Collected Short Fiction, page 1171
“In Africa?”
“Not in Africa, no.” Now and then Gilgamesh had seen maps. He put little faith in them, but other men seemed to live by them; and on the maps, Africa was the name they gave that great hump-shouldered land far to the south of his own where the sky was like fire. “Some called my land Mesopotamia.”
“I don’t know that place.”
“Very few do, in these times. But once it was the center of the world.”
“No doubt it was,” said Calandola, sounding unimpressed. He released Gilgamesh’s hand, casually letting go, not in any admission of defeat but merely, it would seem, because whatever test he had imposed had brought him whatever answer he sought. “These Two Rivers of yours: which two were those?”
“The nearer was the Euphrates, as some call it. The other was the Tigris. We said the Buranunu, and the Idigna.”
Calandola nodded remotely. Plainly those great names were nothing but noises to him. He seemed lost in private calculations.
“Bring wine,” he called suddenly, gesturing to someone in the rear of the cavern.
Gilgamesh saw that a considerable entourage lurked in the darkness behind Calandola: half a dozen black men nearly as huge as their master and perhaps eleven women of the same sort, all of them clad in little more than beads and shells, and their dark skins glossy with oil. One came forward now with a wooden bowl full of some thick sweet-smelling wine. Calandola dipped his fingertips into it, and shook wine out over Gilgamesh’s head as if anointing him, and then slowly rubbed the wine deep into his scalp, while murmuring in an unknown language. Gilgamesh submitted to the rite unprotestingly. Then the black giant offered the bowl to Gilgamesh. For an instant the Sumerian wondered if he was supposed to anoint Calandola in return; but no, apparently all he was meant to do was take a drink. He sipped, and found it heavy and almost nauseatingly sweet. Calandola watched him carefully. After a moment’s hesitation Gilgamesh reached for the bowl again and took a second draught, draining deep.
Calandola threw back his head and laughed. His mouth was enormous, a great world-gulping hole set about with huge white teeth of formidable size. Four of the teeth were gone, two above and two below, so symmetrical in their absence that it seemed likely to Gilgamesh they had been removed deliberately, perhaps for beauty’s sake, or in some witch-rite. And when Calandola’s laughter set the men and women of his tribe laughing with him Gilgamesh saw that they too were missing two upper and two lower teeth, in the same pattern.
“You drink like a king,” Calandola said. “Do you have a name?”
“I am Gilgamesh the Sumerian, who was king of Uruk.”
“Ah. I am Calandola the Jaqqa, who was king of the world.” He clapped his hands. “Oil for King Gilgamesh!” he roared.
Two of the black women came forward, struggling with a huge wooden tub that held some sort of dark grease. Dipping his immense hands in it, Calandola scooped up a great gobbet of the stuff and clapped it to Gilgamesh’s bare chest; and then, with a surprisingly tender touch, he rubbed it in, chest and back and shoulders and the column of the neck, until the Sumerian gleamed as brightly as any of the Jaqqa folk. The same sharp and sour odor came from the oil that emanated from Calandola himself. Gilgamesh felt it permeating his skin, sinking in deep.
When he was done, Calandola held Gilgamesh a moment in a tight embrace. Gilgamesh sensed the bull-like force of the man, the mountainous mass of him.
Then Calandola let go of him and stepped back. “When you return, King Gilgamesh, perhaps we will seek the answers to these questions of yours.”
Calandola flashed his eyes and grinned his gap-toothed grin; and then he turned in clear dismissal and stalked away into the shadows, and his entourage closed in behind him so that Gilgamesh no longer had sight of him.
For a long moment Gilgamesh stood staring, feeling the weight of the sweet wine within his gut and the slippery slickness of the grease with which Calandola had besmeared him. Then he looked about to see what had become of his companions. The Hairy Man leaned against the wall, arms folded across his deep shaggy chest, thin lips clamped in a look of glowering disapproval. As for Herod, he was kneeling in a sweaty heap, eyes fixed in the distance, arms hanging slackly. He looked dazed. It was something of the same look that he had had when he was staring out the window of Gilgamesh’s room at the furious outpouring of flame from the erupting Vesuvius.
