To the Land of the Living (25 page)

But of course this was not that Uruk. This was the Uruk of the Afterworld, a different place entirely, a hundred times larger than the Uruk of his lost Sumer and a thousand times more strange. Yet this place was familiar to him too; and this place seemed to him also like home, for his home is what it was, his second home, the home of his second life.

He had founded this city. He had been king here.

He had no memory of that – it was all lost, swallowed up in the muddle and murk that was what passed for the past here in the Afterworld. But the Knowing that Calandola had bestowed on him had left him with a clear sense of his forgotten achievements in this second Uruk; and, seeing the city before him in the plain exactly as it had looked in his vision, Gilgamesh knew that all the rest of that vision must have been true, that he had once been king in this Uruk before he had been swept away down the turbulent river of time to other places and other adventures.

Herod said, “It’s the right place, isn’t it?”

“No question of it. The very one.”

They were all three riding together in the first Land Rover now, Simon and Gilgamesh and Herod, with their baggage train close behind them and half a dozen of the low, snub-nosed Uruk border-guard vehicles leading the way. Herod was growing lively again, more his usual self, quick-tongued, inquisitive, edgy, nervy. It had given him a good scare when the caravan had been halted by that sudden fog and surrounded by those wild-looking shouting figures. He had been certain that a pack of demons was about to fall upon them and tear them apart. But seeing Gilgamesh step calmly out of his Land Rover and all the wild ones instantly drop down on their faces as though he were the Messiah coming to town had reassured him. Herod seemed relaxed now, sitting back jauntily with his arms folded and his legs crossed.

“It’s very impressive, your Uruk,” Herod said. “Don’t you think so, Simon? Why don’t you tell Gilgamesh what you think of his city?”

Simon gave the Judaean prince a cold, sour look. “I haven’t seen his city yet, Herod.”

“You’re seeing it now.”

“Its walls. Its rooftops.”

“But aren’t they the most majestic walls? And look how far the city stretches! It’s much bigger than Brasil, wouldn’t you say?”

“Brasil sits on an island,” replied Simon frostily. “Its size is limited by that, as you are well aware. But yes, yes, this is a very fine city, this Uruk. I look forward to experiencing its many wonders.”

“And to getting your hands on its treasure,” Herod said. “Which surely is copious. Is that the treasure-house down there, Gilgamesh, that big building on the platform?”

“The temple of Enlil, I think,” said Gilgamesh.

“But certainly it’s full of rubies and emeralds. My master Simon is very fond, you know, of rubies and emeralds. Do you think they’ll mind in this town if he helps himself to a little of their treasure, Gilgamesh?”

Simon Magus said, scowling, “Why are you baiting me like this, Jew? You make me regret I brought you with me on this journey.”

“I simply try to amuse you, Simon.”

“If you keep this up, it may amuse me to have you circumcised a second time,” Simon said. “Or something worse.” To Gilgamesh he said, “Does any of it start to come back to you yet? Your past life in Uruk?”

“Nothing. Not a thing.”

“But yet you’re sure you lived here once.”

“I built this city, Simon. So I truly believe. I brought people of my own kind together in this place and gave them laws and ruled over them, just as I did in the other Uruk on Earth. There is evidence of that, all about me, which I’m unable to ignore or deny. But all firm knowledge of it, the memory of works and days, of the actual feel of what I must have done in those days, the solidity and reality of it as embodied in events and incidents, has fled from my mind.” Gilgamesh laughed. “Can
you
remember everything that has befallen you in the Afterworld since first you came here?”

“If I had been king of some city before Brasil, I think I would remember that.”

“How long have you been here, Simon?”

“Who can say? You know what time is like here. But I understand some two thousand years have gone by on Earth since my time there. Perhaps a little more.”

“In two thousand years,” said Gilgamesh, “you might have been a king five times over in the Afterworld, and forgotten it all. You could have embraced a hundred queens and forgotten them.”

Herod chuckled. “Helen of Troy – Cleopatra – Nefertiti –all forgotten, Simon, the shape of their breasts, the taste of their lips, the sounds they make in their pleasure –”

Simon reached for his wine. “You think?” he asked Gilgamesh. “Can this be so?”

