Page 19 of There Are Rivers in the Sky

—O— ARTHUR

By the River Thames, 1857–8

T he day King Arthur of the Sewers and Slums arrives at the British Museum, not as a casual visitor but as a member of staff, however junior and temporary, he walks into the grand building with a new sense of purpose. The Keeper of Oriental Antiquities is waiting for him at the entrance to the Nineveh collection. Beside him is another young man.

‘Good morning, Arthur. This is my assistant, Edward.’

‘It’s a pleasure to meet the young genius at last!’ says Edward, offering a handshake.

A flush creeps across Arthur’s cheeks. He can never tell whether people mean what they say. For all his skill in deciphering words, he cannot detect sarcasm.

Edward and Arthur are only a few years apart, though the contrast between them is glaringly apparent. Athletic of build, trim and stylish, Edward comes from a moneyed family with an illustrious name and has recently graduated from Oxford University, where he read Classics. Next to him, beads of perspiration visible on his forehead, the scrawny Arthur does his best to ignore the flecks of mud and dung clinging to the hems of his trousers, his accent and his lack of proper schooling.

‘Come, let us show you where you will work.’

The elder scholar and his assistant lead Arthur into the inner sanctums of the British Museum. Their footsteps echo along the marble corridors as they proceed through ornamented doors and lofty galleries and pass through storerooms lined floor to ceiling with shelves and cupboards packed with artefacts – numbered, catalogued and indexed. They end up in a room filled to capacity with wooden boxes. Inside, Arthur learns, there are more than thirty-five thousand tablets, excavated in Mesopotamia and shipped to England. Many of them are chipped or broken; and some so small, smashed and jumbled up that to reassemble them would be a jigsaw of inconceivable complexity.

This they will never say out loud, but both the Keeper of Oriental Antiquities and his assistant expect Arthur to last no more than a few days, his spirit shattered and his enthusiasm eroded by the scale of the challenge. The work asked of him is not only onerous and unrewarding, and the payment meagre, but impossible to accomplish: the assumption that order can be imposed on this chaos is close to madness.

Yet to their surprise, day after day, the boy from the slums keeps returning.

Where others see chaos, Arthur sees patterns. What is intimidatingly unfamiliar to them is to him an exhilarating puzzle to be solved. Every week he pulls another box from the shelves to find inside a new pile of damaged tablets. He strives to sort scores of fragments imprinted with unknown signs, searching for underlying narratives, a story that will bring him closer to the world of the Ancients. If he can find a window into the time of King Ashurbanipal, will he be able to hear the wind blowing through the hollow reeds of the Mesopotamian marshes, the sprinkle of water on the date palms, the sighs of another river, far away?

The more Arthur wrestles with the mysteries of the cuneiform, the more curious he becomes about the people who incised the signs. What were they like? Did the scribes-in-training simply record what was required of them, wishing nothing more than to perform their duties and obey the rules, or had they dared to add their own voice here and there, a personal touch, and, if so, what was their fate?

He imagines the pupils in tablet schools being scolded and beaten by masters no less strict than those he has known. Once he comes across a note on a piece of clay so small and smooth it resembles a pebble from a stream bed, something a river would make. It reads:

Wake me early in the morning.

I must not be late or my teacher will cane me.

Another time, he discovers a tablet with tooth marks in the corner. An exasperated student in Ancient Mesopotamia, upset at the mathematical problem he was set, has bitten into the clay surface. There it is, palpable even after thousands of years, his anger, his frustration, his silent rebellion.

Arthur also notices that most inscriptions end with the identical dedication, always to the same God:

Praise be to Nabu

King Arthur of the Sewers and Slums is given a cramped room at the back of the British Museum, overlooking Russell Square. The windows rattle at the slightest breeze, and there is a draught gusting in from somewhere, but he never complains. He likes being here on his own. With every fractured tablet he pieces together, he meets new characters beyond his wildest imagination – Mesopotamian kings, gods and goddesses … priests, librarians and musicians … cup-bearers, tavern-owners and canal-builders … soothsayers, necromancers and interpreters of dreams … Their stories pile up on one another, like pebbles meeting at the bottom of a creek, tossed about by stronger currents. Arthur prefers to bury himself in the folds of distant history, anywhere but in the here and now. He feels closer to the people of the past than those of the present, more at peace with the ghosts than the living.

