The Red Tent

The silence was thick and stiff. Benia’s hands we

re clenched, for he was fearful that I was about to be taken from him; his jaw was locked, for he was unsure how to speak to the noble perched on a stool in his kitchen. Joseph sent me glances full of unspoken urgency, for he was unwilling to speak in front of Benia. I looked from one face to the other and realized how old we had grown.

Finally I told Joseph, “Benia is your brother now. Say what it is you came to say.”

“It’s Daddy,” he said, using a baby word that I had not heard since Canaan. “He is dying and we must go to him.”

Benia snorted in disgust.

“How dare you?” Joseph said, jumping to his feet and putting his hand on the dagger at his side.

“How dare you?” Benia replied with equal passion, stepping closer. “Why should my wife weep by the bedside of a father who murdered her happiness and his own honor? A father who sent you to the long knives of men known for their ruthlessness?”

“You know the story then,” said Joseph, suddenly defeated. He sat down and put his head in his hands and groaned.

“They sent me word from the north where my brothers and their sons tend the flocks of Egypt. Judah says that our father will not live out the season, and that Jacob wishes to give my sons his blessing.

“I do not wish to go,” Joseph said, looking at me as though I had some answer for him. “I thought I had finished with my duty there. I thought I had even forgiven my father, though not without exacting a price.

“When they came to my house starving and seeking refuge, I twisted the knife. I accused them of theft and forced them to grovel before the mighty Zafenat Paneh-ah. I watched Levi and Simon put their foreheads to the ground at my feet and tremble. I gloated and sent them back to Jacob, demanding Benjamin be sent. I punished our father for choosing favorites. I punished my brothers, too, and kept them in fear of their lives.

“Now the old man wishes to place his hands on the heads of my boys, to choose them for his blessing. Not the sons of Reuben or Judah, who have supported him all these years and borne his moods and whims. Not even the sons of Benjamin, the last-born.

“I know Jacob’s heart. He wishes to atone for the wrongs of the past by blessing my sons. But I fear for them with such a birthright. They will inherit tormenting memories and strange dreams. They will come to hate my name.”

Joseph railed on as Benia and I listened. The hurts of the past clung to him, caught in the folds of his long dark cloak. He flailed around like a drowning lamb.

As he talked about fat years and lean years, about loneliness and sleepless nights, about how life had treated him so cruelly, I searched for the brother I remembered, the playfellow who listened to the words of women with respect and who once looked at me as his friend. But I saw nothing of that boy in the self-absorbed man before me, whose mood and voice seemed to change from moment to unhappy moment.

“I am a weakling,” said Joseph. “My anger has not abated and I have no pity in my heart for Jacob, who has become blind, like his father before him. And yet I cannot say no to him.”

“Messages get lost,” I said softly. “Messengers are sometimes waylaid.”

“No,” Joseph said. “That lie would finally kill me. If I do not go, he will haunt me forever. I will go and you will come with me,” said Joseph, suddenly shrill, a man accustomed to power.

I did not try to hide my disgust at his tone, and when he saw my contempt he dropped his head in shame. And then my brother bowed down with his forehead on the dirt floor of a carpenter’s kitchen and apologized to me, and to Benia, too.

“Forgive me, sister. Forgive me, brother. I do not wish to see my father dying. I do not wish to see him at all. And yet, I cannot disobey. It is true that I can force you to go with me, and for no other reason than to hold my hand. But you will prosper in this, too.”

He stood and resumed the demeanor of Zafenat Paneh-ah. “You will be my guests,” he said smoothly. “The master carpenter will do business on behalf of the king. I go to purchase timber in the north, and I require the services of an artist who knows how to select the finest wood. You will go to the marketplace of Memphis and see olive, oak, and pine in abundance, choosing only what belongs in the king’s house and tomb. You will bring honor to your- profession and to your own name.”

His words were seductive, but Benia looked only at me.

Then Joseph brought his face close to mine and gently said, “Ahatti, this is your last chance to see the fruits of your mothers’ wombs, their grandsons and granddaughters. For those are not only the children of Jacob; they are also the children of Leah, Rachel, Zilpah, and Bilhah.

“You are the only aunt of their mothers’ blood, and our mothers would wish for you to see their grandaughters. After all, you are the only daughter, the one they loved.”

My brother could talk the wings off a bird, and he talked until the sun rose and Benia and I were exhausted. Although we never said yes, there was no saying no to Zafenat Paneh-ah, the king’s vizier, just as there had been no saying no to Joseph, son of Rachel, grandson of Rebecca.

We left with him in the morning. At the river, we were met by a barque of surpassing luxury, filled with chairs and beds, painted plates and cups, sweet wine and fresh beer. There were flowers and fruit everywhere. Benia was stunned at the riches, and neither of us could look into the faces of the naked slaves who waited upon us with the same servility they showed Zafenat and his two sons and their noble retinue.

The lads were old enough to grow their hair, and they were good boys, curious about their father’s guests but polite enough not to ask questions. Benia delighted them by carving little creatures out of wood, and naming each one. He caught me watching him, and his plaintive smile told me that he had done the same for his own sons, dead long ago.

As-naat did not come with us, and Joseph never spoke a word of his wife. My brother was attended by a youthful guard, all of them as beautiful as he had been in his youth, and I often saw him staring at his handsome companions wistfully. He and I barely spoke on the voyage north. We took our meals separately, and no one suspected that the carpenter’s wife had anything to say to the powerful vizier.

When we did exchange words—to say good morning or to comment about the children—we never spoke in our mother tongue. That might have drawn attention to his foreign birth, which was a sore point among many in the king’s service.

Joseph kept to himself at the prow of the barque under a gleaming awning, wrapped in his dark cloak. Had I been alone, I might have sat like him, reliving the journey that had brought me to the house of Nakht-re, where I became a mother, remembering, too, the loss of my son. Had it not been for Benia, I would have thought of the impending meeting with my brothers and opened the old wounds in my heart.