To the Land of the Living (44 page)

Be silent, he told himself. Let this Gallagher say whatever he must say.

But it was too much. Why did he have to pretend to be insane to win his freedom? He could keep quiet no longer. The words came bursting from him despite all his efforts. “This chatter begins to offend my ears. I ask that an end be made of it and that we be released at once without further foolishness.”

“Ah, brother, brother!” Enkidu said, in a syrupy voice that one might use in addressing a child. “It is all right, brother! You will leave here very soon.” Gilgamesh felt a quick sharp kick against his ankle. “There are just a few little formalities, which Mr Gallagher will handle – and then you will be taken from here, to an extremely nice place where you’ll be very comfortable, where Mr Gallagher’s sister will give you everything you need, where you will have help for the things that
torment you – a soft bed, a quiet room, medicines to soothe your troubled mind –”

You shaggy bastard, Gilgamesh thought in fury. I’ll make you pay for this afterward!

But then he caught the playful twinkle in Enkidu’s eyes, and his anger melted, and his heart overflowed with love for his friend who had come here to save him, and laughter began to well up in him with such force that he had to struggle fiercely to throttle it back.

Night had begun to fall by the time they were finally out of there. A cold wind was coming off the river behind them, and lights were glowing like a million little suns in the towering buildings that rose all about. There was noise everywhere, an unbelievable cacophony of screeching and honking. Gilgamesh felt a savage pounding behind his forehead. This world that Enkidu had brought him to was like a joke, a very bad joke that went on and on, that threatened never to end.

If this is the land of the living, he thought, give me the Afterworld. He wondered what would happen if he jumped under one of those onrushing vehicles. Perhaps he would die in an instant and return to the place where he belonged. Or perhaps not. Perhaps once you left the Afterworld you could never return, and he was condemned for his impiety to spend the rest of eternity here. That would be Hell indeed. They would patch him together and send him out into this ghastly hateful land of the living again, and again and again, forever and ever, world without end.

Is it my fate, he thought, always to be restless and discontented, whichever world I may find myself in? Will I never know peace again?

Gallagher said, “Well, here we are, free as birds. It only took five times as long as it needed to, getting you guys sprung.” He shook his head. “Shit, half past four, now, and we’re way the hell over here on First Avenue, and pretty soon I’ve got to start opening up the club –”

Who is this man, Gilgamesh wondered, whom Enkidu has found?

Gallagher was still talking, not seeming to care whether they were listening, or understood anything he said. “Well, so we open a little late today. At least your friends are loose,
Hinky, and that’s the important thing. Scared the crap out of me when that wimp of a psychiatrist started in wanting to know my sister’s phone number right at the end when I thought we were all done, and the address of the Iranian-American Friendship League –”

“But you gave him the phone number,” Enkidu said.

“My sister lives in Los Angeles. That was the number of a girl I used to know, graduate student at Columbia.”

“What about the address you gave him?”

“Of the Iranian-American Friendship League? Christ, I don’t even know if such an outfit exists. I made it all up. But what the hell, Gil, you’re out of there, and that’s what counts.” Gallagher thrust out his hand. “I’m pleased to have been of service. Any friend of Hinkadoo’s a friend of mine. I’m Bill Gallagher, manager of the Club Ultra Ultra on West 54th.”

Gilgamesh accepted the handshake.

“Gilgamesh, son of Lugalbanda,” he said. “Formerly king of Uruk.”

“Very nice to meet you, Gil. And this is Helen of Troy?”

“My name is Helen, yes.”

“A real pleasure, Helen. Here, let’s turn west on 34th. We’re never going to find a cab, this hour, but maybe we have a better chance here than the little streets.” Gallagher laughed. “Just one illegal alien wasn’t enough for me, I guess. Hell with it. Listen, all three of you can stay at the club for a while, if you like, but I’ve only got the one room for all three of you, so you’ll need to get a hotel pretty fast, or something, okay? And some kind of jobs. We don’t really need two bouncers at the club, but maybe you two could take turns at it, Gil, Hinky, day on day off, and the other one can help out in back, maybe. Won’t anybody get out of line, with a couple of guys the size of you two on the premises. Is that all right with you, Gil, Number Two bouncer at the Ultra Ultra?”

“Is he speaking to me?” Gilgamesh asked.

