The Assyrian (38 page)

“Out!” I bellowed. “Out, every one of you,
out—if you value your lives, out!”

It was more than an instant before my
adversary realized that I really was prepared to kill him, that I
wore the uniform of a rab shaqe, and that he had better do as he
was told. He picked his discarded tunic up from the floor and
started backing away.

“Want her all for yourself then, my young
lord?” the old crone chirped behind me. There was a general
laughter, muted and uneasy.

“Everyone—I said, go!”

I had only to make a single pass through the
air with my javelin, and they ran for the door like rabbits. In an
instant, Shaditu and I were alone.

Shaditu did not at first realize this. She
rose on one elbow; drawing her knees up as she did so, and looked
around her, blinking like an owl.

“What the. . . ? Oh, its you,
Tiglath—brother. Care to take your turn in the wine press?”

With a slurred laugh—she showed all the signs
of being very drunk—she let her thighs fall open to reveal the
cleft, worn glowing red with use and streaming with seed.

“I’ve been entertaining—what do you think. .
?”

“You are disgusting,” I said, turning my face
away as I removed my cloak for her to wear. “Here, cover
yourself.”

“Oh, Tiglath, don’t be cross. Here—give me a
kiss, my sweet brother. We never seem to meet except when I am at
less than my best.”

She gathered my cloak around her shoulders
and leaned forward, holding her head in her hands. For a moment I
thought she was about to be sick, but this impression was dispelled
soon enough as she reached out to take hold of my arm, resting her
temple against it.

“Oh, Tiglath, my beautiful brother, if you
could but love me,” she murmured. “I am driven to this by your
rejection.”

“You must have your little joke, I
suppose.”

I pulled away my arm, wondering why I had
ever let her take it in the first place. Shaditu could fill any man
with uneasiness, and I was a man. I picked up her tunic from the
floor; it was a flimsy thing of the thinnest linen, and someone had
torn it into shreds—one could easily imagine the circumstances. No,
she would never wear this again. I could not find her sandals
anywhere.

“Here now, wrap yourself in my cloak. It is
cold out, and you are going outside to your chair and then
home.”

“Not yet, I think,” she answered, leaning
back on the table and letting the cloak fall open. “Let us tarry
here a moment first—just the two of us.”

“Shaditu, if you will not go to your chair on
your own two legs I will drag you, by the hair if I must.”

“I do not think you would, brother.”

“And why would I not, sister?”

“Because you know how very much I would enjoy
it.” She smiled at me, like a cat. “Now give me but a sip of wine
and try a little to be nice to me, Tiglath, for I know you do not
find it a misery to look at me.”

She was right. I could not help myself, for
Shaditu was beautiful. Her mouth had been made for kissing, and her
eyes were wanton, full of wickedness, but tilted up at the corners
as if to smile, as if the sight of you consumed her with pleasure.
The flesh of her body was as smooth as water. That body seemed to
beckon: Come, taste me, hold these breasts in your hands, push your
way between these thighs and know the joy of me. I was but a man,
and I felt this. And Shaditu was not blind.

She lay naked upon my cloak, her arms thrown
back, her belly rising and falling as she breathed. I went to fetch
her a cup of wine and sat down to wait until she drank it and had
done with tormenting me.

She sat up and took the wine cup from my
hand, smiling to herself as if at some private jest.

“You do not love me, you love
another—everyone knows this.” She shrugged her shoulders. “I do not
care. If you desire me, this is enough; I would not interfere
between you and Esharhamat, who must be a poor thing for a man to
pleasure himself with.

“But I see that, once again, I have shocked
you. Yes, I see I have.” The smile on her lips faded quietly away.
“You think I am wicked and unfeeling, worse even than the tavern
harlots, who at least sell themselves for money with which to live.
Perhaps you are right—perhaps also this is not the life I would
have chosen for myself, had I been free to choose. But, you see, I
was not. I have a father who is old and foolish and thinks to keep
me for himself alone.”

“You speak unwisely, sister—I would. . .”

