1997 - The Red Tent (38 page)

I reassured him with an embrace that earned us a loud hoot from the men in the workshop. “I will be home as soon as I can,” he said, kissing my hands. I nodded, too happy to say more.

Meryt was waiting with warm bread and beer when I returned to my house. But when she saw me, she cried, “What did they do to you, sister? You are skinny as a bone, and your eyes look as though you have wept a river.”

I told my friend about the fever and of Re-mose’s quarrel with his master. When my friend heard that he was posted to the north, her eyes filled in sympathy.

After we ate what Meryt had brought, she ordered me to the bed and massaged my feet. All the pain of the past weeks melted as she kneaded my toes and cradled my heels. After I was at peace and still, I asked her to sit by my side and I took her hand, still warm and moist with oil, and told her the rest of what had happened to me in Thebes, including how it came to pass that Zafenat Paneh-ah, the king’s right hand, was my brother Joseph.

Meryt listened in stillness, watching my face as I recounted my mothers’ history, and the story of Shechem and the murder of Shalem. My friend did not move or utter a sound, but her face revealed the workings of her heart, showing me horror, rage, sympathy, compassion. When I finished, she shook her head. “I see why you did not tell me this before,” she said sadly. “I wish I had been able to help you bear this burden from the very first. But now that you entrust your past to my keeping, it is safe. I know you need no oath from me, or else you would not have told me.

“Dear one,” she said, putting my hand to her cheek, “I am so honored to be the vessel into which you pour this story of pain and strength. For all these years, no daughter could have made me happier or more proud than you. Now that I know who you are and what life has cost you, I am in awe that I number you among my beloved.” After a comfortable silence, Meryt gathered her things and prepared to leave. “I will go to give you time to prepare for Benia’s arrival,” she said, taking my two hands in hers. “Blessings of Isis. Blessings of Hathor. Blessings of the mothers of your house.”

But before she walked out the door, my friend’s face regained its impish grin and with a friendly leer she said, “I will call upon you tomorrow. See if you can’t get off your back long enough between now and then to make me something to eat for a change, eh?”

Benia ran in soon after, and we fell upon the unmade bed like youthful lovers, breathless and hurried. Afterward, knotted in each other’s clothes, we slept the famished sleep of reunited lovers. I awoke once in the night, startled and smiling, hating to close my eyes upon the joy of being home.

After my return, I never fully lost my reverence for ordinary pleasures. I arose before Benia to study his face and breathed silent prayers of thanks. Walking to the water fountain or pulling weeds in the garden, I was overcome by the understanding that I had spent a whole day without the weight of the past crushing my heart, Birdsong brought me to tears, and every sunrise seemed a gift shaped for my eyes.

When the vizier’s messenger arrived at our door, as I knew he would someday, I froze with dread at the thought of leaving for so much as a day, but to my relief, the letter did not summon me to the great house on the east bank. Joseph’s dream had been fulfilled, and a second son was born to him. This one came so fast, however, that As-naat did not have time to send for me before the one called Efraem found his way into the world.

Even though I had rendered him no service, Zafenat Paneh-ah sent a gift of three lengths of snowy linen. When Benia asked me why the gift was so extravagant, I told him everything.

It was the third time I had given voice to the full story; first to Werenro, then to Meryt. But this time my heart did not pound nor my eyes fill as I told it. It was only a story from the distant past. After hearing me out, Benia took me in his arms to comfort me, and I nestled into the sheltering peace between Benia’s hands and his beating heart.

Benia was the rock upon which my life stood firm, and Meryt was my wellspring. But my friend was older than I by a generation, and age was taking its toll.

The last of her teeth had fallen from her mouth, for which she claimed herself grateful. “No more pain,” she chuckled. “No more meat, either,” she said, with a doleful shrug. But her daughter-in-law, Shif-re, chopped and mashed every dish, and my friend remained hearty and enjoyed her beer and her jokes as much as ever. She attended many births with me, taking delight in newborn smiles, weeping over the deaths that came our way. We shared countless meals, and I always left her table chuckling. We knew her days were numbered and kissed each other goodbye at every parting. Nothing between us was left unsaid.

