Babylon

by Richard Calder

  Nervously, I looked at the novices out of the corner of my eye, wondering if they might have overheard. But they seemed consumed with their own thoughts and concerns. I tried to forget about them, diverting my gaze so as to study the sleek lines of the silver locomotive, its bogie, its blast pipe, and the name The Empress Faustina that ran along its boiler in gleaming copperplate.

  Beyond the courtyard and train siding lay the familiar expanse of ruins—not blackened, here, by recent, or even more ancient, fires, but standing relatively intact, with only broken windows, missing roof tiles, and a few tumbledown chimneys to betray the fact that they were uninhabited. The architecture was chiefly early eighteenth century and had originally served to house the overspill from Ereshkigal, which, a century and a half ago, would have boasted twice its present complement of temple-maidens. The streets of ivy-festooned, still elegant Georgian houses, radiated out like spokes of a wheel, with me, Cliticia, and the other novices at the hushed, still centre of a ghost town.

  The Duenna, and the two old women who had driven the train—Shulamites long retired who had doubtless taken this dangerous duty upon themselves to relive their youthful past, when life had been so much more exciting and meaningful— walked up to the great, bronze gates, and conducted a brief conversation with someone on the other side through a small, eye-level grille. Behind us, there was a crackle. I turned, and saw that the force-field had been switched back on. The crackle resolved into a hum. I was within the embrace of an electric-blue curtain of interdiction, a tiny figure trapped within a gigantic bell jar, shielded from harm, but unable to escape.

  With a deep moan, the gates opened. We stepped forward, passing between the two big, marble gynosphinxes that guarded the way. They were symbolic, of course, of human women who had melded with animality—the feline animality of Ishtar’s sacred beast, the lion. Those gynosphinxes: how beautiful and yet how menacing they looked! Their deadly, cruelly-tipped mamma were like provocative shields bossed with pink points.

  I was a sphinx, I decided. A woman’s head with wings and the body of a carnivorous beast. Female sphinxes for complicated perversities, female sphinxes for the jaded and bored... They celebrated passage from childhood to womanhood—a womanhood that was close to something feral. They presaged the state of delirium that, with every passing hour, I felt myself surrendering to, like one so earnestly wooed by a beloved sickness, that she yearns for her long engagement to end.

  The gates closed and we walked across the inner courtyard. As big as a football pitch, but with turf replaced by red breccia flag stones, it was enclosed on either side by high, sandstone walls. At its farther end was a peristyle, above which rose a ziggurat: a huge, crumbling structure half-obscured by monstrous effusions of convolvulus and ivy.

  No one spoke. The courtyard echoed to the sound of our heels upon the flagstones. To my left was a well, to my right, a series of storerooms and stables. And riddling the ancient walls were rows of multitudinous windows behind which I sometimes spied a curious onlooker, or simply a girl before a pier glass staring irresolutely at her own reflection. I felt incredibly tired. The air was thick with the aroma of citron and jacaranda, almond and myrtle, and my eyelids became gummy, as much, I think, from the surfeit of exotic scents as from loss of sleep.

  The Duenna raised a hand and we came to a halt before the elegant, marble steps that led up to the peristyle’s ambulatory. At the bottom of the steps stood a stele of black diorite inscribed in indecipherable cuneiform, and at the top, a tripod and brazier filled with burning spices that sent up a green, aromatic cloud. The celia, or naos, of the temple, was directly above us, its enamelled doors closed to all but those initiated into the mysteries.

  The doors opened. Two temple-maidens of senior rank—they were far older than us; in their early twenties, perhaps—walked out of the temple and through the billowing clouds of perfume until they stood between the two columns that framed the celia. They were dressed in white Style Directoire frocks, the Récamier- line cinched with blue silk ribbons that formed extravagant knots beneath the décolletage.

  For a few seconds, they spoke amongst themselves. And they spoke in French. They were the first Shulamites I had encountered from beyond England’s shores. What is more, they were white. The Babylonian moon had tanned their flesh, but only so far as to lend them the appearance of a couple of East End girls who had spent a long, hot summer in the hop fields. The composition of Babylon was indeed changing. I would doubtless soon meet others who, like me, had volunteered from outside the cult’s hereditary ranks.

