, abandoning herself to this unexpected pleasure. For a brief moment, she thought of Abram, wondering if Pharaoh was granting him such gentle treatment. She also wondered why they had been so afraid of the king of Egypt. Could a mighty king who gave such a welcome to foreigners asking for his help be as cruel as they said? Hadn’t they allowed themselves to be misled by gossip? Alas, if that was the case, Abram and she had had no reason to lie. And wasn’t this lie, far from protecting them, going to bring about their ruin? Would she be in this milk bath if Pharaoh knew the truth, knew she was Abram’s wife?
“Did they tell you who I was?” she asked Hagar.
“Sarai, the sister of Abram, the man who believes in an invisible god. They also say that your beauty is untouched by time. Is that true?”
“How do you know all that?”
“My mistress, Pharaoh’s newest wife, told me. Besides, since you arrived yesterday, the wives and the handmaids have been talking about nothing else.”
“But how does Pharaoh know who I am?”
Hagar laughed. “Pharaoh knows everything.”
Sarai closed her eyes, her heart pounding. Did Pharaoh really know everything?
Hagar’s massage became more insistent, more caressing. Despite her anxiety, Sarai felt her fatigue leave her. Her body, made hard by the journey and the heat, now seemed to dissolve in the milk of the pool.
As her agile fingers worked, Hagar rambled on. “My mistress said, ‘Tomorrow, you’ll serve the woman they say is the most beautiful woman beyond the eastern desert.’ She also said, ‘I’ve chosen you, Hagar, because you’re the most beautiful of my handmaids, and we’ll see if this Amorite will have as much luster in your presence.’”
“It’s true,” Sarai agreed, “you are very beautiful. Your hips are more beautiful than mine.”
“That’s because you aren’t a wife and you haven’t yet had children.”
“You have children?”
Hagar took her time before she replied. Pushing her shoulder, she turned Sarai over onto her back. “I was born far south of here, by the sea of Suph,” she said, as she massaged Sarai’s thighs. “My father was rich and owned a city that did a lot of trade with the country you come from. That’s why I speak your language. He gave me away as a bride when I was fifteen, and I gave birth to a little girl. When my daughter was two years old, Pharaoh made war on my father. His soldiers killed both him and my husband. They brought me here. I tried to run away, which was a stupid thing to do. An arrow tore the skin from my back. Pharaoh would have offered me as a wife to whomever he liked, but because of this scar, he couldn’t. So I became a handmaid. Sometimes I regret it, sometimes not.”
Surprised and moved by the sincerity of this confession, Sarai did not know what to say. She took her hands out of the milk and stroked Hagar’s shoulder, lightly touching the tip of her scar. They looked at each other with eyes of friendship.
“Now I don’t feel sad anymore,” Hagar said. “That’s how the life of women is. Men give us and take us. They kill each other, and others decide what’s to become of us.”
Sarai closed her eyes with a shiver. She would have liked to tell Hagar how she had run away from Sumer with Abram, and the price it had cost her. She also would have liked to tell her that she was lying, and that she now knew that even Abram could behave just like any other man!
Hagar sighed. “Perhaps, one day, I’ll leave this palace. But perhaps by the time that day comes, I won’t want to anymore. Life here can be very sweet. You’ll see that eventually.”
“Eventually?”
“My mistress is a jealous wife, and she’s already afraid of you. She doesn’t know how right she is. When Pharaoh sees you, he’ll be dazzled.”
Sarai sat up. “What do you mean? What’s going to happen?”
A look of surprise came over the handmaid’s face. With a knowing, suggestive smile, she placed her soft palms around Sarai’s breasts. “What do you suppose is going to happen? What do men usually do when a woman dazzles them? Pharaoh’s no different. We’re going to dress you, perfume you, make you up, adorn you with jewels, and send you to Merikarê, the god of the Double Kingdom.”
Sarai gripped Hagar’s wrists, as much embarrassed by her caresses as she was alarmed by her words. “And then?”
“Then, you are neither a handmaid nor a slave. If he thinks you’re really the most beautiful of women, which he’s sure to do, and if you give him as much pleasure in his bed as he imagines you will, he’ll take you as his wife.”
SARAI advanced along the terrace, which was crowded with men and women in the balmy light of evening. They all wore makeup, and sported jewels and ornaments, and their wrists and necks glittered with gold.
The terrace led into a huge hall. Between the columns separating the inside from the outside, young men played solemn but constantly changing music on instruments that consisted of two lengths of wood curved like a bull’s horns, with strings stretched between them.
All faces turned toward her. A gong sounded, and the music ceased. And nothing happened as Sarai had been expecting.
