Whores of babylon, p.8
Whores of Babylon, page 8
And if the dragon-pirate and the hero
Could perhaps kill each other mutually
Leaving nearby for me to grasp
The hero’s fallen blooded sword
And the pirate’s sharp sea-serpent tooth
To saw my chains and shatter them
I could break free, escape, and be myself:
A priestess in some greensward temple
Close by a private fountain, where no
Intruder phantom god lurks and leers
To step out from the shade in shepherd’s guise
Or rise from the depths disguised as a naiad
With budding breasts and tresses of gold,
Before revealing - himself. But I am torn
In my heart between the fear of ravage –
And the fear of rescue from ravage;
And the desire for both these fates
Which my father taught me long ago
And my mother too, conspiring with him
Every time she combed my hair out
And anointed me with fragrant oils.
I hear a growling on the shore, the clutch
Of claws - or are those boots and weapons
Of a man? I hear a sighing in the air,
A rushing fall, as if a horse could gallop
Through the clouds, its hooves beating
Blue-black bruises in their fleece
From which the raindrops fall
Which are the tears of heaven.
Who comes from the sea?
Who comes From the sky?
A god? A man? A beast? A hero?
Or my own faint fears, shameful that they are,
The beating of my own heart in my breast,
The blood pounding in the bonds that hold me
Tight as a lover’s embrace . . .
A few days before that performance of Andromeda Alex had made his way to the junction of Esagila Street and Qasr Lane, half fearing to find no hair salon there; perhaps half hoping not to.
But sure enough, Moriel’s premises were present in the shape of a substantial corner house. Archways, equipped with stout night shutters, opened upon a ground-floor barber shop and an adjacent beauty parlour. A sign, in Greek and cuneiform, announced:
Quality private rooms upstairs. By appointment.
Outside the barber’s a tattooed slave with a sword through his belt was minding a snuffling grey mare hitched to a buggy-style chariot. Other clientele must have arrived on foot; a pair of bearded barbers and a couple of bearded coiffeurs were busily tending male and female heads in the adjoining salons. Clients sat on wooden thrones; the barbers and coiffeurs stood on low stools. The establishment was well stocked with bottles of oil and perfume, pots of unguents, ivory combs, copper tweezers, bronze scissors, manicure sets, mussel shells cradling rouge and kohl, razors, alum sticks, camel-hair brushes, basins, mirrors, curling tongs and little charcoal braziers to heat them.
Alex hung about outside while a barber put final touches to a fellow’s waved, oiled crown. The man admired himself, then paid the barber and reclaimed his hickory walking stick from an urn. Alex nipped inside and ascended the vacant throne.
‘Your pleasure, lord?’
‘Er . . . a haircut.’
‘A cut? Your hair isn’t long, so how can I cut it?’ ‘Maybe I ought to have a shave.’
The barber sandpapered his palm against Alex’s cheek. ‘The opposite, I should have thought, lord! Though if a shaved style pleases you . . .’
‘It pleases your master, Moriel. Actually, it was him I came to see. Could he attend to me?’
‘He is busy, lord. He never plies his skills downstairs. One usually makes an appointment.’
‘I believe he’ll see me, if you’ll kindly mention my name: Alex the Greek.’
‘Did I not say he is otherwise occupied, Lord Alex?’
But just then, through a reed door, Moriel himself descended. He held the reeds well aside and bowed low several times, to usher a fine lady whose red hair was a high, coiling bonfire. She too bowed low to avoid mussing her coiffure in collision with the lintel. Escorted by Moriel she minced out to the buggy, where the slave handed her aboard.
As the proprietor returned, Alex leapt up. ‘Excuse me, Moriel!’
‘Oh, it’s the regal namesake himself! What an honour; and so soon after we last met. By sheerest coincidence I have five teeny minutes to spare. Do come up.’
Moriel led the way upstairs and along a corridor to one particular airy room where gauze was stretched across the window for privacy, and as a fly net.
Mirrors and bowls, bottles, jars and combs abounded. The combs were all of silver here, the bowls of fine china. A small army of gold and silver hairgrips lay upon one shelf. On another shelf were bizarre constructions of copper wire, frameworks for future rococo coiffures. Murals decorated the plaster of three walls: plump harem odalisques bathed in marble fountains, reclined sybaritically on divans, titivated themselves amidst flowing drapery.
