Moses, Man of the Mountain (17 page)

The servants of Pharaoh gathered around him and asked him, “Pharaoh, how long is this man going to be set like a trap in Egypt to catch us? The nation can’t stand this kind of a thing much longer. We’re just about ruined already. Aren’t you ever going to do anything to stop it?”

“Then you will support me if I send these Hebrews out of my sight?”

“Do we have to go that far? Can’t we compromise somehow?”

“We can see,” Pharaoh said wearily.

“Give them a light vacation—a day or two ought not to ruin us.”

“Call out the army, and send it down into Goshen.”

“For what? Killing our slaves won’t get our work done.”

“Oh, let’s leave it to Pharaoh. He is responsible for the country. He is conducting this on his own responsibility. Let’s leave it to his intelligence.”

Pharaoh wilted under this back-handed thrust and dismissed the council.

So Pharaoh sent for Moses and Aaron.

“Moses,” he said, “I’ve about decided to let those people go out to worship like you asked me. But I can’t let everybody go. You understand. If I did that my work would be at a standstill. Now if you all could let me know exactly who is going out to worship and just where they plan to go and how long they aim to be gone, I might give you some consideration.”

“Pharaoh, if I told you any of those things you asked me, I would be telling you what I don’t know myself. The Lord of Israel has ordered all the people to go out to a place which He will point out after we get on the way. That’s all he told me, and I’m selling it just like I bought it.”

“Before I let you go I will have to know when you are going, where you are going and how long you plan to stay.”

“I can’t tell you that, Pharaoh,” Moses said stubbornly.

“Then nobody is going to step. Think I’m going to have all the help off the place at one time and I don’t even know where they are at?”

“The time will come, Pharaoh, when they will go, and that soon, I’ll bound you that.”

“You say they will and I say they won’t and I happen to be King of Egypt. And all Egypt will support me in my position.”

“We’ll see about that, King or no King. The god I represent is stronger than thrones.”

The next Wednesday Moses got up early in the morning and sent word around all over Goshen for the people to get hold of every lamp they could get their hands on and lay in a-plenty of oil. Gather up a-plenty lightwood and kindling because they were going to need it mighty bad. Then he went on over to the palace to talk with Pharaoh.

Moses noted that Pharaoh looked sunken and worn. His haggard face was a grim, ashen mask. But his eyes glittered like an asp at bay. Moses noted too that his right hand rested on the hilt of his sword.

“Pharaoh,” Moses began with a deceptive gentleness, “I come this time to save you from yourself.”

Pharaoh started at the sound of Moses’ voice as if he had been stabbed.

“Say what you have to say and leave here. I don’t want to see you. I don’t want to hear your voice. I don’t want to hear your wretched name called again.”

“I see that you are afraid, Pharaoh.”

“A Pharaoh afraid?”

“That crown and that throne make you a Pharaoh, but inside of that frame you are a man. And you are afraid. And I know you do not know what you are afraid of. Your fear is so vast that it has crumbled you up inside. But for that you would have killed me weeks ago.”

“Liar!”

“Pharaoh,” Moses went on calmly, “as I came along I saw long trains of people fleeing Egypt—to the mountains, up the river, anywhere so long as they got out of Egypt. Not Hebrews, mind you, but your own people. They were afraid. Whole villages and towns were empty. It seems that Egypt has learned my name.”

“Egypt knew your name before and nobody left but you.”

“That was because I was not warring against Egypt then. They had never suffered plagues. But now they flee away. You can calm Egypt and restore your country to peace.”

“If you have come to tell me to let those Hebrews go, I tell you right now, No! I will not let them go.”

“You mean you can’t let them go. You wish you could. You know and I know what it would cost you. You can’t undo in a few weeks what you took generations to do. So you don’t dare to do what would ease your position.”

“Never mind about the affairs of Egypt. They do not concern you. You came here to ask me to let the Hebrews go. I tell you, No. So you have nothing to keep you here.”

“But, Pharaoh, I can’t go. My conscience wouldn’t let me until I warn you that my God says you must let His people go.”

“Moses, I know nothing about this God. Nobody seems to know anything about Him but you. I can’t allow the welfare of Egypt to be destroyed by your superstitions. You see that your tricks have not moved me.”

