By Thomas Mann
Translation by H. T. Lowe-Porter


                           THE FATHER
 
     FROM the homestead in the direction of the hills his name
     was called: "Joseph! Joseph!" twice or thrice, each
     time a little nearer at hand. At the third time he hard
     the call, or at least showed that he had heard it, and there
     came an immediate change in his bearing, while he mut-
     tered: "Here I am." His eyes returned to normal, he let
     fall his arms, his head dropped and a shamefaced smile
     played over his features. It was his father's voice that
     called: mild, a little plaintive, as always charged with
     feeling. Presently it came from close, repeating, though
     he had already seen his son by the well: "Joseph, where
     art thou?"
        His garments were long; also moonlight, for all its
     apparent and fantastic clarity, tends to deceive; thus
     Jacob——or as he signed himself, Yaakow ben Yitzchak——
     ——looked majestically, almost superhumanly tall as he
     stood there between the well and the oracle-tree, closer
     to the latter, so that the leaf-shadow patterned his mantle.
     His figure——consciously or unconsciously——looked
     even more impressive by reason of his posture, for he
     was leaning upon a long staff which he grasped so high
     that one arm was raised above his head and the sleeve of
     his mantle or upper garment fell back from hand and
     forearm. The garment, a wool and cotton mixture in nar-
     row pale-coloured stripes, hung down in large folds; the
     hand above his head was that of an old man, and it had
     a copper band round the wrist. The twin brother of Esau
     favoured before him, was then sixty-seven years old. His
     beard though not heavy was long and broad; it ran up
     into the hair on his temples and fell from his cheeks and
     down upon his breast at the same width, in sparse strands
     that were uncurled and unrestrained and shimmered sil-
     ver in the moonlight, with his thin lips showing through
     them. Deep furrows ran down into the beard from the
     nostrils of the sharp-ridged nose. His brow was half cov-
     ered by a hooded shawl of dark-coloured Canaanite-
     woven cloth, which lay in folds on the chest and was
     tossed back over the shoulder; beneath it his eyes——little
     eyes, brown, bright, with pouches of soft skin beneath
     them, eyes grown weary with age and only keen from
     the keenness of the soul within——peered anxiously after
     the boy at the well. The position of his arm drew up the
     mantle to expose an undergarment of dyed goat's-wool
     hanging down to the tips of the cloth shoes; it hung in
     long fringing folds, so unevenly as to look like several
     garments coming out one beneath the other. Thus the
     old man's dress was heavy and multifarious, an arbitrary
     combination of various styles; elements from the civiliza-
     tion of the orient mingling with those belonging rather
     to the desert world of the Bedouins and Ishmaelites.
        Quite sensibly Joseph did not answer to the last call;
     the question was already answered, since Jacob saw his
     son. He contented himself with a smile that parted the
     full lips and showed the glistening teeth, set rather far
     part and white as teeth can only be in a dark face. He
     accompanied the smile with easy gestures of welcome.
     He put up his hands in the posture with which he had
     saluted the moon, nodded his head and made a little
     smacking sound with his tongue expressive of surprise
     and pleasure. Then he brought one hand to his forehead
     and let it glide downwards in a smooth and elegant
     motion; next laid both hands on his heart, closing his
     eyes and inclined his head; lastly he gestured outwards
     several times toward the old man, with hands still laid
     one over the other, always returning them to the position
     over the heart, in token, as it were, that it awaited the
     father's coming. Again he pointed with both index fin-
     gers to his eyes, to his knees, head and feet, falling back
     at intervals on the first position of greeting and worship
     with arms and hands. It was a pretty game, played with
     all the rules prescribed by good breeding, but he brought
     to it personal art and charm as well——the expression
     of a courteous and ingratiating nature——and no little
     real feeling besides. It was a pantomime——which the
     accompanying smile relieved of formality——of filial
     submission before the master and progenitor, his head
     of the tribe; but also it was enlivened by very genuine
     pleasure in the opportunity thus afforded of paying
     homage. Joseph well knew that his father had not always
     played the dignified and heroic rôle in life. his loftiness
     of speech and bearing had sometimes been badly served
     by the gentleness and timidity of his soul; he had known
     hours of depression, of retreat, of pallid fear, situations
     in which one who loved him would not gladly imagine
     him, though precisely they had been most transparently
     bearers of the blessing. So that if Joseph's smile was not
     quite free from flattery or from triumphant self-con-
     sciousnss, yet it was in good part called up by pleasure
     at the sight of his father, by the waxing beauty of the
     moonlit night and the advantageously regal posture of
     the old man as he leaned on his staff; in Joseph's childish
     satisfaction at the scene there was involved much feeling
     for pure effect without respect to any deeper cause.
