Twilight in Babylon

by Frank, Suzanne

  She bolted.

  “Leave the skirt!” he shouted.

  She didn’t even turn around, she just dropped the basket containing the skirt on the floor and ran down the steps and into the street. And smack into a wiry, hairy man. They went down in a tangle of legs and arms and long, black hair. Hers and his. “Watch where you’re going,” he said. “You’re so big, you could hurt a person.”

  “Sorry,” she muttered.

  “You’re the color of dirt; are you ill?” he asked.

  Chloe didn’t look at him. “I think I’m going to be sick,” she whispered, tears starting to sting her eyes. “Oh gods, not again.”

  “Well, don’t do it in the street,” he said. “Come with me.”

  Hot bile filled her mouth, and her body ran cold, then sweaty. Her hands were in fists, and his hand was around her wrist, dragging her behind him. “Excuse me, pardon me, excuse me,” he said, as they ran back up the steps into the offices.

  “What?” she heard the shout. “You can’t—oh, by Nin—”

  Chloe’s face was thrust into the dirt around a palm tree. She coughed up like a kitten, stomach acid and nerves, a little bit of beer from breakfast. There was nothing except her dress to wipe her face on, to clean her runny nose. It was revolting, but—what choices were there?

  “Do you feel better?”

  She looked up at the hairy man, and then beyond him.

  The scribe, beer-bellied and bald, glared at her over the hairy man’s shoulder. Chloe looked around and realized she was at the lugal’s again, but in the interior office. She looked up at the shelves. The basket she’d just dropped was sitting there, with the freshly washed skirt inside.

  “Scribe,” the hairy man called, while staring at Chloe. “Clean out this palm plant and repot it, would you? It doesn’t smell very good in here. Do you need anything?” he asked Chloe.

  The scribe glared at her. She shook her head. The hairy man looked over his shoulder at the scribe. “Get to it.” The hairy man held out his hand and picked Chloe up off the ground. The scribe stalked into the lugal’s office to get the palm.

  “Yes. Sir,” he ground out through gritted teeth.

  * * *

  “A new star?” the stargazer said. “What new star?”

  His friend, lover, and confidant waved at the air. “Just a new one, you know I don’t understand those sorts of things.”

  “You should, you’re the Tablet Father.”

  “Exactly why we have experts, like you, to come in and teach those sections,” he said, patting the stargazer’s arm. He returned both hands and most of his attention to the mutton before him.

  “Where did you hear this?”

  The Tablet Father couldn’t chew and talk at the same time, so he stopped chewing and tucked the piece of mutton in the side of his mouth. “The old babbler at the temple said some boy came in and claimed he was a stargazer and he’d seen a new star.” The Tablet Father switched the mutton to the other side of his mouth. “Of course, no one else had, which caused quite a stir when they stared at the sky.”

  “They saw a new star?”

  “Apparently.”

  “Where in the sky?”

  The Tablet Father swallowed the piece of mutton, mostly whole. Gods hope he wouldn’t choke on it. “Somewhere, lower. I don’t know. It’s almost twilight, then you can look. If it’s there, I’m sure you’ll see it.”

  “But I didn’t see it first.”

  “Of course you did. Who is the ensi going to believe? Asa, the official stargazer of Ur, or some plowboy from the back alley?” Of course, the Tablet Father added to himself, if the ensi actually knew the stargazer, then she’d undoubtedly believe the boy. But his lover didn’t need to know. They’d been together a long time; they each had secrets best left buried. “Your wife did an excellent job on this mutton,” he said, swallowing another huge chunk. “That female human has the best eye for cuts of meat. Especially sheep.”

  “Don’t talk to me about sheep,” the stargazer said.

  “What’s wrong?” If his lover would start talking, the Tablet Father could actually eat in peace.

  “She’s in lust.”

  “Umm.”

  “No sooner than I get her one thing she wants, she sees another. It’s exhausting, I tell you. It’s probably why I… missed the star, the new one.”

  “Only by a night or two,” the Tablet Father said loyally. Between bites.

