The Egyptian by Mika Waltari Read Free Book Online Page A

drink wine and take our pleasure together.”
    “I may not leave the precincts of the temple,” I said in a fright and was ashamed of my cowardice and desired her and feared her as I would have feared death. “I must keep myself undefiled until I have received my consecration, or I shall be driven from the temple and never again be admitted to the House of Life. Have pity on me!”
    I said this knowing that if she asked me once again I must follow her. But she was a woman of the world and knew my distress. She looked about her thoughtfully. We were still alone, but people were moving to and fro nearby, and a guide was loudly reciting the marvels of the temple to some visitors and begging copper from them before showing them new wonders.
    “You are a very shy young man, Sinuhe!” she said. “The rich and great must offer gold before I call them to me. But you would remain undefiled.”
    “You would like me to call Metufer,” I said desperately. I knew that Metufer would never hesitate to slip out of the temple when night fell, although it was his turn to watch. He could do such things, for his father was Pharaoh’s master builder—but I could have slain him for it.
    “Perhaps I no longer wish you to call Metufer,” she said, looking mischievously into my eyes. “Perhaps I should like us to part friends, Sinuhe. Therefore I will tell you my name, which is Nefernefernefer, because I am thought beautiful and because no one who has pronounced my name can resist saying it once more, and again. It is a custom also for parting friends to give one another keepsakes. Therefore I want a gift from you.”
    I was once more aware of my poverty, for I had nothing to give her: not the most trifling little ornament, not the smallest copper ring—nor if I had could I have offered such things to her. I was so bitterly ashamed that I bent my head, unable to speak.
    “Then give me a present to revive my heart,” she said, and she raised my chin with her finger and brought her face quite close. When I understood what she wanted, I touched her soft lips with mine. She sighed a little.
    “Thank you. That was a beautiful gift, Sinuhe. I shall not forget it. But you must be a stranger from a far country since you have not yet learned how to kiss. How else is it possible that the girls of Thebes have not taught you, though your hair is shorn for manhood?”
    She drew from her thumb a ring of gold and silver in which was set a large stone without any inscription and put it on my hand.
    “I give you a present also, Sinuhe, so that you may not forget me. When you have been initiated and have entered the House of Life, you can have your seal engraved upon this stone, like men of wealth and position. But remember that it is green because my name is Nefernefernefer, and because it has been said that my eyes are as green as Nile water in the heat of summer.”
    “I cannot take your ring, Nefer,” and I repeated it “nefernefer” and the repetition gave me untold joy, “but I shall not forget you.”
    “Silly boy! Keep the ring because I wish it. Keep it for a whim of mine, and for the interest it will pay me some day.”
    She shook a slim finger before my face, and her eyes laughed as she said, “And remember to beware of women whose bodies burn worse than fire!”
    She turned to go, forbidding me to follow her. Through the temple door I saw her step into a carved and ornamented chair that was awaiting her in the courtyard. A runner went before and shouted to clear a way, the people standing aside whispering and looking after her. When she had gone, I was seized with a deadly emptiness as if I had dived headfirst into a dark abyss.
    Metufer noticed the ring on my finger some days later; he gripped my hand suspiciously and stared at it.
    “By all the forty just baboons of Osiris! Nefernefernefer, eh? I would never have believed it.” He looked at me with something like respect although the priest had set me to scrub the floors and