  ‘There goes the neighbourhood,’ whispered Cliticia as she elbowed me in the ribs. ‘Land of the crazy white girl, that’s what Babylon’s turning into.’ She looked up at me and smiled. ‘No offence, ol’ cock.’

  ‘Shh!’

  ‘Welcome, novices from Earth Prime,’ said one of the French girls, in thickly accented, but otherwise flawless, English.

  Then both she and her companion stretched out their arms. ‘The Temple of Ereshkigal welcomes you as sisters!’ they said, their voices perfectly synchronized. ‘And Queen Ishtar welcomes you as daughters!’

  From behind them appeared a host of other girls similarly attired in white and carrying bouquets of roses and poppies. They walked to the edge of the ambulatory, and with a great cheer, threw the flowers over our heads.

  And then they sang:

  ‘Praise the goddess, the most awesome of the goddesses.

  She is clothed with pleasure and love.

  She is laden with vitality, charm, and voluptuousness.

  In lips she is sweet; life is in her mouth.

  At her appearance rejoicing becomes full.

  She is glorious; veils are thrown over her head.

  Her figure is beautiful; her eyes are brilliant.

  The goddess—with her there is counsel.

  The fate of everything she holds in her hand.’

  Our reception committee came down the steps to meet us, smiling, laughing, and picking up scarlet petals from the flagstones to once again shower them over our heads. Other girls emerged from the cella and joined in the celebrations.

  Much to my surprise, I felt a tear trickle down my face. I

  - ME - looked up at the ziggurat’s ascending terraces, towards a point where the capstone pierced the heavens in an act of homage to the moon. At last, I was here. Here, in the place I had dreamt about for so long. Here, in the world where I might be myself and find release from England’s stultifying hypocrisy. Free from Mrs Grundy. Free from fear.

  ‘Gabrielle!’ cried Cliticia, darting forward into the throng.

  A face in the crowd had lit up with astonishment.

  ‘You’re lucky to ’ave caught me ’ere,’ said Gabrielle. ‘I go on leave soon.’

  ‘Are you looking forward to it?’ I said. I accompanied Cliticia and her big sister through the temple’s intricate knot of corridors—a maze that evoked the notion of some faded, Parisian hotel that had seen better days but which still managed to draw in the quality, even out of season. And if not a continental hotel, perhaps a night house, or brasserie, like the Café Royal in Princess Street, Leicester Square, where the poules de luxe went to meet their Illuminati lovers.

  ‘Not really,’ said Gabrielle. ‘It’s not like it was when I was your age, and everything was a big, new adventure.’ I had always supposed Cliticia’s sister to be no more than two or three years older than us; but Gabrielle Lipski—pretty as a picture as she still was— approached her mid-twenties, and her upcoming six-week sabbatical would be her last until she retired sometime early next year. ‘Those were the good ol’ days,’ she continued. ‘First time I went off-world, I was like you two, I suppose, wondering what it’d be like to be on sabbatical back on Earth Prime, going to parties and the like with toffs from Brook Street and Westminster. Well, it was a real laugh, I can tell you. I’d only been off-world a couple of months, and there I was, on leave and kicking up me ’eels in Cremorne Gardens.’

 
‘I told you she ’ad lots of stories to tell,’ said Cliticia, beaming with sisterly pride.

  ‘That was ten years ago, of course, before the gardens were dismantled,’ Gabrielle continued. ‘But I remember it like it was yesterday. There were illuminations, fountains, a dancing platform, and, and—’

  ‘An East End girl could feel like an heiress in Cremorne,’ Cliticia interjected.

  ‘Some of those Illuminati thought we were bleeding’ heiresses!’ said Gabrielle. And then, with peals of giggles, the two sisters threw back their heads and broke into raucous song:

  ‘So mind all fast young gentlemen, who journey to Cremorne,

  Or any other gardens, or where crinoline is worn,

  Do not propose to wed strange girls, ’owever well they dress,

  Or else like me you perhaps may get in such another mess,

  Be sure you know ’er station well, before you say you’ll wed ’er,

  A little care is just as good, as good and a great deal better.’

  They both stopped in their tracks, doubled over with laughter.

  ‘Give over, Gabrielle,’ said Cliticia, choking back her snorts of merriment. ‘Give over, do.’ And then, turning her tear-streaked face to me, added: ‘What’d I tell you? She’s a caution, ain’t she? A real caution!’

