“As well as it can be,” the ghost answered. “I have only the memory of bread. I have only the memory of beer. I have only the memory of desire.”
Sharur remembered what Tupsharru had said. “As things are right now, I also have only the memory of desire.”
The laughter that came from his grandfather’s ghost held a bitter edge. “You know not what you say. Soon enough, you will burn like a furnace again, and you will tip up the legs of that slave or give a courtesan copper to suck your prong. I have only the memory, not the thing itself. I shall never have it, never again.”
“And even if I slake my lust, what will it mean?” Sharur asked, in his weakness after being ill matching the ghost’s self-pity. “I shall not have the one woman I truly want.”
“Having any woman is better than having no woman at all.” His grandfather’s ghost was not about to be outdone. “Having thin beer is better than having no beer at all. Having moldy bread is better than having no bread at all.”
“You have the essence of beer. You have the essence of the bread,” Sharur reminded him.
“It is not the same.” The ghost’s sigh was like the breeze blowing through the branches of a dead bush. “And you say nothing about the essence of a woman. Tell me, where shall I find the essence of a woman?”
“That I do not know.” Sharur smiled in the darkness. “Were there such a thing, many living men would seek it: I do know that.”
“And the house of Ereshguna would sell it. The house of Ereshguna would profit from it. I know my son.” The ghost of Sharur’s grandfather spoke with a sort of melancholy pride. Then it said, “I am glad you remain among those with flesh on their bones. When your spirit ran free of your body, I feared you would join me here among the ghosts for some little while, and then drift down into the underworld, into the realm of the forgotten.”
On the blanket, Sharur shivered, though the night was not cold and though he was not feverish. “Truly I had a narrow escape from death because of the foul breath of the fever demon,” he said.
“Truly you had a narrow escape from death,” his grandfather’s ghost agreed. “But while your spirit wandered, you saw more widely than you have while still wearing flesh.”
“I saw more confusedly than I could while still wearing flesh,” Sharur said. “Some of it, I suppose, might have been real. Some would have been the real, transmuted by fever. And some, surely, was nothing but fever.”
“Ah, but which was which?” His grandfather’s ghost used a sly tone Sharur had sometimes heard from his father when he had overlooked something. “Which was real, and which the fever dream?”
“You sound as if you know the answer,” Sharur said. “Tell me.”
“The question is the essence, not the answer. I am a ghost. I am a thing of essences.” Sharur’s grandfather’s ghost sighed again. “But not the essence of a woman. Find a way to boil off the essence of a woman and the ghosts of men would give you whatever you wanted for it.”
“They would give the essence of gold, no doubt,” Sharur said. “Mortals are not things of essences. Tell me: I ask it of you again—which was real, and which the fever dream?”
“The question is the essence, not the answer,” his grandfather’s ghost repeated. “And now I shall go.”
Sharur had not known the ghost was there until it spoke. He could not have proved it was gone now. Was it mocking him, or had it tried to tell him something important? Before he could decide, he fell asleep again.
Slowly, Sharur recovered from the sickness the fever demon had breathed into him. His strength came back, little by little; he ate bread and salt fish and drank beer to restore the flesh of which the fever demon had robbed him. One day, he noticed that, when the Imhursaggi slave woman brought him food and drink, he was eyeing her body. She noticed, too, and departed as quickly as she could. He thought about ordering her back, but in the end did not bother. Though desire had returned, it was not so urgent as to make him want to lie with her.
A few days after that, he left his home and went out into Gibil once more. His steps were slow and halting, so slow and halting as to make him realize that, while he had regained much strength, he was still a long way from having regained it all.
He bought beans fried in fat from a man who cooked them over a brazier set up on a small table he would carry from place to place. The fellow handed them to him in a twist of date-palm leaf. Eating gave Sharur an excuse to stand still and rest. His weakness angered him, but he could do nothing about it.
People and beasts of burden surged past him. He smiled to watch a couple of little naked farm boys with long switches chivying ducks along toward the market square. The ducks fussed and complained, but kept on moving. Some of them, the lucky ones, might be kept for egg layers. The rest would soon be seethed or roasted. Though few foreigners came to Gibil these days, the Giblut still traded busily among themselves.
Sharur had almost finished his beans when a small, thin fellow came up to the man who prepared them and said, “Let me have some of those, if you please.” He opened his right hand to display several broken bits of copper. The cook held out his own hand. He took the copper bits, hefted them, nodded in satisfaction, and gave the newcomer a ladleful of beans in a leaf. The fellow beamed at him. “Thank you, friend. These’ll fill the hole in my belly.”
He spoke with a Zuabi accent. At first, that was all Sharur noticed about him, for it stood out these days. Then he took a longer look at the fellow. “I know you!” he exclaimed.
“No, my master, I fear you are mis—” The Zuabi stopped. His eyes went wide and round in his narrow, clever face. He bowed very low. “No, my master, I am the one who is mistaken. It is an honor to see you again.”
“Come. Walk with me.” Sharur ate the last of his beans, threw the date-palm leaf on the ground, licked his fingers clean, and wiped them on his kilt. “Tell me how you come to be in Gibil, when we last met outside Zuabu.”
“As you might guess, my calling brings me here,” replied the man who had tried to rob Sharur’s caravan as it returned from the Alashkurru Mountains. He popped a handful of fried beans into his mouth.
“Yes, I might have guessed that,” Sharur agreed. “And what, if you would be so kind as to tell me one thing more, have you come to Gibil to steal?”
“I should not tell you what I have come to Gibil to steal,” the Zuabi thief said, “for Enzuabu commanded me to come to Gibil to steal it.”
Sharur walked along without saying anything. He knew, as the thief knew, the Zuabi would not have been able to steal anything in Gibil without the mercy Sharur had shown, and without Sharur’s letting him steal a token bit of jewelry to placate his god.
“I will tell you my name,” the thief said. “I am called Habbazu.”
“I will tell you my name,” Sharur returned. “I am called Sharur.”
They bowed to each other. Habbazu said, “And you are the son of a master merchant? So your men said, back by Zuabu.” Sharur nodded. Habbazu went on, “And I am the son of a thief, and each of us follows his father’s trade. Tell me, master merchant’s son, if a thief could have robbed you and slain you while you lay sleeping but did no more than pass by in the night, what would you owe that man?”
“In Gibil, we do not reckon thievery an honorable trade,” Sharur answered. “A man owes it to himself not to do anything dishonorable. He does not need any other man to owe him anything for refraining.” .
“We think differently in Zuabu,” Habbazu said. “With us, thievery is work like any other. If it were not honorable work, would the god of the city command us to undertake it?” .
“I know little of the ways of gods,” Sharur told him.