The Assyrian (42 page)

. . . . .

It was already dark when I began to make my
way home. It had taken a long time before the paralysis of will—if
I may be so kind to myself as to use such an expression to cover my
weakness—before the paralysis of will departed, to be replaced,
slowly, measure by measure, by a terrible, blind, unfocused anger.
She was gone, and forever. What I hated was life, the thought of
the hours and days and years that stretched before me, and all
without her. I wanted to kill, to maim, to share this pain out to
others that it might not break me to pieces. What people might have
thought of me as I lurched along the street I cannot say. It was
dark and I was wrapped in a simple soldier’s cloak—no one could
have known who I was. But I felt, even to myself, as if I had gone
half mad. Once, twice, I remember, someone would glance at me and
move quickly away.

“Are you lonely, Mighty Lord? Do you want to
tell me your troubles and take some comfort?”

Who was it who had spoken? I did not know;
the words seemed to come from nowhere. I turned my head and saw a
little harlot standing beside me, hardly more than a child. She
smiled uncertainly, as if torn between her fear and her need. The
sight of her filled me with rage—her smiling, mocking face, I
wanted to smash it. I hated her, this common prostitute. I had
never seen her before, and yet I have never hated anyone so
much.

“An easy thing to kill her,” I thought. “The
work of an instant. Why not?” I actually did put my hands about her
throat. I shook her, lifting her so that her bare feet actually
left the ground. My grip tightened. . .

And then, just as suddenly, I lost interest,
letting her drop. I simply could not be bothered.

She was frightened but unhurt. I took a
handful of silver coins from a pocket in my cloak—more money, I
would guess, than she had ever seen in her life—and scattered them
into her lap. She scooped them up and, scrambling to her feet, ran
like a rabbit, no doubt thinking herself unutterably lucky. She
really was lucky. I had come within a breath of murdering her.

“The great gods preserve me from madness,” I
whispered. “I hope it drives you mad” she had said. Esharhamat had
said those words to me, had pronounced that curse. Perhaps,
already. . .

I might almost have welcomed it.

Like Esarhaddon, I owned a palace in the
city; but I did not live in it. The king had settled that I should
have quarters within the complex of buildings that was the royal
residence—he had wished me near him, as if somehow, by remaining
inside the radiant circle of his melammu, that aura of divine light
which is said to hedge those whom Ashur has raised to mastery, he
might transfer it to me.

But if that had been his plan, it had not
succeeded. I could not but wonder, as I let myself in by the little
side entrance that opened from a garden, I could not but wonder who
would occupy these rooms tomorrow, when I would be on the dusty
road to the north, perhaps never to return.

There was no one about to take my cloak, so I
left it on a bench, sitting down there myself because I could not
summon the resolve to do more.

In less than two hours I would put on my
battle armor, collect my sword and my javelin, and walk the few
steps to the house of war. There a horse would be waiting, and
Lushakin and his twenty men, and we would depart from the city like
shadows. But between then and now the time stretched empty.

I felt thirsty—I would drink a cup of wine. I
went into the great hall, being reluctant to shout for a slave to
come to me, but there as well I found I was alone.

Now I did shout, but there was no answer. My
servants, all of them it seemed, were gone.

In his own house a prince of the blood is
never suffered to be alone. From the time I had ceased to be a boy,
living with Esarhaddon in a single room in the house of war, I was
always attended by the slaves of the royal household. They were
always around, so omnipresent that I had learned to notice them no
more than I did the furniture or the color of the walls. But now
they had fled my presence. What could it mean?

One idea came into my mind. Someone—perhaps
the king, perhaps the Lord Sinahiusur, perhaps someone else—someone
had decided that the moment had come for my death. If my house was
empty, it was merely that there should be no witnesses when the
assassins cut me down like summer wheat.

So be it. The idea of dying held no terrors
for me—I would welcome it. But I would not sell my life for
nothing. I would not stand quietly and let them cut my throat;
there would be no dignity in dying thus, and I would at least die
with dignity. They would have to pay for the pleasure of killing
me.