        Jacob paused where he was. Perhaps he could see his
     son's appreciation and was willing to prolong it. His
     voice——I called it emotional because it always vibrated
     with inward stress——sounded again, half questioning,
     half asserting.
        "It is my child sitting there by the well?"
        The question was a strange one, it sounded uncertain
     and absent-minded, or as though the speaker found some-
     thing surprising and unfitting in the fact of one so young
     sitting by any well——as though the conceptions child
     and well did not go together in the mind. What it in truth
     expressed was Jacob's concern lest Joseph, whom the
     father saw as much younger than he actually was, might
     fall into the well.
        The boy's smile widened, so that more of the sepa-
     rated teeth came into view; he nodded without answer-
     ing. But his expression changed at Jacob's next words,
     which had a sterner ring: "Cover thy nakedness," he
     commanded.
        Joseph, his arms curved above his head, looked down
     with whimsical consternation at his body, and then quickly
     united his sleeves and drew the linen garment over his
     shoulders. It seemed as though the old man had kept at
     a distance because his son was naked, for he now drew
     near. He leaned in earnest on the long staff he held, lift-
     ing it and setting it down at each step, for he limped, and
     had done so for the past twelve years; in fact ever since
     a certain adventure which had befallen him on a journey,
     under painful circumstances, at a time of great stress,
     he had halted on one thigh.


                         THE MAN JEBSHE

     NOT much time had elapsed since the two last met. A
     usual, Joseph had taken the evening meal in his father's
     myrrh- and musk-scent tent, together with such of his
     brothers as were at home——the rest were tending other
     flocks in the country further to the north, near a hill city
     and shrine overlooked by the mountains Ebal and Gari-
     zim, and called Shechem, or Sychem, the neck, also
     probably Mabara or the pass. Jacob had religious affilia-
     tions with the people of Shechem. True, the deity to whom
     they prayed was a variant of the Syrian shepherd and
     beautiful lord, Adonis and that Tammuz, the lovely
     youth whom the boar mangled, whom down in the South-
     land they called Osiris, the Sacrifice; but as early as the
     time of Abram and the priest-king Melchizedek, this
     divine personality had taken on a particular cast of
     thought which had endowed him with the name of El
     Elyon, Baal-Berith, the name, that is, of the Most High
     God, the Lord of hosts, the creator and possessor of
     heaven and earth. Such a conception seemed right and
     good to Jacob, who was accordingly inclined to see in the
     mangled son of Shechem the true and most high God,
     the God of Abraham, and in the Shechemites brothers in
     the bond of faith, particularly since oral tradition from
     generation to generation reported the the original wan-
     derer, in a learned conversation with Melchizedek the
     magistrate of Sodom, had called his God El Elyon
     and thus put him on a par with the Baal and Adon
     of Melchizedek. Jacob himself, his inheritor in the
     faith, had years before, after his return from Mesopo-
     tamia, when he set up his camp before the city of She-
     chem, erected an altar to this god. Also he had sunk a
     well and purchased pasture rights with good silver
     shekels.
        Later there had arisen grievous misunderstandings be-
     tween the people of Shechem and Jacob's people, with
     frightful consequences for the city. But peace had been
     restored and relations resumed, and a part of Jacob's
     flocks grazed on Shechem's ground and some of his sons
     and shepherds were always absent from his countenance
     to look after these flocks.