It doesn’t occur to him that we are drawn to the kind of stories that are already present within us, germinating and pushing their way through to the surface, like seeds ready to sprout at the first hint of sun. His progress is painstakingly slow; it takes him weeks to plough through a tiny segment, though he is confident he can gain pace if he works harder. So far, most of the tablets he has deciphered have been about buying and selling. The one he is working on today records a merchant in Nineveh who demands immediate payment for a list of items – 33 jars of oil, 40 casks of wine, 25 sacks of barley. That is all there is to it. Arthur has no way of knowing whether the bill was settled. Still, no matter how trivial, every cuneiform script is extraordinary in his eyes. He finds it remarkable that, even though they have perished – all those high-ranking military officers, wealthy traders and mighty oracles – these simple clay slabs, made of earth and water, have survived. This, he believes, is nothing short of a miracle.

The staff at the British Museum, and the scholars who inhabit its commodious chambers, though used to his presence by now, treat him like the outsider he is. Even so, Arthur senses there may be unexplored opportunities for him. In every department across the museum, particularly in Classical Antiquity – the interlocking civilizations of Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome – there is an entrenched hierarchy, a strict pecking order. This is not the case in Mesopotamian studies. The field – relatively new and uncharted – is still amorphous, like liquid metal waiting to be poured into a mould. This can work to his advantage. He is aware that someone like him, without the prerogatives conferred by social connections and a private education, cannot advance in the other disciplines, where the doors are already closed and the posts mostly taken. But when it comes to reading the cuneiform, even the most eminent expert is but a beginner. Within the confines of the Assyrian Gallery, it makes no difference whether you hold qualifications from a distinguished university or left school as a child – faced with a clay tablet, everyone is in the same field of ignorance. This realization only strengthens his dedication to the task at hand. For the first time in his life he is on an equal footing with those around him. Quietly, he revels in the delicious sense of self-confidence entering his veins, circulating in his blood, teetering on the threshold of a calling he’d never dared hope for.

If Arthur is going through a silent transformation, so, too, is the British Museum. Since its foundation, the institution has served as a repository of curios, an arbitrary collection of things eccentric, exotic or aesthetically pleasing, some on display, most in storage. Artefacts purchased or donated, dug up or stumbled across, spirited away or outright stolen. An inventory that was not always systematically catalogued. When the director of the National Museum of Denmark, Christian Jürgensen Thomsen, visited more than a decade ago, he was disappointed to find the galleries and storerooms in a state of chaos. His compatriot, leading archaeologist J. J. A. Worsaae, expressed his dismay in more vivid terms, decrying the museum as an ‘utter shambles’.

Nowadays, however, the institution is changing. It is evolving into an intellectual hub, keen to become a fulcrum for the scientific study of civilizations. No longer simply a warehouse, it is actively taking part in determining what is worth preserving for posterity. Within its walls, history is not only being protected and displayed but also rewritten. Yet Arthur is too young to understand that, in deciding what will be remembered, a museum, any museum, is also deciding, in part, what will be forgotten.

Weeks become months. The Keeper of Oriental Antiquities continues to support him. He and his assistant have been wrestling with the tablets for so long, without any substantial progress, that the old antiquarian is relieved that someone else, however unlikely, has taken over the struggle. To this end, he obtains permission for Arthur to visit the museum outside its usual opening hours.