The client’s throne up here was a softly cushioned one, the woodwork gilded.
‘To what do I owe the pleasure? Far too soon, you know, to have solved our little puzzle - which calls for extreme discretion. And isn’t it indiscreet to arrive here without warning during business hours?’
‘Perhaps; but there’s something you should know.’
And Alex expounded a version of events which linked the ‘little scroll’ and Deborah and the man he had seen at the temple of Ishtar.
Moriel caressed his eunuch-smooth chin. ‘Hmm. Interesting.’
‘You probably saw that man. You were there too.’
‘Ah no, I fancy not. I was distracted much of the time. A veil was drawn over me.’
‘Think!’
Moriel recollected. ‘How could I ever forget such an outstanding priestess of Ishtar as you describe? My fingers would have positively itched to do her hair for her .. . unless of course I was besotted at the time through inhaling some exotic powder.’
‘Did you see her or not?’
‘Alas. Incidentally, whom are you more concerned about: him, or her?’
‘Both,’ said Alex hastily, ‘in case she tells him.’
‘Ah yes, during pillow talk what secrets spill out! So I’m told; and so I know, from experience.You might suppose that those who share my pillow are too green and unripe to spill much; at least by way of tasty secrets. But ah, theirs are often the most delicious little cherry secrets. I love to pluck the first secret of all; and sometimes, to my astonishment, I open a juvenile snake pit where all manner of corrupt - and would-be so - fruits lurk, fermenting; to mix one’s metaphors.’
‘Do I have to listen to all this? If we only have five teeny minutes!’
‘Oh, but you should. Perhaps Thessany is - was - one such snake pit; and perhaps, on the other hand, not... I have only the merest clues as to who the man you describe might have been. I shall pursue those clues assiduously. I find myself intrigued - as our mutual friend would say. Now, kindly be off with you. Await a message.’
* * *
When Alex returned to the inn from the theatre Hummum the serving woman handed him a letter: two hinged beeswaxed boards sealed with a blob of wax which was stamped with what he took at first to be a tiny picture of ram’s horns. Or cuckold’s.
‘Who delivered this?’
‘Mum-um! UM!’ responded Hummum vigorously.
On closer inspection he concluded that the seal imprint was a stylized head of hair. Hastily he returned to his room, broke the seal, opened the boards. The message, scribed in Greek capitals, ran as follows:
dear boy!
I SHALL NEED TO PAY SOME BRIBES TO SECURE INFORMATION. CREDITORS BOTHER ME, FOR PERFUMES AND COSTLY UNGUENTS RENDERED, TILL MY NOBLEST CUSTOMERS SETTLE THEIR ACCOUNTS. SUCH IS THE WAY OF THE NOBLE, ALAS1. MY BARBERS DEMAND THEIR SALARIES, NONE THE LESS. I ALSO NEED TO PAY AN OUTRAGEOUS FINE ON ACCOUNT OF A TRUMPED-UP CHARGE. OUR MUTUAL FRIEND IS AWAY FROM TOWN VISITING HER
aunt’s lands at borsippa. She will surely reimburse you,
SINCE OUR MUTUAL INTERESTS ARE INVOLVED. A MESSENGER WILL CALL AT BREAKFAST TIME TOMORROW. HE MAY BRING NEWS ABOUT THE OTHER MATTER. GIVE HIM SEVEN SILVER SHEKELS.
YOUR FRIEND, M.
Which ‘other matter’ did Moriel mean? The cassette? Or Deborah? Which? It was unclear.
Seven silver shekels. Alex had arrived in Babylon with twenty shekels in his purse. Twenty shekels was the cost of a cheap, decrepit slave; so he’d heard. (A strong, young, handsome slave could cost ninety.) The poorest-paid labourer earned ten shekels a year. Already Alex had spent a couple of shekels, and given one to Thessany at the temple. Presumably he owed Kamberchanian a shekel or more for lodgings. If he paid Moriel seven more . . . Momentarily the cold hollow clutch of impending poverty gripped his guts.
