Gilgamesh in the Outback Part 3

"Thank you, my lord," Gilgamesh muttered, trying to keep the irony from his tone.

The doctor appeared almost at once, as though he had been waiting in an antechamber. Another of Prester John's little games, perhaps? He was a burly, broad- shouldered, bushy-haired man of more than middle years, with a manner about him that was brisk and bustling but nevertheless warm, concerned, rea.s.suring. Drawing Gilgamesh down beside him on a low divan covered with the gray-green hide of some scaly h.e.l.l-dragon, he peered into the wound, muttered something unintelligible to himself in a guttural language unknown to the Sumerian, and pressed his thick fingers around the edges of the torn flesh until fresh blood flowed. Gilgamesh hissed sharply but did not flinch.

"Ach, mein lieber freund, I must hurt you again, but it is for your own good.Verstehen sie ?"

The doctor's fingers dug in more deeply. He was spreading the wound, swabbing it, cleansing it with some clear fluid that stung like a hot iron. The pain was so intense that there was almost a kind of pleasure in it: it was a purifying kind of pain, a purging of the soul.

Prester John said, "How bad is it, Dr. Schweitzer?"

"Gott sei dank, it is deep but clean. He will heal without damage."

He continued to probe and cleanse, murmuring softly to Gilgamesh as he worked: "Bitte. Bitte. Einen augenblick, mein freund." To Prester John he said, "This man is made of steel. No nerves at all, immense resistance to pain. We have one of the great heroes here,nicht wahr ? You are Roland, are you? Achilles, perhaps?"

"Gilgamesh is his name," said Yeh-lu Ta-shih.

The doctor's eyes grew bright. "Gilgamesh! Gilgamesh of Sumer?Wunderbar!

Wunderbar! The very man. The seeker after life.Ach , we must talk, my friend, you and I, when you are feeling better." From his medical kit he now produced a frightful- looking hypodermic syringe. Gilgamesh watched as though from a vast distance, as though that throbbing swollen arm belonged to someone else. "Ja, Ja, certainly we must talk, of life, of death, of philosophy,mein freund , ofphilosophy ! There is so very much for us to discuss!" He slipped the needle beneath Gilgamesh's skin.

"There.Genug. Sit. Rest. The healing now begins."

Robert Howard had never seen anything like it. It could have been something straight from the pages of one of his Conan stories. The big ox had taken an arrow right through the fat part of his arm, and he had simply yanked it out and gone right on fighting. Then, afterward, he had behaved as if the wound were nothing more than a scratch, all that time while they were driving hour after hour toward Prester John's city and then undergoing lengthy interrogation by the court officials and then standing through this whole endless ceremony at court-G.o.d almighty, what a display of endurance! True, Gilgamesh had finally gone a little wobbly and had actually seemed on the verge of pa.s.sing out. But any ordinary mortal would have conked out long ago.

Heroes reallywere different. They were another breed altogether. Look at him now, sitting there casually while that old German medic swabs him out and st.i.tches him up in that slapdash cavalier way, and not a whimper out of him. Not a whimper!

Suddenly Howard found himself wanting to go over there to Gilgamesh, to comfort him, to let him lean his head back against him while the doctor worked him over, to wipe the sweat from his brow- Yes, to comfort him in an open, rugged, manly way- No. No. No. No.

There it was again, the horror, the unspeakable thing, the hideous crawling h.e.l.l- borne impulse rising out of the cesspools of his soul- Howard fought it back. Blotted it out, hid it from view. Denied that it had ever entered his mind.

To Lovecraft he said, "That's some doctor! Took his medical degree at the Chicago slaughterhouses, I reckon!"

"Don't you know who he is, Bob?"

"Some old Dutchman who wandered in here during a sandstorm and never bothered to leave."

"Does the name of Dr. Schweitzer mean nothing to you?"

Howard gave Lovecraft a blank look. "Guess I never heard it much in Texas."

"Oh, Bob, Bob, why must you always pretend to be such a cowboy? Can you tell me you've never heard of Schweitzer?Albert Schweitzer? The great philosopher, theologian, musician-there never was a greater interpreter of Bach, and don't tell me you don't know Bach either-"

"She-it, H.P., you talking about that old country doctor there?"

"Who founded the leprosy clinic in Africa, at Lambarene, yes. Who devoted his life to helping the sick, under the most primitive conditions, in the most remote forests of-"

"Hold on, H.P. That can't be so."

