Part Six
Chapter Twenty-One
Nut and Ganj are riding in a four-wheel cart as it lurches out through the city gates. They recline among baskets of apples, pears, and bananas. Ben-jah sits up front, holding the reins to a team of oxen.
Ben-jah turns around to Nut and says, “It is a sick animal. It might be saved. If you are truly a healer, you can greatly improve your lot in life.”
“A little, hairy baby?” asks Nut.
“Something like that. It is a monkey. It is the King’s favorite animal. It comes from very far away.”
Ganj peels a banana. “How far away?”
= =
The road takes them beyond the outskirts of the city, toward an isolated tract along the river’s edge. They stop at a gate. Ben-jah shows the guard the ring on his hand. The guard waves them through.
They pass corrals holding various animals. Graceful gazelles with their skinny legs and slender necks. Onagers with their long faces and big ears. Aurochs with their massive shoulders and menacing horns.
They come to another guard-post where they pass through a tall gate. Now the corrals are much larger and sturdier. There are creatures that look like horses painted with black and white stripes. There are enormous gazelles with massive twisting horns. In the distance are towering beasts with immensely long necks, ungainly legs, and a hide covered with big orange spots.
Nut is spellbound. “These creatures are beyond my imagination,” he says.
The cart descends toward the river, plunging into a forest. Rabbits leap into the undergrowth at their approach. Wild pigs, unheeding, dig and snort in the muddy ground. After a few bends in the road, the cart stops at a massive gate in a huge timber wall. Strange sounds tumble from behind the looming gate.
A guard on the top of the wall shouts down, “All clear.” A gang of men strain to swing out the gate.
Nut glances nervously at Ganj.
Ganj grins. “We are going to see the manticore,” he says.
“What is the manticore?”
Ben-jah turns around and casts a menacing look at Ganj. “We are going to cure a monkey!”
* * *
Chapter Twenty-Two
Nut and Ganj are working in the lush gardens. They are down on their hands and knees, planting seeds. They are laughing at a joke about the King. A youth approaches wearing a bright purple sash.
“I am seeking Ben-jah!” the boy announces, puffing out his chest.
Ganj looks up. “Who wants to know?”
“I am the King’s messenger!”
“I can see that.”
“Are you Ben-jah?”
Ganj slowly stands. He brushes the dirt from his knees. “No,” he says. He walks over to the boy and stares down at him. “What is this all about?”
“Well, not that it is any of your business —” The boy fidgets, looking away. “Ben-jah is to be honored for saving the King’s monkey.”
“The King’s monkey, you say?” Ganj cocks his head sidewise and grins. “You certainly look like a monkey.” He laughs. “Wait here. I will fetch him.”
As Ganj walks away, the boy scowls and makes a gesture with his fingers.
After a long silence, Nut asks, “Do you go to the Temple?”
“I go everywhere,” says the boy. Again he puffs out his chest.
“Have you been to the Temple?”
“I have been everywhere.”
“Then you have seen Inni?”
“Who is he?”
“Inni!” Nut makes a motion with his hands to describe her feminine shape.
“Oh! Yes! Inni!”
“I am Nut. Has she mentioned me?”
“I have no doubt that she has!”
“She has?! What did she say?!”
“She told me… that she thinks of you night and day.”
“What else?”
“I can say no more,” he says as Ganj returns with Ben-jah.
Ganj points to the messenger. “Ben-jah, this child has something to say to you.”
* * *
That night, in their quarters, Nut keeps repeating, “Inni thinks of me night and day! Constantly!”
Eventually Ganj says, “That is truly wonderful! No doubt we should celebrate!”
And they do. Ganj and Nut sneak into the palace wine cellar. They have a great time telling stories about their homelands, worlds far away from the Land Between the Two Rivers. They also have a great time talking about how the King is a child in a man’s body.
Ganj tells Nut how humans came to be. “At the beginning of the world, the gods had to toil to make their bread. They complained to the Great God Enki and begged him to create creatures to serve them. At a lavish feast, Enki and his consort, Ninhursag, got extremely drunk and created a horde of humans that were idiots, or cripples, or weaklings, or blind, or barren and afflicted, or foolish, ugly, and incontinent.”
Nut laughs. “This explains everything!”
Nut and Ganj have a great time. Eventually Ganj says that they should leave, but Nut wants more wine. Then Nut says they should leave, but then Ganj wants more wine. They have a great time. Nut passes out and Ganj drinks some more.
They are found in the morning, covered with their own vomit.
* * *
Despite Ben-jah’s pleading, Nut and Ganj are condemned by the King to work on the city’s walls.
They work alongside men with big, mangled hands. Dull, slow-witted men with twisted feet. Men with scabby stripes across their backs, wounds festering with flies. When one falls, another replaces him.
The sun bakes the bricks as red as blood. Guards swelter. Workers topple. The days crawl by like shadows across the immense wall.
* * *
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