“Of course, that beauty did not serve him well when he was young. His own brothers hated him so much they sold him to a pack of slavers—can you imagine an Egyptian doing such a thing? Every
day I thank the gods that I was born in the valley of the great river.” “No doubt,” I said, surveying her girth, for there was no other land that could support such excess. Shery caught my meaning and grabbed at her midsection with both hands. “Ha, ha! I am a creature of amazing proportions, am I not? The king once pinched me and said that only dwarves please him more than the sight of someone as large and round as me. You would not believe how many men find this desirable,” Shery said. “In my own youth,” she began in a conspiratorial whisper, “I gave pleasure to the old king, until his wife grew jealous and had me packed off to Thebes.
“But that”—she winked—“is another story for another time. You want the history of this house, which is juicy enough,” she confided.
“Zafenat Paneh-ah was sold into slavery, as I said, and his new masters were swine, the most Canaanite of the Canaanites. I don’t doubt that he was beaten and raped and forced to do the dirtiest work. Of course, his majesty does not speak of that anymore.
“Zafenat Paneh-ah did not acquire that pompous name until recently. ‘The God Speaks and He Lives,’ indeed! They used to call him Stick, for when he first came to Egypt he was as skinny as his newborn son.
“When his owners came to Thebes, he was sold to Po-ti-far, a palace guard with sticky fingers who lived in a great house on the outskirts of the city. Because Stick was more clever than his master by half, he was put in charge of the garden, and then given oversight of the wine-pressing. Finally, he was set above the other servants in the house, for Po-ti-far loved the Canaanite boy and used him for his own pleasure.
“But Po-ti-far’s wife, a great beauty called Nebetper, also looked upon him with longing, and the two of them became lovers right under the master’s nose. There is even some gossip about who fathered her last daughter. In any case, Po-ti-far finally discovered them in bed together and he could no longer pretend not to know what was going on. So in a great show of anger and vengeance, he sent Stick to prison.”
By that point I had lost interest in Shery’s story, which apparently had no end. I wanted to sleep, but there was no stopping the woman, who did not see my hint when I yawned, or even when I closed my eyes.
“The Theban jail is no laughing matter,” she said darkly. “A hideous pit where men die of murder and despair as much as fever, full of madmen and cutthroats. But the warden came to pity his handsome inmate, who was neither hateful or insane. Soon he was taking his meals with the Canaanite, who spoke a good Egyptian by then.
“The warden was a bachelor and childless, and he treated Stick like a son. As the years passed he gave Stick responsibility for his fellows, until finally he was the one to determine which man slept near a window and which man was chained close to the latrine, so the inmates did what they could to bribe and please him. I tell you, Den-ner,” Shery said, shaking her head in admiration, “wherever this fellow goes, power seems to move into his hands.
“Meanwhile, the old king died, and the new king had a habit of punishing minor offenses against him by sending people to jail. If he was displeased by the texture of his bread at dinner, he might send the baker to jail for a week or even longer. Cupbearers, wine stewards, sandal-makers, even captains of the guard were sent to languish in that place, where they met Stick.
“Everyone was struck by his princely bearing and by his ability to interpret dreams and divine the future. He told one poor drunkard that he would not live out the week, and when he was found dead—not murdered, mind you, simply done in by years of strong drink—the prisoners proclaimed him an oracle. When a cupbearer returned from prison with a story about a jailer who saw into the future, the king sent for Stick and set him to interpret a series of dreams that had plagued him for months.
“It was not a difficult dream to divine, if you ask me,” said Shery. “Fat fish being devoured by bony fish, fat cows being trampled by skinny cows, and then seven fat stalks of wheat which were beaten down, leaving seven dead stalks.
“Any half-wit magician who pulls birds from beneath baskets in the marketplace could have interpreted that one,” Shery sniggered. “But the dreams haunted and frightened the idiot king, and it calmed him to hear that he had seven years in which to prepare for the coming famine. And so he elevated the jailer, an unlettered foreign-born conniver, to become his first-in-command.
“I imagine your son has already told you that this so-called Zafenat Paneh-ah is totally dependent upon Re-mose. And now that Zafenat is not only vizier but a father as well, there will be no stopping his pride,” Shery fumed, bustling around the room, preparing my bed, for she had talked away the whole afternoon.
“And yesterday,” she grumbled, speaking to herself by that point, “this madman demanded that his son be circumcised. Not when he is at manhood’s door and able to withstand such a thing. Not like civilized people, but now. Immediately! Can you imagine wanting to do that to a tiny baby? It only goes to prove that a born barbarian does not change. As-naat screamed and carried on like a gutted cat at the order. And I can’t blame her there.”
“Joseph,” I whispered, in horror and disbelief.
Shery peered up at me. “What?” she said. “What did you say, Den-ner?”
But I closed my eyes, suddenly unable to breathe. All at once I understood why I had been summoned to Thebes and why Shery had told me the endless story of the vizier. But surely this could not be. It was fever that weakened my reason. Dizzy and light-headed, I lay down on the bed, panting.
Shery noticed that something was amiss with me. “Den-ner,” she said. “Are you unwell? Can I get you something? Maybe you are ready for solid food now.
“But here is something to cheer you up,” she said, Jooking up at the sound of footsteps. “Your son comes to pay respects. Here is Re-mose. I will bring you both some refreshment,” she burbled, and left me with my son.
“Mother?” he said, formally with a stiff bow. But when he saw my face he started. “Ma? What is it? They told me you were much improved and that I might see you today,” he said doubtfully. “But perhaps this is not the right time.”
I turned my face toward the wall and waved him out of the room. I heard Shery go out with him and murmur an explanation. His hurried footsteps fading in the distance were the last thing I knew before I fell asleep.
Shery had told Re-mose of our conversation and repeated the word I had spoken before falling back into a fevered darkness of mind. Thus my son took “Joseph” into his mouth and, unannounced, went into the great hall, where the vizier of Egypt sat alone, whispering comfort to his firstborn son, who had been circumcised earlier that day.
“Joseph,” said Re-mose, throwing the name at him like a challenge. And the one known as Zafenat Paneh-ah trembled.
“Do you know a woman called Den-ner?” he demanded.
For a moment Zafenat Paneh-ah said nothing, and then he asked, “Dinah?” The master looked into his scribe’s eyes. “I had a sister named Dinah, but she died long ago. How do you come by her name? What do you know of Joseph?” he commanded.
“I will tell you what there is to tell after you describe her death,” said Re-mose. “But only then.”
The threat in his voice rankled Joseph. But even though he sat on a throne with a healthy son in his arms and guards ready to do his bidding, he felt bound to answer. It had been a lifetime since he had heard his own name, twenty years since he had spoken his sister’s name aloud.
So he began. In a quiet voice that drew Re-mose close to the throne, he told him that Dinah had gone to the palace in Shechem with his mother, Rachel the midwife, to tend to a birth in the house. “A prince of the city claimed her for a bride,” said Joseph, and Re-mose heard how Jacob turned away the handsome bride-price, and finally accepted him only on the cruelest of conditions.