To the Land of the Living Read online

  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 smoldering 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.”

  * * *

  NINE

  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, elecampane, 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 w
as 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.”

  “—and for various wishes,” shouted the one called Eadfrith, “and for envy, and for terror, and that thou may have grace, and if thou hast this sort with thee, thou shalt be prosperous, and ever acceptable—”

  “Good sir! Here, good sir, here, if you please!”

  “No harm? No harm?” The Hairy Man guffawed, showing huge chopper-like teeth. “No harm playing tag with a mastodon, either, eh, my friend? If you’re big enough, I suppose. Walk right up to it, tweak it by the trunk, pull its ears? Eh?”

  “A mastodon?” Gilgamesh said blankly. A strange word: he wondered if he had heard it right.

  “Never mind. You wouldn’t know, would you? Before your time. Never mind. But I tell you, this is no city to be strolling around in unprotected. Nobody warned you of that?”

  “Herod said something about wizards and mages, but—”

  “Good sir! Good sir!”

  “But you ignored him. Herod! That clown!” The small deep-set eyes of the Hairy Man were bright with contempt. “Sometimes even Herod will tell you something useful. You should have heeded his warning. Brasil’s a place of many perils.”

  “I have no fear of dying,” said Gilgamesh.

  “Dying is the least terrible thing that could happen to you here.” The Hairy Man placed a wrinkle-skinned leathery-looking hand on Gilgamesh’s arm. “Come. Here. Walk about with me a little, up and down.”

  “Do you have a name?”

  “Names are nothing,” said the Hairy Man. “It was a fright for you, what happened outside, eh?”

  Gilgamesh shrugged.

  The Hairy Man leaned close. There was an odd sweetish flavor about his furry body. “There are places in the streets here where the other worlds break through. That is always a danger, that the fabric will not hold, that other worlds will break through. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  “Yes,” Gilgamesh told the Hairy Man. “There was such a place in Uruk. A passageway that ran down from our world into this one. Inanna the goddess descended through it, when she went to Hell to visit her sister Ereshkigal. And during the rite of the Closing of the Gate I dropped my drum and my drumstick into that passageway when a girl startled me by crying out the name of a god.” He had not thought of these things in centuries. Recollection, flooding back now, swept him with uncontrollable emotion. “The sacred drum, it was, which Ur-nangar the craftsman made for me from the wood of the huluppu-tree, by which I entered my trances and saw the things that mortal eyes are unable to see. That was how I lost my friend Enkidu, the first time, when I dropped my drum and my drumstick into that dark and terrible hole of cinders and ashes, and he entered the nether world to bring them back.”

  “Then you know,” the Hairy Man said. “You have to learn where these places are, and stay away from them.”

  Gilgamesh was trembling. Old memories were surging with new life within him.

  Enkidu! Enkidu!

  Once again he saw Enkidu, gray with dust and snarled in masses of tangled cobwebs, coming forth from that pit in Uruk that led down to the world of the dead; and Enkidu as he came forth was a dead man himself, shorn of all life-strength, who within twelve days would be carried off forever to the House of Dust and Darkness. How great had been the mourning of Gilgamesh! How he had cursed the gods of death for taking Enkidu from him! And then, after Gilgamesh’s own time had run its course and he had joined Enkidu in the Afterworld, losing him again—what pain it was, to be reunited with him and then to lose him that second time, when Enkidu had stepped between those quarrelsome Spaniards and Englishmen and caught a bullet meant for someone else—

  “And once more he is lost to me,” Gilgamesh said aloud. “As though the curse of Inanna follows us even to the Afterworld, and we must find each other and be parted again, and find each other once more, and part once more, over and over and over—”

  “What is this you say?” asked the Hairy Man.

  “We were on that far shore, Enkidu and I, among a caravan of strangers, of sleazy conniving Later Dead. And while I was gone from the camp, while I was away hunting, there was an attack on the camp, and when I returned I found all of them dead except this brindle dog Ajax; but of Enkidu there was no sign. Brigands must have swept him off, or demons, to torment me by separating us once again. But I will find him, if I must seek until the gods grow old!”

  “In the Afterworld there is no finding anyone,” the Hairy Man said, “except by accident, or the whim of those dark gods who rule this place. You surely must know that.”

  “I will find him.”

  “And if he is dead?”

  “Then he’ll come back again, as all the dead here do sooner or later. I tell you I will find him.”

  “Come, now,” said the Hairy Man. “Come and walk with me, until your head is clear.”

  “Wait,” Gilgamesh said. He brushed the Hairy Man’s hand aside. “Do you think that these doctors here could give me a spell that would help me trace him?”

  “They will tell you they can. But in the Afterworld there is no finding anyone, Gilgamesh.”

  “We’ll see about that.”

