To the Land of the Living Read online

  “Do as you please, King Gilgamesh. But if you would have the knowledge, take and eat. Take and eat.”

  “Take and eat!” came the booming voice of Calandola. “Take and eat!”

  The cannibal tribesmen leaped and danced. One who was whitened with chalk from head to toe and wore straw garments that seemed to be the costume of a witch rushed to the cauldron, pulled a joint of meat from the boiling water with his bare hands, held it aloft.

  “Ayayya! Ayayya!” the Jaqqas cried. “Ayayya!”

  The witch brought the meat to Calandola and held it forth to him for his inspection. From Calandola came a roar of approval; and he seized the joint with both his hands, and put his jaws to it and buried his teeth in it.

  “Ayayya! Ayayya!” cried the Jaqqas.

  Gilgamesh felt the wine of the cannibals flowing through his soul. He swayed in rhythm to the harsh and savage music. Beside him, Herod now seemed wholly transported, lost in an ecstasy, caught up entirely in the fascination of this abomination. As though he had waited all his life and through his life after life as well to make this surrender to Calandola’s foul mystery. Or as though he had no choice but to be swept along into it, wherever it might take him.

  And I feel myself swept along also, thought Gilgamesh in shock and amazement.

  “Take,” said Calandola. “Eat.”

  Joyously he held the great slab of steaming meat out toward Gilgamesh.

  Gods! Enlil and Enki and Sky-father An, what is this I am doing?

  The gods were very far from this place, though. Gilgamesh stared at the slab of meat.

  “This is the way of Knowing,” said Calandola.

  This?

  No. No. No. No.

  He shook his head. “There are some things I will not do, even to have the Knowing.”

  The aroma from the kettle mixed with some strange incense burning in great braziers alongside it, and he felt himself swaying in mounting dizziness. Turning, he took three clumsy, shambling steps toward the entrance. Acolytes and initiates drew back, making way for him as he lumbered past. He heard Calandola’s rolling, resonant laughter behind him, mocking him for his cowardice.

  Then Herod was in his path, blocking him. The little man was drawn tight as a bow: trembling, quivering.

  Huskily he said, “Don’t go, Gilgamesh.”

  “This is no place for me.”

  “The Knowing—what about the Knowing—?”

  “No.”

  “If you try to leave, you’ll never find your way out of the tunnels without me.”

  “I’ll take my chances.”

  “Please,” said Herod. “Please. Stay. Wait. Take the Sacrament with me.”

  “The Sacrament? You call this a Sacrament?”

  “It is the way of Knowing. Take it with me. For me. Don’t spurn it. Don’t spurn me. We are already halfway there, Gilgamesh: the wine is in our souls, our spirits are opening to each other. Now comes the Knowing. Please. Please.”

  He had never seen such an imploring look on another human being’s face. Not even in battle, when he raised his axe above a foe to deliver the fatal stroke. Herod reached his hands toward Gilgamesh. The Sumerian hesitated.

  “And I ask you too,” came a voice from his left. “Not to take depart. Not to abandon loyal friends.”

  Ajax.

  The dog was flickering like the shadows cast by a fire on a wall: now the great brindle hound, now the strange little wasp-woman, and now, for only a moment, a hint of a human shape, a sad-eyed woman smiling timidly, forlornly.

  “If you take the meat you can set me free,” said the dog. “Reach into soul, separate dog and spirit. You would have the power. Send poor suffering soul on to next sphere, leave dog behind to be dog. I beg you, mighty king.”

  Gilgamesh stared, wavering. The dog’s pleas moved him deeply.

  “Your friends, great hero. Forget not your friends in this time of savioring. Long enslavement must end! You alone can give freedom!”

  “Is this true?” Gilgamesh asked Herod.

  “It could be. The rite releases much power to those who have power within them.”

  “Forget not your friends,” the wasp-woman cried again.

  For a moment Gilgamesh closed his eyes, trying to shut out all the frenzied madness about him. And a voice within him said, Do it. Do it.

  Why not? Why not? Why not?

  This is the Afterworld, nor is there any leaving of it.

