The Assyrian (22 page)

And drunk we did get—wildly, gloriously
drunk. We held riot through the streets of Nincveh, turning over
beer pots and tumbling tavern harlots as if we two were a
conquering army and had taken the place by storm. We brought the
woman Leah with us, Esarhaddon leading her about by a thin silver
chain through the ring in her nose—the man who had put it there was
wise, for although I could only understand one word in three of her
heavily accented Aramaic, it was clear that in that tongue at least
she was as fractious a creature as ever drew breath. Finally, out
of simple curiosity and when I was drunk enough, I accepted
Esarhaddon’s oft repeated imitation and took her aside into a wine
shop storeroom and went into her, and never have I known a greedier
woman. She would not be content and when I had spent myself she
slipped her lips over my member, holding me tightly with her mouth
until, faster than I would have thought possible, she had brought
me back to full vigor. When I came away my groin ached like an old
wound in the cold.

There was not more than an hour to dawn by
the time we found our way back to the house of war, so we headed to
the steam house to sweat ourselves sober. We sat upon the cedar
benches mopping our limbs, and Leah, her fine linens stripped off
and tied around her waist as if they were rags, tended the fire for
us and poured water on the baking rocks. The sight of her made my
head ache.

“How is it her hair is that color?” I asked,
for it poured down her naked back and in the dull lantern light
seemed almost ready to catch fire of itself.

Esarhaddon, who had not finished with his
debauch and was busy breaking the seal on a final jar of Babylonian
beer, looked up to see what I was talking about and then grinned
and winked at me.

“She soaks it in wine six times in the month
and spreads it out over the brim of a wide straw hat with no crown,
letting it dry in the sun. Why? Did you think she was born like
that? Brother, such women do everything by magic. The west is a
land filled with wondrous things—I have been to Judah, where the
holy men work such spells that they are more powerful than the
kings. And you should see the Egyptian harlots in Damascus—someday
I will conquer that land just so I can have my fill of them. But by
the sixty great gods, Tiglath Ashur, son of Sennacherib, where
within the four corners of the world did you collect all those
gaudy scars?”

“I will tell you all my stories for a taste
of that beer—my tongue feels as thick and dry as a clay
tablet.”

In the end I told him all my stories,
everything that had happened since his departure for the west,
including my conversation with the Lord Sinahiusur.

“Did you believe him, Tiglath?” he asked. For
a man who had just been told he stood near to inheriting the
mastery of the world, he did not seem greatly pleased. “I mean, do
you really imagine it could be possible? One of us, the king?”

“Yes, I imagine it possible. After all, the
god could carry a village plowman to the throne of Ashur if it
suited his purposes. You and I are the sons of a king, and you by
his lawful wife. If the omens are indeed unfavorable for Arad
Ninlil—or if he should die—why not?”

I found myself watching Leah with nervous
interest. Nothing I had been saying was actually treasonous, but it
was not wise to speculate too openly about things touching the
succession. She, however, was busy splashing her body from a bucket
of cold water and seemed to regard our conversation with the
indifference of total incomprehension.

“Calm yourself, brother. She does not
understand one Akkadian word in five, and does not care. She is
like a cat—if she can groom herself, stretch out in the sun with a
full belly, and find a hot male to service her, she is happy. Her
mind turns on nothing else. This one is no Naq’ia.”

With the mention of his mother’s name,
Esarhaddon’s face darkened.

“It would answer all her prayers, wouldn’t
it,” he went on, his voice taking on a hard edge. “Then she would
have the power she has dreamed of all her life.”

“You would be king in this land, brother—not
she. You could do what you liked with her, send her to some
comfortable oblivion where she could content herself with ruling
over her women. You are not hiding your face in her skirt now.”

“Am I not? You think not?” He laughed,
throwing back his head, but it was a bitter sound. “I have not seen
her in years, Tiglath, but still I feel her fingers about my neck.
No—even as king I would never be strong enough to stand up to
her.

