Creation (57 page)

I have heard three versions of what happened next: from Atossa herself, from Lais and from Xerxes. Each story varies a bit from the other but the general sense is as follows.

When Darius came to Atossa in the harem, he found her seated in front of a life-size statue of Cyrus the Great. She wore the queen’s diadem. She was entirely at her ease, or gave that impression. Gracefully she motioned for her attendants to withdraw.

Then, like an Indian cobra, Atossa struck first. “You have killed my husband and brother, the Great King Cambyses.”

Darius was taken entirely by surprise. He had expected Atossa to fling herself at his feet and beg for her life. “Cambyses died of a wound,” said Darius, allowing himself to be put on the defensive, a mistake that he would never have made in war. “Of an accident, self-inflicted.”

“You were king’s friend. You were his spearbearer. You rubbed the poison onto the sword’s tip.”

“Because you say so does not make it true.” Darius had begun to rally. “Cambyses is dead. That is a fact. How he died is no business of yours.”

“What concerns the Achaemenid is my business, and mine alone. For I am the last. I have proof that you killed my husband and brother, the Great King Cambyses ...”

“What is this proof?”

“Do not interrupt,” hissed Atossa. When she wanted, she could sound like a proper pythoness. “I am the Achaemenid queen. I also know—as you know—that you killed my husband and brother, the Great King Mardos.”

Darius had started to back away from this alarming woman. Now he stopped. “He was your husband, but he was not your brother. He was Gaumata, a Magian.”

“He was no more a Magian than you are. He was the Achaemenid, which you are not, and can never be.”

“I am Great King. I am the Achaemenid.” Darius had now placed an ivory chair between himself and Atossa. I am quoting from Atossa’s version. “I killed the Magian, the impostor, the usurper ...”

“You are the usurper, Darius, son of Hystaspes; and one word from me to the clans, and all of Persia will go into rebellion.”

This brought Darius to his senses. He swept the chair to one side and moved toward the seated queen. “There will be no word from you,” he said, face close to hers. “Understand? No word. Because all those who choose to believe that the Magian was really Mardos will be put to death.”

“Go ahead, little adventurer. Kill me. Then see what happens.” Atossa gave him what must have been, in those days, a lovely smile: white pearls instead of black. It was, incidentally, at this point that Atossa found herself uncommonly attracted to the blue-eyed auburn-haired usurper, or so she told Lais. The fact that she and Darius were the same age increased rather than diminished her unexpected lust.

Atossa made her life’s boldest move. “I have already dispatched agents to Babylon, to Sardis, to Ecbatana. Should I be killed, they are to reveal to the military commanders of our loyal cities that Darius is twice a regicide. Remember that Cambyses was admired. Remember that Mardos was loved. Remember that they were the last sons of Cyrus the Great. The cities will revolt. That is a promise. You are a bold young man and nothing more—as yet.”

The as yet was the beginning of an elaborate peace treaty, whose principal condition was laid down by Atossa. If Darius married her and made their first son the heir, she would tell the world that he had indeed killed a Magian whom she had been forced to marry. Although each made various concessions to the other, the main article of the treaty was honored by both sides.

Democritus wants to know if Atossa had really dispatched those agents to Babylon, and so on. Of course not. She was never more splendid than when she was improvising toward some great end. Did Darius believe her? No one will ever know. What we do know is that as a result of her bluff, Darius never ceased to fear as well as admire Atossa. For the next thirty-six years, he did his best to exclude her from the business of government, and it must be said that, occasionally, he succeeded. On her side, Atossa was delighted with the youthful regicide; and saw in him a superb administrator of her father’s empire. The result of that blood-stained treaty was Xerxes. Unhappily, he was the sort of man who anticipates balance in all things. If one end of the board that rests on the log goes down, the other must go up. Since Darius had not suffered for his crimes, the son would.

I have revealed these matters, Democritus, not just to confound the man from Halicarnassus. Quite the contrary: his version is a fine tale for children and Darius is its shining hero. The actual story is darker and reflects no credit on our royal house. But I think it necessary to know the truth in order to explain the nature of my beloved Xerxes. From the first moment that he knew the true story of his father’s rise, he saw with perfect clarity his own bloody end. This foreknowledge explains why he was who he was, and did what he did.