Gilgamesh poked him with his toe.
“Come,” he said. “Get up. I think we have to go now.”
Numbly Herod nodded. His eyes were wide. “He gave you the wine!” he murmured. “He gave you the oil! Extraordinary! Astonishing! On the first visit, the wine, the oil!”
“Is that so unusual?” Gilgamesh asked.
Herod was shivering with excitement. “The power of the man! The sheer awesomeness of him! I can’t believe he gave you the wine the first time. And the oil. It was as though he looked at you and sized you up in a single glance, and said to himself, Yes, this man and I, we, are of the same spirit. My God, how I envy you! To be taken right into Calandola’s arms—” He swung around toward Gilgamesh and the Sumerian saw the look of sickening devotion on Herod’s face.
In some strange way Gilgamesh felt undeniably impressed by Calandola himself. But not like this. Not like this.
From the shadowy corner the Hairy Man snorted contemptuously. “So much for half a million years of evolution. You lie down with savages and before long you turn into one yourself.”
“And what are you?” Herod flared, whirling around in sudden fury. “You animal! You ape! You half-human thing! You wrap yourself in a toga and you think you’re a Roman. But I know what you really are!”
“Come,” Gilgamesh said.
“Before Adam ever was,” Herod said fiercely to the Hairy Man, “you ran naked in the forests, and lived in holes in the ground, and knew no gods nor language nor civilization, and ate worms and grubs and leaves. Talk about savages! We know what your kind was. Savage is too polite a word. Let me tell you something: You people are just here on a technicality. Hell is for humans. If we have a few of you grunting ape-men here, too, well, that’s just somebody twisting the rules a little. Maybe certain starry-eyed New Dead types have fooled themselves into thinking that you’re our ancestors, but we both know that that can’t be possible. And when you start putting on airs and pretending that you actually are human beings—”
“Enough of this, Herod,” Gilgamesh said, more sternly. “Up. Out. Lead me back to the upper city.” To the Hairy Man he said apologetically, “He’s just overwrought. The air down here, I suppose—”
“He wants to sell his soul,” said the Hairy Man. “The trouble is, he doesn’t know where to find it. But I take no offense. I’m as accustomed to being called an ape as you are to explaining where your Land used to be. If he needs to think of himself as the crown of Creation, what’s that to me? He knows nothing of the life we lived when the gods had not so much as imagined any of you.” The Hairy Man laughed and scratched his furry chest. “Ask him, later, what that grease was that the black wizard rubbed into your skin. Not now. Ask him later.”
7.
“—human fat?” Gilgamesh said, incredulous.
Herod moved his head in a quick affirmative. They were in Sulla’s palace again, by the courtyard fountain.
“But where does he get it?”
“There are plenty of bodies available. Life isn’t simply cheap in Hell, you know. It’s free for the taking, and who’s to say no?”
Gilgamesh knew that well enough. No gods governed this world and law and order, or the lack of it, was a matter of purely local whim. There were marauding armies everywhere, and freelance bandits, and swaggering bullies, and mere casual random killers; and death was a daily commonplace. But death here was only an irritating annoyance, a bothersome but brief interruption of the endless ongoingness of your stay in Hell. There were those who had died three times the same week and came bounding back from it each time, apparently unchanged. Somewhere behind the scenes they reconstructed your body from whatever bits and pieces could be found, and stuffed your soul back into it and turned you loose to live again. Not that he had experienced it himself: so far as he could recall he had died only once in all his thousands of years, and that at the expected time, when his span on Earth had come to its appointed end. But keeping himself from being killed in Hell was only a matter of pride for him. Enkidu had said that of him once, hurling the accusation at him in anger the one time they had quarreled: “Too proud to die—too proud to accept the decree of the gods—” And Gilgamesh had had to admit to himself that it was true. Because he had been who he had been, he took care to guard himself constantly against attack here, and when he was attacked he saw to it that his strength or his cunning always would prevail. He would have no man able to boast that he had slain the mighty Gilgamesh. Yet if by some mischance he did someday die again, he was aware that it would not be for long.
Still and all, to be slaughtering people or hauling in the corpses of those slain by others, and oiling one’s skin with the grease of them—!
