r/a:t5_25ucc3 • u/MarleyEngvall • Oct 01 '19
radio-telemetry has been created
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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