Happily, before the month was over, Xerxes had put aside his melancholy. He kept both rooms of the chancellery working day and night. He personally counted the gold and silver in the treasury. Together we inspected the contents of the house of books. I read to him all sorts of ancient records, particularly those that dealt with India and Cathay.

“You want to go back, don’t you?” We were covered with dust from old brick tablets, moldering papyrus, bamboo strips.

“Yes, Lord, I want to go back.”

“The year after next.” Xerxes brushed the dust from his beard. “I promise we’ll go, once Egypt is back in the fold. I haven’t forgotten what you told me. I also haven’t forgotten that sooner or later, old though I am, I must add to my patrimony.”

We both smiled. I was no longer expected to take seriously Xerxes’ references to his advanced age. Yet, looking back, I think that he had convinced himself that his time as a soldier had come and gone. War is a very young man’s work.

Before the court left Persepolis, Xerxes reinstated me as king’s eye. I was then commanded to accompany Ariamenes to Bactria. I was expected to use my ears as well as my eyes. Although Xerxes had treated his brother leniently, he did not trust him. Now that I understood the family better, I was in no position to say that his doubts were frivolous.

Ariamenes accepted my company with reasonable grace. Despite the considerable retinue that we traveled with, we were obliged to pay the always humiliating tax to the brigands who control the trail through the Persian highlands.

I did not recognize Bactra. After the great fire the entire city had been so rebuilt that it now resembles Shravasti or Taxila more than Susa. What had once been a crude frontier settlement is now an eastern city, with nothing Persian about it.

At first Ariamenes was highly suspicious of me. But in the end, we got on well enough. We got on even better when I found practically no irregularities in his conduct of the government. I found him altogether mysterious as a man. To this day I have no idea why he went, if only briefly, into rebellion. I suppose the strangeness and the remoteness of Bactria might have had something to do with it. Beyond the mountains to the south is India; across the deserts to the east is Cathay; at the north are the cold forests and barren plains of the tribes. Civilization does not begin until one has traveled three hundred miles to the west. At the edge of everywhere, Bactria is nowhere.

Bactria is also quite as much a mood as a place, and the mood is wild, violent, ecstatic. The Bactrian Magians who follow the Lie are amongst the strangest people on earth. They are constantly besotted with haoma. They are cruel beyond belief. Despite the teaching of Zoroaster and the stern injunctions of three Great Kings, they continue to tie down the sick and the dying alongside the dead. Scorched by the sun and chilled by the snows, the dying cry out for help that no one dares provide. Vultures and dogs feed not only on corpses but on the living.

When I complained to Ariamenes, he said, “I can do nothing. The Bactrians fear the Magians more than they do me. Why don’t
you
stop them? You’re the prophet’s heir. They’ll listen to you.”

Ariamenes was amusing himself at my expense. He knew that where Zoroaster himself had failed, his grandson was not apt to succeed. Yet I did take up the matter with the leaders of the Zoroastrian community. Most of them were related to me, and several were sympathetic. Nearly all were ... worldly, I suppose the word is. Pretending to follow the Truth, they pursued money and honors. They assured me that the practice of exposing the not-dead would be stopped. Yet it goes on to this day.

A large shrine had been built over the spot where Zoroaster was murdered. I felt very odd indeed, standing in front of the fire-scorched altar, whose shallow steps had once been drenched with golden haoma and blood. I said a prayer. My cousin, the head of the order, chanted a response. Then, standing before the fire-altar, I described to a dozen of my relatives—small, dark Chaldean-looking men—the death of the prophet and the words that the Wise Lord saw fit to speak to me through those dying—dead?—lips.

They were deeply moved. So, in fact, was I. Yet as I spoke the familiar words, I did not actually recall them the way that they had sounded when I first heard them. Repetition has long since robbed me of true memory. Nevertheless, standing before the haunted altar, I did catch a sudden glimpse of myself as a child, eyes bedazzled by death and deity.

