To the Land of the Living (34 page)

“I have forgotten all of that.”

“What?”

“I tell you I remembered nothing of this Uruk, or my time as king here, until just a little while ago,” said Gilgamesh, holding a hand to the side of his head, where it had begun to ache. “Or that we ever spoke of it during our Outback years. In Brasil, Simon Magus invited me to go in quest of Uruk, and I said, What Uruk? There is no Uruk in the Afterworld. After a time I had some evidence that I was wrong about that, but still I doubted it, and went on doubting it until I was actually here. Now it begins to come back, to me, yes. But all those years away from here it was gone from my mind.”

“Gone from your mind, brother? Well, and that is how it often is, in the Afterworld,” said Enkidu, shrugging. “It is a place of devilish tricks.”

“So it is indeed.”

“I see now that it must have greatly troubled you, then,
when Simon began to speak of this city here and you knew nothing of it.” Enkidu gave him a close look. “Can that be why, brother, you asked me about the manner of my death? Have you forgotten also what death is like here?”

“How could I forget that which I haven’t experienced? I have never –”

He saw the glint in Enkidu’s dark eyes, and halted.

“Do you say I have died also in the Afterworld?” Gilgamesh asked, after a long tense pause.

“You ask, so you must not know the answer.”

In a hard steady voice Gilgamesh said, “I have died only once, brother, and that was in the other world, when I was old and heavy with years, and the kingdom was great about me, and darkness came to me in my sleep. But here – no, Enkidu, never here, not even once.”

Enkidu looked amused. “Not even once? In thousands of years of dwelling amidst the many dangers of this place?”

“You say that I have?”

Gilgamesh was trembling now.

“Yes, brother,” said Enkidu softly.

“When?”

“When? How would I know when? Who can keep the count of the years here? Ah, but let me think a bit. There was the time when the earth turned to quicksand beneath you, when we were in Santo Domingo, that is one. And when the mountain of ice fell, in the Great Borealis, for another. And in Estotiland Isle, when the beast came up out of the sea –”

Gilgamesh swayed. The paving-stones seemed to be melting away beneath his feet. There was nothing substantial in this world, no reality that could be trusted.

“Gods! What are you saying? How many times has death had me here?”

Enkidu turned his palms upward. “This is hard for me. Five? Ten? I could not count them. I never counted very well, brother. But it was often enough. You know, it happens again and again to us all.”

“I remember no such things,” said Gilgamesh, his voice barely rising above a whisper.

“There must be much that I have forgotten also, brother. No doubt of it. The slate is cleared again and again. What does it matter? We live, we die, we live, we die – it is the way of this
place. If we had to bear all our memories in our minds all at once, we’d be no more than madmen. Though sometimes I think we are madmen even so.”

“Deaths – so many deaths –” Gilgamesh muttered.

He stared into the air and saw himself toppling again and again, like a great tree that somehow could be felled over and over. He saw himself lying lifeless on a barren plain, and by the edge of a stormy sea, and on the crest of some wolf-haunted mountain. And each time awakening, and beginning anew, and remembering nothing. It stunned him that he could forget so much, that the extent of the Afterworld’s treachery was so far-reaching. His face blazed with shame. And with scorn, too, for the petty pride that had led him to pretend that he was invulnerable here, and for believing his own pretence.

“Gilgamesh?” Enkidu said.

“A moment. This bewilders me.”

“No, brother, let it slide easily from you!”

“If only I could.”

“Ah. You were ever haunted by death, weren’t you?” said Enkidu. “But it comes so easily. It should be dismissed just as easily.”

“Yes,” Gilgamesh said. “You speak the truth.”

“Then dismiss it. Dismiss it!”

Gilgamesh nodded, and looked away.

But he could not shake himself free of the darkness that Enkidu’s words had wrapped about him. One by one all his illusions had been stripped from him, since those days of innocence when he roamed the Outback, and it was a hard and painful thing to withstand. He stood motionless, gripping the stone rail of the high gallery as though he feared plummeting to the floor below if he were to let go. Desperately he struggled to regain his equilibrium.

“Come, brother!” Enkidu leaned close, laughing, pummeling Gilgamesh lightly now with his fists, as if to sting him from his brooding this way. “What does a death or two mean? It happens to everyone. But we are alive now, are we not, and you are a king again, and all is well! All is well, brother! All is well!”

