Watson, Ian - Novel 16 (12 page)

 
          
Alex
only grunted.

 
          
‘Do
tell Uncle Gupta!’

 
          
‘That’s
my own affair.’

 
          
‘So
are the charming Deborah’s affairs her own. The moment she came back she packed
up and left.’

 
          
‘You
aren’t serious!’

 
          
‘Never
more so. Old Kamber was most distressed. A real loss of clientele. The lady had
class. He planned to offer her lucrative employment. The dear chap does nurse
fantasies of grandeur. No concept of reality - even though his hands are
plunged in reality daily! Come to think of it, maybe that’s why his girls stick
with him loyally. He inspires affection. Confidence! That’s why I was quizzing
him about opportunities, even though I take whatever he says with a pinch of salt.
Prosperity, like a full purse, is here today and gone tomorrow. Like beauty.
Like innocence.’

           
‘Where did she go to, Gupta?’

 
          
‘I
haven’t the faintest idea.’

 
          
Alex
felt chilled. ‘You didn’t make any effort to keep in touch?’

 
          
‘That,
Alex, is your little game; not mine.’

 
          
‘I
think you’re lying.’

 
          
‘Maybe
I am; maybe I’m not. Now you see it. . . now it is all illusion.’

 
          
‘I
think you know very well where she went.’

 
          
‘In
general terms I do. She went somewhere else inside
Babylon
. No doubt we shall all bump into one
another, tomorrow or in ten months’ time.’

 
          
That
man who bedded Deborah at the temple! Deborah and he had made an arrangement -
who else could it be? - and she had gone to him.

 
          
Alex
tried to call to mind an exact image of the man:

 
          
Mature,
muscular, not stout. Tall, with a wavy black beard and a beehive turban.
Expensively robed. The wood of his walking stick, which he had flourished with
easy aplomb, had been inlaid with ivory in a spiral pattern ... or was Alex
confusing that with another fine walking stick he had spotted en route to the
temple before that lying hostile tradesman misdirected him? The two memories
melded inconveniently in his mind.

 
          
How
could he trace Deborah’s man?

 
          
Oh,
that was easy. He couldn’t himself. But Thessany would have noticed the man,
particularly one so distinguished-looking. Most likely she already knew who he
was. And how about Moriel? Maybe Moriel trimmed and waved the man’s beard
professionally?

 
          
Did
he really wish to ask a favour of Moriel? One which would no doubt be
faithfully reported back to Thessany? Did he want to give Thessany an extra
hold over him? To present her with a hostage to fortune in the shape of
Deborah?

           
But then he saw a way. Deborah knew
about the scroll; the tape. Wasn’t Alex forever dropping the damn thing? She
might mention the enigma of the tape to the man with the beehive turban, who
must be a fellow of consequence. Alex had to be sure who that man was, and
whether Deborah had gone to him.

 
          
No
need to mention that he harboured any special feelings for Deborah! She was a
mere acquaintance, who had spotted the cassette by accident. But what a coup it
would be to spin a web of intrigue around absconded Deborah, just as Thessany
had spun one around him. Alex perceived that he ought to pick up tips from
Thessany - as Gupta had from Kamberchanian - so as to triumph in
Babylon
, particularly in an affair of the heart.
Which this was indubitably; a consuming affair. Always providing that he hid
his true feelings from Thessany!

 
          
It
might also be a smart idea to change his lodgings. Why should Thessany know
where Alex lived, and not vice versa? If she could keep in touch with him
through Moriel, why, so could he with her.

 
          
Alas!
Deborah might tire of her Babylonian beau, or he of her. She might return to
Between The Skin Shops. Alex had to stay put.

 
          
‘What
a lengthy meditation,’ Gupta said. ‘Now you’ve lost something else, namely
Deborah.’ ‘Something else? What else did I ever lose?’

           
‘You feared you’d lost something
yesterday morning, eh? In the case of your lady friend, though, I can see you
have a clue. You have let your
mind
search for her in the maze of
Babylon
. Yes, you’ve spied a thread leading through
a labyrinth, a sticky silken thread such as cunning little spiders weave.’

 
          
This
accurate sally inflamed Alex’s suspicions. Thessany had hinted at the
existence of official spies; and Gupta was dangling bait too assiduously. For a
comparative newcomer the Indian was surprisingly adroit. He might have arrived
at Kamberchanian’s inn only a dozen days before, but did that prove him a total
tenderfoot in the city?

