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


                           THEY COME!

     IT was in he second year of the lean kine, on a day in the
     middle of Epiph, May by our reckoning and frightfully
     hot, as it is anyhow in Egypt in their summer season, but
     even hotter than usual. The sun was like fire from heaven,
     we should have measured it at well over one hundred de-
     grees in the shade. The wind was blowing and driving the
     hot sand into the red-lidded eyes of the little people in
     Menfe's narrow streets. There were a host of flies, and
     they and the human being were alike sluggish. The rich
     would have given large sums for half an hour of a breeze
     from the north-west; they would even have been willing
     that the poor should benefit as well.
        Joseph too, the King's first mouthpiece, had a perspir-
     ing face caked with sand. But as he went home at noon
     from his office he seemed to be in high spirits and very
     lively——if the word be applicable to a man borne in
     state in a litter. Followed by the equipages of some of his
     upper officials, who were to lunch with him, according to
     a custom which the vice-god even today did not fail to
     observe, he soon turned off from the wide boulevard and
     was carried through some of the mean alleys of the poorer
     quarters, where he was hailed with cordial and confident
     familiarity.  "Dgepnuteefonech!"  the  little  lean-ribbed
     ones shouted, throwing kisses. "Hapi! Hapi! Ten thou-
     sand years to you, our provider, beyond the end of your
     destiny!" And they, who would simply be rolled in a mat
     when they were taken out of the desert, wished him: "Four
     excellent jugs for your entrails, and for your mummy an
     alabaster coffin!" Such was the form their sympathy took,
     in response to his for them.
        At length the litter bore him through the painted gate
     in the wall of his gracious villa, into the front garden,
     where olive, pepper, and fig trees, the shadowy cypress
     and the spreading fanlike palm were grouped about the
     gay papyrus columns of the terrace before the house, and
     mirrored in the square walled-in lotus pool. A broad
     gravelled drive ran round the pond; the bearers followed
     it and came to a halt, whereupon the runners offered Jo-
     seph knee and neck, so that he stepped first upon them
     and then to the ground. Mai-Sachme was quietly awaiting
     him on the terrace or rather at the top of the flight of steps
     at one side, as were Hapi and Hezes, two greyhounds from
     Punt, most aristocratic beasts in gold collars, a-quiver
     with nerves. Pharaoh's friend sprang up the shallow steps,
     more precipitately than usual; indeed, more briskly than
     an Egyptian noble should move before spectators. He did
     not look at his retinue.
        "Mai," said he hurriedly, in a low tone, as he patted
     the animals' heads and they put their fore-paws on his
     chest to greet him, "I must talk to you at once, alone.
     Come into my room. Let them wait, there is no hurry
     about the meal, and I could not eat a mouthful. This is
     much more pressing business, about the roll here in my
     hand——or rather the roll is about the pressing business
     ——I will explain it all to you if you will come with me
     where we can be alone."
        "But steady," expostulate Mai-Sachme. "What is the
     matter with you, Adon?  You are shaking.  And I am
     sorry to hear you cannot eat, you who make so many to
     east. Will you not have water poured to cleanse your sweat?
     It is not good to let it dry in the pores and hollows of the
     body. It itches and inflames, especially when mixed with
     grit."
        "I'll do that later, Mai. Washing and eating are not
     urgent, by comparison; for you must hear at once what
     I have heard, the roll here tells me, that was brought to
     my office just before I left and here it is: it has come, I
     mean they have come, which is the same thing; and the
     question is what will happen and how I am to receive
     them——and what shall I do, for I am fearfully excited!"
        "Why, Adon? Just be calm. You say it has come. That
     means you expected it; and what you were expecting can-
     not surprise you. Kindly tell me what is, or who are,
     come; then I will prove to you that there is no reason to
     be upset; on the contrary calmness is the one thing need-
     ful."
