“Her kindness is too great.”
“It is not a question of kindness, O king. It is a question of the health of your soul, and of the safety of the city, and of the divine balance and order of the realm, which must be maintained. And so the goddess has decreed these rites, out of her great mercy and love.”
Ah, I thought. Her great mercy and love! I nearly burst out in laughter! But I did not: I held myself in check. Well, I told myself, I will play this game out to its end. In my most courteous and formal way I said, “The mercy of the goddess is sublime. If my soul is at risk, it must be cleansed. Lead me to the place of purification.”
As I stepped down from the chariot Ninurta-mansum glanced toward me, and I saw him frown. It should have been no concern of his that I might be giving myself over to treachery: he was Shulutula’s man, not mine. Yet he was trying to warn me. I realized that he was one who would die for me, if needs be. Giving him a reassuring clasp on the shoulder, I told him to take the asses to graze but not to get too far away from me. Then, going on foot, I followed the three priestesses of Inanna toward the pavilions below the walls.
Plainly she had been a long time in planning this. What was virtually a holy precinct had been constructed out here. There were five tents, one large one with the reed-bundles of Inanna mounted in the sand before it, and four lesser ones in which all manner of sacred implements seemed to have been stored—braziers, incense-burners, holy images and banners, and the like. As I came near, priestesses began to chant, musicians to pound on their drums and blow into their fifes, temple dancers circled round and round me with joined arms. I looked toward the main tent. Inanna herself must wait in there for me, I thought, and suddenly my throat was dry and fiery knots tightened in my gut. Was I frightened? No, it was not exactly fear; it was a sense of some great finality closing in upon me. How long was it since she and I had been face to face? What transformations had she accomplished behind my back in the city, since then? Surely she meant to work my undoing today; but how? How? And how might I defend myself? Ever since my childhood—when she had been little more than a child herself—my fate had been entwined with this dark-souled woman; and it seemed certain that I was approaching now, within this great tent of scarlet and black that rose before me on the plain of Uruk, the ultimate collision of our destinies.
But I was wrong once again. The three priestesses raised the curtain of the tent a little way and held it back, indicating to me that I should go inside. I entered, and found myself in a perfumed place of rich lustrous mats and sheer draperies; and awaiting me at the center of it, seated kneeling on a low couch, was a woman of voluptuous form whose body was bare except for a glowing pendant of gold that hung between her breasts and the thick-bodied olive-hued serpent of the goddess, which was wrapped like a rope about her waist, moving in slow sliding pulsations. But she was not Inanna. She was Abisimti the holy courtesan, she who had initiated me into the rites of manhood long ago, she who had done the same for Enkidu when he dwelled in wildness on the steppe. I had been set and braced for Inanna; the surprise and shock of finding someone else in Inanna’s place so stunned and staggered me that I recoiled and found myself all but hurled into my fit. I felt myself going over the brink of an abyss. I swayed; I shook; I pulled myself back with the last of my strength.
Abisimti looked toward me. Her eyes were gleaming strangely; they burned in their sockets like spheres of glowing carnelian. In a voice that seemed to be making a journey to me from some world that was not this world she said, “Hail, O king! Hail, Gilgamesh!” And she beckoned me to her side.
40
FOR AN INSTANT I WAS twelve years old again and I was going with my uncle to the temple cloister for my initiation; I saw myself in my kilt of soft white linen, with the narrow red stripe of surrendered innocence painted on my shoulder and a lock of my hair in my hand to give to the priestess. And I saw again the beautiful sixteen-year-old Abisimti of my boyhood, whose breasts were round as pomegranates, whose long dark hair tumbled loose past her gold-painted cheeks.
She was still beautiful now. Who could count the men she had embraced for the goddess’ sake before I first had come to her, or the men she had embraced since? But the number of those who had possessed her might be as great as the number of the grains of sand in the desert, and still they could not take her beauty from her: they could only enhance it. She was not young; her breasts were no longer quite so round; and yet she was still beautiful. I wondered, though, why her eyes looked so strange, why her voice was so unfamiliar. She seemed almost dazed. They have given her some potion, I thought: that must be it. But why? Why?