 
          
Had
Nabu actually come to
Babylon
in the same party as Gupta? It was worth asking the Nubian.

 
          
Another
thought occurred: Deborah had seemed to enjoy the way Gupta carried on. Could
she have said anything to him about Alex’s tape? (To the extent that the tape
was Alex’s any longer!)

 
          
‘Yet
then, sir, that cunning little spider wraps the fly up in a package and drags
it to her lair!’

 
          
No
confiding in Gupta! Ten times no.

 
          
Alex
said, in an offhand way, ‘She might have left a note in my room.’ This was a
proposition which Gupta could hardly have the gall to contradict - even if he
had
been into Alex’s room during his
absence, even if he
had
noted how a
brick had been prised out of the wall.

 
          
‘I’ll
pop upstairs and see. You carry on milking Kamberchanian’s brains.’

 
          
First
Alex checked his room in case there was a note, which there wasn’t; then he
went along to Nabu’s room.

 
          
Nabu
was inside, stripped to his loincloth, performing press-ups.

 
          
‘Okay
if I come in?’

 
          
‘Sure.’
The Nubian jumped up and began towelling himself. ‘I reckon I might become a
wrestler rather than a scribe.’

 
          
Alex
shut the door. ‘Deborah has gone.’

 
          
‘Sorry
to hear it. She was one nice lady. I guess you and Gupta managed to piss her
off.’

 
          
Alex
shrugged. ‘I’m sorry you thought I was brushing you off yesterday. I wasn’t,
honestly. Can I ask you something?’

           
‘Can’t stop you. So you just go
ahead.’

 
          
‘You
and Gupta both checked in here on the same day.’

 
          
‘Right.’

 
          
‘Did
you travel to
Babylon
together?’

 
          
‘We
did not.’

 
          
‘You’re
sure?’

 
          
‘’Course
I’m fucking sure. What of it?’

 
          
‘I
think Gupta might have been here for a long time already.’

 
          
‘What,
in this inn?’

 
          
‘Of
course not! In the city.’

 
          
‘Doing
what?’

 
          
‘A
bit of spying.’

 
          
Nabu
went to the window and looked down into the yard. ‘He’s chatting up Mr Kamber
right now. Is that what you mean by spying?’

 
          
‘He
said he’s asking him for business tips.’

 
          
‘So
why’s he asking Mr Kamber for business tips if he ain’t a greenhorn? Man,
you’re paranoid.’

 
          
Alex
smiled thinly. ‘All survivalists are paranoid. This city’s founded on
paranoia.’

 
          
‘What
a load of bullshit.’

 
          
‘No
it isn’t.
Babylon
’s all about survival. Surviving in
Babylon
isn’t a big naive romp.’

 
          
‘Like
me, huh? Big and naive?’

 
          
‘What
I mean is, you can get corrupted, trapped, destroyed. There’ll be government
spies.’

 
          
‘Sent
by whose government?’

 
          
‘
Babylon
’s. And from elsewhere. You know, like
Greece
and
India
and
Carthage
.’ Alex grinned lopsidedly. ‘Surviving
could be a tough business.’

 
          
‘Depends
on your attitude, boy. Way you’re headed right now, you’ll end up in some alley
with your skull cracked open. Take some friendly advice. Relax.’

           
‘Relax? That’s rich, from someone
who just worked himself into a lather.’

 
          
‘And
who did I hurt in the process? Not a living soul.’

 
          
Alex
said incoherently, ‘
Babylon
’s my skull. That’s what I’ll crack. This city’s my skull.’

 
          
‘Play
skull-games by all means,’ retorted Nabu, ‘but leave me out of them.’

 
          
Coincidentally,
Nabu checked out of the inn later that very day and Alex never saw him again,
except perhaps once - in the distance, at Babylon Fair in the fields beyond
the Adad Gate, when he noticed a black man oiled and nearly nude save for a
cache-sexe
and studded leather thongs on
ankles and wrists. The Negro was limbering and primping and flexing muscles of
black volcanic rock, like some darker, mobile, more plastic version of the
diorite column on
Palace Street
on which were inscribed, in ten thousand cuneiform signs, the laws of
Hammurabi, moral sanctions for a city which honoured their elegant phrasing
more than it did their substance. (Yet in
Babylon
punishments could be savage and sudden, as
Alex was subsequently to discover. Sometimes, too, justice consisted not in
the enforcement but in the remission of harsh penalties.)

