The Assyrian

by Nicholas Guild

  “Young master, welcome, many times welcome to the house of your servant Kephalos. And you, Prince Esarhaddon, welcome as my master’s royal brother and in your own right as well. I am honored beyond words to think. . .”

  “Obviously not beyond words, Kephalos. Come, up on your feet again, honored physician, or you will soil your robes.”

  This consideration seemed to carry some weight and we were finally able to persuade him to rise and finish his effusive greeting inside.

  His face was shining with oil and his prosperity was everywhere evident as he took us into the private rooms of his house. There were carpets on the floors and the chests that seemed to stand against every wall had been left open to show forth linens of many colors and richly embroidered wools. Even before we sat down at his table the smell of spiced lamb had reached us from the kitchen. My slave, without doubt, had grown rich.

  “Half of all this is yours, young master, pursuant to our agreement.” Kephalos waved his hand so that the lantern light flashed from his ringed fingers. “And I have invested sums with the Aramaean traders—wisely, of course, for I am careful of my lord’s wealth—and we can expect good returns next year, when the caravans return from the Northern Sea. Yes, come here, my sweet boy.”

  It was the child who had brought me Kephalos’ invitation that morning. He sat down beside his master, close enough to touch his side, and Kephalos put his arm over the boy’s shoulder as if their intimacy were of long standing. Esarhaddon and I exchanged a glance, but we said nothing and Kephalos went on talking as before, apparently quite comfortable in the usages of his own house. He spoke of the metal trade, and in a way that would have convinced anyone he had been born to commerce. He drank a great deal of wine as he talked, and the more he drank the more openly he caressed the slave child, who accepted it all without any self-consciousness, like a baby in its mother’s lap. Matters had proceeded almost to the point of indecency by the time a fat little woman with the broad brown face of a Phrygian and gold bangles on her ankles and wrists brought in the first course of our dinner and set it down before us. As she left, she swept the child up in her arms with the practiced motion of a boatman loading cargo. Kephalos smiled after her with indulgent lechery.

  “Mother and son,” He said, after she had gone back to her kitchen. “Arrived in the land two years ago. The boy is young, and Philinna, though sweet as a fig, is a simple creature and speaks hardly a word of Akkadian. She understands Greek well enough, but who else does in this part of the world? I picked them both up for I am embarrassed to tell you how little. The boy’s name is Ernos. Try these, my young lords—honeyed locusts, which I would not be ashamed to serve to the king your father himself. Philinna has a loving touch with such delicacies. . .”

  After dinner, Kephalos took us out to his garden and we sat under a vine arbor and drank wine mixed with water at three parts to two, as strong as any I had ever tasted. It was not very long until I felt as stunned as a man who has just fallen from his horse, and Esarhaddon was drunk almost to incoherence.

  “We cannot allow the prince to go back to your barrack in such a condition,” Kephalos said finally, shaking his head as he looked at the way Esarhaddon sagged against the arbor. “I have something to bring him back to life.”

  He stepped back inside his house and in a moment returned with a small flask which he emptied into the wine that remained in Esarhaddon’s cup.

  “In an hour he will be fresh as dew.”

  While we waited for Kephalos’ potion to do its magic, he and I listened to the crickets and enjoyed the relief of cool night breezes. It was as pleasant an evening as I have ever known.

  Eventually Esarhaddon got up, staggered to a corner of the garden, and retched loudly. When he came back he was smiling and talkative and asked for more wine.

  The night was black before Kephalos allowed us to say our farewells, and as a parting gesture he gave me a pouch bulging with silver coins.

  “You are reaching the age, master, when you will find uses for ready money,” he said, holding my hands in his own and cupping them around the pouch. “And the night is still fresh and it is a long way yet back to the royal barrack.”

  Then, once more, at the threshold of his grand house, he went down on his knees before me and clasped my ankles.

  “I am your servant,” he said. “And though I was born a free man I could not want a better master. Always remember, in this life I and my home and all that I have is yours, my prince.”

