Whores of Babylon, page 3
Babylon, it seemed, had been rebuilt as a used city, a second-hand city, even though its civic structures gleamed.
The dominant odour of these streets was a kind of vegetarian halitosis: armpit of Brussels sprouts, with a soupQon of donkey dung and urine. This might be perfectly comforting and friendly, were you a rabbit. The meaty and fishy elements must be scavenged nightly by stray cats and dogs - by rats too? - or bare feet would tread upon a lawn of maggots.
Had rats been introduced? Had they gravitated mysteriously across the intervening desert sands, scenting the Hamelin of new pickings without fear of poison bait?
The nostrils of Babylon’s passing citizenry did not, by and large, twitch to the aroma of their native paths busily and appreciatively like bunnies’. If the flesh of the streets exhaled a compost-heap body odour, a fair number of passers-by - those who were modestly prosperous enough - deployed a whole battery of counter-smells, an olfactory palette of aromatic gums, fragrant oils, musk, sandalwood, patchouli.
Many men wore only a kilt, striding along stripped to the waist. (A few owned no more than a breech- clout.) Others sported cloaks fastened at the shoulder with a duffel peg; one or two, who walked arrogantly, boasted embroidered robes. Some men were cleanshaven but many wore beards, often stylishly waved. Wavy hair fell loosely over some men’s shoulders, though turbans were also popular, and one saw the occasional fez. Richly robed fellows swung walking sticks jauntily.
Women were in smocks or loose, ankle-length shawls. Their hairstyles varied: plaited and coiled like a turban, or done up in a bun. Some buns were huge, and netted in a snood. Some faces were lavishly painted. Kids raced along the street almost naked, boys and girls alike; but then they still were alike, except beneath the cache-sexe of their abbreviated loincloths.
‘We’ll have to visit a perfume vendor, too,’ said Alex. ‘Before long, eh? Shall we?’
Deborah wrinkled her nose, for a moment just like a rabbit. ‘Greeks don’t wear perfume,’ she said. ‘It’s effete.’
He was sure she was teasing. ‘I bet they do here, Deb. I just bet they do.’
Hitherto all the whitewashed house fagades had been blankly private save for the single vaulted archway which gave access sunkenly into shadows; and then only on the side of the street which faced the cooler north. Yet the walls, which continued on from one building to the next, weren’t featureless. They were built in a saw-tooth style, in and out, in and out, so that the sunshine - where it reached into the street - cast bands of brightness and shadow. The walls on the sunny side were a chiaroscuro of slats like a long louvred window set on its side, as though a sudden jerk on a rope running the length of the houses might have swung all the bands of clay bricks at once, rendering the interiors breezy and visible.
Realistically, of course, in that unlikely event the houses would just have tumbled down - as indeed their highest elevations seemed already to be doing bit by bit, resulting in frayed, crumbling crenellated battlements up top.
One house was scaffolded precariously with poles and rope. Builders were hauling up baskets of clay from a damp greasy mound tipped in the street, partly blocking it. The men were repairing a section of slumped roof and parapet wall. Grown-up kids playing mud pies, for real.
‘I bet they guarantee those repairs at least till the next thunderstorm,’ said Alex, nodding aloft. ‘Albeit a year from now.’
‘Adobe’s a good building material. It’ll outlast steel and glass.’
‘Should they slap it on while it’s wet?’
‘Become a builder. Find out.’
He nudged her. ‘Talking of men wearing perfume,’ he whispered, ‘I hear the local Macedonians have all gone Persian.’
‘So?’
‘You said that was effete. You seemed to disapprove.’
Briefly Deborah looked confused, but then she laughed. ‘Look, Alex, where I come from - came from, I mean - guys could bathe in asses’ milk, should they find a convenient ass. And many did. They could wear bones through their noses and raspberry jam on their cheeks. It only bothers me as a visiting Greek lady, see? If it attracts you, do it. Find yourself.’
Oh, I will, he thought - and felt ashamed, of naivety. Not for the first time it occurred to him how his own home community had been fairly puritanical in its codes of behaviour . . . But wasn’t Babylon, too, in its own way? A woman who murdered her husband for the love of another man wasn’t just locked away. She was impaled alive. Supposedly.
