Then she said, almost fiercely, "Well? Do you remember me?"
"I have seen you serving Inanna at the rites."
Her eyes flashed. "Of course you have. Everyone has. But you and I have met. We have spoken." "Have we?"
"Long ago. You were very young. It must have gone from your mind."
"Tell me your name, and I will know if we have met."
"Ah, you have forgotten me!"
"I forget very little. Tell me your name," I said.
She smiled mischievously, and spoke her name, which is one that I may not set down here, for, like my own birth-name, it has been replaced by a holier one and must be abandoned forever. The sound of her name lifted the latch of my memory, and from the storehouse of my mind came a rush of recollection: strings of blue beads, amulets of pink shell, a bare sinuous girlish body painted with serpent designs, budding breasts, a sharp perfume. Was this woman one and the same with that sly child? Yes. Yes. Her breasts were more than buds, now, and her face had grown broader from cheek to cheek, and the wicked sparkle of her eyes was obscured by the womanly cosmetics with which she had painted them. But I was certain that I saw the girl hidden within the woman.
"Yes, I remember now," I said. "The day of the naming of the new king, when I was lost in the maze of the temple, and you came after me, and comforted me, and led me back to the ceremony. But you are greatly changed."
"Not so much, I think. I was already beginning to be a woman, then. I had bled goddess-blood three times. I think I look not so very different now. But you are altogether changed. You were only a child, then."
"It was six years ago, or a little more than that."
"Was it? What a sweet child you were!" She shot me a flagrant glance. "But a child no longer. Abisimti tells me you are truly a man."
Abashed, appalled, I cried, "I thought the doings of priestesses were sacred secrets!"
"Abisimti tells me everything. We are like sisters."
I shifted my weight restlessly. As before, long ago, I felt anger and uncertainty, because I was unable to tell whether I was being mocked. I was strangely helpless before her guile. I had grown older, yes, but so had she; and if I was not much past twelve, she was at least sixteen, and still far ahead of me. There was a sharp edge on her, that cut me wherever I tried to take hold of her. I said, a little too brusquely, "Why am I here?"
"I thought it was time we met again. First I saw you one day during the festival, when you were at the temple bearing offerings. My eye fell upon you and I wondered about you, and I asked someone, Who is that man? And she said, that is no man, that is only a boy, the son of Lugalbanda. It surprised me, that you had grown so swiftly, for I thought you were still very young. Then a few days later Abisimti said that a prince had come to her in the cloister and she had conveyed him into manhood, and I asked her which prince that was, and she told me that he was the son of Lugalbanda. I thought I would speak with you again, after hearing Abisimti. The ' words of Abisimti made me curious about you."
It infuriated me that I was still too simple to read the meanings between her meanings. Was she saying that she wished to go to the cloister with me herself?. So it seemed, or why else had she summoned me, and why else would her eyes be so wanton with me? Well, gladly would I have gone with her-more than gladly! Her beauty drove me wild, even then. But I was not sure that that was what she wanted, and I did not dare put it to the test, out of fear of being refused. One may not have the priestesses of Inanna for the mere asking, only the ones who wait in the cloister, who have dedicated themselves as holy whores. It is shameful to approach the others, who are set apart as brides of the god, or of the king in whom the god is embodied. I did not know which class she belonged to. And perhaps this was simply a game for her, and I only her plaything, a man-doll now instead of the child-doll I once had been. I felt her spinning webs all about me, and I was lost in them.
She said, "How has it been for you? What do you do? I never leave the temple; I have no news of the city, except the gossip that the serving-maids bring me."
"My mother is priestess of An. I do some service at his temple. I study the things a young man studies. I wait to enter into the fullness of my manhood." "And then?"
"I will do as the gods require of me."
"Has any god chosen you yet to be his own?"
"No," I said. "Not yet."
"Do you wish it?"
I shrugged. "It will happen when it happens."
"Inanna chose me when I was seven."
"It will happen when it happens," I said.
"When you know, will you come to me and tell me which god it is?"
She was staring at me very hard. She seemed to be laying some sort of claim to me, and I did not understand why. Nor did I like it. But her power was intense. I heard myself saying meekly, "Yes,
I will tell you. If that is what you want." "That is what I want," she said.
Something became softer about her now: that mischievous edge went from her, and the look that I interpreted as wantonness. From a pouch at her waist she took an amulet and pressed it into my hands, a statuette of Inanna, with great breasts and swollen thighs, carved from some smooth green stone that I had never seen before. It seemed to shine with an inner flame. "Keep this by you always," she said.
It troubled me to take it from her. I felt as though the price of that statuette was my soul.
I said, "How can I accept anything so precious?"
"You may not refuse. That would be a sin, to turn back the gifts of a goddess."
"The gifts of a priestess, rather."
"The goddess speaks through her priestesses. This is yours, and while you have it, you are under the protection of the goddess- power."
Maybe so. But it made me uneasy. In Uruk we are all under the protection of the goddess-power; but nevertheless Inanna is a dangerous goddess, who deals in mysterious ways with her subjects, and it is unwise to get too close to her. My father had done his service to Inanna, as a king of Uruk must, but whenever he had gone in private to a temple it had been to Sky-father An. And I myself felt more comfortable with Enlil of the storms than I did with the goddess. But I had no choice but to take the amulet. It may be perilous to worship Inanna but it is far worse to anger her.
When I left her that day I felt strange, as though I had been forced to surrender something of great value. But I had no idea what it was.
I was summoned several more times in the next few months to the audience-chamber at the end of that passageway of demons and wizards deep below the Enmerkar temple. It was the same each time: an inconclusive conversation, a puzzling display of threatening flirtatiousness that led nowhere, a sense at the end that she had outplayed me in a game with rules I did not understand. Often she had some little gift for me, but when I brought her one she would not take it. She wanted to know many things-news of the court, of the assembly, of the king. What had I heard? What were they saying in the palace? She was insatiable. I grew cautious with her, saying little, answering her questions as briefly and vaguely as I could. I did not know what she wanted from me. And I feared the power of her beauty, which I knew was strong enough to sweep me to destruction. With anyone else I would have said, young as I was, "Come with me, lie with me," but how could I say such words to her? Shielded as she was by the aura of the goddess, she was unattainable, until she gave consent. At a word from her, at the crooking of a single finger, I would have knelt to her. But she did not speak the word. She did not crook the finger. I prayed that the gods would deliver her into my arms, one of these times when she sent for me. But though the warmth of her smile said one thing, the cool icy sparkle of her eyes said another, and held me back from her as though I were a eunuch. She seemed altogether beyond my reach. Yet I had not forgotten the astonishing thing she had said to me in my childhood, on the day of Dumuzi's coronation: When you are king, I will lie in your arms.