“Besides, I do not even want to be king.” He
stood up and shook himself, making the sweat dance from his body
like rain. “You can be king with my blessing. You are the clever
one—you would do very well as king. For myself, I am a soldier, not
an intriguer.”

“But you will have Naq’ia, and she is
intriguer enough for the pair of you.”

“By Adad’s thunder, you speak truth, Tiglath
Ashur—but would you want that breasted jackal settling the destiny
of the world? No, no more I!”

And then he laughed again, and the cloud
lifted from him. We finished the beer and broke the jug against the
steam house wall, and we were gay and carefree once more.

“I have it, brother!” he roared, his arm over
my shoulder as naked we walked back to the officer’s barrack, Leah
carrying our clothes and lighting the way for us with a lamp, for
it was still short of dawn. “If I am king, you shall be my turtanu,
and if you are king you can spend all your royal vigor on the Lady
Esharhamat and I shall be master of your house of women—hah, hah,
hah!”

. . . . .

The temple of Ishtar saw a great deal of me
in those days. In keeping with my resolution, I wore myself out on
the cult priestesses, and on those evenings when I was not paying
my devotions to the goddess I was carousing through the city with
Esarhaddon, drinking wine until my head throbbed and rutting on
tavern harlots. Wherever we went Esarhaddon brought Leah along,
leading her by the silver chain that ran through her nose ring—he
even took her with him when he visited the sleeping mats of other
women, since during his time in the west he had developed a taste
for taking his pleasure thus. He once said it was his ambition to
buy a pair of identical twins to keep as concubines. “Two women as
alike as a pair of hands,” he would say. “I wouldn’t wish to be
able to tell one from the other, like one woman with two bodies—I
might even give them both the same name. That would be luxury!” And
while he spoke thus, sitting on a bench in the steam house with a
cold cloth and a pot of beer, Leah, as silent and practiced as a
dairymaid, would kneel between his feet and milk him dry.

And thus the moon dwindled to a sliver and
grew fat again as I spent the days in preparation for war and my
nights in debauchery. But if I thought that thus occupied with
drill and whoring I had escaped from Esharhamat, I was greatly
mistaken. I could stumble back to my quarters within two hours of
dawn, my brain numb and my manhood wrung out and shriveled like a
date husk after pressing, yet I had only to lie down upon my pallet
and close my eyes and her unbidden memory would flood into my mind.
I had learned how little this torment of love has to do with the
body, but I had learned nothing else—nothing that would allow me to
find an instant’s peace.

And so when the hour came, as I had known it
would, that I returned from the parade ground to find an enclosed
carrying chair waiting for me beside the entrance to the officers’
barrack, I knew that within would be one of Esharhamat’s women,
shrouded in veils and secrecy. I had only to push the curtain aside
and a narrow hand emerged to press into mine a wooden tablet no
wider than the span of a lady’s fingers and coated on one side with
wax. Scratched into the wax was Esharhamat’s message: “Why do you
never come now? How am I to endure life if my eyes never see your
face? Come, or I shall perish of grief that my ghost may haunt you
in the darkness. Come, or I shall know you love me not.”

Even as I stood staring at the words, there
was a knock from within the curtained chair and the bearers
scrambled to their feet. There was no need to wait for an answer,
for Esharhamat must have known she had won. I went to my room and
threw the wooden tablet onto the brazier, and as I listened to the
wax hiss as it burned I realized that what I felt most deeply was
relief. I would see her again. I could surrender now to what I had
always known would be my undoing. I must love Esharhamat while I
lived.

The next morning I dismissed my soldiers to a
day of rest, put on my best uniform, and walked through the gateway
across the dusty patch of ground that divided the house of war from
the palace where dwelt my father the king and all the members of
his household. All this time, nothing had separated me from her but
a few mud brick walls.

When I was shown into her garden I saw her
sitting beside the fountain, dressed as she had been that first
morning outside the Great Gate, in the costume of mourning with the
red widow’s shawl covering her hair. I stood before her and she
looked up into my face, and her brilliant black eyes were wet with
tears.