A few days afterward Simon Magus appeared before Gilgamesh in the audience-chamber, smelling of wine and looking
more seedy than ever, and said, “I will be leaving for Brasil in a short while.”

“You know you may remain as my guest as long as you wish, Simon.”

“I’m grateful for your generosity. But I’ve been away from my city long enough. Who knows what’s been going on back there while I’ve been here in Uruk?”

“Surely your wizards have everything in your Brasil under careful control,” said Gilgamesh.

“Yes. That is my hope.”

There was an uncomfortable silence. It seemed to Gilgamesh that there was more on Simon’s mind than mere leave-taking, something of considerable import, but Simon simply waited, his small cold eyes narrowed expectantly, his blotches and blemishes looking more fiery than usual on his soft sagging face.

“Will you have some wine?” Gilgamesh asked finally.

“Wine is always welcome, yes.”

Gilgamesh signalled. A servant fetched an ewer of the rich dark wine of Uruk.

Simon said, drinking deep, spilling a few drops on a toga that already bore purple stains, “So you have your kingship now, Gilgamesh.”

“Indeed.”

“The kingship that you insisted you didn’t want.”

“It came to me. It would have been wrong to refuse it.”

“Wrong indeed,” said Simon. “There is a fundamental rightness that must be obeyed, and we know it when we encounter it. It is one power, divided between above and below, self-generating, self-increasing, self-seeking, self-finding, being its own mother, its own father, its own sister, its own spouse, its own son, mother, father, the root of all things.”

Gilgamesh blinked and frowned and stared.

“What you say is very hard to follow, Simon.”

“It seems clear enough to me.”

“No doubt it does,” said Gilgamesh. “But you are a mage and a sorcerer. You are full of strange philosophies and mazy words. I am only a warrior.”

“And a king.”

“And a king, yes.”

“A very noble king.”

Gilgamesh ordered Simon’s wine-glass refilled. Impatience rose in him.

“Enough of this dance. What is it you wish to ask of me, Simon?”

“I remind you that we came here together, as partners. You to regain your Uruk and your Enkidu, and I – I –”

“You to plunder the jewels of Uruk, yes.”

“Yes.”

Gilgamesh smiled. “There are no jewels here, Simon.”

“Do you know that?”

“There are more jewels set into one arm’s-length of your palace wall in Brasil than I have seen in all of Uruk.”

“Ah, but you’re wrong.”

“Am I? Tell me, then.”

Simon moved nearer and said in a low voice, “There’s plenty here. I have ways of obtaining information. I haven’t forgotten all my craft of sorcery, Gilgamesh. Call your court officers together and ask them what they know about Dumuzi’s treasure, and you’ll be greatly surprised.”

“I am growing accustomed to great surprises,” said Gilgamesh.

“Well, you’ll have one more. There’s treasure here, even as the tales maintain.” His color deepened. His lips and jowls worked with covetousness, like those of a hungry glutton. “We had an understanding, Gilgamesh! Do you mean to go back on our understanding? We came here as partners, I remind you, Gilgamesh – I remind you –”

The Sumerian held up a hand and nodded. But Simon would not be pacified by that.

“I want my share! Without me you’d never even have known about this place! I remind you – I beg you, Gilgamesh, don’t deny me what I seek! I beg you.”

“You have nothing to fear, Simon,” said Gilgamesh calmly. “I will deny you nothing, so long as it’s within my means to grant it. But first let me find this treasure that you say is here. I have only your word that it exists; and so today I can give you only words. But when I have the jewels, ah, Simon, then you’ll have your full share. I pledge you that.”

“Is it so?”

“Upon my mother’s soul I pledge it.”

“Very well, then, Gilgamesh. But soon. Soon!”

“Soon, yes.”

Simon departed then, in apparent satisfaction, after one last draught of wine and a long, cool, searching look at Gilgamesh. Gilgamesh stared after him, baffled by the depth of Simon’s greed. For what? For mere shining stones? That made even less sense to him than the lust after power for power’s sake that had driven so many men, and not a few women, into vast and empty exertions. Here was Simon, an intelligent man, a philosopher, even, quivering and sniveling for pretty baubles with childish eagerness, which was repellent in one who was so very far from being a child. Hovering before Gilgamesh, hinting and maneuvering and finally simply begging for the trinkets he craved.

Well, if there were jewels here for Simon to have, he could have them. They were of no use to Gilgamesh. Summoning the overseer of the royal splendor, a bald rotund eunuchoid Sumerian who called himself Akurgal, he said, “Does custody of the crown treasure fall into your sphere of duty?”