  He crossed the room to Calandola, who still held the meat. The cannibal chieftain grinned ferociously at Gilgamesh, who met his fiery gaze calmly and took the meat from him. Held it a moment. It was warm and tender, a fine cut, a succulent piece. Out of the buried places of his mind came words he had been taught five thousand years before, that time in his youth when he was newly a king and he had knelt before the priests in Uruk on the night of the rite of the Sacred Marriage:

  What seems good to oneself

  is a crime before the god.

  What to one’s heart seems evil

  is good before one’s god.

  Who can comprehend the minds of gods

  in heaven’s depths?

  “Take,” Herod whispered. “Eat!”

  Yes, Gilgamesh thought. This is the way. He lifted the slab of meat to his lips.

  “Ayayya! Ayayya! Ayayya!”

  He bit down deep, and savored, and swallowed; and from the volcano Vesuvius somewhere not far away there came a tremendous roar, and the earth shook; and as he tasted the forbidden flesh the Knowing entered into him in that moment.

  It was like becoming a god. All things lay open to him, or so it seemed. Nothing was hidden. His soul soared; he looked down on all of space and time.

  “Your friends, Gilgamesh,” came a whispering voice from high overhead. “Do not forget—your friends—”

  No. He would not forget.

  He sent forth his soul into the dog that was the wasp-woman that once had been a human sinner. Without difficulty he distinguished the human soul from the dog-soul and the wasp-soul; and separated the one from the others, and held it a moment, and released it like a bird that one holds in one’s hand and casts into the sky. There was a long sigh of gratitude; and then the wandering soul was gone, and Ajax the dog lay curled sleeping at Gilgamesh’s feet, and of the wasp-creature there was no sign.

  To Herod then he turned. Saw the sadness within the man, the weakness, the hunger. Saw too the quick agile mind, the warm spirit eager to please. And Gilgamesh touched Herod within, only for an instant, letting something of himself travel across the short distance from soul to soul. A touch of strength; a touch of resilience. Here, he thought. Take this from me; and hold something of myself within you, for those times when being yourself is not enough for you.

  Herod seemed to glow. He smiled, he wept, he bowed his head. And knelt and offered a blessing of thanks.

  Gilgamesh could feel the presence of monstrous Calandola looming over him like a titan. Like a god. And yet he seemed no longer malevolent. Distant, dispassionate, aloof: serving only as a focus for this strange rite of the joining of souls.

  “Seek your own Knowing now, Gilgamesh,” said the Jaqqa. “The time has come.”

  Yes. Yes. The time has come. Now—Enkidu—?

  Where?

  Ah: there. There he was, in that narrow high-walled canyon, amidst the people of the caravan, the transporters of stolen jewels. There was the wagon that had fallen over, and now stood upright. Van der Heyden bustling around, giving orders. And now—now two of those whirling noisy flying-machines of the Later Dead, two helicopters, suddenly darkening the sky, descending out of nowhere, fitting themselves with eerie precision between the walls of the canyon. The caravan people shouting, running for weapons. The helicopters hovering, twice a man’s height off the ground—guns poking from their sides—the brutal sound of machine-gun fire—the caravan people running, screaming, falling—

  Enkidu crouched beside a wagon with an automatic weapon somehow in his hands, fi
ring back—

  A figure rising out of the closer helicopter, throwing something down—a fragmentation bomb, it was—a burst of black smoke, screams, caravan people sprawling everywhere, horribly mutilated—

  And Enkidu still firing—

  “No!” Gilgamesh cried. “Enkidu! No!”

  But it was like crying out within a dream. He could do nothing. He was not a god; and this vision, he knew, was sealed already into the irremediable past. Enkidu, rushing wildly toward the closer helicopter as though meaning to tear it apart with his own hands—some man of the Later Dead, with close-cropped yellow hair and hard blue eyes, peering out in amazement, reaching behind him, coming out with a grenade, arming it and tossing it in the same instant—a moment of sudden fierce incandescence, like a tiny sun—Enkidu caught within it, visible for a moment, staggering, falling—

  Falling—

  Then there was only nothingness where Enkidu had been. His spirit had been swept away once again to that mysterious place of death within death where those who perished in the Afterworld were sent. Where he would wait in limbo, a year maybe, a thousand years, half of eternity perhaps—there was no predicting it—until it was his turn to be given flesh and breath again, and be sent forth into the death-in-life of the Afterworld.

