Chapter 29

Genesis 39:7–9

Joseph winced as his foot splashed down into the shallows of the River, not quite making the leap between the edge of Potiphar’s boat and the dry riverbank. He shook his sopping sandal, already weary from the hours spent among the waving ripples of golden wheat he had been out to inspect. Potiphar’s lands lay upriver from the villa, and the day had been hot, but the short voyage back in the comfortable wooden boat had been pleasant enough until the wet sandal. Joseph watched to make sure the boat was under proper care by the waiting servants before moving on toward his master, who had accompanied him out for the inspections and stood waiting for him now. Making a squelching sound as he walked, Joseph sighed and looked up at the sky, shot through with rosy light, fading into a deep, slate-blue darkness.

“I suppose it’s not enough for your god to send us a bountiful harvest,” Potiphar said, following Joseph’s gaze. “He has to paint the sky each night, too.”

Joseph smiled. “Another harvest, in its own way.”

“Even so.” Potiphar waited for Joseph to fall into step beside him, and the two men walked on past the gates and into the courtyard of Potiphar’s property, awash in the sweet scents of flowers from the garden. “To think,” Potiphar said, as their footsteps crunched over the gravelly sand of the paths, “the same god that spoke to Abraham comes now to bless my lands.”

“If you believe it’s the god of Abraham,” Joseph said, “then he’s always blessed your lands.” He drew his outstretched hand across the darkening horizon. “And all of Kemet, and all that is.”

Potiphar was quiet for a moment, then asked, “Is that what you believe?”

Joseph clasped his hands behind his back as he walked. “It’s been a long time since I was in my father’s household.”

“You’ve adopted our gods, then?”

Joseph chuckled. “Perhaps they’ve adopted me.”

The candlelight within the villa was flickering out through the cracks in the woven mats hung over the small windows cut into the walls and casting shadows out into the garden. “Abraham’s god won’t mind?” Potiphar asked as they walked by the reflecting pool.

“Oh,” Joseph shrugged again, “he has my father and brothers to worry about. And I don’t imagine any of them have much concern about me.”

Potiphar slowed and then paused, standing in the garden with the stars beginning to peek through the veil of fading light. He turned his face to his steward.

“Sasobek,” he said, and Joseph, standing beside him, sensed a sudden gravity in his master’s expression, “do you really believe that?”

Joseph looked at Potiphar, not expecting the question and therefore lacking any immediate reply.

“I’ve always understood our gods to be forces,” Potiphar said, after a silence, “expressions of a deeper reality, symbols.” He paused again, looking up at the sky. “But the god I find in your Abraham’s writings does not strike me at all as a symbol.” He paused. “He strikes me as humanly real and disturbingly present, and that”—he focused his gaze intently on Joseph—“is why I have not been able to leave those texts alone since my father first gave them to me. That is why I feel driven to understand them.” He moved his head slightly to one side. “Do you feel nothing of this?”

Joseph, who could not tell whether he was being rebuked or merely interrogated, averted his eyes, looking down and away toward where the reflecting pool sparkled with its water canvas of nascent stars. But then he felt a hand on his shoulder and looked up.

“It was right to call you Sasobek,” Potiphar said, and his voice was gentler. “Son-of-Sobek, the Crocodile, the water god.”

“Why do you say that?” Joseph asked.

“Because water is the great in-between of the mysteries.” Potiphar gestured toward the reflecting pool. “It holds the realm between earth and heaven, solid and sky. Even the stars are transformed into an ocean—the watery womb where the sun goes to rest each day. The in-between places are where the divine manifests itself—in the water, in the horizon.” He fixed Joseph with a most earnest expression. “I very much doubt that Abraham’s God—if he’s the one watching over you—did not care that you were brought here.” He shook his head. “Perhaps it is simply your destiny to swim through the in-between, like the crocodile.” And he smiled. “Like Abraham.”

Joseph felt a strange constriction rising deep within his throat. “Perhaps.”

“Osiris was killed by his brother,” Potiphar reminded him quietly, “and was brought back to life with even greater divinity. He gained it by passing through the violence and the shadow.”

“I’m not Osiris,” said Joseph.

“Or,” Potiphar said, “perhaps you haven’t met your Isis yet.” He smiled. “Whatever—or whoever—it is that can bring you back to life.” Joseph looked away again, and Potiphar reached out and put his hand on Joseph’s shoulder. “All right,” he said. “Forgive me. Come on. Let’s have something to eat.”

