Desert God

by Wilbur Smith

  Gradually I became aware of a subtle and elusive aroma on the warm night air. I had smelled nothing quite like it before, but although I could not place it all my senses were aroused. I felt an unusual but agreeable sensation building up in my neck and shoulders and running down my spine. This alerted me to the powerful presence close behind me.

  I turned to face it and I was so startled that I dropped the wine chalice and it rang on the paving. For a moment my heart stilled in my breast, and then began to thump again like the hoof-beats of a runaway horse.

  The mysterious lady from the temple stood before me; so close that I could make out her exquisite features in the shadows beneath the hood. If I had reached out I could have touched her but I could not move.

  At last I found my voice, but when I spoke it was hushed with veneration. ‘Who are you?’

  ‘My name is Inana.’

  I was struck to the very quick of my being by both the sound and sense of her reply. It resonated in my ears like celestial music. I knew at once that no sound so beautiful could ever issue from a human mouth. The sense of what she had said was even more striking. Inana was the ancient name from the very beginning of time for the goddess Ishtar.

  ‘My name is Taita.’ It was the only reply that I could think of.

  ‘Apart from your name you know very little about yourself, do you? You do not even know the name of your father or your mother.’ She smiled in gentle sympathy as she said it.

  ‘No. I never knew them.’ I acknowledged the truth of her statement. Compassionately she held out one hand to me, and without hesitation I took it. Immediately I felt the heat and strength from it flowing into me.

  ‘Do not be afraid, Taita. I am your friend, and more than your friend.’

  ‘I am not afraid of you, Inana.’ She held out her other hand and when I took that one also I knew that a powerful bond of blood and mind existed between us.

  ‘I know you!’ I exclaimed in wonder. ‘I feel that I have known you from the very beginning. Tell me who you are.’

  ‘I have not come to tell you about myself. I have come to tell you about yourself. Come with me, Taita.’ Still holding both my hands she moved backwards, leading me from the open terrace into my own bedchamber. Her footsteps, if there were any, made no sound. There was only the soft swishing of her skirts. I sensed that under them her feet were not touching the ground, and that she was suspended just above the surface.

  The beautiful lantern-lit room that we entered had been my home for all these past weeks and I thought that I knew every inch of it, but now I saw that there was a door in the facing wall that I had never noticed before. As Inana led me towards it the door swung open of its own accord. There was utter darkness beyond the portals. Still holding hands we plunged into the darkness and it engulfed us. We plummeted downwards, but she held my hands and I was unafraid. The wind of our descent blew into my face with such force that I had to slit my eyes against it. We flew in darkness for what seemed an eternity, but I knew time was an illusion. Then I felt solid footing beneath me and we were no longer moving. There was light, at first only a glimmering. I could make out the shape of Inana’s head again, and then slowly her bodily form appeared beneath it. I saw that now she was as naked as I was.

  I have seen the bodies of many beautiful women during my long life, but Inana far surpassed any of them. Her hips were voluptuous but above them her narrow waist emphasized their elegant contours. Although she was as tall as I am her limbs were so delicately smooth and sculptured that I could not prevent myself reaching out to stroke them. Lightly I ran my fingers up her arms from her wrists to the curve of her shoulders. Her skin was silken but the muscles beneath it were adamantine.

  Her hair was piled high, but when she shook her head it came cascading down in a glowing wave over her shoulders, and fell as far as her knees. This rippling curtain did not cover her breasts which thrust their way through it like living creatures. They were perfect rounds, white as mare’s milk and tipped with ruby nipples that puckered as my gaze passed over them.

  Her body was hairless. Her pudenda were also entirely devoid of hair. The tips of her inner lips protruded shyly from the vertical cleft. The sweet dew of feminine arousal glistened upon them.

  The light grew stronger still and I realized that we were standing in the Hanging Gardens high above the city of Babylon. The masses of shrubbery and flowers that surrounded us were wondrously lovely, but they were rendered mundane by Inana’s beauty. She took my hands from her shoulders and she kissed them one after the other. I shivered at the sensation that pervaded my whole being.

