The Assyrian

by Nicholas Guild

  On my way home, as I passed through the house of war, I stopped by the barrack of the quradu and found Lushakin, my old ekalli.

  “Have you the stomach for another campaign?”

  He regarded me for a moment, scratching the chin of his beard absentmindedly. Like everyone else, he had heard the rumors.

  “Against whom do we fight?” he asked—it was not such an impertinent question. “If it be not against the king, I am your man, Prince, even into the mouth of death.”

  “No, Lushakin, my old comrade, I do not invite you to civil war. My brother Esarhaddon will not lose his chance at the throne by any action of mine.”

  “Then it is true, Prince, that you will not be marsarru?”

  “The god has chosen elsewhere.”

  Lushakin was not a fool, so he said nothing. But the way he wrinkled his face suggested clearly enough that he might favor another explanation just as well.

  “What would you have me do?”

  “Just this—gather twenty men who are weary of peace. Tell them to make ready to leave tonight, but say nothing of me. The city is uneasy enough—I would slip away and have no man know of it. Tell them we will make war against the tribes of the northern mountains, but nothing else.”

  “It shall be as you say, Prince.”

  I had but one more thing to do, and I would be free of all entanglements—as free as if I were dead.

  I had not slept since my interview with the king, but I cannot really account for my state of mind on that day by reference to the lack of a night’s sleep. Everything had taken on a peculiar air of unreality—this was no longer my life that I was living. It was as if all these things were happening to someone else, and I was merely the helpless witness. Or, perhaps more accurately, it was like one of those nightmares in which one knows, even while it is going on, that one is dreaming, that it is, after all, only a nightmare.

  “Presently I will wake up,” I kept thinking. “I will wake up and find myself in my own bed. I will be six years old again and safe in my mother’s room in the house of women. My life cannot possibly have come to this.”

  The house on the Street of Nergal looked dead, like a long neglected tomb. Had it really been only yesterday that I had seen Esharhamat here, had held her in my arms, full of hope? It seemed impossible. No one had entered this dwelling in centuries. The room that held our bed

  was like the scene of some terrible misfortune, the memory of which hangs over it as a kind of curse so that people shun that spot and allow it to fall into decay.

  “I will be here,” I had told her, “even if I die for it.” “I will never see her again,” I had told Esarhaddon. Both of these seemed to involve an absolute moral claim—I could not but have made both promises, and yet each seemed to exclude the other. I sat down on the edge of the bed, overwhelmed, my head throbbing, my breast feeling as if it might explode. For some reason I had left my javelin at home, and it was just as well. At that moment, in the extremity of my despair, I might have used it to tear open my heart.

  Faintly, as things happening at a great distance, I could hear the noises from the street below my window, from the street beyond that street, from that quarter, from the whole city. The life of Nineveh went on, precisely as if I did not exist—as if it did not matter that Tiglath Ashur must lose the sweetness of his own life. As if that life had never been lived.

  I have no notion how long I sat there like that. Or, at least, notions of time did not seem to enter into it. And then, quite unexpectedly, came the sound of a tiny hand rapping on the door in the wall this house shared with the one behind it. Tap, tap, tap. A pause. Tap, tap, tap.

  “Tiglath, are you there?” came her voice at last.

  I tried to speak. I opened my mouth and then closed it again, unable to utter a sound. I could not even rise from the bed—it was as if all power over my body had left me.

  “Tiglath, answer me. I know you are there. Let me in.”

  Silence. Then the sound of her fist beating on the door, louder this time.

  “Tiglath, let me in. Tiglath!”

  I waited. I could not seem to breathe. “What if she went away?” I kept thinking. I would never hear that voice again. She would be lost to me forever. And yet I could not answer.

  Now, as if in a fury, she pounded against the door—as if she wanted to break it down. I could see how it shook on its leather hinges as she kicked at the base with her sandaled feet.

