To the Land of the Living (26 page)

Half a dozen servants appeared as if from nowhere to help Gilgamesh with his bath, and anoint him with fragrant oils, and garb him in a white flounced woollen robe that left him bare to the waist in the Sumerian manner. After a time Herod came knocking at the door, and he too was garbed after the fashion of Sumer, though he still wore his gleaming Italian leather shoes instead of sandals, and he had his little Jewish skullcap on his head. His dark curling hair had been pomaded to a high gloss.

“Well?” he said, preening. “Do I look like a prince of Sumer the Land, Gilgamesh?”

“You look like a fop, as always. And a weakling, besides. At least your toga would have covered those flabby arms of yours and that spindly chest.”

“Ah, Gilgamesh! What need do I have of muscles, when I have
this
?” He touched his hand to his head. “And when I have the brave Gilgamesh the king to protect me against malefactors.”

“But will I, though?”

“Of course you will.” Herod smiled. “You feel sorry for me, because I have to live by my wits all the time and don’t have any other way of defending myself. You’ll look after me. It’s not in your nature to let someone like me be endangered. Besides, you need me.”

“I do?”

“You’ve lived in the Outback too long. You’ve got bits of straw in your hair.”

Automatically Gilgamesh reached up to search.

“No, no, you foolish ape, not literally!” said Herod, laughing. “I mean only that you’ve been out of things. You don’t understand the modern world. You need me to explain reality to you. You stalk around being heroic and austere and noble, which is fine in its way, but you’ve been paying no attention to what’s really been going on in the Afterworld lately. The fashions, the music, the art, the new technology.”

“These things are of no importance to me. Fashion? And music? Music is mere tinkling in my ear. It is at best trivial, and usually worse than that. Art is decoration, an insignificant thing. As for this new technology you speak of, it is an abomination. I despise all the inventions of the Later Dead.”

“Despise them all you like, but they’re here to stay. The New Dead outnumber us a thousand to one, and more of them arrive every day. You can’t just ignore them. Or their technology.”

“I can.”

“So you may think. A bow and a couple of arrows, that’s good enough for you, right? But you keep running afoul of things you don’t comprehend. You blunder on and on and you get yourself out of trouble most of the time pretty well, but you fundamentally don’t know what’s what, and sooner or later you’ll come up against something that’s too much even for you. Whereas I’ve kept up with modern developments. I can guide you through all the pitfalls. I’m aware, Gilgamesh. I know what’s happening. I stay in touch. Politics, for example. Do you have the foggiest notion of the current situation? The really spectacular upheavals that are going on right now?”

“I take great care not to think of them.”

“You think it’s safe, keeping your head in the sand that way? What happens over there on the far side of the Afterworld can have a tremendous impact on how we operate here. This isn’t
your ancient world, where it took forever and a half just to carry the news from Rome to Syria. Do you know what a radio is? A telephone? A microwave relay? Like it or not, we’re all Later Dead now. You may still be living like a Sumerian, but the rest of the people here are neck-deep in modern life.”

“They have my compassion,” said Gilgamesh.

“You don’t know the slightest thing about the revolutionary movements swirling in half a dozen cities back East, do you? The whole Upheaval? The People’s Rebellion against the administration in Nova Roma? What Cromwell is doing, and Lenin, and Frederick Barbarossa? The latest deeds of Tiglath-Pileser? The present status of Metternich? No, no, Gilgamesh, you’re out of things. And damnably proud of your ignorance. Whereas I have kept up with the news, and –”

“I have spent time in Nova Roma, Herod. I have seen Cromwell and Bismarck and Lenin and Tiglath-Pileser and Sennacherib and the rest of that crowd putting together their petty schemes. Why do you think I went to the Outback? I wept with boredom after half an hour among them. Their intrigues were like the squeakings of so many mice to me. Whatever they may be planning to do, it will all wash away like a castle of sand by the edge of the sea, and the Afterworld will go on and on as it always has. And so will I. The invisible demons who are the true masters here laugh at the pretensions of the rebellious ones. And so do I. No, no, Herod, I haven’t any need of your guidance. If I choose to protect you against harm, it’ll be out of mercy, not out of self-interest.” He glanced at the watch he wore, a gift from Simon Magus. “It grows late. We should be on our way to the feast.”

“The wristwatch you wear is a despised invention of the Later Dead.”