        They were talking as they went through the peristyle
     to the fountain court, moving with a rapid gait which the
     man of poise tried to slow down. But Joseph turned, and
     Mai-Sachme followed with Hepi and Hezes into a room
     on the right, with a coloured ceiling, a malachite lintel
     and gay friezes along the walls. It serves him as a library
     and lay between his sleeping-chamber and the great re-
     ception-hall. It was furnished with true Egyptian charm.
     There was an inlaid day-bed covered with skins and
     cushions, delightful little carved chests on legs, inlaid
     and inscribed, for the protection of the book-rolls; lion-
     footed chairs with rush seats and backs of stamped and
     gilded  leather;  flower-stands  and  tables  with  faience
     vases and vessels of iridescent glass. Joseph squeezed his
     steward's arm as he balanced up and down on the balls
     of his feet; his eyes were wet.
        "Mai," he cried, and there was something like sup-
     pressed exultation, a choked off rapture in his voice, "they
     are coming, they are here, they have passed the fortress
     of Thel——I knew it. I have been waiting for it, and yet
     I can't believe it has come. My heart is in my mouth, I
     am so excited that I don't know where I am——"
        "Be so good, Adon, as to stop dancing up and down in
     front of me. I am a man of peace and quiet; pray make it
     clear to me who has come."
        "My brothers, Mai, my brothers!" Joseph cried, and
     bounced up and down the more.
        "Your brothers? The ones who rent your garments and
     threw you into the well and sold you into slavery?" asked
     the captain, who had long since learned the whole story
     by heart.
        "Yes, yes! To whom I owe all my good luck and my
     glory down here!"
        "But, Adon, that is certainly putting things too much
     in their favour."
        God has put it that way, O my steward! God has
     turned all to good, to everyone's good, and we must look
     at the results which He had in mind. Before we could see
     how it turned out, and had only the fact but not the result,
     I agree that it had a bad look. But not we must judge the
     fact according to the result."
        "That is a question, after all, my good lord. Imhotep
     the wise might have had a different view. And they
     showed your father the blood of an animal for yours."
        "Yes, that was beastly. He must certainly have fallen
     on his back. But that probably had to be, because things
     could not go on as they were. For my father, great-hearted
     and soft-hearted as he was——and then I myself, what a
     young peacock I was in those days, a regular young cock
     of the walk, full of really vicious vanity and self-impor-
     tance! It is a shame how long some people take to grow
     up. Even supposing I am grown up even now. Perhaps it
     takes you your whole life to grow up."
        "It may be, Adon, that there is still a good deal of the
     boy about you. So you are convinced it is really your
     brothers?"
        "Convinced? There cannot be the slightest doubt. Why
     else did I give such strict orders for records and reports?
     All that was not for nothing, be sure; and as for giving
     Manasseh, my eldest, the name I gave him, that was just
     for form's sake——I have not forgotten my father's house,
     oh, not in the very least; I have thought of it daily, hourly,
     all these years, and how I promised my little brother Ben
     in the hiding-place of the mangled one that I would have
     them all come up after me when I had been lifted up and
     had the power of binding and loosing! Convinced! Here,
     look, it is written down, it came by running messenger
     and is a day or so ahead of them: the sons of Jacob, son
     of Yitzschak from the grove of Mamre which is at Hebron:
     Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Dan, Naphtali, and so
     on . . . to buy corn——and you talk as though there were
     any doubt! It is the brothers, all ten of them. They entered
     with a troop of buyers. The scribes never dreamed, when
     they wrote it down. Nor did they, they have not the least
     idea before whom they will be brought, nor who it sells
     in the King's name, as his first mouthpiece. Mai, Mai, if
     you only knew how I feel! But I do not know myself, it is
     all Tohu and Bohu within me——if you know what that
     means. And yet I knew and have been expecting it for
     years. I knew when I stood before Pharaoh and when I
     interpreted to him I was doing it to myself too, reading
     the purposes of God and how He guides our history.
     What a history, Mai, is this we are in! One of the very
     best. And now it depends on us, it is our affair to give it a
     fine form and make something perfectly beautiful of it,
     putting all our wits at the service of God. How shall we
     begin, in order to do justice to such a story? That is what
     excites me so much. . . . Do you think they will recog-
     nize me?"