I said, “I expected to find Inanna in here.”
She spoke slowly, as if in a dream. “Are you displeased? She cannot leave the temple. You will go to her afterward, Gilgamesh.”
I should have realized Inanna would not go outside the walls of the city. To Abisimti I said, “I am just as content, finding you. I was surprised, that was all—”
“Come. Put off your robe. Kneel down before me.”
“But what rite is this that we will do?”
“You must not ask. Come, Gilgamesh! Disrobe. Kneel.”
I was wary but oddly calm. Perhaps this was a true rite after all; perhaps Inanna meant only to serve, indeed, and had devised all this to cleanse me of Enlil-knew-what impurity before I went inside the city. I could not believe that the gentle Abisimti would be part of any plot against me. So I put aside my sword and laid down my robe, and I knelt on the mat before her. We were both naked, though she wore a pendant and a living serpent about her middle, and I had the pearl of Grow-Young-Again hanging on a string on my chest. I saw her looking at it. She could not have any idea what it was; but her brows came together for a moment.
“Tell me what I must do,” I said.
“This is the first thing,” said Abisimti.
She reached to her side and lifted in both her hands an alabaster bowl of wondrous slimness and elegance, carved with the sacred signs of the goddess. She cupped it and held it forward between us. There was dark wine in it. So we would pour out a libation, I thought, and then perhaps we would make some sort of a sacrifice—sacrifice Inanna’s serpent, could that be possible?—and after that I supposed we would speak a rite together; and at the last, she would draw me down onto the couch and take me into her body. In our coupling I would cast forth whatever it was that had to be purged from me before I could enter Uruk. So I imagined things would unfold.
But Abisimti held the bowl toward me and said in a slow dreamlike whisper, “Take this, Gilgamesh. Drink it deep.”
She put the bowl into my hands. I held it a moment, looking down at the wine, before bringing it to my lips.
And I sensed a strangeness. Abisimti was shivering in the great heat of the day. She was trembling all over her body. Her shoulders were oddly hunched, her breasts swayed like trees in a tempest, the corners of her mouth drew in and out in an odd quirking way. I saw fear on her face, and something almost like shame. But her eyes gleamed ever more brightly; and it seemed to me that they were fixed on me in the way that a serpent’s eyes were fixed as it stares at its helpless prey just before striking. I cannot tell you why I saw her that way, but I did. She was watching: she was waiting. For what?
I said, suddenly suspicious once again, “If we are to take part in this rite together, we must share everything. You drink first; and then I will take mine.”
Her head went back with a jerk as though I had slapped her.
“That may not be!” she cried.
“Why is that?”
“The wine—it is for you, Gilgamesh—”
“I offer it freely to you. Share it with me, Abisimti.”
“I am not permitted!”
“I am your king. I command you.”
She wrapped her arms over her breasts and huddled into herself. She was quaking. Her eyes no longer met mine. She said, so softly I scarcely could hear her, “No—please, no—”
“Take but a sip,
before I do.”
“No—I beg you—”
“Why are you so afraid, Abisimti? Is the wine such holy stuff that it will harm you?”
“I beg you—Gilgamesh—”
I held the bowl out to her, pushing it practically in her face. She turned away; she clamped her lips tight, perhaps fearing I would force it into her mouth. Then I was certain of the treachery. I put the wine-bowl down beside me, and leaned forward, taking her by the wrist. Quietly I said, “I thought there was love between us, but I see I may have been mistaken. Tell me now, Abisimti, why you will not drink the wine with me, and tell me truthfully.”
She did not answer.
“Tell me!”
“My lord—”
“Tell me!”
