by Shlomo Kalo
Soon the famous reliefs came into view – bulls, lions and horsemen, like those shown in the hall of the library, but on an infinitely larger scale. Lions pounced in fury, bulls tried to gore an unseen assailant, and horsemen charged with the light of battle gleaming in their eyes. And there were also beasts and men riddled with arrows or impaled on lances and swords, rolling on the ground, faces distorted by pain.
“A striking work of art!” he declared calmly and added: “And let’s hope people learn from it and desist from killing!”
“That’s not the purpose at all!” she retorted. “These images are designed to train people to kill, meaning that more wars and nightmares are in store for us. The marauding lion is still the symbol of manhood!”
He was silent. She was right. The lust for violence depicted here was the kind that lodges deep in the heart.
“If I had my way,” she went on to say – “I’d scrape off all those horrible images of people and animals. I don’t see how anyone could benefit from them!”
“What would you put in their place?”
Their docile mounts proceeded in time with the conversation, and when it was necessary, as at the moment that this question was asked, they stopped without being reined in, and waited patiently.
“I’d demolish the whole wall!”
Once again she was right. Where God is – walls are superfluous. She glanced at him sidelong, seeking his response.
“A dream for the distant future!” he retorted.
“And until then?”
“Let’s leave the ugly wall of Babylon behind us and ride somewhere else.”
They joined the broad royal highway, with its paved surface, and unprompted, the horses quickened their rhythmic pace
“We’ll ride to the shrine of Bel!” she said. “There’s a festival there today.”
On the way they met a few riders, some of whom recognised them, especially the daughter of Or-Nego, and greeted them with a bow, while others passed them by, grim-faced and wrapped up in themselves, despite the fine and pleasant day that had descended on Babylon. Walkers were hurrying to one place or another, and there were carts too, harnessed to heavy-hoofed working horses, laden to overflowing, impeding and endangering the other traffic. When they reached the region of the shrines she drew his attention to a hill covered with flowers.
“Didn’t you know about this?” she asked, and was surprised to hear his negative reply. “Look, it’s a magic hill – and there’s no ground underneath it!”
He followed the direction of her gaze and sure enough, he saw to his amazement that the entire hill with its abundance of flowers and young trees was suspended in the air.
“How?” – he wanted to know.
She answered him with a smile, for some reason tinged at the edges with sadness:
“There’s a special way of planting a host of flowers like that on frames that are invisible to the eye. Those are the Hanging Gardens, one of the wonders of the world! They were planted as a wedding gift from King Nebuchadnezzar to his beloved bride, the Median princess Temior, who missed the flowers and the hills of her native land.”
“King Nebuchadnezzar is a man of stature and of generous heart!” he declared.
“Any man who truly loves – has stature and a generous heart!” she retorted.
At midday they came to the shrine of Bel. This was a tall building with pointed roof, a garden of flowers and dwarf trees planted on it.
They went inside. In the depths of a spacious hall rose a statue some twenty cubits in height. At the feet of the statue glowed the gentle lights of grease-lamps. The huge mouth of the effigy, its nostrils and even its eye-sockets were exhaling flames of fire.
She anticipated his question before he had time to ask it and replied:
“It’s a simple mechanism – the fire inside the hollow head is nourished by a constant stream of pure oil, and as the nostrils and the mouth and the eye-sockets are the only apertures, that’s where the flames poke through. Of course,” she went on to say – “someone has to maintain the fire, and also polish the statue so it shines all the time.”
“The priests of Bel?” he asked.
“Priestesses,” she corrected him.
“This idol is served by priestesses?”
“Priests too, but they’re busy with the ritual. Care of the statue and maintenance of the fire in the head are entrusted to priestesses.”
“And who are these priestesses?” he went on to ask, and she answered him:
“Winsome virgins, who dedicate themselves to the god. The lives of the priestesses of Bel are calm and tranquil, and they have no interest in worldly sensations. They believe that when their time comes, their souls will be united with the sublime soul of the god, and they will enjoy eternal bliss such as mortals are incapable of describing or experiencing. These virgins are also prophetesses, and when I visited this place last year one of them prophesied that I would either be the servant of a god coming down to earth in human form, or I would serve this idol.”
“And do you believe such prophecies?” he asked, a note of indignation creeping into his voice.
“Absolutely!” she replied, her voice remarkably calm.
Unconsciously she touched his hand lightly, like the zephyr, a breeze at midday to caress the blossom of the apple-tree. He felt her touch and did not withdraw his hand, but did not encourage her either.