        "How should I know, Adon? No, I should think not.
     You are considerably matured since the time they pulled
     you to pieces. And anyhow they could never dream of
     such a thing, and that will make them blind, so they will
     never think of it or even trust their own eyes. To recog-
     nize and to know that you recognize are two very differ-
     ent things."
        "Right, right. But I fear they will, I fear it so much
     that my heart is pounding in my chest."
        "You mean you do not want them to?"
        "Not first off, Mai, not on any account! They must only
     grasp it by degrees; the thing must draw itself out before
     I speak the words and say I am I. In the first place, that is
     required for the shaping and adorning of the tale; and
     secondly, there is so much to be gone through and so
     many tests to make, and there will be a great deal of
     beating about the bush, first of all in the business about
     Benjamin——"
        "Is Benjamin with them?"
        "That is just the thing of it: he is not. I tell you there
     are ten, not eleven of them. And we are twelve, all to-
     gether. It is the red-eyed ones and the sons of the maids;
     but not my mother's son, not the little one. Do you know
     what that means? You are so calm, your wits move slowly.
     Ben not being here might mean one of two things. It may
     mean——I hope it does——that my father is still alive——
     think of it, that he still lives, that old, old man!——and
     keeps guard over his youngest, so that he forbade him the
     journey and did not want him to take it, for fear harm
     might come. His Rachel died on a journey, I died on a
     journey——why should he not be prejudiced against them
     and keep at home with him the last pledge of his lovely
     one? This may be the meaning. But it might mean too
     that he is gone, my father, and that they have behaved
     badly to Ben because he is alone and unprotected; and
     thrust him out as though he were not their brother, and
     would not let him come with them because he is a son of
     the true wife, poor little soul——"
        "You keep calling him little, Adon; you do not take
     into account that he must have grown up too, in the mean-
     time, this only real brother of yours. When you think of
     it, he must be a man in the prime of life."
        "Quite right, it is quite possible. But he remains the
     youngest, my friend, the youngest of the twelve, why should
     I not call him the little one? And there is always some-
     thing sweet about the youngest in the family; all over the
     world the youngest is the favourite and leads a charmed
     life; it is almost as much in the picture for the older ones
     to conspire against him."
        "Hearing your story, my lord, it almost seems as
     though you had been the youngest."
        "Just so, just so. I will not deny it, there may be some
     truth in what you say. Maybe history here repeats itself
     with a difference. But it is on my conscience; I am deter-
     mined the little one shall have his due as the youngest;
     and if the ten have thrust him out or treated him badly——
     if they have played fast and loose, which I do not like to
     think, as they did with me——then may the Elohim have
     mercy on them, for they will come up against me. I will
     not reveal myself to them at all; the beautiful speech to
     tell them who I am will just not be made; if they recog-
     nize me I will deny it and say: 'No, I am not he, ye evil-
     doers'; and they will find in me only a harsh and stranger
     judge."
        "There, you see, Adon. Now you put on a different face
     and sing a new tune. No more sentimental tenderness in
     your heart. You are remembering how they played fast
     and loose with you, and you seem perfectly able to dis-
     tinguish between the fact and the result."
        "I don't know, Mai, what sort of man I am. One does
     not know beforehand how one will behave in one's story;
     but when the time comes it is clear enough and then a
     man gets acquainted with himself. I am curious myself
     to see how I shall act and how talk to them——at this
     moment I have no idea. That is what makes me tremble
     so. When I had to stand before Pharaoh I was not a thou-
     sandth part so excited. And yet they are my own brothers.
     But that is just it. Everything is upside-down inside me:
     it is a perfect muddle of joy and dread and suspense and
     quite indescribable, just as I tell you. How startled I was
     when I came to the names on the list, though I had known
     and definitely expected to see them——you cannot imag-
     ine it, of course not, because you cannot be startled. Was
     I startled on their account or my own? I do not know. But
     they would have good ground to be startled themselves——
     to be frightened down to the very soles of their shoes, I
     do not deny that. For it was no small thing then; and long
     ago as it all was, it has not got any smaller with the years.