Obviously a law like that wasn’t carried out to the letter.
Or was it?
A crashing and clanging issued from the next doorway. A pall of fumes arose from the house’s hidden courtyard, smutting the blue sky overhead; Alex concluded that this particular building must house a factory or a smithy. (Unless, which was less likely, the place was on fire within and the frenzied occupants were trying to beat out the flames with swords and chains and hammers.) No other sign gave notice of a workshop. No clay tablet trodden with duck’s-foot cuneiform letters was inset by the door. How did the locals know where a place was? Or whose place was whose?
From here on much of the rest of the street was sky- soiled on the north-facing side; and more intermittent Nibelungish din soon reached his ears from within the walls. Half a dozen houses - not all quite in a row - were anonymous foundries or blacksmiths’.
‘This must be the Street of the Smiths, but how does anybody find the right Mr Smith? I don’t see any signs.’
‘I guess,’ said Deborah, ‘if you have business here, you already know.’
‘That isn’t much help to a newcomer.’
‘Why should there be signs on everything? The thing itself is its sign.’ She waggled her hand. ‘Do you need signs on your fingers telling you which is which? If so, you’re in trouble. And so is anyone with you.’
Alex experienced a quick chill of implied threat. He said nonchalantly, ‘There mightn’t be any signs, but have you noticed how everyone’s walking in the same direction? That’s been true of all streets since the bridge. No one going the opposite way.’
‘Isn’t it obvious?’ she asked. ‘With streets so narrow?’ Again Alex felt he had suffered a minor defeat. Too many of these, he feared, might erase Deborah from his life - like a message rendered nonsensical by too many errors.
He was rescued from discomfiture by donkeys. (And Deborah, one moment cool and languid, was panicked the next by these same beasts, as David Copperfield’s Aunt Betsy Trotwood would be goaded into a tizz, a passion, by the mischievous antics of donkey boys and their wicked quadrupeds, two thousand and some years later.)
Laden with swaying bundles, a gang of donkeys - the only team work was that imposed by the confines of the houses - came at a canter, buffeting pedestrians out of the way while urchin muleteers played a hopeless game of tag behind, trying to catch hold of tails and avoid the hammer kicks of hooves which would surely ensue. Further up the street one incompetent lad still sprawled amidst the slippery mound of clay which had created a bottleneck, causing separation of boys from donkeys, and donkeys from their braying senses.
The leading donkey sideswiped Alex with its swag- gery flanks, which were both belly-bountiful in their own right, like those of some huge hairy child suffering from kwashiorkor, and swollen besides by bundles of trader’s booty tarpaulined under a sheep fleece. A small package of dirty cloth tied with cord slipped out from under the fleece, to fall at his feet.
Without really thinking, while confusion mounted and loud Babylonian curses erupted everywhere and while the next donkey blundered heavily past, Alex snatched the package up. Otherwise it would be squashed down into the deep litter of other rags and tatters of bedding and cabbage stalks, wouldn’t it?
Now two other beasts were trying to run abreast, crowding the street from wall to wall. Perhaps this was the fault of the kilted man squeezed between their necks, trying to wrestle them both to a halt; he was being dragged along. The people ahead of this donkey duo took to their heels, encouraging the animals to do likewise.
‘Help!’ cried Deborah, doing nothing to escape. Why not? Maybe this was beneath the dignity of an elegant Greek lady.
Alex seized his chance, and her hand (his other hand gripping the packet) and dragged her in flight as far as the next intersection, which luckily was close at hand. They ducked down a different street just as hooves thudded by - the runaway pair pursued in turn by yet more beasts, then by squealing urchins, finally by a foul-looking burly fellow swearing and lashing a whip at the urchins’ backs.
Enjoying the sensation of leading Deborah, Alex hurried her more than halfway down this street of refuge before she dug her heels in, out of breath or tired of playing that role. She gazed at him wide-eyed. Angry? Exhilarated?
In purest Attic Greek she said, ‘Wow. I could use a drink.’