With each step she took, the folds of her toga danced against her hips and thighs. The diadem of bronze and calcite holding her hair in place weighed on the back of her neck. A long necklace of lapis lazuli swayed on her chest, hollowing the cloth between her breasts and revealing their form. Her makeup emphasized the incredible charm of her face. Earlier, she had caught Hagar’s look of surprise and admiration when she had traced a line of kohl around her eyes.
She knew she was beautiful. And she knew how powerful that beauty could be.
Powerful enough perhaps to confront Pharaoh. To stand before him and have the courage to confess to him, before anything irreparable happened, that because of Abram’s fear they had both lied to him.
The courtiers stepped aside to let her pass, looking her over greedily and making whispered comments as they did so. There, sitting on a large seat covered in lion skin and with sculpted armrests shaped like ram’s heads, was Pharaoh. Merikarê, eleventh god-king of the Double Kingdom.
The first thing that surprised Sarai was that he was bare-chested—he wore only a transparent veil over his shoulders—and very thin. Although he had fine skin, his face was like a mask. A curious gold cone hung beneath his chin. His features were delicate and regular, his cheeks perfectly smooth. His lips were highlighted with a red unguent, his eyes and eyelids were coated with kohl, and the line of his eyebrows was extended by a line of night-blue makeup. On his head, putting the finishing touch to his unreal appearance, he wore a headdress made of cloth with a gold stripe, gauze, and leather. Two giants with skins as black as night stood behind his seat, wearing helmets shaped like suns.
Abram stood among the courtiers, dressed in a purple tunic she had never seen before. She tried to attract his attention, but he avoided her gaze.
As Hagar had advised her, she went right up to Pharaoh. They stared at each other, each as motionless as the other.
That was her second surprise: She detected neither emotion nor pleasure in Merikarê’s masklike face. He examined every inch of her—first of her face, then of her body—without showing any sign of the astonishment or the desire she usually aroused in men.
Disconcerted, Sarai lowered her eyes, not daring to speak the words she had been ready to say. The anxious thought came to her that her beauty had somehow diminished, become tarnished, and that everyone in the hall was aware of it.
“Your sister is as beautiful as I had been told she was, Abram of Salem,” Pharaoh declared, in a soft, light voice with a strong accent. “Very beautiful indeed.”
Sarai looked up again, relieved, ready to express her gratitude, only to find that Pharaoh was no longer looking at her, but at Abram.
“I’m flattered and surprised, Pharaoh,” Abram said, “that you know so much about us. I know so little about you and your country.”
“I can tell you how I learn things that happen out of my sight. The merchants come and go, they listen and they see. And if they don’t tell Pharaoh’s officers what they’ve seen, they lose their merchandise. Simple, isn’t it? So, I know you believe in one invisible god.”
“That’s true.”
Sarai listened to this chatter, increasingly angry. Was that the extent of the impression she had made on Pharaoh?
“If your god is invisible and has no appearance,” she heard him ask Abram, “how do you know he exists? How do you know if he likes you or not?”
“He speaks to me. He directs my actions and guides my steps by speaking to me. His word is his presence.”
The whole court, except perhaps for some of the women, had eyes only for Merikarê and Abram, as they exchanged their learned questions and answers. Sarai tried to brush aside her annoyance. Wasn’t it fortunate, after all, that her beauty did not dazzle Pharaoh? Abram had been right to pass her off as his sister after all. Despite what the handmaid Hagar had said, Pharaoh did not even desire her, let alone want to make her his wife.
The thought should have satisfied and reassured her. But it didn’t.
Her cheeks burned with a resentment she could not suppress. She pursed her lips in anger. Anger with Abram, anger with Pharaoh! Anger at their insulting indifference, anger at their eagerness to cross swords and impress each other and everyone else with the brilliance of their ideas.
Pharaoh furrowed his elegant brows, breaking the masklike austerity of his face.
“No body or mouth?” he asked in astonishment, his voice both suspicious and incredulous.
“He has no need of them. His word is sufficient presence,” Abram replied, in a mellow tone, calm and amiable.
Abram sure of himself and without fear. Not even fear that Pharaoh might spurn the beauty of his wife who was now his sister! And now Pharaoh was standing up, leaving his royal seat, brushing against Sarai like a forgotten shadow, and going right up to Abram, who was a whole head taller than him.
“So your god created the world?”
“Yes.”
“All worlds? The world of darkness and the world of light, the world of evil and the world of good, the world of the dead and the world of the unborn?”
“All worlds.”
“Ah . . . And how?”
“By His will.”
