Twilight in Babylon

by Frank, Suzanne

  “Holy water,” Asshur said, standing slowly. “Water that confirms life, sustains it.”

  The fountain of youth. The phrase flew through Cheftu’s mind, but it wasn’t attached to anything else. “How do you know what it is?”

  “I’ve seen it, I’ve heard about it. It’s a very special water,” he said. “It has these properties…”

  * * *

  The caverns were damp, deep, deep beneath the earth. In a land that was hugely oil deposits and mosquito breeding grounds, Chloe was astounded to find this space. No wonder the old mothers had thought it was the gate to the underworld. “It’s certainly clammy enough,” she muttered to herself.

  The walls were illustrated with sloppy depictions of pregnant women and wild, horned animals. “Oh my gosh,” Chloe breathed in astounded English. “These are cavemen paintings!” She’d been to caves in Spain and France where the hunters and gatherers of previous millennia had written their stories in pictures on the walls of the places they lived. Iraq had had cave dwellers? She touched the drawings, almost to check if they were dry; the colors were still so vivid, the illustrations kinetic. Were they old, even now?

  After all, she was barely IN historical time the best she could figure. If Cheftu didn’t recognize anything, then either little green men were responsible for civilization, or there was another explanation.

  These days, Chloe didn’t bet on either option being the answer.

  She walked on.

  Torches had blackened the walls and ceilings throughout the cave, and she wondered for a moment how long ago that had been, when man first figured out fire. “Not that I want to find out firsthand or anything,” she said out loud, just in case Someone was listening.

  On the floor in the next room, she found the watchers. Hundreds, maybe thousands of the big-eyed statues and plaques, paintings and dolls, faced forward, staring through an archway.

  “Ohmigod,” Chloe muttered as she picked her way through the field of votives. “This is it, Cheftu, the gateway out.”

  She walked up to the archway—a natural one, misshapen, and plain, and looked around. Of course, there wouldn’t be a blue light or anything—it was the wrong time of the year. But… “There are no symbols,” she said to herself. As she looked into the room beyond it, she heard the trickle of a stream, water hitting a pool. Faint, but distinct.

  She was thirsty. Cool, fresh water would taste great after the months of warm, marshy Euphrates water. That’s why they made beer here, she reasoned. Anything to disguise the flavor of the water.

  The stream ran down the wall from some higher, hidden source, then fell into a small pool. Enough to splash her face and fill her stomach. “That’s weird,” she said, as she watched it flow. “Maybe it’s not water?”

  * * *

  Cheftu had heard the lugal out, but he still doubted the man’s veracity. But what motivation could there be for such a patently false story? He dropped his gaze.

  “You doubt me?”

  “You tell me that somewhere there is a stream where the water is too cold to drink, it foams as it falls, and it can’t be taken away in containers or skins, but must be consumed at the source.”

  “We think there is some connection between the snows of the mountains and the water,” Asshur said. “It’s sacred water, and the sources for it are dried up. Were there any ponds or pools, maybe grottos beneath the earth, that you remember in the mountains?”

  “Jepheti would go on long walks, sometimes for days, up in the snow,” Cheftu said, using Kidu’s patchy memory. “That is all I know. Why is it so important?”

  Asshur looked at Cheftu, and for the first time Cheftu believed him, or at least believed Asshur believed what he said. “Our people are aging too quickly, multiplying too fast. We’re running out of water, of grain, of occupations. We had to create a police force to keep the poor from killing each other over a cup of water.”

  “You think if everyone had this water, it would make things better?”

  “Most assuredly. Four children for a household, in the course of sixty years, instead of the reverse. But the water must be consumed from birth, for it slows the process from the start, not somewhere in the middle. Time is running out.”

  “What happens if you don’t find it?”

  Asshur clasped his hands tightly. “We’ll devour each other like rats. We’ll forsake our humanity. For all our learning and heritage, we are but animals.”

  Cheftu looked away from the intensity of the man as he pondered Asshur’s words. “What about the standards you mentioned?”