“I seem always to be weeping for you,
Tiglath.” she said, burying her glance in the stone floor at her
feet. “For your danger or your unkindness—it is the same, since it
seems I must lose you to one or the other.”

“Is that why you are in mourning?” I asked. I
could not help but smile, since the device was so transparent.

“Have you not made my heart a widow,
Tiglath?”

I took my place beside her, but though I was
close enough that my arm touched hers she would not look at me
again. I covered her hand with mine, but she drew it away. It
seemed I was in deep disgrace.

And while she pouted thus, and I struggled
with myself to find some word to speak to her, I looked about me
and saw with no little shock of surprise that we were completely
alone. It had never happened before that Esharhamat had received me
without some two or three of her women in discreet attendance at
the opposite side of the garden, chattering among themselves like
monkeys. It could only be that their mistress had made a point of
sending them away.

“I hear you spend almost all your evenings
with the harlots at the temple of Ishtar,” she said at last. “And
when you are not with them, you crawl through the wine shops and
brothels with Esarhaddon. I hear the two of you keep your own
courtesan, whom you lead about on a leash.”

“And who speaks to you of such things,
Esharhamat?”

“No one—everyone. It is the common gossip of
the palace. I listen as to a thing indifferent, the doings of a
stranger.”

“Then you have grown indifferent to me?”

I made so bold as to put my arm about her
waist and for an instant—merely an instant—she seemed to pull away
from me, but then I had no difficulty drawing her into my embrace.
We were playing a game, only that. I think we both understood
clearly enough who was surrendering to whom.

“Oh, Tiglath,” she said, burying her face in
my chest, “is the company of these women so much more to your
liking than is mine? Do they give you such pleasure then that you
would desert me utterly? Oh, Tiglath, how unhappy you make me!”

She wept miserably, shaking in my arms as if
the falling sickness were upon her. It was one of the most joyful
moments of my life.

At last, when her tears had dried against my
tunic, she seemed to rest, holding my free hand in her lap with
both of hers. She was quiet, and I could hear her breathing deeply
as if in sleep. My bowels were melting in tenderness—what would I
not have done or suffered for her sake then? The shawl had slipped
down from her head and with my lips I could find the part in her
shining hair, black as the waters of death.

“You must not take pleasure with other
women,” she whispered, almost as one speaking in a dream. “Whatever
you would have from them I can give you. You see, Tiglath? I am
grown myself into a woman, and I think you would find me fair.”

With a quick movement she reached up and
undid one of the clasps of her tunic. Then she took my hand and
slid it inside so that it rested over her breast, which was firm
and tight, and I could feel her heart beating just beneath. The
flesh was as smooth as alabaster, and the nipple pressed against my
palm with an urgency of its own. When I let my hand slide across it
she moaned softly and raised her face to look at me and my lips
found hers and kissed them hungrily, for I was stirred to the
soul.

“I would spill the blood of my maidenhead for
you, Tiglath. I would do it now if you wished it. I belong to
you—my heart and my body are yours, now and always.”

Her quick little tongue darted into my mouth
and felt nervously along the tip of mine. Her breathing was quick
and hot. She meant everything that she said, for her hands carried
the same message and they glided up my thighs and cupped around my
member, hard as bronze.

Desire closed off my voice and clouded over
my eyes. Where had she learned such arts, I wondered in my choking
passion. Or perhaps these are things the knowledge of which women
have as a birthright. Not even the most skillful of harlots had
ever aroused such longing in me.

She undid a second clasp on her tunic and it
fell away, sliding down her arms, leaving her exposed from shoulder
to navel. Her skin was a pale pink, for she blushed even to her
breasts at her own boldness. My hands covered them, as if I would
protect her modesty, and I kissed her throat, letting my lips drift
down and down. . .

“This will not do.” I said—I found I had just
voice enough for that. I lifted her tunic back up to cover her
shoulders, wanting her more than ever now. “This is madness,
Esharhamat, my love, my—”