 
          
Only
this one possible future sighting of the Nubian, outside a boxing or a
wrestling booth. Alex had not ventured down the temporary avenue of hucksters,
haruspices, prestidigitators, saltimbanques, and well- patronized mountebanks
to investigate more closely.

 
          
In
a nutshell - like some burly Hop-o’-my-Thumb floating away to be captured by
fairies or by an enchanted frog family residing in the marshes, who appeared in
human form only once a year, at the fair - Nabu vanished from his life that
afternoon.

 
          
In
which Alex is careless with his shekels,
 
and becomes an omen

 
          
Days
hastened by. Alex’s unshaven jowls became more decently bearded. Wandering as
the whim took him, he explored the whole of the Etemenanki district, then the
new city
over the water. Back in his home area he
visited the Greek Theatre one afternoon and took in a performance of Euripides’
Andromeda
, once lost, now found
again.

 
          
The
braggings of Andromeda’s mother about her daughter’s loveliness had rubbed salt
into sea-god Poseidon’s soul, so he had unleashed a monster on the land. To buy
Poseidon off, the maiden was chained to a cliff as a meal for the sea-dragon.

 
          
While
the masked players down on the proscenium enacted this drama, Alex pondered its
relevance to himself.

 
          
Was
Deborah Andromeda? Was the man with the beehive turban Poseidon? Or was that
man the monster?

 
          
Was
Alex Perseus? Brave Perseus who rescued Andromeda (leaving his famous winged
horse offstage)?

 
          
The
mass of spectators on the circuits of stone seats were rowdily appreciative, as
though they were at a boxing match. They ate and drank. They applauded and
catcalled. Even when the chorus were dancing their most stately, graceful
routines, these interludes were punctuated by whistles from the audience - perhaps
endorsing or deploring fine points of choreography? But they also hushed at
tragic moments when certain solos were sung, to the accompaniment of a single flute;
and one of Andromeda’s solos burned itself into Alex’s heart. (Later he bought
a copy of the speech from a drama scribe.)

 
          
Andromeda
(in chains
):

           
Like
the real Helen who never sailed to Troy

           
So that men and ships followed a ghost

           
And Priam’s son loved a ghost in bed,

           
A
hallucination sent by gods to craze men,

           
Or
by one goddess to save that selfsame Helen

           
From
Paris
’s
lust and from the blood debt

           
Of all the foolish heroes, and the ruin

           
Of great
Troy
for ever . . .

           
I
am sacrificed for a phantom too,

           
The
phantom of my father’s pride,

           
Which
irked an even more potent phantom,

           
Poseidon,
figment of a sick imagination,

           
My
sire’s. But my death will be real

           
If the sea-dragon that ravages these shores

           
Is real; if it is not a guise for pirates

           
Who plunder, and can be bought off

           
With a chained virgin’s blood

-
           
Of pierced maidenhead!

           
Who
could rescue me from this cruel rock

           
Unless he be a pirate too, of another stripe?

           
For
what are heroes but pirates by another name

           
Who wage war on fate (or fatal circumstance)

           
And
pluck from time the mantle of distinction,

           
Stealing from the gods the flame of immortality,

           
Robbing even the grave of its boon, oblivion?

           
Do
not heroes seize the high ground of history

           
There to erect their image, their phallus

           
Of power to procreate not sons and daughters

           
But a name, the name of hero

           
Before which women must weep and pray?

           
And
yet my soul yearns for a hero

           
-     
Just as, enchained, made vulnerable,

           
I
yearn also for a pirate to pluck me,

 
 
         
For
then at least this will be over

           
When I will be a virgin prize no more.

           
And
if the dragon-pirate and the hero

           
Could perhaps kill each other mutually

           
Leaving nearby for me to grasp

           
The hero’s fallen blooded sword

           
And the pirate’s sharp sea-serpent tooth

           
To saw my chains and shatter them

           
I could break free, escape, and be myself:

 
          
A priestess in some greensward temple

           
Close by a private fountain, where no

           
Intruder phantom god lurks and leers

           
To step out from the shade in shepherd’s guise

           
Or rise from the depths disguised as a naiad

           
With budding breasts and tresses of gold,

           
Before revealing - himself. But I am torn

           
In my heart between the fear of ravage –

           
And the fear of rescue from ravage;

 
          
And the desire for both these fates

           
Which my father taught me long ago

           
And my mother too, conspiring with him

           
Every time she combed my hair out

           
And anointed me with fragrant oils.