  Slowly, the laughter ebbed away.

  We had stopped outside a room whose door stood open. Inside, the drapes were pulled, and the bed was a mess of disordered sheets. A small altar stood against one wall. A bronze image of the snake-king, Samael, consort of Lilith and Lord of the Damned, stood on top of it, alongside two earthenware pots containing sticks of incense.

  ‘Does anyone actually live on this corridor?’ I said.

  ‘Not for a while now,’ said Gabrielle, straightening herself. Her ribcage still palpitated, as if at any moment she might be seized by another hysterical fit of giggles. ‘It’s not so easy to attract volunteers these days, and those that do volunteer, well—’

  ‘Well, wot?’ said Cliticia pointedly, all merriment sapped by resentment and fear.

  Gabrielle shrugged. ‘They turn out to be the wrong sort,’ she said, as drained of joy as her sister.

  ‘I ’ope you’re not implying—’

  ‘Tell me more about what it’s like to be on sabbatical,’ I said, taking the reins, as it were, and steering all three of us clear of the hidden precipice.

  Gabrielle arched an eyebrow.

  ‘For me, it was fun,’ she said. ‘At least, it used to be. You see things you’d never dream of seeing. You see Cremorne, you see the posh clubs, you go to parties and balls.’ She sucked thoughtfully at her teeth. ‘The Illuminati: I suppose you could say that they like to show us off.’

  ‘We’re their trophies,’ I said. We walked on. Absently, I glanced into another room whose door also stood open and noticed that, like the previous room, it contained an altar whose centrepiece was a bronze statue of a snake: a representation of Samael—or Satan, as He was more commonly known. ‘We’re the outward symbols of their divine prerogative,’ I added, unable to resist the call to pedantry. I might have added that if the Illuminati were to invite me to a pleasure garden, party, or grand ball, I would have to learn to close my eyes and think upon that same image of Satan that many of the former tenants of Temple Ereshkigal had obviously summoned up whenever they had accepted a gentleman’s tribute to the Goddess.

  ‘Trophies? Dunno,’ said Gabrielle. ‘But I do know that sometimes it’s a shilling, sometimes a gold sovereign, and sometimes even a five-pound note.’ She proceeded forward; Cliticia and I followed. ‘Course,’ she sighed, ‘for that you really ’ave to gamahuche ’em till the bleeding cows come ’ome.’

  The principles of the hieros gamos had become corrupted; I had known that before I volunteered. But I had not thought that a ritual that had conferred kingship and godhead upon so many great men both ancient and modern could ever be referred to in such cold, mechanical terms.

  ‘You get lots of cadeaux,’ said Cliticia, looking up at me, and then turning to her sister. ‘Remember all the flowers and chocolates, all the ribbons, stockings, and petticoats, that you got last time you were on leave, Gab?’

  ‘As long as it’s not a dose, I don’t care what they ruddy give me,’ Gabrielle countered. ‘I’m sick of it.’

  This romantic exchange was, to be frank, somewhat disillusioning. Back in Wilmot Street, lying in bed, I had imagined my off-world sisters in their own bowers of bliss, sharing my moon-haunted, sherbet-filled dreams. Dreams not of Mammon, but of demon lovers. In ancient times, the sacred prostitute’s sexuality had been indistinguishable from her spiritual nature. But in these latter days, a Shulamite cared, it seemed, less about love, desire, and surrender, than getting and spending.

  ‘What makes all doctrines plain and clear?

  About two hundred pounds a year.’

  We continued down the long, high-ceilinged corridor, with its stucco of lions and serpents and its oblong windows opened upon the night. Moonbeams, falling obliquely across our path, had transformed the corridor into an underwater tunnel. And as we walked, the breeze outside blew the gossamer draperies into our path, so that we moved beneath billowing waves of tulle and satin.

  We stopped outside a door. Unlike so many others, it was closed, and seemed in good repair. Like the others, it displayed a brass nameplate. The inscription read: Miss Noctiluca de Torqueville.

