Homo Sum — Complete by Georg Ebers
CHAPTER I.
Rocks-naked, hard, red-brown rocks all round; not a bush, not a blade,not a clinging moss such as elsewhere nature has lightly flung on therocky surface of the heights, as if a breath of her creative life hadsoftly touched the barren stone. Nothing but smooth granite, and aboveit a sky as bare of cloud as the rocks are of shrubs and herbs.
And yet in every cave of the mountain wall there moves a human life; twosmall grey birds too float softly in the pure, light air of the desertthat glows in the noonday sun, and then they vanish behind a range ofcliffs, which shuts in the deep gorge as though it were a wall built byman.
There it is pleasant enough, for a spring bedews the stony soil andthere, as wherever any moisture touches the desert, aromatic plantsthrive, and umbrageous bushes grow. When Osiris embraced the goddess ofthe desert--so runs the Egyptian myth--he left his green wreath on hercouch.
But at the time and in the sphere where our history moves the oldlegends are no longer known or are ignored. We must carry the readerback to the beginning of the thirtieth year of the fourth century afterthe birth of the Saviour, and away to the mountains of Sinai onwhose sacred ground solitary anchorites have for some few years beendwelling--men weary of the world, and vowed to penitence, but as yetwithout connection or rule among themselves.
Near the spring in the little ravine of which we have spoken growsa many-branched feathery palm, but it does not shelter it from thepiercing rays of the sun of those latitudes; it seems only to protectthe roots of the tree itself; still the feathered boughs are strongenough to support a small thread-bare blue cloth, which projects like apenthouse, screening the face of a girl who lies dreaming, stretched atfull-length on the glowing stones, while a few yellowish mountain-goatsspring from stone to stone in search of pasture as gaily as though theyfound the midday heat pleasant and exhilarating. From time to time thegirl seizes the herdsman's crook that lies beside her, and calls thegoats with a hissing cry that is audible at a considerable distance.A young kid comes dancing up to her. Few beasts can give expression totheir feelings of delight; but young goats can.
The girl puts out her bare slim foot, and playfully pushes back thelittle kid who attacks her in fun, pushes it again and again each timeit skips forward, and in so doing the shepherdess bends her toes asgracefully as if she wished some looker-on to admire their slender form.Once more the kid springs forward, and this time with its bead down. Itsbrow touches the sole of her foot, but as it rubs its little hooked nosetenderly against the girl's foot, she pushes it back so violently thatthe little beast starts away, and ceases its game with loud bleating.
It was just as if the girl had been waiting for the right moment to hitthe kid sharply; for the kick was a hard one-almost a cruel one. Theblue cloth hid the face of the maiden, but her eyes must surely havesparkled brightly when she so roughly stopped the game. For a minute sheremained motionless; but the cloth, which had fallen low over herface, waved gently to and fro, moved by her fluttering breath. Shewas listening with eager attention, with passionate expectation; herconvulsively clenched toes betrayed her.
Then a noise became audible; it came from the direction of the roughstair of unhewn blocks, which led from the steep wall of the ravine downto the spring. A shudder of terror passed through the tender, and notyet fully developed limbs of the shepherdess; still she did not move;the grey birds which were now sitting on a thorn-bush near her flew up,but they had merely heard a noise, and could not distinguish who it wasthat it announced.
The shepherdess's ear was sharper than theirs. She heard that a man wasapproaching, and well knew that one only trod with such a step. She putout her hand for a stone that lay near her, and flung it into the springso that the waters immediately became troubled; then she turned on herside, and lay as if asleep with her head on her arm. The heavy stepsbecame more and more distinctly audible.
A tall youth was descending the rocky stair; by his dress he was seento be one of the anchorites of Sinai, for he wore nothing but ashirt-shaped garment of coarse linen, which he seemed to have outgrown,and raw leather sandals, which were tied on to his feet with fibrouspalm-bast.
No slave could be more poorly clothed by his owner and yet no one wouldhave taken him for a bondman, for he walked erect and self-possessed.He could not be more than twenty years of age; that was evident in theyoung soft hair on his upper lip, chin, and cheeks; but in his largeblue eyes there shone no light of youth, only discontent, and his lipswere firmly closed as if in defiance.
He now stood still, and pushed back from his forehead the superabundantand unkempt brown hair that flowed round his head like a lion's mane;then he approached the well, and as he stooped to draw the water in thelarge dried gourd-shell which he held, he observed first that the springwas muddy, and then perceived the goats, and at last their sleepingmistress.
