“I HAVE DISCOVERED,” THE PHILOSOPHER Pascal wrote, “that all human misery comes from one fact: that we are unable to sit at ease alone in a room.” This insight is more radical than you might at first imagine.
The solitary confinement was excruciating for the brothers. Pacing back and forth in the narrow cells, which were equipped only with cot, water pitcher, and bowl for human waste, all of them went wild with fear, not only for their own lives but for the lives of their starving families. How had their mission been so wretchedly diverted? What in the world had they done to turn the great lord against them? Were they all going to die now? We have failed our father, Reuben thought. It was the shame of this failure that burned inside him most painfully. There was an ironic sense of justice in this, he realized. I didn’t care about Father when we sold Joseph. Now I do, and this caring is my greatest sorrow.
The lord’s presence was august and strange, yet there was something familiar about him amid all his splendor. Each man felt disoriented. Everything had lost its name; nothing was recognizable. Old memories floated up to the surface of consciousness, old guilts, the old guilt, the vision of Joseph battered and thrown into the pit, the voice of Joseph pleading with them, the voice of their father as he sobbed inconsolably for his lost darling. They felt that they were wandering in a labyrinth of confusion. Each man tried to find a way out. Each man failed.