"That one man could achieve so much? I a.s.sure you, Bob, he was quite well known in our time-perhaps not in Texas, I suppose, but nevertheless-"

"No. Not that he could do all that. But that he's here. In h.e.l.l. If that old geezer's everything you say, then he's a G.o.dd.a.m.nedsaint . Unless he beat his wife when no one was looking, or something like that. What's a saint doing in h.e.l.l, H.P.?" "What arewe doing in h.e.l.l?" Lovecraft asked.

Howard reddened and looked away. "Well, I suppose, there were things in our lives-things that might be considered sins, in the strictest sense-"

"No one understands the rules of h.e.l.l, Bob," said Lovecraft gently. "Sin may have nothing to do with it. Gandhi is here, do you realize that? Confucius. Werethey sinners? Was Moses? Abraham? We've tried to impose our own pitiful shallow beliefs, our pathetic grade-school notions of punishment for bad behavior, on this incredibly bizarre place where we find ourselves. By what right? We don't begin to comprehend what h.e.l.l really is. All we know is that it's full of heroic villains and villainous heroes-and people like you and me-and it seems that Albert Schweitzer is here, too. A great mystery. But perhaps someday-"

"Shh," Howard said. "Prester John's talking to us."

"My lords amba.s.sador-"

Hastily they turned toward him. "Your majesty?" Howard said.

"This mission that has brought you here: your king wants an alliance, I suppose?

What for? Against whom? Quarreling with some pope again, is he?"

"With his daughter, I'm afraid," said Howard.

Prester John looked bored. He toyed with his emerald scepter. "Mary, you mean?"

"Elizabeth, your majesty," Lovecraft said.

"Your king's a most quarrelsome man. I'd have thought there were enough popes in h.e.l.l to keep him busy, though, and no need to contend with his daughters."

"They are the most contentious women in h.e.l.l," Lovecraft said. "Blood of his blood, after all, and each of them a queen with a noisy, brawling kingdom of her own.

Elizabeth, my lord, is sending a pack of her explorers to the Outback, and King Henry doesn't like the idea."

"Indeed," said Yeh-lu Ta-shih, suddenly interested again. "And neither do I. She has no business in the Outback. It's not her territory. The rest of h.e.l.l should be big enough for Elizabeth. What is she looking for here?"

"The sorcerer John Dee has told her that the way out of h.e.l.l is to be found in these parts."

"There is no way out of h.e.l.l."

Lovecraft smiled. "I'm not any judge of that, your majesty. Queen Elizabeth, in any event, has given credence to the notion. Her Walter Raleigh directs the expedition, and the geographer Hakluyt is with him, and a force of five hundred soldiers. They move diagonally across the Outback just to the south of your domain, following some chart that Dr. Dee has obtained for them. He had it from Cagliostro, they say, who bought it from Hadrian when Hadrian was still supreme commander of h.e.l.l's legions.

It is allegedly an official Satanic doc.u.ment."

Prester John did not appear to be impressed. "Let us say, for argument's sake, that thereis an exit from h.e.l.l. Why would Queen Elizabeth desire to leave? h.e.l.l's not so bad. It has its minor discomforts, yes, but one learns to cope with them. Does she think she'd be able to reign in Heaven as she does here-a.s.suming there's a Heaven at all, which is distinctly not proven?"

"Elizabeth has no real interest in leaving h.e.l.l herself, majesty," Howard said. "What King Henry fears is that if she does find the way out, she'll claim it for her own and set up a colony around it, and charge a fee for pa.s.sing through the gate. No matter where it takes you, the king reckons there'll be millions of people willing to risk it, and Elizabeth will wind up cornering all the money in h.e.l.l. He can't abide that notion, d'ye see? He thinks she's already too smart and aggressive by half, and he hates the idea that she might get even more powerful. There's something mixed into it having to do with Queen Elizabeth's mother, too-that was Anne Boleyn, Henry's second wife.

She was a wild and wanton one, and he cut her head off for adultery, and now he thinks that Anne's behind Elizabeth's maneuvers, trying to get even with him by-"

"Spare me these details," said Yeh-lu Ta-shih with some irritation. "What does Henry expect me to do?"

"Send troops to turn the Raleigh expedition back before it can find anything useful to Elizabeth."

"And in what way do I gain from this?"

"If the exit from h.e.l.l's on your frontier, your majesty, do you really want a bunch of Elizabethan Englishmen setting up a colony next door to you?"

"There is no exit from h.e.l.l," Prester John said complacently once again.

"But if they set up a colony anyway?"

Prester John was silent a moment. "I see," he said finally.

"In return for your aid," Howard said, "we're empowered to offer you a trade treaty on highly favorable terms."

"Ah."

"And a guarantee of military protection in the event of the invasion of your realm by a hostile power."