  “Tiglath—TigLATH! I know you are there—you would not have stayed away, not when you promised. Can you not see that we have both been tricked? Let me in, let me in, let me in, let-me-in, in, in, in, in!”

  The words tumbled together until they were no longer words. She was only sobbing now, and I could tell from the sound that she must have been kneeling in front of the door. She sobbed and sobbed, pounding on the rough wood hard enough to make her hands bleed. Finally, she had discovered her helplessness. Like a captured bird beating its soft wings against the bars of its cage, until the wings break and the heart bursts. . .

  And then she stopped, and the only sound I could hear was that of her weeping, a low wail, like that of an exhausted child. And then nothing—a blank, an emptiness.

  In a long life a man does many things the memory of which afflicts him with remorse. All the acts of spite or cruelty or cowardice collect in the soul like the tiny cracks one sees in the glaze of an old pot. I have committed many wicked and craven acts in my time on this earth, but none which fills me with more shame than my silence while Esharhamat cried out to me to be admitted one last time into my embrace. I was simply afraid, and that fear was more terrible than the fear of pain or even death. I could not have borne my life another instant if I had seen her—not when I knew I would never see her again—and I had not the courage to tell her so. The sound of her weeping beyond the door, that was my last link with our love. I could only listen, helpless, and pray she would not leave me in darkness too soon.

  At last I could hear her rising from her knees. I could hear the soft sound of her hands against the door as she steadied herself against it. Would she leave now? Could I stop her? Had I even courage enough left to try?

  Her voice, when she spoke again, was calm. There was still the rasp of tears in it, but it was calm enough. It was cold, like spring water in winter, filled with ragged ice.

  “Tiglath, I know you can hear me,” she said, seeming to measure each word. “I know you have turned your back on me now, and I do not forgive you. I know you love me, and I would gladly have died to hear you say it one last time, but now I hope your love is a curse to you. I hope it haunts you until you die, as it will haunt me. I hope it drives you mad.”

  “Try to understand,” I thought. “Try, my love, try to see that I am without choice or will. Try, try to understand.” But she would not even wish to understand. Why should she? She was right to hate me for this betrayal.

  “I will marry Esarhaddon,” she went on. “I will give him the sons a king must have, and I will try to find pleasure in his bed—not love, for all love is dead within me, but pleasure if I can. Remember, all your life, each night, that I will be in Esarhaddon’s bed in the house of succession. It will be his arms around me, not yours—not yours. It will be. . .”

  That was the end, except for the sound of her footsteps as she ran away. When I knew she was gone, then—only then—could I bury my head in my hands and weep.

  . . . . .

  It was already dark when I began to make my way home. It had taken a long time before the paralysis of will—if I may be so kind to myself as to use such an expression to cover my weakness—before the paralysis of will departed, to be replaced, slowly, measure by measure, by a terrible, blind, unfocused anger. She was gone, and forever. What I hated was life, the thought of the hours and days and years that stretched before me, and all without her. I wanted to kill, to maim, to share this pain out to others that it might not break me to pieces. What people might have thought of me as I lurched along the s
treet I cannot say. It was dark and I was wrapped in a simple soldier’s cloak—no one could have known who I was. But I felt, even to myself, as if I had gone half mad. Once, twice, I remember, someone would glance at me and move quickly away.

  “Are you lonely, Mighty Lord? Do you want to tell me your troubles and take some comfort?”

  Who was it who had spoken? I did not know; the words seemed to come from nowhere. I turned my head and saw a little harlot standing beside me, hardly more than a child. She smiled uncertainly, as if torn between her fear and her need. The sight of her filled me with rage—her smiling, mocking face, I wanted to smash it. I hated her, this common prostitute. I had never seen her before, and yet I have never hated anyone so much.

  “An easy thing to kill her,” I thought. “The work of an instant. Why not?” I actually did put my hands about her throat. I shook her, lifting her so that her bare feet actually left the ground. My grip tightened. . .

  And then, just as suddenly, I lost interest, letting her drop. I simply could not be bothered.