“I take what I choose from among their things,” said Gilgamesh. “I choose very little. You are not the first to try to mock me for inconsistency. But I know who I am, Herod, and I know what I believe.”

“Yes,” Herod said, in a tone that was its own negation. “How could anyone have doubt of that?”

Gilgamesh might have pitched him from the window just then; but the servants returned to lead them to the feasting-hall. Simon, waiting for them amid the splendors of the lobby, greeted them with wine-flushed face. He had spurned
Sumerian robes altogether and was decked out in a purple toga and high gilded buskins in the Greek style.

As they moved toward the door Simon caught Gilgamesh by the wrist and said quietly, “One moment. Tell me about this king we are about to meet, this Dumuzi.”

“If it is the same one, he succeeded my father Lugalbanda on the throne of Uruk – the first Uruk – when I was a boy, and drove me into exile. He was a coward and a fool, who neglected the rites and squandered public funds on ridiculous adventures, and the gods withdrew the kingship from him and he died. Which made the way clear for me to become king.”

Simon Magus nodded. “You had him murdered, you mean?”

Gilgamesh’s eyes widened. Then he laughed. This man might be a drunkard but his mind was still shrewd.

“Not I, Simon. I had nothing to do with it. I was in exile then; it was the great men of the city who saw that Dumuzi must go, and the priestess Inanna who actually gave him the poison, telling him it was a healing medicine for an illness he had.”

“Mmm,” said Simon. “You and he take turns succeeding one another in the kingship of Uruk, here and in the former life. Now it’s his turn to rule. And yours may be due to come again soon. Everything revolves in an endless circle.”

“It is the way of this place. I am used to it.”

“He was afraid of you once. He’ll be afraid of you still. There’ll be old grudges at work tonight. Perhaps an attempt at some settling of scores.”

“Dumuzi has never frightened me,” said Gilgamesh, making the gesture one might make to flick away a troublesome fly.

Sabartes said, “Which is it, Pablo, that has you so excited these days? That you have a new mistress, or that we are finally to have a bullfight for you to attend?”

“Do you think I am excited, brother?”

With a sweeping gesture Sabartes indicated the litter of sketches all about the studio, the dozen new half-finished canvases turned to the wall, the bright splotches everywhere where Picasso, in his haste, had overturned paints and not bothered to wipe them up. “You are like a man on fire. You work without stopping, Pablo.”

“Ah, and is that something new?” Rummaging absentmindedly in a pile of legal documents, Picasso found one with a blank side and began quickly to draw a caricature of his friend, the high forehead, the thick glasses, the soft fleshy throat. A little to his surprise he saw that what he was drawing was the old pedantic Sabartes of the last years on Earth, not the incongruously young Bohemian Sabartes who in fact stood before him now. And then the sketch changed with half a dozen swift inadvertent strokes and became not Sabartes but a demon with fangs and a flaming snout. Picasso crumpled it and tossed it aside. To Sabartes he said, “She will be here soon. Do you have anything you must tell me?”

“Then it
is
the woman, Pablo.”

“She is splendid, is she not?”

“They were all splendid. La Belle Chelita was splendid, the one from the strip-tease place. Fernande was splendid. Eva was splendid. Marie-Therese was splendid. Dora Maar was –”

“
Basta
, Sabartes!”

“I mean no offense, Pablo. It is only that I see now that Picasso has chosen once more a new woman, a woman who is as fine as the ones who went before her, and –

“You will call me Ruiz, brother.”

“It is hard,” said Sabartes. “It is so very hard.”

“Ruiz was my father’s name. It is an honest name for calling me.”

“The world knew you as Picasso. All of the Afterworld will know you as Picasso too as time goes along.”

Picasso scowled and began a new sketch of Sabartes, which began almost at once to turn without his being able to prevent it into a portrait of El Greco, elongated face and deep-set sorrowful eyes, and then, maddeningly, into the face of a goat. Again he threw the sheet aside. He would not mind these metamorphoses if they were of his own choosing. But this
was intolerable, that he could not control them.
Painting
, he had liked to tell people in his life before this life,
is stronger than I am. It makes me do what it wants
. But now he realized that he must have been lying when he said that; for it was finally happening to him, just that very thing, and he did not like it at all.