           
I
hear a growling on the shore, the clutch

           
Of claws - or are those boots and weapons

           
Of a man? I hear a sighing in the air,

 
          
A rushing fall, as if a horse could gallop

           
Through the clouds, its hooves beating

           
Blue-black bruises in their fleece

           
From which the raindrops fall

           
Which are the tears of heaven.

           
Who
comes from the sea?

           
Who comes From the sky?

           
A god? A man? A beast? A hero?

           
Or my own faint fears, shameful that they are,

           
The beating of my own heart in my breast,

           
The
blood pounding in the bonds that hold me

           
Tight as a lover’s embrace . . .

 
          
A
few days before that performance of
Andromeda
Alex had made his way to the junction of
Esagila Street
and
Qasr Lane
, half fearing to find no hair salon there;
perhaps half hoping not to.

           
But sure enough, Moriel’s premises
were present in the shape of a substantial corner house. Archways, equipped
with stout night shutters, opened upon a ground-floor barber shop and an
adjacent beauty parlour. A sign, in Greek and cuneiform, announced:
Quality private rooms upstairs. By
appointment.

 
          
Outside
the barber’s a tattooed slave with a sword through his belt was minding a
snuffling grey mare hitched to a buggy-style chariot. Other clientele must have
arrived on foot; a pair of bearded barbers and a couple of bearded coiffeurs
were busily tending male and female heads in the adjoining salons. Clients sat
on wooden thrones; the barbers and coiffeurs stood on low stools. The
establishment was well stocked with bottles of oil and perfume, pots of
unguents, ivory combs, copper tweezers, bronze scissors, manicure sets, mussel
shells cradling rouge and kohl, razors, alum sticks, camel-hair brushes,
basins, mirrors, curling tongs and little charcoal braziers to heat them.

 
          
Alex
hung about outside while a barber put final touches to a fellow’s waved, oiled
crown. The man admired himself, then paid the barber and reclaimed his hickory
walking stick from an urn. Alex nipped inside and ascended the vacant throne.

 
          
‘Your
pleasure, lord?’

 
          
‘Er
. . . a haircut.’

 
          
‘A
cut? Your hair isn’t long, so how can I cut it?’ ‘Maybe I ought to have a
shave.’

           
The barber sandpapered his palm
against Alex’s cheek. ‘The opposite, I should have thought, lord! Though if a
shaved style pleases you . . .’

 
          
‘It
pleases your master, Moriel. Actually, it was him I came to see. Could he
attend to me?’

 
          
‘He
is busy, lord. He never plies his skills downstairs. One usually makes an
appointment.’

           
‘I believe he’ll see me, if you’ll
kindly mention my name: Alex the Greek.’

 
          
‘Did
I not say he is otherwise occupied, Lord Alex?’

 
          
But
just then, through a reed door, Moriel himself descended. He held the reeds
well aside and bowed low several times, to usher a fine lady whose red hair was
a high, coiling bonfire. She too bowed low to avoid mussing her coiffure in
collision with the lintel. Escorted by Moriel she minced out to the buggy,
where the slave handed her aboard.

 
          
As
the proprietor returned, Alex leapt up. ‘Excuse me, Moriel!’

 
          
‘Oh,
it’s the regal namesake himself! What an honour; and so soon after we last met.
By sheerest coincidence I have five teeny minutes to spare. Do come up.’

 
          
Moriel
led the way upstairs and along a corridor to one particular airy room where
gauze was stretched across the window for privacy, and as a fly net.

 
          
Mirrors
and bowls, bottles, jars and combs abounded. The combs were all of silver here,
the bowls of fine china. A small army of gold and silver hairgrips lay upon one
shelf. On another shelf were bizarre constructions of copper wire, frameworks
for future rococo coiffures. Murals decorated the plaster of three walls: plump
harem odalisques bathed in marble fountains, reclined sybaritically on divans,
titivated themselves amidst flowing drapery.

 
          
The
client’s throne up here was a softly cushioned one, the woodwork gilded.