He impatiently set down the vessel and called the girl loudly, but shedid not move till he touched her somewhat roughly with his foot. Thenshe sprang up as if stung by an asp, and two eyes as black as nightflashed at him out of her dark young face; the delicate nostrils of heraquiline nose quivered, and her white teeth gleamed as she cried:
"Am I a dog that you wake me in this fashion?" He colored, pointedsullenly to the well and said sharply: "Your cattle have troubled thewater again; I shall have to wait here till it is clear and I can drawsome."
"The day is long," answered the shepherdess, and while she rose shepushed, as if by chance, another stone into the water.
Her triumphant, flashing glance as she looked down into the troubledspring did not escape the young man, and he exclaimed angrily:
"He is right! You are a venomous snake--a demon of hell."
She raised herself and made a face at him, as if she wished to show himthat she really was some horrible fiend; the unusual sharpness of hermobile and youthful features gave her a particular facility for doingso. And she fully attained her end, for he drew back with a look ofhorror, stretched out his arms to repel her, and exclaimed as he saw heruncontrollable laughter,
"Back, demon, back! In the name of the Lord! I ask thee, who art thou?"
"I am Miriam--who else should I be?" she answered haughtily.
He had expected a different reply, her vivacity annoyed him, and he saidangrily, "Whatever your name is you are a fiend, and I will ask Paulusto forbid you to water your beasts at our well."
"You might run to your nurse, and complain of me to her if you had one,"she answered, pouting her lips contemptuously at him.
He colored; she went on boldly, and with eager play of gesture.
"You ought to be a man, for you are strong and big, but you let yourselfbe kept like a child or a miserable girl; your only business is to huntfor roots and berries, and fetch water in that wretched thing there.I have learned to do that ever since I was as big as that!" and sheindicated a contemptibly little measure, with the outstretched pointedfingers of her two hands, which were not less expressively mobile thanher features. "Phoh! you are stronger and taller than all the Amalekitelads down there, but you never try to measure yourself with them inshooting with a bow and arrows or in throwing a spear!"
"If I only dared as much as I wish!" he interrupted, and flaming scarletmounted to his face, "I would be a match for ten of those lean rascals."
"I believe you," replied the girl, and her eager glance measured theyouth's broad breast and muscular arms with an expression of pride. "Ibelieve you, but why do you not dare? Are you the slave of that man upthere?"
"He is my father and besides--"
"What besides?" she cried, waving her hand as if to wave away a bat. "Ifno bird ever flew away from the nest there would be a pretty swarm init. Look at my kids there--as long as they need their mother they runabout after her, but as soon as they can find their food alone they seekit wherever they can find it, and I can tell you the yearlings therehave quite forgotten whether they sucked the yellow dam or the brownone. And what great things does your father do for you?"
"Silence!"
"Dare, dare, dare!" she sneered. "What do you dare then? not even tolisten!"
"At any rate not to what you have to say, you goblin!" he exclaimedvehemently. "Your voice is hateful to me, and if I meet you again by thewell I will drive you away with stones."
While he spoke thus she stared speechless at him, the blood had lefther lips, and she clenched her small hands. He was about to pass herto fetch some water, but she stepped into his path, and held himspell-bound with the fixed gaze of her eyes. A cold chill ran throughhim when she asked him with trembling lips and a smothered voice, "Whatharm have I done you?"
"Leave me!" said he, and he raised his hand to push her away from thewater.
"You shall not touch me," she cried beside herself. "What harm have Idone you?"
"You know nothing of God," he answered, "and he who is not of God is ofthe Devil."
"You do not say that of yourself," answered she, and her voice recoveredits tone of light mockery. "What they let you believe pulls the wires ofyour tongue just as a hand pulls the strings of a puppet. Who told youthat I was of the Devil?"
"Why should I conceal it from you?" he answered proudly. "Our piousPaulus, warned me against you and I will thank him for it. 'The evilone,' he says, 'looks out of your eyes,' and he is right, a thousandtimes right. When you look at me I feel as if I could tread every thingthat is holy under foot; only last night again I dreamed I was whirlingin a dance with you--"
At these words all gravity and spite vanished from Miriam's eyes; sheclapped her hands and cried, "If it had only been the fact and not adream! Only do not be frightened again, you fool! Do you know then whatit is when the pipes sound, and the lutes tinkle, and our feet fly roundin circles as if they had wings?"
"The wings of Satan," Hermas interrupted sternly. "You are a demon, ahardened heathen."
"So says our pious Paulus," laughed the girl.
