Whores of Babylon, page 7
‘A man. Never mind who.’
‘And that man needs to ask permission from your father?’
‘Naturally.’
‘So who is Daddy? What’s his status? Is he Inspector of Coracles - or President of the Perfume Guild? Costermonger to the Court of Alexander? Official Procurer of Pillows?’
Thessany sniggered. ‘Let’s return to the intrigue at hand. If we wish to discover the secret of this little scroll’ (which she still held on to), ‘we’ll need to keep in touch, right? Where are you staying?’
‘An inn called Between the Skin Shops.’ He held out his hand for the cassette, but what she handed him instead was her empty goblet.
‘If this little box fell out of your jockstrap in the street you could get into fearful trouble. Or supposing some official spy searched your room; or somebody might waylay you, pretending to be a robber. Possession of this scroll puts you in a vulnerable position, my Alex. Whereas I have plenty of places where I can hide things.’
‘Why should a spy . . . ? Oh, I see. You’re blackmailing me.’
‘Do pour me some more wine, will you? You’re uncouth. First you bed me; now you let me parch with thirst.’
He refilled her goblet, then his own, of which he drank deep.
‘I ought to toss the wretched thing in a canal.’
‘Oh no! That wouldn’t do at all. You could be destroying Babylonian government property.’
‘So you’ll take charge of it, eh?’
Alex felt very reluctant to yield control of the tape. To his annoyance he realized that it had become a kind of idiot talisman for him. Other people wore mystic amulets of all sorts round their necks; he wore a cassette tape stuffed in his waistband. In a way the tape amounted to the same thing as an amulet. He couldn’t read any information magnetically encoded on it; a computer tape couldn’t be decoded for another two thousand years and more. That made it a magical object, which tied him mystically to that distant future twentieth century which he had abandoned either permanently or temporarily. The tape had become an irrational key to his personal time machine. He feared to surrender it - even while yearning to become a true Babylonian, which was another sort of surrender.
He squared up to Thessany: ‘If you keep it, that puts you in a delicate position, not me! Surely you don’t want me to have a hold over you?’
So far she had avoided telling him her father’s name or occupation or address . . .
‘Tush, does the worm turn? I think I shall entrust the object to my friend Moriel, for safekeeping and research.’
‘Who’s Moriel?’
‘Why, the man I was speaking about a while ago.’ The pederast! Or paedophile, whatever he was. ‘Him? He’s reliable? He nearly collected a spear in his guts just recently. I want nothing to do with a type like that.’
‘A type like that can be very trustworthy and useful. He doesn’t wish certain irregularities in his conduct highlighted. Yes, he’s ideal.’
‘He seems the very acme of self-advertisement!’
‘Oh, within limits. He’s also rather good at selfpreservation. Never oversteps the bounds. Not so far! He’ll make an excellent go-between. He has all the right instincts, finely honed. He’s a hairdresser, which gives him entree to all kinds of circles. You’ll find his salon in the inner city, junction of Esagila Street and Qasr Lane.’ She drained her wine. ‘Let’s hasten, and await him in the courtyard. We’ll find some quiet alley, to pass the package ever so discreetly.’
‘I’d rather know how to get in touch with you directly.’
‘No doubt. The essence of a good intrigue, however, is an impeccable go-between. Someone who can procure items of interest - rumour, scandal, secret news. Someone with naughty connections.’
‘Maybe Moriel has already left.’
‘I rather doubt that.’
When they intercepted Moriel, the hairdresser’s behaviour no longer seemed so outrageous. His eyes looked less drugged. No doubt he had successfully discharged certain pent-up excesses.
They adjourned to a nearby alleyway littered with fresh turnip peelings. Thessany negotiated. The cassette, wrapped in its cloth, was exchanged. Thessany packed Alex off in one direction and herself went the opposite way, leaving Moriel lingering on the spot, brooding. Alex was thus prevented from doubling back to trail Thessany homeward, if homeward was where she was heading. He returned to the inn, wondering how soon he would see Deborah.
