To the Land of the Living (16 page)

Now and again flying fiery-eyed demons swooped through the city at rooftop height. No one paid any attention to them. Frequently they came to rest and perched, preening themselves like living gargoyles, beating their powerful wings against the air and sending down dank fetid breezes over the passers-by below. Gilgamesh saw one of the winged things suddenly sway and fall, as though overcome by a spell. Little glossy scuttling animals emerged from crevices in the gutter and pounced upon it. They devoured it before Gilgamesh had reached the end of the street, leaving nothing but scraps of leathery cartilage behind.

When he looked off in the distance it seemed to him that there was some sort of translucent wall in the sky beyond the city, cutting Brasil off from the rest of the Afterworld. Its blue-white sheen glimmered with cold ferocity; and it seemed to him that there were monstrous creatures outside, not the usual demon-beasts but some other kind of even greater loathsomeness, all crimson beaks and coiling snaky necks and vast wings that flailed in fury against the wall that kept them out. But when he blinked and looked again he saw nothing unusual at all, only the heavy clouds and the dark glimmer of the light of the sun struggling to break through them.

Then he heard a sound that might have been the sound of a tolling bell. But the bell seemed to be tolling backward. First came the dying fall, and then the rising swell of sound, and then the initial percussive boom; and then silence, and then the dying fall again, climbing toward the clangor of the striking clapper:

mmmmmmoooMMMMNGB! mmmmmmoooMMM-MNGB! mmmmmmoooMMMMNGB!

The impact of the sound was stunning. Gilgamesh stood still, feeling the immense weight of time drop away, centuries peeling from him with each heavy reverberation. As though on a screen before him in the air he saw his entire life in the Afterworld running in reverse, the thousands of years of aimless wandering becoming a mad flight at fantastic speed, everything rushed and blurred and jumbled together as if it had happened in a single day, Gilgamesh here, Gilgamesh there, brandishing his sword, drawing his bow, slaying this devil-beast and that, climbing impossible mountains, swimming lakes of shimmering color, trekking across fields of blazing sand, entering cities that were twisted and distorted like the cities one enters in dreams, penetrating the far regions of this place even to the strangest region of all, in the north, where great drifting ivory block-shaped creatures of immense size and unknown nature moved about on their mysterious tasks. Now he was wrestling joyously with Enkidu, now he watched the brawling swarms of Later Dead come flooding in and filling the place with their ghastly noisy machines and their guns and their foul-smelling vehicles, now he was in the villa of Lenin in Nova Roma among Lenin’s whole unsavory crew of cold-eyed conspirators and malevolent bitchy queens, and now he sat roistering in the feasting-hall of the Ice-Hunter king Vy-otin, with Enkidu laughing and joking by his side and Agamemnon too, and Amenhotep and Cretan Minos, and Varuna the king of Meluhha, his great companions in those early days in the Afterworld. How long ago that was! And now–

“Great king!” a woman cried, dashing up to him and clutching at his wrist. “Save us from doom, great king!”

Gilgamesh stared at her, amazed. Not a woman but a girl. And he knew her. Had known her, once. Had loved her, even. In another life, far away, long ago, on the other side of the great barrier of life and death. For her face was the face of the girl-priestess Inanna, she whom he had embraced so rashly and with such passion in old Uruk, in the life he had led before this life! During his long years in the Afterworld he had thought more than once about encountering Inanna again, had even once or twice considered seeking her out, but he had never acted on the thought. And now, to blunder into her like this here in Brasil

Or was he still in Brasil? Was this the Afterworld at all?

Everything was swirling about him. A thick mist was gathering. The earth was giving up its moisture. It seemed to him that he saw the walls of Uruk rising at the end of the street, the huge white platform of the temples, the awesome statues of the gods. He heard the clamor of his name on a thousand thousand tongues.
Gilgamesh! Gilgamesh
! And in the sky, instead of the familiar dull red glaring light, there was the yellow sun of the Land, that he had not beheld in so unimaginably long a time, blazing with all its midsummer power.

What was this? Had that tolling bell lifted him altogether out of this world and cast him back into the other, the world of his birth and death? Or was this only a waking dream?