  ‘What do you want of me, Inana?’ It did not sound like my own voice that said it.

  ‘I propose to unite with you.’

  ‘Surely you know that I am not a whole man,’ I whispered in my shame. ‘I was emasculated a long time ago.’

  ‘Yes.’ Her voice was gentle, compassionate. ‘I was there when they did that to you. I felt the knife as keenly as you did. I wept for you, Taita. But I rejoiced for myself. Coupling is not the same as uniting. I was speaking not of the brief conjoining of the flesh that ends too soon in a puny muscular spasm, sparse reward for the man who renders up his seed, or for the woman who accepts it into her womb. That is merely nature’s expedient for launching another mortal life into a brief and inconsequential existence that too soon is obliterated by death.’

  She guided my right hand down from her lips and thrust my fingers deeply into the crevice between her luscious thighs. It was narrow as my two fingers and lubricious. I felt my own loins melting with the heat of hers. ‘I was not speaking of this.’ With her fingertips she gently caressed the brutal scar between my legs where once my manhood had been: ‘Nor of this.’

  ‘What else is there that joins a man and a woman, Inana?’

  ‘There is the uniting of souls rather than bodies. The melding of superior minds. That is the true miracle of existence that can very rarely be consummated.’

  She drew me down on to the greensward of the secret garden. It was silken and soft beneath us as the down of the eider duck. She came over me in a swift and sinuous movement and at once our bodies were locked as closely and intimately as the gods had designed them to be. Our legs and our arms were entwined, and our breath was mingling. I could feel her heart beating against my own.

  Gradually our two hearts became a single organ that we shared, and they beat as one. Our combined breathing harmonized and sustained both sets of our lungs. It was the most uplifting and fulfilling sensation I had ever experienced. I wanted to be more deeply engulfed by her body, and to engulf her completely in mine so that we might become a single organism.

  Then I suffered a fleeting sense of panic and helplessness as I felt her mind taking control of mine. I tried to prevent it, but then I realized that I was usurping her mind even as she did the same to me. As she took my memories from me so I garnered hers. Between us nothing was lost or forgotten. We were sharing an existence that stretched back into the distant past.

  ‘Now I know who my father is,’ I whispered, hearing the wonder of it in my own voice.

  ‘Who is he?’ she asked. She knew the answer before she formed the question, and I heard her question although she had not spoken.

  ‘He is Meniotos, the god of anger and morality,’ I replied in the divine silence that we shared.

  ‘Who then is your mother?’ Inana asked and I took the answer from the single mind that we shared.

  ‘My mother was Selias, but she was a human and mortal. She died giving birth to me.’

  ‘You are a demi-god, Taita. You are neither entirely human nor completely divine. Even though you are a long liver, one day you too must die.’ She wrapped my soul more tightly and protectively with her own. ‘It is a day that is still far off. However, I will be there to shield and sustain you when it happens. After you have gone I will mourn you for a thousand years.’

  ‘Who are you, Inana? Why do I feel so bound to you in both body and spirit? Who
is your father?’

  ‘My father is Hyperion, the god of light. He is the brother of Meniotos. So we are of the same divine blood, you and I,’ she answered directly.

  ‘I heard your answer before I asked my question,’ I told her silently. ‘And your mother? Was she a mortal human or a goddess?’

  ‘My mother is Artemis,’ Inana replied.

  ‘Artemis is the goddess of the hunt and of all wild animals,’ I acknowledged. ‘She is also the virgin goddess, and the goddess of maidens. How can she be both a virgin and your natural mother?’

  ‘You must know, Taita, that with those of us who are gods and demi-gods all things are possible. My father Hyperion restored my mother’s virginity to her the hour after I was born.’ I smiled at the charming practicality of her father’s solution, and I felt Inana smile with me before she continued, ‘But I am a virgin like my mother, and by the decree of Zeus who is the father of all the gods I must always remain a virgin. That is my punishment for refusing Zeus, who is my grandfather, when he sought to have his incestuous way and copulate with me.’