“The years float by and run one into another. The demons play with our memories. There are no straight lines here, and no unbroken ones. How could we keep our sanity, Simon, if we remembered everything that has happened to us in the Afterworld? Two thousand years, you say? For me it is
five
thousand. Or more. A hundred lifetimes. Ah, no, Simon, I have come to see that we are born again and again here, with minds wiped clean, and the torment of it is that we don’t even know that that is the case. We imagine that we are as we have always been. We think we understand ourselves, and in fact we know only the merest surface of the truth. The irreducible essence of our souls remains the same, yes – I am always Gilgamesh, he is Herod, you are Simon, we make the choices over and over that someone of our nature must and will make – but the conditions of our lives fluctuate, we are tossed about on the hot winds of the Afterworld, and most of what happens to us is swallowed eventually into oblivion. This is the wisdom that came to me from the Knowing I had of Calandola.”

“That barbarian! That devil!”

“Nevertheless. He sees behind the shallow reality of the Afterworld. I accept the truth of his revelation.”

“You may have forgotten Uruk, Gilgamesh,” said Herod, “but Uruk seems not to have forgotten you.”

“So it would appear,” said Gilgamesh.

Indeed it had startled him profoundly when the Sumerian border guards had hailed him at once as Gilgamesh the king. Hardly was he out of the Land Rover but they were kneeling to him and making holy signs, and crying out to him in the ancient language of the Land, which he had not heard spoken in so long a time that it sounded strange and harsh to his ears. It was as if he had left this city only a short while before – whereas he knew that even by the mysterious time-reckoning of the Afterworld it must be a long eternity since last he could have dwelled here. His memory was clear on that point, for he knew that he had spent his most recent phase of his time in the Afterworld roving the hinterlands with Enkidu, hunting the strange beasts of the Outback, shunning the intrigues and malevolences of the cities – and surely that period in the
wilderness had lasted decades, even centuries. Yet in Uruk his face and form seemed familiar to all.

Well, he would know more about that soon enough. Perhaps they held him in legendary esteem here and prayed constantly for his return. Or, more likely, it was merely some further manifestation of the Afterworld’s witchery that spawned these confusions.

They were practically in Uruk now. The road out of the hills had leveled out. A massive wall of red brick rose up before them, and a great brazen gate inscribed with the images of serpents and monsters set in the center of it. It swung open as they drew near, and the entire procession rolled on within.

Simon, far gone in wine, clapped the Sumerian lustily on the shoulder. “Uruk, Gilgamesh! We’re actually here! Did you think we’d ever find it?”

“It found us,” said Gilgamesh coolly. “We were lost in a land between nowhere and nowhere, and suddenly Uruk lay before us. So we are here, Simon: but where is it that we are?”

“Ah, Gilgamesh, Gilgamesh, what a sober thing you are! We are in Uruk, wherever that may be! Rejoice, man! Smile! Lift up your heart! This city is your home! Your friend will be here – what’s his name, Inkibu, Tinkibu –”

“Enkidu.”

“Enkidu, yes. And your cousins, your brothers, perhaps your father –”

“This is the Afterworld, Simon. Delights turn to ashes on our tongues. I expect nothing here.”

“You’ll be a king again. Is that nothing?”

“Have I said I feel any wish to rule this place?” Gilgamesh asked, glowering at the other.

Simon blinked in surprise. “Why, Herod says you do.”

“He does?” Gilgamesh skewered the little Judaean with a fierce glare. “Who are you to pretend to speak what is in my mind, Herod? How do you imagine you dare know my heart?”

In a small voice Herod said, shrinking back as though he expected to be hit, “It is because I was with you when you had the Knowing, Gilgamesh. And had the Knowing with you. Have you forgotten that so soon?”

Gilgamesh considered that. He could not deny the truth of it.
Quietly he said, “This city must already have some king of its own. I have no thought to displace him. But if the gods have that destiny in mind for me –”

“Not the gods, Gilgamesh. The demons. This place is the Afterworld,” Herod reminded him.

“The demons, yes,” said Gilgamesh. “Yes.”

They were well within Uruk now and the caravan had come to rest in the midst of a huge plaza. At close range Gilgamesh saw that Uruk was only superficially a Sumerian city: many of the buildings were in the ancient style, yes, but there was everything else here too, all periods and styles, the hideous things that they called office buildings, and the sullen bulk of a power-plant spewing foulness into the air, and an ominous-looking barracks of dirty red brick without windows, and something that looked like a Roman lawcourt or palace off to one corner. A crowd was gathered outside the Land Rover, many in Sumerian dress but by no means all; there was the usual mix, Early Dead and Later, garbed in all the costumes of the ages. Everyone was staring. Everyone was silent.