“They speak very quickly here,” said Enkidu. “But I am starting to understand what they say.” He turned to Gallagher. “He will be pleased to have the job, yes, Bill. Very pleased.”

“Good. And you, Helen – you need some work too. Can you do topless, you think?”

“Topless?”

“You know. Strip. Show the skin. Bare the boobs.”

Helen looked at him. “Do I understand? You mean, take my clothing off in front of others? This is what you mean by topless?” She laughed. “In the poem they wrote about me, it was the towers that were topless, not me.”

“What?”

“The towers. The topless towers of Ilium.”

Gallagher said, “Help me out, Hinkadoo. What’s she talking about?”

Helen said, “You know. ‘Was this the face that launched a thousand ships –’”

“Oh. The poem,” said Gallagher doubtfully. “It’s about you, is it?” He thought a moment. “‘Was this the face that launched a thousand ships –’ The poem’s talking about Helen of Troy?”

“Yes.”

“And you are –”

“It is a joke,” Enkidu said. “She likes to pretend to be Helen of Troy. Just as my Gilgamesh pretends that he is Gilgamesh the king, who ruled long ago in Sumer. A joke, do you see, Bill? Only a joke.”

“Right,” Gallagher said.

How easily Enkidu picks up the way of speaking here, Gilgamesh thought. How glibly he tells the lies!

It is all noise, he thought. Everything that is said and done in this world is mere noise without meaning. And the noise was growing more intense every moment. The roaring, the booming, the honking, the screaming – he thought his heart would burst from the utter madness of it. Yet Enkidu took no notice of it, nor Helen. They went babbling merrily on and on, speaking with this Gallagher, saying things he could not understand and speaking so quickly that the words themselves became a blur of noise. He gave Enkidu a desperate look, but Enkidu merely smiled, and went on talking. Gilgamesh trembled. There was a drumming now in his ears, in his head, in his chest. The lights of the big buildings were blinking crazily, like beacons gone berserk. Voices rose and fell all about him, now thundering like waterfalls, now dropping to a sinister, oily whisper. Strangers in the street were pointing at him, nudging one another, laughing.

I am going mad, Gilgamesh thought.

Gods, is there no way I can depart from here? I have had enough. It is time to move on. I must escape this place or perish. I will fall down and do obeisance – yes, I will pray for my deliverance –

Once he had wanted to live forever, and that had been denied him, for at the end of his time in the first Uruk he had died, full of years and beloved by his people; but that death had led only to a new birth, in a world where indeed it did seem that he would live forever, and when he had attained the life eternal that he had sought so badly it seemed to lose its savor for him, and he could not remain content. Whereupon he had chosen to return to the land of the living. And here he was. But, he told himself, if only he could be discharged of his voyage, he would be restless no longer, he would gladly be still, he would make an end of his questing and seeking. Yes. Yes.

Now prayer rose and coursed in him like a river. He who had not prayed in the thousands of years of his life after life now humbled himself before the gods he once had worshipped.

Enki, spare me! Enlil, great one, set me free.

Lugalbanda –father
-
grant me peace!

For an answer there was only the lunatic cacophony of the traffic, and the vile fumes that choked the air, and the buzzing chatter of Gallagher and Enkidu and Helen.

Once again he closed his eyes and made entreaty to the great gods of Sumer and to the god his father, Lugalbanda. And opened his eyes again, and looked out without hope into the squalid ugly jumble that was the land of the living.

Then he beheld something before him that kindled a great strangeness in his soul, as though the earth were about to erupt and explode, and everything whirled about him. He blinked and caught his breath. And said, pointing down the street, “Enkidu? Do you see that man there?”

“Which, brother? There are so many.”

“The one with the red face, the big chest, down there. Surely we’ve seen him before – in the Afterworld –”

“I’m not sure which one you –”

“There. There. He was at the court of Prester John, do you remember? The ambassador from King Henry, he was. He
and the other one, the one with the strange long face – Howard was this one’s name, I remember now, Robert Howard –”

“Here? How can it be? This is the land of the living, brother.”

“I tell you, he is the man,” said Gilgamesh. “Or else his twin.”

Shaken, he looked off into the deepening dusk. Could it be? Perhaps his eyes were deceiving him. How could the man Robert Howard possibly be here, possibly be on the very same street he was, of all the teeming myriad chaotic streets of this city in this teeming chaotic world? A trick of the darkness, he thought. Or of his memory.

