The Descent Page 4

defeat the other. This I came to realise before him and in doing so, I faltered. King Gilgamesh saw his advantage and struck fast. His sword blade rested at my neck, cold iron that was not as cold as the truth of what had happened between us.

  We faced each other in the midst of our destruction. I could see in his eyes the dawn of his understanding. Here I was, the man he had dreamed of, the companion to match him, to understand him—his mirror.

  And he did not like what he saw.

  King Gilgamesh took his blade from my neck and turned his back on me. “Leave,” he said sternly, sadly.

  “I will not leave,” I said. “Not until you heed my words. You are unique. One third man, two thirds god. Your mother bore you so that you might be elevated above all other men. This is the destiny Enlil decreed for you.”

  “Unique?” he questioned, scorn and doubt waring in his voice. “Says the man who met me blow for blow. Who won today not because he was stronger, but because he was my own self turned upon me.”

  “But I did not win today.”

  He looked over his shoulder at me, expression blank. “You walk away from me. You win.”

  “Only through your compassion, my king. Perhaps that is what I came here to show you.”

  Gilgamesh did not respond then, but he did take me to meet his mother, Rimat-Ninsun. She was elegant and beautiful and I knelt under her regard, for the first time scared of what might happen. Gilgamesh stood back, head bowed, awaiting his mother’s wisdom. If Ninsun did not approve of me, then perhaps the king’s mercy would prove short.

  “This man has no father or mother,” she said. “His hair is uncut, his clothes cast offs. Born in the wilderness, raised by the wild. He is hardly a suitable companion for a king.”

  Was this not the woman who had foretold my coming as a good omen? And yet everything she said was true. I was unbathed, barely clothed and knew little of the city or of manners. Her words made wounds Gilgamesh’s blade had never a hope of matching.

  She stepped down from her throne and circled me, her hand rising to touch my dirty, tangled hair.

  “But for a man, he is perfect. My son, lords and priests for counsel you have aplenty. A friend who knows your wills and wants, you lack.” Ninsun went to her son and laid her slender hand on his crossed arms, smiling. “A companion with a hope of matching you, of perhaps taming you, you do not have, and need.”

  Gilgamesh was not entirely convinced, at least not at first. Yet, when he gave me the gold armlets, when he closed them about my flesh and offered his friendship, I felt them as a weight not just on my body, but on my heart. It was a responsibility, a trust placed upon me such as I had never had before.

  The king may have been uncertain but I was not. As he’d seen himself in me, I had seen myself in him—the wild heart, barely shackled by the manners of civilisation, the knowledge there was something more beyond walls and rules. This was my duty.

  Through my duty, Gilgamesh had come to see me as first his companion, then his friend. And finally, he had called me brother.

  No more. I traced the engraving on the armlets. What need have I of them here?

  Nerubanda offered them to the gate, they were accepted and once more, my guide and I stepped through. The gate disappeared, the window did not appear and the mountain was ahead of us, beckoning.

  Endushaba was the guardian of the sixth gate. The scorpion-man looked me over as if considering what I had left to offer. I too looked and saw a man barely respectable in his tunic, bereft of adornment and weapons, relieved of family, arrogance, faith, violence and vanity—the trappings of civilisation. I was closer now to how I had been before the trapper had brought Shamhat to the hills to capture me. There was scarce left to give up.

  Ashamed as I once would never have been, I removed my tunic. Naked, I considered this simple item. Embroidered and tasselled as it was, at base it was just a fold of material given significance by the morals and values of man.

  I had lived without clothing, once. My cloak had been my hair, tangled and gruesomely long. My weapons had been my hands and cunning, my plate the bare ground, my cup the running stream. It had been immeasurably simpler then. The stags had not minded my table manners, the wolves had not insisted on rules during our battles. Food was what you could find or take, sweet or sour or partly rotting. Bed was a pile of leaves under the low boughs of a tree. The days were filled with grazing and keeping one eye watching for predators. The nights were for sleeping and hiding from those who might hunt me.

  But that simple world was all too soon invaded by a new danger. The trapper would set his snares at the waterhole and dig his pits along the well-trod paths. Only once did one of my animal companions have to be caught before I realised what was happening. So I went ahead and filled in the pits, broke the snares. Only then would we go to drink at the waterhole.

