Watson, Ian - Novel 16 (7 page)

 
          
Had
the Indian, by hideous chance, been in that same street when the donkeys
bolted? Had he spied Alex pick up the packet; and remembered him? Or was
mind-reading from facial tics and flushes another of his tricks?

 
          
Whichever,
Alex decided he had better dig out the cassette from its hiding place as soon
as the light was adequate next morning. He would keep it about his person till
he found somewhere out in the city to hide it. A loose stone somewhere, a hole;
maybe in the grounds of some temple.

 
          
‘That’s
enough,’ said Nabu. ‘Just you quit teasing, upsetting these good folk. Just cut
it out.’

 
          
Tm
not upset,’ said Deborah.

 
          
‘Of
course you aren’t,’ agreed Gupta. ‘And isn’t your companion the clever one with
knives, who knows how to
cut
things
out?’

 
          
‘Um-hum,
MUM,’ said the serving woman.

 
          
In
which Alex makes holy love, and meets
 
a hairdresser

 
          
A
roar of anger woke Alex out of a confused dream. Oh yes, he had just pushed the
plunger which primed the bomb which would blow up the whole world exactly an
hour later. Why had he done so? It had something to do with a message which he
either had or hadn’t received. He felt nobly, coolly tragic to be the one who
had to destroy so much hope and beauty and love. He heard Deborah call out,
scrambled from his pallet, clutched a cloth about him and rushed from his room
down the corridor in the direction of disputing voices. He was still half
asleep.

 
          
Nabu’s
incensed voice boomed from an open door: ‘Ah say it’s disgustin’!’

 
          
‘Not
if it’s his custom!’ (Deborah’s voice.)

 
          
‘Why
leave this door open? So everyone could see him?’

 
          
Alex
hove to in the doorway. Nabu and Deborah were just inside, she seeming to
restrain him. Gupta sat stark naked on the bare clay floor in the clear morning
light, his legs loosely crossed. One hand was occupied down by his bum, the
other hovered by his mouth. A little glossy black box lay open before him, and
from it up to his lips snaked a thin strip of. . .

 
          
Gupta
was busy feeding Alex’s unravelled tape into his mouth, eating it! The other
end of the tape emerged from his anus, teased out by twitches of his fingers.
Brown-stained, fouled.

           
Alex staggered against the doorpost.
Gupta had slunk into his room while he slept and stolen the cassette. Now he
was . . . besmirching it.

 
          
The
Indian nodded to Alex. ‘Good morning! Have you lost something?’ he enquired
adenoidally, around the contents of his mouth.

 
          
Before
Alex could betray himself, Nabu burst out, ‘This here is hygiene, Indian-style!
This is how you clean out your bowels! You spend all night swallowin’ a cord of
towelling - till you excrete it! Then you pull to and fro vigorously. You leave
your door open so everyone can watch you. It makes me sick.’

 
          
Deborah
started to giggle.

 
          
With
a few rippling heaves of Gupta’s Adam’s apple and a slow pass of his hand,
within moments the Indian was crumpling something like a tapeworm in his palm;
and his mouth was empty. Swiftly Gupta wound the long thin worm around his
fingers and tucked it neatly into the black box.

 
          
‘Actually,’
he said in a prim voice, ‘it is a silk ribbon, nothing more.’ He whisked his other
hand from behind him. ‘Here is a second ribbon. Both quite clean. Ha ha, my
little joke! They were never joined together inside me. You saw them as one
single ribbon, Nabu, because the other day I told you how some wise men in my
country, who can control their inner motions, clean out their guts by
swallowing a very long bit of towel and passing it right through them like the
snake of Kundalini.’

 
          
Gupta
adjusted his sitting position into a tighter lotus, hiding his genitals. ‘Isn’t
it remarkable what you can see - when actually there is nothing to see? And
conversely!’

 
          
Alex
saw that the black box was lacquer, not plastic. The tape wasn’t a tape. It was
wider than a tape. It was, as Gupta had said, ribbon. He sighed his pent breath
out.

           
A predatory brown bird with beady
eyes, Gupta scried him. ‘You saw something of intimate interest too, hmm,
Alex?’

 
          
‘I
had a nightmare. I got a bit confused.’

 
          
‘Dear
me, and on your first night in
Babylon
!’

 
          
‘Not
a good omen,’ said Deborah light-heartedly.

 
          
‘No,
dear lady, a dream is not an omen. People in
Babylon
pay scant attention to dreams, unless a
professional interprets them. But then, the Babylonians are themselves a
dream, are they not? I know how to interpret dreams, Alex. You have brought
your nightmare to the right room.’

 
          
‘If
you interpret dreams,’ said Alex harshly, ‘do you interpret
Babylon
too?’ Was Gupta a trained observer,
masquerading as this sleazy fakir?

 
          
‘Ah!
Here we come to the nub. The intimate something which you thought you saw is perhaps
connected with how this city is evaluated?’ Gupta wound the other ribbon tight
and placed it with its twin. Together, the two ribbons looked just like a
couple of tape spools. ‘Connected with how
Babylon
is understood, both from within and from
without? Am I getting close?’

 
          
Or
was Gupta an agent, not of the university, but of some other interested party?
Some foreign government?

 
          
‘Rubbish,’
said Alex, answering both himself and Gupta too.

 
          
The
Indian chuckled. ‘Today you should visit the
temple
of
Marduk
. There you should pray for victory.’

 
          
‘Pray?’
Alex repeated in astonishment.

 
          
‘Yes.
Prayer is simply a means of fixing the mind. Marduk is god of war. You must
pray for victory, over the fear that destroys.’