She shook her head. Then, with a force that astonished me, she pulled her arm free of my grasp and whirled around so suddenly that her snake took alarm and uncoiled itself from her waist, gliding loose of her. An instant later I saw a copper dagger in her hand. She had pulled it from beneath a cushion behind her. I thought it was intended for me; but it was toward her own breast that she drove it. Seizing her wrist, I held the tip of the blade back from her flesh. That cost me some little effort, for she had a kind of fit upon her and her strength was almost beyond belief. Slowly I prevailed; I forced the dagger back; then I wrenched it from her hand and hurled it across the room. At once she fell upon me like a lioness. Our bodies came together, slippery with sweat, in a wild struggle. She clawed at me, she bit, she sobbed and shrieked; and as we fought her fingers became entangled in the cord that held the pearl of Grow-Young-Again. She pulled; I felt the cord burning like fire against my neck as it went taut; then the cord snapped, and the pearl, rolling down my body, went bouncing away.
When I realized what had happened I pushed Abisimti aside and scrambled desperately after that most precious of jewels. For a moment I could not see where it had landed. Then I caught the gleam of its lustre reflecting the faint light of the brazier. It lay a dozen paces from me, or so. But Inanna’s accursed serpent had spied the pearl also, and—the gods alone know why—was slithering swiftly toward it.
“No!” I roared, and sprang forward. But I was too late. Before I was halfway across the room the serpent reached the pearl and took it lightly in its mouth, as a cat holds her kitten. It swung around, facing me, to display its prize. For an instant its yellow eyes glittered with the most bitter mockery I have ever had to behold. Then the snake raised high its head and opened its jaws, and the pearl went sliding down its maw. If I could have seized that serpent I would have wrung it until it disgorged the stone; but to my horror the foul creature slipped cunningly past my grasp and made its writhing way toward the flap of the tent. On hands and knees I crawled quickly after it, but I had no chance of catching it. It was the subtlest of beasts. Delicately it put its snout to the sand and wriggled down into the earth in a moment and vanished from sight. In its place remained only a few bits of its speckled skin that it had sloughed off as it escaped. Already it was shedding its old self, and coming into the renewal of the body that had been meant for me. All my labor thus was a waste: I had toiled in far lands merely to obtain the boon of new life for the serpent. For myself I had gained nothing.
I stood stunned a moment or two. Then I looked back toward Abisimti. While I had sought to regain the pearl she had seized the bowl of wine and had gulped a deep draught of it: her cheeks were dripping with the stuff. She rose to her feet in a frightful wild jerking manner, staring at me with such sorrow and love as nearly broke my heart. Every muscle of her body was writhing at a different rhythm: she looked like a woman possessed by a thousand demons.
“You understand—I did not want to do it—” she said in a terrible thick-voiced grunting way.
Then the bowl fell from her lifeless hands and she toppled to the floor virtually at my feet.
I thought I might go mad in that moment, or at least be swept into the tremors of a fit. But a strange calmness was upon me, as though my soul, buffeted so hard, had shored itself up by closing in on itself to make me invulnerable. I had no fits. I did not even weep. I looked down and saw the dark stain of the spilled wine in the sand, and calmly I scuffed other sand over it with my foot until it was hidden. Then I knelt and closed Abisimti’s eyes, she who had been sent here to slay me and who had given up her own life instead. I felt no anger toward her, only pity and regret: she was a priestess, she had been under oath to obey the goddess’ behest. Well, her oath to Inanna had brought her now to the House of Dust and Darkness, where I too might now be arriving, but for that look of fear and shame I had spied in Abisimti’s face as she handed me the poisoned wine. Now she was gone. And the pearl of Grow-Young-Again gone too, between one moment and the next. Siduri the tavernkeeper had spoken truly: You never will find this eternal life that you seek. But it did not matter. I was weary of chasing after a dream. The serpent’s mockery had given me my answer: it was not meant to be, I must find some other way.
I donned my robe and strapped my sword to my side and went from the tent. The dazzling sunlight struck against my eyes like a fist as I emerged. But after a moment I could see. The three priestesses of Inanna stood before me, gaping in amazement: they had not thought they would see me come forth alive.
