To the Land of the Living (20 page)

“This is the royal wine,” said Calandola in a voice like the dark rumbling of a bear. “It will make the first Opening for you, the Opening that comes before the Knowing. Are you prepared, King Gilgamesh?”

“Give me your wine.”

“First your dog, and then you.”

“The dog?”

“First the dog,” Calandola said again.

“Very well,” said Gilgamesh. This was all madness to him; but he saw none of it as any more mad than any other part. The dog? Why not the dog? “If the dog is willing, give the dog the royal wine.”

Calandola made a brusque signal with three fingers of his left hand. The woman holding the pillowed cup knelt; the man poured the royal wine from the crook-necked flask.

When the cup was full she turned toward Ajax. The dog uttered a growling sound, but not, so it seemed, in any angry way. He looked up at Gilgamesh and there was an unmistakable questioning in his eyes.

Gilgamesh shrugged. “You are to go first,” he said. “That is what I have been told. Drink, Ajax. If you will.”

The room grew hushed. The dog drank, lapping quickly at the bowl. Wagging his tail, making little snuffling sounds: the royal wine appeared to please him. Gilgamesh had never known a dog to drink wine. But Ajax was a dog of the Afterworld; there was no reason why the dogs of the Afterworld could not drink wine, or fly through the air, or do any number of other unnatural things. The Afterworld was not a natural place.

At length Calandola signalled again, and the woman withdrew the cup from Ajax. The dog remained motionless. His eyes seemed strange: unmoving and, so it appeared, glowing.

Gilgamesh reached now for the cup.

“No,” Calandola said. “Not yet. Your other dog first.”

“I have but one dog.”

“This one,” said the Jaqqa, and pointed with his foot at Herod.

The Judaean prince looked astounded. He had been kneeling beside the other acolytes; now he rose, shaking his head in disbelief, tapping his breast as though to say, “Me? Me?” Calandola pointed a second time, making a contemptuous hooking gesture with his outstretched foot to draw Herod forward. Gilgamesh thought the little man would topple over before he had managed to take five steps. But somehow he stayed upright long enough to approach the cup-bearer. She proffered the pillow. Herod took the cup from it, resting it in both his hands and putting his face down and forward, practically into the cup. In long sighing gulps he drank it dry. Then he swayed and shook; the cup-bearer seized the cup before he could drop it; Herod backed away, wearing now the same glazed look in his eyes that the dog Ajax did, and took up his kneeling position once more.

This time Gilgamesh waited to see whether there were any more dogs in the room. But no: at last it was his turn to taste the royal wine.

The man with the crook-necked flask poured. The woman who held the pillow carried the cup to the Sumerian.

“Take,” said Calandola. “Drink.”

Gilgamesh lifted the bowl as Herod had done, in both his hands. It was cool and smooth, like fine ivory, but irregular of shape beneath. As he stared down into it he ran his fingers over its undersurface and came to realize what sort of thing it was that he held in his hands: beyond any question a human skullcap, with the parts below the eyesockets cut away. Very well, he thought. We drink here from a polished skullcap. Why not? He was beginning to understand Lord Calandola’s style of doing things. A skullcap is well suited to be a cup. Why not? Why not?

The wine was dark, not honey-colored like the other stuff, but tinged with red. He took a sip. There was an overpowering sweetness to it: a sweetness like that of the sweetest nectar, or perhaps even more intense. It lay strangely on his tongue, a heavy thick-textured wine. He swallowed it and took another, and suddenly he knew what it was that give the wine its sweetness, and what tinged it with red. This royal wine of Imbe Calandola’s was a wine made of blood. Knowing that, he thought his stomach might rebel at it, and hurl it back. But no. No, it slipped down smoothly enough. He had some more.

He drank until the cup was empty, and looked up, and smiled, and handed it back to its bearer.

And waited.

The Opening, this was. That comes before the Knowing.

Well? Why was nothing happening? Why had his eyes not gone glassy, as had the dog’s, as had Herod’s? Why was he not swaying? Why not dizzy? Was he immune to Calandola’s monstrous wine? Was he so lost within the walls of his own self that there could be no Opening for him?

He looked toward Calandola. “There is no effect,” he said. “Perhaps another draught of your wine, Lord Calandola.”