"If King Henry's armies are so mighty, why does he not deal with the Raleigh expedition himself?"

"There was no time to outfit and dispatch an army across such a great distance," said Lovecraft. "Elizabeth's people had already set out before anything was known of the scheme."

"Ah," said Yeh-lu Ta-shih.

"Of course," Lovecraft went on, "there were other princes of the Outback that King Henry might have approached. Moammar Khadafy's name came up, and one of the a.s.syrians-a.s.surnasirpal, I think-and someone mentioned Mao Tse-tung. No, King Henry said, let us ask the aid of Prester John, for he is a monarch of great puissance and grandeur, whose writ is supreme throughout the far reaches of h.e.l.l. Prester John, indeed, that is the one whose aid we must seek!"

A strange new sparkle had come into Yeh-lu Ta-shih's eyes. "You were considering an alliance with Mao Tse-tung?"

"It was merely a suggestion, your majesty."

"Ah. I see." The emperor rose from his throne. "Well, we must consider these matters more carefully, eh? We must not come hastily to a decision." He looked across the great vaulted throne room to the divan where Dr. Schweitzer still labored over Gilgamesh's wound. "Your patient, doctor-what's the report?"

"A man of steel, majesty, a man of steel!Gott sei dank , he heals before my eyes!"

"Indeed. Come, then. You will all want to rest, I think; and then you shall know the full hospitality of Prester John."

The full hospitality of Prester John, Gilgamesh soon discovered, was no trifling affair.

He was led off to a private chamber with walls lined with black felt-a kind of indoor tent-where three serving-girls who stood barely hip-high to him surrounded him, giggling, and took his clothing from him. Gently they pushed him into a huge marble cistern full of warm milk, where they bathed him lovingly and ma.s.saged his aching body in the most intimate manner. Afterward they robed him in intricate vestments of yellow silk.

Then they conveyed him to the emperor's great hall, where the whole court was gathered, a glittering and resplendent mult.i.tude. Some sort of concert was under way, seven solemn musicians playing harsh screeching tw.a.n.ging music. Gongs crashed, a trumpet blared, pipes uttered eerie piercing sounds. Servants showed Gilgamesh to a place of honor atop a pile of furry blankets heaped high with velvet cushions.

Lovecraft and Howard were already there, garbed like Gilgamesh in magnificent silks. Both of them looked somewhat unsettled-unhinged, even. Howard, flushed and boisterous, could barely sit still: he laughed and waved his arms around and kicked his heels against the furs, like a small boy who has done something very naughty and is trying to conceal it by being over-exuberant. Lovecraft, on the other hand, seemed dazed and dislocated, with the gla.s.sy-eyed look of someone who has recently been clubbed.

These are two very odd men indeed, Gilgamesh thought. One works hard at being loud and l.u.s.ty, and now and then gives you a glimpse of a soul boiling with wild fantasies of swinging swords and rivers of blood. But in reality he seems terrified of everything. The other, though he is weirdly remote and austere, is apparently not quite as crazy, but he too gives the impression of being at war with himself, in terror of allowing any sort of real human feeling to break through the elaborate facade of his mannerisms. The poor fools must have been scared silly when the serving-girls started stripping them and pouring warm milk over them and stroking their bodies. No doubt they haven't recovered yet from all that nasty pleasure, Gilgamesh thought. He could imagine their cries of horror as the little Mongol girls started going to work on them.What are you doing? Leave my trousers alone! Don't touch me there! Please-no-ooh-ah-ooh! Oooh!

Yeh-lu Ta-shih, seated upon a high throne of ivory and onyx, waved grandly to him, one great king to another. Gilgamesh gave him an almost imperceptible nod by way of acknowledgment. All this pomp and formality bored him hideously. He had endured so much of it in his former life, after all. And thenhe had been the one on the high throne, but even then it had been nothing but a bore. And now- But this was no more boring than anything else. Gilgamesh had long ago decided that that was the true curse of h.e.l.l: all striving was meaningless here, mere thunder without the lightning. And there was no end to it. You might die again now and then if you were careless or unlucky, but back you came for another turn, sooner or later, at the Undertaker's whim. There was no release from the everlastingness of it all.

Once he had yearned desperately for eternal life, and he had learned that he could not have such a thing, at least not in the world of mortal men. But now indeed he had come to a place where he would live forever, so it seemed, and yet there was no joy in it. His fondest dream now was simply to serve his time in h.e.l.l and be allowed to sleep in peace forever. He saw no way of attaining that. Life here just went on and on-very much like this concert, this endless skein of tw.a.n.gs and plinks and screeches.