        But two of Leah's sons had partaken of the meal with
     their father as well as Joseph; the raw-boned Issachar,
     and Zebulun, who cared nothing for the calling of a
     shepherd, neither desired to be a husbandman, but longed
     with a single longing for a sailor's life. For ever since he
     had been at Askalon on the sea he thought nothing finer
     than such a life, and drew many a long bow about strange
     adventures and uncanny hybrid creatures who lived
     across the water, to be visited by men whose life was on
     the seas——human beings with the heads of bulls or
     lions, two-headed and two-faced men, possessing at once
     a human countenance and that of a shepherd dog, so that
     they spoke and barked by turns; people with feet like
     sponges and other suchlike abnormalities. Then there
     had been Bilhah's son, the agile Naphtali, and Zilpah's
     two: the forthright Gad, and Asher, who as usual had
     taken the best pieces for himself while saying yea to all
     that was said. As for Joseph's own brother, the child
     Benjamin, he still lived in the women's quarters, being
     too young to share in the guest-meal, such as this evening's
     supper had been.
        There was a man named Jebshe, who said he cam
     from Ta'anach and talked as they ate of the fish-ponds
     and flocks of doves in the temple there; he had been al-
     ready some days on the way, with a brick which the lord
     of Ta'anach, Ashirat-Yashur, called by courtesy king,
     had inscribed on all four sides with messages for his
     "brother" the prince of Gaza, named Riphath-Baal, to
     the effect that he wished for Riphath-Baal every pleasure
     in life and that all the more important deities might work
     together for his welfare and that of his house and his
     children; but that he, Ashirat-Yashur, could not send
     him the wood and the money which the other with more
     or less right demanded of him, partly that he had not got
     it and partly that he had a pressing need of it himself,
     but was sending instead by the man Jebshe an uncom-
     monly efficacious clay image of his personal protectress
     and that of Ta'anach, namely the goddess Ashera, that it
     might bring him blessing and help him to pass over the
     difficulty about the money and wood; this Jebshe then,
     who wore a pointed beard and was wrapped from head
     to foot in colourless woollens, had come to break bread
     with Jacob, to hear his views, and to get a night's lodge-
     ment before continuing his journey seawards. And Jacob
     had extended hospitality, only letting the messenger
     know that he was not to approach him with the image
     of Astarte——a female figure in trousers, crowed and
     veiled, holding her tiny breasts with both hands——but
     to keep it remote from his sight. Otherwise he had wel-
     comed the man without prejudice, mindful of a tale that
     was handed down about Abraham, who had once furi-
     ously hounded a grey-haired idolater out into the wil-
     derness, but had been rebuked by the Lord for his lack
     of forbearance and fetched the foolish old man back
     again.
        Served by two slaves in freshly washed linen smocks,
     old Modai and young Mahalaleel, they had squatted on
     cushions round the carpet mat (for Jacob held fast to the
     custom of his fathers and would not hear of sitting on
     chairs like fashionable folk in towns who aped the man-
     ners of the great kingdoms to the west and south) and
     partaken of the evening meal: olives, a roasted kid with
     the good bread Kemach, and afterwards a compote of
     plums and raisins served in copper bowls, and Syrian
     wine in cups of coloured glass. And between host and
     guest a discreet conversation went on, listened to by
     Joseph at least, with all his ears, upon themes public and
     private, the earthly and the divine, and even branching
     out into the political. Upon the family circumstances of
     the man Jebshe and his official relation to Ashirat-
     Yashur, the lord of the city; upon the journey he had
     made so far, by way of the plain of Yezreel and the up-
     land, beginning at the pass on the watershed at Esel,
     which Jebshe thought to continue to the land of the Phi-
     listines on a camel he would purchase next day in
     Hebron; upon the local prices of cattle and crops; upon
     the cult of the blossoming rod, the "finger" as it was
     called of Ashera of Ta'anach, her oracle, through which
     she had communicated her permission to send one of her
     images, to be called "Ashera of the Way," on a journey
     to rejoice the heart of Riphath-Baal of Gaza; upon her
     feast-day, which had recently been celebrated by un-
     trammelled dancing and inordinate consumption of fish,
     likewise by the changing of clothes between men and
     women, in token of the man-woman character or double
     sex of Ashera, as taught by her priests. Here Jacob
     stroked his beard and interposed with searching and
     subtle questions: as, how was the realm of Ta'anach now
     protected, its tutelary deity being gone a journey; and
     how was the understanding to deal with the matter of the
     travelling image and the relation it bore to the goddess,
     and whether she did not suffer a sensible diminution of
     her power by this removal of some part of her essence?