  ‘That is a cruel punishment for such a trivial offence,’ I sympathized with her.

  ‘I think not, Taita. I think it the kindest and sweetest reward; for how otherwise could you and I be lovers through the ages that have passed and those that are yet to come, and still retain our virginity and purity?’

  ‘How could anyone know our destiny, Inana? I had not even been born in the remote time about which you are speaking.’

  ‘I was there when you were born, Taita. I was there when your manhood was ripped from you, and I wept for you then although I knew how richly we both would profit from that terrible deed through the millennia.’

  ‘You speak of millennia. Will you and I be together for that long, Inana?’

  She did not reply directly to my question. ‘Although you have been unaware of it I have followed you closely since the day of your birth. I knew of everything that befell you: every brief joy and every excruciating agony.’

  ‘Why me, Inana?’

  ‘Because we are one, Taita. We are of one blood and one breath.’

  ‘I can keep nothing from you,’ I conceded. ‘However, I am not virgin as you are. I have been carnally united with other women in my life.’

  Inana shook her head sadly. ‘You have known only one woman, Taita. I was there when it happened. I could have warned you against it, for you paid for that transitory pleasure with the blade of the castrating knife.’ I felt her breath in my mouth and her sorrow in my own heart as she went on, ‘I could have spared you the agony, but if I had done so, if I had warned you of the consequences, then you and I would never have been able to couple as we are doing now, in eternal and divine chastity.’

  I thought on what she had said and then I sighed as she sighed within me.

  ‘It all happened so long ago. I do not remember the girl’s face. I do not even remember her name,’ I admitted.

  ‘That is because I have expunged the memory from your mind,’ she whispered. ‘If you wish I can replace it, and you can keep it with you for the next five thousand years, but it will bring you no joy. Do you want that?’

  ‘You know that I do not.’ I was renouncing that poor lost soul, who had been a slave with me. In our shared misery we had given each other some little comfort. She had given me love. But she had long ago been swallowed up by the abyss of space and time and gone where nobody could follow her; not even an emasculated demi-god.

  I surrendered myself to the moment, feasting on the contents of Inana’s mind and memory even as she feasted on mine. With our bodies and souls interlocked time was no longer a river rushing breathlessly by. It became a gentle ocean on which we floated together, savouring every moment as though it was a slice of eternity. She bolstered the ramparts of my soul, rendering me immeasurably wiser and invulnerable to evil.

  Together we achieved a state of spiritual grace.

  After an eternity my soul spoke to hers. ‘I don’t want this ever to end, Inana. I want to remain with you forever like this.’ Then I heard her voice reply from the very depths of my being:

  ‘You are a part of me, Taita, and I am a part of you. But at the same time we are separate and entire, each to ourselves. We have our own distinct existences to which we must return. We have our own destinies which we alone must work out.’

  ‘Please don’t leave me,’ I implored her.

  ‘I am leaving you now. It is time for me to go.’ Her voice was no longer commingled with mine.

  ‘Will you return to me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Where?’ I demanded.

  ‘Wherever you are.’

  ‘When, Inana? When will I see you again?’

  ‘In a day, a year or perhaps in a thousand years.’ I felt her body unfold to release me from her embrace and her arms slipped away.

  ‘Stay just a little longer,’ I implored her but she was already gone and I sat up. I looked around me in bewilderment. I found myself lying on my cot on the terrace of the palace. I jumped up and ran into the main bedchamber. I stopped in the middle of the large room and stared at the far wall where last I had seen the doorway to the secret garden into which Inana had flown with me. There was no doorway now.

  I crossed the floor slowly and began to examine the facing wall minutely, running my fingertips over the surface, seeking the joint between door and jamb. The plasterwork was smooth and uninterrupted. I remembered then what Inana had said to me.

  You must know, Taita, that with those of us who are gods and demi-gods all things are possible.

  It seemed that many years had passed since I had last stood on this spot. Was there such a dimension as time in that far place to which Inana had transported me? I wondered. Even if there were, perhaps time had remained frozen in this world while I was in the other with her?