  “That female human can nag. A regular goat, that’s what she is. Nagging and nipping. Always what she wants, what she must have. Why can’t we have what the people on Crooked Way have.” The stargazer groaned. “She just doesn’t realize that the incomes, combined, of a stargazer and a shepherdess who weaves part-time, don’t add up to as much as merchants and traders make.”

  The Tablet Father would endure a lot of babbling to eat this well. His wife couldn’t boil water without setting the house afire. Their relationship was best as it was; she lived on the marshes with the children, and he stayed with whichever protector’s son was in his Tablet House, currently Kalam’s younger brother. His wife cared nothing for the city, and he was allergic to reeds. The stargazer wasn’t eating his meat—he’d pushed his plate away—so the Tablet Father picked the joint off his friend’s plate and started to nibble on it.

  “They are the fattest, she says, that she’s ever seen. With tails like she’s never seen.”

  “Sheep?”

  “You think I’m talking about goats?”

  The Father closed an ear while he scooped more of the succulent roasted meat onto his bread and into his mouth. This was the reason he didn’t have a beard—it was too messy when one enjoyed the table like he did. He swallowed a belch and ripped some more meat off the bone. “Are these a new kind of sheep?”

  “What do you mean, a new kind? Sheep are sheep. They’re like humans. There is no new kind of human. Some of them just have fat rumps and some skinny. It’s not new, it’s merely variety.”

  “So this is a new variety of sheep, the fat-tailed ones your wife likes? Why doesn’t she buy one? I know some people who—”

  “Not at market, at the grazing fields. The common ones on the north side,” the stargazer explained.

  The Tablet Father rarely stepped out of the city, and certainly not to the north. He grunted. “Those sheep belong to someone else, then.”

  “Yes.”

  “Well,” he said, licking his fingers. “I can—” He burped. Ahh, he could almost eat more, but with Asa looking at him disapprovingly, maybe not. “I can make some inquiries for you. Find out who owns them, what they want for them. That sort of thing.”

  The stargazer’s smile showed his broken side tooth. The Tablet Father loved that smile, loved that tooth. “She’s out,” the stargazer said. “Some felting at the factory, they needed all hands.”

  The Tablet Father wiped his greasy hands on the edge of his cloak—he’d be out of it in a minute, anyway. “What about the sky?”

  “Like you said, it will be there in a few hours. Stars will wait.”

  He took his hand.

  * * *

  “And how was your day, today?” his mother asked Nimrod.

  “Fine,” Nimrod said.

  “Even though there was nothing to kill?” his littlest brother, Roo, smarted off.

  “I met a girl,” Nimrod said.

  “A girl?” his father repeated. “Where did you meet a girl? I didn’t realize we had many huntresses in the city.”

  “I wasn’t hunting. There’s nothing to hunt here. I miss the mountains.” His mother’s glance was pleading—not this topic, not during dinner, not again—but Nimrod ignored it. “I’m sorry I ever got married, or came to the city,” he said.

  Nirg, Nimrod’s wife, said nothing, just served him more food. He would apologize to her later. Lea, his second wife, glared at him. She would throw things at him later.

  “You met another female?” Nimrod’s father said. “Not hunting?”

&
nbsp; “Should you be looking at other females?” Nimrod’s mother asked. “I mean, you have two lovely brides now, maybe… another onager, or dog?”

  “We don’t want him to transgress with onagers,” his father said. “It wouldn’t reflect well on the family or my position.” His father was the lugal.

  Nimrod stabbed his food with a dagger.

  “Where’d you meet the female?” his little brother, the brat, asked.

  “Father’s offices.”

  “When were you there?” his father asked. “I must have already gone to the temple.”

  “Why was a female in your father’s office?” his mother asked.

  Nimrod knew they had an understanding. Priestesses, well, it was part of the duty of his father Shem, to spend time and congress with them. But other women, city women, his mother wouldn’t have it. It shamed her at council gatherings and meetings of the karums.

  “She was returning a skirt, from Justice Ningal,” Nimrod said.

  “The female who vomited on me?” his father asked, pushing away his plate.

  “We’re eating,” Lea reminded Nimrod.

  “Yum!” the brat said.