"So say I too," cried the young man. "Who ever saw you in the assembliesof the just? Do you pray? Do you ever praise the Lord and our Saviour?"
"And what should I praise them for?" asked Miriam. "Because I amregarded as a foul fiend by the most pious among you perhaps?"
"But it is because you are a sinner that Heaven denies you itsblessing."
"No--no, a thousand times no!" cried Miriam. "No god has ever troubledhimself about me. And if I am not good, why should I be when nothing butevil ever has fallen to my share? Do you know who I am and how I becameso? I was wicked, perhaps, when both my parents were slain in theirpilgrimage hither? Why, I was then no more than six years old, and whatis a child of that age? But still I very well remember that there weremany camels grazing near our house, and horses too that belonged to us,and that on a hand that often caressed me--it was my mother's hand--alarge jewel shone. I had a black slave too that obeyed me; when she andI did not agree I used to hang on to her grey woolly hair and beat her.Who knows what may have become of her? I did not love her, but if I hadher now, how kind I would be to her. And now for twelve years I myselfhave eaten the bread of servitude, and have kept Senator Petrus's goats,and if I ventured to show myself at a festival among the free maidens,they would turn me out and pull the wreath out of my hair. And am I tobe thankful? What for, I wonder? And pious? What god has taken any careof me? Call me an evil demon--call me so! But if Petrus and your Paulusthere say that He who is up above us and who let me grow up to such alot is good, they tell a lie. God is cruel, and it is just like Himto put it into your heart to throw stones and scare me away from yourwell."
With these words she burst out into bitter sobs, and her features workedwith various and passionate distortion.
Hermas felt compassion for the weeping Miriam. He had met her a hundredtimes and she had shown herself now haughty, now discontented, nowexacting and now wrathful, but never before soft or sad. To-day, for thefirst time, she had opened her heart to him; the tears which disfiguredher countenance gave her character a value which it had never before hadin his eyes, and when he saw her weak and unhappy he felt ashamed of hishardness. He went up to her kindly and said: "You need not cry; come tothe well again always, I will not prevent you."
His deep voice sounded soft and kind as he spoke, but she sobbed morepassionately than before, almost convulsively, and she tried to speakbut she could not. Trembling in every slender limb, shaken with grief,and overwhelmed with sorrow, the slight shepherdess stood before him,and he felt as if he must help her. His passionate pity cut him to theheart and fettered his by no means ready tongue.
As he could find no word of comfort, he took the water-gourd in his lefthand and laid his right, in which he had hitherto held it, gently on hershoulder. She started, but she let him do it; he felt her warm breath;he would have drawn back, but he felt as if he could not; he hardly knewwhether she was crying or laughing while she let his hand rest on herblack waving hair.
She did not move. At last she raised her head, her eyes flashed intohis, and at the same instant he felt two slender arms clasped round hisneck. He felt as if a sea were roaring in his ears, and fire blazing inhis eyes. A nameless anguish seized him; he tore himself violently free,and with a loud cry as if all the spirits of hell were after him he fledup the steps that led from the well, and heeded not that his water-jarwas shattered into a thousand pieces against the rocky wall.
She stood looking after him as if spell-bound. Then she struck herslender hand against her forehead, threw herself down by the springagain and stared into space; there she lay motionless, only her mouthcontinued to twitch.
When the shadow of the palm-tree grew longer she sprang up, calledher goats, and looked up, listening, to the rock-steps by which he hadvanished; the twilight is short in the neighborhood of the tropics, andshe knew that she would be overtaken by the darkness on the stony andfissured road down the valley if she lingered any longer. She fearedthe terrors of the night, the spirits and demons, and a thousand vaguedangers whose nature she could not have explained even to herself; andyet she did not stir from the spot nor cease listening and waiting forhis return till the sun had disappeared behind the sacred mountain, andthe glow in the west had paled.
All around was as still as death, she could hear herself breathe, and asthe evening chill fell she shuddered with cold.
She now heard a loud noise above her head. A flock of wild mountaingoats, accustomed to come at this hour to quench their thirst at thespring, came nearer and nearer, but drew back as they detected thepresence of a human being. Only the leader of the herd remained standingon the brink of the ravine, and she knew that he was only awaiting herdeparture to lead the others down to drink. Following a kindly impulse,she was on the point of leaving to make way for the animals, when shesuddenly recollected Hermas's threat to drive her from the well, and sheangrily picked up a stone and flung it at the buck, which started andhastily fled. The whole herd followed him. Miriam listened to them asthey scampered away, and then, with her head sunk, she led her flockhome, feeling her way in the darkness with her bare feet.