  * * *

  The water smelled fine to Chloe, but she couldn’t see any reason it should be so foamy. It wasn’t falling a great distance, and it wasn’t churned in any way. “Did someone put soap in it?” she wondered. A finger test proved it was bitter, freezing cold; the deep chill that feels hot at first, then frigid. “I’d have a headache in a second from drinking that.” The kind of head pain you get from slushy margaritas or biting ice cream. It looked like that souped-up water you poured on cuts to keep from infection. What was that called?

  Having paid her respects, left her watcher, seen no one and realized the archway was not hers and Cheftu’s pathway out, Chloe started back to the entrance. She tried to, anyway, but the cavern chambers were circuitous, the rooms all looked the same. When she’d stumbled into the watchers’ area for the third time, she felt a twinge of panic.

  Follow the art.

  Gazelles on one wall led to a pregnant woman portrait in the next room. From there, she went up a slight flight of stairs to another room with a family on the wall. Three women and one man, four children and an old person—at least to guess from the markings. By that measure, though, what would future generations make of Picasso? “There’s a reason he wasn’t painting on the walls,” she said.

  A three-pronged fork in the hallway. Torches still burned; she wasn’t scared, this was a peaceful, comfortable place. But odd. “Alice and her rabbit holes,” Chloe muttered. Talking to herself was kooky, but the sound of her voice in this space made it a little less… intense.

  She took the center hall, which went straight. “This isn’t the way,” she thought as she passed by several smaller rooms. The hallways opened into a conference-sized room. Off to the side she saw a tiny space with two standing stones.

  Actually, one was brick and one was stone. They were carved, just like the judgment stones in the complex of the city. The brick one looked like it had spent some time underwater—the writing was faded, and it was considerably shorter than the stony one.

  They must be very old, she thought. The pictograms were recognizable as pictures, instead of the series of markings she was learning at the Tablet House. She took a step closer, then felt a chill.

  Was someone watching her? She turned quickly, but didn’t see anyone. Still the eerie feeling stayed, grew. I want out of here, Chloe thought, as she retraced her way to the fork in the hall. She took the right-hand branch, up and up and up… and blinked in the waiting sunshine.

  The creepy feeling still hadn’t gone away, so she race-walked back to the palace. When she finally stepped into the building she was sweaty and breathing heavily… and feeling quite ridiculous.

  It seemed like she had been down there for years, yet it was only minutes.

  And it wasn’t the gate to Kur.

  * * *

  “What did he say?” she asked Cheftu later that night when they were falling asleep, the breeze from the river blowing across them. “Why did he need such privacy?”

  “He’s an old man, following fairy stories,” Cheftu said. “He’s afraid to acknowledge that death comes for him.”

  “Why would he talk to you about aging? I mean, by any account you are young.”

  Cheftu sighed, and his fingers played in her hair. “Because my, Kidu’s grand-père, lived for hundreds of years. Asshur thinks there is a fountain of youth, a magical elixir that will slow the maturation process and help people live longer,
have children later. It’s all about too many people.”

  “I have a two-word solution: birth control.”

  Cheftu shrugged. “He knows this thing. But making his people do it when they are young, it—”

  “So his talk was boring, and his being rude to me served no purpose?”

  Cheftu kissed her. “None whatsoever. Forgive me for allowing him to treat you that way. How was your journey?”

  “Strange. Eerie. Like being in the womb of the earth.”

  “Did the others feel that way?”

  Chloe opened her eyes. Thought. “You know, I didn’t see anyone else. I wandered for a while, but I never actually saw another person.”

  Cheftu must have heard something in her voice. “Are you well, chérie?”

  She chuckled. “I think I understand why that place has a reputation for being the gate to hell, or purgatory, or wherever. There was definitely a strange feeling, like something invisible was watching.” She shivered, and he pulled her closer.

  “You are safe now. I shouldn’t have let you go alone.”

  “Don’t be silly, I just let my imagination run away with me.”