“You would what, brother? Do not imagine you
can threaten me as you did that crowd of ruffians.” She made a
faint dismissing gesture, as if her late paramour and his friends
were ghosts she would wave away. “I will say whatever I like.”

“Were you a man, even my brother in blood, I
would kill you for your impertinence.”

“But I am not a man, and you are my brother,
O mighty Tiglath Ashur—I think myself safe enough from your
wrath.”

She laughed, throwing back her head, and I
began to wish I were someone else that I might slap her face hard
enough to make those mocking lips bleed. I desired her—I could not
lie to myself—but at the same time I longed to break her body like
a rotten twig. There are some women who thus mingle in us yearning
and hatred, and Shaditu was one of them.

“What do I say that is not the truth?” she
went on, laughing still, but bitterly. “Shaditu is the king’s
darling and may not have a husband to rule over her while her
father lives. Had I been given a man of my own, and been allowed to
live in the manner of other women, I might have been content with
that and never strayed into the beds of common soldiers and the
wine shops of the poor and despised. But perhaps—who can say?—I
might have anyway, for perhaps it is simply my nature to be
wicked.

“Come into me, Tiglath. You will someday, as
we both well understand. Let us take pleasure together.” She looked
up at me through smoldering eyes. “No? Not today? Or perhaps you
have wrung yourself dry in another’s arms?”

“Get up, Shaditu—it is time you left this
place. Get up, or I will drag you and we will see how you enjoy
it.”

When she saw the time for teasing was over,
she rose from the table like a queen from her throne, drawing my
cloak around her so that it covered her up to the tips of her ears.
Her slaves scrambled to their feet when they saw us.

I watched her carrying chair disappear down
the street, the slaves trotting like dogs in their haste.

. . . . .

But for me this was not only a season of
sighing women. I did not have to trifle in forbidden passions to
feel myself loved, for I was the darling of the world.

The king, who had settled with himself that I
should have the favor of gods and men, sent me to the holy city of
Ashur that I might pray in his name at all the ancient shrines and,
while I had the opportunity, inspect the garrison there that the
priests might see in what esteem I was held by the army.

In this he was not without cunning, for under
the surface the sources of power within the nation were struggling
among themselves, divided by the late war in the south and the
king’s siege and sack of Babylon. The priests and others who looked
to the old culture of Sumer as to a mother believed that a
sacrilege had been committed, that the great gods would avenge
themselves upon us for the destruction of Marduk’s city. The
soldiers and those who, like the merchants and tradesmen, looked to
the caravan routes of the west for their prosperity, thought the
king had done well to crush Babylon and break forever its alliance
with Elam before these two overwhelmed us. These, because the king
favored me and because I had seemed so to distinguish myself in
that action—thus we blind ourselves to the truth, for how, except
in men’s eyes, was Esarhaddon’s glory less than mine?—these wished
me exalted as the marsarru. The Babylonian party saw Esarhaddon as
their savior—he would turn aside Marduk’s wrath and rebuild his
city. Thus I was to go to Ashur to ingratiate myself with the gods
and overawe their priests. Such devices, so my father gave me to
understand, were the skilled workmanship of kings.

But since he did not trust perfectly my hand
in statecraft, he sent the Lord Sinahiusur with me lest, for want
of wisdom, I disgrace myself utterly.

Except as a soldier marching by beneath her
walls, I had never seen the city of Ashur, sacred to the god and
seat of our ancient kings. Ashur had been a city when Nineveh and
Calah were empty even of their names. Before kings, before cities,
before one mud brick stood upon another, the first of our race had
come here from the empty wastes of the western deserts, delivered
from a life of wandering by the mercy of Great Ashur, who said,
“This shall be your place, where the seed of the nation shall grow
and scatter across the wide world. I give you my name, that all may
know you are servants of the god.” No man born between rivers and
mountains may see that city of the fathers without his heart rising
within him.

Sinahiusur and I rode on horseback, taking
with us an escort of fifty men. It was a journey of less than two
days if one traveled by water, but our object—at least in part—was
to make an impression, and there is no dignity in a reed raft that
delivers one up sick and soaking and unsteady on one’s legs. I had
no taste for being laughed at, so we went by road, as a soldier
should. We arrived at the gates of Ashur after four days.