  Nirg dug into her mush. Not much could come between Nirg and food. A hardy mountain female who didn’t waste energy on conversation or fancy clothes. Very different from the woman Nimrod had met today. “Your scribe showed his usual charm.”

  “His task is not to be nice to people but to keep people from taking my daylight. It’s valuable!”

  “It’s voted on by the public,” Nimrod said. “Anyway, this female was running out of the building, and we crashed into each other.”

  “Is she ugly, since she’s a female?” the brat said.

  Nimrod shrugged. “She’s Khamite. Dark, like all the city women.” His gaze touched on the fair heads of Nirg and Lea. They were like flax and wheat. “Spoke like she was from somewhere north.”

  “She’s a refugee, a sheepherder. Ningal, out of the goodness of his aged heart, apparently has taken her in, Roo,” his father explained.

  Nimrod saw the look his mother gave his father. Everyone knew Ningal spent time with priestesses only. There were going to be a lot of unhappy widows, not to mention how his children were going to feel, if the leading justice of Ur took up with a young Khamite girl. A refugee, which was worse.

  It was so much simpler in the mountains, Nimrod thought. People meant what they said. If they didn’t like you, they killed you. If you didn’t like them, you killed them. Animals were honest. Mountain people were honest. Nimrod got tired sometimes, just trying to figure out which smiles were real and which were not.

  It was time to meet Kidu, the incoming en and Nimrod’s friend, for a friendly wrestling match and cool beers. He was straightforward, and a good companion. An honest mountain man.

  The girl was like that, today. Honest. No, she couldn’t be from the city.

  “She was trying to see you,” he told his father.

  “Why, so she could throw up on something else?”

  The brat snickered. Nimrod elbowed him. The little urchin squealed and fell off his chair. The remonstrations were immediate and expected, and Nimrod helped the brat up and served him some more food. Lea’s gaze was laughing now; she hated Roo. Nirg ate on undisturbed.

  “Thank the gods I left a few minutes early today,” his father said. “I’ll do it tomorrow, too, just in case.”

  The brat snorted a pea up his nose, then made a loud hacking noise and spat it out his mouth onto his dish. Their father turned away. Nimrod looked at his food. He missed the mountain people… their honesty, simplicity, the sense it made when you lived in the mountains. You fought to stay alive, you treasured the moments of dawn and twilight, you valued a woman who could feed a fire, and you protected the man who fought at your back.

  Everyone had the same goals, to live a good life, to not irritate the gods, to feed the children, the animals, themselves.

  But none of them knew how to read or write; for this reason, Nimrod had returned to the city. He was a hunter, and he loved the mountains, but he needed the energy of the city.

  He just wished he could start Ur over. Build it up from a slate of blank clay.

  Get it right.

  * * *

  “See! It’s just there!” Ezzi said, pointing at the sky. The men, the venerable priests of the Temple of Sin, stared up at the blackness. “It’s new. I think tonight is its fourth night.”

  They stared long and hard. The exorcist among them held up his clay copy of a sheep’s liver and pointed to various spots. They muttered and stared and consulted each other. He could have a cloak like that, Ezzi thought. Then everyone would know he was a stargazer. Dark, like the night, sprinkled with the signs of stars and moon, falling to the ground with the rustle of gold fringe.

  “Next week is the New Year,” one of them said to Ezzi. “Watch this star every night until then. We’ll cast omens and see what secrets the gods hold for us.”

  “Yes, sirs,” he said, bowing his head.

  “Keep a good watch on it, boy. We’ll talk to the lugal’s stargazer when he gets here.”

  “Yes, sirs.”

  “Let us know if there are any changes in its position, or the time it appears. Anything at all.”

  Ezzi could barely control his excitement.

  “Are you a stargazer professionally?” one of the cloaked men asked.

  “Ye-yes, sir.”

  “Employed by anyone?”

  He cleared his throat. “Not yet, I just completed the Tablet House. I’m entertaining some offers from various businessmen around town.”

  “I see.” The man looked back at the sky, and no one else said anything.

