Sarah (24 page)

ABRAM had guessed correctly.

They reached the outskirts of Midgol, a town of low white houses, without incident. It was clear to everyone that Lot had not lied. The inhabitants smiled when they saw them. Men with smooth cheeks greeted them with incomprehensible words in a slippery, sinuous language that sounded like flowing water.

There was water everywhere. Midgol stood very close to one of the branches of the Nile. The gardens, the pastures, and the groves of palms and orange trees were surrounded by well-maintained canals. They were allowed to water their animals there. Abram thanked them and presented them with a pair of turtledoves. Everyone laughed. They talked to one another with signs, grunts, and handclaps.

“Now let's go to the river,” Abram declared, once the flocks had been watered. “We may find fallow land there where the animals can graze.”

The road leading into the land of Pharaoh was broad and shaded by tall palm trees. Abram walked in front, vigilant. Behind him, Lot and his young companions preceded the main part of the column. As Abram had ordered, the wives and children were standing in the wagons, surrounded by the animals, which had been brought together into a single flock.

Men and women working in the fields gathered at the side of the road to watch them pass. At the sight of all these bearded men, the children rubbed their cheeks and laughed.

Suddenly, the road opened out onto the river, which was straddled by a big wooden bridge. The bridge itself and both banks were covered with Pharaoh's soldiers.

Two or three hundred of them. Perhaps more.

They stood in serried ranks, shield touching shield, so close together that a rat could not have squeezed between them.

Young, clean-shaven men in loincloths, their shoulders covered with very short capes. They wore no helmets, and their hair was thick, black, and shiny. Some carried spears and round shields, others bows, with brass daggers or stone maces at the belts of their loincloths.

Abram stopped and raised his staff. Lot and the others surrounded him. Farther back, men gave the call to halt the flock and the mules. The noise of the big wagon wheels ceased.

The soldiers moved forward in two columns, their spears raised, and surrounded Abram and the head of the flock. Those who had been on the other bank now occupied the bridge.

Three men holding gilded staffs approached Abram. There were bronze leaves sewn on their leather capes, and their forearms were covered with thick brass bracelets. They, too, were clean-shaven, but their cheeks were creased with age. Of the three, only one wore anything on his head: a kind of tall leather helmet, like a folded veil, with a little bronze ram's head fixed above the forehead. His eyes came to rest without hesitation on Abram.

“My name is Tsout-Phenath. I serve the living god Merikarê, Pharaoh of the Double Kingdom.”

Surprisingly, they understood him perfectly. He spoke the Amorite language almost without an accent. His light-brown, expressionless eyes moved from Abram to Lot and the others, then returned to Abram.

“Do you know you have entered the lands of Pharaoh?” he asked.

“I know. I've come to ask for his help. My name is Abram. Drought has chased me from the land of Canaan, where I was living with my people. There is famine there. The earth is dry and cracked and everything is dying. All I ask of Pharaoh is some grassland so that our flocks can be replenished and my people no longer have to weep over the deaths of their children.”

Pharaoh's officer remained still for a moment, his eyes narrowed, his lips curled with doubt. Perhaps he was taking his time in order to instill even more fear into them. Or perhaps he was simply trying to understand Abram's words. In the silence, the anxious bleating of the animals could be heard, and the scraping of clogs, but not a word was spoken.

Then, all at once, without moving, the officer gave orders in his own language. Soldiers advanced along the column until they reached the wagons. They pushed the animals aside, causing the whole flock to became agitated. Lot made as if to stop them.

“No!” Abram said. “Don't move.”

The second of the three officers, who had been silent until now, shouted something. Another group of soldiers pushed back Lot and his companions. A dagger prodding his ribs, Abram was forced to the side of the road. At the rear of the column, the soldiers made the women get down from the wagons. It took a long time. The man named Tsout-Phenath gave another order, and the third officer joined the soldiers.

Time passed. Tsout-Phenath stood impassively, waiting.

“What are you doing?” Lot asked, unable to stand it any longer.

Tsout-Phenath did not even deign to glance at him.

“They're only following Pharaoh's orders,” Abram said. “Stay calm. There's nothing to fear.”

This time, Tsout-Phenath turned to Abram, looked at him closely, then nodded and half smiled.

Now the soldiers were returning, pushing a group of women—the youngest and prettiest—in front of them.

When they came to a halt, Tsout-Phenath gestured the soldiers to move aside. He stepped forward, and examined each woman's face in turn, sometimes lifting their veils with his gilded staff. When he reached Sarai, he stopped. She stood there with downcast eyes. He spent so long contemplating her that she finally looked up, confronting his gaze with a severe expression.

Tsout-Phenath nodded. “What's your name?” he asked.

“Sarai.”

He gave a sign of approval, as if the name pleased him, and said a few words in his own language. The other officers came forward and surrounded Sarai, separating her from the other women.

“Pharaoh wants to see you,” Tsout-Phenath said, turning to Abram. “You and this wife of yours, whose name is Sarai.”

“She isn't my wife,” Abram replied, without batting an eyelid. “She's my sister.”

Tsout-Phenath stopped dead, surprised. “Your sister? We were told you were coming with your wife, the most beautiful woman ever seen among you in the land beyond the desert, near the city of Salem. Looking at this woman whose name is Sarai, I don't see how you could have a wife more beautiful than this.”

“How do you know we've come from Salem?” Lot cried, unable to contain his anger.

Tsout-Phenath gave an arrogant laugh. “Pharaoh knows everything.” He approached Sarai. “Is this true? Are you the sister of the man named Abram?”

“Yes,” she said, without hesitation.

Tsout-Phenath considered her a moment longer. His look was so sharp, so insistent, that Sarai had the impression that her tunic no longer covered her. He finally turned back to Abram.

“We're going to take one of your mule carts. Pharaoh wants to see that, too. So your sister won't have to walk. Appoint a chief for the others while you're away. We'll take them somewhere where they can pitch their tents and your flock can graze while Pharaoh decides what do with all of you.”

Land and Grain

D
raped in a green toga, a necklace of red stones hanging between her breasts, the woman advancing toward Sarai had dark skin and teeth as white as milk. Her beauty seemed to echo Sarai's own. She gave a deep bow.

“My name is Hagar. As long as you are within these walls, consider me your handmaid.”

She stood up again and clapped her hands, and ten young girls appeared, carrying linen, goblets of scents, pots of unguent, combs, and caskets.

“Your journey must have been long and tiring,” Hagar said. “We've prepared a bath for you. Follow me . . .”

She was already turning her back and leaving the terrace. Sarai followed her, docile and powerless, with the young girls at her heels.

The journey had indeed been long and tiring. They had had to cross six branches of the Nile and plunge deep into the rich lands of Egypt before reaching Pharaoh's palace in Neni-Nepsou. Separated from Abram, Sarai had spent the whole journey imagining Pharaoh's ferocity and the humiliations that she—who was now Abram's sister—was going to have to endure.

Throughout the journey, in fact, her resentment toward Abram had continued to grow. She may have accepted his decision, but now, with Pharaoh's officer Tsout-Phenath never letting her out of his sight, she felt alone, abandoned, and under threat.

But her anger and fear faded as soon as she saw the walls of Neni-Nepsou. Everything here was splendor, opulence, and sweetness. The palace was vast but elegant. Purple flowers cascaded from the top of its dazzling white walls. There were many gorgeous terraces and colonnades, some of stone, some of painted and gilded wood, linked by countless staircases.

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.