The Assyrian

by Nicholas Guild

  At last, as we lay together quietly in our bed, the urgent passion spent so that we could feel once more the restful pleasure of love. I heard hailstones beating on the roof—tat, tat, tat! like birds picking at seeds that have fallen between the paving bricks. It had thundered all that night, so I was not surprised. It was somehow an agreeable sound, enclosing us in safety.

  Esharhamat passed her hand over the hair on my chest, as if to smooth it into place. Her breast just touched my arm. I felt. . . I cannot put into words what I felt. It seemed that all happiness must now slip away into nothingness, that all the rest of my life must be in mourning for the end of this one moment. I would not grieve, however, since I had this moment.

  “Did you miss me?” she asked, letting her hand come to rest upon my belly and curling her fingers so that I could feel the faint tracery of her nails.

  “When?”

  “All these last days—when you were with the king, and your mother.”

  “Are you jealous of my mother?” I turned my head to look at her, smiling. “Are you?”

  “No—not of her. Of the king sometimes.”

  “Why? Why would you be jealous of the king?”

  “Because you would lay down your life for him.”

  I laughed, gathering her to me, for it seemed such a foolish thing for anyone to say. I told her so.

  “You only think it is foolish because you are a man,” she answered. She pretended to be angry but did not turn her face away when I moved to kiss her.

  “Come—why are you jealous of the king? Are you jealous?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then why? I would lay down my life for you just as quickly as for him.”

  “Then because you would give me up for his sake.”

  “If he ordered it, how could I not?”

  “Not if he ordered it, but if he asked it.”

  “He is the king. How could I refuse? That would be duty.”

  “And love? What is love?”

  “Love is what I want—or need, to live. Duty is life. It is more than life. It is the same with every soldier. If you were a man you would understand.”

  “But I am not a man,” she said, touching my face with her lips, letting me feel her hungry hot breath, teasing me with the point of her tongue as I tried once more to kiss her. “I am not a man—did you know it? Prove to me that you knew all along I was not a man.”

  Even as she laughed, a sound like the tinkling of little brass bells, she reached under the blanket and curled her fingers around my manhood, by then once more hard as iron, guiding it into her. As she melted against me, and as she shuddered with longing and a tiny sob broke from her throat, I cared nothing for kings or gods or duty—only for her.

  Later, while she slept, I stole out of bed and went to the window, unhooking the shutters that I might see the street below, still glittering with fallen hail.

  What had she meant to tell me? Had it been a joke, a mere freak of womanly petulance? What did she want?

  As it had from time to time over the past several days, my memory flooded with the look on my mother’s face as she watched the butchery before the Akitu house. Had the king meant to inspire fear? He had only displayed his own—the whole spectacle had been grotesque and stupid.

  If I became king I could prevent such things. I could have Esharhamat—not in secret but openly, as my wife.

  And as my wife she would be forever safe. I knew she was blind and heedless—what would become of her if I could not make her my wife? She refused to see that she could ever become anything else and she imagined, as the rising wind carried her, that it was her own strength that made her soar so high. She might destroy herself by her own rashness if the world did not answer to her wishes. Thus, as I loved her, I was afraid for her.

  She was still asleep when I drew the shutter closed again. I sat down on the bed beside her, and I thought. “You are all that matters to me—you, this place, this moment.” Was I wrong to love her like that? Yes. I knew it, and did not care.

  And as if she had heard, her eyes fluttered open and she smiled at me.

  “I would be king for your sake,” I said suddenly, having planned to say nothing. “For your sake, and to change the world.”

  “Would you, my love? But the world will not allow itself to be changed.”

  . . . . .

  My walk home took me through some of the poorer sections of the city, where the streets were slippery with ice, mud, and garbage and men smelled of weariness and stale beer. These were the houses of day laborers, who rented space for their sleeping mats one night at a time, who would never have enough money to buy themselves wives, and whose bodies, when they were dead, would lie in unremembered graves, their souls without offerings to ease the pangs of hunger and thirst. Such men, if they had the stomach and the strength for either, might become soldiers or thieves, risking death to better themselves a little, but otherwise the grim course of their lives had been set for them on their whelping day.

