Robert Silverberg - Gilgamesh the King

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.

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 ofsu~rrendered 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-yearold 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 GrowYoung-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.