so that one day we could go home. It was as important as the copying of the Sacred Books."
"It's an old tale," I said.
"This whole trade, by the way, gave to my own house a sumptuous quality that it might not have had, had we been camel breeders. And that you must understand because the richness around us colored my father's values as much as mine.
"What I mean is, not only did we make money, but the house was always full of merchandise passing through. You know. Here would be a magnificent cedar statue of the goddess Ishtar just come from Dilmun, and my uncle would keep it at home for a week or two, gracing the living room, before the sale was made. The place was full of beautiful footstools, delicate furniture from Egypt, the fine black and red urns and pots of the Greeks, and just about anything portable and ornamental and lovely to behold."
"You grew up on beauty, didn't you?"
"Yes," Azriel said. "I did. I really did. And I grew up, for all my smart talking and carrying on and flirting with Marduk, I grew up with love. My father's love. The love of my brothers. My sisters. The love of my uncles even. Even my deaf uncle. Even once the prophet Azarel said to me, 'Yahweh looks at you with love.' So did the old witch Asenath. Ah, such love."
He had come to a natural pause. He sat there, resplendent in the red velvet, hair glossy and natural, and the pure skin of his young man's cheeks as soft as a girl's I suppose. I must be getting old. Because young men look to me now as beautiful as girls. Not that I desire them. It's only that life itself is lush.
He was confused. In pain. I hesitated to press him. Then he parted his lips, only to be quiet.
Part I Chapter 4
4
What was it like, roaming in the temple? The palace?" I asked. "The beautiful house, I can envision. But the palace, was the palace plated in gold? Was the temple?"
He didn't respond.
"Give me pictures, Azriel. Take your time by means of images. The temple, will you tell me what that was like?"
"Yes," he said. "It was a house of gems and gold. It was a world of the deep vibrant gleam of the precious, of lovely scents and the sounds of harps, and pipes playing; it was a world for the bare feet to walk on smooth tiles that were themselves cut in the shapes of flowers." He smiled.
"And," he said, "it was a hell of a lot more fun than you might think. Not all that solemn. The two buildings were huge, of course, you know Nebuchadnezzar built the palace to the mil glory of the past, or so he thought, and greatly expanded the private gardens; and the temple was the great building known as Esagila, and behind the building itself stood the big ziggurat, Etemenanki, with its stairway to heaven, and then its ramps going up to the very topmost temple of my great and favorite smiling god.
"The temple and the palace were full of locked and sealed doors. Some of these seals had not been broken in a hundred years. And of course, as you probably know, we had contracts made in this way too ... in that a contract would be written out on a clay tablet, dried, and then enclosed in a clay envelope with the same words on it, which was then dried, so that one could not get to the original tablet inside without breaking the envelope. So if some corrupt individual had made a change on the outer envelope, the sealed inside tablet would tell the truth.
"There was a lot of that at court, people bringing in contracts, breaking open the envelopes, discovering some wily bastard had made a change in the contract, and the King and his advisors and wise men passing judgment. I never followed out any condemned man to see him executed. As you said, I grew up on beauty.
"In the streets of Babylon I never saw the hungry. I never saw a wretched slave. Babylon was the city people dreamed of living in; everyone was happy in Babylon and under the protection of the King.
"But to return to your question. One could roam in the temple. One could just roam. I could creep in my fine jeweled slippers into the chapels where the other gods were - Nabu and Ishtar and