But no – no – the red-faced man was pointing, too, staring, looking dumbstruck at Gilgamesh – running wildly toward him, now, pushing people aside –

“Conan!” he cried. “By Crom, it is you, Lord Conan! Here-here!”

Gilgamesh stood still, scarcely even breathing. Everything seemed quite different, suddenly. The street about him was growing misty and insubstantial. The towering buildings were wavering and flickering like the frail plants that grow beneath the water and dance in the current. The frantic noise of the traffic died away. He could barely see Gallagher now, and even Enkidu and Helen seemed remote and indistinct.

The strange red-faced man Howard kneeled before him as he had done once before long ago in the Outback, sobbing and babbling.

Then the other one appeared, the lantern-jawed one, gaunt and pale – Lovecraft was his name, Gilgamesh remembered, King Henry’s other ambassador. Putting his hand on Howard’s shoulder, he said gently, “Up, Bob. You know that this is not your Conan. This is Gilgamesh the king.”

“So he is. Yes. Yes.”

“Come. Let him be.”

“Why are you here?” Gilgamesh asked. “Is this not the land of the living?”

“We all came to visit you,” a new but familiar voice said. Gilgamesh glanced to his side and saw Herod of Judaea, clad now not in Roman robes but in a suit of Later Dead style. Vy-otin was with him, majestic in a bulky overcoat and a narrow-brimmed hat pushed down low over his forehead on the side where the eye was missing. They were smiling at him. The buildings were all but invisible, now. The cars that still streamed by in the street were ghost-cars, silent, mysterious. Herod slipped an arm through one of Gilgamesh’s, and Vy-otin took the other.

“You two should be in Uruk,” Gilgamesh said uncertainly. “I left you in charge of the city.”

“The city can look after itself for a while,” Vy-otin said. “This was more important. Let’s go, Gilgamesh.”

“Wait,” he said. “Enkidu – Helen –”

“Come on,” Herod said. “This is New York! We have to live it up! First the Natural History Museum – Vy-otin wants to show us the mammoth bones, and some paintings his friends did a long time ago – and then maybe I ought to stop in the synagogue for the services – it’s Friday night, you know – but you can come along, they won’t mind –”

“And the Museum of Modern Art,” said Picasso, stepping out of the mists. “The Metropolitan. You should not forget those. He has much to learn about the great painters. Let him see Cezanne. Let him see Velasquez.
Ypues, carajos,
let him see Picasso!”

“Are all of you here?” Gilgamesh said softly. “Every one of you?”

Yes. All of them. There was that kindly old German doctor – Schweitzer, was he? – smiling and twisting the ends of his immense mustache. There was Simon Magus, holding out a flask of wine. And there? Caesar, was that? Yes. And Walter Ralegh, in full gleaming armor, making a courtly bow? Yes. Yes. Baffled, amazed, Gilgamesh took a few stumbling steps toward them. The city around him had all but vanished, leaving nothing but a radiant glow stretching far toward the horizon. It seemed to him that he was in Vy-otin’s ancient feasting-hall now, the palace of the Ice-Hunters where the bones of the great beasts lay strewn about as they had in the
early mists of time. And all about him were unexpected figures, coming to him from the other world, crowding close – Prester John saluting him now, and limping little Magalhaes, and Belshazzar, Amenhotep, Kublai Khan, Bismarck, Lenin –

That was Calandola standing apart from the others, like a massive column of black stone, grinning, his eyes blazing like beacons – and the Hairy Man – and Dumuzi – Ninsun – Minos – Varuna of Meluhha –

They were all here, everyone he had ever known. A horde of faces ringing him around, people nodding, smiling, waving, winking, laughing –

“What is this?” Gilgamesh asked. “What is happening to me?”

He wondered if he might be dying at last. The third and final death, the true death, after he had died from this world into the other one and died from that one back into this, and now was going onward into oblivion, into the ultimate sleep. Could that be it? So at last, then, – was it peace at last? Sleep? Eternal rest? An end to wandering, an end to kingship, an end to Gilgamesh?

He understood nothing. Nothing.

“Herod? Mother? I beg you – tell me – please, tell me –”