The Summit

That our Fathers, after the Flood, erected the Tower of Babell, to preserve themselves against a second Deluge, is generally opinioned and beleeved…” – Sir Thomas Browne

The tower stands a bleak and solemn place, encircled by the world-ocean. Once the highest of plateaus, its yellow-gray summit now grasps listlessly to the thin air as the brickwork mere cubits below gives way only to the great swirling morass of the waters. This is the drowning-sea of Shinar, from whence all living things are derived, save those few clinging skeletons that gasp and murmur beneath the withered canopy. Here they hang hopeless, baked ceaselessly by the mute orb of heaven and taunted by the vast sea of the firmament. Beneath the lonely pinnacle are the depths, in which all manner of things do creep.

In a lonely instant of terror I did once glance at what lies beneath the face of the waters, but the drop is so great and the pressure of the seas so tremendous that only in the long past have men such as ourselves ventured far into the abyss. Even then, these men were able to sustain themselves only by breathing in short snatches of air through the hollowed bones of several of the larger fish that do dwell within the shadow of the pinnacle: in this manner did they dive into the waters and scour the walkways of the drowned city. At this time, there was a severe drought all over the region, such as has not been witnessed by any of our generation, and it was said that from the topmost height of the stairway even the floor of the plain was visible beneath the waters. And so did our divers swim parallel to the base of the tower and along the stairway to the immutable stars, lurking with the creeping things of the sea there beside the mountain of brick and earth. But these days of flourishing were few, as the bowl of the valley was filled once more by the coming rain and the ascendancy of the waters. Those who dive in our age merely hang upon the crest.

There is no question among our philosophers as to the place of man in the cosmos, for he clings only to the bricks and there exists for him no other support on this mountain of Shinar. His grip must not slacken, even in tempest, lest he be cast down into the chasm of the dark waters, there to be dragged to his death by the cruel, foaming talons of the waves. The great boiling whiteness of the swell, engorging like some horrible leviathan the man it seizes, spits back from its bowels not the slightest bone as sign of its catch. Those who plummet into its widened mouth are taken forever, sealed up within black, ineffably black, breathless tombs, from whence no despairing cry, no kind of sound ever escapes. Even the lulling meander may prove a tearless huntress, for some among our young are every year stolen away by the deceptive gentleness of her bobbing breast.

I think them fools who would believe that they need train themselves for swimming, and observe with some disdain from beneath our priestly canopy their climbing forms, hanging low among the mottled shellfish, scuttling down the golden slope toward the waters, there to dive and become one with the Devourer. There is no island paradise to which they might escape, whatever they dream, these babbling men – all things exist below the waters, save the sanctuary. Here, where the finger of clay is touched to the folds of heaven, we alone find refuge. For generations the waters have remained at a level nearly constant and without motion; they encroach not upon us – why, therefore, should we invade them? Can we be wanted in the depths?

For, you see, the teeming sea is no friend to us. For years it has enshrouded and laid waste our once fruitful kingdom; it has longed to swallow us, just as it swallowed our grandfathers in the time of orogeny, and as it shall again in lust long to swallow the bodies of our descendents. But still the hand of the invisible calms its rages, and in its sacred dread it bows low its skull, hiding again its tongue, scraping with its livid claws only the vast body of our indomitable protector, and feeding off the helpless in our tribe. The divers lose themselves in their god of water, but their ablutions are in vain, for what may be given to appease that monster, which itself is the libation of the universe, a perfect offering to the sky-father? Eyes unseen bore through the brick along those ancient, swollen, black pathways beneath the outer walls, into which even the boldest among us do not dare to descend in fear of the mourning dead, whose words are like cinders. It creeps through what gaps it may find; it desires the wretch who makes himself simple prey to its devices. It lurks even so close, but still these men long for its embrace, as though seeking consolation in the surety of their own destruction.

When I was young and my heart was strong, and I was not belabored by short breaths and weak legs, I entered the waters, urged on by those of my caste who had found it to their pleasure. What foolishness! I immediately slipped down below and into the pool, losing myself in the god, and I was devoured for a time. Some hand from above, a beacon in the dancing sunlight (but there is no time, there is no time), this touch was my protection, and by the will of heaven I breathed again, and so my seed survived undrowned to enter another, and now my seed may never perish, so that man might live again at the Day of Recession. But still in the cool of night I feel the water around me once more, and I thrash hopelessly, and all in vain, for I have shot like a comet down, down through the heavens, down past the mountain like fire from the clouds, down, not to burn but to smolder in the cold, the infinitely cold, down, deep in the wastes. I slide further below, flying again, or sinking, plunging – what of it? I drown, but I do not drown, for my eyes see all. Scores of fish fly past my ruined corpse: whole families of them see me and take fright, mute generations, their silver bodies lost in the waterburst of the falling star. I see the vastness of the whale, dwarfed by the mountainside, which covers all in its black shadow, and so far below it reaches that there is no plain beneath. The mountain stands astride itself: it has no base – it, in its divinity, hovers in the gulf. This awful world is revealed before me, not, in truth, as the scriptures tell us, but as a burning speck upon the face of the void, and all is water but the mountain. And still I fall, into the night, wherein all the beasts of the sea do shine like stars, glowing as though lit from within by fires undying. I sink and am lost, and before me are raised high the great heads of the oceanic gods, tiered crowns like forests around me, those dreadful forms supporting in the span of their arms the very depths, and, as I behold those faces of cold night, all is forever extinguished.

I wish our fathers had been more ambitious in their labors. I awake from my dreams to face the faceless heaven, only to realize all in a flame of agony that had I but a single step more, I might stand to touch the stars.

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