“Except Rizpah,” Jonathan reminded him.
“She’s retired. She doesn’t count. All the others are gone. But they still flourish in towns like Endor, and the nice thing about them is that they help. They don’t just lie there and wait as if they were expecting the Red Sea to open. And when you want to be alone, you pay your shekels and dismiss them with a compliment.”
“I'll think about it,” said Jonathan. Resolutely he knelt to rebuild his elephant. But his shoulders were hunched and he looked like a sad little boy whose toys had been nibbled by mice.
David embraced him and took the pale and forlorn face between his hands, and, because there appeared to be no one closer than the palace, which was hidden by poplar trees, kissed him on the mouth.
He did not hear Rizpah’s approach, he felt her shadow shut them from the sun. (Two visitors, two shadows. What was the proverb brought out of Egypt? “One shadow cools, two shadows kill.”) He looked into her wide, bland eyes and wondered if they concealed a perception which only Saul had perceived.
He released Jonathan as casually as if he had been adjusting his friend’s tunic and said quickly, “I’m going to marry Michal. Has Saul told you?” He was careful to make his voice sound happy and expectant like that of a new bridegroom.
“Yes. I came to congratulate you. I feel that you are well suited to each other.” She was wearing her usual soiled robe, originally red but discolored with saffron flour from the palace kitchen, which fell to her supervision. She might have been an aging slave instead of a concubine who had replaced a queen.
“Jonathan was wishing me success in my marriage.” Even in undemonstrative Israel, fathers kissed their sons and brothers kissed their brothers, but not on the mouth, no, never on the mouth. Perhaps, however, customs differed among Rizpah’s people, the Ammonites, and she would interpret the kiss as merely fraternal.
“Jonathan has become a very affectionate boy since you came to court” Irony? Reproach? Threat? Spoken by Saul, the words would have bristled with sinister implications. But Rizpah’s simplicity was the perfect disguise.
‘I too wish you success, 1 she said, “though love is not always successful, is it? There are too many ghosts.” She smiled wanly and disappeared down the trail.
“Is she going to tell the king?” David asked.
“It’s hard to say,” said Jonathan. “She likes you, I know, and she loves Michal. But I've always taken my mother’s part against her, and I rather think she dislikes me. She may go directly to Saul. Or to Michal. Or she may do nothing at all. She isn’t the fool she seems, you know. She doesn’t think, but she does feel, and some of her intuitions are worthy of a Siren. Have you ever noticed how often she begins a sentence with ‘I feel’?‘
“Never mind,” said David. “Saul won’t have us stoned for kissing each other.”
“Probably not,” said Jonathan. “But he may separate us. I can see him sending you to fight the Philistines and me to fight the Edomites. I’d rather be stoned!”
“Jonathan, nobody can separate us, not even the king.‘ Marriages of state, unpredictable concubines, compromising kisses, even another war… such circumstances were like locusts, pestiferous but not dangerous (yet a plague of locusts had brought famine to Egypt).
“David, you make good things happen because you want them to, and you work like Jacob for anything you want But there are some things that even you can’t accomplish. It was too perfect, our loving each other. You know what they say: ‘Perfection belongs to the gods. Show them your imperfections and then they will answer your prayers.’ ”
“I've shown them enough imperfections for both of us, laughed David.
“I think,” said Jonathan slowly, “that you will be king one day. And Michal will be your queen.”
It was the next day in the garden that an old man, as full of years as Abraham before his death, beckoned to David with yellow, crooked fingers. Unlike Abraham, who had worn his age like a mantle of white egret feathers, he resembled a fallen eagle. His talons were broken but his eyes were keen and fierce.
His voice was surprisingly soft when he said: “My son, you are Yahweh’s chosen to rule his people.