  Gilgamesh went toward the rows of wooden tables and benches.

  “Good sir, I am Aethelbald,” said one of the merchants of spells eagerly.

  “I am Eadfrith,” said the one beside him, beckoning.

  “I am Wulfgeat. I have here a drink that is good for giddiness and fever of the brain, for flowing gall and the yellow disease, for singing in the ears, and defective hearing—”

  Gilgamesh impatiently waved them to silence. “Who are you people?”

  “We are Angles here,” said Wulfgeat, “except for this Saxon beside me, and masters of wortcunning and leechdom are we, and starcraft. Our work is substantial! Our skills are boundless!”

  “Wortcunning?” Gilgamesh said. “Starcraft?”

  “Aye, and may it be that we have a spell for you! What is your need, good sir? What is your need?”

  “There is a man for whom I search,” said Gilgamesh after a moment. “A friend whom I have lost.”

  “A lost friend? A lost friend?” The spell-mongers began to murmur and confer among themselves. “Viper’s bugloss?” suggested one. “The ash of dead bees, and linseed oil?” Another said. “Cammock and thung, wenwort and elder root, steeped in strong mead or clear ale.” But the third shook his head violently and said, “It must be done by dreaming. The tokens must needs be induced. To see a well opened beside one’s house, or a hen with chickens, or to be shod with a new pair of shoes—aye, those are the tokens, and we must give him the potion that brings on such visions as will be useful, and then the next night—”

  “What is this?” a sudden familiar buzzing voice cut in. “What’s going on here?”

  Herod, pushing and shoving his way through the throng, appeared abruptly at Gilgamesh’s side. The Hairy Man scowled and muttered something unintelligible beneath his breath. The merchants of spells looked alarmed, and turned away, gesticulating toward the opposite side of the building and loudly crying out the merits of their wares to those gathered over there.

  “Where have you been?” Herod demanded. “Simon’s had people looking all over the place for you.”

  “I thought I would walk through the town.”

  “Gevalt! And came here? Ah. Ah, I think I know why. Shopping for a spell that’ll lead you to Uruk, are you? Is that what you’re up to? Despite everything I told you last night?”

  From afar came the sound of a mighty voice crying, “The Book of the Fifty Names! Who will buy the Book of the Fifty Names?”

  “The Hairy Man brought me in here,” Gilgamesh said. “I was simply wandering from one street to another when something strange happened to me, a fit, perhaps—in the days when I lived on Earth I was subject to fits, you know, though I thoug
ht I was exempt from that in the Afterworld—and I grew dizzy—I saw faces—I saw ancient streets—” Angrily he shook his head. “No, I’m not trying to buy a spell for finding Uruk. I seek only Enkidu. And if these wizards—”

  “Marduk! Marukka! Marutukku!” roared the mighty voice.

  “These wizards are fishmongers and rabble,” Herod said scornfully, making the sign of the horns at Aethelbald and Eadfrith and Wulfgeat. They shrank back from him. “Peasants is what they are. Shopkeepers, at the very best.” He drew the six-pointed star in the air before them and they turned from him, pale and shaken. “You see? You see, Gilgamesh? What can they do? Cure an ague for you, maybe? Stop up a sniveling nose? These are foolish men here. They will not find your Enkidu for you.”

  “Can you be sure of that, Herod?”

  A crafty look came into Herod’s eyes as he peered up at Gilgamesh.

  “King of Uruk, if I show you a true wizard who will give you the answer you seek, will you abandon the idea of taking Simon off on this insane expedition?”

  The Hairy Man’s yellow-rimmed eyes widened in surprise. “You speak of Calandola?” he asked in his thickest, harshest tone.

  “Calandola, yes,” said Herod.

  The Hairy Man scowled, twisting up his apelike jaw and lowering his brows until he seemed almost to be winking, and emitted a rumbling sound from deep within his cavernous chest. “This is unwise,” he said, after a time. “This is most unwise.”

  Herod glared at him. “Let Gilgamesh be the judge of that!”

  “Asaraludu!” boomed the caller of the Fifty Names. “Namtillaku! Narilugaldimmerankia!”

  “And who is this great wizard you offer me?” Gilgamesh asked.

  “Imbe Calandola is his name,” said Herod. “A Moor, he is—no, a Nubian, or something of each, perhaps. Black as night, terrible to behold. He maintains a temple in the dark tunnels far below the streets of Brasil, and there he presides over the giving of visions. There are those who think he is the Lord of Darkness himself, the Prince of Hell, the Great Adversary, the vast Lucifer of the Abyss: Satan Mephistopheles Beelzebub, the Archfiend, the King of Evil. Perhaps he is; but I think he is in truth only a great savage, who knows the wisdoms of the jungle. In either case he will tell you what you wish to know. The Hairy Men, I understand, consult him frequently.”