Calandola laughed – a strangely drawn-out laugh, that sounded thin and far away, and came cascading down over
Gilgamesh like the tumbling of a waterfall. He made no other reply.

Then came a weird droning voice from somewhere to his left, saying, “Alas, alas, you fall in error, world-striding Gilgamesh! No further wine do you need! The walls are down! The Opening is at hand!”

“What? What?”

“See me revealed! My previous self is what you behold.”

The Sumerian gasped. Ajax had disappeared; and in his place a bizarre creature fluttered midway between the floor and the level of Gilgamesh’s shoulders. It was something like a wasp, but larger than any insect Gilgamesh had ever seen, and covered with a shining blue incrustation almost like some precious stone. From its rear jutted a cruel-looking green stinger; and its tiny face was the face of a human woman. It buzzed and beat its wings as it hovered beside him.

“You see?” the wasp-woman cried. “In the Opening, much is shown! In my last life I was this, who am come back into the Afterworld now as Ajax the dog.”

“Your – last life”

“As insect, yes. Though even before that did I have human flesh, the same as you. Yet I gave self up to sin, and down I was forced to slip. For my penance was I made insect and greatly did I suffer. But then in later times for loyal service was I granted dog. You see, it is down the ladder and then sometimes up again. I still aspire, beyond dog. I rise again, and be better than dog. Though dog is good. When one has known insect, dog seems good.”

Ah. That was it. Gilgamesh understood. His dog Ajax, then, was one of those unfortunates whose fate it was to drift from body to body, from form to form, during their eternal stay in the Afterworld. So it seemed Calandola’s wine was doing some work, if he was able to see such things as this. Yes, he was sure now: an Opening of some sort had been achieved, and he was perceiving things beyond the ordinary realm of perception.

“Indeed, dog is good,” the wasp-woman was saying. “To have King Gilgamesh as my master is good. I follow the mighty Gilgamesh and he will take mercy on me some day and put me into a woman-body again. Or even a man-body.
What does it matter, man or woman, if only human? Human I would be again, as who would not?”

Gilgamesh smiled. “If I can do it, I will,” he said.

Instantly the wasp was a dog again; and Ajax lay flattened by his feet, nuzzling close.

Gilgamesh bent and stroked the beast fondly. Then he rose and turned toward Herod.

“And what of you?” asked Gilgamesh. “You, wasp in human form, what shape do you present now?”

But no outward change had come over Herod under the influence of Calandola’s drink. Herod was still Herod, a small bushy-haired quick-eyed man wearing a rumpled white toga, slumped in a kneeling position halfway across the chamber. Yet something was different now. The Herod whom Gilgamesh had come to know in these few days in Brasil was a man of tricks and chatter, fast and flashy of mind, forever swiftly weaving a web of words about himself to keep bigger and more stupid foes at bay. It was a defense that must have served him well in his centuries in the Afterworld; but now it seemed that the royal wine of the jaqqa king had stripped all that away from him.

Herod was wide open, defenseless: a sad frightened dependent man who was spending the years of his death as he had spent the years of his life, searching for a master. Once it had been the Roman Emperor Caligula, who had turned him briefly into a king. Later much later, here in the Afterworld it had been Simon Magus. Now it was this monstrous overbearing creature of darkness, Calandola. It could just as well be Gilgamesh next. Or Lenin, or Mao Tse-tung, or Prester John, or any of the infinite horde of other emperors and princes and demigods and warlords who had set themselves up to rule some little corner of this vast and unknowable realm that was called the Afterworld. Herod needed a master. He would probably be happier as a dog: if only he and Ajax could trade bodies somehow! Look at him, sitting there half slumped. Wishing he had a tail to wag, wishing he had soft brown worshipful eyes that he could turn lovingly upon his master, instead of those beady clever ones of his.

Gilgamesh felt a surge of scorn for Herod, that pitiful and most unkingly king.

But the scorn melted, and gave way to a deep sense of
compassion that swept through Gilgamesh with unexpected force and left him shaken and weak. How could he feel kindness for the dog who had been a wasp and yearned to be a human again, and not for this human whose soul was the soul of a dog? To despise Herod because he was no hero was itself a despicable thing. There was no shortage of heroes in the Afterworld. By the thousands and tens of thousands they swaggered about, replaying in death the dramas they had chosen in life. And if Herod – poor miserable little Herod – could manage nothing better than to find the joy of his life in the shattering outbursts of a volcano and in the barbaric blood-feasts of a nightmare savage, why, it was because he was who he was. He had no choice. No one had any choice. The gods decreed everything.