But there are more obstacles in Arthur’s way than there are providers of support. One major hurdle, especially during the dreary days of winter, is the lack of light. The museum being full of precious objects and manuscripts, candles are hazardous. Gas lamps, though safer, are reserved for senior employees. Arthur is not entitled to one of his own. Thus restricted, he can study the cuneiform only under what slender rays of sun penetrate the dim interior. His eyesight slowly deteriorating, conscious of how little working time he has left as each hour passes, he sits as close to the window as possible, hunched over a tablet, until enveloped by a gloom so profound that it wraps itself around him like a stray spectre from its own world.

A few weeks into this, Arthur comes up with a practical solution. By pressing damp paper on to their surfaces, he creates exact replicas of the tablets, which he then takes home to work on late into the night. This gives him more time with the inscriptions. He has to be careful, though, for the impressions, fragile and friable, are often nibbled away by mice.

Yet the biggest hurdle arises when his parents receive an official notification of eviction. New railways are being built across London, and some of the tracks will cut through densely populated areas, including their own neighbourhood. In a matter of days hundreds of people lose their homes. The family now shares a single cramped room with three others, their walls stained by years of dirt and their windows patched with scraps of cloth to keep out the cold. Arthur starts to sleep in his clothes, worried that they might get stolen in the middle of the night. He still does his best to keep himself clean, but soap is limited and so is water. His mother attempts to help him, when she is feeling well enough that is, which happens less and less often with her grief over the loss of her young child, her frustration with her husband’s drinking and spendthrift ways, and her endless worries as to how to put food on the table.

The decline in Arthur’s appearance does not go unnoticed. Racing from the publishing company to the British Museum and back every single afternoon does not give him enough time to comb his hair or straighten his jacket, which is, by now, faded and fraying at the cuffs. It is not only his appearance that puts people off. His cryptic mutterings and eccentric manner also unnerve them, and the trustees have started to question whether they should continue to keep him in their employ. The Keeper of Oriental Antiquities feels obliged to tell the youngster, as soon and as gently as he possibly can, that they will no longer require his services.

That week it rains incessantly. The Thames swells up, surges forth. The frontier separating the earth and the sky blurs into a listless grey that covers everything, as a gauze would swathe a wound. The spires of the city glower like gibbets in the twilight. So forceful is the downpour that a primordial dread bestirs amongst Londoners, a fear deep down that they may have angered God – or a river-dwelling nymph or naiad. Gushing through the gutters, pounding on the windowpanes, the water demands to be seen and heard. London shivers and shrivels, folding into itself like a rose withering under the absence of sun.

On the third morning, the family’s basement floods, and they find themselves up to their knees in murky, foul-smelling water. What little they have, they haul on to the street. While his father carries the mattress, his mother the stools and his younger brother the cooking utensils, Arthur rushes to save the impressions of Mesopotamian tablets.

‘Look at you, stewing over a bunch of scribbles,’ says his father under his breath.

Hours later, the rain having finally relented, the ground saturated, a defeated hush falls on the neighbourhood. A full moon hangs in the sky, so bright that Arthur can make out the maria on its surface. An arrangement of light and shade. So much in life is composed of recurrent designs. The zigzags traced by bolts of lightning, the rings inside a felled tree, the threads on a cobweb, the tessellations of a honeycomb, the twists of a conch shell, the petals of a chrysanthemum … A city also teems with fractal geometry. The catacombs beneath Camden Market, the arches of Paddington Station; the Neo-Gothic ornamentation of the Houses of Parliament … People, no less, are formed by repeated habits and conventions. The Mesopotamian tablets, too, embody a series of patterns whose meaning Arthur is determined to discover.

Wrapped in an old blanket for warmth, he places his finger on a line of cuneiform and reads out a mysterious name he has not come across before.

Gil-ga-mesh .

The following afternoon, Dr Samuel Birch enters the room where Arthur works, braced for a difficult conversation. He expects to see the young man poring over a tablet by the window, as is his wont. Instead he finds him pacing back and forth, his hair dishevelled, his collar askew, his tie unknotted, his shirt-tails hanging out and his eyes burning bright with excitement.

