The Assyrian (32 page)

We had stopped for the night in a village not
two days’ march from Nineveh, and Esarhaddon, saying he wished to
sleep with a real roof over his head, had chased a peasant and his
family out of their house and taken it over. He lay on his back on
a reed sleeping mat and the twins rubbed warm oil into his thighs,
so he was very content with life that night.

“I know as much, brother. I have spoken with
the king. . .”

“Oh, I do not bother with the king.”
Esarhaddon grinned, pinching one of the twins on the breast to hear
her squeal. It did not, however, take a baru to see the unhappiness
in his eyes. “When you are with him, the king is too deaf with
cheering to hear even the name of Esarhaddon. You and half the army
could shout my praises to him for a week and he would not
notice—not that such a thing could happen, for the army takes its
cue from him and sings no one’s glory but yours. No, I must wait
until you are king. Then, while you stay in your capital with your
consort and your eunuch scribes, wondering which of your sons is
plotting to have you poisoned, I will fight your wars and become
more brilliant than the sun.”

“What can I say, my brother? Except that I
pray you do not grow bitter against me, for you are wronged through
no will of mine.”

Yet wronged none the less, Esarhaddon,
burdened with his ambition to be great—and why should he not dream
of greatness, since we had all been raised to imagine our lives
could have no higher purpose than to conquer in the name of our
king and his god—what did he not suffer? Was he a block of wood
that he felt nothing? No, he was not that. He suffered and knew
bitterness. And why should he not hate me, who was the cause of his
suffering?

Still, rather than accuse me, he reached out
his hand to me and squeezed mine hard in his strong fingers.

“I know this, brother. I know.”

And so it appeared that we were all in accord
with the future that seemed to stretch before us like the road to
Nineveh. Why should I not be king when even my chief rival wished
it? The god, of course, must give his consent, but had he not
already marked me out as the object of his special favor? Who did
not wish it, except Naq’ia—and, perhaps, some part of myself? I had
only to rid my mind of darkness, it seemed, and I would be blessed
above all other men.

So we traveled on to Nineveh, an army of
conquerors, having set all things right in the lands where Ashur
was lord. And in Nineveh the work of our hands was also
praised.

“You have accomplished this thing,”
Esharhamat said to me, in a soft voice, her mouth almost touching
my ear. “The king loves you, and you appear glorious to the people.
You have done well, Tiglath Ashur, whom I worship with my whole
self.”

But I was hardly listening. I did not wish to
remember my glory, or the king’s love, or how I had come to possess
these things. I wished only to drown myself in the sweet smell of
Esharhamat’s body that I might lose all sense of an existence
beyond her. I did not love myself now, so I wished more than ever
to love her.

While she whispered words, I let my hands
slide over her body, finding the wide sleeves of her tunic that I
might touch her breasts. I pressed my lips into the flesh of her
neck, hungry for the taste of her. What were her ambitions or my
hopes or the lordship of the world compared to the passionate
demands of the flesh?

And was she less fevered than I? Her breath
was hot and came in quick little gasps as she dug her nails into
the backs of my arms. We were sitting side by side on a marble
bench in her garden, the only sound the silvery tinkle of the
fountain’s waters, alone—as always, she had seen to that—and I had
only to lift the hem of her robe to spill her virgin blood over the
cold stone. I could feel my manhood, tight, throbbing like a war
drum, and I thought I might choke with desire as she seemed to melt
in my embrace, as if she wished to disappear into my body.

“No. . .” The word was only a constricted
little sound, like a strangled sob. “No, not here—there are too
many spies here. Too many enemies.”

“Damn your enemies—I don’t care. I can’t. .
.”

My hands trembled. I tried to undo the clasp
of her tunic, but my fingers would not seem to obey. I would tear
it open . . .

“No—not here, Tiglath. Listen to me!”

With calm, efficient strength she pushed me
from her, and when I tried to reach for her again I found my
fingers caught in her grip.

