Ishtar Read online

  I was not even convinced this woman was all of Ishtar. Perhaps her spirit was in pieces, and the strong one lived elsewhere, leaving just this weak and helpless part behind in the mountain with her secret army.

  ****

  My great grandmother told the story differently, my mother said.

  I’m not sure why, of all the men she could have chosen, it was Ashurnasirpal who took her attention. He was not a good man. Of all her lovers, he was the one without quality. Gilgamesh believed in himself so powerfully that all around him benefited, and Tammuz had had his innocence, his Greenness. Sargon, for all his cruelty, had Akkad at his heart; Shulgi was a master builder and planner. Ashur had only himself and, once Ishtar won him, he had her at heart as well. I think Ishtar loved him because he worshipped her as a goddess, not a woman.

  Their wedding banquet was talked about by king after king into the forever. Ishtar took three days to prepare, fussed over and poked at by a dozen attendants. Oh, the gossips they were.

  “I heard she was hung by hooks in the Underworld. For two hundred years!” I heard one say.

  “That’s where the scars came from,” another told her.

  “Ishtar would never stay still for so long, you fools,” I told them. “Those scars are from where her wings used to be.” And there; information passed which may or may not be true.

  Ashur adorned his palace with wood because he loved the feel of it, the smell. Box, mulberry, cedar, tamarisk, poplar. The utensils. The musical instruments. Napkins of wood shaved finely, used to wipe the grease from chins.

  Around the wall were bronze-fittings, bolts holding things in place. “Our craftsmen are very talented.” He was proud of this; those men and their families would not die of hunger, regardless of circumstances. Ashur did reward talent.

  There were beams of Byblian cedar for roofing, high tamarisk doors furnished with bronze fittings, gleaming bronze friezes in doors. Statues of red gold and precious stone. The room had a bluish glow from the blue enamel baked brick.

  There were inlays showing his conquests. The serving girls, slaves one and all, didn’t like to look too closely because the pictures made them sick. Images of their own people in pain and defeat.

  In the garden, these things grew: cedar, cypress, box, fir, medicinal plants, juniper, lamer-oak, date palm, ushu-willow, mulberry, bitter almonds. Grown from torn bodies in the ground, sprouting between the bones of his enemies.

  In the storage room were man-high jars for food and drink, made of baked clay and etched so that the servants would know what they held. All this food and drink was to celebrate his goddess.

  Food offerings came from everywhere, carefully sourced; no point in giving food if the goddess didn’t know from where it came. Ishtar brought enormous wealth to the marriage, but Ashur did not want this. As his bride price he chose just one thing: the long pin Ishtar wore to symbolise her freedom.

  As part of his speech, he spoke of the three fears of a man:

  That his lady would perform black magic against him.

  That she would pass on words that should be kept secret within the palace.

  And that she would open her thighs for another man.

  Ishtar promised him many times that none of these things would occur. I could not understand, though, how he didn’t bore her. She would be better with a stone cutter, or a soldier, than this dull, jealous man.

  The wedding lasted for seven days, and then the people starved again.

  Ashur did not care. “Are you hungry, my love?” he asked Ishtar.

  She shook her head. She spoke less than ever she did, as if each day she forgot another word.

  “Then that should be enough for the people. Anyone who says he is hungry is committing blasphemy against the goddess.”

  When Ishtar worried about hungry people, he said, “You are satadaru. Worried. You should not be.” Ashur did not like to be around worried people.

  If Sargon was cruel, then Ashur, half his size, was cruelty reduced to a potent paste. He took pleasure in pain, saying that inflicting it made him feel god-like. “I would be a good god,” he said.

  He had his enemies flayed over days; he loved to cut men and watch them bleed. He relished destroying families. I saw it more than once; men so distraught at the violent deaths of their loved ones that they wept themselves to the Underworld. We were so dry, so waterless, that the loss of any moisture could kill you, let alone the rivers of tears from those men.

  At least there was no blood to wash from their clothing.

  He had children dashed to mush. Babies. He had them crushed and pounded until there was nothing left of them but a mess in the dust.