If I had had any doubts that the god meant me
to be king, they fled like shadows as we approached the city.
Somehow, I knew not how, the garrison had received word of our
coming. Four thousand men lined the road—and behind them the common
people, the shopkeepers and bakers, the tanners of hides and
workers of metal, the farmers and the brickmakers, they and their
wives and their children, in numbers beyond counting they had come.
And they had but one voice and one song. “Ashur is King!” they
shouted. “Ashur is King! Ashur is King! Ashur is King!”

I rode alone at the head of my escort—even
the turtanu had fallen back that this triumph might be mine
alone—and as my horse made its nervous way over the brick highway
the people threw flowers in my path, and coins that the touch of my
horse’s hoofs might bless them, as if I were already their chosen
lord. “Ashur is King! Ashur is King!” they shouted, and then, first
the soldiers and finally everyone, “Tig-LATH! Tig-LATH! Tig-LATH!
Tig-LATH!”

How much may a man thus hear his name on
men’s lips before he believes himself to be exalted, chosen of the
gods, precious in the sight of heaven? How much, before he becomes
a fool in his own heart?

That night we were feasted by the city
governor, an old soldier whose eyes shone like pools of oil as we
talked about past campaigns and the glory of war. He was the second
son of the old turtanu, who had been a brother of Great Sargon, and
called Sinahiusur “cousin,” although he could not be brought to
call me anything except “gugallu” a word meaning something between
“hero” and “commander.” At first I thought his intention was merely
to tease me, a young man in danger of growing too full of himself,
but gradually it became plain that he was in earnest and meant only
to show respect. It was an embarrassment coming from one of his
rank and age and, I felt, almost an insult to him whom I had always
regarded as my patron, but the Lord Sinahiusur, who only smiled and
told stories and drank wine, gave no sign that he took it as such,
seeming to regard my elevation over him as right and natural.

But by then, of course, I had grasped
something which even a few hours earlier, while I was kept blind by
borrowed radiance, had eluded me. This spectacle had been
arranged.

The skilled workmanship of kings. The report
would soon reach Nineveh that I had been received in triumph. That
I was popular with the army was well known, but now all would
credit me with the favor of the city mob, which is not so
negligible a thing that great men might ignore it. The priests
would be silenced.

And had I not myself begun to believe? And
was that no an object too? The cunning old fox my father would gull
me with everyone else. And all this the Lord Sinaiusur had
understood from the beginning.

So the next day, keeping to the role assigned
me, I abased myself at the shrines of Ashur, Ishtar, Adad, Ea,
Nergal, Shamash, Sin, Nabu, and—simply as a precaution—Marduk. I
offered wine and fruit, I burned cuttings from my beard to atone
for past sins, and I donated gold, silver, copper and precious
stone to the gods’ adornment. I listened, humble and silent, to
priestly admonitions. I saw my simtu read in oil streaked water. I
consulted the barus. I would prosper, they told me. I would be
great in the Land of Ashur.

In the evening I went to dine at the barrack,
where most were veterans of the southern wars and I was greeted as
an old comrade. Among the common soldiers there were many who
wished merely to touch my hands—such is the power of myth, for had
not many of them suffered more and put their lives at greater
hazard than I? Men create their heroes and their kings to reflect
what is most noble in themselves, for what was I but their image of
all they had done themselves? I felt myself humbled as I sat in the
officers’ mess, drinking wine with braver men than I who for the
rest of their lives would speak of how once they had breached a jar
with Tiglath Ashur.

In the morning we set out again for Nineveh.
Once more the soldiers and common people lined the road, and once
more they called my name as if invoking the power of the great
gods, but this time the wine did not set my head spinning and I was
able to wave and smile and know that it was merely emptiness, an
illusion like the blue water one sees beyond the baking desert.

And the Lord Sinahiusur, who rode beside me,
was once more the king’s turtanu, to whom all in the land save one
must bow.