  He, too, had drunk more than was good for him, but I knew that he meant what he said and there were tears shining in his eyes as he rose from the ground. A rascal and worse was this slave of mine, but for some reason he had decided to be my friend as well and I could not help but love him. He waved after us as Esarhaddon and I walked away down the street to the Gate of Adad.

  In the light from the doorway to a tailor’s shop—Nineveh never sleeps, so the tailor was still at his needle and glanced up to watch us, perhaps thinking we meant him some mischief—I divided the contents of the money pouch with Esarhaddon. We always divided everything, bread, beer, work, so why not this? It was more silver than either of us had seen before in our lives.

  “I wonder which of them he is bedding with,” he said after we had resumed our journey—more slowly now, and watchfully, because Esarhaddon had settled with himself that we were to make proper use of our sudden good fortune. “The mother or the son, or possibly both, do you think? Perhaps both together?”

  He was grinning because he knew he had shocked me, although there was no reason why I should have been shocked. We were both aware, in the rather abstract way of boys just on the threshold of their manhood, that women were useful for other things besides preparing honeyed locusts, and no one who has lived any time in an army encampment, even if it be the royal barrack, can escape the knowledge that there are those who prefer a boy to any woman, even if she be sweet as a fig. Still, I was shocked. The meaning of Kephalos’ behavior at dinner, which I had found more puzzling than anything else, was suddenly clear to me.

  Then, all at once, as if I had just seen the joke, I broke out into loud laughter.

  “Yes,” I said, laughing still—we were both laughing now. “Yes, knowing Kephalos, I would say both together”

  With our arms about each other’s shoulders and money in our belts, Esarhaddon and I went off in search of adventure and pleasure and all else that silver coins could buy in the streets of Nineveh.

  In the end what we found was a wineshop, not a hundred paces from the palace walls. I have since been in a thousand such places, for they are to be found everywhere in the world, but of course the first time for everything is what one remembers. It was only a few tiny rooms, and its mud walls had never felt the stroke of a brush. There were tables and benches about, all of rough dark wood, and everywhere men in plain wool tunics and with their heads bare sat drinking with sullen concentration. The air smelled sour and was itself almost thick enough to drink. Huddled in one corner were three men with musical instruments, and in front of them danced what at first sight I fancied the most enchanting beauty I had ever beheld, for her breasts were as round and brown as apples, and her belly, as she swayed to the music, seemed possessed of its own independent life. My mother excepted, it was the first time I had ever seen a woman naked.

  There were other women there, carrying wine to the tables and sometimes leaning over the men they served, and they—it suddenly struck me—were naked too. One of them turned as Esarhaddon allowed the curtain over the doorway to drop back into place, and she smiled at us with a smile that seemed to promise all the delights of this earth.

  “By the sixty great gods, Tiglath my brother, I think we have found what we were seeking.”

  Yes, indeed we had.

  Everyone stared at us as we approached an empty table and sat down. It did not seem a place much frequented by the cadets of the royal barrack, but that did not, it appeared, count to our disadvantage. The girl who had smiled at
us came by with a jug of wine and a pair of pottery cups, and as she set them down we could smell the perfume of her bare body. I do not know how Esarhaddon felt, but I was mortally frightened. Much as I longed to, sooner than touch her brown flanks I would have put my hand into the armorer’s furnace. She, however, was not so reluctant.

  “Lords,” she murmured, letting the fingers of one hand trail down the side of Esarhaddon’s face, “you do us honor by your presence.” She poured the wine, and as she did one of her breasts, which were by no means undersized, brushed against the sleeve of my tunic. For a moment I thought I would choke with sheer excess of pleasure. “Anything you wish you may command. Food, wine, a woman to help you drink it—a woman to help you forget your cares. All you need do is speak.”

  We could not have spoken. Our tongues were glued to our palates and we dared not risk so much as a syllable. It was then that I noticed Esarhaddon’s face had turned as red as fire.

