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 stilclass="underline" he laughed and waved his arms 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 glassy-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 lusty, 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 then he 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 Helclass="underline" 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 Hell 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 twangs 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 Hell—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 God’s own miracle, dear Gilgamesh. The blessing of the Almighty is upon you.” He seized a flagon of his own from a passing servant, quaffed it, made a face. “Ach, this milk-wine of theirs! And ach, ach, this verfluchte 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, God’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. Er 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 Hell?’ But then I said, as perhaps you have said, as I think everyone here must say at one time or another, ‘Why is it that Schweitzer is in Hell?’ And I knew that it is that God is mysterious. Perhaps I was sent here to minister to the damned. Perhaps it is that Bach was also. Or perhaps we are damned also; or perhaps no one here is damned. Es macht nichts aus, all this speculation. It is a mistake, or even vielleicht a sin, to imagine that we can comprehend the workings of the mind of God. We are here. We have our tasks. That is enough for me 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 gods 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 passing the time. I had a friend to bear the burden with me once—”
“Enkidu.”
Gilgamesh seized the doctor’s sturdy 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 shaggy, 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?”