Read Online Watson, Ian - Novel 16 by Whores of Babylon (v1.1) - Free Book Online

below?’ he asked her, making no effort to look over for himself. Big
coracles were spinning inshore to tie up.
                 How
the ungainly craft avoided dashing themselves against the piers of the bridge
upstream was a puzzle, unless the answer was that the water obligingly
funnelled them through. That was the only bridge over the Euphrates , and it was crowded with traffic passing
between old city and new. From stout pier to stout pier stretched rows of
planks. (Every night - as Alex later learned - the central sections were lifted
and stacked ashore under guard. You did not build a bridge for your enemies to
cross! Yet this was in the very heart of Babylon . Was the heart sick, divided against
itself? Or was this a bridge between two hemispheres of the Babylonian brain;
and every night when the city slept did it dream two separate dreams: the dream
of the past, and the dream of the future?)
                 ‘What’s
down there, Deb?’
                ‘Tunnels to the bazaars/ she told
him. ‘The crews unload, then break up their boats, and drive their donkeys
through the tunnels. Tunnels are what’s down there. And one weeping rabbi.’
                 ‘A
who?’ Now Alex did lean over the balustrade. Immediately he saw the bearded
figure who was facing the wall, skullcap on his crown, prayer shawl around his
shoulders, the black box of a phylactery fastened with ribbon to his forehead
like a container for buttons, comfits, or pills; with his back to the boats
and donkeys and baskets of fruit and skins of wine and crans of fish, with
tears running down his cheeks.
                 ‘He
comes here every morning,’ said Gupta, ‘to mourn the ruin of the temple of Solomon . Many more Jews camp out on the quay road
on festival days. They want nothing to do with pagan rites.’
                 ‘That’s
crazy.’
                 ‘How
is it crazy?’
                 ‘Why
should people pretend to be Jews, or rabbis?’ ‘They are Jews,’ said Deborah sharply. ‘He is a rabbi.’
                ‘Oh,’ said Alex.
                 They
lunched on fish cakes from a stall. While they were licking their fingers clean
afterwards, Gupta said, ‘Let’s visit the Wonder Cabinet of Mankind.’ He glanced
at the high, hot sun. ‘This afternoon, after siesta?’ Indeed, traffic was
already beginning to thin out. It was past noon . People were returning home.
                 ‘Shall
we? I’d like to show you both the famous Wonder Cabinet. Though if I built a
cabinet myself, ha ha, it would have different sorts of wonders in it!’
‘Wonders which vanish before your very eyes. Like soap bubbles,’ suggested
Alex.
                ‘Shall we?’ pressed Gupta.
                 ‘Yes,’
said Deborah.
     
                 *
* *
     
                They returned to Between The Skin
Shops and sought their cool rooms.
                 During
his siesta Alex dreamed: that the missiles had all flown, the bombs had all
fallen. Russia and America were no more; Europe and China had been wiped off the map. Man-made
plagues raged elsewhere. It was the collapse, the end of technological
culture, of global governments.
                 Somehow Babylon survived. Here in the loneliest corner of
the American desert - though there was no longer any ' America ’ - Babylon remained intact, entire. Untouched. And
continued being Babylon .
                 It
was as though all the power released by the warheads had torn a hole in the
continuum of time and space; had scrambled the clock of the sun and the
calendar of the moon; and had sucked this ancient city from out of a previous
era to deposit it in the future, as the only future which remained.
                 Babylon thrived. The Euphrates flowed round and round. Seasons passed;
then decades. Eventually the