  This was the man Ishtar chose to marry.

  Was it his wealth? She had wealth enough of her own, all she could ever want. Was it because he could protect her? Keep her worshipped?

  His palace was so well-made that when a dust storm came, the inside was untouched. After it was over, we went out to find all covered with black.

  He burnt many libraries. He was a fool of a man. Didn’t he realise that by burning a clay tablet you preserve it? He was too lazy to step inside and smash them himself. Yet, because of Ishtar, he preserved the texts about Gilgamesh. My daughter will see them written into one volume, perhaps, or my granddaughter.

  He recorded the stories of the land. He recorded the great flood, and the reign of Sargon. He recorded the decisions of Shulgi. All things Ishtar had witnessed and played a hand in, yet she was not recorded as such. She said, “And Tammuz? You must keep his story as well.”

  She spoke of Tammuz as if he were still here. Her grasp on time was slipping. I asked her, “Was Tammuz your lover or your son?” and she was both surprised and horrified. Oh, history, how it blurs.

  Ashur took Ishtar’s continued presence for a mandate, that her divine love gave him the right to do anything: cut off the hands of those who offended him, destroy entire villages on a whim, allow his people to starve, burn buildings and begin wars. Ishtar did not care. She was tired.

  Ashur had many girlfriends, a harem. They were terrified of Ishtar and kept their pins sharpened to keep her away. Pins were used for personal protection — I think they gave the illusion of an armed society, ready for war. Pins were also worn in the grave, but those were far longer. Our loved ones were buried with all their jewellery, and the pin pointed up towards their chins.

  A virgin wore a garment pin which would be loosened after marriage.

  Ishtar called Ashur her garment pin. The effect that had on him! It could make him go weak at the knees, just to hear her say that. Pins were Ishtar’s weapons. She liked them.

  I always said they left holes in the fabric.

  Sometimes, if she was feeling maudlin and remembering her past loves or her daughter, she would scratch herself deeply with them. She spoke so sadly of her daughter, how she had too much secret knowledge. That was never understood in a woman.

  Some days, when Ashur was away and would not ask questions, she would go to be amongst her army. They were pale, now, paler than ever before, and their muscles were slack, their flesh soft. They waited for her command, but she did not know against whom to set them.

  This, perhaps, was the worst of it.

  ****

  Oh, it was dry as a stick. Ashur worshipped his goddess even in this drought, anointing her feet with cedar oil. “I am your main worshipper. You need no other.”

  Did she think this would make her stronger? But he treated prostitutes, her priestesses, terribly — with such disrespect and violence that her temples became dusty with misuse, the women too frightened to work there.

  Had men changed so much? Were they now so frightened by the power of a woman in pleasure that they would give that pleasure up themselves?

  In the time of Gilgamesh, Ishtar said, the husband would take great delight in pleasing his woman. This was long before the time when female pleasure was considered a sin. Oh, Ishtar, how powerful you were. Once you left, women lost the power of
lust, didn’t they? They lost the truth of desire, although that desire remains.

  Now, womanhood was used as a curse. Ishtar heard this once; a man cursing another to become a woman. She was so furious she struck the curser down and turned him into a maggot wriggling in a sour, stinking dead camel’s stomach.

  Can you see what this meant to women? That to be a female was to lose prestige and power.

  Time came when Ishtar knelt beside me washing the clothes. She was so faded, so empty. I had no children; we two old women stood beside each other and we rinsed out the blood of the people. I think she believed this way she would escape destruction, the end. But she did not realise, she has never understood, my ancestresses’ prophecy: that mankind will fall if no one worries for the welfare of the people. With her becoming one of us, what will happen? Who will care?

  So those were the five loves of Ishtar. Five mortals, five gods, who can say? She liked them better if she knew they could die. She didn’t like the idea of forever.

  She went to sleep with her stillborn army in caves and tunnels. She slept, bitter and angry. Dry and unloved. There they lived, guarding her, waiting for a time when they would be called to service again.

