I
The days of the floods were approaching.
The black, parched, withered earth, deathlike and terrible was aching under the terrible sun; the waters of the Nile barely covered its slimy bed. Men, animals, and plants were perishing with the heat. Had the heat lasted, everything, it seemed, would have been burnt up as with the fire of a conflagration or of the Sheheb.
But at the exact day, at the exact hour, God's miracle took place: Mother Isis wept over her dead son—the dried-up Nile; her tear—the star Sirius, the forerunner of the sun—fell into it and the ram-headed Khnum unsealed the springs of water.
Frogs croaked joyfully; herons paced about the black mud as though measuring the earth like the wise god Tot, the Measurer; the clerks of the Water Department measured the height of the water from the Waterfalls to the Delta by the marks on the stone walls of the measuring wells, while simple folk did it by the crocodile eggs and ant-heaps: the water never rose above these. Twelve cubits meant the ruin, sixteen cubits the salvation of Egypt.
At that time Merira went to Nut-Amon, Thebes, to see Ptamose who was at death's door and implored him not to delay. But even when Merira had arrived in Thebes he kept putting off the meeting, as though he feared it.
He, too, was ill; he could not sleep at night and in the daytime he wandered about the town, not knowing what to do with himself. A grimace of disgust was constantly upon his face as though he smelt an evil stench. This was one of the curious torments of his illness: he was everywhere pursued by bad smells—of dead rats as in a granary, of bats as in the burials caves, or of rotten fish as on the banks of the Nile where fish is cleaned, salted and dried in the sun. No perfumes were of any use: they only made the stench worse.
Some three days after his arrival he was sitting by the eastern gates of the Apet-Oisit enclosure, among the ruins of the tomb-sanctuary of King Tutmose the Third.
The sun was in the zenith: its rays came down straight almost without casting any shadow. The dreadful light poured down like molten tin. Merira sat in the narrow shadow cast by the crown of the giant pillar that had fallen—the double head of the Heifer-Hather. The shadow at his feet diminished so rapidly that one could almost see it: only a minute before he had been all in the shadow and now the sun was burning his feet. He saw a scorpion running in the dusty grass but he did not stir, he seemed spellbound. There was a dull pain in his left temple, as though a fishbone had pierced the eyeball. He felt rather sick, and there was a taste of death in his mouth.
Black dots like flies, swam about in the air, that quivered with the heat, and turning into transparent glassy maggots melted away. One of them began to grow and became an ancient Sphinx, with the face of Akhnaton; if a man had suffered for a thousand years in hell and then came to earth again he would have a face like that. He slowly swam past and melted away, then came back again, turned thick and heavy and stood on all fours; his hind legs were those of a lion but the front were human arms. He ran along making a hideous clatter with his claws.
As though breaking with a terrible effort invisible bonds on his arms and legs, Merira regained consciousness, got up and walked away.
By the same subterranean passages which Dio had trodden, he descended into the large, low-pitched sepulchral chamber, or sanctuary, supported by low quadrangular columns. A couch stood in the middle; a corpse lay upon it.
The vaulted niche in the wall where once Amon's great Ram had lain on a couch of purple in the brilliant light of sanctuary lamps, was dark and empty: the animal had just died and its body was being embalmed.
Merira told the two priests who were in the room to go out, and, approaching the couch with the dead man upon it, knelt down, bending towards him. The dead man opened his young, living, immortal eyes; his lips whispered with the rustle of dry leaves:
"Is it you, Merira?"
"Yes."
"Blessed be the True, the Only God! I have waited seven years for you, my son, I knew that you would come—that I would not die without seeing you. Why did you tarry so long? Did you think I would not forgive you? I will forgive everything. Well, tell me, are you with him or with me?"
"Oh, if I only knew, if I only knew, father! This is why I have suffered so for seven years—because I don't know on whose side I am. Perhaps I am neither with you nor with him."
"There is no middle course."
"To an honest man there is not, but to a vile one anything is possible. For seven years I have done nothing but deceive myself and others. Don't torment me, father, don't ask me, decide yourself on whose side I am!"
"If I do you will not believe me. Do you remember your oath?"
"What are oaths to me? I have broken them long ago."
"No, you wanted to break them but you could not. You know yourself, there is no room for both of you in the world, it is either you or he. If you don't kill him, you will kill yourself."
"Yes, perhaps I will. Or, first him and then myself.... Can one kill the man one loves, father?"
"Yes. To kill the body in order to save the soul."
"Well, that is how it will be with me, or perhaps it will be different: I will kill him not out of love but out of envy. A beggar envies a rich man, a scoundrel envies a noble one, the dead envy the living. Set killed Osiris, his brother, from envy. And how can I help envying him? He is—and I am not: he is alive and I am dead He kills me, he destroys me for ever and ever!"
"Why have you not come before? What have you been doing with him?"
"What have I been doing? I thought I should get the better of him, deceive him, catch him in my net, but instead...."
He broke off and asked, with a wry smile:
"Was it good, father, that Set killed Osiris?"
"Why do you ask? You know yourself: they, the blind puppies, think it was not good. Osiris is life and Set is death for men, but for us, the wise ones, this is not so. The Tormented one torments, the Slain one slays, the Destroyed one destroys the world. Osiris-Amenti is the eternal West, the sun of the dead, the end of the world: he will rise over the world and the sun of the living will be extinguished; the god with an unbeating heart will conquer the world and the heart of the world will cease to beat. He is merciful and he ensnares the world with his mercy as a bird-catcher ensnares a bird. He says 'everlasting life' and, behold, there is everlasting death. Set and Osiris have been struggling since the beginning of the world, but the world does not yet know which of the two shall conquer."
"You speak almost exactly as he does, father! the tiniest hairbreadth divides you from him...."
"Yes, there is only a hairbreadth difference between truth and falsehood. Do you know the secret? The first Osiris has been, the second is to come; this man is but a shadow cast by Him; this one has spoken but the One to come will act."
"What will He do?"
"Destroy the world."
"Or perhaps the world will perish for His sake and be happy in doing so?"
"And will you be happy, too?"
"Perhaps I, also."
"Do you love Him, then?"
"I do. How can one help loving Him? He is more beautiful than all the sons of man. The devil knew well how to tempt man. I love His shadow, too, King Akhnaton; I love and hate him at the same time. And he knows it—he knows I want to kill him...."
Without speaking Ptamose took a ring off his finger and put it on Merira's.
King Tutmose the Third, King Akhnaton's great-great-grandfather, gave this ring to Hatuseneb, the high priest of Amon. A tiny cup of poison was concealed under the fiery yellow carbuncle—'Amon's eye.' On his deathbed the king commanded that if any king of Egypt were false to Amon he was to be killed with that poison.
"My spirit be upon you, my son, and the Spirit of the Secret One!" Ptamose said, laying his hands on Merira's head. "Henceforth, you, Merira, son of Nehtaneb, are the High Priest of Amon. Woe to thy enemies, O Lord! Their dwelling-place is in darkness but the rest of the earth in thy light: the sun of them that hate thee is darkened, the sun of them that love thee is rising!"
He ceased speaking, closed his eyes, and for a few minutes lay without moving. Suddenly a faint tremor passed over his body. He heaved a deep, deep sigh; his chest rose, then sank and did not rise again. But there was no change in his face.
Merira watched him for some time, unable to tell whether he were alive or dead. He took his hand—it was cold; he felt his heart—it did not beat.
He called the priests and said:
"The great seer—Urma, the prophet of all the gods of the south and the north, the high priest of Amon, Ptamose, has ascended to the gods!"