No one else had dodged up this particular thoroughfare to escape the stampede, though the way had been completely clear. Now, as if some unseen Babylonian traffic controller had waved a flag, the street began filling with folk from ahead.
‘We appear to be facing the wrong way,’ said Alex.
‘I doubt if it damn well matters. Much. Might get our toes stubbed.’
‘Won’t get impaled for jaywalking, you mean?’ He winked.
People crowded by.
‘God, you do construct cages around yourself.’
He slipped briefly into English, and joked, ‘Well, we are looking for bars.’
She looked shocked, insulted, on the point of marching off alone. Perhaps high-born ladies did not walk these streets alone; so she stayed.
‘Sorry, Deb. I’ll ask directions to the nearest beer shop, or wine palace, or whatever.’
The man he chose to ask - a short, dark, Hispanic type - was kilted and bare-chested but wore leather sandals, so obviously wasn’t riff-raff. What else he was was betokened by his tattooed forehead. He wore there the sun-disc mark of Shamash. The sides of the man’s head were shaved, and the curious quiff of hair which remained on his crown made him resemble a sun- browned version of the comic-strip French detective boy Tintin. Alex stepped in his way.
‘Excuse me.’
‘I’m busy.’ The man spoke gruffly, thrust past, and continued on his way. He smelled of sandalwood.
‘You just asked a slave,’ said Deborah.
‘So?’
‘A temple slave.’
‘Obviously he wasn’t my slave.’
‘A slave.’ She repeated the word, to savour it. ‘A real honest-to-goodness slave.’
‘That’s right. The old country has reintroduced slavery. White slavery; not just black.’
She looked defiant. ‘What old country?’
‘Okay, we’ll pretend it doesn’t exist. Not yet.’
It. He’d found himself unable - reluctant - to mention the name America. Another tattooed slave passed. The man spat irritably as they stared at him.
All of a sudden Alex really saw these people in the street, not just witnessing but experiencing them.
Slaves. People owned by other people, as you own a horse or a dog. Though horses did not wear scent. . .
Was everyone in Babylon - tattooed or untattooed - equally a slave? All slaves to a dream, to an almighty pretence, a fabrication? Were the visiting free Greeks all applicants to a curiously fulfilling kind of slavery - no matter whether they were fated to prosper here, or to fall on hard times?
‘I guess,’ mused Alex, ‘if they were just phoney slaves, that would make the whole place phoney.’ What if the slaves ran away? Would soldiers hunt them down in the desert, using dogs to track and spears to chivvy? Could one escape across a state line from Babylonia into America and be free again?
America didn’t yet exist. America was unknown. Any state line was a fault line in time, behind which all Babylonia had slumped into the past, had submerged itself like a whale sounding deep into the abyss of history. How could one even imagine escaping from the belly of such a whale? Because it had dived, the whale would survive - emotionally at least - whilst the surface of America would wither under the scorching rays of the eternal, epoch-mocking sun, Shamash, who judged and condemned all human actions, who sent kingdom after kingdom into the empty hollow darkness which was the afterlife, and which also was posterity.
‘I guess,’ said Alex, ‘some people might give up their freedom gladly - so they can become authentic. Maybe people do this all the time. You’re a little interested in that too, eh?’
She didn’t answer; perhaps because he had not really expected an answer. Instead she began walking on down the rest of the street, which was temporarily clear again. He caught up. They turned the corner and almost tripped over a beggar, a barefoot bundle of rags.
‘Alms,’ croaked the creature. He instantly recognized Greeks, and begged in Greek.
This wasn’t an American beggar, some bagman or hobo on a park bench. This was an Asiatic, ancient, timeless beggar. Not a scrap of spare fat on him. More like a monkey with bad teeth. A herpes sore adorned his lower lip.
Alex addressed the beggar: ‘Greetings! Can you direct us to a taverna?’
‘Good God,’ protested Deborah. But Alex didn’t intend to follow the man’s directions, into some thieves’ kitchen. He was simply curious. He wanted to prove the man a masquerade. He wanted the man to wink.
No, that’s a lie. Alex wanted him not to wink; so that this was all for real.