  Ezzi realized he must have been dismissed. He’d hoped they would offer to pay him or something; he really wanted that tub, but they didn’t pay him. Not this time, he reminded himself. Next time they would, for sure. He’d discovered a new star! The lugal himself would be thrilled!

  He crossed the roof and walked down the stairs. Priests with spears watched the entranceways to each of the floors; they were usually the biggest men and certainly the most handsome. Priests were above all men in Ur, the most physically blessed by the gods.

  Would the same could be said for priestesses. Ezzi had seen some servants of the goddess who looked like they guarded the seven gates of Kur instead of danced in the court of the gods. He continued his path around the temple. The night gardeners were out, clearing the small irrigation ditches that lined the walkways and fed the innumerable palm trees that swayed and swooshed in the evening air. Light from the oil lamps illuminated the blue or red or green or yellow on the walls of the staged temple. Ezzi walked down the stairs.

  Maybe the lugal himself would offer Ezzi employment? Perhaps he would be so impressed and so pleased he would come to Ezzi’s house himself. No, Ezzi scoffed. The lugal would never visit, but he might send a scribe, or a gentleman. That wouldn’t be unheard of. Ezzi’s steps quickened. My mother won’t be home tonight; the week before New Year’s is one of the busiest at the tavern. This would be a good time for the scribe to come.

  He’d get home and whip those slaves into order to clean the house, get rid of the donkey odor.

  When Ezzi heard footsteps behind him, he held his breath. It had happened so quickly! The runner’s pace and breath seemed to get faster the closer he got. Ezzi hurried his steps; he wanted to be at home by the time the message arrived. The runner gained on him and Ezzi accelerated. His Old Boy cloak was too formal actually to run in; and it wouldn’t be seemly for the lugal’s newest stargazer to race.

  The runner passed him, and Ezzi saw the lapis and pearl shell standard around his neck. It was from the lugal! Running to his street. The man would just have to wait until Ezzi got home. Aware of his importance, Ezzi slowed his pace and lengthened his steps, like a justice. He lived on the street with Justice Ningal; he’d seen the grave and noteworthy way he walked.

  Ezzi turned onto Crooked Way, and the
runner ran past him. Going the other direction. “Wait!” Ezzi cried. “I’m not home yet!”

  The runner paid him no heed. His hands were empty now.

  Ezzi peered down the street and saw one of the doors closing.

  Oh. Not for him.

  * * *

  “For me?”

  “It does say, ‘The Female human Chloe.’ ”

  “Good thing there aren’t any male human Chloes,” she said, stepping up to Kalam. “May I have it?”

  “Certainly.”

  The clay envelope was wrapped around a clay tablet, similar to the one with the record of her sheep. Scribbles and scratches, scribal marks, were all over it. She couldn’t read a thing. Not even the part with her name in it. She handed it back to him. “Do you mind?”

  He looked at it, then looked at her. Somehow the story of her puking in the potted palm had gotten back to him. Ningal was out tonight, but Kalam was in and had been as irritable as an expectant water buffalo ever since twilight.

  Nice analogy, the voice inside her head said. Snidely.

  He sighed. “Certainly.” With a quick whack, he broke the outer clay envelope and pulled out the letter. He read it quickly. “By the gods,” he muttered and tossed it at her.

  Chloe dived for it, sliding in the dirt, but she caught it. “You throw like a girl,” she said. His expression was confused, on top of angry. She was confused at herself. Did girls throw more than boys? Differently? She shook her head to clear it, and looked at the clay letter.

  Marsh bird marks walked across the clay. It was damp. “What does it say?”

  “Meet me at the lugal’s office at the double hour before noon. You’ll get to meet him.”

  “Nimrod!” she exclaimed.

  “How do you know the lugal’s son?”

  So the story of the puked-on potted palm hadn’t made it to him. “Old friends,” she said glibly. “Thank you, Kalam.”

  “I’m leaving now,” he said, slapping his basket hat on and storming through the courtyard. He slammed the door after him.

  Chloe looked at the letter; the scratches were familiar somehow. She’d never used them, but she’d seen something similar. In a big room, with lots of light. They were lying on tables, lots of them, with little placards explaining where they’d been found and when.