Creation (48 page)

When I had finished, Atossa said the awesome words “I will speak to Darius.” In all the years that I knew her, I don’t suppose that I heard her use this phrase more than three times. It was like a declaration of war. Gratefully I kissed her hand. Once again we were fellow conspirators.

I tried several times to see Mardonius, but he was too ill to receive me. The leg had turned gangrenous and there was talk of amputation. Everyone said what a shame it was that Democedes was no longer alive.

Fan Ch’ih was delighted with Babylon. “There are at least six men from Cathay living here, and one is a partner of the Egibis.” All the world knows—except Democritus—that Egibi and sons are the richest bankers in the world. For three generations they have financed caravans, fleets, wars. I never knew any of them well, but Xerxes was altogether too familiar with them. Because of his passion for building, Xerxes was constantly short of money and the Egibis were invariably helpful and sometimes reasonable. Ordinarily they lend money at twenty percent. For Xerxes, they would reduce the rate to ten percent, which made it possible for him to start if not complete a dozen palaces during his lifetime, as well as conduct the Greek wars. Xerxes’ wife Roxanna was a granddaughter of an Egibi. She was very much ashamed of a connection that very much amused him. “They cannot refuse money to a relative,” he would say.

Darius despised bankers, which was curious, since he himself was essentially a man of the marketplace. I suppose that he wanted to eliminate the middle-man. In any case, he financed the realm through tribute and plunder. According to Xerxes, Darius almost never took a loan. “But then, I don’t think my father ever understood the system.”

I never told the Great King Xerxes that there was very little about finance that his predecessor had not understood. Darius’ discounts on money turned in at the treasury were notorious. Although he is supposed to have learned the trick of short-changing the citizens from Hippias, I think that it was the other way around. On the other hand, the gold coinage was always honest in Darius’ day. “I am the archer,” he would say, ringing one of his coins on the table. “That is my face, my crown, my bow. Men must appreciate my true weight.” They did. They do. Only recently has the gold coinage been debased.

I was able to arrange several meetings between Fan Ch’ih and Xerxes. As interpreter, I saw to it that they got on well. Not only was I able to interest Xerxes in India but Fan Ch’ih’s stories of the cities of Cathay excited both of us.

“How large the world is!” Xerxes exclaimed at one point. We had just run out of maps and Fan Ch’ih was not very explicit when it came to describing the approaches to Cathay. He did tell us that there were two overland routes. One passed through the high mountains to the east of the old Shakya republic; the other crossed the wide northern desert beyond the Oxus River. Fan Ch’ih himself had come by sea to the Magadhan port of Champa. “But it took me more than a year,” he said. “And I don’t want to go back that way. I want to find a good overland route—a silk road, connecting us with you.”

Later, in Cathay, Fan Ch’ih told me that he had been deliberately vague about the approaches to what they call the Middle Kingdom because he had been overwhelmed by the immensity of Darius’ empire. “I had thought Persia would be like Magadha. Instead, I found a universal monarch who, luckily for us, had no idea just how much of a universe there is. So I decided that it would not be a good idea for him to visit Cathay. A Persian army on the Yellow River would be highly disturbing.”

Note the contrast between a man of Cathay and a Greek. Out of injured self-esteem, the Greek is always ready to betray his native land. Although the Middle Kingdom is split into dozens of warring states, no man of Cathay—except, perhaps the so-called son of heaven—would dream of asking help from the army of an alien race. The yellow people are not only exceptionally intelligent, they are perfectly convinced that of all the world’s people they are unique. In their eyes,
we
are barbarians! That’s why only a few adventurous souls like Fan Ch’ih ever leave Cathay. The rest are indifferent to what lies beyond their Middle Kingdom.

Fan Ch’ih had been quick to make a number of business arrangements with Egibi and sons. Skillfully he exploited their passion for silk or Cathay cloth. He sold what he had; bought what he could afford; borrowed against future profits.

While I was still waiting for a private audience with the Great King, Fan Ch’ih had managed to finance a convoy of cargo ships to take him to India, where he would transfer his goods to a caravan. Then he would cross India and enter Cathay through the high mountains, a long and hazardous journey of the sort that young men embark upon without a second thought.