“Inanna?” he said in wonder. How slender she was! How young! Strings of blue beads about her waist, amulets of pink shells tied to the ends of her hair. Her body bare, painted along its side and front with the pattern of the serpent. And her dark-tipped breasts – the sharp stinging scent of her perfume–

She spoke again, this time calling him by his name of names, the private name that no one had called him in thousands of years, since that day when he was still half a boy and he had put on the mantle of kingship and had for the first time heard his king-name roaring like a flooding river in his ears,
Gilgamesh, Gilgamesh, Gilgamesh
. He himself had forgotten that other name, that birth-name: but as she spoke it the dam of recollection burst in his soul. What wizardry was this, that he should be standing before the girl Inanna again?

“I am Ninpa the Lady of the Scepter,” she murmured. “I am Ninmenna the Lady of the Crown.”

She reached her hand toward his. As he touched her she changed: she was older now, fuller of body, her dark eyes gleaming with wanton knowledge, her deep-hued skin bright with oil. “Come,” she whispered. “I am Inanna. You must come with me. You are the only one who can save us.”

A dark tunnel before him – a buzzing in his ears, as of a thousand wasps about his head – a brilliant purple light glowing before his eyes – a mighty roaring, as though Enlil of the Storms had loosed all his winds upon the Afterworld–

And then a fiery pain at his ankle. Ajax, sinking his fangs deep! Gilgamesh stared down at the dog, astonished.

“Careful, Gilgamesh!” Ajax barked. “This is enchantment!”

“What? What?”

The woman held him by the hand. Heat came from her, and it was overwhelming, a furnace heat. And she was changing, again and again; now she had his mother’s face, and now she was the round-breasted temple-woman Abisimti who had first taught him the arts of love; and then she was the child-Inanna again, and then the woman. And then she was a thing with a hundred heads and a thousand eyes, pulling him down into the nether pits of the Afterworld, into the yawning blackness that lay beneath the smouldering heart of the Vesuvius volcano.

“I am Ereshkigal of Hell,” she whispered, “and I will be your bride.”

Down – down – descending a ladder of lights – blinding whiteness all around, and a bright red mantle of copper fluttering in the breeze out of the pit, and demons dancing below. On all sides, lions. From high overhead, golden wine falling from two inverted wine-cups; and the wine was thick and fiery, and burned him where it touched him.

He heard the furious howling of the dog. He felt the terrible pull of the black depths.

“It is enchantment, Gilgamesh,” said Ajax again. “Stay – fight – I will get help –”

The dog ran off, uttering terrible wolf-cries as he went.

Gilgamesh stood his ground, baffled, shaking his head slowly from side to side like a wounded bull. If only Enkidu were here! Enkidu would pull him back from the abyss, just as Gilgamesh once long ago had tried to bring Enkidu out of that tunnel of old dry bones that led to the land of the dead. He had failed, then, and Enkidu had perished; but they were older now, they were wiser, they knew how to deal with the demons that surrounded them on all sides–

Enkidu! Enkidu!

“You should not have come to this street alone,” a new voice said. “There are many dangers here.”

Enkidu, yes! At last! The dog Ajax had returned, and he had brought Enkidu with him to Gilgamesh’s side. Gilgamesh felt his soul soaring. Saved! Saved!

Through blurred eyes he saw the powerful figure of his friend: the great muscles, the thick pelt of dark hair, the burning gleaming eyes. Enkidu was struggling with
Ereshkigal-Inanna, now. Shoving the Hell-goddess back toward her pit, wresting her cold hands free of Gilgamesh’s wrist. Gilgamesh trembled. He could not move. He was helpless to act on his own behalf. In all his years in the Afterworld he had never known such peril, had never fallen so deeply into the power of the dark beings of the invisible world. But Enkidu was here – Enkidu would save him–

Enkidu was freeing him. Yes. Yes. The frightful chill of the abyss which had enfolded him was relenting. The blinding lights had receded. The temples and streets and sun of Uruk no longer could be seen. Gilgamesh stepped back, blinking, shivering. His heart was pounding in dull heavy thuds, almost like the tolling of that backwards bell. Tears were streaming down his face. He looked about for his friend.

“Enkidu?”