“Oh, yes, they have. You and Egypt will never be the same after I am gone. And I warn you that I have other tricks, as you call them in scorn, more terrible than those that you have experienced. Don’t make me use them to scourge you. Let the Israelites go.”

“You can’t scare me, Moses. Out of the consciousness of my might, I have been indulgent with you. Don’t provoke me any further.”

“No, you have temporized with me because you are weak.”

“Weak? Why, I have a million men under arms.”

“And in your panic you contemplate sending a million men against one man. I thought you said you were brave.”

Pharaoh half rose from his seat in his anger. “You are getting beyond your depth, Moses. I might forget my patience in a moment.”

“Oh, you will have your hour with me, when the time that is set for it comes. In the meanwhile I am to tell you to let the Hebrews go.”

“And I tell you that I will not let them go. Nothing on earth can make me change my mind.”

“Nothing, Pharaoh?”

“Nothing, on my sacred oath, nothing. My very soul revolts at the thought.”

“Then you have forgotten your past terrors.”

“I never had any to forget.”

“Perhaps not, but, Pharaoh, when you come to wind up that last ball of sorrow, don’t forget that I reasoned with you.”

“Fear is no part of me, say what you will.”

“Pharaoh, have you ever seen darkness?”

“Of course I have! A night has followed every day I ever saw.”

“But did a day always follow every night you ever saw, Pharaoh?”

“It never failed yet.”

“It is just possible that a Pharaoh even is about to learn something new. You are going to have darkness in the broad open daylight. I am turning my back on you and the great invisible darkness that stands behind me shall make itself known. I am loosing the plague of darkness on Egypt.”

Moses went out of the palace and lifted his right hand and the light began to thicken. There were no clouds in the sky. The world just began to grow dim. By the time Moses got home it was dusk in mid-afternoon. Then it went on from there. Egypt knew darkness, living crawling darkness that had a life of its own. It had body like the wind and it heaved in motion like the sea.

In Goshen, lamps burned in every house and at the doors. But in other Egypt the darkness smothered down upon the earth. Its pall silenced cries and choked back laughter. Even the beasts ceased groaning after the first hour. Egypt was soundless and motionless for three whole days. And outside of Goshen, nobody saw anybody else for the space of three days. It was a soundless vacuum like in heaven when the orchestra before the throne strikes silence for the space of half an hour once in every thousand years. When the three full days were over the darkness began to lift and to withdraw itself across the Red Sea into the land of Midian, into a certain mountain from which it had come.

In the druggy gray shadow of the departing darkness, children and parents groped toward each other and huddled to
gether in silence a long while before they spoke. The lion that had fought off its own cubs in the terror of sightlessness hovered them again, and the asp had faith once more in its fangs.

“Horus is dead beneath the sundown horizon. His light will never come again,” one priest whispered to the others. These were the first words spoken in Egypt since the reign of nights without days.

“Egypt will die in this coldness that has leaked out of the darkness,” his brother whimpered. “How can we strain against a man who has killed our gods? Darkness strips everybody of everything. We can’t live.”

And everywhere in Egypt tongues began to move and say, “The pride and stubbornness of Pharaoh has destroyed us all.”

And what they saw with their eyes was terrible. Old ones, sick and poor; children, women trampled to death during the darkness when the nation was stampeded by fear. Bodies on steps and in doorways.

The moment that he could see his hand before his face Pharaoh began to call out to his attendants to come closer to him. “I am King of a dead nation,” he moaned. “Go beg Moses to come. The children of Israel can go. Find lamps and lanterns and go get me Moses.”

But by the time that his messengers could grope their way to Goshen the light of a natural night had lightened Egypt. There was no moon, but the stars could be plainly seen. So Pharaoh haughtily refused to talk to Moses when he came, and put him off until morning and went off to bed.

“Moses,” he said next morning, “as bad as I hate to see you in any form or fashion, I am a reasonable man. So I am prepared to let you go and take the children of Israel to go serve your God, but your flocks and your herds stay right here. You understand me, don’t you?”

“I heard you, Pharaoh, but when we go out to worship, not a hoof will be left in Egypt.”

“If you are only going out to worship your God as you say, what do you need livestock for?”

“We don’t know what we might need to serve the Lord with until we get there. The flocks and the herds go with us or we don’t go.”