In the yard Gupta stood chatting with the landlord, a rotund, bald, squinty man called Kamberchanian, obviously Armenian. Kamberchanian also owned the neighbouring striptease parlour, and abominated the fulling and tanning business on the other side of his inn. It was his ambition to buy those premises and transform them dramatically into a costly furrier’s, thus eradicating the smells of alkali, ash, alum, and dung which tended to invade both of his own premises when the wind was in the wrong direction. Such odd smells made some guests doubt the quality of cuisine at the inn, and had even put occasional customers off his girls. These discriminating patrons of the skin shop - the sort whom Kamberchanian forever hoped to attract - conceived strange fancies that there was some symbolic connection between the unveiling which the girls performed and the removal of flesh, fat, and hair from animal skins next door but one. A spectre of mortality haunted Kamberchanian’s entertainments and their intimate aftermaths.
All this had emerged when mine host joined his guests for supper the previous evening in the hostelry.
A fanciful ambition, Kamberchanian’s! Here was the wrong part of town for a costly furrier’s.
Gupta made a beeline for Alex: ‘Ah, I was just gleaning some business tips. Did you enjoy yourself?’
Alex only grunted.
‘Do tell Uncle Gupta!’
‘That’s my own affair.’
‘So are the charming Deborah’s affairs her own. The moment she came back she packed up and left.’
‘You aren’t serious!’
‘Never more so. Old Kamber was most distressed. A real loss of clientele. The lady had class. He planned to offer her lucrative employment. The dear chap does nurse fantasies of grandeur. No concept of reality - even though his hands are plunged in reality daily! Come to think of it, maybe that’s why his girls stick with him loyally. He inspires affection. Confidence! That’s why I was quizzing him about opportunities, even though I take whatever he says with a pinch of salt. Prosperity, like a full purse, is here today and gone tomorrow. Like beauty. Like innocence.’
‘Where did she go to, Gupta?’
‘I haven’t the faintest idea.’
Alex felt chilled. ‘You didn’t make any effort to keep in touch?’
‘That, Alex, is your little game; not mine.’
‘I think you’re lying.’
‘Maybe I am; maybe I’m not. Now you see it. . . now it is all illusion.’
‘I think you know very well where she went.’
‘In general terms I do. She went somewhere else inside Babylon. No doubt we shall all bump into one another, tomorrow or in ten months’ time.’
That man who bedded Deborah at the temple! Deborah and he had made an arrangement - who else could it be? - and she had gone to him.
Alex tried to call to mind an exact image of the man:
Mature, muscular, not stout. Tall, with a wavy black beard and a beehive turban. Expensively robed. The wood of his walking stick, which he had flourished with easy aplomb, had been inlaid with ivory in a spiral pattern ... or was Alex confusing that with another fine walking stick he had spotted en route to the temple before that lying hostile tradesman misdirected him? The two memories melded inconveniently in his mind.
How could he trace Deborah’s man?
Oh, that was easy. He couldn’t himself. But Thessany would have noticed the man, particularly one so distinguished-looking. Most likely she already knew who he was. And how about Moriel? Maybe Moriel trimmed and waved the man’s beard professionally?
Did he really wish to ask a favour of Moriel? One which would no doubt be faithfully reported back to Thessany? Did he want to give Thessany an extra hold over him? To present her with a hostage to fortune in the shape of Deborah?
But then he saw a way. Deborah knew about the scroll; the tape. Wasn’t Alex forever dropping the damn thing? She might mention the enigma of the tape to the man with the beehive turban, who must be a fellow of consequence. Alex had to be sure who that man was, and whether Deborah had gone to him.
No need to mention that he harboured any special feelings for Deborah! She was a mere acquaintance, who had spotted the cassette by accident. But what a coup it would be to spin a web of intrigue around absconded Deborah, just as Thessany had spun one around him. Alex perceived that he ought to pick up tips from Thessany - as Gupta had from Kamberchanian - so as to triumph in Babylon, particularly in an affair of the heart. Which this was indubitably; a consuming affair. Always providing that he hid his true feelings from Thessany!