“Why do you do this? Why?” I was so angry I
stood up from the bench, my hands clenched into fists. I seemed to
hate her—I would have done anything, said anything. “If you do not
wish me to touch you, then I will go to the temple of Ishtar. I
will. . .”

“Good — then go! Tonight! Find a woman who
pleases you and drop your silver into her lap!”

I looked into her eyes, seeing once more the
blind, greedy rashness of her love, as if she would perish without
it, seeing the danger from which she turned her eyes. She should
have wept with fear and shame, but she did not. She was
laughing.

“If you go tonight, at the last moment of
daylight, wait beside the door. The woman who will come to you
there, with a widow’s veil over her head, will be me.”

. . . . .

The remaining hours of that day were the
longest I have ever lived through. The prisoner in his cage,
waiting for the sun to rise on the morning of his execution, does
not suffer more than the lover whose conscience is not easy, and
what Esharhamat proposed was a blasphemy against the goddess.

Ishtar grants her blessing to the pure maiden
who gives her virginity not with passion but to one who is to her a
stranger, a man she will lie with once and see no more. To these
the Lady Wrapped in Loveliness gives fertility and a husband with
strong loins, but her temple shall not be used as a trysting place.
The rites of sacred harlotry have no place for such as Esharhamat
and I, and we both understood this. I was filled with darkness. I
would meet her, since she would have it so and because I felt
myself too covered in sin to resist, but I knew we were damning
ourselves.

Esharhamat, it seemed, was easy in her mind,
but women are braver than men, who can face only death without
trembling. She, it seemed, could face even the wrath of heaven. Or
perhaps she had merely perfected the art of lying to herself.

I took a horse and rode out from the city,
following the river until I could look in every direction without
seeing a human figure. Then I dismounted, tethered my horse, and
sat down by the rushing waters of the Tigris to listen to its voice
until it should wash me clean of foreboding, until I could know
what it was I wished for myself.

Did I expect the maxxu to come to me yet once
more, to tell me the god’s will and give me rest? I think not. I
hoped for it, to find those blind eyes resting once more on my
face, but I did not really expect it. He did not come, but his
words haunted my mind, adding to my torment. He had spoken of
Nineveh as a dead city. I would find nothing there, neither glory
nor happiness nor friendship nor love, he had told me. Yet I had
found all these things already. “Listen to the promptings of your
heart,” he had said. “The sin will not be yours.” Yet I was covered
in guilt and my heart knew now one direction, now another, as if it
would pull me apart. My praises were on all men’s lips but my own.
I was divided against myself.

No, there was no peace in the muddy waters of
that mother of rivers. She rolled past me, heedless. She had been
here since the days of the gods and would remain long after I and
all the race of men were dust. She nourished us all but was
indifferent, as if her bounty were as nothing, as we were
ourselves.

I had been sitting by the river’s edge a long
time. The horse touched my back with its nose, as if to remind me
that it had a stall waiting for it back at the house of war. Yes,
the point was well taken. I rose and mounted, turning my face
toward the city which it was prophesied I would outlive, because
there was no escape. Even a horse knew as much, and was therefore
wiser than I.

. . . . .

The temple of Ishtar is a vast walled complex
of buildings and enclosed gardens, almost a city in itself, and,
indeed, it could not be otherwise, for it is home to perhaps two
hundred of the sacred harlots and easily twice as many of their
servants and followers, most of whom are eunuchs.

The women of this precinct are nothing like
the common prostitutes found plying their trade in the wine shops
and streets of every city in the world—for there is no degradation
in the service of Ishtar, Goddess of Love and Fruitfulness. The
temple harlots are women of great beauty and charm—and sometimes of
considerable intelligence as well—who are honored wherever they go,
surrounded as they are by an aura of inexplicable chastity, as if
they had preserved their virginity at the temple door, rather than
losing it there like other women. It is not unheard of for them to
amass great fortunes and retire, sometimes to marriage with
important men—and such a man does not have to feel afraid that
anyone might be snickering behind his back, for he is an object of
envy rather than the butt of coarse jokes.