On the wall, behind the chair where I sat to
take my meals, were crossed a pair of javelins, my boast to the
world that I was a soldier. I took one of them down, testing the
copper point against my thumb. I would go looking for those who
looked for me, and we would see how many would die along with
Tiglath Ashur. The idea filled me with a cruel pleasure.

I took off my sandals that my feet would make
no sound upon the tile floor. I held the javelin in both hands and
went hunting for my quarry. Where would they be waiting? Would they
expect me to know? I tried to see the problem from their side. They
had not killed me in the garden as I came home, and the reason
could only be that they did not wish to take the risk of some
chance witness happening by. They might guard the exits, but they
would make their attempt somewhere well inside this wing of the
palace—they would wish me to die silently.

I would go to my bedroom. I would find them
there, if not before.

When he knows his enemies are within reach, a
man’s every sense grows as keen as the edge of an iron knife. I
could hear every whisper of sound on that hot night, when the air
was too heavy to bring even a breath of wind in through an open
window. I could hear the dust tumbling through empty space. I could
hear the faint hiss of an oil lamp burning I knew not where. I
could hear the very darkness. If there had been a murderer waiting
with his sword drawn, I would have heard the beating of his heart,
but there was nothing. I made my cautious way in silence, until I
reached the short hallway that led to my bedroom.

There was a glow of flickering yellow light
from beneath the door, which had been left open to perhaps the
breadth of my thumb. Someone was within—how I knew I could not have
said, but the fact was as plain as if whoever it was had shouted
out his name.

I balanced my hand against the door, first
the tips of the fingers only and then the palm, feeling the weight
of its reluctance on its leather hinges. I pushed it open.

A lamp burned on the floor beside where I was
used to sleep, casting strange shadows over the ceiling as if the
room were filled with the fluttering black wings of evil spirits. I
could see almost the whole room—no one was lurking in a corner,
waiting to kill me. There was no one there.

And then the blanket on my sleeping mat
stirred. An arm came out, pushing the blanket down, and a woman sat
up and smiled at me. For a moment, an instant, a single pulse of
time, I felt a wild surge of hope, and then I saw that the woman
was Shaditu.

“I sent your servants away,” she said,
letting the blanket fall away to expose her naked breasts. “They
are remarkably loyal to their master, so I had to mix in a few
threats with the gold I poured into their waiting hands. I wanted
us to be alone.”

For those few seconds at least, I think I was
quite mad. A wild cry of rage broke from my lips, and I balanced
the javelin in my hand and threw with every shred of my strength.
The weapon buried its point in the wall, not the width of three
fingers from Shaditu’s head. Had I meant to miss her? I know not. I
do not think so.

At first her eyes grew wide with fear, but
that did not last long. Her breast was heaving and she trembled,
but not because she was afraid.

“Oh, Tiglath,” she murmured, her voice thick
with excitement, “how you know to make a woman want you!”

And then, with a kind of reckless violence,
she threw back her head and began to laugh. The silvery sound of
her laughter filled the room, driving away the shadows the way a
dog’s bark will scatter a flock of roosting birds—there was no
space for anything except Shaditu’s ringing laughter. It filled my
mind until I wanted to clutch the sides of my head to keep it from
bursting.

“Is this how you courted the Lady
Esharhamat?” she asked, still hardly able to speak for laughing.
“Is this how you brought her to love you, Tiglath, by displaying
how easily you could pierce her flesh with your lance? Come—you may
poke away at me with your other one. You may drive it in as deep as
you like.”

To show me what she meant she pulled the
blanket away from her legs, opening them as wide as she could.

“Come, Tiglath—dear, strong, loving brother.
Is that an easy enough target for you? Hah, hah, hah!” Her breasts
and belly shook with merriment.

And then, quite suddenly, she stopped. She
smiled at me, a cunning, knowing smile, as if she could see
straight into my heart.