Was he being diddled? He had already parted with the ‘little scroll’. He decided not to hand over any money.
Next morning he gobbled his porridge quickly, then loitered in the courtyard pretending to admire the lone date palm, on which perched a couple of pigeons. A scraggy black cat admired the pigeons, too, from its hiding place behind a wooden water-butt. Hoping that the birds might descend into its jaws, it darted aggrieved glances at Alex.
A boy hesitated in the entrance; headed for Alex. He was barefoot, and otherwise bare apart from a brief raggy kilt. Ten or eleven years old, black-mop-headed, cooked brown by the sun and basted with dirt streaks as though he had been rolling sweatily in dust.
‘You’re from Moriel?’
The boy nodded.
‘You have some news for me?’
Another nod.
‘So tell me.’
‘Master Moriel said you must first give me some money.’ The boy skipped back a pace as though he suspected that Alex, hearing this, might grab him by the arm.
Alex shrugged. ‘First tell me the news.’
‘Master Moriel said: when you give me the money, that will prove who you are. He told me how much. You pay me, and we will see if it is the same sum. Otherwise you might be anybody.’
‘The landlord can easily assure you who I am. Shall I summon him?’
The boy shook his head. ‘Master Kamberchanian is well known for his fantasies, sir.’
One of the pigeons flapped down. The cat wriggled a while, then made an abortive rush. The bird clattered aloft unscathed, and shat from on high.
‘I have to hurry back,’ said the boy. T do have important news, which might soon be too late. But who is it for?’
‘It’s for me.’ Alex began to sidle around in the hope of blocking the boy’s exit; the boy glanced behind him and retreated.
‘This news will not wait, sir.’
‘Seven silver shekels. That was how much.’
‘But where are they? I don’t see seven shekels.’
Exasperated, Alex counted out the money, which the boy accepted with cautious, outstretched palm. As soon as he had all seven coins they vanished up and under his kilt.
‘You must hasten, sir, to the Festival Temple outside the north wall. There you will see the Greek woman and find out who the man is. The matter of the scroll is being pursued. Seven shekels will unlock a secret door. That’s all.’ And before Alex could question him, the boy fled.
‘Wait!’
From the doorway to the dining room Gupta eyed Alex with interest. He clapped his hands. ‘You have made a boy disappear! Taking your money with him. That’s a good trick.’
‘Now I’m disappearing too.’ Alex headed for the entrance, but then slowed his steps. The doorkeeper had gone off somewhere. Time was of the essence; and what was the quickest route? Much as he loathed to involve the Indian in this affair, Gupta would probably tell him the truth; whereas casual strangers might misdirect!
‘Gupta! I’m not inviting you to accompany me, do you understand?’
‘Impeccably, sahib.’
‘Can you tell me the quickest way to the Festival Temple? Please?’
‘Easy. Cut along Sin Street all the way. Pass through Sin Gate. A bridge crosses the moat. A road leads north-west to the temple. You can’t miss it.’
Nodding his thanks, Alex hurried off.
Sin, of course, was the moon-god; just as Shamash was the sun, and Ishtar, Venus. Sin was supposedly a wise old man with a lapis lazuli beard who wore an enormous turban. Sin also measured time, and since time maps out history Sin was a repository of wisdom whom other gods consulted once a month when Sin was at his brightest. The moon-god was also the enemy of night-time criminality.
As Alex hastened northwards along the street he noted signs of other sins. Early though it was, several fellows squatted or wandered vacantly, looking drugged. Was hereabouts where Moriel obtained illicit pharmaceutical exotica such as aphrodisiacs? Nor was Kamberchanian’s the only striptease parlour in the vicinity. Yet might it not be that such establishments were located here under the aegis of Sin’s watchful moon-eye as a way of emphasizing that in Babylon there was nothing evil about them whatsoever?
At Sin Gate a spear-toting guard halted Alex.
‘Where are you going, Greek?’
‘Just to the Festival Temple.’
‘You aren’t a citizen.’
‘No, not yet.’
‘Quarter of a shekel exit tax.’
Angrily Alex paid over the bronze coin. The guard produced a waxed tablet from a leather pocket.
‘Name? Date of entry? Address of lodgings?’