I was then shown the room of the oxhides. Here a dozen scribes sit listening to old members of the community recite Zoroastrian texts. As the old men chant, the verses, or gathas, are written down. Since I had heard some of these gathas from my grandfather’s lips, I noticed that slight alterations were being made—deliberately? In some cases I think that my grandfather’s words are being altered for a new generation. But, more often, the reciter has simply forgotten the original, which is why I have finally come around, reluctantly, to the view that it is important that these things be recorded now while errors are relatively few.

With the current and universal penchant for writing everything down—when, where, why did it begin? The actual words of Zoroaster, the Buddha, Mahavira, Gosala, Master K’ung will be preserved for future generations even though, paradoxically, a written text is far easier to corrupt than the memory of a priest who has learned a million words by rote and dares not change one of those words for fear he will lose all the rest. On the other hand, it is quite easy to make up a brand-new text on a cowhide and then claim that it is very old, and authentic.

Already, in my lifetime, Zoroaster’s injunctions against the improper use of haoma have been altered to conform to the Magian tradition. Recently the quality of Arta, or righteousness, has been turned into a god, while the deva Mithra has never been entirely expunged from the Zoroastrian faith because, as my last living contemporary cousin says most piously, “Is Mithra not the sun? And is not the sun the sign of the Wise Lord?” So, slyly, one by one, the devils return. What man wants to worship, he will worship. My grandfather shifted certain emphases. That was all.

When I told the community that Xerxes had promised to acknowledge no god but the Wise Lord, they were most pleased. “Even though,” as the chief Zoroastrian observed, “the Magians who follow the Lie are not apt to follow the Great King.”

In some detail, I was told of the daily battles that took place between our Magians and theirs. I was also told of the endless disagreements between the Zoroastrians at court and those who had stayed in Bactra.

Although I did my best to appear entirely at their service, I got the impression that I was something of a disappointment to these small dark men of the frontier. They had expected me to be one of them. Instead, they were confronted with a blue-eyed man who spoke the Persian of the court. As king’s eye, I was altogether too much a part of the secular world, and I am sure that it seemed every bit as strange to them as it still seems to me that of all the people on this earth I should have been the one to hear the voice of the Wise Lord. Because of that one moment in my childhood, I am, to this day, regarded as Persia’s holiest man. It is ludicrous. But then, what we are is seldom what we want to be while what we want to be is either denied us—or changes with the seasons.

Am I not wise, Democritus? Now that winter’s come for me and the ice is black, I know exactly who and what I am—a corpse-in-waiting.

TWO YEARS AFTER XERXES’ ACCESSION to the throne, I was accredited ambassador to all the kingdoms, duchies, states which comprise that far-off land we call Cathay, a world that no Persian had ever seen. The journey that I had hoped to make with Fan Ch’ih I now would make-with a caravan sponsored by Egibi and sons. Two Cathayans were assigned me as translators while Bactrian cavalry and foot soldiers acted as military escort.

Needless to say, the second room of the chancellery opposed my embassy but the Great King had spoken and so, to justify what the treasurer considered wasted money, I was commanded to inaugurate, formally, a trade route between Persia and Cathay, a task rather like building a ladder to the moon. But I was more than willing to try. Although I would have preferred to take the long, relatively safe journey through India—and see Ambalika and my sons—Fan Ch’ih’s letter had made it clear that the northern route beyond the Oxus River was the shortest, if most dangerous approach to Cathay. So I went north. This proved to be stupid. But then, stupidity is a quality common to youth. Democritus tells me that he, too, would have gone to Cathay by the shortest way. Thus, my point is proven.

Fan Ch’ih had told me that since smelted iron is virtually unknown in Cathay, there would be an excellent market for the best Persian metal—and metalworkers. Egibi and sons agreed. They would finance the caravan—despite those depressing odds against our ever returning, which Shirik had worked out on his abacus. Nevertheless, he would take the chance, he said: “If you can open the northern route, then we shall have—for the first time—a proper silk road.” Traditionally, all land approaches to Cathay are called silk roads. In exchange for the smelted iron, Egibi and sons would want a thousand and one things, ranging from silk to dragon’s bone for medicinal purposes. Luckily for me, old Shirik’s stomach disorders could only be soothed by an infusion of powdered dragon’s bone from Cathay. As a result, he had a personal as well as a business interest in the success of my mission.