Moses by Howard Fast Page A

stone and additional bricks. Each man had on his back a wooden rack, an open box that he grasped by two handles which extended over his shoulders. His fellow slaves would fill the box to capacity with bricks or stone or bags of mortar and, barely able to walk, every muscle rigid and tight, the man would make his way over the plank that extended from the boat to the shore—bricks and mortar to the bricklayers, the crushed stone to be emptied into a deep ditch that circled the entire island.
    Moses followed Neph and the other engineers ashore, and since they became immediately concerned with their own business, talking to the overseers and the bricklayers and examining the work in progress, he decided to wander about by himself and see what he could see.
    The slaves interested him because he had never before heard of the people of Goshen whom Ramses had taken as his servants. If he saw his own high-boned face among these slaves, it was not with any recognition or understanding; he walked slowly around the island, watching them at their work and wondering whether they could continue to work like that as the hot day wore on, or whether they would fall to the earth and die.
    They, in turn, paid no attention to him, if indeed they saw him at all; and when he gazed straight into their bloodshot, sweat-filmed eyes, he felt that there—was a veil they used to thrust the world away from them. Indeed, they were not to be admired—unkempt, unshaven, naked and barefoot and stinking with their perspiration, filthy with the eaked mud of the morass, a string for a belt and only a dirty piece of cloth or leather to keep their parts from the shamelessness of exposure. When they spoke to each other they were stingy of words, having little breath to spare from their labour, and then they spoke in their own tongue—strange and hard to Moses’ ear, a curious consonantal language that cut the words sharply and lacked the soft flow and flavour of Egyptian. Yet they also spoke Egyptian, as Moses noticed when the overseers addressed them, an Egyptian that was accented and hardened into what seemed and sounded like a translation of their own language.
    When Moses felt Neph’s tread at his side and heard his grunt of greeting, he said,
    â€œWhy, Neph, do they live on? Isn’t it better to be dead, to die quickly and with some honour than to be worked and beaten to death like a beast?”
    â€œNo,” Neph answered shortly.
    â€œI don’t understand. I would die and welcome the dark lord Osiris.”
    â€œNo, you wouldn’t,” Neph said.
    â€œBut I tell you I would!”
    â€œAh, yes, you tell me that. When life is full and sweet and young, as it is with a prince of the Great House, then the thought of surrendering it becomes an easy abstraction. You have so much life that you can be prodigal with it, Moses. But when life hangs by a thread, then by all the gods that be, it is nothing you give up easily! Life is the reason for life, as you will some day learn, and reason enough, you may be sure.”
    â€œI don’t understand you,” Moses replied.
    â€œNo. Better that you don’t, I think. Come now, Moses, and I will tell you something of houses and how we do the impossible. First of all—you see how hard the ground under your feet is, and it will be harder still when we pave it with limestone.”
    Moses nodded.
    â€œAnd yet a year ago, it was the same soft, oozing mud that you will find on any of these swamp islands. That is why we dug this ditch all around. The first problem was to drain the ground. We do that by ditching and letting the water seek its level, and we leave the ground high, after which it is baked hard by the sun. Now we are filling the bottom of the ditch with crushed stone, so that it will act as a dry well and not silt up. We will line the sides with slabs of rough stone, lead run-offs into it, and roof it with stone. Since we have already raised the ground