After a brief period of mourning for Parmys, Darius held a levee and I took this opportunity to present Fan Ch’ih at court. At first there were all sorts of objections from the second room of the chancellery. Was the yellow man really an ambassador? If so, from what king? If he was simply a merchant, he could not be received. That was definite. Finally Xerxes intervened and Ambassador Fan Ch’ih was commanded to attend the Great King and present him with the duke of Lu’s acknowledgment of the Great King’s lordship over him.

At noon we arrived in the hall of columns. Xerxes had only just finished this handsome building, situated to the northwest of the palace. I was received courteously by the court chamberlain. I was treated gravely by the Persian nobles, who have never quite known what to make of me. On principle, they do not like priests. Yet I am no more a priest than I am a noble. Nevertheless, though not one thing or the other, I am close to the royal family, and so all the nobles offer me polite smiles, proffered cheeks, whispered compliments—all except for Gobryas. He never gave me more than a nod. As part of the Atossa-Xerxes faction, I was the enemy. I noted that the old man’s whiskers had undergone yet another transformation. From a harsh red, they had changed like autumn leaves to a dull gold.

Although Mardonius was nowhere in sight, more than a hundred of the Great King’s sons and nephews were present. For the first time I saw Artaphrenes, the son of the satrap of Lydia. He looked like his father except for the expression of the face, which was positively stone-like with ambition. At his side was the Median admiral Datis, whom I had met years before at the hunting lodge on the road to Pasargada.

The Greek contingent was grouped to the left of the throne. Hippias looked very old; but resolute. He clung to the arm of Milo, now a handsome man. I bowed to Hippias. I embraced Milo, who said with wonder, “You’ve turned black.”

“Too much fire eating,” I said, backing off. I did not want to speak to the king of Sparta.

Fan Ch’ih stayed close to me. The nobles stared at him as if he were some sort of strange animal. He stared right back. Although Persian architecture was not to his taste, he did admire the splendor of the costumes. “Only,” he asked suddenly, “where are the Egibis?”

“This is the court.” I thought that was answer enough.

“I know. I also know that they lend money to the crown prince. So why aren’t they here?”

“This is the court,” I repeated. “The Egibis are bankers, merchants. The Great King cannot receive them.”

“But his family does business with them.”

“Yes, but only in private. At court, only the nobles may wait upon the Great King. Isn’t it the same in Cathay?”

“It has been said that, perhaps, it was so in the old days.” Fan Ch’ih was a master of the uninformative reference, usually attributed to his teacher, Master K’ung. In each of the Great King’s capitals, court ceremonial conforms to whatever protocol obtained before the creation of the Persian empire. At Memphis, he is pharaoh, and a god. At holy Pasargada, he is clan leader. At Babylon, he is a Chaldean king whose power is granted him by a priesthood who takes the line that although the city might currently belong to a mortal Persian king, the court’s ceremonial must never cease to be anything less than an earthly reflection of Bel-Marduk’s immortal glory. As a result, musicians play music rather more suitable for an evening with prostitutes than for a levee of the Great King while temple dancers make distractingly obscene movements as they render homage to Ishtar who is Cybele who is Anahita who is Diana who is—everywhere!

At Babylon the high priest of Bel-Marduk acts as master of ceremonies. That day the high priest was in excellent voice. He stood at the entrance to the hall of columns and howled at us in old Chaldean. Then the guards commander roared, “The Great King Darius, lord of all the lands, king of Babel, king of kings!”

Darius appeared in the doorway, the sun behind him. As he put his foot on the long Sardis rug that leads to the throne, we prostrated ourselves.

The Great King was dressed in the purple Median robe that only the sovereign may wear. On his head was the high felt cidaris circled by Cyrus’ blue-and-white fillet. In his right hand, he held the golden sceptre; in his left hand, he held the golden lotus. The court chamberlain carried the ceremonial fly whisk and folded napkin. The guards commander carried the footstool. A member of the Babylonian royal family held the traditional golden parasol over the Great King’s head. This particular parasol had belonged to the ancient Assyrian kings. A few paces behind the Great King walked the crown prince.

As Darius made his slow stately progress down the center of the hall, the priests of Bel-Marduk began solemnly to chant. Although we were supposed to be looking at the redwash floor, we were all watching the Great King.

Darius was now blond as a Scythian. I looked for signs of age, and found them—always an easy thing to do, except in one’s own mirror. Several months earlier, Darius had suffered some kind of paralysis. As a result, he dragged, very slightly, his left leg, and the left hand, which held the lotus, looked stiff. Later I was told that Darius had no strength at all in the entire left side of his body and that the lotus had been tied to his fingers.