  I passed a wine shop—even here there were wine shops, for all human creatures must have their little luxuries—and noticed that, on the other side of the street, there was a carrying chair of rich design, its sides covered in black leather. Around it were squatted four discontented looking slaves, casting their eyes about them as if they wondered how they would ever avoid the contagion of such a place. They were slaves, yes, they seemed to imply, but still better than any free man who might find himself here. It was with a slight shock that I realized they wore the dress of royal slaves.

  All at once a torrent of laughter reached me from within the wine shop. I was curious—I almost could not help myself. I went inside.

  It was a crowded, fetid little room with walls of unpainted mud brick. Men in the cheapest dun colored tunics sat about, at tables and even on the floor, playing at lots or talking in loud voices or merely watching whatever amusement might be going forward. There was a slight stir just as I came in, for these were not people used to rubbing shoulders with ranking officers of the king’s army, but I was by no means the focus of interest.

  On top of a table at the other end of the room, a great hairy naked beast of a man was bent over on his elbows and knees, grunting like a pig as he rutted on a woman whose white legs stuck out from beneath him like the feelers of some strange insect. While everyone watched, some cheered the huge beast on as others, some two or three I saw, made bets, dropping little packets of coins tied up in pieces of oily rag into the lap of an elderly crone who sat on a high stool and looked as if she might own the place.

  Of the woman who was the source of all this entertainment I could tell little, except that she seemed to be young. I must do something, however—she most probably was here against her will, for who. . ?

  And then, as if to snatch a breath of air from beneath her loathsome, sweating burden, she happened to turn her head enough for me to see something of her face. Yes, of course—I was a great fool—the carrying chair. It was Shaditu!

  The king’s own daughter—it was intolerable. A few quick steps and I had crossed the room. I grasped the lout by his ankle, yanking him over so that he pulled loose from my sister and landed on the floor backside first, with a loud smack.

  For a moment he was merely stunned. Then he was angry. But even as he gained his feet the copper tip of my javelin was balanced delicately against his throat.

  “Out!” I bellowed. “Out, every one of you, out—if you value your lives, out!”

  It was more than an instant before my adversary realized that I really was prepared to kill him, that I wore the uniform of a rab shaqe, and that he had better do as he was told. He picked his discarded tunic up from the floor and started backing away.

  “Want her all for yourself then, my young lord?” the old crone chirped behind me. There was a general laughter, muted and uneasy.

  “Everyone—I said, go!”

  I had only to make a single pass through the air with my javelin, and they ran for the door like rabbits
. In an instant, Shaditu and I were alone.

  Shaditu did not at first realize this. She rose on one elbow; drawing her knees up as she did so, and looked around her, blinking like an owl.

  “What the. . . ? Oh, its you, Tiglath—brother. Care to take your turn in the wine press?”

  With a slurred laugh—she showed all the signs of being very drunk—she let her thighs fall open to reveal the cleft, worn glowing red with use and streaming with seed.

  “I’ve been entertaining—what do you think. . ?”

  “You are disgusting,” I said, turning my face away as I removed my cloak for her to wear. “Here, cover yourself.”

  “Oh, Tiglath, don’t be cross. Here—give me a kiss, my sweet brother. We never seem to meet except when I am at less than my best.”

  She gathered my cloak around her shoulders and leaned forward, holding her head in her hands. For a moment I thought she was about to be sick, but this impression was dispelled soon enough as she reached out to take hold of my arm, resting her temple against it.

  “Oh, Tiglath, my beautiful brother, if you could but love me,” she murmured. “I am driven to this by your rejection.”

  “You must have your little joke, I suppose.”

  I pulled away my arm, wondering why I had ever let her take it in the first place. Shaditu could fill any man with uneasiness, and I was a man. I picked up her tunic from the floor; it was a flimsy thing of the thinnest linen, and someone had torn it into shreds—one could easily imagine the circumstances. No, she would never wear this again. I could not find her sandals anywhere.

