To the Land of the Living (32 page)

The procession halted before the two boxes of honor. The matador saluted the king, and then Picasso, who was the president of the bullfight today. The king, who had been staring at the newly arrived Enkidu as though he were some sort of demon that had materialized in Picasso’s box, and whose face now was as dour and foul as bile, acknowledged the salute with an offhand flick of his hand that Picasso found infuriating in its discourtesy “
puerco”
, he muttered. “
Hijo de puta
.”

Then Picasso rose. As president he carried the keys to the bull-pens. With a grand swing of his arm he tossed them out to one of the
alguaciles
, who caught them nicely and rode over to release the first bull.

“And so we commence,” said Picasso quietly to Sabartes. “
Alfin
, we commence.”

He felt himself settling into the inviolable sphere of concentration that always enveloped him at the bullfight. In a moment he would feel as though he were the only one in the stadium.

The bull came galloping forth.

Madre de dios!
What a horror! That was no bull! That was an evil monster!

Sabartes had told him what to expect, but he had never quite grasped it, apparently. This could have been something out of one of his own paintings. The creature had six many-jointed legs, like some giant insect, and two rows of terrible spines on its back that dripped a nasty fluid, and great flopping ears. Its skin was green with purple blotches, and thick like a reptile’s. There were horns, short and curved and sharp and very much like a bull’s, but otherwise this was pure hell-creature.

Picasso shot a venomous look at Sabartes. “What have you done? You call that a bull?”

“We are in the Afterworld, Pablo,” said Sabartes wearily. “They do not send bulls to the Afterworld, only human beings. But this will do. It is much like a bull, in its way.”

“Chingada!”
Picasso said, and spat.

But they were making a brave attempt down in the arena. The banderilleros were dancing around the bull, striving to plant their little lances in the beast’s neck, and sometimes succeeding. The hell-bull, maddened, charged this way and that, going for the horses of the picadors, who warded it off with thrusts of their pikes. Picasso could see that these were experienced men out there, who knew what they were doing and were doing their best, though plainly the hell-bull puzzled them. They were trying to wear it down to make it ready for the Hour of Truth, and by and large they were achieving that. Picasso felt the bullfight slip around him like a cloak. He was wholly engulfed in it now. He saw nothing else but the bull and the men in the ring.

Then he looked toward the matador, waiting his moment to one side, and everything turned sour.

The matador was frightened. You could see it in his nostrils, you could see it in the angle of his chin. Perhaps he had been a master of his art back there in the time of Charles IV, but he had never fought anything like this thing, and he was not going to do it well. That was plain. He was not going to do it well.

The trumpets sounded. It was the moment.

Blanco y Velez came forward, holding out the
muleta,
the little red silk cape, and the
capote,
the big work cape. But he moved stiffly, and it was the wrong stiffness, the stiffness of fear rather than the stiffness of courage. The picadors and the banderilleros saw it, and instead of leaving the ring they withdrew to one side, exchanging uneasy glances. Picasso saw it. The hell-bull saw it. The matador’s moves were awkward and hesitant. He didn’t seem to know how to use his capes – had the art not progressed that far, in the time of Charles IV? – and he had no grace and he took quick, mincing steps. He led the bull around and around, working closer and closer to him, but that should have been beautiful and it was merely depressing.

“No,” Picasso said under his breath. “Get him out of there!”

“He is our only matador, Pablo,” Sabartes said.

“He will die. And he will die stupidly.”

“He looked better when I saw him yesterday. But that was with a heifer.”

Picasso groaned. “He will die now. Look.”

There had been a shift of equilibrium in the ring. Blasco y Velez was no longer working the bull; the bull was working Blasco y Velez. Round and round, round and round – the bull seeming not angry now but amused, playing with him, dancing around, picking up speed – the picadors trying now to intervene, Blasco y Velez backing away but now finally putting a brave face on things, trying a desperate
veronica
, a
farol,
a
mariposa
, a
serpentina
, a
media-veronica
– yes, yes, he knew his work, he understood the art, except that he was trying to do everything at once, and where was his control, where was his stillness, where was his art? The bull, passing him, snarled and nipped him in the shoulder. Blood flowed. Blasco y Velez jumped back and went for his sword – forbidden, to use the sword in mere self-defense – but the bull knocked it from his grasp with a contemptuous whirl, and swung on past, throwing down a picador’s horse and goring it, and coming back again toward the matador –

“No!” came a tremendous roar from Gilgamesh’s shaggy friend, the huge Enkidu.

