Robert Silverberg - Gilgamesh the King

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 demon

"You understand-I did not want to do it-" she said in a terribl thick-voiced grunting way.

Then the bowl fell from her lifeless hands and she toppled to th floor virtually at my feet.

I thought I might go mad in that moment, or at least be swep into the tremors of a fit. But a strange calmness was upon me, a though my soul, buffeted so hard, had shored itself up by closint in on itself to make me invulnerable. I had no fits. I did not eve~ weep. I looked down and saw the dark stain of the spilled wine il 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 li~ 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 Wruk 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 da so thick were their walls. Lamps were burning, casting a soft lig on the colored ornaments of baked clay that I had had put by tl thousands into those walls. I walked swiftly. This was my templ~ I had designed it and I knew my way in it. I expected to find Inanr in the great chamber of the goddess, and so she was: standing at tl~ center of the room, fully robed and in her finest breastplates an ornaments, as though she had prepared herself for some high cere mony. She wore one ornament I had never seen on her before-mask of shimmering beaten gold that covered all her face but he 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 win~ for me. She did your bidding and offered the bowl to me, but Z would not drink from it, and so she drank the wine herself, of he~ 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."

"And," I said, "the custom of offering the king, upon his return to the city from a journey, a bowl of wine that kills." I went a few steps closer to her. "Take offthe mask, Inanna. Let me see your face again."

"I will not," she said.

"Take off the mask. I ask you."

"Let me be. I will not take off the mask."

But I could not speak with this metal-faced stranger. It was the woman of flesh and blood I sought to look upon again, the treacherous and beautiful woman I had known so long, she whom I had loved, in my fashion, as I had loved no other woman.! meant to behold that woman one more time.

Gently I said, "I would see the splendor of your face once more. I think there is no face more beautiful in all the world. Do you know that, Inanna? How beautiful you have seemed to me?" I laughed. "Do you remember the nights we made the Sacred Marriage together? Of course. Of course. How could you forget? That year when I was the new king, and I lay all night in your arms, and in the morning the rain had come. I remember.! remember those times before you were Inanna, when you called me to the chambers deep below the old temple. I was just a frightened boy then, and I scarcely knew what games you were playing with me. Or that first time, when they were saying the coronation rite for Dumuzi, and I wandered off into the corridors of the temple and you found me. You were just a child yourself, though you already had your breasts. Do you remember? Do you remember? Ah, Inanna, in time I came to understand the games you were playing with me! But now I would see your face again. Put down the mask." "Gilgamesh-"