The beggar stank. He couldn’t afford perfume or any oily alkaline soap. Could such a person ever spare a coin to toss upon a woman’s loins in the temple of Ishtar? Only if someone else gave it to him. Only if someone else expressly paid him to go there and choose a particular woman. Alex toyed briefly with this thought, tormenting himself.
The man grinned evilly, yellow-toothed. He held his palm higher, more urgently. Like a monkey, for peanuts. The motion revealed a knife stuffed inside a band of cloth round his waist. The beggar wore those rags not for warmth or for decency’s sake - Babylon was a hot city - but to hide a weapon. Alex hadn’t bargained for this. (Was Mitch right, after all?)
Deborah dragged on Alex’s arm, hauling him away.
Slaves. Beggars. These people weren’t extras on some back lot. They were the big scene, just as much as King Alexander. They were the action.
And there was no camera.
Unless . . . maybe tiny, hidden lenses were watching everywhere, indistinguishable from a speckle on a wall.
This street was wider than the last, but people still made their way in only one direction. Abruptly a chariot clattered down the thoroughfare, its horse whipped on by a Macedonian officer wearing bronze breastplate and skirt of leather thongs, his helmet hard-crested like the skull of an extinct Corytho- saurus. Pedestrians scattered to the walls to avoid being trampled. No one seemed to mind.
After a while, they did find a bar-restaurant. Wide windows, open on to the street, disgorged smells of honeyed barley-cake, bean soup, goat stew, horsemeat steaks. Sample meals stood on the brick counter within. Behind, the kitchen was a smoky den, though open to the sky.
Patrons squatted on stools at low tables. Most drank pots of beer. A couple of men were sucking wine from jars through long filter-tubes, for all the world like opium smokers puffing on hookahs.
Alex ordered honey cakes with a side dish of dates, and beers. They found vacant stools in a far corner, and settled.
The beer, sweetly sour, also tasted of dates. Too many sweet things? No; right now this was good for their blood sugar.
‘Well, well,’ he said.
He remembered the packet which he’d picked up, and later stuffed into his sleeve. He produced it. ‘What’s that?’
‘It fell off one of those damn donkeys.’
‘And you kept it?’
‘I forgot.’
‘But that makes you a thief!’
‘Hardly! It’s just a pack of rag.’
‘So why did you take it?’
‘I’ll return the damn thing.’
‘How? Who to? That’s a lie. Why didn’t you return it right away?’
‘What is this? My trial? Now who’s constructing cages?’
‘Why didn’t you give it back?’
‘We were avoiding being trampled, remember?’
‘You had time to pick it up. You could have done a citizen a favour.’
‘Mightn’t be worth giving back.’ Circumspectly, Alex untied the twine and unfolded the soiled cloth.
Inside nestled a black plastic box containing a cassette tape. Hastily, Alex covered it.
‘Oh my God, what’s that doing here?’ she whispered. ‘Dunno,’ he whispered. ‘It might be a computer program. Or results.’
‘Why?’
‘Because everything’s being watched and recorded and measured. By the university. We’re all bits of information.’
‘You’d better get rid of it. Chuck it in the next canal.’ ‘It has to be valuable. This is fate, destiny. Don’t look a gift donkey in the mouth.’
‘Valuable to you?’ She shook her head. ‘Uh-uh. That isn’t why we’re here - not to start playing power games with the system.’ She shuddered. ‘You fool. Even knowing about that thing makes me a criminal as well. I don’t want to know about it. I don’t want to be speared. Or enslaved.’
‘Not even enslaved for one day?’
‘That thing’s no use to you.’
‘It’s useful to someone.’
‘Maybe it’s just blank.’
‘And someone wants to copy something? Steal some knowledge, smuggle it out? In which case, returning this to its owner mightn’t have been a bright idea. It might have been a damn dangerous idea.’
‘How, if you hadn’t opened it?’
‘I might have felt the shape inside. That overseer with the whip might have thought I had. We might have been followed and murdered.’
Deborah whistled softly. ‘You’ve really persuaded yourself. You must be mad. Will you please get rid of the thing?’
‘I can’t do that. This is important - but who to? You’re in on it too, you know. You’re involved.’