“Well, you don’t go then. Egypt will not be robbed like that.”

“Ta-Phar, I’m just as wore out with you as you are with me. I been just fooling along with you because I remember you’re mean and stubborn, so I took advantage of it to let you make a fool out of yourself before Egypt. But I’m through playing with you now. I came back into Egypt to lead out the children of Israel. I am showing you my ugly laugh now.”

“Don’t you stand up here in my palace and talk to me like that, Moses. I am King in Egypt. Get out! And look out for yourself too. Don’t look in my face again, for the day you do is the day you die. Get out!”

Moses laughed a laugh that he had been saving up for more than thirty years. “You told the truth then, Ta-Phar. I will certainly not see your face again—not that I ever got any pleasure out of it anyway. But you will hear from me again, and you sure won’t like it when you do.”

“It is my will not to see you again. Be warned.”

“But I tell you, Pharaoh, that you will. I am talking for Israel now and you are talking for Egypt. But a time will come when you will seek me out so that Ta-Phar and Moses may stand face to face. You will seek me out to fight me. And I’ll be there, Ta-Phar, and I’ll be exulting like a stallion.”

“And if that time ever comes, you be there like a stallion. I shall be there, a lion in his strength.”

“Let us hope for the meeting,” Moses said with restrained feeling. And he was gone.

N
ight came walking through Egypt swishing her black dress. The palace and the peasant slept. Pharaoh and the servants of Pharaoh had assured the Egyptians that the terrors of Moses were ended. He had said that Moses must cease and the word of a Pharaoh was enough. So the nation slept its sleep untroubled.

In Goshen the blind-eyed goddess of night huddled close, and families stayed inside their houses and waited. A bloody bunch of hyssop had swished against every door in Goshen three times—once on the lintel overhead and once on the door facing at either side. Then the people had gone inside and sat behind the blood and waited as Moses had ordered. Their new god, who had chosen them through Moses, was going to fight Pharaoh for their sake. He had asked the sign of the three bloody marks on the door and the people had done their part. The rest was for Moses and God to do. So the dark stillness in Goshen was not sleeping darkness. It meant waiting. The lamb had been sacrificed and eaten in every house in the land and his signal blood guarded the doors. The night went on its way.

Darkness balanced up on midnight looking both ways for day. Then the great cry arose in Egypt. They cried and died in Egypt. It was the great cry that had issued first from the
throat of Israel years before and spread to the rim bones of the world and come back again. And now it poured out through the mouth of the Egyptian nation. It was such a cry that there was none like it since the morning stars sang together, and never shall be another like it as long as heaven is happy. Egypt cried out at the death of the first-born. Every house in Egypt was bloody. Blood outside the door in Goshen, blood inside every other house in Egypt.

Pharaoh looked upon his first-born and wept. His son was dead and the son of his son was dead in his own blood. There were snorts and bellows from his stables from the smell of animal blood. So Pharaoh cried for his dead with all of his voice. Every house in Egypt strained its voice trying to express its bereavement. The noise of it struck the sky and came back to the Nile and ran with it to the sea, the Egyptian chorus of sorrow indoors.

Outside, the paths and pavements were full of soft, swift feet fleeing into Goshen with its listening ears. These were the sounds of the night, sounds without words.

With the sunrise, Princes and people said, “This is the hand, the right hand of Moses.” They lifted their dead from beds and said in awe, “Moses and the God of the Israelites.” They rolled their dead from straw mats and pallets and said, “Moses and his right hand.” They crowded in and around the palace and shouted, “Get Moses and the Hebrews out of Egypt. If you don’t, everybody in Egypt will be dead.”

So Pharaoh sent for Moses to dismiss him, his God and his people from Egypt. He was no longer proud Pharaoh with the mask-like face. He was a man whose son was dead. But Moses refused to go see Pharaoh all that day. Burials went on and burials went out from houses all day in long lines and solemn weeping, and all Egypt was in tears. Pharaoh sent messengers to Moses again telling him not that the Hebrews might go, but that they must go.

Moses heard the message sitting in his house but he didn’t
say a word right then. The news was too big to speak at once. He had to sit with his feelings for a while. Afterwards he called his leaders to him and told them, “Your slavery is over. Pharaoh is broken at last. We march out of Egypt with a free people. We march out with a high hand.”