  “Later perhaps?” She looked from one to the other, but we were both equally helpless. “I will come again—or if you wish anything, you need but raise the smallest of your fingers.”

  She took my little finger, hooking it with her own, and brought it up to her mouth and pretended to bite it with her white teeth. My life has been wasted, I thought. Until this moment I have learned nothing, done nothing of the slightest importance. Under my loincloth, my member was as rigid as a tent peg.

  She went away, and I lifted the wine cup to my lips and the sour taste of it brought me back to earth with a jolt.

  The woman who had danced began again, and all the time, as her body undulated to the rhythm of the flute and the drum’s beat, she never seemed to take her eyes from us. She would tilt her shoulders and her breasts would swing out to one side, and her hips twitched back and forth and the heavy mat of hair between her legs strained up and back.

  “By the sixty great gods,” Esarhaddon breathed, his voice hardly more than a whisper. “For just half a quarter of an hour alone with her, what I wouldn’t give. What I wouldn’t give.”

  It seemed, however, that many were not so fastidious as my brother, for as soon as the woman had finished her dance, a man in the costume of an Amorite approached her, gave her a drink of wine from the goblet he carried, and began to engage her in a discussion the subject of which was more than obvious. At last he reached into a pocket and counted out a few copper coins for her. She rested her back against the unpainted wall and placed one foot upon a stool she might have kept there for the purpose, and the Amorite lifted up the front of his tunic and pressed himself against her.

  I have seen such things many times, for the people who live beside the two great rivers feel no shame about satisfying themselves . In all the great cities of the East one can walk down the streets in broad day and behold men rutting on women. They do this as casually as a Greek or an Egyptian might empty his bladder against a temple wall. Perhaps it is only because I am half a foreigner that I have always turned my eyes away with a feeling of unease, as if I had chanced to witness a profane thing. It is a prejudice of mine, something I have never overcome.

  But I must confess that I watched that Amorite and his dancer with something like awe. I could not have looked away if I had wanted to, and I did not want to. All I could see of her from behind the screen of his green and white tunic was one leg, the foot of which rested on her stool, but it took no great labor of the imagination to understand what was taking place. His tunic, the only curtain he allowed his modesty, trembled and shook like a fishing boat’s sail in a squall. When it was over—for the whole act occupied no more than a minute or two—and he shuddered and was at last quiet, he sagged away from her as if somehow she had squeezed him dry. The woman, when she stepped out from in front of him, was of course unchanged. It might never have happened. She went back to her musicians and sat down and sipped a cup of water. Nothing had touched her.

  “I have a room upstairs—perhaps you would prefer that, Lord?”

  The serving girl returned. She was leaning over us, closer to Esarhaddon than to myself, and it was difficult to know which of us she addressed.

  “Yes, I would. . .” The words died in Esarhaddon’s throat. I do not think I could have spoken at all.

  She turned her eyes to me, but I could only look down and shake my head. All desire, if such it was, had deserted me. She put her arm across Esarhaddon’s shoulder, dismissing me with a tight smile.

  “Then come, Lord, and share my sleeping mat for a time. You will see that we know the difference between a greasy caravan merchant and a cadet of the royal barrack. Come now. Lord. . .”

  Esarhaddon glanced at me, and I could see he was almost as frightened as I had been, but he rose and went away with her. I was left behind to consider my failure in solitude.

  She made short work of him, for not a quarter of an hour later he was down again and we were back out on the street. We had had enough of reveling and it was time to turn our steps back to the palace and our quiet beds.

  “Well—did you?”

  I felt myself entitled to as much curiosity as that.

  “I’m not sure—I think so.” Esarhaddon shook his head in perplexity. “She lay down and told me I could do as I liked and wanted to know if I preferred her on her back or her belly. At last she grabbed me—you know—and it was over in a second. I couldn’t tell whether I was actually inside her or not.”

  “How did it feel?”

  “It is difficult to put into words. At any rate, for two pieces of silver, I think I made a bad bargain.”