  “Here now, wrap yourself in my cloak. It is cold out, and you are going outside to your chair and then home.”

  “Not yet, I think,” she answered, leaning back on the table and letting the cloak fall open. “Let us tarry here a moment first—just the two of us.”

  “Shaditu, if you will not go to your chair on your own two legs I will drag you, by the hair if I must.”

  “I do not think you would, brother.”

  “And why would I not, sister?”

  “Because you know how very much I would enjoy it.” She smiled at me, like a cat. “Now give me but a sip of wine and try a little to be nice to me, Tiglath, for I know you do not find it a misery to look at me.”

  She was right. I could not help myself, for Shaditu was beautiful. Her mouth had been made for kissing, and her eyes were wanton, full of wickedness, but tilted up at the corners as if to smile, as if the sight of you consumed her with pleasure. The flesh of her body was as smooth as water. That body seemed to beckon: Come, taste me, hold these breasts in your hands, push your way between these thighs and know the joy of me. I was but a man, and I felt this. And Shaditu was not blind.

  She lay naked upon my cloak, her arms thrown back, her belly rising and falling as she breathed. I went to fetch her a cup of wine and sat down to wait until she drank it and had done with tormenting me.

  She sat up and took the wine cup from my hand, smiling to herself as if at some private jest.

  “You do not love me, you love another—everyone knows this.” She shrugged her shoulders. “I do not care. If you desire me, this is enough; I would not interfere between you and Esharhamat, who must be a poor thing for a man to pleasure himself with.

  “But I see that, once again, I have shocked you. Yes, I see I have.” The smile on her lips faded quietly away. “You think I am wicked and unfeeling, worse even than the tavern harlots, who at least sell themselves for money with which to live. Perhaps you are right—perhaps also this is not the life I would have chosen for myself, had I been free to choose. But, you see, I was not. I have a father who is old and foolish and thinks to keep me for himself alone.”

  “You speak unwisely, sister—I would. . .”

  “You would what, brother? Do not imagine you can threaten me as you did that crowd of ruffians.” She made a faint dismissing gesture, as if her late paramour and his friends were ghosts she would wave away. “I will say whatever I like.”

  “Were you a man, even my brother in blood, I would kill you for your impertinence.”

  “But I am not a man, and you are my brother, O mighty Tiglath Ashur—I think myself safe enough from your wrath.”

  She laughed, throwing back her head, and I began to wish I were someone else that I might slap her face hard enough to make those mocking lips bleed. I desired her—I could not lie to myself—but at the same time I longed to break her body like a rotten twig. There are some women who thus mingle in us yearning and hatred, and Shaditu was one of them.

  “What do I say that is not the truth?” she went on, laughing still, but bitterly. “Shaditu is the king’s darling and may not have a husband to rule over her while her father lives. Had I been given a man of my own, and been allowed to live in the manner of other women, I might have been content with that and never strayed into the beds of common soldiers and the wine shops of the poor and despised. But perhaps—who can say?—I might have anyway, for perhaps it is simply my nature to be wicked.

  “Come into me, Tiglath. You will someday, as we both well understand. Let us take pleasure together.” She looked up at me through smoldering eyes. “No? Not today? Or perhaps you have wrung yourself dry in another’s arms?”

  “Get up, Shaditu—it is time you left this place. Get up, or I will drag you and we will see how you enjoy it.”

  When she saw the time for teasing was over, she rose from the table like a queen from her throne, drawing my cloak around her so that it covered her up to the tips of her ears. Her slaves scrambled to their feet when they saw us.

  I watched her carrying chair disappear down the street, the slaves trotting like dogs in their haste.

  . . . . .

  But for me this was not only a season of sighing women. I did not have to trifle in forbidden passions to feel myself loved, for I was the darling of the world.