“It does not, majesty.”

“Doesn’t treasure qualify as royal splendor?”

“My responsibilities are the robes and personal articles of your majesty, majesty.”

“But there is a treasure here? Jewels, and such?”

“So there is, majesty.”

“Who looks after it?”

Akurgal pondered that. “The guardian of the Ereshkigal shrine, perhaps. No, it may be the Inanna master-at-arms. But no – no, that hardly makes sense– they would never let
him
deal with anything so weighty – let me think another moment, majesty, just one moment more –”

“I could get quicker answers from a string of sausages!” said Gilgamesh, his face darkening.

“I’m thinking, majesty – thinking –”

“You’ll be a string of sausages yourself if you don’t tell me what I ask.”

“The chamberlain of the sash of Enlil!” Akurgal gasped desperately.

“Indeed?”

“The chamberlain of the sash of Enlil, yes. Yes, truly, majesty. He’s the one!”

“Fetch him for me.”

“At once, majesty. At once.”

Akurgal trotted away, arms churning, robes flapping. Gilgamesh laughed. In minutes there came a second functionary, lean and hatchet-faced, with a stark Assyrian look about him, though he had a Sumerian name: Ur-Namhani. When Gilgamesh indicated his wishes, Ur-Namhani stared at him a long while, as though negotiating with himself about whether to comply. After some time he said with great dignity and some show of irritation, “The treasury is in the shrine of Enlil. Shall I have it brought here or will you accompany me to it?”

“We’ll go there,” said Gilgamesh.

None of Simon’s frenzied fantasies had prepared the Sumerian properly for what awaited him in the dark, dank, chilly vaults beneath the temple of the father of the gods. Producing a chain of keys, Ur-Namhani ostentatiously opened gate after gate as they proceeded through a series of narrow tunnels until they had reached the innermost storeroom, and there, when the lights had been turned on, Gilgamesh found himself confronted with a surfeit of splendors beyond all imagining. Wherever his eye came to rest there were bags, chests, casks, satchels, strongboxes, overflowing with all manner of precious things, and the hint of even more in the shadows beyond, on and on into an immeasurable maze of caverns.

There were bricks of gold piled higher than a man’s head, and bangles by the barrel, necklaces, bracelets, rings, pins, brooches, armlets, all of the finest yellow glitter. There were lavalieres, torques, pendants, chains. There were necklets, stickpins, circlets, solitaires. There were bags of pearls. There were gold coins in vast heaps; Gilgamesh scooped some up, and saw on them the heads of emperors and kings, and fierce gryphons and dragons on the other side. He saw horseshoes of gold, and daggers, and belt-buckles, and trinkets in the shape of towers, bridges, carriages, castles. There were golden toothpicks set with rubies, and little golden spoons with jade handles, and boxes of gold that contained shimmering diamonds, and strings of diamonds threaded on gold. Raw jewels spilled from taut-stretched burlap sacks hard pressed to contain them: they gleamed in every color, red and green and yellow and blue and radiant white and a dozen more, and Gilgamesh, dipping his hands in, came up with streaming arrays of rubies, emeralds, sapphires, opals, amethysts, of
jasper and carnelian, of chrysoberyl and moonstone, of turquoise, amber, coral, jade. There was no end to it. No wonder Simon Magus had yearned to conquer this city. For a long while Gilgamesh explored these marvels in silence. Then he turned to the waiting Ur-Namhani.

“Are these things real?” he asked.

“Real?”

“Sorcerer-stuff, or actual gems?”

“Oh, they are real, majesty, most definitely real,” said Ur-Namhani in a lofty, condescending way. “Gathered by Dumuzi from every part of the world, for the glory of Enlil. Not a year went by but another fortune in treasure was laid up in this vault, equal to any king’s ransom.”

Gilgamesh nodded. “I had no idea there were enough bandits in this city to collect so much plunder, even in a thousand years. It is a very impressive haul. Very impressive.” Rising, he tossed a double handful of shimmering treasure back into the nearest barrel. His head was throbbing. The vastness of this hoard left him stunned, even he, for whom such a gross welter of wealth offered no delight. The very abundance of it was oppressive, and yet the power of its mass could not be denied. “Very well. I will send Simon Magus to you – my guest, the fat drunken monarch of the isle of Brasil. You know who I mean?”