  While I tried to separate reality from fantasy, and truth from falsehood, my eyes alighted on the floral display of red roses in the huge bronze amphora that stood in the centre of the floor. I crossed to it and examined the blooms on their thorny stems. They were as fresh as when I had last seen them.

  ‘They could have been renewed many times in my absence.’ I spoke aloud. Then I looked down. There was a single red blossom lying on the marble slabs. I remembered that I had snapped it off the main stem the previous afternoon to savour its perfume, and then I had dropped it to the floor for the palace servants to clear away.

  I stooped to pick it up and sniffed the bloom. It was as fragrant as when I last smelled it, and when I examined it more closely I found that although it had been without water it was not wilted, but as fresh and crisp as when I had broken it off the stem.

  Did Inana and I spend only a single night in that divine embrace and not a lifetime as I imagined? I wondered. It did not seem possible. I stood bemused, brushing the petals of the red rose against my lips.

  I heard the doors of the main apartment open and then muted voices speaking in Egyptian. ‘Who is that?’ I shouted and one of them replied:

  ‘It is I, master.’ I recognized the voice of Rustie. Moments later he appeared in the doorway of the bedchamber.

  ‘Where have you been?’ I demanded.

  ‘You told me not to awake you until the sun was above the horizon, master,’ he protested with ill-concealed indignation.

  ‘When did I tell you that?’

  ‘Last night when you dismissed me.’ So I had been away for only a single night. Then again, perhaps it had never happened. Perhaps all of it had only been a dream, but I desperately hoped not. I was already yearning for my next tryst with Inana, if of course she was real and not a phantom of my mind. Would I ever know the answer to that mystery: phantom or reality, what and who was Inana?

  ‘I had forgotten. Please forgive me, Rustie.’

  ‘Of course, master. But it is I who should apologize to you.’ Rustie is so easily mollified. He is a lovely man and I am really very fond of him. However, I reminded him sternly:
<
br />   ‘Do not forget that we are leaving for Sidon in five days’ time. You must be ready to travel again by then.’

  ‘I have already packed most of our possessions into the wagons. I can be ready to march within the hour.’

  Every hour of those last five days we spent in Babylon seemed to be filled with frantic activity. There were the last meetings with Nimrod and his council, the signing of accords between our nations, and the arrangements agreed upon for the remainder of the bullion that I had promised him to be collected by Nimrod’s minions in Thebes. I was mightily pleased that I would not be present when the promissory bond for twenty-seven lakhs of silver, which I had signed with the hawk seal, was presented to Pharaoh Tamose.

  On top of all this, there was the arrival in Babylon of the emissary that the Supreme Minos had sent to Babylon to welcome my mission and travel with us to Crete. He had sailed from Knossos in a flotilla of war galleys with his entourage. He had left the ships in the Sumerian port of Sidon and travelled overland with his entourage to meet me.

  His name was Toran, which translated from Minoan as ‘the Son of the Bull’. He was a handsome man in the prime of his life and he travelled in such state as befitted the representative of the richest and most powerful monarch on this earth. King Nimrod set aside an entire wing of the palace to accommodate his entourage. Simply to feed and entertain the Cretan visitors Nimrod was obliged to spend much of the three lakhs of silver which I had bestowed upon him. He was eager to see Toran return to his island and did all in his power to hasten his departure.

  Notwithstanding his physical beauty and regal manners Toran was one of the shrewdest and most intelligent men I had ever encountered. At our first meeting we formed a strong bond of mutual respect; almost immediately each of us recognized the superior qualities of the other.

  One of the many virtues that we shared was a loathing of the Hyksos barbarians and everything even remotely associated with them. I spent almost an hour commiserating with him on the despicable and unprovoked attack they had made on the Minoan fortress of Tamiat, and the atrocities that they had committed upon the Cretan troops that they had captured there. Toran’s youngest son was one of the junior officers whom they had beheaded after he had surrendered to them.