You, Gilgamesh: you will be a hero of heroes, a man like a god, a king among kings. And it will be your doom to die nevertheless, and to live forever in the Afterworld.

You, Enkidu: you will be a bold hunter and warrior, friend to the great king. And it will be your doom to die again and again, while the king your friend seeks you through all the halls of eternity.

You, Herod: you will be clever and cautious, a mouse in a world of lions. And you will have wit enough to deceive them all and keep your throne and your life, no matter how terrifying the risks of power may be to you.

We are who we are, all of us. The gods determine. We play the parts assigned. Why, then, feel contempt for those who play parts unlike our own? Herod, Simon, Calandola, the Hairy Man, the little scheming quarrelsome Later Dead folk, and all the rest – each was playing his proper part, each was fulfilling the decree of the gods. And each was in his own way the hero of his own drama, doing as it seemed fit for him to do. How could anyone be condemned for that?

Gilgamesh went to Herod’s side and bent down to take him by the arm.

“Up,” he said gently. “No more crouching, here. You are a man. Stand up like a man.”

“Gilgamesh –”

“There’s nothing to fear. I am your friend. I will protect you against whatever it is that you fear.”

But even as he spoke the words, Gilgamesh realized that the spell was breaking, became aware that the power of the wine was slipping from him. In another moment the warmth and
tenderness he felt for Herod faded. The irritation and contempt returned. This sad weak man: why offer to protect him? What was Herod to him? Let him fend off his demons for himself. Let him grovel before Calandola. Let him dance on the rim of the crater of Vesuvius and throw himself into the volcano’s boiling heart, if that was where he thought the true home of joy was to be found. Gilgamesh looked down at Herod and shook his head. Released his hold on Herod’s arm. Turned away.

“Well then, it seems to be over,” said Calandola, his voice coming as though from a great distance.

Gilgamesh stood blinking and baffled like one who has stepped from midnight darkness into the full noonday blaze of the sun.

“That was it?” he asked. “The Opening?”

“When other souls stand bare before you, yes, that is the Opening, King Gilgamesh.”

“And what now? Now the Knowing?”

“No,” said Calandola. “Another time. You resisted the wine; you achieved only a partial Opening. Your soul is a stubborn one. It will not yield to forces from outside. Come back another time, King Gilgamesh: and then we will see if you are strong enough to accomplish the Knowing.”

“What did I do wrong?” Gilgamesh asked. “Where did I fail?”

“You held back,” said Herod. “You were nearly there, and then at the last moment you held back. When the Opening begins, it’s necessary to surrender completely to it. You were fighting it.”

“Fighting is in my nature. Surrender isn’t.”

“Do you want the Knowing or don’t you?”

“I thought I was yielding to the wine,” Gilgamesh said. “I entered the soul of the dog. I saw what he had been in his last life. A wasp-creature, do you know that? With a woman’s face and the body of some hideous insect. And then I turned to you I saw your soul, Herod, I saw the true self within you, I –”

“All right. I don’t need to hear about it.”

“I saw nothing that would shame you.”

“Thanks all the same, but I’d rather not know.”

“It was as if the walls that separate us from each other had broken down. And then – then almost at once they were up again. The wine had worn off. Maybe if I had taken more –”

“Maybe,” Herod said. “You’re so damned big. Maybe Calandola misjudged the quantity. But he’s been doing this for centuries. He knows what quantity is right. I think it’s you, Gilgamesh. You held back, you kept some part of yourself in reserve. I can understand that. But if you want to learn the answers to your questions – if you hope to discover where Enkidu has gone –”

“Yes. I know.”

“Calandola may not allow you to return to him for a week, or even a month. But when he summons you, go. And whatever he asks of you, do it. Or there’ll be no Knowing for you. Eh, Gilgamesh?”

“What are you two chattering about?” Simon asked, appearing suddenly beside them. “Hatching a good conspiracy?” The dictator, grinning, clapped one hand to Gilgamesh’s broad back and one to Herod’s. “It’s useless, you know. I have seers who tell me everything. Past, present, and future lie revealed to them. The slightest hint of subversion here will show up instantly as a blip on their screens.”