And then the second Sumerian giant leaped from the stone bench and vaulted down into the arena.

“Enkidu!”
Gilgamesh cried.

Picasso gasped. This was becoming crazy, now. This was turning into a nightmare. The big Sumerian picked the hapless matador up and tossed him aside to safety as though he were a doll. Then he came toward the bull, caught it by the double rows of spines, swung himself up easily on to the beast’s back, and began to throttle it.

“No, no, no!” Picasso muttered. “Clown! Butcher! Sabartes, stop this idiocy! What is he doing?
Riding
the bull?
Strangling
the bull?” Tears of rage crowded into his eyes. His first
corrida
in who knew how long, and it had been a dreadful one from the start, and now it was dissolving into absurd chaos. He stood on his seat, bellowing. “Butchery! Madness! For shame! For shame!”

*

Enkidu was in trouble. He was on the bull and had made a brave beginning of it, but now the bull’s anger was rising once again and its strength was in the ascendant, and in another moment the creature was going to roll over and kill him by falling upon him, or hurl him loose and fall upon him with its hooves. Enkidu’s peril was great and it was immediate. That was the one thing Gilgamesh saw, and nothing else mattered to him. To have won him back once more, and then to lose him again so quickly in this craziness of a bullfight – no, no, it could not be.

It was like that time in the other life when the Bull of Heaven was loose in old Uruk, and Enkidu had mounted it and seized it by its horns and tried to force it to the ground. It had taken both of them to slay the bull that time. It would again.

Gilgamesh snatched up his sword. Herod saw him and grabbed at his arm, crying, “Gilgamesh! No! Don’t go out there!” The Sumerian swatted him aside and clambered down over the edge of the box. Enkidu, holding on with difficulty now atop the plunging, bucking monster, grinned to him.

The whole stadium seemed to be going insane.

People were up, some of them screaming, others just milling about in excitement. Fist-fights were breaking out everywhere. Dumuzi was on his feet, eyes wild, face purple, making frantic gestures. Glancing upward, Gilgamesh had a quick glimpse of struggling figures outlined against the rim of the arena. Dumuzi’s snipers, fighting with Vy-otin’s men? And farther up, a flock of demon-birds circled in the sky, ghastly things with gaping beaks and long shimmering wings.

The bull, lurching from side to side, was trying to shake Enkidu free. Gilgamesh rushed forward and took a spew of the bull’s sweat in his face. It burned like acid. He drew his sword, but the bull backed out of range, and twisted itself so violently that Enkidu nearly was flung from its back.

Yet he showed no fear at all. He held tight, thighs gripping the bull’s back just in front of the spines, and took a firm hold on the thing’s diabolical horns. With all his great strength he fought to force the bull’s head downward.

“Strike, brother, strike!” Enkidu called.

But it was too soon. The bull had plenty of fight left in it. It whirled wildly around, and the rough scaly skin of its flank caught Gilgamesh across the ribs and drew blood. It leaped
and bucked, leaped and bucked, slamming its hooves against the ground. Enkidu flailed about like a pennant flapping in the breeze. He seemed about to lose his grip; then he called out in his most confident tone and rose again, rearing high above the creature’s razor-sharp back. He regained his grip on the horns and twisted, and the bull yielded and weakened, lowering its head, turning so that the nape of its neck was toward Gilgamesh.

“Strike!” Enkidu called again.

And this time Gilgamesh drove the blade home.

He felt a quivering, a shudder, a powerful movement within the creature. It seemed to resist its death a long moment; but the blow had been true, and suddenly its legs collapsed. Gilgamesh extended a hand toward Enkidu as he sprang free of it and came down beside him.

“Ah, brother,” Enkidu said. “Like the old days, yes?”

Gilgamesh nodded. He looked outward. On every level of the stadium there was frenzy, now. Gilgamesh was amazed to see that Dumuzi had left the royal box and had leaped into Picasso’s. As though fearing for his own safety, the king had one arm tight around Ninsun’s waist and held Picasso with the other arm around his throat, and was dragging them from the box, struggling with his two hostages toward the exit.

“Your mother,” Enkidu said. “And your little painter.”

“Yes. Come on.”