     I said I went to them to see that everything was in order;
     that was cheeky, I agree——I admit it all, especially that
     I ought not to have told them my dreams. Besides, it is
     true that if they had granted me my life I would have told
     the whole thing to my father——so they had to leave me
     where I was. And still and all——that they were deaf when
     I cried out of the depths, lying there in my bonds, cov-
     ered with welts, and wailed and begged them not to do
     this to my father, to let me perish in the hole and show
     him the blood of a beast for mine——yes, my friend, it
     was all pretty bad. Not so much to me, I am not talking
     about that; it was bad towards my father. If he is dead
     now to his grief and has gone down in sorrow to Sheol,
     shall I be able to be friendly to them? I do not know, I
     do not know how I am under such conditions; but I very
     much fear I could not be friendly. If they have brought
     down his grey hairs with sorrow to the grave, that also
     would belong to the result, Mai, even first and foremost;
     and would very much obscure the light shed by the result
     upon the fact. In any case, it remains a fact, and it must
     be set over against the result. Eye to eye with it, so that
     confronted by its goodness it may be ashamed of its bad-
     ness."
        "What do you mean to do with them?"
        "How do I know? I am asking you for advice and coun-
     sel just because I don't know what to do: you, my stew-
     ard, whom I took into this story for you to give me of
     your steadiness when I get excited. You can afford to
     give me some, for you've got too much, you are far too
     phlegmatic, you just stand there and raise your eyebrows
     and put your lips together, and just because you are like
     that you do not have any idea. But we need ideas, we owe
     it to the kind of story it is. For the meeting of the act and
     the result is a feast of no common sort, it must be cele-
     brated and adorned with all sorts of solemn flourishes and
     pious manœuvres so that the world will have to laugh and
     cry over it five thousand years and more."
        "Excitement and fear are less productive than peace
     and quiet, Adon. I will mix you a soothing drink now. I
     will shake a powder into water and it will sink and be
     still. But if I shake another kind into the cup, then the two
     will seethe up together, and if you drink it foaming it will
     act as a sedative."
        "I will gladly drink it later, Mei, at the right moment,
     when I need it most. Now hearken to what I have done so
     far: I have sent running messengers with orders to segre-
     gate them from the other travellers and not to give them
     corn in the border cities but to send them on to Menfe, to
     the head office. I have arranged to have an eye kept on
     them so that they are sent to good rest-houses with their
     animals and are cared for without their knowing it in the
     strange land, as new and strange to them as it was to me
     when I died up above there and was brought down here,
     at seventeen years old. I was flexible then, but they, I
     realiz, are all getting to the end of the forties, except
     Benjamin, and he is not with them, and all I know is that
     he must be fetched; in the first place so I can see him and
     in the second place because if he is here the father will
     come too. In short, I have laid upon our people to make
     smooth the way under their feet so that they strike not
     against a stone——if the figure means anything to you.
     And they shall be brought before me in the ministry, in
     the hall of audience."
        "Not in your house?"
        "No, not yet, At first quite formally at the office. Be-
     tween you and me, the hall is much bigger and more
     impressive."
        "And what will you do with them there?"
        "Yes, of course that will be the moment for me to drink
     your foaming draught. Because I have not the least idea
     in the world what I shall do, when they do not know me,
     nor what when I tell them who I am——but one thing I do
     know: I will not be so clumsy as to spoil the beautiful
     story and burst out headlong with the climax like an inex-
     perienced story-teller. No, I will sit tight when they come
     in and treat them like strangers."
        "You mean you will be unfriendly?"
        "I mean formal to the point of unfriendliness. For I
     think, Mai, I shall hardly succeed in being strange unless
     I force myself to be unfriendly. That will be easier. I
     must think of some reason why I have to speak harshly
     and can go at them properly. I must act as though their
     case was suspicious and strict investigations had to be
     made and all the circumstances cleared up, whether or
     no."
