To the Land of the Living by Robert Silverberg

waited, knowing there must be more, and knowing too that Enkidu had his own style in these matters of story-telling. But the moments passed, and nothing more was forthcoming. They walked on. Gilgamesh, after a time, turned toward Enkidu and said, “Did you embrace her, then?”
    “Embrace her? Oh, yes, yes, that I did. I came up to her and reached for her and drew her into my arms, and quite willingly she came.” He laughed. “Why would I not embrace her? She was very beautiful, brother.”
    “And the strangeness? What was that?”
    “The strangeness, yes,” Enkidu said, speaking as though from an immense distance. “I’ll tell you of that. When she was in my arms, I went to stroke the smoothness of her back, as women will often like you to do. But there was no smoothness there, brother. She was a fine woman from the front, but from the back she was like a hollow tree with a rough bark”
    “A demon,” said Gilgamesh, and he made a gesture to invoke the protection of Father Enlil.
    “A demon, yes, perhaps,” Enkidu said. “But also a great disappointment, and a waste of beauty, to find that she was only half beautiful, and monstrous in the other half.’
    “She did you no harm, though?” asked Gilgamesh uneasily.
    “Only to my sense of what is fitting and proper. A beautiful woman should be beautiful through and through, or else there should be no beauty about her at all. That is what I believe.” After a pause Enkidu said, “There is more.”
    “Go on, then.”
    “I let go of her and went from her, and in a little while I came to” a second woman standing beside the road, whose hair was scarlet and whose skin was white and whose face was like that of a goddess. She held out her arms to me, and I drew her close, and her far side was all bones, bare and hard and cold, not a scrap of flesh to cover them.”
    “How sad.”
    “Sad, yes, very sad. And the next woman –”
    “The next? How many were there?”
    “The next,” said Enkidu, “had black hair and golden skin, and small breasts so lovely they would make you cry. And I turned her around and her back was all seaweed and shells. And the next after that –”
    “The next after that, yes.”
    “Snakes and toads behind her, and the marks of leprosy. But in front she was shining like a maiden, and her eyes were blue and her hair was the color of sunrise. You would have wept, brother, at the beauty of her, and at the evil that was behind her.”
    “There were others after her,” Gilgamesh said, “and each was worse than the last, is that not so?”
    “Yes. Every hundred paces, a different one. They seemed to spring like flowers from the ground. And I went on and on, until I was running, at last, and they were waving their arms at me with a motion that was like that of the branches of the trees that grow beneath the sea, and I ran, and ran, and ran, until I came to the last of them, who was more beautiful even than any of the others, and she said, Here I am, Enkidu, I am the one. But I shook my head. I told her to keep back from me. I am the one you seek, she said, I am the one. When she came toward me I raised my bow, and put an arrow on the string, and told her I would send her to her next life if she came another step closer.”
    “And did she?”
    “No,” said Enkidu in deepest sorrow. “She turned, then, and walked very slowly away with her shoulders downcast, never once looking back. And from the other side she was lovelier yet than in front. She was perfect. She was without flaw. I watched her go until she was lost to my sight. And then I ran the other way, not stopping until the darkness came. For it seemed certain to me that the door to the land of the living was not to be found in that place. And I knew, brother, that if I had gone after her and embraced her she would have changed in my arms, and become something far more loathsome than any that I had seen earlier, and the pain of that would remain with me forever. That is so, would