  He threw back his head and laughed and, arm in arm, we went home.

  As soon as we were within the barrack compound we could sense the change—lights were on everywhere, and the only sound was the hum of voices. We had not been in our room long enough to remove our sandals when the doorway darkened and we heard Tabshar Sin’s voice.

  “Where have you been?” he asked. He did not sound pleased.

  “We went to the Ionian’s house for dinner. Tiglath asked permission—don’t you recall?”

  Tabshar Sin stared at us in the gray darkness, almost as if he couldn’t understand what the words meant.

  “Be ready for arms inspection in five minutes,” he answered. There will be no sleep for anyone tonight. We are on alert until the palace sends word to the contrary.”

  “Why? What has happened?” I do not know which of us spoke.

  “You mean you have not heard?”

  Tabshar Sin turned back toward us from the threshold, and his astonishment seemed genuine.

  “Nothing—what is it?”

  “The rider came an hour ago. The Elamites have crossed the Tigris with a great army. Babylon has fallen, it would seem without much resistance, and the marsarru Ashurnadinshum was captured. Whether he is alive or dead. . .”

  “Then it is war,” I said. It was a conclusion at once obvious and stunningly important. The Elamites had ridden in and taken the king’s heir. Ashurnadinshum might even be dead already, and I would not envy him the manner of his dying.

  The Land of Ashur was to fight, and not for a day or a month or even a year. There would be many campaigns, for it was no small thing to snatch the king’s son from the throne of Babylon and the Elamites were not old women. If it went on long enough, even Esarhaddon and I might see battle. With a shock I realized that this night was probably the last moment of my boyhood.

  “Yes, Prince—it is war.”

  Chapter 4

  Nergalushezib, for a few months at least, had felt the throne of Babylon under his haunches. Now his kingdom was an iron cage hanging by a chain from the Great Gate of Nineveh. Naked and filthy, the crown he had usurped from Ashurnadinshum fixed to his head with copper nails, on his hands and knees he roamed back and forth, back and forth, while the citizens pelted him with mud, excrement and curses. I saw him on the third day of his exposure, and already then hunger, the merciless sun, the anguish of his own heart, and perhaps the copper nails driven through the skull and i
nto his brain had deprived him of reason. He howled like an animal, praying for death through his cracked and bloody lips. The gods must truly have scorned him, for he lived to the sixth day.

  Thus did the Lord Sennacherib, the Servant of Ashur, avenge himself for the butchering of his eldest son.

  That day and all the days while Nergalushezib lived were like a time of festival in the city. Fortune tellers and prostitutes, sellers of beer, fruit, honey cakes, and roasted meat all followed their trades under his eyes. All the delights of this life, all just beyond his reach, all were there for him to witness as, a finger’s width at a time, his life ebbed away through the mire coated bars of his iron cage. As he raved and howled and begged for the pity of men and gods, the people of Nineveh laughed at him with many voices. Most of them were foreigners—this wasn’t their quarrel. They were merely there to watch, and the war was good for trade.

  And the war, it seemed, would never end but would go on and on, for Nergalushezib had not been taken in some decisive battle but sold by a traitor, to whom Sennacherib gave as his reward the man’s measured weight in silver. The Elamites and their Chaldean allies could always find a new wax doll to reign for them in Babylon, and it was at Susa, in the dungeons of the Elamite king Hallutush-Inshushinak, that Ashurnadinshum, strangled with a bowstring, had met his death. Then that king in his turn had perished, slain by his own people after Sennacherib’s victory at Nippur. But now his son reigned, and Kudur-Nahhunte, as all men knew, was as poisonous as a coiled serpent.

  It had been almost two years since the night the royal barrack had stood at alert. The beginnings of a beard grew on my chin, and to my intense embarrassment the hairs were straight rather than curly, declaring once again my mixed blood. I was almost a man and my military training, greatly accelerated since the war’s beginning, was nearly over. All these things weighed on my mind as I stood in the crowd that had collected outside the city walls to witness the usurper’s agony.