The morning came when Kiya appeared at the door to say that Meryt could not rise from her bed. “I am here, dear one, sister,” I said when I arrived at her side, but my old friend could no longer give me greeting. She could not move at all. The right side of her face had collapsed, and her breathing was labored.

She returned the pressure of my fingers in her left hand and blinked at me. “Oh, sister,” I said, trying not to weep. She stirred, and I could see that even though she was nearing death, Meryt was trying to comfort me. That would not do. I looked into her eyes and managed a midwife’s smile. I knew my task.

“Fear not,” I whispered, “the time is coming. “Fear not, your bones are strong. “Fear not, good friend, help is nearby. “Fear not, Anubis is a gentle companion. “Fear not, the hands of the midwife are clever. “Fear not, the earth is beneath you. “Fear not, little mother. “Fear not, mother of us all.”

Meryt relaxed and closed her eyes, surrounded by sons and daughters, grandsons and granddaughters. She sighed one long sigh, the wind through reeds, and left us.

I joined with the women in the high-pitched keening death song that alerted the whole neighborhood to the passing of the beloved midwife, mother, and friend. Children burst into tears at the sound, and men rubbed their eyes with damp fists. I was heartbroken but comforted by one of Meryt’s last gifts to me, for at her deathbed I became one of her grieving family.

Indeed, I was treated as the oldest female relative and given the honor of washing her withered arms and legs. I swaddled her in Egypt’s finest linen, which was mine to give. I arranged her limbs in the crouch of a baby about to enter the world and sat with her through the night.

At dawn we carried her to rest in a cave on a hill overlooking the tombs of kings and queens. Her sons buried her with her necklaces and rings. Her daughters buried her with her spindle, her alabaster bowl, and other things she loved. But the midwife’s kit had no place in the next life, and it passed to the keeping of Shif-re, who held Meryt’s tools with reverence, as though they were made of gold.

We buried Meryt with songs and tears, and on the way home laughed in her honor, recalling her delight in surprises, jokes, food, and all the pleasures of the flesh. I hoped that she would continue her enjoyment of these in the life to come, which she believed to be much like this world, only deathless and eternal.

That night, I dreamed of Meryt and woke up laughing at something she said. The following night I dreamed of Bilhah, waking to tears on my cheeks that tasted of the spices my aunt used in her cooking. One night later, Zilpah greeted me and we flew through the night sky, a pair of she-hawks.

When the sun set again, I knew I would meet with Rachel in dreams. She was as beautiful as I remembered. We ran through a warm rain that washed me clean as a baby, and I woke up smelling as though I had bathed in well water.

Eagerly I awaited my dream of Leah, but she did not come the next night or the night after. Only at the dark of the new moon was I visited by the mother of my flesh. It was the first time my body failed to give the moon her due. I was past giving life, and my mother, who had borne so many children, came to comfort me.

“You are the old one now,” she said gently. “You are the grandmother, giving voice to wisdom. Honor to you,” my mother Leah said, touching her forehead to the ground before me, asking forgiveness. I lifted her up, and she turned into a swaddling baby. Holding her in my arms, I begged her pardon for ever doubting her love, and I felt her pardon in the fullness of my heart. I went to Meryt’s tomb the morning after Leah’s dream and poured out wine, thanking her for sending my mothers back to me.

With Meryt gone, I was the wise woman, the mother, grandmother, and even great-grandmother of those around me. Shif-re, a new grandmother, and Kiya, about to be married, attended me wherever I went to place the bricks. They learned what I had to teach, and soon went on their own to deliver women from the fear and loneliness of birth. My apprentices became sister and daughter. In them, I found new water in the well I thought would remain forever dry after my Meryt died.

Months passed and years. My days were busy, my nights peaceful. But there is no lasting peace before the grave, and one night, after Benia and I had gone to bed, Joseph appeared inside our door.

The sight of him there, clad in a long black cloak that turned him into a shadow, was so strange that I thought him part of a dream. But the edge in my husband’s voice woke me to the moment, suddenly dark and dangerous.

“Who comes into my house without knocking?” he growled, like a dog sensing danger, for this was clearly no distraught father in search of the midwife.

“It is Joseph,” I whispered.