“Does it disgust you?” Herod asked.
Gilgamesh shook his head. “A little. I don’t know. It seems displeasing. Who is this Calandola? He said he was a king in Africa. But that means little to me.”
“And to me. The Africa we Romans knew was a land of light-skinned folk, just across the water from Rome. He’s from deeper down, the dark part of the continent. And of a much later time, they say. He lived by the river Zaire, in the land called Kongo, in the days when the Spaniards and the English and the Portuguese were building empires across the seas.”
“Just the day before yesterday, that is to say.”
“Yes. His people were known as Jaqqas. Nomads, they were. Warriors who would destroy everything that lay in their path, for the sheer love of destruction. There was something almost religious about it, their fondness for smashing things. Purifying the earth is what they called it.”
“And when his army was finished purifying, he’d shine himself up with the fat of the conquered, is that it? A cheerful custom which he takes pleasure in continuing to practice in Hell?”
“Oh, he does worse things than that.”
Gilgamesh raised an eyebrow. “Does he?”
“Far worse.”
“Such as?”
“Don’t ask me to tell you. You’ll have to discover the rest for yourself. I’m pledged to reveal nothing. If I break my oath he’ll know right away. And cast me out.”
“Out of what?”
Herod seemed surprised. “His presence! His fellowship! His—his light!” Light was an odd term to use, Gilgamesh thought, for one who reigned in darkness and who seemed himself to be the very embodiment of darkness. He stared at Herod in distaste. “You worship him, don’t you?”
“That’s a bit of an overstatement, I’d say.”
“As you wish.”
“I’d say that I’m fascinated by him, is all.”
“Merely in the way of scholarship?”
“It’s more than scholarly,” Herod said. “I won’t deny that I’m in awe of him. Fascinated to the point of awe, yes. Yes. But so are you. Admit it, Gilgamesh! I was watching you. He’s practically as big as you are, and maybe just as strong as you are, and there’s something about him, something mysterious and powerful, that draws you in, just as he’s drawn in everyone else who ever came near him. Admit it! Admit it, Gilgamesh!” Herod’s high-pitched voice had taken on that buzzing intensity again, and for a moment Gilgamesh had to struggle to keep from swatting him. There were, Gilgamesh had heard, certain poor souls in Hell who had been given the forms of strange insects when they were reborn here, instead of bodies of their own. Well, Herod’s body certainly seemed human enough, but it was as if there was something of the insect about him as well. A wasp, a fly, a gnat. He was certainly infuriating.
And this fascination that Herod claimed to feel for Calandola. This awe. There was something sick about it, weak, submissive, ugly. Clearly the black man emanated some magical force that Herod had allowed completely to seize possession of him. Gilgamesh understood now why he had taken so quick a dislike to Herod. The man was looking for some power greater than himself to which he could surrender everything: his identity, his soul, his entire self. If not Sulla, then the volcano. If not the volcano, then Calandola. Gilgamesh had never been able to understand the value of surrender of any sort; and certainly he had never held much regard for those who went about searching for it.
“He may be able to see through the mists,” Gilgamesh said, “and tell me where Enkidu has gone. That’s where my interest in your Lord Calandola begins and ends.”
“Not true! Not true! But you won’t own up to it.”
“You tax my patience, Herod.”
“You don’t find him—attractive?”
“Attractive? Not in the least. ’Repellent’ is the word I’d use.”
“I wish I could believe that.”
“Do you tell me that I’m lying?” asked Gilgamesh ominously.
“I tell you that you may be hiding things even from yourself,” said Herod. “Oh, perhaps not! Perhaps not!” he added quickly, as Gilgamesh glared.
“Oiled in the fat of the dead! I never heard of such a thing in any land, not even the most barbarous. It is a monstrous thing to do, Herod.”
“All right, so he’s a monster. But won’t you at least agree that he’s a glorious monster? Larger than life, a monster of monsters. Oh, how my grandfather Herod would have loved him! So big, so dark. Those diabolical eyes. The way his skin is all carved and covered with bumps and welts. And those four teeth knocked out to make him look prettier—and the way he shines in the darkness, that gleam that he has—”
That gleam, Gilgamesh thought somberly. Yes.