‘Oh, sir, I am so glad to see you!’ Arthur exclaims.

‘Everything all right, Smyth?’

‘I have news!’ says Arthur, his voice trembling. ‘I think I have stumbled on something important. More than that, fascinating!’

Thus saying, he picks up a tablet and translates these lines:

He Who Saw the Deep …

He came a far road, was weary, found peace,

And set all his labours on a tablet of stone.

Arthur lifts his head to find the scholar staring at him with undisguised astonishment. As their gazes lock, they both break into a smile, seized by the realization that they have encountered something mysterious and wholly unexpected. This tablet is unlike anything Arthur has read so far. This is not a merchant’s grain inventory or a legal text or memorandum. It is poetry.

‘How marvellous,’ says the Keeper of Oriental Antiquities. ‘The trustees are going to be delighted. Do you think you can carry on with the translation – if you can find more of it in this jumble?’

Arthur inhales a lungful. He has been waiting for this moment for so long. ‘Should I be allowed to continue my labours, which I would be happy to do, it would be on one condition. Two, actually, if I may.’

‘Tell me.’

‘I’d need a gas lamp to be able to read when the light is poor.’

‘That can be provided.’

‘Also, a new jacket, sir. Mine is very old.’

A hint of affection in his gaze, the Keeper of Oriental Antiquities nods. ‘You may most certainly have both.’

And thus Arthur starts to assemble an ancient story, piece by broken piece. Powerful and remorseless, Gilgamesh is a callous brute at the start of the epic. He deflowers newly married women on their wedding nights, attacks their humiliated husbands, tyrannizes entire communities. Deluded by hubris, infatuated by desire, blinded by ambition, he is ultimately debased and humbled by failure. This is something that puzzles Arthur. In all the books he has read, the heroes were apparent, clearly delineated. That they were superior to others in talent, courage, or intelligence was beyond doubt. But in the Mesopotamian imagination nothing is definite. The divine and the mundane, the good and the evil, the overworld and the netherworld – all are in a perpetual dance. Gilgamesh , the earliest recorded tale in the history of humanity, the oldest surviving poem, is also startlingly fluid and fluctuating, as its principal character shifts and pivots, repeatedly failing his trials. The-hero-that-is-no-hero matures only after multiple defeats. The narrative breaks apart and is restored again, like the sea that smashes against the jetty, destroying and renewing itself.

That year in December, the boy whose life began by the River Thames is offered a full-time position at the Middle Eastern Collections of the British Museum. He takes his leave from the publishing house to dedicate himself fully to the Mesopotamian artefacts. He has just turned eighteen.

His salary is much lower than it was at Bradbury in another year or two he could have become a master printer. He has raised himself up this far but now he is foolishly abandoning his good fortune, and for what? The cotton famine has hit hard, mill workers in Lancashire have no job, and the tides of discontent and despair are lapping at the shores of London. Entire families have been left without food and shelter. There is so much hunger, penury and suffering all around, and here he is leaving a well-paid position to tinker with a heap of crumbling, smashed tablets.

His father is furious about the drop in his earnings; he curses and swears constantly, but there is not much the man can do to change the course of things. Arthur is now tall, and, though he has never been solidly built, he is strong enough to ward off blows. The sons of abusive fathers need to grow fast.

Around this time Arthur starts to keep a diary. His first entry reads:

Thus it is that, in the winter of 1858, I, King Arthur Smyth of the Sewers and Slums, have entered into official life at the British Museum to regularly prosecute the study of the cuneiform tablets from the Library of Ashurbanipal in Nineveh and, in particular, to pursue the translation of an epic poem, which seems to have been widely known and deeply cherished by the Ancients. I believe I have finally found my calling: it is my duty to piece together what has been broken, to help people to remember what has been consigned to oblivion throughout the centuries, and to retrieve what has been lost somewhere along the way.

I wish to be like the River Thames: I want to tend to what has been discarded, damaged and forgotten.