  Then one day I saw him. He stood on the far side of the waterhole, pale and shaking as he beheld me. I knew him by his scent, the same I had found about the traps, so I snarled at him, baring my teeth as the wolves did. He startled and fled.

  A second day I saw him. Though still scared, he did not frighten so easily and stayed longer to watch. I drove him off with a half-hearted charge. A third time he came, keeping his distance. Then he left and did not return for many days.

  When next I saw him he was not alone. There was a woman with him. Of course I did not fully understand what she was. She was different—and enticing. Her shape was curved and smooth, her hair long and shiny and her scent… It was the most delicious thing I had ever smelt. This fascinating creature stood at the edge of the waterhole and lifted aside her skirt to show shapely legs which she washed in the water. I quite forgot to slack my thirst, so entranced was I.

  Day after day I returned to the waterhole, not to drink but to see this lovely vision. Each day she was there and each day she revealed more of her clean, clear skin of a hypnotising hue. Each day I dared to creep closer: to see more, to smell her deeper, to perhaps hear her. The day I finally touched her, she lay still and let my dirty fingers mar her perfection. The next day, she took my hand and led me into the water. There, she washed me and I saw my skin was the same as hers. The day after, she brushed my hair and I saw it was the same as hers.

  Then came the day she showed me the reason behind the strangest of my feelings. Upon her spread cloak we coupled and I saw not just how similar we were, but how different to the animals I was.

  And so the animals I had run with came to know I was not like them. They turned away from me, would not let me within their herd or stray on their fields. Seeing my hurt, the woman, Shamhat, gave me her tunic to wear and taught me to eat from a plate and drink from a cup. Satisfied with my humanisation, she then taught me to speak as a man and told me of King Gilgamesh.

  “He is mighty and wise unto perfection,” she said in reverential tones. “Beautiful as you, Enkidu, and as wild in his heart. Yet he is untempered. He struts his power over the people like a wild bull trampling the fields. There is no-one who may hope to challenge him. Uruk suffers for this lack.”

  Ensnared as I was by her softness and curves, by the sheer delicacy of her body and voice, I had known hardship and confrontation and the closeness of death all my life. She would never be enough to keep me. In her words I found something I could understand and, perhaps, someone who could understand me.

  So I followed her to Uruk to meet King Gilgamesh, to challenge him and show him neither of us was alone.

  In this endless, cold, grey place that had become my fate, I had no need, no desire, for the trappings of man. I tossed my tunic to Endushaba.

  The scorpion-man threw my tunic at the gate. The offering was accepted and the gates creaked open. With a bitter laugh on my lips, I did not wait for my guide but stepped through the gates before him. They clanged shut behind me and, as usual, I turned to look for the window.

  It wasn’t there, and when I looked forward, the mountain was where it always had been. Without my guide and hungry for this
to be over, I ran for the distant monster.

  “I am Ennugigi,” the scorpion-man said when I arrived at the gate. “Before you pass through my gate, you must relieve yourself of a weight brought with you from the world of the living.”

  “Relieve myself of what? I have nothing left to give.”

  Ennugigi smiled sadly. “Without an offering, the gate will not open.”

  “Then it seems we will be companions for a long time to come.”

  “If you look closely enough,” the scorpion-man said, “you will find you have something to offer.”

  I threw my arms wide to expose my nakedness. “This is all I have left!” And even as I said it, I knew what I had to do.

  The knowledge was like sinking into cold water—all encompassing, supporting, but deadly. This was it, the final gate, and all I had to do was surrender everything I was. Already I was a hollow container. The only thing that remained was to break the shell.

  After a last, slow breath, I ran at the gate.

  The impact shattered my nose, bruised my ribs and crushed my toes. I bounced back, staggering, head reeling. My ears rang so loud I could not hear a thing, my eyes blinded by the pain in my face. I toppled over.

  Slowly, very slowly it seemed, the pain faded, dulling to a numbing throb. I lay where I had fallen, unwilling to move, wanting nothing more than to find an end, a cessation of all the pain, the