Someone with the soft face of a eunuch came by and offered him a morsel of grilled meat. Gilgamesh knew he would pay for it later-you always did, when you ate something in h.e.l.l-but he was hungry now, and he gobbled it. And another, and another, and a flagon of fermented mare's milk besides.

A corps of dancers appeared, men and women in flaring filmy robes. They were doing things with swords and flaming torches. A second eunuch brought Gilgamesh a tray of mysterious sugary delicacies, and he helped himself with both hands, heedless of the consequences. He was ravenous. His body, as it healed, was calling furiously for fuel. Beside him, the man Howard was swilling down the mare's milk as if it were water and getting tipsier and tipsier, and the other, the one called Lovecraft, sat morosely staring at the dancers without touching a thing. He seemed to be shivering as though in the midst of a snowstorm.

Gilgamesh beckoned for a second flagon. Just then the doctor arrived and settled down cheerfully on the heap of blankets next to him. Schweitzer grinned his approval as Gilgamesh took a hearty drink. "Fuhlen Sie sich besser, mein Held, eh?The arm, it no longer gives you pain? Already the wound is closing. So quickly you repair yourself! Such strength, such power and healing! You are G.o.d's own miracle, dear Gilgamesh. The blessing of the Almighty is upon you." He seized a flagon of his own from a pa.s.sing servant, quaffed it, made a face. "Ach, this milk-wine of theirs!

Andach, ach , thisverfluchte music! What I would give for the taste of decent Moselle on my tongue now, eh, and the sound of the D minor toccata and fugue in my ears!

Bach-do you know him?"

"Who?"

"Bach! Bach, Johann Sebastian Bach. The greatest of musicians, G.o.d's own poet in sound. I saw him once, just once, years ago." Schweitzer's eyes were glowing. "I was new here. Not two weeks had I been here. It was at the villa of King Friedrich- Frederick the Great, you know him? No? The king of Prussia?Der alte Fritz? No matter. No matter.Es macht nichts. A man entered, ordinary, you would never notice him in a crowd, yes? And began to play the harpsichord, and he had not played three measures when I said, 'This is Bach, this must be the actual Bach,' and I would have dropped down on my knees before him but that I was ashamed. And it was he. I said to myself, 'Why is it that Bach is in h.e.l.l?' But then I said, as perhaps you have said, as I think everyone here must say at one time or another, 'Why is it thatSchweitzer is in h.e.l.l?' And I knew that it is that G.o.d is mysterious. Perhaps I was sent here to minister to the d.a.m.ned. Perhaps it is that Bach was also. Or perhaps we are d.a.m.ned also; or perhaps no one here is d.a.m.ned.Es macht nichts aus , all this speculation. It is a mistake, or evenvielleicht a sin, to imagine that we can comprehend the workings of the mind of G.o.d. We are here. We have our tasks. That is enough for us to know."

"I felt that way once," said Gilgamesh. "When I was king in Uruk, and finally came to understand that I must die, that there was no hiding from that. What is the purpose, then, I asked myself? And I told myself: The G.o.ds have put us here to perform our tasks, and that is the purpose. And so I lived thereafter and so I died." Gilgamesh's face darkened. "But here-here-"

"Here, too, we have our tasks," Schweitzer said.

"You do, perhaps. For me there is only the task of pa.s.sing the time. I had a friend to bear the burden with me, once-"

"Enkidu."

Gilgamesh seized the doctor's st.u.r.dy wrist with sudden fierce intensity. "You know of Enkidu?"

"From the poem, yes. The poem is very famous."

"Ah. Ah. The poem. But the actual man-"

"I know nothing of him,nein ."

"He is of my stature, very large. His beard is thick, his hair is s.h.a.ggy, his shoulders are wider even than mine. We journeyed everywhere together. But then we quarreled, and he went from me in anger, saying, 'Never cross my path again.' Saying, 'I have no love for you, Gilgamesh.' Saying, 'If we meet again I will have your life.' And I have heard nothing of him since." Schweitzer turned and stared closely at Gilgamesh. "How is this possible? All the world knows the love of Enkidu for Gilgamesh!"

Gilgamesh called for yet another flagon. This conversation was awakening an ache within his breast, an ache that made the pain that his wound had caused seem like nothing more than an itch. Nor would the drink soothe it; but he would drink all the same.

He took a deep draught and said somberly, "We quarreled. There were hot words between us. He said he had no love for me any longer."

"This cannot be true."

Gilgamesh shrugged and made no reply.

"You wish to find him again?" Schweitzer asked.

"I desire nothing else."

"Do you know where he is?"

"h.e.l.l is larger even than the world. He could be anywhere."

"You will find him."