  She was frightened but unhurt. I took a handful of silver coins from a pocket in my cloak—more money, I would guess, than she had ever seen in her life—and scattered them into her lap. She scooped them up and, scrambling to her feet, ran like a rabbit, no doubt thinking herself unutterably lucky. She really was lucky. I had come within a breath of murdering her.

  “The great gods preserve me from madness,” I whispered. “I hope it drives you mad” she had said. Esharhamat had said those words to me, had pronounced that curse. Perhaps, already. . .

  I might almost have welcomed it.

  Like Esarhaddon, I owned a palace in the city; but I did not live in it. The king had settled that I should have quarters within the complex of buildings that was the royal residence—he had wished me near him, as if somehow, by remaining inside the radiant circle of his melammu, that aura of divine light which is said to hedge those whom Ashur has raised to mastery, he might transfer it to me.

  But if that had been his plan, it had not succeeded. I could not but wonder, as I let myself in by the little side entrance that opened from a garden, I could not but wonder who would occupy these rooms tomorrow, when I would be on the dusty road to the north, perhaps never to return.

  There was no one about to take my cloak, so I left it on a bench, sitting down there myself because I could not summon the resolve to do more.

  In less than two hours I would put on my battle armor, collect my sword and my javelin, and walk the few steps to the house of war. There a horse would be waiting, and Lushakin and his twenty men, and we would depart from the city like shadows. But between then and now the time stretched empty.

  I felt thirsty—I would drink a cup of wine. I went into the great hall, being reluctant to shout for a slave to come to me, but there as well I found I was alone.

  Now I did shout, but there was no answer. My servants, all of them it seemed, were gone.

  In his own house a prince of the blood is never suffered to be alone. From the time I had ceased to be a boy, living with Esarhaddon in a single room in the house of war, I was always attended by the slaves of the royal household. They were always around, so omnipresent that I had learned to notice them no more than I did the furniture or the color of the walls. But now they had fled my presence. What could it mean?

  One idea came into my mind. Someone—perhaps the king, perhaps the Lord Sinahiusur, perhaps someone else—someone had decided that the moment had come for my death. If my house was empty, it was merely that there should be no witnesses when the assassins cut me down like summer wheat.

  So be it. The idea of dying held no terrors for me—I would welcome it. But I would not sell my life for nothing. I would not stand quietly and let them cut my throat; there would be no dignity in dying thus, and I would at least die with dignity. They would have to pay for the pleasure of killing me.

  On the wall, behind the chair where I sat to take my meals, were crossed a pair of javelins, my boast to the world that I was a soldier. I took one of them down, testing the copper point against my thumb. I would go looking for those who looked for me, and we would see how many would die along with Tiglath Ashur. The idea filled me with a cruel pleasure.

  I took off my sandals that my feet would make no sound upon the tile floor. I held the javelin in both hands and went hunting for my quarry. Where would they be waiting? Would they expect me to know? I tried to see the problem from their side. They had not killed me in the garden as I came home, and the reason could only be that they did not wish to take the risk of some chance witness happening by. They might guard the exits, but they would make their attempt somewhere well inside this wing of the palace—they would wish me to die silently.

  I would go to my bedroom. I would find them there, if not before.

  When he knows his enemies are within reach, a man’s every sense grows as keen as the edge of an iron knife. I could hear every whisper of sound on that hot night, when the air was too heavy to bring even a breath of wind in through an open window. I could hear the dust tumbling through empty space. I could hear the faint hiss of an oil lamp burning I knew not where. I could hear the very darkness. If there had been a murderer waiting with his sword drawn, I would have heard the beating of his heart, but there was nothing. I made my cautious way in silence, until I reached the short hallway that led to my bedroom.

  There was a glow of flickering yellow light from beneath the door, which had been left open to perhaps the breadth of my thumb. Someone was within—how I knew I could not have said, but the fact was as plain as if whoever it was had shouted out his name.