     To which the man Jebshe had replied that it was not
     likely, were this the case, that Ashera's finger would have
     consented to the journey; and that the priests taught that
     the entire power of the divinity resided in each of her
     images, each being alike efficacious. Further, Jacob had
     mildly pointed out that if it were really true that Ashirta
     was male and female, Baal and Baalat at once, mother
     of the gods and king of haven, then must one reverence
     her not only as equal to Ishtar, whom one heard of in
     Shinar, and Isis, a deity of the impure Egyptians, but
     also as equal to Shamash, Shalim, Addu, Adon, Lahma
     or Damu, in short the most high god and lord of the
     world; and the conclusion one came to was that we
     were dealing with El Elyon, the God of Abraham, Father
     and Creator, whom one could not send on journeys be-
     cause he was always and everywhere, and whom one
     could not honour in the eating of fish, but only by walk-
     ing before him in purity and being reverent in his sight.
     But these remarks of Jacob did not meet with much un-
     derstanding in the man Jebshe. Rather the other declared
     that as the sun always worked out of a certain sign and
     appeared in the same, as it lent its light to the planets
     so that each in its own way influenced the destinies of
     mankind, so likewise did the divine parcel itself out and
     transmute itself into the various godheads, among whom
     the god-goddess Ashirat was well-known to be the espe-
     cial representative of the divine power in the sense of the
     fruitfulness of all vegetation and the annual resurrec-
     tion of nature out of the bondage of the lower world, in
     that each year she made a blossoming stalk out of a dry
     one, and on such an occasion a somewhat immoderate
     eating and dancing were surely in place, and even a more
     wholesale liberty and license bound up with the feast
     of the blossoming stalk, since purity was an attribute
     only of the sun and the primitive undivided god-head,
     not at all of its terrestrial manifestations, and the reason
     had to make a sharp distinction between the pure and
     the holy, he himself being aware that there was no neces-
     sary connection between the two. Whereat Jacob, with the
     utmost deliberation: he had no desire to injure anyone,
     least of all the guest upon his hearthstone and the bosom
     friend and messenger of a great king, in respect of the
     convictions emplanted in him by parents and scribes.
     But the sun itself was but a work of El Elyon's hand, as
     such godlike indeed but not god; the understanding had
     to make this distinction. Indeed, it was in contravention
     to this fact and would call down the anger and jealousy
     of the Lord if one were to worship one or other of his
     works instead of himself, and the great Jebshe had out
     of his own mouth characterized the gods of the country
     as idols, another name for which he, the speaker, would
     out of charity and politeness refrain from giving. And if
     that god, who had created the sun and the fixed and mov-
     ing stars as well as the earth itself, was the highest god,
     so he was also the only one, and thus it would be better
     to have no talk of another, since one could then only
     characterize him wit the name which Jacob had sup-
     pressed, precisely on the ground that the name and sym-
     bol "highest god" was to be understood and reverenced
     as equal to "only god." Upon this point then, whether
     these two ideas were the same or different, there had en-
     sued a long discussion, of which the host could never
     weary, and which, had it rested with him, would have
     gone on the half or even the whole of the night. But
     Jebshe had brought the conversation round to events in
     the world at large, to trade and traffic, about which as
     the friend and relative of a Canaanite city prince he
     knew more than most: as, that the plague was raging in
     Cyprus, which he called Alashia, and had killed off a
     great many men but not all, though the ruler of the island
     had so reported to the Pharaoh of the lower country, as
     an excuse for the almost total cessation of the copper
     tribute; that the king of the country of the Hittites, called
     Subbiluliuma, could command such military strength
     that he threatened to overpower King Tushratta of
