“Gilgamesh fell silent after I spoke. His eyes on the ground. Then he looked up and, in a voice so calm it was frightening, said: ‘You are like me. There is no difference between us.’ And he was right: on the one hand, a gaunt old man. On the other, a young man, a warrior perhaps, exhausted from battle. What could set them apart? A trick. It so happened that, after the Flood, I turned away from men and toward my protector, Ea. And became the one and only dweller in Dilmun. I hadn’t warned the people who had boarded the box-shaped ship. They were left leaderless. And all, for all time, destined to die. Gilgamesh, too, one day.”

“When Gilgamesh departed, like a gust of wind, he left me with a constant craving to speak of him. But to whom? Only one voice could talk back to me: the voice of Siduri, the alewife. We lived on opposite banks of the waters of death, like neighbors in a vast prairie. On rare occasions, we were able to visit each other. It was I who went to her. I sat at the bar of her tavern, like any ordinary customer. I never tired of hearing her tell how she first saw Gilgamesh. He had arrived wrapped in a lion skin, like a hunter of wild bulls, rowdy, shaggy, and brusque.

“Siduri had barred the tavern door and fled to the roof for safety. When, finally, she agreed to serve at the bar, Gilgamesh sat facing her and began to boast of his exploits with Enkidu. Just what every customer inevitably does, Siduri thought. Of course, they were amazing exploits this time, not your run-of-the-mill bravado. Gilgamesh flaunted the crazed energy of someone who still lives in hope, though grief over Enkidu ate away at his confidence. He still hadn’t given up the idea that death was something you could root out, like Humbaba and his cedars.

“There was only one way to interrupt those stories, and it always worked. ‘Impressive,’ Siduri said. ‘So what’s with the hollow cheeks and glazed eyes?’

“Gilgamesh fell silent for a moment, taken by surprise. How was it that this woman seemed to know everything? And he began to speak of the only thing he really cared about and that he could have talked about all night: Enkidu, his dead friend.

“It was then that Siduri, with sovereign sobriety, told him what I would have to tell him again later, weaving it together with other stories: ‘When the gods fashioned men, they assigned them death and kept life for themselves.’ Not a word more was required. And no one could have said it better than Siduri, used as she was to standing quietly behind the bar, listening to the endless, empty monologues of her customers. Who were always enchanted by her, by her veiled beauty, her golden cups, her silence that they mistook for interest.

“Despite what she had said, Gilgamesh asked Siduri how to find me. I was his last conceivable goal. And soon afterward, he left in a whirl. Siduri had seen him only that one night, but she seemed to know everything that I would find out about him only after many days. Seeing Siduri became a way of remembering Gilgamesh. And she felt the same way.”