  I balanced my hand against the door, first the tips of the fingers only and then the palm, feeling the weight of its reluctance on its leather hinges. I pushed it open.

  A lamp burned on the floor beside where I was used to sleep, casting strange shadows over the ceiling as if the room were filled with the fluttering black wings of evil spirits. I could see almost the whole room—no one was lurking in a corner, waiting to kill me. There was no one there.

  And then the blanket on my sleeping mat stirred. An arm came out, pushing the blanket down, and a woman sat up and smiled at me. For a moment, an instant, a single pulse of time, I felt a wild surge of hope, and then I saw that the woman was Shaditu.

  “I sent your servants away,” she said, letting the blanket fall away to expose her naked breasts. “They are remarkably loyal to their master, so I had to mix in a few threats with the gold I poured into their waiting hands. I wanted us to be alone.”

  For those few seconds at least, I think I was quite mad. A wild cry of rage broke from my lips, and I balanced the javelin in my hand and threw with every shred of my strength. The weapon buried its point in the wall, not the width of three fingers from Shaditu’s head. Had I meant to miss her? I know not. I do not think so.

  At first her eyes grew wide with fear, but that did not last long. Her breast was heaving and she trembled, but not because she was afraid.

  “Oh, Tiglath,” she murmured, her voice thick with excitement, “how you know to make a woman want you!”

  And then, with a kind of reckless violence, she threw back her head and began to laugh. The silvery sound of her laughter filled the room, driving away the shadows the way a dog’s bark will scatter a flock of roosting birds—there was no space for anything except Shaditu’s ringing laughter. It filled my mind until I wanted to clutch the sides of my head to keep it from bursting.

  “Is this how you courted the Lady Esharhamat?” she asked, still hardly able to speak for laughing. “Is this how you brought her to love you, Tiglath, by displaying how easily you could pierce her flesh with your lance? Come—you may poke away at me with your other one. You may drive it in as deep as you like.”

  To show me what she meant she pulled the blanket away from her legs, opening them as wide as she could.

  “Come, Tiglath—dear, strong, loving brother. Is that an easy enough target for you? Hah, hah, hah!�
�� Her breasts and belly shook with merriment.

  And then, quite suddenly, she stopped. She smiled at me, a cunning, knowing smile, as if she could see straight into my heart.

  “You will never have her again, Tiglath,” she said. “There will be other women—many women, if I am any judge—but never the Lady Esharhamat, who will be set to breeding kings, hunched under Esarhaddon’s weight like any tavern slut. Let him have her, Tiglath Ashur, hero, mighty warrior. Come and let me teach you how little you have really lost.”

  There is a line beyond which men may not go and remain men. It is a vague thing, this demarcation that sets the limit to rage, lust, sorrow, joy, the frenzy of fear. It is the limit of what we may endure of these things before they overwhelm us, and no one crosses that line of his own will. I crossed it as I listened to my sister Shaditu mocking me. I hated her. I thought that was all I felt, that bitter hatred as she gloated over the corpse of my dead hopes—I thought that was all, but I was wrong.

  If she said another word . . .

  “Did you think it could end any other way? Did you think I would let that cold little bitch puppy have you?”

  Even as her eyes followed me, even as my shadow fell across her naked body did she speak to me thus in her throaty, wanton voice, the very sound of which seemed to stab at my breast like a dagger with a broken point.

  “You were never meant for one such as her, Tiglath Ashur, my dear, stupid brother. What can she offer you that I. . .”

  As I stood over her she reached up to touch me. I took her arm just above the wrist and pulled her toward me—I could see the expectation in her eyes and it filled me with what I took to be the purest hatred but which was far from pure. I raised my hand and struck her, hard, straight across the face so that her head snapped back with a violence that seemed enough to have broken her neck. When she turned her eyes to me again they were shining with pain and a thin trickle of blood was running from her mouth. Still, she smiled at me. I could not stand to see her smile. I tightened my hand into a fist and struck her again, making her cry out.