Gilgamesh the King by Silverberg Robert

Author:Silverberg, Robert [Silverberg, Robert]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
ISBN: 9781480418202
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2013-05-13T16:00:00+00:00

20

ONE DAY I CAME UPON Enkidu and found him in a bleak and downcast mood, scowling and sighing and well-nigh close to tears. I asked him what troubled him, though I was fairly sure that I knew; and he said, “You will think me a fool if I tell you.”

“Perhaps I will, and what of it? Come, speak it forth.”

“It is foolishness, Gilgamesh!”

“I think not,” I said. I gave him a close look and said, “Allow me a guess. You grow restless in our civilized life of ease, is that not it? You’ve become weary of dallying here in idleness.”

His face reddened and he replied, startled, “By the gods, how did you know that?”

“It takes no great wisdom to see it, Enkidu.”

“I would not have you think that I want to return to my old life and run naked on the steppe.”

“No. I doubt that you do.”

“But I tell you, I’m becoming soft here. The edge of my strength is going from me. My arms are limp, my breath comes short.”

“And the hunting trips we make? And the games we play on the jousting-field? Not enough, are they, Enkidu?”

In a low voice I could barely hear he said, “I am ashamed to say it. But they are not enough.”

I put my hand to his arm. “Well, they are not enough for me either.”

He blinked in surprise. “What is that you say?”

“That I feel the same restlessness you do. My kingship binds and confines me. The tranquility that I’ve labored to achieve for the city has become my enemy. My soul is troubled even as yours is. I yearn as much as you for adventure, Enkidu, for danger, for mighty deeds that will raise up my name before mankind. I chafe here. I long to take a great journey.”

It was the truth. All was so serene in Uruk that being the king did not seem much different to me from being a shopkeeper. I could not accept a shopkeeper’s lot, for the gods had put divinity in me, and the divine part of me was and is unsleeping, forever questing, forever unsatisfied. That is the jest the gods have played on me—that I yearn for peace but am not satisfied when I attain it; but I think I have solved the riddle of that jest now, as I will tell you in its proper time.

“Ah, is it so?” he said. “You suffer as I do?”

“Exactly as you do.”

He laughed. “We are like two overgrown boys, casting about for new diversions. But what will we do, then, Gilgamesh? Where can we go?”

I gave him a long steady look. Slowly I said, “There is a place known as the Land of Cedars. For some time now I have been thinking of undertaking an expedition to that place.” That was not the truth: the idea had leaped into my mind that moment. “Do you know of it, Enkidu?”

With a frown he said, speaking somewhat darkly and grimly, “I know of it, yes.”

“Would it cure your restlessness, do you think, to go there with me?”

He moistened his lips.

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