  ‘This’ll be your room,’ said Gabrielle. ‘The girl ’oo used to be ’ere ’as retired. It’s a good room. Noctiluca ’as left some of ’er stuff behind, so you can rummage through it. It’s all up for grabs. But you’ll just ’ave to accept the fact that you’re going to ’ave to double up for the time being until we can find you rooms of your own.’ She turned to her younger sister, bent over, and kissed her on a cheek still grimy from travel. ‘Sorry to ’ear about the rough time you’ve ’ad of it, darling. You were lucky to escape. It don’t bear finking about what might ’ave ’appened to the poor little beggars they caught.’ She straightened her back and looked from one of us to the other. ‘Can’t believe ’ow you managed to ’ide the way you did,’ she concluded, not for the first time betraying her suspicions, and those, perhaps, of others, too.

  ‘I told you before,’ I said. ‘We hid in a culvert, by the side of the track.’

  ‘Until the Men diverted the train onto another line,’ said Cliticia, ‘and left, taking the other girls with ’em.’

  ‘To the Citadel, I suppose,’ I added.

  ‘Well, that was a lucky escape,’ said Gabrielle. ‘A wery, wery lucky escape.’

  I opened the door.

  Gabrielle tapped me on the shoulder. ‘Make sure you clean yourself up,’ she said, ‘the ’igh Priestess won’t tolerate slatternliness. Especially in ’er audience chamber.’ On entering the temple, our papers had been inspected. No one had questioned their veracity. But just as we were about to leave the main hallway and be taken to our rooms by a still astonished Gabrielle, we had been approached by a lady-in-waiting and told that the Serpentessa had granted us an audience. We were to report to her chambers in three hours time.

  I wondered if we were to face an interrogation.

  Gabrielle turned her gaze upon her younger sister and looked her up and down. Then, with a deep, woeful sigh, she shook her head. ‘Clitich, Clitich, whatever ’ave you done to your bleedin’ ’air?’

  ‘Will there be many people at the audience?’ I said, quickly, before the two of them became involved in a sisterly spat.

  ‘Just you,’ she said, smiling, I thought, with a certain air of triumph, first at me, and then Cliticia. ‘Just you.’

  Cliticia lay supine on the big, four-poster bed, her dress thrown to the floor, her stays unlaced, and her stockings rolled down about her unshod ankles.

  ‘We really should be getting ready,’ I said. She cast her right forearm over her eyes and did not reply. But though Cliticia suspected the worst, I refused to give in to despair. Our papers were
in order; our story sound; there was no reason to think that we would be discovered. ‘Come on,’ I said. ‘We can’t keep the Serpentessa waiting.’ Cliticia cast her left forearm over the right, as if meaning to shut out the world entirely.

  ‘I’m no good at speaking, you know that,’ she said. ‘I’ll get all tongue-tied, I’m bound to.’ She tsked. ‘I don’t like ’igh Priestesses. And Gabrielle says this one is bad news. She’ll find out, Maddy, I’m sure she will.’

  ‘Then let me do the talking,’ I said.

  I sat at a vanity table on the opposite side of the room. To pass the time, and to accommodate Cliticia’s sulk, I had fallen to perusing some of the books that had belonged to the room’s former occupant, and which had lain piled up in a corner gathering dust alongside a small mountain of girlish fripperies and cosmetics. Some were mere feuilletons, grubby with thumbprints, and distinguished only by their outrageous cover price of a shilling. They had lurid, somewhat disturbing, titles: The Confessions of a Lady’s Maid or Boudoir Intrigue, disclosing many Startling Scenes and Voluptuous Incidents, The Fortunes and Misfortunes of a Balletgirl, and London by Night; or Gay Life in London. The vellum-bound books were a different matter. Many were signed, suggesting that they had been gifts. (The recipient had obviously enjoyed an enviable degree of popularity.) I studied some of the signatures. Shulamites, of course, often gave their children exotic, not to say brazen, names; but the names of some of the temple-maidens at Ereshkigal were, it seemed, more brazen than most. With love, from Voluptua, read the dedication inscribed in a copy of M. Verne’s Le Sphinx des Glaces. And a young lady who had gone by the curious appellation of Pudenda had it seemed presented a novel entitled La Curée by one Emile Zola ‘In memory of golden days.’ The pages exuded a sickly, cloying smell of stale scent that soon came to pervade the whole room. Other signatures testified to the affections of scores more girls. Their names were equally bizarre: Lascivia, Morbidezza, Libitina, Septicaemia, Veneria, Dementia, and Immodestista.