“We had no official gathering place for prayers, of course, because we had such grandiose plans for going home and building the Temple of Solomon all over again; I mean no one was going to throw up any little street-side temple in Babylon. The temple would have to be done according to sacred dimensions, and after I was dead and cursed and had become the Servant of the Bones, the Jews did go home and build that temple. In fact, I know they did, because I saw it once…once, as if in a fog, but I saw it.
“In our Babylonian life we gathered at private homes for prayers, and also for the elders among us to read the letters we received from the rebels still hiding on Mount Zion, and also the letters coming from our prophets in Egypt. Jeremiah was imprisoned there for a long time. I don’t remember anyone ever reading one of his letters. But I remember a lot of mad writing by Ezekiel. He didn’t write it down himself. He walked about talking and predicting and then other people wrote it down.
“But so we prayed, in our homes, to our invisible and all-powerful Yahweh—reminded always that before David promised him a temple, Yahweh and the Ark of the Covenant had been housed only in a tent, and that had its meaning and its value. Lots of the Elders thought the whole temple idea was Babylonian, you know. Go back to the tent.
“On the other hand, our family had for nine generations been rich merchants, city men, living in Nineveh before Jerusalem, I think, and we had little concept of the nomad life or carrying about shrines in tents. The story of Moses didn’t make a great deal of sense to us. For instance, how could the people be so lost in the desert for forty years? But, I repeat myself, don’t I?…What am I saying…
“A tent to me was all the silk over my bed, the red-tinged light in which I lay with my hands cupped under my head talking to Marduk about the prayer meetings and listening to his jokes.
“At some of these prayer meetings we had our own prophets, whose books are lost now, who did a great deal of ranting and screaming. I was frequently pointed to, and told that I had found favor in the eyes of Yahweh, though what this meant nobody was certain.
“I guess they all knew in a way that I could see farther than others, look into souls, you know, see like a zaddik, a saint, but I was no saint, only an obstreperous young man.”
He stopped. The sharpness of memory seemed to cut him off and hold him.
“You were happy,” I said. “By nature, you were happy, truly happy.”
“Oh, yes, I knew it, and so did my friends. In fact, they often teased me about being too happy. Things never seemed all that difficult, you see. Things never seemed dark! Darkness came with death, and the worst darkness for me was right before it, and maybe…maybe even now. But darkness. Oh, to take on the world of darkness, that is like trying to chart the stars of heaven.
“What was I saying? Things were easy for me. I enjoyed them. For example, to be educated I had to work in the tablet house. I had to get a real Babylonian education. This was wise, this was for the future, this was for trade, this was to be a man of learning. And they beat the daylights out of us if we were late, or didn’t learn our lessons, but usually it was easy for me.
“I loved the old Sumerian. I loved writing out the whole stories of Gilgamesh and ‘In the Beginning’ and copying all kinds of records so that fresh tablets could be sent to other cities in Babylonia. I could practically speak Sumerian. I could now sit down and write for you my life in Sumerian—” He stopped. “No, I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t because if I could have written my life, I wouldn’t have climbed up this snowy mountain to commit it to you…I can’t…I can’t.…write it in any tongue. Talking lets the pain flow…”
“That I understand perfectly, and am here to listen. The point is, you know Sumerian, and you can read it, and you can translate it.”
“Yes, yes, yes, and Akkadian, the language that had been used after, and the Persian which was creeping up on us all then, and Greek—I could read that well—and Aramaic which was taking the place of our own Hebrew in daily life, but then I wrote Hebrew too.
“I learnt my lessons. I wrote fast. I had a way of plunging the stylus into the clay that made everybody laugh but my writing was good. Really good. And I also loved to stand up and read out loud, so whenever the teacher took sick, or was called out, or suddenly needed some medicine, otherwise known as beer, I’d stand up and start reading Gilgamesh to everybody in an exaggerated voice, making them laugh.