CHAPTER NINE
It was a hardship; indeed, it was a deprivation to be a Siren and not to live by the sea; to live in a streamless village whose single well erupted from sulfurous Sheol. It had been worse than a deprivation to leave the coves of Crete with their sea caves and rainbow fish, the sun-drenched forests where woodpeckers chattered to Dryads, and come to the squalid town of Endor, which lay directly between Philistia and Israel and changed masters as often as the moon changed phases. But here she was safe from the pirates who scourged the coast; here she was comfortable, even if not wealthy, from her alternating practice of prostitution and soothsaying. When the Philistines controlled the town, she practiced either art; when the hardbitten, guilt-ridden Israelites ousted the permissive Philistines, she concealed her powdered newt and eye of toad in her cellar and gave herself totally, if discreetly, to love.
Often she wondered about that other Siren who had come from Crete to Israel, her friend Abinoam. Alecto pitied her, since the king she had married was frequently mad and, even when sane, preferred the frumpish concubine Rizpah, and Ahinoam must endure the agonies of the chaste or risk being stoned by envious wives. At least the Goddess had befriended both of them by disposing of their mutual enemy, the Cyclops Goliath.
She was filling a pitcher at the well when she saw the strangers. Since the good wives of Endor avoided her company, she was careful to visit the well in the late afternoon, when no one dipped water except the thirsty travelers who paused to break their journey and seek a lodging for the night, and the dying sun laid a many-colored mantle over the colorless town. The bucket tinkled melodiously as it rose on its chain with its precious freight. Quietly she hummed the ancient song with which her unprincipled ancestors had tried to ensnare Odysseus, and a voice in her whispered: “Something remarkable is going to happen to me tonight.”
The men had muffled their faces with their robes, but they stared at her curiously and, she was pleased to note, admiringly, although one seemed shy and looked at the well whenever she met his gaze. Their eyes bespoke youth. With a Siren’s keen vision she could even detect their color in the diminishing light of dusk. The shorter, stockier youth had eyes of penetrating blue; his friend had eyes of green which made her think of lost islands and limitless oceans (/ have known such eyes…).
“The water is a trifle brackish, I fear.‘ She smiled. ”But this is Endor, forgotten and decaying, like a backwater of the sea.“
Blue Eyes was quick to answer. “But not its women. Is this Rebecca I see before me, as Jacob saw her at the well?”
“Please,” whispered Green Eyes to his friend. “She doesn’t look like a whore. She may be somebody’s wife. You’ll have her husband on our necks.”
“She’s a whore,” said Blue Eyes. “Can’t you tell by her boldness? And she comes alone to a well at dusk and without a veil”
Of course she had heard them; not even a whisper escaped a Siren’s ears. “It pleases you to call me a whore,” she said without anger. “And you are right. Long ago I learned that I have one gift. I am neither quick nor clever. I can weave a basket of rushes and grow a passable garden, but I keep house more to the satisfaction of mice than men. All in all, I would make a barely tolerable wife and a forgetful mother. But Ashtoreth has seen fit to give me an ample body and, I hope, a not unpleasing face. Since they are my best possessions, I use them to best advantage. If I were proud, I might call myself by the high-sounding name of courtesan and make you think that I had lain with kings, or better yet, I could pretend to be a widow who was waiting to marry the brother of her deceased husband. But pride goeth before a fall, and I have fallen far too many times already to risk another bruise. I am, as you say, a whore. The question that remains is this. Do I please you-either or both-and have you the wherewithal to engage my lodging and my person for t
he night? That is to say, if either of you pleases me. I have yet to decide.”
Blue Eyes opened a pouch at his belt and withdrew a handful of the flat copper shekels.
“I have decided,” she said.
“My friend wishes to engage you for the night,” said Blue Eyes.
“Can’t he speak for himself?”
“I wish to engage you for the night,” said Green Eyes, though she quickly surmised that he would prefer his friend. It was not mat he was foppish or fey. His voice was deep and manly in spite of his shyness, his figure straight as the mast on a galley. He was probably a stalwart warrior. Nor was he brash and assertively male, the lover who tries to conceal his inclinations with boasts and extravagant compliments. It was the way he looked at her which revealed his secret: as if she were his sister. She felt that he liked her but loved his friend; certainly he loved his friend. They stood so inseparably close that their arms must be touching beneath their robes.