“We have done the rite,” I said quietly. “I am cleansed now of all impure things. Go you and look after the priestess Abisimti: she will need the words spoken over her.”
The leader of the priestesses said, bewildered, “You have had the sacred wine, then?”
“I have made a libation to the goddess with it,” I told her. “And now I will enter the city, and pay my respects to the goddess in person.”
“But—you—”
“Step aside,” I said easily. I rested my hand on the hilt of my sword. “Let me pass, or I’ll split you like a broiled goose. Step aside, woman. Step aside!”
She gave ground as the darkness yields before the morning sun, shrinking back, all but vanishing. I went past her to the waiting chariot. Ninurta-mansum, coming to me, put his hand to my wrist and gripped it hard. The charioteer’s eyes were shining with tears. I think he had not expected to see me alive again either.
I said to him, “We are done with this business here. Let us go into Uruk now.”
Ninurta-mansum took the reins. We rode around the bright-hued pavilions and headed toward the High Gate. I saw people atop the parapets, peering down at me; and when the chariot reached the portal of the gate it swung wide and I was admitted without challenge. As well I should have been: for they all knew me to be Gilgamesh the king.
“Do you see, there?” I said to my charioteer. “Where the White Platform rises, at the end of this great avenue? The temple of Inanna is there, the temple that I built with my own hands. Take me there.”
Thousands of the citizens of Uruk had come to witness my homecoming; but they seemed strangely cowed and awed, and scarce any of them called my name as I journeyed past. They stared; they turned to one another and whispered; they made holy signs, out of their great fear. Through a silent city we rode down the wide boulevard toward the temple precinct. At the edge of the White Platform Ninurta-mansum brought the chariot to a halt and I dismounted. Alone I went up the lofty steps to the portico of the immense temple that for love of the goddess I had built in place of the temple of my grandfather royal Enmerkar. Some priests came out and stood in my way as I approached the temple door.
One said boldly, “What business do you have here, O Gilgamesh?”
“I mean to see Inanna.”
“The king may not enter Inanna’s precinct unless he has been summoned. It is the custom. You are aware of that.”
“The custom now is altered,” I answered. “Stand aside.”
“It is forbidden! It is improper!”
“Stand aside,” I said in a very low voice. It was sufficient. He stood aside.
The temple halls were dark and cool even in the heat of the day, so thick were their walls. Lamps were burning, ca
sting a soft light on the colored ornaments of baked clay that I had had put by the thousands into those walls. I walked swiftly. This was my temple. I had designed it and I knew my way in it. I expected to find Inanna in the great chamber of the goddess, and so she was: standing at the center of the room, fully robed and in her finest breastplates and ornaments, as though she had prepared herself for some high ceremony. She wore one ornament I had never seen on her before—a mask of shimmering beaten gold that covered all her face but her lips and chin, with the merest of slits for her eyes.
“You should not be here, Gilgamesh,” she said coolly.
“No, I should not. I should be lying dead in a tent outside the walls just now. Is that not so?” I did not let anger enter my voice. “They are saying the words over Abisimti now. She drank the wine for me. She did your bidding and offered the bowl to me, but I would not drink from it, and so she drank the wine herself, of her own free will.”
Inanna said nothing. The lips below the mask were clamped close together and set in a tight thin line.
“They told me while I was in Eridu,” I said, “that in my absence you declared me dead, and called for the election of a new king. Was that so, Inanna?”
“The city must have a king,” she said.
“The city has one.”
“You had fled the city. You ran off into the wilderness like a madman. If you were not dead, you might as well have been.”
“I went in search of something. And now I have returned.”
“Did you find that for which you searched?”
“Yes,” I said. “And no. It does not matter. Why do you wear that mask, Inanna?”
“It does not matter.”
“I have never seen you masked before.”
“It is a new custom,” she said.
“Ah. There are many new customs, it seems.”
“Including the custom of the king’s entering this temple unsummoned.”