           
Yeah,
that
was the nightmare, all right. The whole world being destroyed.
Alex remembered now.

 
          
With
the cassette duly recovered from its hiding place in the wall - of course Gupta
hadn’t stolen it! - and with the slim packet now tucked into his loincloth
under his tunic, Alex shared a breakfast of porridge with the others. Sparrows
twittered and bounced along the wall-top fringing blue sky, hoping later to
descend and peck bowls clean before the mad serving woman could hum the bowls
away.

 
          
‘Are
you going to Marduk’s temple?’ Deborah asked Alex.

 
          
‘No.’
Yet the precincts of a temple were precisely where he had thought of hiding the
tape. ‘Yes. Maybe.’

 
          
‘Let
me be your guide,’ offered Gupta. ‘Yours too, fair lady.’

 
          
‘We’ll
go alone,’ said Alex.

 
          
Deborah
cocked an eyebrow. ‘We will?’

 
          
If
Deborah was with him, how could he hide the tape successfully? Damn the tape!
This business was becoming obsessional. Witness his hallucination that Gupta
had been eating the tape, performing an intestinal Indian rope trick with it.
But until he had deposited the thing somewhere secret, he couldn’t relax.

 
          
Had
Gupta somehow
made
him see what he
imagined he saw?

 
          
If
Alex went on his own to the temple, Gupta would contrive to be Deborah’s guide
for the day; of that he felt sure. What might Deborah inadvertently reveal to
Gupta about Alex’s secret, and hers? About their mutual bond?

 
          
Courage, he thought. Victory.

           
‘Sorry, Deb,’ he said. ‘I guess a
guy has to pray alone. Can we meet up afterwards? Take in lunch; see some
sights? We could meet. .He had no idea where.

 
          
‘At
the main exit from the temple on to the river road,’ Gupta suggested helpfully.

 
          
‘Yes.
There.’ Alex rose.

 
          
‘When?’
asked Deborah; which was a good omen. ‘Don’t forget,’ said Gupta, ‘that much of
the city takes a siesta in the early afternoon.’

           
Looking pointedly at Deborah, not
Gupta, Alex named the hour of rendezvous.

 
          
Nabu
rubbed a porridge smear from his lower lip and stood up too. ‘I’ll walk along
with you, Alex.’

 
          
‘No,
don’t bother. I’ll find the temple.’

 
          
‘Suit
yourself, friend. Suit your own sweet self.’ Offended, the sunbelt Nubian
stomped off.

 
          
The
route, described by the doorkeeper of the inn, was easy. Alex forged south
through minor streets - of leather-workers and mat-makers, coppersmiths and
confectioners - till he struck the main crossthoroughfare,
Marduk Street
. This was a vast paved boulevard mainly
lined with high windowless houses. As he strode along, with the sun at his
back, the shining bulk of Babel Tower ahead seemed to tug at him once more as
though the great spiral structure was indeed distorting the geometry of the
city, building more space in its heart, just as the sides of a whirlpool open
up extra surface space in the waters which the whirlpool perturbs.

 
          
The
turbaned, stick-twirling Babylonians who were strolling along - upper-crust
people for the most part - hardly gave
Babel
a glance, but it was almost with difficulty
that Alex himself finally veered off southwards along the
Processional Way
. This he followed until he reached the long
approach road leading west to the temple of the god of victory.

           
Vaulted bazaars opened off either
side, thronged hives of commerce where sacks of corn and sesame seeds, boxes of
dried fish, bundles of reeds, skins and wool and cheeses were changing hands.
Porters rushed to and fro, cursed by merchants and factors. Several auctions
were simultaneously in full swing, in addition to the individual business of
bargaining. So much complex bustle deterred Alex from wandering under the
vaults and soon he arrived in the temple forecourt, hoping to find it less
crowded than the precincts.

 
          
It
did prove to be; though only by comparison and due to the sizable acreage of
the forecourt, where numerous vendors were peddling incense and oil and
bleating lambs, bowls of wine, rissoles, and amulets to the steady trickle of
citizens who made their way through one or other of several gates in the walls
surrounding the court. These walls, enamelled blue and yellow, were high,
though distance eventually dwarfed them. Those were smooth, firm walls with no
loose bricks, naked to public view.

 
          
The
temple itself looked complicated, with potential nooks and crannies. Broad
ramps sloped steeply upward, zigzagging and bisecting one another, circuiting
the tower-tipped tiers of the dun-coloured edifice which was the colour of
dried blood. Up these ramps climbed worshippers, while others descended. Could
all these people really be intent on prayer? To a god of war? Or did they wish
only to exercise themselves and admire the view from the summit?

 
          
Impelled
by curiosity, Alex accosted one departing worshipper, bearded and turbaned,
swinging an ornate ivory-handled walking stick.

 
          
‘Excuse
me, Sir. Fm a visitor. Do you really worship the god of war here?’ (Or is it
only to ‘fix your mind’ for the day?)

           
The man flushed angrily. ‘Fool!’ he
snarled, and shoved Alex aside.

 
          
Another,
older man heard this exchange. He approached, smiling in wry apology, and stood
twiddling his own bull-headed, bronze-bound stick.

 
          
‘Perhaps,
Greek, it is purer to worship gods who don’t exist?’ he offered cryptically.
‘Perhaps worshipping them
causes
them to exist? On the other hand, where else can you innocently worship war in
these late days? Maybe these worshippers are simply searching for their own
lost innocence - the innocence of the beast, which does not ask whether the sun
will rise tomorrow. Or even whether tomorrow will exist.’