Narrative of Yilgamseh XII

They returned to Utnamishem's house and to his aged wife who seemed to Yilgamseh in her shuffling and her faithful silence like a servant only there to hold the door. He hardly knew her as a person, he had talked only to Utnamishem, been only with him. Was she all he needed as companion?

Yet when he fell asleep and Utnamishem remarked to his wife with hostile irony: Look at the strong man who wants life; sleep follows him like his shadow, she said to her husband: "Touch him again and wake him so he can return in peace to his home." 
She had learned to read her husband's moods.

"Men are deceitful and incapable of peace. I know," he said. Can't he even stay awake with me? Sleep is like death only slothful people yearn for. Bake loaves," he ordered her, "and put them at his head one for each day he sleeps. We'll see how long it is before he wakes."

Over her frail protest the trial was set. After some days, Utnamishem woke the younger man who thought he had barely gone to sleep.

"You have slept for seven days," he said. "Look at the dried out loaves my wife has baked. How will you bear eternal life? It is not easy to live like gods."

"What can I do to win eternal life," the younger pleaded. "Wherever I go - even here - I am drawn back to death."

Austerely Utnamishem called out to the boatman on the other shore and scolded him for sending Yilgamseh across. "Return him to your shore," he called. "Bathe him and burn these pelts he wears which can only remind him of his friend. Let him be fresh and young again. Let the band around his head be changed. Let him return to his city untried. His people need the sight of something new, and the appearance of success." His words sounded bitter.

"I came for wisdom only," shouted Yilgamseh.

"Don't hurt an old man further with your praise. I have nothing to give you that will save."

Ursulababi crossed in his ship and obeyed. He took the pelts from Yilgamseh, and though the grieving man was too disheartened to protest, when they were taken from him and burned he cried out as if a festered wound had just been pierced. When it was over he stood in the bow to leave with only inner traces of his journey. Utnamishem contemplated him, unable to speak. As if he were afraid of some desire to retain, he looked down at the ground, away from Yilgamseh.

His wife whispered to him, saying: "He has come so far. Have you forgotten how grief fastened onto you and made you crave some word, some gesture, once?" Utnamishem's face grew tight, and then relaxed, as when one is relieved of inner pain by one who sees more deeply than oneself. He looked at the younger man who had come into his consciousness. "Youth is very cruel to an old face" he said in a hushed voice. "It looks into its lines for wisdom so touchingly but there is nothing there to find."

Yilgamseh wanted to reach out to tell him he was wrong, sensing suddenly the hours one might spend alone in contemplating oldness as he himself had spent alone in his spoiled youth, seeing nothing there but time.

"I know your pain too well to lie," said Utnamishem. "I will tell you a secret I have never told. Something to take back with you, something to guard. There is a plant in the river. Its thorns will prick your hands as a rose thorn pricks but it will give to you new life."

He heard these words and tried to speak but rushed instead to the old man and embraced him. The two men held each other for a moment then Utnamishem raised his hands as if to say: "Enough."

And Yilgamseh looked back at him then hurried off to find the plant. He tied stones to his feet and descended into the river. When he saw the plant of rich rose color and ambrosial shimmering in the water like a prism of the sunlight, he seized it, and it cut into his palms. He saw his blood flow in the water.

He cut the stones loose from his feet and rose up sharply to the surface and swam to shore. He was calling out, "I have it! I have it!"

Ursulababi guided the ecstatic man away to the other shore, and when they parted Yilgamseh was alone again, but not with loneliness or the memory of death. He stopped to drink and rest beside a pool and soon undressed and let himself slip in the water quietly until he was refreshed, leaving the plant unguarded on the ground.

A serpent had smelled its sweet fragrance and saw its chance to come from the water, and devoured the plant, shedding its skin as slough.

When Yilgamseh rose from the pool, his naked body glistening and refreshed, the plant was gone; the discarded skin of a serpent was all he saw. He sat down on the ground, and wept.

In time he recognized this loss as the end of his journey and returned to Urkai.

Perhaps, he feared, his people would not share the sorrow that he knew.

He entered the city and asked a blind man if he had ever heard the name Enduki, and the old man shrugged and shook his head, then turned away, as if to say it is impossible to keep the names of friends whom we have lost.

Yilgamseh said nothing more to force his sorrow on another.

He looked at the walls, awed at the heights his people had achieved and for a moment - just a moment - all that lay behind him passed from view.