  Cheftu turned onto his side, his arm tight around her waist, his breath on her neck. “I love you, chérie.”

  “I love you, too. Good night.”

  “Sweet dreams.”

  Chloe lay awake, her memory replaying the cavern. The millions of staring plaster eyes, the water that came from nowhere and wasn’t drinkable, the old standards, the misshapen paintings, the echo and chill of the place. She didn’t believe that Kur was a physical place that could be reached from the surface of the planet, but she certainly understood why the marsh girl and everyone else around here did. That cavern was freaky.

  Marshes

  “The poor man is the silent man in Sumer.”

  “We’ll be in the marshes for the next stretch of the journey,” Nimrod said. “In mashufs. Women will travel in the middle of the group, men surrounding them. Watch the surface for crocodiles and snakes. Pay attention to the movements of birds and test the depth of any water you step into before you step.”

  Chloe knew the reason for his precautions—marsh dweller was synonymous with outlaw. And if they didn’t get you, then nature would.

  The other women, most of whom had been city dwellers all along, looked terrified. Chloe couldn’t explain it, but it seemed as though part of her was being packed up and another part was being assembled. To her, it seemed her vision grew sharper, her right arm stronger, her movements more sinuous to blend in with the grasses, the reeds, and the river. The marsh girl’s instincts lived inside her body, the girl’s knowledge of the plants, the animals, and their behaviors was information in her brain. She was the marsh girl.

  And the marsh girl was her.

  The marsh waters were low this late in the season, so the mashufs—really, very skinny canoes—were lightly loaded, so they moved easily. Chloe didn’t remember many details about the marsh girl’s life, but the images were consistent. Images and feelings were all she really had.

  A heron poised for flight, with twilight behind him, confirmation that sun would return on the morrow. Though, Chloe thought, in this place if the sun skipped a day or two, people would just be relieved for a break in the heat.

  Not funny to joke about, when she considered how they reacted to an eclipse.

  Someone was buried under the name Puabi, or as it could be read, Shub-ab.

  Chloe pushed her mashuf through the long grass and shallow water, watching the birds, the fish, the crocodiles, and other amphibians whose names she’d never known in any lifetime. It was a peaceful, if not a quiet place.

  In the distance she saw the huts of the marsh dwellers. Formed of reeds that were arched together and tied, they looked a lot like greenhouses in the modern U.S. Or petite aircraft hangars. The sides were decorated in woven patterns, and each family’s was different. I wonder what the marsh girl’s had been, Chloe thought. I wonder if I picked up some reeds and started weaving if I would discover that I have that knowledge.

  Water buffalo wandered in the water. Mothers, with babies tied to their breasts, washed their clothes in the water and watched the string of mashufs glide past.

  How many more miles of this? Chloe wondered. And she pushed off again.

  * * *

  Twilight filtered down on the village; Chloe could only see it on the palm that slanted over their reed house. Cheftu twined his arms around her waist as they sat in the doorway. “You’ve been quiet.”

  “In separate boats, there wasn’t much to say.”

  “Did your marsh girl come from there, that territory we sailed through?”

  “No,” Chloe said, and rested her hands on his forearms. “From some village between Uruk and Ur. West and north, I think.”

  The palm tree’s bark looked stained with gold, then salmon, and plum, then, finally, night fell. “I always thought twilight was the end of the day,” she said.

  “To us it is.”

  “Is that because our thoughts were based on thinking in a straight line? If this is A, then B has to happen?”

  He kissed her forehead. “I never analyzed it.”

  “Neither did I, until it dawned on me how safe it is to have twilight be a beginning instead of the conclusion.”

  “Cute pun,” Cheftu said, and kissed her cheek.

  “Unintentional, but thanks.” She wasn’t looking outside anymore, but inside. Her mind, she seemed more aware of its mechanics than ever before. How did she shift seamlessly from being the marsh girl to being her modern self? What mechanism slipped from dealing with politics and religion to knowing which birds were good raw and which weren’t? Small things, like knowing what plants were poisonous, how to climb a palm tree, how to read the seasons.