  “Where will I find him?” Gilgamesh asked, numbed by loss.

  And a voice replied, “You must seek him in Uruk of the treasures.”

  Fiercely Gilgamesh shook his head. “There is no Uruk!”

  “No? No? Are you sure, King Gilgamesh? Is that what the Knowing tells you?”

  “Why—”

  He looked. And saw. And the veils of memory dropped away.

  Uruk!

  It lay glittering upon the breast of a broad dark plain, a white city bright as a jewel. There was the platform of the temples, there were the sacred buildings, there were the ceremonial streets. Uruk. Not the Uruk where he had been born and been king and died, but that other Uruk, New Uruk, the Uruk of the Afterworld, that great Uruk which he—

  —had founded—

  —had ruled for a hundred years, or was it a thousand—

  —he—he—a king in the Afterworld—

  He saw himself on the throne. Officers of the court all around him, and petitioners seeking favors, and emissaries from other principalities of the Afterworld. Saw himself issuing decrees, saw himself going over plans, saw himself greeting the generals of his victorious armies. Saw himself being king in the Afterworld as he had been in the world before the Afterworld. Saw it and knew it to be a true vision.

  The Knowing came upon him like a torrent, sweeping away all the imagined certainties by which he had been living for so long. Why had he thought he was an exception to the rule that the heroes in the Afterworld must recapitulate the struggles of their life-times? How had he deceived himself into thinking that he and Enkidu had spent all their thousands of years in the Afterworld merely wandering, and hunting, and wandering again, shunning the ambitions that raged like fire in everyone else? Of course he had sought to reign in the Afterworld. Of course he had brought followers together here once upon a time, and built a city, and made it magnificent, and defended it against all attack. How could he not have done such a thing? For was he not Gilgamesh the king?

  And then—then—

  Then to forget—

  He understood now. There was never any trusting of memory in the Afterworld. How often had he seen that! Whole centuries might collapse into a single moment, and be forgotten. Whole empires might rise and fall and go unremembered. There was no history here. There was really no past, only a stew of events that did not form a pattern; and there was no future, and scarcely any present, either.

  In the Afterworld everything was flux and change, though beneath the flux nothing ever changed. Gilgamesh had truly thought the lust for power had been burned out of him by time. Perhaps it had. But there was no longer any denying the things he had so long been able to hide even from himself. He knew now why all those little men engaged in conspiracies and revolutions and the other trips of power here in the Afterworld. Without striving, what is there to keep one from going mad in this eternity? He had put striving behind him, or so he thought. Perhaps. Perhaps. But perhaps he was not entirely done with it yet.

  He stood stunned and gaping in the midst of Calandola’s terrible feast. Within him blazed the forbidden food that had opened his eyes.

  Enkidu dead once more. Uruk real. Himself not yet entirely immune to the craving for power.

  Now I have had the Knowing, Gilgamesh thought.

  He dropped to his knees and covered his face with his hands and let great sobs of mourning rip through his body. But whether it was for Enkidu that he mourned, or for himself, he could not say.

  “So soon?” Simon asked. “What’s your hurry? We need time to plan things properly.”

  “I mean to set out for Uruk in five days or less,” said Gilgamesh. “You may come with me or not, as you please. I have my bow. I have my dog. I am well accustomed to traveling by myself through the wilderness.”

  Simon looked mystified. “Just a day or two ago it seemed to me very doubtful that you wanted to go to Uruk at all. You didn’t even appear to believe the place was there. And now—now you can’t wait to get started. What happened that turned you around so fast?”

  “Does it matter?” Gilgamesh asked.

  “It’s your friend Enkidu, isn’t it? Some wizard here has told you that he’s waiting for you in Uruk. Am I right?”

  “Enkidu is dead,” said Gilgamesh.

  “But he’ll be reawakened to Uruk. By the time you get there, he’ll be waiting. Right?”

  “That could be.”