He said, “I prefer now to be known as Ruiz. That way none of my heirs will find me here. They are very angry with me, brother, for not having left a will, for having forced them to fight in the courts for year after year. I would rather not see them. Or any of the women who are looking for me. We move on, Sabartes. We must not let the past pursue us. I am Ruiz now.”

“And you think that by calling yourself a name that is not Picasso you can hide from your past, though you look the same and you act the same and you paint day and night? Pablo, Pablo, you deceive only yourself! You could call yourself Mozart and you would still be Picasso.”

The telephone rang.

“Answer it,” said Picasso brusquely.

Sabartes obeyed. After a moment he put his hand over the receiver and looked up.

“It is your Sumerian priestess,” said Sabartes.

Picasso leaned forward, tense, apprehensive, already furious. “She is cancelling the sitting?”

“No, no, nothing like that. She will be here in a little while. But she says King Dumuzi has asked her to attend a feast at the royal hall tonight, and that you are invited to accompany her.”

“What do I have to do with King Dumuzi?”

“She asks you to be her escort.”

“I have work to do. You know I am not one to go to royal feasts.”

“Shall I tell her that, Pablo?”

“Tell her – wait. Wait. Let me think. Speak with her, Sabartes. Tell her – ask her – yes, tell her that the king’s feast is of no importance to me, that I want her to come here right away, that – that –

Sabartes held up one hand for silence. He spoke into the telephone, and listened a moment, and looked up again.

“She says the feast is in honor of her son, who has arrived in Uruk this day.”

“Her
son
? What son?” Picasso’s eyes were blazing. “She said nothing about a son! How old is he? What is this son’s name? Who is his father? Ask her, Sabartes! Ask her!”

Sabartes spoke with her once again. “His name is Gilgamesh,” he reported after a little while. “She has not seen him since her days on Earth, which were so long ago. I think you ought not to ask her to refuse the king’s invitation, Pablo. I think you ought not to refuse it yourself.”

“Gilgamesh?” Picasso said, wonderstruck. “
Gilgamesh
?”

Motorized chariots painted in many gaudy colors conveyed them the short distance from the lodging-hall to the feasting-place of the king, on the far side of the temple plaza. The building startled Gilgamesh, for it was not remotely Sumerian in form: a great soaring thing of ash-gray stone, it was, with a pair of narrow spires rising higher than any of the fanciful baroque towers of Brasil, and pointed arches over the heavy bronze doors, and enormous windows of stained glass in every color of the rainbow and a few other hues besides. Ghastly monsters of stone were mounted all along its facade. Some of them seemed slowly to be moving. The palace was very grand and immense and massive, but somehow also it seemed oddly flimsy, and Gilgamesh wondered how it kept from falling down, until he saw the huge stone buttresses flying outward on the sides. Trust Dumuzi to build a palace for himself that needed to be propped up by such desperate improvizations, Gilgamesh thought. He loathed the look of it. It clashed miserably with the classic Uruk style of the buildings that surrounded it. If I am ever king of this city again, Gilgamesh vowed, I will rip down this dismal pile of stone as my first official act.

Herod, though, seemed to admire it. “It’s a perfect replica of a Gothic cathedral,” he explained to Gilgamesh as they went inside. “Perhaps Notre Dame, perhaps Chartres. I’m not sure which. I’m starting to forget some of what I once learned about architecture. I had some instruction in it, you know, from a man named Speer, a German, who passed through Brasil a while back and did a little work for Simon – peculiar chap, kept asking me if I wanted him to build a synagogue for me – what use would we have for a synagogue in the Afterworld? –but he knew his stuff, he taught me all sorts of
things about Later Dead architectural design – you’d be astounded, Gilgamesh, what kinds of buildings they –”

“Can you try being quiet for a little while?” Gilgamesh asked.

The interior of the building actually had a sort of beauty, he thought. The sun was still glowing ruddily in the sky at this hour, and its subtle light, entering through the stained-glass windows, gave the cavernous open spaces of the palace a solemn, mysterious look. And the upper reaches of the building, gallery upon gallery rising toward a dimly visible pointed-arch ceiling, were breathtaking in their loftiness. Still, there was something oppressive and sinister about it all. Gilgamesh much preferred the temple in honor of Enlil that he had built, and still well remembered, atop the White Platform in the center of the original Uruk.
That
had had grandeur.
That
had had dignity. These Later Dead understood nothing about beauty.