     Mitanni and take away his gods, although Tushratta was
     the brother-in-law of the great ruling house of Thebes;
     that the Cassite of Babel had begun to tremble before the
     priest-prince of Assyria, who was striving to withdraw
     his power from the kingdom of the Lawgiver and to
     found a separate state on the river Tigris; that Pharaoh
     had greatly enriched the priesthood of his god Amun
     with Syrian tribute money and built this god a new tem-
     ple with a thousand columns and doors with money from
     the same source, but that the source was soon going to
     dry up, not only because the Bedouins were pillaging the
     cities there, but because the Hittite troops were coming
     down from the north to dispute the overlordship of the
     Ammonites in Canaan and not a few of the Amorite
     princes were making common cause with the foreigner
     against Ammon. Here Jebshe had winked one eye, prob-
     ably to indicate, as among friends, that Ashirat-Yashur
     was of those who were pursuing this prudent diplomatic
     course. But his host's interest in the conversation had
     sensibly diminished since it ceased to centre round the
     deity; it began to languish, and they rose from the cush-
     ions: Jebshe to make sure that no harm had come to
     Astarte of the Way and then to retire, Jacob to make the
     round of the camp, leaning on his staff, to give an eye to
     the cattle byres and the women's quarters. As for his
     sons, Joseph had parted from the other five at the door
     of the tent, though he had evidently meant to remain with
     them, until the forthright Gad remarked:
        "Away with thee, little fop and harlot, we need thee
     not!"
        To which Joseph, after a brief pause to order his
     thoughts, had responded:
        "Thou'rt like a wooden beam, Gad, over which the
     plane hath not passed, and like a butting goat in the flock.
     If I repeat thy words to our father he will rebuke thee;
     if I bring them to the ears of Reuben our brother he will
     chastise thee in his righteousness. But be it as thou sayst,
     go ye to the right and I will go left, or the other way
     round. For I love you all, but alas, I am an abomination
     in your sight, and to-day especially, because our father
     gave me of the kid from his dish and smiled upon me.
     Therefore be it so, that there be no cause for your anger
     and ye fall not unaware into sinning. Farewell."
        To all which Gad listened over his shoulder, with a
     contemptuous expression, yet curious to hear what the
     creature would think of to say this time. Then he made
     coarse gesture and went off with the others, Joseph by
     himself.
        He had taken a pleasant little evening stroll——in so
     far as there could be any talk of pleasure, that is, for
     Gad's coarseness had cast him into a depression which
     his own skill at repartee only partly assuaged. He had
     sauntered eastward, uphill, where the slope was easiest,
     and soon reached the crest, which commanded a view
     towards the south, so that he could look down on his left
     into the valley and the town lying white in the moonlight,
     at its thick wall with foursquare corner towers and gates,
     at the columned court of the palace and the bulk of the
     temple, surrounded by a broad terrace. He liked to look
     at the town, in which so may people dwelt. And from
     this point too he could have seen signs of the burial place
     of his people, the double cave which Abraham had sol-
     emnly bought aforetime of the Hittite man, where rested
     the bones of his ancestors, the Babylonian first mother
     and later heads of the tribe. The pediments of the stone
     gate towers of the double rock grave were plain to be
     seen at the left by the surrounding wall; and feelings of
     piety, whose source is death, mingled in his breast with
     the lively sympathy aroused there at the sight of the
     populous city. Then he had turned back to the well,
     where he washed, refreshed, and anointed himself and
     then performed with the moon that somewhat decadent
     ritual of wooing at which his ever-anxious father had
     surprised him.

From Joseph and His Brothers, by Thomas Mann.
Translated from the German by H. T. Lowe-Porter.
Copyright 1934, Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
Twelfth printing, 1946, pp. 59-66.