They rushed back toward the stands. But suddenly Ninsun twisted about and reached toward one of the guards in the box adjoining. When she swung around again a dagger was in her hand. Frantically Dumuzi attempted to shove Picasso against it, but as Gilgamesh stared in amazement his mother pivoted away with the agility of a warrior, reached around, drove the dagger deep into Dumuzi’s side. In the same instant Simon, coming from the rear, put his sword through the king’s middle. Dumuzi fell and was swept under foot. Picasso stood unmoving, eyes focused far away, as if lost in a dream. Ninsun looked at the hand that still held the dagger as though she had never seen her hand before.

“Up here!” Vy-otin called to Gilgamesh, not from Picasso’s box but from the royal one. “Quickly!”

The Ice-Hunter extended a hand. Gilgamesh jumped upward beside him. Vy-otin pointed.

“On the royal bench. Fast!”

“What?”

“Dumuzi’s dead. He panicked when the snipers didn’t open fire, and tried to escape with Picasso and your mother as hostages, and –”

“Yes. I saw it.”

“You’re the king here now. Get up there and act like one.”

“King?” Gilgamesh said, struggling to comprehend.

Vy-otin shoved him. Gilgamesh caught hold of the edge of the royal bench and pulled himself up on it, and turned and looked upward toward the many tiers of the arena. The sky had darkened and was full of screeching demons. Surging mobs were boiling back and forth. Everyone seemed to have gone berserk.

He extended his arms. “People of Uruk!” he cried, in a voice like an erupting volcano. “Hear me! I am Gilgamesh! Hear me!”

“Gilgamesh!” came the sudden answering roar. “Gilgamesh the King! Gilgamesh! Gilgamesh!”

“You’re doing fine,” Vy-otin said.

He felt figures close around him. Herod, Simon Magus, Vy-otin – Enkidu – Ninsun – Picasso –

He turned to them.

“By Enlil, I swear to you I did not come here to make myself king,” Gilgamesh said angrily.

“We understand that,” said Herod.

“Of course,” said Simon.

“Keep waving your arms,” said Vy-otin. “They’re starting to settle down. Just tell them to take their seats and stay calm.”

“Gilgamesh!” came the great roar again. “Gilgamesh the King!”

“You see?” Vy-otin said. “You’re doing just fine, your majesty. Just fine.”

Yes. Yes. Despite himself he felt the rush of oncoming power now, that sense of strength and righteous force that the word
majesty
summed up. Perhaps he had not come here to make himself king, but now he was king all the same, king of Uruk in the Afterworld as once he had been king of Uruk in Sumer the Land. He gestured and felt the crowd in his grasp. “People of Uruk! I am your king! Take your seats! All of you, take your seats!”

They were obeying now. He saw them standing frozen, staring, and then beginning to return to their places. The shouts and hubbub turned to a low murmuring, and then to stillness. An eerie hush fell over the stadium.

Enkidu said, “Have them send out another of those bulls. You and I will fight it, Gilgamesh. We’ll fight all the bulls they can throw at us. Yes? Yes?”

Gilgamesh glanced at Picasso. “What do you say? Shall we continue the bullfight?”

“Ah,
companñero
, that is no way to fight a bull, the way you two do it. It is not what I came here to see, this jumping on the bull’s back.” Then the little man laughed. “But that is no bull, eh, King Gilgamesh. So why must it be fought according to the Spanish way? Go. Go. Commence your reign with a
corrida
in the Uruk style. Show us what you can do, my friend. I will sketch you as you work.”

Gilgamesh nodded. To Herod he said quietly, “Get the late king out of here, will you? And have the arch-vizier and the rest of the court officials rounded up.” With a gesture to Enkidu to accompany him he leaped down again into the bull-ring. He shouted to the
aguaciles
across the way and the gate opened and a second hell-bull came charging forth. Calmly the new king of Uruk waited for it with Enkidu at his side.

Altogether they dispatched five bulls that day. Each encounter began in silence, the crowd awed, puzzled, astonished as much by this strange new sport, so it appeared, as by the tumultuous transfer of royal power that had taken place before their eyes. But as the banderillos and the picadors went about their tasks, and the angered bull snorted and reared and brandished its claws, the excitement and noise would grow, and when the two robust heroes entered the ring for the fifth time to bring the contest to its triumphant end the arena echoed with a great
constant roaring, a bedlam of shouts, that did not diminish until the last thrust had gone home and the bizarre bull-monster lay sprawled on the floor of the dusty coliseum.