“You know the old myth of course. And it’s important to our story, stupid and crazy as it is. Here is this king Gilgamesh and he is running wild around his city—on some tablets he is a giant, on others he is the size of a man. He behaves like a bull. He has the drums beaten all the time, which makes everybody unhappy. You’re not supposed to beat the drums except for certain reasons—to frighten spirits, to call to nuptials, you know.
“Okay, so we have Gilgamesh tearing up the city of Uruk. And what do the gods do, being the Sumerian gods, being about as smart as a bunch of water buffalo—they make an equal for Gilgamesh in a wild man called Enkido, who is covered with hair, lives in the woods, and likes to drink with beasts—oh, it is so important in this world with whom one eats and drinks and what!—anyway, here we have wild Enkido coming down to the stream to drink with the beasts, and he is rendered tame by spending seven days with a temple harlot!
“Stupid, no? The beasts wouldn’t have anything to do with him once he knew the harlot. Why? Were the beasts jealous because they didn’t get to lie with the harlot? Don’t beasts copulate with beasts? Are there no beast harlots? Why does copulating with a woman make a man less of a beast? Well, the whole story of Gilgamesh never made any sense anyway except as a bizarre code. Everything is code, is it not?”
“I think you’re right, it’s code,” I said, “but code for what? Keep telling me the story of Gilgamesh. Tell me how your version ended,” I asked. I simply couldn’t resist the question. “You know we have only fragments now, and we don’t have the old script that you had.”
“It ended the same way as your modern versions. Gilgamesh couldn’t resign himself that Enkido could die. Enkido did die, too, though I don’t remember quite why. Gilgamesh acted as if he’d never seen anybody die before, and he went to the immortal who had survived the great flood. The great flood. Your flood. Our flood. Everyone’s flood. With us it was Noah and his sons. With them it was an immortal who lived in the land of Dilmun in the sea. He was the great survivor of the flood. And off to see him, to get immortality, goes this genius Gilgamesh. And that ancient one—who would be the Hebrew Noah for our people—says what? ‘Gilgamesh, if you can stay awake for seven days and nights, you can be immortal.’
“And what happens? Gilgamesh instantly fell asleep. Instantly! He didn’t even wait a day! A night. He keeled over! Smash. Asleep. So that was the end of that plan, except that the immortal widow of the immortal man who had survived the flood took pity on him, and they told Gilgamesh that if he tied stones to his feet and sank down in the sea he could find a plant that, once eaten, gives you eternal youth. Well, I think they were trying to drown the man!
“But our version, as yours, followed Gilgamesh in this expedition. Down he went and he found the plant. Then he comes up again. He goes to sleep. His worst habit apparently, this sleeping…and a snake comes and takes the plant. Ah, what utter sadness for Gilgamesh and then comes the old advice to all:
“ ‘Enjoy your life, fill your belly with wine and food, and
I laughed. “I like your telling of it. When you would stand up in the tablet house, did you read it with that same fervor?”
“Oh, always!” he said. “But even then, what did we have? Bits and pieces of something ancient. Uruk had been built thousands of years before. Maybe there was such a real king. Maybe.
“If I have a point in all this right now, let me make it. Madness in kings is common. In fact, I think sanity in kings must be rare. Gilgamesh went crazy. Nabonidus was crazy. You ask me, Pharaoh was crazy in every story I ever heard about him.
“And I understand this. I understand it because I have looked into the face of Cyrus the Persian and into the face of Nabonidus, and I know that kings are alone, utterly alone. I have looked into the face of Gregory Belkin, a king in his own right, and I saw this same isolation and terrible weakness; there is no mother, there is no father, there is no limit to power, and disaster is the portion of kings. I have looked into the face of other kings, but that we will pass over quickly later on, because what I did as the evil Servant of the Bones does not matter now, except that every time I killed a human life, I destroyed a universe, did I not?”
“Perhaps, or you sent the evil flame home to be cleansed in the great fire of God.”
“Ah, that is beautiful,” he said to me.
I was complimented. But did I believe this?