Through blurring eyes he saw the shaggy figure. Enkidu? Enkidu? No. The heavy pelt was like a beast’s. A reddish color, and coarse and dense, letting none of the skin show through. And the face – that underslung chin, those fierce brooding ridges above the eyes why, this was not Enkidu at all, but rather the Hairy Man who was Simon’s wizard. Or perhaps not, perhaps another of that tribe altogether it was so difficult telling one Hairy Man from the next

The very ugliness of the Hairy Man was comforting. The squat bulk of him, the solidity. This creature who had lived when the gods themselves were young, who had walked the earth in the days before the Flood, who had lived fifty thousand or a hundred thousand or a hundred hundred thousand years in the Afterworld before Gilgamesh of Uruk first had come here. Ancient wisdom flowed deep in him. Next to him, Gilgamesh felt almost like a child again.

“Come with me,” said the Hairy Man, thick-tongued, husky-voiced. “In here. You will be safe. You will be protected here.”

It might have been some sort of warehouse. A huge dark long room, walls of white plaster, curved wooden ceiling far overhead. A single piercing beam of light cutting through from above, illuminating the intricacies of the rafters and slicing downward to show the sawdust-strewn floor, the rows of bare wooden tables, the hunched and somber figures sitting on backless benches behind them. They were staring straight forward and exclaiming aloud, each in the midst of uttering some private recitation, each ploughing stubbornly onward over the voices of all the others.

“I am Wulfgeat. For chronic disorder of the head or of the ears or of the teeth through foulness or through mucus, extract that which aileth there, seethe chervil in water, give it to drink, then that draweth out the evil humors either through mouth or through nose.”

“I am Aethelbald. Seek in the maw of young swallows for some little stones, and mind that they touch neither earth, nor water, nor other stones; look out three of them; put them on the man, on whom thou wilt, him who hath the need, and he will soon be well.”

“I am Eadfrith. Here we have rue, hyssop, fennel, mustard, elelcampane, southernwood, celandine, radish, cumin, onion, lupin, chervil, flower de luce, flax, rosemary, savory, lovage, parsley, olusatrum, savine.”

In wonder and bewilderment Gilgamesh said, “Why, who are these people, and what’s all this that they’re babbling?”

“– again, thou shalt remove the evil misplaced humors by spittle and breaking; mingle pepper with mastic, give it the patient to chew, and work him a gargle to swill his jowl”

“– they are good for headache, and for eye-wark, and for the fiend’s temptations, and for night goblin visitors, and for the nightmare, and for knot, and for fascination, and for evil enchantments by song. It must be big nestlings on which thou shalt find
them. If a man ache in half his head, pound rue thoroughly, put it into strong vinegar–”

The Hairy Man said, “These are dealers in remedies and spells, and this is the market where such things are sold in Brasil.”

“– and also mastic, pepper, galbanum, scamony, gutta ammoniaca, cinnamon, vermilion, aloes, pumice, quicksilver, brimstone, myrrh, frankincense, petroleum, ginger –”

“– that he by that may comfortably break out the ill phlegm. Work thus a swilling or lotion for cleansing of the head, take again a portion of mustard seed and of navew seed and of cress seed, and twenty peppercorns, gather them all with vinegar and honey –”

“– and smear therewith the head, right on top. Delve up waybroad without iron, ere the rising of the sun, bind the roots about the head, with crosswort, by a red fillet –”

Gilgamesh shivered. “I think this place is no better than being in the street. A marketplace of wizards? A hundred mages bellowing spells?”

“No harm can befall you here,” the Hairy Man said. “There is such a constant crying-forth of magics in here that each cancels the other out, so there is no peril.”

“– the seed of this wort administered in wine is of much benefit against any sort of snake, and against sting of scorpions, to that degree that if it be laid upon the scorpions, it bringeth upon them unmightiness or impotence and infirmity –”

“– for ache of loins and sore of the thighs, take this same wort pulegium, seethe it in vinegar –”

“I am Aethelbald.”

“I am Eadfrith.”

“I am Wulfgeat.”

“– this wort, which is named priapiscus, and by another name vinca pervinca, is of good advantage for many purposes, that is to say, first against devil sicknesses, or demoniacal possessions, and against snakes, and against wild beasts, and against poisons –”

“Good sir! Good sir!” It was the one who said he was Aethelbald, waving wildly at Gilgamesh.

“What does he want with me?”

“To sell you something, no doubt,” the Hairy Man replied. “Why were you wandering in these streets by yourself?”

“My head was aching when I awoke. From the noise of the eruptions all night long, and, I think, from some prattle of the Jew Herod last evening. So I went out to walk. To clear my head, to see the city. I saw no harm in it.”