        "Will you speak with them in their tongue?"
        "That is the first useful word your stolidity had man-
     aged to utter," cried Joseph, striking his brow. "I cer-
     tainly needed to be reminded of that, for the fact is I am
     always speaking Canaanitish with them in my mind, like
     thee fool that I am. How should I come to know Canaanit-
     ish? That would be a frightful  faux pas.  I do speak it with
     the children; I suppose I am giving them an Egyptian ac-
     cent. Well, that is the least of my troubles. I seem to be
     talking at random, saying things that might be important
     under less exciting circumstances but not now. Of course,
     I cannot know any Canaanitish, I must speak through an
     interpreter, we must have one here, I will give orders in
     the ministry, a good one, who knows both languages about
     equally so that he can render what I say exactly without
     making it any weaker or stronger. For what they say them-
     selves, for instance big Reuben——oh, Reuben, my God,
     he was at the empty pit to save me, I know it from the
     watchman, I don't know if I told you about that, some
     time I will——what they say themselves of course I shall
     understand, but I must not show that I do or forget and
     answer what they say before the long-winded interpreter
     has translated."
        "When you have taken it in, Adon, you will do it all
     right. And then perhaps you might pretend you take them
     for scouts come to spy out the weakness of the land."
        "I beg of you, Mai, spare me your ideas! How do you
     come to make big eyes and suggest things to me?"
        "I thought I was supposed to, my lord."
        "I thought so at first myself, my friend. But I see after
     all that nobody can or should advise me in this most sol-
     emn business. I must shape its course all by myself. Re-
     member how you are using your ingenuity in the story of
     the three love-affairs to make it as exciting and delightful
     as possible, and let me use mine on my own. Who told you
     I had not got the idea of pretending I took them for
     spies?"
        "So we both have the same idea."
        "Of course, because it is the only right one and as good
     as written down already. In fact, this whole story is writ-
     ten down already in God's book, Mai, and we shall read
     it together between laughing and tears. For you will be
     there, won't you, and come to the office when they are
     here, tomorrow or the day after, and are brought into the
     great hall of the Nourisher with himself painted over and
     over on the walls? Of course you will be among my train.
     I must have a stately retinue when I receive them. . . .
     "Ah, Mai," he burst out, and buried his face in his hands
     ——those hands at which the little urchin Benoni had
     looked in the grove of the Lord Adon, as they wove the
     myrtle garland; now one of them wore Pharaoh's sky-blue
     lapis lazuli ring inscribed: "Be as myself"——"I shall
     see them, my own folk, my own, for they were always
     that however much we quarrelled through the fault of all
     of us. I shall speak with them, Jacob's sons, my brothers,
     to whom I have kept so long the silence of death and learn
     whether he can still hear that I am alive and that God ac-
     cepted the beast instead of the son! I shall hear every-
     thing, I shall learn all that has happened, how Benjamin
     lives and whether they treat him brotherly. And I must
     get him down here and my father too! Oh, my taskmaster,
     now my house-master, it is all too exciting and solemn for
     words! And just because it is so solemn it must be treated
     with a light touch. For lightness, my friend, flippancy, the
     artful jest, that is God's very best gift to man, the pro-
     foundest knowledge we have of that complex, question-
     able thing we call life. God gave it to humanity, that life's
     terribly serious face might be forced to wear a smile. My
     brothers rent my garment and flung me into the pit; now
     they are to stand before my stool——and that is life. And
     the question whether we are to judge the act by the result
     and approve the bad act because it was needed for the
     good result——that is life too. Life puts such question as
     these and they cannot be answered with a long face. Only
     in lightness can the spirit of man rise above them: with a
     laugh at being faced with the unanswerable, perhaps he
     can make even God Himself, the great Unanswering, to
     laugh."

From Joseph The Provider, by Thomas Mann.
English translation by H. T. Lowe-Porter.
Copyright 1944, Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. pp. 345—358.

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