I lit lamps and Benia offered my brother the best chair. But Joseph insisted on following me back to the kitchen, where I poured him a cup of beer, which sat untouched.

The silence was thick and stiff. Benia’s hands were clenched, for he was fearful that I was about to be taken from him; his jaw was locked, for he was unsure how to speak to the noble perched on a stool in his kitchen. Joseph sent me glances full of unspoken urgency, for he was unwilling to speak in front of Benia. I looked from one face to the other and realized how old we had grown.

Finally I told Joseph, “Benia is your brother now. Say what it is you came to say.”

“It’s Daddy,” he said, using a baby word that I had not heard since Canaan. “He is dying and we must go to him.”

Benia snorted in disgust.

“How dare you?” Joseph said, jumping to his feet and putting his hand on the dagger at his side.

“How dare you?” Benia replied with equal passion, stepping closer. “Why should my wife weep by the bedside of a father who murdered her happiness and his own honor? A father who sent you to the long knives of men known for their ruthlessness?”

“You know the story then,” said Joseph, suddenly defeated. He sat down and put his head in his hands and groaned.

“They sent me word from the north where my brothers and their sons tend the flocks of Egypt. Judah says that our father will not live out the season, and that Jacob wishes to give my sons his blessing.

“I do not wish to go,” Joseph said, looking at me as though I had some answer for him. “I thought I had finished with my duty there. I thought I had even forgiven my father, though not without exacting a price.

“When they came to my house starving and seeking refuge, I twisted the knife. I accused them of theft and forced them to grovel before the mighty Zafenat Paneh-ah. I watched Levi and Simon put their foreheads to the ground at my feet and tremble. I gloated and sent them back to Jacob, demanding Benjamin be sent. I punished our father for choosing favorites. I punished my brothers, too, and kept them in fear of their lives.

“Now the old man wishes to place his hands on the heads of my boys, to choose them for his blessing. Not the sons of Reuben or Judah, who have supported him all these years and borne his moods and whims. Not even the sons of Benjamin, the last-born.

“I know Jacob’s heart. He wishes to atone for the wrongs of the past by blessing my sons. But I fear for them with such a birthright. They will inherit tormenting memories and strange dreams. They will come to hate my name.”

Joseph railed on as Benia and I listened. The hurts of the past clung to him, caught in the folds of his long dark cloak. He flailed around like a drowning lamb.

As he talked about fat years and lean years, about loneliness and sleepless nights, about how life had treated him so cruelly, I searched for the brother I remembered, the playfellow who listened to the words of women with respect and who once looked at me as his friend. But I saw nothing of that boy in the self-absorbed man before me, whose mood and voice seemed to change from moment to unhappy moment.

“I am a weakling,” said Joseph. “My anger has not abated and I have no pity in my heart for Jacob, who has become blind, like his father before him. And yet I cannot say no to him.”

“Messages get lost,” I said softly. “Messengers are sometimes waylaid.”

“No,” Joseph said. “That lie would finally kill me. If I do not go, he will haunt me forever. I will go and you will come with me,” said Joseph, suddenly shrill, a man accustomed to power.

I did not try to hide my disgust at his tone, and when he saw my contempt he dropped his head in shame. And then my brother bowed down with his forehead on the dirt floor of a carpenter’s kitchen and apologized to me, and to Benia, too.

“Forgive me, sister. Forgive me, brother. I do not wish to see my father dying. I do not wish to see him at all. And yet, I cannot disobey. It is true that I can force you to go with me, and for no other reason than to hold my hand. But you will prosper in this, too.”

He stood and resumed the demeanor of Zafenat Paneh-ah. “You will be my guests,” he said smoothly. “The master carpenter will do business on behalf of the king. I go to purchase timber in the north, and I require the services of an artist who knows how to select the finest wood. You will go to the marketplace of Memphis and see olive, oak, and pine in abundance, choosing only what belongs in the king’s house and tomb. You will bring honor to your- profession and to your own name.”

His words were seductive, but Benia looked only at me.

Then Joseph brought his face close to mine and gently said, “Ahatti, this is your last chance to see the fruits of your mothers’ wombs, their grandsons and granddaughters. For those are not only the children of Jacob; they are also the children of Leah, Rachel, Zilpah, and Bilhah.