Watson, Ian - Novel 16 (8 page)

 
          
‘Yes?
Go on.’

 
          
The
old man had a time-lined, dusty face, as though dirt had entered the many
cracks and ingrained itself. Alex felt that he was looking at an aged version
of himself.

 
          
Fondling
the bronze bull in his hand, the man said, ‘The beast knows nothing of
tomorrow. Yesterday is already erased. All is now, the present, the moment. The
moment repeats itself for ever.Thus the beast and his kind endure for a million
years. In place of history they possess instinct. But perhaps, Greek, the gods
of war destroy empires - with all their records and monuments — every so often,
otherwise the weight of memory would cripple us beneath its burden? We wouldn’t
have the energy for new enterprises; which are really the same old enterprises,
forgotten then rekindled.’

 
          
What
was Alex to make of this? Was the old man a philosopher, a fantasist, a fool?
Or a futurologist? Was he saying that the world, and civilization, had to be
destroyed — so that the world could continue? That
America
must fall into decay so that the empire of
Amazonia
or
Ashanti
could arise? Surely he was forgetting about
all the nuclear missiles poised in their silos, cradled in their submarines?
Was it possible that society could simply collapse, and the missiles remain
where they were, rusting, unfireable?

 
          
Alex
didn’t dare phrase such questions here, only a few hundred paces from Marduk’s
temple.

 
          
The
old man executed a little skip around his walking stick.

 
          
‘And
perhaps, Greek,’ he said, ‘Marduk has nothing to do with war. Don’t assume that
you’re wise, merely because you’re a foreigner. What happens elsewhere is
mirrored here. What happens here is mirrored elsewhere. You’re here to
discover
Babylon
.
Babylon
isn’t here to discover you.’

 
          
He
winked, and began to stride off in sprightly style.

 
          
‘Thank
you for your courtesy, sir!’ Alex called after him.

 
          
‘My
pleasure. My whim.’

 
          
‘How
do you mean, “
Babylon
isn’t here to discover me”?’

 
          
The
man wagged a finger. ‘You Greeks have a saying: Know Thyself. Explore thyself.
You’re quite wrong. Your own life has no purpose and no goal - though of course
the world would be purposeless without any people in it. Accumulate
information, my boy! Forget about generalities and principles! Compile the list
of whatever happens to you - never try to sum that list up.’

 
          
Wagging
his hand in farewell, the man went on his way, leaving Alex baffled. Maybe that
had been his mischievous intention: to call Alex a fool at much greater length
than the other man, and more circuitously.

 
          
On
the subject of circuits, the zigzag ramps of the temple awaited. Alex still had
to hide the tape, which might be packed with information, or might be blank.

 
          
*
* *

           
He stood puffing at the summit of
the temple. His heart beat fast, and the package still pressed against his
bowels.

 
          
He
had passed too many people on the way. One intersection of the ramps had been
occupied by a great cage of tiny scampering monkeys with inquisitive bright
eyes. A lower intersection had opened into the heart of the temple, ruddily
lamplit and shadowy, where shapes of magi moved beneath looming fearsome
statues and where linen curtains concealed musicians - he heard kettledrums
beating softly, harps rippling like waterfalls, the whistling of an ocarina,
entertainment for Marduk while the god’s brazen nostrils inhaled the reek of
charring flesh and blood. Within, the geometric temple was a cavern, its
pillars resembling stalagmites. Hiding places abounded, but also places from
which hidden figures could easily spy whatever he did. You would have to be a
habitue to hide anything safely there.

 
          
So
he rested at the summit for a while, taking in the view: the sprawling, walled
suburbs over the water to the west where garden green glinted amidst houses;
the bend of the
Euphrates
to the south, with the Borsippa canal
forking off into farmland; the road to
Nippur
to the east.

 
          
Behind
him a terracotta dragon - like those at the Ishtar Gate, but rampant - reared
to half his height again, a spade gripped in one claw to support it. Spade and
dragon: symbols of Marduk. Lower down the ramps he had passed terracotta
statues of lions, too. A spiky lightning rod rose highest. He kept his back to
the dragon, letting it block the view to the north where the
Tower
of
Babel
pulled at his mind.

 
          
Defeated,
yet feeling that none the less he had scaled a peak, he descended the ramps
again.

 
          
*
* *

           
Emerging from the courtyard by the
west gate, he soon found himself upon the river road a few hundred cubits south
of the great stone bridge. People of many nationalities passed by, as though
the port of the world was here. He saw Arabs, Armenians, Indians, fellow-
Greeks (of course); even a Chinese face. He soon spotted Deborah leaning on the
balustrade of the corniche, alone. Before he could reach her, to his
exasperation Gupta appeared up steps from the quays below, grinning.