Nevertheless, Darius’ face was still handsome and he did not seem to be more than usually painted. The blue eyes were clear. Even so, the contrast between him and Xerxes was altogether too vivid. Xerxes was half a head taller than his father; and he was young. In Xerxes’ left hand was a golden lotus. The right hand was still empty. I suspect that Darius was perfectly aware that there was no one in that hall who was not wondering how long it would be before there was a new occupant of the lion throne—except that the lion throne was not used in Babylon. At the insistence of the priests, the Great King was obliged to sit in a somewhat unimpressive gilded chair that had been used by the Akkadian kings for a thousand years, or so the high priest maintained. When Babylon rebelled for the last time, Xerxes had the chair chopped up and burned. As Xerxes watched the smoky flames, he said, “You see, I was right! It’s new wood. They fake everything here.”

The cult of antiquity has always been a kind of madness at Babylon. Credit for this must be given to Nabonidus, the last Babylonian king. He spent his life digging up forgotten cities. When Cyrus Invaded Babylonia, Nabonidus was so busy trying to decipher the contents of the foundation stone of a thirty-two-century-old temple that he never noticed that he was no longer king until he returned to the city one evening and found Cyrus in residence at the new palace. At least that’s the story the black-haired people like to tell. Actually, Nabonidus was captured, imprisoned, freed. He then went back to his digging.

Between Nabonidus and his friend Amasis, the pharaoh of Egypt, the past was—and is—constantly being not only disinterred but imitated. Nothing can ever be old enough or ugly enough for the true lover of antiquity; Worse, all sorts of long-forgotten religious rites have been revived, particularly in Egypt. To Cyrus’ ever-lasting shame, he encouraged the antiquarian passion of his Babylonian and Egyptian subjects; worse, it was his policy to identify the Achaemenids with every extinct dynasty of any note. Except for Xerxes, all of his successors have continued the madness. For more than twenty years a dozen Magians labored in a back room of the palace at Susa inventing plausible genealogies for Darius. Eventually he was related to everyone from Zeus to Amon Ra, and always in the direct line!

Darius took his seat. Xerxes stood behind him. We got to our feet and stood, hands in our sleeves, heads respectfully bowed. The Babylonian high priest intoned the Great King’s titles; then followed an erotic dance by women from Ishtar’s temple. The whole ceremony was very un-Persian.

Armed with lists, the court chamberlain began to whisper into Darius’ ear things that he needed to know. Since Darius was now rather deaf, there was a good deal of confusion. Quite often the wrong person was awarded the command of a nonexistent frontier post. Nevertheless, Darius insisted that he alone make every appointment, unlike Xerxes, who turned over to the chancellery all routine assignments. As a result, Darius never lost control of the machinery of a government which Xerxes never mastered.

Darius then spoke of general matters. From time to time he would mispronounce simple words, a characteristic of those who have suffered a partial or whole paralysis of the left side. Democedes once told me that there is absolutely nothing to be done when this has happened. But if the patient is a powerful and willful man, certain herb poultices can be prescribed on the ground that “they will cause the patient practically no harm.” He was a rare physician.

All was well on the northern borders, said Darius. The tribes were quiet. There had been civil disobedience in Armenia. The Great King had put a stop to it. There were the usual alarms out of Egypt. But Egypt was like Babylon, filled with religious fanatics, madmen, adventurers. The Great King had restored tranquillity.

As Darius spoke, I watched the Greeks. Demaratus and Hippias jointly headed a group of perhaps twenty exiles. Except for Hippias, there were no longer any tyrants at the court. That era was finished. The current Greeks were disgruntled generals, admirals, magistrates, who felt, often rightly, that they had been ill treated by the various democracies. The Athenians were particularly bitter. But then, the Athenian assembly is uncommonly perverse. Any citizen can be sent packing if a majority of the city’s occasionally corrupt but always frivolous assembly votes for ostracism. Sooner or later just about every distinguished man of state is exiled. Democritus thinks that I exaggerate. I don’t. One day they will rid themselves of General Pericles simply because he bores them. “In the matter of the west.” Darius crossed his arms. Sceptre and lotus changed sides just as crook and flail do when Egypt’s pharaoh chooses to symbolize his dominion over the double realm.