Free The Egyptian by Mika Waltari

and I was a little scared. The one to which Thothmes led me was called the Cat and Grapes. It was a pretty little house, full of soft, golden lamplight. There were soft mats to sit on, and young—and in my eyes lovely—girls beat time to the music of flutes and strings. When the music stopped, they sat with us and begged me to buy them wine, as their throats were as dry as chaff. Then two naked dancers performed a complicated dance requiring great skill, and I followed it with interest. As a doctor I was accustomed to the sight of naked girls and yet had never seen breasts swaying or little bellies and bottoms moving so seductively as these.
    But the music saddened me again, and I began to long for I knew not what. A beautiful girl took my hand and pressed her side to mine and said my eyes were those of a wise man. But her eyes were not as green as the Nile in the heat of summer, and her dress, though it left her bosom bare, was not of royal linen. So I drank wine and neither looked into her eyes nor felt any wish to call her “my sister,” or take pleasure with her. And the last I remember of that place is a vicious kick from a Negro and a lump I got on my head when I fell dcwn the steps. So it came about just as my mother Kipa had foretold: I lay in the Street without a copper piece in my pocket until Thothmes drew my arm over his strong shoulder and led me to the jetty, where I could drink my fill of Nile water and bathe my face and my hands and my feet.
    That morning I entered the House of Life with swollen eyes and a smarting lump on my head, a dirty shoulder cloth, and without the smallest wish to ask, “Why?” I was to be on duty among the deaf and those with ear diseases, so I washed myself quickly and put on the white robe. On the way I met my chief, who began to upbraid me in phrases I had read in the books and knew by heart.
    “What is to become of you if you run along the walls by night and drink without keeping tally of your cups? What is to become of you if you idle away your time in pleasure houses, Smiting wine jars with your stick to the alarm of honest citizens? What is to become of you if you shed blood and run from the watchmen?”
    But when he had done his duty, he smiled to himself with relief, took me to his room, and gave me a potion to cleanse my stomach. My spirits rose as I realized that wine and pleasure houses were winked at in the House of Life provided one stopped asking why.
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    So, I, too, was smitten with Thebes fever and began to love the night more than the day, the flickering of torches more than sunlight, Syrian music more than the moans of the sick, and the whispering of pretty girls more than crabbed old writings on yellow papers. But no one had anything to say against this as I fulfilled my tasks in the House of Life, satisfied my examiners, and kept a steady hand. It was all part of the initiate’s life; few students could afford to set up house on their own and marry during their training, and my teacher gave me o understand that I would do well to sow my wild oats, give rein to my body, and be of a merry heart. But I meddled with no woman though I thought I knew that their bodies did not really burn worse than fire.
    The times were full of unrest, and great Pharaoh was ill. I saw his shriveled old man’s face when he was carried to the temple at the autumn festival adorned with gold and precious stones, motionless as a statue with his head bowed beneath the weight of the double crown. The physicians could not longer help him; rumor had it that his days were numbered and that his heir would soon succeed him—and the heir was but a stripling like myself.
    There were services and sacrifices in the temple of Ammon, and Ammon could not help his divine son though Pharaoh Amenhotep III had built for him the mightiest temple of all time. It was said that the King had grown wroth with the Egyptian gods and that he had sent swift messengers to his father-in-law, the king of Mitanni in