“You get out first,” Simon said to Gilgamesh.

He nodded. A gaggle of what were obviously municipal officials, plainly Sumerian by race, had assembled alongside the Land Rover. They were looking in at him expectantly. They seemed worried, or at least puzzled, by his presence here.

He stepped out, looming like a giant above them all.

A man with a thick curling black beard and a shaven skull, who wore the woollen tunic of Sumer the Land, came forward and said – in English – “We welcome Gilgamesh the son of Lugalbanda to the city of Uruk, and his friends. I am the arch-vizier Ur-ninmarka, servant to Dumuzi the king, whose guests you are.”

“Dumuzi?” said Gilgamesh, astonished.

“He is king in Uruk, yes.”

“He who ruled before me, when we lived on Earth?”

Ur-ninmarka shrugged. “I know nothing of that. I was a man of Lagash in the Land that was, and Uruk was far away. But Dumuzi is king here, and he has sent me to give you greeting and escort you to your lodgings. Tonight you will dine with him and with the great ones of the city.”

Dumuzi, Gilgamesh thought in wonder.

Memories of his first life, so much more clear to him than
most of what had befallen him in the Afterworld, came flooding back.

Dumuzi! That pathetic weakling! That murderous swine! Surely it is the same one, he thought; for in the Afterworld everything that has befallen befalls over and over. And so Dumuzi was king in Uruk once again, the same Dumuzi who in the old life, fearing Gilgamesh the son of Lugalbanda as a rival, had sent assassins to slay him, though he was then only a boy. Those assassins had failed, and in the end it was Dumuzi who went from the world and Gilgamesh who had the throne. No doubt he fears me yet, Gilgamesh suspected. And will try his treacheries on me a second time. Some things never change, thought Gilgamesh: it is the way of the Afterworld. As Dumuzi will learn to his sorrow, if he has new villainy in mind.

Aloud he said, “It will please me greatly to enjoy the hospitality of your king. Will you tell him that?”

“That I will.”

“And tell him too that he will be host to Simon, ruler of the great city of Brasil, and to his prime minister, Herod of Judaea, who are my traveling companions.”

Ur-ninmarka bowed.

“One further thing,” said Gilgamesh. “I take it there are many citizens of Sumer the Land dwelling in this city.”

“A great many, my lord.”

“Can you say, is there a certain Enkidu here, a man of stature as great as my own, and very strong of body, and hairy all over, like a beast of the fields? He who is well known everywhere to be my friend, and whom I have come here to seek?”

The arch-vizier’s bare brow furrowed. “I cannot say, my lord. I will make inquiries, and you will have a report this evening when you dine at the palace.”

“I am grateful to you,” said Gilgamesh.

But his heart sank. Enkidu must not be here after all; for how could Ur-ninmarka fail to know of it, if a great roistering hairy giant such as Enkidu had come to Uruk? There is no city in the Afterworld so big that Enkidu would not be conspicuous in it, and more than conspicuous, thought Gilgamesh.

He kept these matters to himself. Beckoning Simon and Herod from the Land Rover, he said only, “All is well. Tonight we will be entertained by Uruk’s king.”

*

Dumuzi, at any rate, seemed to do things with style. For his visitors he provided sumptuous lodgings in a grand hostelry back of the main temple, a massive block of a building that seemed to have been carved of a single slab of black granite. Within were fountains, arcades, so much statuary that it was hard to move about without bumping into something, gigantic figures of gods with staring eyes and plaited tresses in the ancient manner, and towering purple-leaved palm trees growing in huge many-faceted planters of a shining red stone that glistened like genuine ruby. Perhaps it was. Gilgamesh saw Simon fondling one covetously as though contemplating how many hundreds of egg-sized stones it could be broken into.

Each of the travelers had a palatial room to himself, a broad bed covered in silk, a sunken alabaster tub, a mirror that shimmered like a window into Paradise. Of course, there were little things wrong amid all this perfection: no hot water was running, and a line of disagreeable-looking fat-bellied furry insects with emerald eyes went trooping constantly across the ceiling of Gilgamesh’s room, and when he sprawled on the bed it set up a steady complaining moan, as though he were lying on the protesting forms of living creatures. But this was the Afterworld, after all. One expected flaws in everything, and one always got them. All things considered, these accommodations could hardly be excelled.