Fretting, Alex told him. Curling one arm round his spear for balance, the guard painstakingly inscribed the information in the wax with a bronze nib.
‘Can I go through? I’m in a hurry, man.’
‘Wait.’ The guard inscribed a copy below, then snapped the tablet in half. He handed the lower part to Alex. ‘Present this on your return. Don’t lose it or you’ll have to pay tax again.’
‘Great. Thanks.’ Alex sped through the gate, which was decorated with green rosettes and white sickle moons bobbing like boats on wavy blue water.
Sin Bridge led to a Y-fork of dusty roads, both stretching away through patchwork fields of vegetables. The temple was obvious a quarter of a mile down the left-hand road: a ziggurat glazed green like a great artichoke. A small crowd bustled about the entrance, where several chariots were parked.
Even as Alex set out from the bridge people were boarding the vehicles, horses were being unhitched. A chariot departed in the direction of the citadel further west; occupants of other chariots still conversed. He started to run.
Deborah was sitting in a chariot waiting to be pulled by a black stallion. She wore a white sari and was intent on her companion: the man with the giant turban. That grandee’s robes were sumptuous, glittering with gold thread.
Alex slowed from a sprint. The meeting had to seem spontaneous. He could hardly race up screaming Deborah’s name. But now the grandee gathered his reins. Presumably the stallion would canter off, too, towards the Ishtar Gate. To cut on to the westerly route Alex left the road and waded hastily through rows of cabbages. Reins slapped rump; the chariot started to roll.
He was still short of intercepting when the stallion trotted by. He raised a hand in salute, assuming a look of surprise and pleasure; or so he hoped.
Deborah spotted Alex and favoured him with a smile and a vague wave. She didn't ask her escort to halt the chariot.
The hell with that! The chariot wasn’t exactly racing along. Alex gained the road and jogged behind, hoping to convey an impression of voluntary exercise. He let the vehicle pull well ahead. Deborah glanced back once. As soon as the chariot passed out of sight through the gap between outer wall and citadel, he hared forward.
Reaching that gap, he could see the chariot already crossing the bridge before the Ishtar Gate. A guard blocked his way. Hastily Alex thrust the half-tablet at the man.
‘Hang on, Greek! This here’s a Sin Gate receipt.’
‘So?’
‘You have to return by the same gate.’
‘I’ll pay again!’ Alex scrabbled in his purse for another quarter-shekel, which he thrust at the guard.
‘Oh Shamash! Now I need to write another tablet.’
The chariot had passed through the gate. At this rate there’d be no hope of catching up. Alex thought of racing off; imagined a spear in his back; despaired.
‘Forget it! I’ll go back by Sin Gate.’ He reached for his coin, which had vanished deep in the guard’s clenched paw.
‘You’ve already paid me.’ The soldier was enjoying himself now.
‘I’ve changed my mind.’
‘People like you make our jobs a misery.’
‘Is this how you treat foreign guests? The money doesn’t go to you. Why should you care?’
The guard whistled to himself out of tune.
‘Oh, I see. There’s a rake-off.’
‘Goes to the upkeep of the gate. To the splendour of Ishtar, Greek!’
‘Where do you spend it? In her temple? Or up on Sin Street?’
Reluctantly the guard disgorged the coin from between the lips of his fingers. ‘I’ll remember you.’
Alex snatched his money and headed back in the direction of the temple. The previous members of the crowd who had no chariots were now returning citywards afoot. He passed several whose looks he didn’t care for before encountering a likely pair: one big and fat, the other small and skinny. Bearded Laurel and bearded Hardy, kilted and bare to the waist. The Mesopotamian - or hippopotamian - Hardy’s breasts wobbled as he walked.
‘Excuse me, sirs; please favour me with an answer?’
‘A pleasure,’ puffed Hardy, who looked relieved to halt.
‘Can you tell me what was happening just now at that temple?’
‘I can, and I will. This year’s it’s Sin’s turn to give a bride to Marduk for the sacred marriage. Sin’s priest Shazar and the bride-to-be were sacrificing on neutral ground. Entrails were being divined, and other omens. Oil on water. Drift of smoke.’
‘All excellent,’ said Laurel tersely.
‘Was Sin’s priest the man with the giant turban?’