  ****

  If you would like to read Enheduanna’s poem, please go here: http://www.womeninworldhistory.com/lesson2.html

  AND THE DEAD SHALL OUTNUMBER THE LIVING

  BY DEBORAH BIANCOTTI

  CHAPTER ONE

  “Sorry, we’re not hiring.” The Madame is slim and wears a suit. Her hair is coiled faultlessly on the top of her head. Her makeup is perfect, too: evening-smoky-eyes-going-to-the-Oscars makeup. It’s two o’clock in the afternoon and the brothel has the faded, dusty look of a place that shouldn’t open before dark.

  Adrienne flips out her badge. “Business not good?”

  The Madame’s perfect face doesn’t move, but it’s clear the badge has adjusted her thinking. “Business is fine, Detective. We’re busy. We’re legal. In these lean economic times, people limit their spending. The jobs are getting smaller, more...modest.”

  Adrienne finds it a funny choice of words.

  “Lower expectations?” she asks.

  “More easily satisfied,” the Madame confirms. “Is your interest business? Or pleasure? We have some delightful ladies—”

  “I’m looking for Nina,” Adrienne says.

  The Madam doesn’t even blink. “Nina is occupied, but you’re free to wait—”

  “It’s a social call,” says Adrienne.

  At last an emotion shows on the mask of the woman’s face. It’s surprise.

  “You a friend?” the Madame asks. “Nina doesn’t have many women friends.”

  Adrienne notes that they’re ladies when she’s a customer, but women when she’s a friend.

  “I’m one of a kind,” Adrienne says.

  “Well, then. Leave a number, I’ll pass it on.”

  Adrienne drops a card on the desk and takes her leave. Down the plush burgundy carpet hallway, through the heavy curtains at the front, and out the glass doors onto the street. A customer would go out the back door, discretely — or is it shamefully? — exiting into an alleyway behind the local shopping centre. She’s not a customer, so she goes out the front. She puts on her sunglasses. An old man gives her a wink like they’re friends.

  She stares him down.

  The glass windows of the brothel feature the painted image of the king and queen of hearts — the queen with cleavage up the wazoo (as Nina would describe it), the king looking particularly cheerful. Oddly, both king and queen are ducks. Adrienne wonders if it’s rhyming slang.

  She walks the thirty minutes back to the city in the crisp, cold July weather. Her fists are plunged into jacket pockets, shoulders hunched. She shivers until the energy of her walk begins to warm everything but her toes.

  ****

  Nina calls late that afternoon.

  “You should get a phone,” says Adrienne.

  “Then people would call me more. Where are you?”

  Adrienne mentions a coffee shop near the office and Nina hangs up.

  She’s on her second cup of decaf by the time Nina arrives. Nina moves like what she is: an ex-dancer with a few too many years on her frame. She’s tall and curvy, with a prominent bust. But it’s her cheekbones that really stand out, lending her face a wide, predatory coldness.

  Nina says, “Haven’t seen you in a while. What’s it been?”

  Not even a hello.

  “Ten years?” Adrienne suggests.

  Nina reflects, tipping her hard face to the side. She hasn’t softened with age. “Maybe twelve.”

  “Guess I’m older than I realised.”

  “Aren’t we all? Can I smoke in here?” Nina shakes open a box of cigarettes.

  Adrienne inhales the tobacco promise and tries not to salivate. Nina raises an eyebrow in invitation. It’s then Adrienne notices how pale her brow is, plucked into almost-obscurity. Her face is clean and her skin is pink like she’s been scrubbing at it.

  “It’s no smoking,” Adrienne says. “Listen, I’ve got a problem.”

  “What, pregnant?” Nina gives the first smile Adrienne’s seen from her in something more like twenty years. “Too old to be worried about pregnant, surely? I mean, not too old to be pregnant. Just too old to give a goddamn.”

  Adrienne places a plain manila folder on the table and pulls out four photos, close-ups of faces made of grey clay.

  “What’s this?” Nina asks.

  “Facial reconstructions. We found these guys dead, bones shattered. All their bones.”