Sarai, in her humiliation, did not dare confront the eyes of the courtiers. She was about to withdraw, disappear, flee to some other part of the palace. But at that moment Pharaoh turned, and looked her up and down, with a more intrigued expression. His irises were tinged with green and bronze specks, his full lips curled mockingly. His muscles rippled, forming moving shadows on his bare chest with its dark nipples. Despite her anger, Sarai found him handsome, attractive, although strangely inhuman.
“How can a world be created by will alone? It must be engendered, given birth. How can a lone god accomplish what can only come from copulation? I think you’re wrong, Abram. Our scholars have thought long and hard about these matters. According to them, Atoum came into existence by himself. Splendid, dazzling, but incomplete without a woman to give birth. So he masturbated and cast his seed into the void. From it was born Chou, the air you breathe. Atoum took his penis in his hand again, and created Tphenis, the humidity of the world. Only then, from Chou and Tphenis, were born Geb, the earth that sustains our steps, and Nout, the sky that sustains our gaze. And today I, Merikarê, use my will. But only to choose where I deposit my seed and engender life.”
He smiled. All around, the courtiers laughed and clapped. Still smiling, Pharaoh raised his right hand to demand silence. He tipped his hand like the point of a spear toward Abram.
“I like you, Abram. A man whose god only reveals himself through words cannot be a barbarian. My father, Akhtoés the Third, also knew the power of words. He made a scroll for me with his teaching. On the scroll it is said, ‘Be an artist in words to attain victory, the tongue is the sword of the king. The word is mightier than any weapon, and words are superior to all battles.’”
A murmur of approval went through the hall. Pharaoh went back to his seat. But this time, as he passed Sarai, he startled her by taking her hand in his thin, hard fingers and drawing her close to the royal seat before letting go of her.
Pharaoh’s voice rang out, imperiously. “Music, entertainment, and food!”
THERE was enough food to feed an entire people. There were female singers with plaintive voices and supple, lascivious hips, and dancers who swayed and whirled, twisting their spines into the shapes of wheels or tops. There were magicians turning rods into snakes by throwing them to the floor, releasing horrible spiders into the air, pulling doves from between the breasts of the ladies of the court, lighting fires in basins of pure water, bending the blades of daggers with a mere look.
Pharaoh ate little, enjoyed himself abstractedly, and continued talking to Abram about his god, the cities of Akkad and Sumer, wars, the land of Canaan. But while he ate, enjoyed himself, and talked, he rarely took his eyes off Sarai, although he did not address her until Abram said that she knew how to write in the Sumerian manner.
He ordered fresh clay to be brought, along with some of the styli his scribes used for writing on papyrus. Carefully, Sarai inscribed several words, making little conical strokes that crossed and recrossed.
Pharaoh pointed to a star shape. “What does that mean?”
“The god-king.”
“And that?”
“Shu, hand.”
“What does your sentence say?”
“‘The god-king with strong, gentle h
ands.’”
Pharaoh barely smiled. With the tips of his fingers, he touched the raised words on the tablet lightly, and printed his mark below them. Then he stroked the back of Sarai’s hand with those same fingers, and she felt the damp coolness of the clay on her skin.
“Can you dance as well as you can write?” Pharaoh asked.
Sarai hesitated. She glanced at Abram, but he was turned away from her, conversing with a courtier. So, without a word, she stood up. A gong resounded, and the music came to an abupt halt. The dancers stopped and moved aside to make space for her. The courtiers ceased their hubbub to look at her. Abram, too, turned now to stare at her.
She stood facing Pharaoh, and raised her arms to shoulder height. Gently, her hips began to sway. She bent her arms, one hand below her face, the other above it. She slid forward and stamped her foot. She moved to the side and stamped again. The musicians picked up the rhythm of her steps and began plucking the strings of their harps in time to her dance. The sounds of a flute and an oboe rose, undulating like Sarai’s hips.
She closed her eyes, unconsciously becoming intoxicated with her own grace, carried away by the joy of taking Pharaoh by surprise and making herself irresistible to him. She had not forgotten the dance of the bull. Her body bent and swayed, offering itself with the same entrancing suggestiveness that had once aroused the beast. Now it was Pharaoh’s heart she was inflaming.
She knew she had succeeded when she clapped one last time and came to a halt, her chest panting, and nothing moved in the hall. Pharaoh rose and approached her. The pupils of his eyes had grown bigger, more vibrant. She thought he was going to touch her, but he turned to Abram.
“Abram,” he said, his voice no longer as light, “I grant you land for your flock and grain for your people until the pastures of Canaan become green again. Tomorrow, Tsout-Phenath will take you back to your people. Your sister stays with me. Perhaps she will be my land and my grain.”
