31:T121b,KATHARINE and ERESHKIGAL, mid conversation ERESHKIGAL
(emphasizing)
...a mountain. KATHARINE
Have a drink. ERESHKIGAL
Thank you. KATHARINE
Surely it’s not your first mountain. ERESHKIGAL
First one that’s been killed! KATHARINE
Does the mountain… talk to you? ERESHKIGAL
Well, yes. They’re not chatty. KATHARINE
So what on earth drove her to it? ERESHKIGAL
On earth, ha. Inanna? KATHARINE
I thought she was entertained with - you know - honey, cheeses, carnelian, admiring her vulva, stealing boats… ERESHKIGAL
She probably still likes all that. Who’d you hear that from? KATHARINE
Enheduanna, of course. ERESHKIGAL
I haven’t talked to Inanna. KATHARINE
Maybe you ought to. ERESHKIGAL
Why would I do that. KATHARINE
You just went and talked to those foragers. That was unusual. Are you ok? ERESHKIGAL
I’m the goddess of the underworld of course I’m ok. They’re just. They’re neither here nor there. Literally. KATHARINE
Sounds uncomfortable. ERESHKIGAL
You spent time in the ground. KATHARINE
Excuse me? ERESHKIGAL
I mean on the dig. In the archeological pit. KATHARINE
Pit. Yes. I thought you meant my corpse. ERESHKIGAL
Maybe you could talk to them. KATHARINE
Are they good looking? ERESHKIGAL
Katharine. KATHARINE
Why would you want me to talk to them? ERESHKIGAL
I think something’s happening to them. With the mountain. I think they’re tied to it. KATHARINE
I do love being needed… What exactly qualifies me? Just having been handy with the shovel? ERESHKIGAL
I was meaning - there might be something you get. From spending all that time digging up and trying to understand people 5000 years older than you. I think that’s the sort of time scale that might help. KATHARINE
It would be useful? ERESHKIGAL
What made you keep doing the digs? Keep going out into the middle of nowhere? KATHARINE
How did she put it - so broken, so confused 'that it seems impossible that their calm should ever return or that we should ever compose from their fragments a perfect whole or read in the littered pieces the clear words of truth. For our penitence deserves a glimpse only; our toil respite only.’ ERESHKIGAL
You’re quoting Woolf to me? KATHARINE
To the Lighthouse. ERESHKIGAL
Have I introduced you two? KATHARINE
We met while both in tuxedos. In Paris. The twenties. ERESHKIGAL
What’s with all this access to your memory? Everything’s becoming so porous. Will you talk to them?? KATHARINE
I’ll do it if you go talk to Inanna. ERESHKIGAL
And how would I do that? KATHARINE
It’s blown open. The Foragers are holding it open, you’re telling me I can go talk to them which is something you have never suggested before. Of course you can go talk to Inanna. ERESHKIGAL
Ugh I hate this. KATHARINE
This is good for what you're trying to do. ERESHKIGAL
What do you think I'm trying to do? KATHARINE
Can we have any of the same relationships we have now and say we have rebuilt the world? ERESHKIGAL
Do you know, when Inanna killed Ebih - that’s the mountain, Ebih - she said ‘I did all these things, burnt your forests, poisoned the soil, killed you, and I made you cry.’ Why’d she say that? What is happening? KATHARINE
I guess every family has one. ERESHKIGAL
Very funny. She killed 7,342 trees, 27 mountain lions, a couple herds of wild deer, thousands of birds and squirrels and mice, billions of bugs - KATHARINE
..possibly these two people. ERESHKIGAL
..‘possibly’ what a headache. You know, this is part of something a lot larger. KATHARINE
She just wants the ritual of it, the frenzy - ERESHKIGAL
But she doesn’t even know. KATHARINE
Poor thing. She’s being manipulated, you know. ERESHKIGAL
Poor thing?! Don’t forget you were a master manipulator during your life. How did Agatha Christie describe you…
‘Of one thing I am quite positive, and that is if one had to choose one woman to be a companion on a desert island, or some place where you would have no one else to entertain you, she would hold your interest as practically no one else could. […] She was capable of rudeness in fact she had an insolent rudeness, when she wanted to, that was unbelievable - but if she wished to charm you she would succeed every time.’ KATHARINE
I was wonderful. I do forget. Agatha was such a bore. ERESHKIGAL
Yes well. Forgetting is good for the dead. 32:[] 2f:{"title":"Scene 10","cells":[{"id":0,"value":"# Scene 10","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":110,"value":"$31","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":99,"value":"","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"},{"id":81,"value":"[NEXT SCENE](https://observablehq.com/@florencewallis/ei11)","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md"}],"files":"$W32","stdlib":"1","titling":"auto"}