  Things, that for all her well-trained body, modern information and technical skills, she would have died without knowing. How did all the mental cogs and wheels work?

  “Are you ready to dine?” Cheftu asked.

  “Do you like this life?” she asked. “Living as a well-to-do vagabond who is feted and celebrated wherever he goes?”

  “In my country, it is the way the wealthy and titled always lived,” he said. “The people were only concerned with pleasing themselves.”

  “Does it bother you to be indolent?”

  He laughed, and she turned to watch him. His face was so beautiful, and now he was gilded from head to toe. “I grew accustomed to being rich and lazy quickly.”

  They exchanged a quick kiss, then hurried out to join the others for dinner.

  * * *

  “Hydrogen peroxide!”

  Cheftu looked at her as though she’d blasphemed.

  “That’s what that stuff was, I can’t believe it’s taken this long for me to remember.”

  “What are you babbling about?”

  The heat and the endless marching had worn both their tempers thin. They were headed north again; the river ran south, so they were back on their feet. Long days of walking, for Nimrod feared they’d miss being able to dry bricks before the rainy season hit in their new, unnamed, location.

  Chloe couldn’t remember what rain was. Cool and wet? Not possible. “In the cavern, the gate to the underworld. Somewhere inside, there was a fountain of hydrogen peroxide.”

  Cheftu turned on her, his eyes wild. “It foamed?”

  She nodded.

  “Bitterly cold?”

  She nodded.

  He started laughing, gasping for air, holding his belly, slapping his thighs—she pushed him into the river. He came up, still laughing. He climbed up the bank with the occasional giggle. Chloe stood, her hands on her hips, fighting a grin.

  “Next you will tell me you saw two pillars, one of brick and one of stone.”

  “No, I won’t tell you that.” Though it was true.

  He laughed again. Finally, she sat down. Obviously they weren’t walking for a while. The sheep gnawed on the grass and watched Cheftu
with big brown eyes.

  Then he stopped. Abruptly. “If that is truth,” he said, “then the other must be truth.”

  “The other is?”

  “Ningal of Ur is three hundred years old.”

  Chloe walked away.

  * * *

  “Repeating that it is not possible does not change the fact that it might be possible,” Cheftu said as they walked along. “We’ve heard tales from almost everyone about longevity in numbers that seem—”

  “Like lies?” Chloe said.

  “But there is consistency. I find it difficult to ignore.”

  Chloe swatted a sheep into line and frowned at the ground. “Ningal? You met him, Cheftu. Three hundred years old? It’s not possible!”

  “I believe,” he said over his shoulder, “you once called me Horatio and told me there was more in heaven and on earth than I could conceive?”

  “I hate it when you quote me,” she muttered. “Especially when I’ve misquoted Shakespeare.”

  “Why should it being true bother you so much, chérie?”

  That thought occupied her for at least an hour.

  They stopped for lunch, pitched a tent to nap under, ate in silence, then nodded off. When Cheftu woke up, Chloe was staring at the river, frowning. “I don’t know which way is up anymore,” she said.

  He pointed to the sky.

  She didn’t laugh.

  “Do you need to have this answer?” he asked.

  They packed the tent, gathered the sheep, and walked on. The river channel they were following led east, toward the mountains, though they were going to stop far before then.

  Twilight fell, and they pitched their tent again. Somewhere behind them, the other Urians spread out with flocks and children, set their fires, and fried their fish. Cheftu cooked, Chloe was intent. She thought all through the meal she scarcely touched, then looked up at the sky until he took her hand and led her to the tent.

  With soft kisses and touches, he made love to her. Silent, gentle, easing her to sleep. He was soundly asleep when she spoke.

  “I do.”

  “Do what?” he said, groggy.

  “I do have to know which way is up, I do have to know what I believe. This new information, these stories, how everyone is convinced people lived longer before the Deluge, that everyone on earth is from the same family—” She sighed. “I don’t know what to make of it.”