  “Then there’s no hurry. He’ll be there when you get there. Whenever that is. Relax, Gilgamesh. Let’s organize this thing the right way. Picked men, decent equipment, give the Land Rovers a good tuneup—”

  “You do those things. I don’t plan to wait around.”

  Simon sighed. “Rush, hurry, go off half-cocked, never stop to think anything through! It’s not my style. I didn’t think it was yours. I thought you were different from all the other dumb heroes.”

  “So did I,” said Gilgamesh.

  “Ten days?” Simon said.

  “Five.”

  “Be merciful, Gilgamesh. Eight days is the soonest. I have responsibilities here. I have to draw up a schedule for my viceroy. And there are decrees to sign, materiel to requisition—”

  “Eight days, then,” said Gilgamesh. “Not nine.”

  “Eight days,” said Simon.

  Gilgamesh nodded and went out. Herod was waiting in the hall, cowering by the door, probably eavesdropping. Almost certainly eavesdropping. He looked up, his eyes not quite meeting those of Gilgamesh. Since the last visit to the cavern of Calandola, Herod had been remote, furtive, withdrawn, as though unable to face the recollection of the terrible rite he had led Gilgamesh into.

  “You heard?” Gilgamesh asked.

  “Heard what?”

  “We leave for Uruk, Simon and I. In eight days.”

  “Yes,” Herod said. “I know.”

  “You’ll be the viceroy, I think. I’m sorry about that.”

  “Don’t be.”

  “You didn’t want this to happen.”

  “I didn’t want to be viceroy, no. But I won’t be. So there’s no problem.”

  “If you aren’t going to be viceroy, who will be?”

  Herod shrugged. “I don’t have any idea. Calandola, for all I care.” He reached out uncertainly toward Gilgamesh, not quite touching his arm. “Take me with you,” he said suddenly.

  “What?”

  “To Uruk. I can’t stay here any longer. I’ll go with you. Anywhere.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “As serious as I’ve ever been.”

  Gilgamesh gave the little man a close, long look. Yes, he did indeed seem to mean it. Leave the comforts and tame terrors of Brasil, take his chances roaming in the hinterlands
of the Afterworld? Yes. Yes, that was what he appeared to want. Maybe the experience in the cavern beneath the city had transformed Herod. It was hard to imagine going through something like that and not coming out transformed. Or perhaps the truth was merely that sad little Herod had formed one more attachment that he felt unable to break.

  “Take me with you,” said Herod again.

  “The journey will be a harsh one. You’ve grown accustomed to ease here, Herod.”

  “I can grow unaccustomed to it. Let me come with you.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “You need me, Gilgamesh.”

  It was all Gilgamesh could do to keep from laughing at that.

  “I do?”

  “You’ll be a king again when you reach Uruk, won’t you? Won’t you? Yes. You can’t hide that from me, Gilgamesh. I was there when you had the Knowing. I had the Knowing too.”

  “And if I am?”

  “You’ll need a fool,” Herod said. “Every king needs a fool. Even I had one, when I was a king. But I think somehow I’d do the other job better. Take me along. I don’t want to stay in Brasil. I don’t want to visit Calandola’s cavern again. I might want another dinner there. Or I might become dinner there. Will you take me along with you, Gilgamesh?”

  Gilgamesh hesitated, frowned, said nothing.

  “Why not?” Herod demanded. “Why not?”

  “Yes,” Gilgamesh said. “Why not?” His own favorite phrase floating back at him. The great unending Why Not? that was the Afterworld.

  “Well?” asked Herod.

  “Yes,” said Gilgamesh again. There was some charm in the idea, he thought. He had come to like the little Jew rather more, since they had been in Calandola’s cavern together. There was weakness in him, yes, but there was a strong humanity also. And Herod was intelligent, and shrewd besides: a good combination, not overly common. He could be a lively companion, when he wasn’t buzzing and chattering. A better companion, very likely, than old wine-guzzling Simon. And possibly Herod wouldn’t buzz and chatter quite so much, while they were on the march, out among the rigors of the back country. It might almost make sense. Yes. Yes. Gilgamesh nodded. He smiled. Yes. “Why not, Herod? Why not?”