“You will never have her again, Tiglath,” she
said. “There will be other women—many women, if I am any judge—but
never the Lady Esharhamat, who will be set to breeding kings,
hunched under Esarhaddon’s weight like any tavern slut. Let him
have her, Tiglath Ashur, hero, mighty warrior. Come and let me
teach you how little you have really lost.”

There is a line beyond which men may not go
and remain men. It is a vague thing, this demarcation that sets the
limit to rage, lust, sorrow, joy, the frenzy of fear. It is the
limit of what we may endure of these things before they overwhelm
us, and no one crosses that line of his own will. I crossed it as I
listened to my sister Shaditu mocking me. I hated her. I thought
that was all I felt, that bitter hatred as she gloated over the
corpse of my dead hopes—I thought that was all, but I was
wrong.

If she said another word . . .

“Did you think it could end any other way?
Did you think I would let that cold little bitch puppy have
you?”

Even as her eyes followed me, even as my
shadow fell across her naked body did she speak to me thus in her
throaty, wanton voice, the very sound of which seemed to stab at my
breast like a dagger with a broken point.

“You were never meant for one such as her,
Tiglath Ashur, my dear, stupid brother. What can she offer you that
I. . .”

As I stood over her she reached up to touch
me. I took her arm just above the wrist and pulled her toward me—I
could see the expectation in her eyes and it filled me with what I
took to be the purest hatred but which was far from pure. I raised
my hand and struck her, hard, straight across the face so that her
head snapped back with a violence that seemed enough to have broken
her neck. When she turned her eyes to me again they were shining
with pain and a thin trickle of blood was running from her mouth.
Still, she smiled at me. I could not stand to see her smile. I
tightened my hand into a fist and struck her again, making her cry
out.

“Taunt me again,” I thought. “Go ahead—give
me a reason to kill you. I hardly need one.”

“Oh, brother,” she whispered through her
bruised lips. “How I love you! Here—let me lick the blood from your
fingers!”

She grasped my arm with her free hand and
tried to raise herself. I tried to shake her off, but she hung on
with what seemed like the fear of death.

“Let me kiss your cruel hands,” she said,
with a voice thick and trembling. “Let me. . .”

I could not help myself. Tears of anguish
were streaming down my face. My knees seemed ready to buckle. I
knelt beside her, taking her little neck in my two hands. I meant
to choke her to death. I would kill her—I would. Then why did I see
no fear in her eyes? Why did her fingers caress my arms? I would
break her. . .

But I did not. Suddenly I was covering her
face with harsh, hating kisses. She moaned softly, and her tongue
licked at my lips.

“Damn you!” I whispered. “Damn you!”

“Yes—yes. . . Damn me, yes.”

Her hand slipped down, reaching under my
tunic to grasp my manhood, which with astonishment I found was
swollen and hard. Her fingers moved up and down its length—I could
hardly breathe.

“Hurt me, brother—yes. Avenge yourself on my
body, Tiglath Ashur, favorite of the gods, true king. Kill me if it
pleases you. Who has a better right—why should I care if I
die?”

But I did not kill her. I covered her breasts
with my hands, letting my fingers close around them until she
screamed with the pain of it. Yet mixed with the pain was a raw
longing, as if she hoped it would never stop. Even while I hurt
her, she began lifting the tunic up over my

shoulders.

Tiglath Ashur, favorite of the gods. Of late
the gods had shown me their favor in strange ways. But I did not
think to ask what she meant—I was beyond thinking, of that or
anything else. If I did not take this woman—not Shaditu, not my
sister, but merely this body which writhed beneath me—then I felt
as if my breast would shatter with rage.

I went into her. With the first thrust she
rolled back on the top of her head and began to moan, a low, hollow
sound, as if her body were inhabited by a demon struggling to get
out. Her hips moved in time with me, at first slowly and then
faster. I buried my teeth in her shoulder and she cried out—even as
I reached my climax, she cried out.

I did not look at her as I put on my tunic
again. I was not ashamed of what I had done. I merely hated her and
desired never to see her face again.

“Will you come to me again?” she asked, in
the small, meek voice of a child.