  “All?” Nina looks confused. A dancer, a whore, a med-school drop-out. Somewhere along the line, she appears to have picked up a passing familiarity with bones. “Impressive.”

  Adrienne nods. “And no, we didn’t find them at the base of cliffs or the bottom of the ocean. We found them in the street.”

  In the street, left to rot in alleyways or behind buildings. One in an empty construction site, the developer having gone bust years back. No weapons, no tools, no marks on their skin. Just four jellied dead men with calcium paste for bones.

  “Well,” Nina says, “it’s nice you thought to look me up, and all, but why are you showing me dead people?”

  She squints and a spider web of lines fans out from the corners of her eyes.

  “At least one of them is a prostitute. Unconfirmed on a second.”

  Nina looks at the photos. “These guys?”

  “You used to run the sex workers’ union. Do you recognise any of them?”

  “That was a while ago.” But Nina peers into their plastic eyes. “Wait, I know this one. And this guy, yeah. Both rent boys.” She points to two men Adrienne hasn’t been able to identify. That makes three out of four dead men prostitutes. The fourth guy looks too old for the game, and Nina says so.

  “Someone’s killing prostitutes?” she asks. “Male prostitutes?”

  Adrienne nods. She gives Nina time for the idea to sink in.

  “That’s weird.”

  “Isn’t it?”

  She feels herself slipping back into the familiar ease they had when they were young. Before life got to them. Adrienne takes a deep breath to quell the fear in her belly, the fear of getting old, the fear of death. It was fear that drove her into the police force, but nowadays it’s fear that’s driving her away. She keeps thinking of settling down in a nice house with a garden, hiring a cleaner and a gardener, and spending her days on the verandah sipping cocktails, feet up on the balcony. In her head, this daydream always gives way to another one, where she’s swapping witticisms with Dorothy Parker, wearing 1950s-style trousers and planning a trip to Spain. She’s not even sure where the images come from.

  Nina says, “I’m guessing you’ve got no leads. I mean, if you’re here talking to me.”

  “I’ve got two leads,” Adrienne says. “Both crazy.”

  Nina part-way succumbs to the nicotine pull and picks a cigarette from the box, let
ting it dangle between her lips. She gives the waitress a reassuring wink as she thumbs the lighter, and indicates the spot on the table where she’d like a cup of coffee. “I like crazy.”

  Adrienne takes a long breath. “One is a liberation group.”

  “Sure.”

  “Liberation of the oppressed who trade sex for cash.”

  “Hear hear,” says Nina. “I’m all for anyone who promises me a raise. And the other lead?”

  “The Cult of the Goddess. They like to sit around and wait for their goddess to arrive. And be naked. They say she’s coming back at the end of the Mayan calendar.”

  “Sounds like a long time to be naked.” Nina indicates the cold, grey sky outside, the people hunched in their coats. “Not good weather for it, either.”

  “The Mayan calendar ends the twenty-first of December, 2012. This year,” Adrienne says.

  “And then?”

  “Who knows? The end of the world. The ascension to the next plane. The evolution of the soul.”

  Nina is thoughtful. “That ascension stuff rings a bell. This naked group, they worship Ishtar, right? Goddess of love and war.”

  “Love and war?” Adrienne raises her eyebrows. She hasn’t paid the cult much attention. Had them pegged as being all show and no go.

  Nina keeps thumbing her lighter, clearly fighting the urge to light up. “What, you don’t think love and war are related?” She grins. “Prostitutes get into this cult sometimes. They like the themes, I guess.”

  Adrienne makes a note while Nina continues. “Way back when, Ishtar had these sexual sacred rituals. Prostitution, of a kind. So, some of the girls—”

  “That’s working backwards, isn’t it?” Adrienne interrupts. “Fair enough, people do crazy things for sacred reasons. Goats and human sacrifices and whatever. Sex, sure, I guess.” She tries to get her thinking straight. “But if you’re a prostitute already, why pretend you’re doing something sacred? Isn’t that like retrofitting?”