  The king, who had settled with himself that I should have the favor of gods and men, sent me to the holy city of Ashur that I might pray in his name at all the ancient shrines and, while I had the opportunity, inspect the garrison there that the priests might see in what esteem I was held by the army.

  In this he was not without cunning, for under the surface the sources of power within the nation were struggling among themselves, divided by the late war in the south and the king’s siege and sack of Babylon. The priests and others who looked to the old culture of Sumer as to a mother believed that a sacrilege had been committed, that the great gods would avenge themselves upon us for the destruction of Marduk’s city. The soldiers and those who, like the merchants and tradesmen, looked to the caravan routes of the west for their prosperity, thought the king had done well to crush Babylon and break forever its alliance with Elam before these two overwhelmed us. These, because the king favored me and because I had seemed so to distinguish myself in that action—thus we blind ourselves to the truth, for how, except in men’s eyes, was Esarhaddon’s glory less than mine?—these wished me exalted as the marsarru. The Babylonian party saw Esarhaddon as their savior—he would turn aside Marduk’s wrath and rebuild his city. Thus I was to go to Ashur to ingratiate myself with the gods and overawe their priests. Such devices, so my father gave me to understand, were the skilled workmanship of kings.

  But since he did not trust perfectly my hand in statecraft, he sent the Lord Sinahiusur with me lest, for want of wisdom, I disgrace myself utterly.

  Except as a soldier marching by beneath her walls, I had never seen the city of Ashur, sacred to the god and seat of our ancient kings. Ashur had been a city when Nineveh and Calah were empty even of their names. Before kings, before cities, before one mud brick stood upon another, the first of our race had come here from the empty wastes of the western deserts, delivered from a life of wandering by the mercy of Great Ashur, who said, “This shall be your place, where the seed of the nation shall grow and scatter across the wide world. I give you my name, that all may know you are servants of the god.” No man
born between rivers and mountains may see that city of the fathers without his heart rising within him.

  Sinahiusur and I rode on horseback, taking with us an escort of fifty men. It was a journey of less than two days if one traveled by water, but our object—at least in part—was to make an impression, and there is no dignity in a reed raft that delivers one up sick and soaking and unsteady on one’s legs. I had no taste for being laughed at, so we went by road, as a soldier should. We arrived at the gates of Ashur after four days.

  If I had had any doubts that the god meant me to be king, they fled like shadows as we approached the city. Somehow, I knew not how, the garrison had received word of our coming. Four thousand men lined the road—and behind them the common people, the shopkeepers and bakers, the tanners of hides and workers of metal, the farmers and the brickmakers, they and their wives and their children, in numbers beyond counting they had come. And they had but one voice and one song. “Ashur is King!” they shouted. “Ashur is King! Ashur is King! Ashur is King!”

  I rode alone at the head of my escort—even the turtanu had fallen back that this triumph might be mine alone—and as my horse made its nervous way over the brick highway the people threw flowers in my path, and coins that the touch of my horse’s hoofs might bless them, as if I were already their chosen lord. “Ashur is King! Ashur is King!” they shouted, and then, first the soldiers and finally everyone, “Tig-LATH! Tig-LATH! Tig-LATH! Tig-LATH!”

  How much may a man thus hear his name on men’s lips before he believes himself to be exalted, chosen of the gods, precious in the sight of heaven? How much, before he becomes a fool in his own heart?

  That night we were feasted by the city governor, an old soldier whose eyes shone like pools of oil as we talked about past campaigns and the glory of war. He was the second son of the old turtanu, who had been a brother of Great Sargon, and called Sinahiusur “cousin,” although he could not be brought to call me anything except “gugallu” a word meaning something between “hero” and “commander.” At first I thought his intention was merely to tease me, a young man in danger of growing too full of himself, but gradually it became plain that he was in earnest and meant only to show respect. It was an embarrassment coming from one of his rank and age and, I felt, almost an insult to him whom I had always regarded as my patron, but the Lord Sinahiusur, who only smiled and told stories and drank wine, gave no sign that he took it as such, seeming to regard my elevation over him as right and natural.