Joseph walked alongside his master into the flickering embrace of candlelight, leaving the stars behind.

Later that night, after retiring with Potiphar to his study to go over the last of the harvest calculations, Joseph said goodnight to his master and walked, alone, through the candlelit courtyard of the villa, quietly closing the front door as he stepped back out into the garden. He could hear the frogs croaking beyond the estate walls. Their faint, rhythmic ribbitting was a familiar and friendly accompaniment as he strolled through the night garden, a gentle assurance that the natural cycle of the world was still in order and another peaceful night had settled across the estate.

Passing back by the reflecting pool, he paused, watching the rippling stars, and he closed his eyes, taking a deep, fragrant breath of night.

Abraham—the words of the text came to him, whispered out of the stillness of the garden—Abraham—and he opened his eyes, looking up at the stars—my name is Jehovah, and I have heard you, and have come down to deliver you, and to take you away from your father’s house, and from all your kinsfolk, into a strange land which you know not of . . .

It was the passage that came in response to Abraham’s being lifted up on an altar, prepared for the sacrifice of his own life—Behold, I lifted up my voice to the Lord my God, and the Lord hearkened and heard and he filled me with the vision of the Almighty, and the angel of his presence stood beside me, and immediately unloosed my bands . . .

Joseph felt a sudden chill, even in the midst of so beautiful a night.

And then, amidst the stars and the frog song and the silent flowers, he heard a rustling footfall and turned toward where the path dipped among the fig trees, their branches spread out over whoever might be passing below. He squinted in the darkness and moved closer, leaving behind the drifting stars. The gentle fall of his footsteps mingled with the muttering frogs as he drew closer still, and he saw a murmur of shimmering white coming along the path toward him.

He slowed, and she slowed, and they looked at each other across the darkness.

“Djeseret.” Her name, spoken out across the hush of the garden, brought the slightest of smiles to her face as she stood, safely sequestered beneath the branches that tangled the view of the stars, splattering the moonlight down in gentle patches.

“I didn’t think there was anybody else out here,” she said.

“I was just coming from the house,” he explained, gesturing over his shoulder, and she nodded and looked down at the ground. He turned back to her, but she didn’t raise her eyes, and he felt suddenly unsure what he ought to do as they stood in the quiet of the garden with the lowing frog song and the stars embracing the sky.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

She nodded.

“Well,” he said at last, “I should go.” He moved as if to pass her, but she moved with him, swallowing the distance back again, and when he turned around, his face was suddenly very close to hers.

“Please don’t go,” she said quietly. She reached out, tentative, and he felt her fingers slip through his; he felt her warmth against his skin.

There, in the night, he could hear Potiphar’s voice, could see the way his master had looked at him—Do you feel nothing of this?

And somehow, that voice became his father’s, speaking out across the sky—

That is the symbol of Melchizedek—the prophet, the priest—

His father had put that robe with its symbols upon him, clothing him in an identity and heritage and folding him into the covenant line, a covenant his brothers had tried to tear from him the day that Joseph, son of Jacob, son of Abraham, was scattered into a thousand pieces—

A thousand pieces—

Until now, beneath the stars and the darkness and the hush of the garden, as he felt her breath against his body, the words came tearing back across the sky, rushing through all that had been and all that he was, and he remembered that the god had a name and that the god had known Abraham’s name—

Abraham, my name is Jehovah—

—and that he was Joseph, son of Jacob, son of Isaac, son of Abraham, clothed in a promise that his name too was known to the God of his fathers and that he still, somehow, belonged to Him.

“Djeseret.” His voice was unsteady, whispering, against the sudden pounding of his heart. “There is nothing your husband has kept back from me”—he took a slow breath—“but you.”

He could feel her lower her head, brushing against him. “Am I his to give?”

He looked away. “Please don’t do this.” He moved his hand, loosening her fingers from around his. “I can’t.”

She looked up at him and let his hand go. He looked at her, at the open, plaintive expression on her face and the hopeful, trusting, frightened glint in her eyes. “Your god,” she said softly, “is a god of abundance.” She laid a hand on his chest. “Don’t you think . . . he would give you . . . a child?”

How many times, he thought, had his mother pled with his father and his father’s God—and how many times had her plea gone unanswered?

“I can’t,” he whispered.

He knew she had understood what he said, but her eyes betrayed that she did not understand. He turned his face away from hers.

He could feel her chin trembling.

And then she slipped away from him, like a pale shadow beneath the light of the moon.

He was left alone.