It might also be a smart idea to change his lodgings. Why should Thessany know where Alex lived, and not vice versa? If she could keep in touch with him through Moriel, why, so could he with her.
Alas! Deborah might tire of her Babylonian beau, or he of her. She might return to Between The Skin Shops. Alex had to stay put.
‘What a lengthy meditation,’ Gupta said. ‘Now you’ve lost something else, namely Deborah.’ ‘Something else? What else did I ever lose?’
‘You feared you’d lost something yesterday morning, eh? In the case of your lady friend, though, I can see you have a clue. You have let your mind search for her in the maze of Babylon. Yes, you’ve spied a thread leading through a labyrinth, a sticky silken thread such as cunning little spiders weave.’
This accurate sally inflamed Alex’s suspicions. Thessany had hinted at the existence of official spies; and Gupta was dangling bait too assiduously. For a comparative newcomer the Indian was surprisingly adroit. He might have arrived at Kamberchanian’s inn only a dozen days before, but did that prove him a total tenderfoot in the city?
Had Nabu actually come to Babylon in the same party as Gupta? It was worth asking the Nubian.
Another thought occurred: Deborah had seemed to enjoy the way Gupta carried on. Could she have said anything to him about Alex’s tape? (To the extent that the tape was Alex’s any longer!)
‘Yet then, sir, that cunning little spider wraps the fly up in a package and drags it to her lair!’
No confiding in Gupta! Ten times no.
Alex said, in an offhand way, ‘She might have left a note in my room.’ This was a proposition which Gupta could hardly have the gall to contradict - even if he had been into Alex’s room during his absence, even if he had noted how a brick had been prised out of the wall.
‘I’ll pop upstairs and see. You carry on milking Kamberchanian’s brains.’
First Alex checked his room in case there was a note, which there wasn’t; then he went along to Nabu’s room.
Nabu was inside, stripped to his loincloth, performing press-ups.
‘Okay if I come in?’
‘Sure.’ The Nubian jumped up and began towelling himself. ‘I reckon I might become a wrestler rather than a scribe.’
Alex shut the door. ‘Deborah has gone.’
‘Sorry to hear it. She was one nice lady. I guess you and Gupta managed to piss her off.’
Alex shrugged. ‘I’m sorry you thought I was brushing you off yesterday. I wasn’t, honestly. Can I ask you something?’
‘Can’t stop you. So you just go ahead.’
‘You and Gupta both checked in here on the same day.’
‘Right.’
‘Did you travel to Babylon together?’
‘We did not.’
‘You’re sure?’
‘’Course I’m fucking sure. What of it?’
‘I think Gupta might have been here for a long time already.’
‘What, in this inn?’
‘Of course not! In the city.’
‘Doing what?’
‘A bit of spying.’
Nabu went to the window and looked down into the yard. ‘He’s chatting up Mr Kamber right now. Is that what you mean by spying?’
‘He said he’s asking him for business tips.’
‘So why’s he asking Mr Kamber for business tips if he ain’t a greenhorn? Man, you’re paranoid.’
Alex smiled thinly. ‘All survivalists are paranoid. This city’s founded on paranoia.’
‘What a load of bullshit.’
‘No it isn’t. Babylon’s all about survival. Surviving in Babylon isn’t a big naive romp.’
‘Like me, huh? Big and naive?’
‘What I mean is, you can get corrupted, trapped, destroyed. There’ll be government spies.’
‘Sent by whose government?’
‘Babylon’s. And from elsewhere. You know, like Greece and India and Carthage.’ Alex grinned lopsidedly. ‘Surviving could be a tough business.’
‘Depends on your attitude, boy. Way you’re headed right now, you’ll end up in some alley with your skull cracked open. Take some friendly advice. Relax.’
‘Relax? That’s rich, from someone who just worked himself into a lather.’
‘And who did I hurt in the process? Not a living soul.’
Alex said incoherently, ‘Babylon’s my skull. That’s what I’ll crack. This city’s my skull.’
