Istar of Babylon: A Phantasy

by Margaret Horton Potter

"Truly, Charmides, thou deservest all happiness!" she said, impulsively, coming nearer to him.

He bowed his head. "For thee I came to Babylon. Through thee my heart has found its home. Therefore, when thou shalt ask it of me, my life it is thine."

With this, then, and a last puzzled look at her, he went forth to his much-belated temple duties.

Istar, once more left alone, turned slowly back into her shrine. The little interlude that had broken in upon her loneliness made her shrink from the pall that waited to overwhelm her again. Thereafter the one hour of Charmides' presence remained like a little golden disk in the memory of her solitary months. But now the momentary sense of companionship was too terribly contrasted with the melancholy of her solitude. Hurriedly covering herself with a great, silver-woven, heavy-meshed veil, she left her retreat in the upper morning and left the ziggurat for her dwelling-place behind the temple.

She did not see her sanctuary again for seven months. It was not that she felt any reluctance about entering it. Simply, her apathy had become such that she was incapable of the physical effort necessary for the ascent of the tower. Once a day she took her place in the mercy-seat in the temple. All the remaining time she spent in the inmost court of her particular suite of rooms, or in the miniature apartment where she was accustomed to sleep. She reclined generally at full length, doing no work of any kind, her eyes shut, the heavy veil shrouding her figure but thrown back from her face, her body perfectly motionless, her very thoughts apparently at rest. Her attendants watched her, wondering at the great change that was working upon that formerly magnificent personality. And through these same temple-slaves, eunuchs, and hierodules, strange rumors concerning the once universally worshipped goddess continued to fly abroad through the city. Certainly there appeared to be little enough of the divine about this weak, ill woman; though why the change had come none of those connected with her had the faintest idea.

These were the days of Istar's wandering in the wilderness. Pain, mental and physical, she learned in every stage, from slight discomfort to nerveless agony. Each morning she woke with the prayer in her heart that night might bring the end of it all, yet knowing well that her end was far away. Her old, archetypal world became gradually more and more indistinct to her memory, till she had all but forgotten it. Her one wish, that she dared not utter, was for annihilation. Yet this would involve a sin that she could not but recognize as unpardonable; for Istar of Babylon bore within her another life, a life that was, as yet, part of her, that by natural law was hers to cherish, that she could not love, that she dared not hate. And it was the day when this new life should take unto itself individuality that she lay dreading through all those dreary months, from the death of summer to Airû, when the new spring came to Babylon.

The fall of Istar was accomplished. This, by day and by night, she cried to herself, in her agony of self-mortification. It seemed to her that the wheel of the law was the most merciless of all ordained things. The former dead-alive existence of her godhead seemed holy, now that she could know it no more. The very present, indeed, unendurable as it was, was infinitely better than what was to come. As a matter of fact, her extreme dread of the future was very near to turning her brain, for at every hour she lived the moment of discovery, till, at times, she was like to go mad with it, and to disclose it all, then and there, and so have done with it.

There were two or three of her priestesses who realized, through many of her symptoms, her mortal state; and these were very tender to her in this time of her trial. From their lips no word of her condition reached the outside world. The underlings, only, talked; and it was from underling to Zicarî, Zicarî to Pasîsû, Pasîsû to Sângî, and so to the Patêsi at last, that distorted accounts of Istar's life and suffering passed rapidly in the late autumn. And these rumors quickly reached the ears of the three people who had the strongest personal interest in Istar of Babylon. Two of them were her enemies, bitter, unscrupulous, and powerful. These two were also closely connected. But, while one knew perfectly the mind of the other, and each knew that the greatest desire of the other's political life was Istar's ruin, yet, while matters slowly ripened and daily grew more absorbing, the subject of the approaching disgrace of the whilom goddess was never once opened between them. Amraphel of Bel, from his palace on the Â-Ibur-Sabû, and Daniel of Judea, from his humble house south of the canal of the Prophet, in the Jews' quarter, watched, planned, listened, read each other's hearts, and bided their time, in the way peculiar to those that know well their world. The time for action would come, and without any planning on the part of either of them. But when it did arrive there must be no bungling of the affair.

Only one little thing in the case, as these two considered it, failed to assume its proper proportion in the perspective of their reasoning. The cause of Istar's undoing was as much a mystery to them as it was to the lowliest kalî in Istar's temple. Both Amraphel and Daniel had long ago ceased to reckon Belshazzar as a factor in this affair. The old suspicion had been a mistake—an incomprehensible mistake. The prince royal went no more to the temple of the goddess, never spoke of or to her, gave rather all his time to affairs of state; which at this moment sorely needed the firm will and the strong hand that he alone, of all his house, possessed.

It was well enough that Amraphel could not read Belshazzar's heart. There was indelibly written what would have startled that reverent man out of all his omniscient composure. For if Istar mourned unceasingly the loss of her godhead, Belshazzar, of the house of the Sun, mourned the loss of her to his life as he would hardly have mourned the fall of that kingdom that was dearer to him than his life. After the strange return from Erech, he had gone daily for two months to Istar's temple, and had sought by entreaty, threat, prayer, and imprecation, to be admitted to her. And again and again, and yet again, had he been refused, till finally he turned his thoughts to the life of his city. But by this means she was not taken from his heart. By night he dreamed of her, and by day, when she was as far from him as the sun, as near as his children, as unapproachable as the silver sky, she was forever a sub-consciousness in his thoughts.