 
          
‘Greetings,
Alex! Did you find what you were seeking? Or did you lose it? Ha ha! Did you
pray for guidance? If so, here I am.’

 
          
Alex
realized that he had quite forgotten to pray. Well, that wasn’t true. He never
had any intention of praying; but maybe he ought to have done so . . .

 
          
‘Hi,
Alex,’ said Deb.

 
          
‘What’s
down below?’ he asked her, making no effort to look over for himself. Big
coracles were spinning inshore to tie up.

 
          
How
the ungainly craft avoided dashing themselves against the piers of the bridge
upstream was a puzzle, unless the answer was that the water obligingly
funnelled them through. That was the only bridge over the
Euphrates
, and it was crowded with traffic passing
between old city and new. From stout pier to stout pier stretched rows of
planks. (Every night - as Alex later learned - the central sections were lifted
and stacked ashore under guard. You did not build a bridge for your enemies to
cross! Yet this was in the very heart of
Babylon
. Was the heart sick, divided against
itself? Or was this a bridge between two hemispheres of the Babylonian brain;
and every night when the city slept did it dream two separate dreams: the dream
of the past, and the dream of the future?)

 
          
‘What’s
down there, Deb?’

           
‘Tunnels to the bazaars/ she told
him. ‘The crews unload, then break up their boats, and drive their donkeys
through the tunnels. Tunnels are what’s down there. And one weeping rabbi.’

 
          
‘A
who?’ Now Alex did lean over the balustrade. Immediately he saw the bearded
figure who was facing the wall, skullcap on his crown, prayer shawl around his
shoulders, the black box of a phylactery fastened with ribbon to his forehead
like a container for buttons, comfits, or pills; with his back to the boats
and donkeys and baskets of fruit and skins of wine and crans of fish, with
tears running down his cheeks.

 
          
‘He
comes here every morning,’ said Gupta, ‘to mourn the ruin of the
temple
of
Solomon
. Many more Jews camp out on the quay road
on festival days. They want nothing to do with pagan rites.’

 
          
‘That’s
crazy.’

 
          
‘How
is it crazy?’

 
          
‘Why
should people pretend to be Jews, or rabbis?’ ‘They
are
Jews,’ said Deborah sharply. ‘He
is
a rabbi.’

           
‘Oh,’ said Alex.

 
          
They
lunched on fish cakes from a stall. While they were licking their fingers clean
afterwards, Gupta said, ‘Let’s visit the Wonder Cabinet of Mankind.’ He glanced
at the high, hot sun. ‘This afternoon, after siesta?’ Indeed, traffic was
already beginning to thin out. It was past
noon
. People were returning home.

 
          
‘Shall
we? I’d like to show you both the famous Wonder Cabinet. Though if I built a
cabinet myself, ha ha, it would have different sorts of wonders in it!’
‘Wonders which vanish before your very eyes. Like soap bubbles,’ suggested
Alex.

           
‘Shall we?’ pressed Gupta.

 
          
‘Yes,’
said Deborah.

 
          
*
* *

           
They returned to Between The Skin
Shops and sought their cool rooms.

 
          
During
his siesta Alex dreamed: that the missiles had all flown, the bombs had all
fallen.
Russia
and
America
were no more;
Europe
and
China
had been wiped off the map. Man-made
plagues raged elsewhere. It was the collapse, the end of technological
culture, of global governments.

 
          
Somehow
Babylon
survived. Here in the loneliest corner of
the American desert - though there was no longer any '
America
’ -
Babylon
remained intact, entire. Untouched. And
continued being
Babylon
.

 
          
It
was as though all the power released by the warheads had torn a hole in the
continuum of time and space; had scrambled the clock of the sun and the
calendar of the moon; and had sucked this ancient city from out of a previous
era to deposit it in the future, as the only future which remained.

 
          
Babylon
thrived. The
Euphrates
flowed round and round. Seasons passed;
then decades. Eventually the Babylonians began to colonize what was once
America
. They knew nothing, any longer, of the
customs or speech of the dead
America
or of the dead twentieth century. They knew
only Babylonian ways. Long hair and perfume; coracles and ziggurats; Ishtar and
Marduk. Yes, Marduk had won a great, much-prayed- for victory.

 
          
But
elsewhere, far away, was a new Assyrian wolf or a second Alexander marshalling
his forces in
Angola
or
Argentina
, to collide with
Babylon
once more?

 
          
The
Wonder Cabinet of Mankind occupied one corner of the backside of the royal
palace. This was the first museum in the history of the world, opened to the
general public by Nebuchadnezzar.

           
‘Ha ha,’ laughed Gupta, ‘behold the
wonders of the world!’