“A monster, no question of that. I’m not so sure about glorious. The Hairy Man speaks the truth: your Calandola’s a savage.”
“Of course he is,” Herod said at once. “That’s what’s so wonderful about him! A marvelous overwhelming hideous ghastly frightful savage! But he’s a seer, too. You mustn’t overlook the reality of his powers. You’ll find out. He can open the darkness for you. He’ll do the rite of the Knowing with you. And whatever questions you have will be answered.”
“Ah, and will they be?”
“Have no doubt of that, Gilgamesh. None at all. All that is secret will be laid bare.”
Gilgamesh pondered that. Opening the darkness? The rite of the Knowing? A half-naked savage with a piece of copper thrust through his nose, laying bare all that is secret? Well, maybe. Maybe. The only thing that was certain in Hell was the absolute strangeness of it. What had been invisible on Earth, or nearly so, was made manifest here. On Earth one sometimes caught glimpses of demons out of the corner of one’s eye; here they sat down and played at dice with you, or sprawled by the fireside in a tavern, singing curious songs. Witchcraft was everywhere. Gilgamesh had no reason to doubt this Calandola’s powers of divination. And if covering one’s skin with loathsome grease was the price of finding the path to Enkidu, well, that was not too high a price to pay. No price would be too high for that.
At the far side of the courtyard Sulla and his Hairy Man appeared. The dictator beckoned.
“Gilgamesh! Where have you been?”
The Sumerian answered only with a shrug.
“Will you be at the party tonight?” Sulla called.
“Party?”
“After the games! Women, Gilgamesh! Wine! Rivers of wine! Don’t forget!”
“Yes,” Gilgamesh said, without enthusiasm. “Of course.” Rivers of wine? Wine meant nothing to him now. The image of the Jaqqa Imbe Calandola rose up in his mind, soaring like a colossus above him, and then he had a sudden startling view of himself swimming desperately against a terrible current, in a river not of wine but of blood.
8.
“Take,” Calandola said. “Drink.”
For a second time Gilgamesh, led by a tense and apprehensive Herod Agrippa, had gone down into the tunnels below Pompeii. For a second time they had penetrated the torchlit chamber that was the lair of Imbe Calandola and his Jaqqa minions. And for a second time the black wizard-king had offered Gilgamesh the sweet wine and had rubbed his body with the oil of dread origin.
Now some further, deeper rite was about to commence. The room was more crowded than it had been the other time. There seemed to be even more Jaqqas than before, a great shadowy crew of them, thirty or forty or even more, stalking like long-legged goblins through the dim smoky recesses of the cavern, performing tasks that not even Gilgamesh’s keen vision could clearly perceive. But also there were eight or ten or a dozen other figures in white Pompeiian garb, men and women, kneeling in the center of the room like acolytes, like initiates. Some of them were masked with strips of black cloth and others had their faces bared. Like Herod they seemed uneasy: their pale faces were glistening with perspiration and their eyes flickered constantly from side to side. Often during the rite of the wine and the oil they stared at Gilgamesh with great intensity, and sometimes with a strange expression that might have been loathing and fear, or perhaps pity and sorrow: he could not tell. It might even have been envy. Envy? For what? He felt like one who was about to be sacrificed to an unknown god.
From the depths of the room came music. The Jaqqas were playing fifes that made an ear-piercing shrieking sound, and beating on drums fashioned from the scaly hides of demon-beasts, and also tapping their fingers against thin boards mounted on wooden stakes. Four of the women came dancing across the room in wild cavorting prancing leaps, their oiled breasts hobbling, their gap-toothed mouths wide open in frozen grimaces. Calandola himself, shining and immense, sat astride a small three-legged stool intricately carved with the faces of demons, and rocked back and forth, bellowing in pleasure.
Then he rose and signaled, and two of the Pompeiian acolytes sprang to their feet, a man and a woman. Out of the darkness of the cavern’s strange-angled comers the man brought a crook-necked flask and the woman fetched a tasseled red pillow on which there rested a cup of strange design, wide and shallow.