“In her time,” she went on to say – “my mother wanted to be one of the virgin priestesses and worship Bel. She came here and put her request to the chief priestess. She looked at her with penetrating eyes, and a hint of maternal tenderness and told her this was no place for her (so anyway she described it to my father, the minister Or-Nego, and he repeated it to me). She told her that her service of the ‘divine’ – that’s how the chief priestess put it, ‘the divine’, without mentioning any god specifically, not even Bel – would achieve its fullest expression at the side of a man of distinction, pure of heart and valiant in deed, who would bring her great happiness, and she would also bear him a daughter (so my father tells it and I’m repeating him word for word) and with the birth of her daughter her time on this earth would be at an end, and she would be gathered into the open fields of light where all the pure souls are privileged to walk.
“And as the priestess of the idol prophesied, so it was. My mother met my father and fell in love with him, and he returned her love, and their short life together was sublimely happy, and then I came into the world and, as had been foretold, my mother left us and her soul ascended to those wide open fields. And my father, the minister Or-Nego, the noblest of men, did not take a new wife to take her place, and he even told the King that he would rather die than consent to take another wife, as is the custom of the Chaldeans. And the King understood this, and my father’s unbounded devotion to his first and his only wife touched him deeply, so at any rate people tend to believe, and I tend to believe or perhaps I should say, I would like to believe,” – she corrected herself – “and he’s an exceptional minister and counsellor and perhaps the only one in the King’s service who has remained a widower and not taken a wife.
“As you will yet become aware,” she went on to say without any change in the tone of her voice – “loyalty is the distinctive feature of this family, and nothing can prevail over it, not even the fires of Hell!” She looked away from him as she continued, her voice clear and every word audible:
“If I am not allowed to be by the side of the man I love, no other man will take his place, no one will defile my embrace and earn a place in my heart!” She turned to look at him again with those big eyes, lovely as velveteen flowers opening to the light.
In the late hours of the afternoon he returned to his lodging with heavy heart. Denur-Shag was waiting for him:
“I have come to take my leave of you,” he sniffed. “Not for ever!” he hastened to add – “Not at all, not at all! We are sure to meet again in the long corridors of this forbidding building, that they c
all the palace of King Nebuchadnezzar, the wise and the valiant, conqueror of the world, His Majesty! And you would do well to remember all these titles. They are immeasurably important, and can sometimes mean the difference between life and death, especially when this King and conqueror of the world, the wise and the valiant, His Majesty – is in an eccentric mood, or should I say his normal mood. No other mortal can allow himself to indulge in such a mood, but it’s nothing exceptional as far as the King is concerned.
“And today – ah! Today I enjoyed the performance! I emptied into my stomach all the pitchers of pleasure that I could take and believe me, this stomach of mine is bottomless, almost bottomless I should say! And in spite of that – today it was thoroughly satisfied, filled to the brim.
“According to the Chaldean perception, which differs from the perception of the inhabitants of those distant islands to the north-west – every play worthy of the name consists of three elements: plot, suspense, and a surprising and liberating conclusion. The plot of the play that I witnessed today came to its full fruition in the answer that was given to the all-conquering King, the wise and the valiant etc., no doubt affecting him to the very roots of his soul, which incidentally, in his case are not so difficult to reach. This was the plot, and the suspense which the plot engendered was the obligatory ritual cleansing, the ablutions – in this case, a bloodbath – the blood in question being yours.
“I almost saw you in the convivial company of that stalwart pair standing to attention behind the King, gripping the gilded hilt of the shining, naked, execution-sword, ready to brandish it over any neck that the King might point to.
“And then came the turn of the astonishing and liberating conclusion – no stalwart duo, no brandished blade, no blood – quite unlike the scenes normally staged for the King’s benefit, taking account of his well-known tastes and proclivities. And instead of this – praise and jubilation! Incredible to relate!
“There is no doubt, no room for the shadow of a shadow of a doubt, that you are the chosen one, the most favoured of all by your God and the God of your fathers, who, according to your claim, is the one and the only, the exclusive God. And indeed, this has been proved, proved conclusively, incontrovertibly, before the forum of the people, in living marvels and miraculous spectacles – when your God freed you unharmed from the predatory claws of the roaring lion, always poised to spring. Till this day I had never witnessed such an impressive, conclusive scene, a scene that sets my heart quivering and makes all my limbs tingle, finally to release the heart from its quivering and my limbs from their tingling, bringing them joy instead, satisfaction and relief of the most exquisite kind!”
He breathed deep, like a man worn out after running a long distance, and gave him a sidelong glance suffused with tenderness and affection, concluding:
“I only came to wish you, in the name of your God and the God of your fathers and through His grace, stunning success in your new post in the office of the chief of the King’s senior counsellors. Believe this or believe it not – I am proud of you!”
He shook his hand firmly and left the room which – so it seemed – he would now be obliged to vacate, transferring to grander and more spacious quarters, in keeping with the post allotted him in the government of Nebuchadnezzar the Second, King of Babylon.
End of Book I of THE CHOSEN
To be continued in:
Book II: The Prophet
and
Book III: A Man Much Loved
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