Most of the women who come to the temple do
not, however, have any thought of staying. They perform their
ritual and go home with nothing except their silver coin, which
will be sewn into the decoration of their wedding tunic, and
perhaps a memory, pleasant or unpleasant as the case might be, and
perhaps not even that.

The temple itself is as unlike a brothel as
any place on earth, for there is no drunkenness and no shame,
everything is pleasant and orderly, and there is not that peculiar
sense of mockery which prostitutes generally bring to their
work—there is no feigned passion and no sense that the men who come
there are merely fools to be teased out of their money and sent
away. The virgins who enter only once are too innocent and too
apprehensive for that, and the sacred harlots are skilled enough to
please themselves as well as their clients.

As the sunlight dwindled to nothing, I waited
outside the temple entrance, on the great stairway made of burned
brick colored blue and yellow in alternate bands as it rose from
the level of the street. The steps were crowded with women, some of
them nervously glancing around them—will it be this man who will
come for me? Or this? Or this?—and some merely bored with waiting,
and some, the plain ones, who had been there longest, with eyes
glazed and hopeless, as if they could see the emptiness of their
future stretching out before them.

Esharhamat had not yet arrived, and as I
stood there men and women stared at me, as if I must be either
hopelessly bashful or some species of idiot who could not bring
himself to make a choice. But my uneasiness had for its source
something beyond the curious attention of such as these, for I felt
as if I were under the eyes of the gods.

Esharhamat did not come. My shadow lengthened
across the burned brick steps, covering now one seated figure, now
another, and still Esharhamat did not come. Of course—she had seen
reason and would save us both from this terrible sin. I tried to
hope it might be so, and my eyes darted anxiously up and down the
great straight Street of Ishtar. Yes, of course. She would not
come. And fool that I was, I yearned for a glimpse of her that I
might know her love was greater than her prudence.

In the gathering darkness, waiting women
lighted little clay lamps that men might still see their faces.
Here and there they huddled together around a brazier or wrapped
their arms about their knees and slept where they sat. Threads of
laughter reached me through the still air—the temple would still be
a busy place long after the rest of the city slept.

She will not come, I told myself. I
understood now that she had meant this as a punishment upon me,
that she was even then in her own rooms, safe and surrounded by her
women, smiling secretly at the thought of my fool’s vigil.

Or, perhaps, not so secretly. Perhaps this
was a great joke she would share with her women, how she had
avenged herself upon the mighty Tiglath Ashur, whose name was
glorious but who was still but a man and, like all men, gulled by a
few soft words. Raw as a schoolboy. A simpleton.

Yet I too could dance to that merry pipe.
Esharhamat would laugh no more when she heard—and she would hear,
for she seemed to hear everything—that Tiglath Ashur, the mighty,
the valiant, whose sinews had the strength of iron and whose heart
was bronze, that her glorious lover on this night, appointed for
his disgrace, had not waited idly but had led another woman—and
more than one, many, and such as otherwise would wait through many
a cold night, poor plain little things—into the temple of Ishtar,
showering their laps with silver and leaving

them to dream all their lives. . .

But the idea brought me shame almost as soon
as it formed in my mind, for Esharhamat had come after all.

A carrying chair, enclosed, such as only
great ladies might use, stopped at the foot of the temple steps.
The little door opened. A woman covered in the red veil of mourning
stepped down. Yes, of course she had come. I was ashamed of my
contemplated betrayal, ashamed to have doubted her, glad she had
come and ashamed of that as well. But glad just the same.
Esharhamat, fairest of women, how the desire for her rose in my
liver, as if a green fire consumed me.

I watched as her tiny feet, peeking out with
each step from beneath the hem of her tunic, mounted the great
brick stairway to the temple door. I watched as men and women alike
stepped aside to let her pass, humbled and abashed in the presence
of such radiance. No one could see her face, but no one could doubt
her beauty, for it was a thing witnessed by her slightest movement,
by the delicacy of her little jeweled hands, by her eyes, large and
dark, luminous as the night moon. She had come, to this place, to
my arms.