“I struggled to hear it more clearly, their blessed familiar voices:
“ ‘Turn your head to them, Lord God Marduk,’ said Cyrus. ‘It is your father, singing with all his heart.’
“I turned. I saw nothing but a blur of waving arms, of garlands tossed in the air, of flowers falling, but I heard my father:
“The singing went on and on, following us to the gates of the temple. And then came the shouts, ‘Messiah, Messiah, Messiah!’ And Cyrus waved and threw them his kisses, and at last it was time for the coronation.
“We were taken down from the chariot and the wagon, and walked on a bed of flowers up and up the seemingly endless stairway of the great ziggurat Etemenanki, so that the people from far off could see us through the wide gates. I thought I might die before I reached the top; I couldn’t look above, only at the golden stairs before me and I thought of the stairway to Heaven which Jacob had seen in his dream with the angels coming and going.
“At last we stood on the summit, the mountain made by and for the god, and I was given the crown. By now it seemed I did not control my limbs at all. I felt nothing. I smiled because it was easiest to smile, and my arms ached suddenly with tiredness as I lifted the big Persian crown of gold and placed it on the head of the Living King.
“ ‘Now may I die,’ I whispered. Exhaustion overcame me. My knees were in pain, my feet, all of me that could no longer move or stand with any freedom.
“Distinctly I saw the loving eyes of Cyrus, I saw the solemnity in his face, I saw…the dedication to Kingship in him. I saw perhaps a little of a King’s madness.
“Slyly and cleverly the priests crowded around me and painted me over and over that I might move my limbs, and some vitality came back to me. ‘Keep your eyes open,’ Remath said. ‘Keep your eyes open.’
“I did. We were taken down to the courtyard. The banquet lasted for hours. I know the poets came and they sang, and I know that the King dined and all the nobles dined. But I sat rigid staling. My eyes wouldn’t close now whatever I did. They had been stupid to add paint. They only softened the lids when they did, I thought to myself, and I looked down at my hands lying on the table, and I thought, ‘Marduk, I have never once called on you.’
“His voice came in my ear. ‘You have had no need of me, Azriel. But I’m with you.’
“Finally it came to an end. Darkness had fallen. It was finished. The King was crowned, Babylonia was Persia, the city was drunk beyond the palace gates and the temple gates, and within these two buildings others drank and sang.
“ ‘Now,’ said the young priest, ‘we will carry you up to the shrine. You need walk no more. You need only take your place at your banquet table there, and if you do not die within a few hours we will give you the gold in your mouth.’
“ ‘Not quite yet,’ said Remath. ‘Follow me and quickly, for we have one more ritual to perform and it must be done properly.’
“The young priest was confused. So was I but I didn’t care. I didn’t give a damn. I didn’t care at all. I was slumbering already, and when I saw the vague shapes of the dead hovering about, staring at me in fear, I was pleased. I would have thought they would have come thundering down upon me like an army and dragged me out of my gold clothes and said, ‘Come stumble through eternity with us!’ but they didn’t.
“Suddenly I felt an unbearable heat. I saw a huge fire. I thought I heard my father’s voice, but I wasn’t sure, and then I heard Asenath say,
“ ‘It is powerful powerful magic! Do you want him to die! Give it to me!’
“For one brief second I saw my father, and in confusion, he gave over to her the old tablet, in its clay envelope. ‘Azriel!’ he called out. He reached beyond her, towards me.
“I wanted to speak but I was past it. I couldn’t do anything.
“The doors were slammed shut on my father and on the world.
“We were in a chamber with a hot, hot fire, the cauldron full of gold boiling, and the air almost impossibly hot. And Asenath then broke the clay envelope of the old tablet. She just smashed the outer clay as if it was nothing, and then she held up the secret tablet to the light of the torch.
“I was standing on my own, too rigid to move, too rigid to fall, stating at them. I wasn’t even too horribly afraid of the fire. What were they doing, Remath and the old woman? Where was the High Priest? Hadn’t I glimpsed him now and then?
“And then Asenath began to read, but this was not Sumerian, it was Hebrew, old old Canaanite Hebrew.
“ ‘…and that he should see his own death and that he should see his soul, his tzelem and his spirit and his flesh all boiled together in the bones, to live in the bones, forever, only to be called forth by the Master who knows his name, and calls his name…
“ ‘No!’ I screamed. ‘That is not a charm! That is Hebrew. That’s a curse. You lying witch.’
“The gold covering on me cracked all over as I sprang with all my drunken strength at her, but she backed up like a dancer and Remath had me by the throat. I was as stupefied and weak as those lions who had come against it.
“ ‘You witch, that’s a curse,’ I said.
“ ‘That he shall see all of him that is visible and invisible and all fluids of his body boiled down into the bones, and that he shall be bound to those bones and whoever is Master of those bones, and that he shall not be taken into the darkness of Sheol nor the eternal life of God forever and ever.
“ ‘Marduk!’ I screamed.
“I felt myself heaved backwards, and thrown into the boiling gold. I screamed and screamed. It was unthinkable. It was not possible that I could know such pain. It was not possible that such a thing could happen to me, that boiling gold should choke my mouth and cover my eyes!
“And when I thought I would go blank mad, blank mad with horror and pain, with nothing of human thought left, I shot upwards out of the cauldron, free-floating above the body that was slumped and boiling in the pot, with only one open eye above the bubbling gold. The body that had been mine! And I was not in it.
“I was there above, arms outstretched, staring down. And I saw the face of Asenath upturned.
“ ‘Yes, Azriel,’ she screamed, ‘watch, watch the gold boil, watch the flesh fall from your bones, watch the bones become the gold, don’t take your eyes off it, lest you be drawn back down into agony and death.’
“ ‘Marduk,’ I cried.
“ ‘It’s your choice,’ he said. ‘Go back down into that cauldron of pain and you die.’ His voice was broken or sad. I realized that he was below me. He stood looking up.
“And for the first time he looked small to me and simple. Not grand or godly. And Asenath was just an old fool of a woman. And Remath staring at the body sinking into the bubbling pot was jumping up and down and making his hands into fists and cursing and screaming.
“There was no time. There was no decision. Or maybe it was pure cowardice. I could not go down into that pain. I could not be boiled alive. I could not bear that such a thing would happen to any human being. I watched