‘Play skull-games by all means,’ retorted Nabu, ‘but leave me out of them.’
Coincidentally, Nabu checked out of the inn later that very day and Alex never saw him again, except perhaps once - in the distance, at Babylon Fair in the fields beyond the Adad Gate, when he noticed a black man oiled and nearly nude save for a cache-sexe and studded leather thongs on ankles and wrists. The Negro was limbering and primping and flexing muscles of black volcanic rock, like some darker, mobile, more plastic version of the diorite column on Palace Street on which were inscribed, in ten thousand cuneiform signs, the laws of Hammurabi, moral sanctions for a city which honoured their elegant phrasing more than it did their substance. (Yet in Babylon punishments could be savage and sudden, as Alex was subsequently to discover. Sometimes, too, justice consisted not in the enforcement but in the remission of harsh penalties.)
Only this one possible future sighting of the Nubian, outside a boxing or a wrestling booth. Alex had not ventured down the temporary avenue of hucksters, haruspices, prestidigitators, saltimbanques, and well- patronized mountebanks to investigate more closely.
In a nutshell - like some burly Hop-o’-my-Thumb floating away to be captured by fairies or by an enchanted frog family residing in the marshes, who appeared in human form only once a year, at the fair - Nabu vanished from his life that afternoon.
3
In which Alex is careless with his shekels,
and becomes an omen
Days hastened by. Alex’s unshaven jowls became more decently bearded. Wandering as the whim took him, he explored the whole of the Etemenanki district, then the new city over the water. Back in his home area he visited the Greek Theatre one afternoon and took in a performance of Euripides’ Andromeda, once lost, now found again.
The braggings of Andromeda’s mother about her daughter’s loveliness had rubbed salt into sea-god Poseidon’s soul, so he had unleashed a monster on the land. To buy Poseidon off, the maiden was chained to a cliff as a meal for the sea-dragon.
While the masked players down on the proscenium enacted this drama, Alex pondered its relevance to himself.
Was Deborah Andromeda? Was the man with the beehive turban Poseidon? Or was that man the monster?
Was Alex Perseus? Brave Perseus who rescued Andromeda (leaving his famous winged horse offstage)?
The mass of spectators on the circuits of stone seats were rowdily appreciative, as though they were at a boxing match. They ate and drank. They applauded and catcalled. Even when the chorus were dancing their most stately, graceful routines, these interludes were punctuated by whistles from the audience - perhaps endorsing or deploring fine points of choreography? But they also hushed at tragic moments when certain solos were sung, to the accompaniment of a single flute; and one of Andromeda’s solos burned itself into Alex’s heart. (Later he bought a copy of the speech from a drama scribe.)
Andromeda (in chains):
Like the real Helen who never sailed to Troy
So that men and ships followed a ghost
And Priam’s son loved a ghost in bed,
A hallucination sent by gods to craze men,
Or by one goddess to save that selfsame Helen
From Paris’s lust and from the blood debt
Of all the foolish heroes, and the ruin
Of great Troy for ever . . .
I am sacrificed for a phantom too,
The phantom of my father’s pride,
Which irked an even more potent phantom,
Poseidon, figment of a sick imagination,
My sire’s. But my death will be real
If the sea-dragon that ravages these shores
Is real; if it is not a guise for pirates
Who plunder, and can be bought off
With a chained virgin’s blood
- Of pierced maidenhead!
Who could rescue me from this cruel rock
Unless he be a pirate too, of another stripe?
For what are heroes but pirates by another name
Who wage war on fate (or fatal circumstance)
And pluck from time the mantle of distinction,
Stealing from the gods the flame of immortality,
Robbing even the grave of its boon, oblivion?
Do not heroes seize the high ground of history
There to erect their image, their phallus
Of power to procreate not sons and daughters
But a name, the name of hero
Before which women must weep and pray?
And yet my soul yearns for a hero
- Just as, enchained, made vulnerable,
I yearn also for a pirate to pluck me,
For then at least this will be over
When I will be a virgin prize no more.