Well, no matter. She was used to pleasing men, from virgins to masochists. Fathers had brought her their sons and asked her to teach them the art of love, and old graybeards had visited her for reassurance that they could still serve Ashtoreth as well as Yahweh. It was a point of pride that she could satisfy any man of any race, even if he was impotent or a lover of other men. After all, she was a Siren, and Sirens-their persons as well as their possessions and their arts-were the ultimate aphrodisiacs.
To Blue Eyes she said, “There’s an inn down the road. It'll do for the night, if you don’t mind fleas and thieves. That is, unless you want to come with us and watch.”
Blue Eyes laughed and a red tendril of hair escaped from his hood. “I’m a doer, not a watcher.” Then to his friend, “I’ll see you in the morning. If the evening doesn’t go well, come any time you like.”
The two engaged in whispered conversation.
“But what do I do? I mean, to get started. She’ll expect compliments and gewgaws and who knows what amorous tricks.”
“Ask her price. Give her the shekels in advance and make clear they’re all you have, so you won’t be robbed in your ‘Then-?”
“Compliment her. Treat her like a bride. Don’t make her feel you’re buying her but wooing her ”
“I get tonguetied when I have to compliment a strange.
“You can be as eloquent as Samuel when you want to Now get on with it before you change your mind.”
“Alecto’s hut had earned her the local name ‘the Witch of Endor.’”
She looked intently into Green Eyes’ face and took his hand. “You will do nicely, my dear,” she said and led him, shivering, into what, on the outside, was indistinguishable from the other rounded huts of wattle and brick, which resembled a crooked row of horseshoe crabs. The inside of Alecto’s hut, however, had earned her the local name “the Witch of Endor.”
The boy gasped. “It’s like a seacave.” A fisherman’s net hung like a tapestry on the far wall, and she had strung it with murexes, conch shells, and starfish. The masthead of a Philistine galley, a great wooden goose, presided over the room like a guardian god, but the true god was the Goddess, whose image in terra-cotta, life-sized, stood beside the goose as if to say: “I am the one who really sails the ships-or sinks them.” She was exquisitely carved and expertly painted with red ocher and powdered lapis lazuli, and Alecto was very proud that a priest who was also a sculptor, Philistine needless to say, since there were no Israelite sculptors, had called her image “lovelier than any in Gaza or Gath, and almost as lovely as you.” She had not charged him a shekel for the night.
The other walls hung with the shields which Philistine sailors fastened to the hulls of their ships, the shields which, staring like dragon eyes, had struck demonic terror into the hearts of the Egyptians when the Philistine war galleys had first invaded their waters. The couch rested on a framework of oars carved with tiny figures of sailors and fishermen. The pillows danced with embroidered tarpons. The drinking cups leaped with flying fish. A fresh salty scent pervaded the room, and Alecto noticed with pleasure that a look of wonderment had come into the boy’s eyes, as if he were remembering sea-girt islands and malachite seas.
The better to admire the room, he thrust the robe away from his face and revealed a luxuriance of hair so yellow that it seemed to have been woven on looms within the sun. How could she fail to recognize the prince of Israel? His beauty and bravery were as famous as his friendship with David, who, she realized, had been his blue-eyed friend.
She could not restrain the cry, “Bumblebee!”
He looked at her in astonishment. “You know me?”
“Yes, my dear. I knew you as a little child. And I know why you must come to me, a whore, though the women of Israel clamor for your attention. Has your mother told you about our race, the Sirens?“
“A little.”
“Then she has told you that there is only one mature female, the queen, and many drones-the workers don’t count — in each of our hives, and the males must console each other, except in the nuptial flight.”
“The Tragic Exaltation, Mama called it But it holds no attraction for me. And that’s why I still cleave to men instead of women.”
“And the present man being David, I may not be able to help you. He looks like a harvest god. That glory of flaming hair! It positively aureoles him.”
He smiled with pleasure at her praise of his friend, and she warmed with the sweetness of him.
“I’m glad I found you. Mama would have sought you a long time ago except for my father-that is, stepfather. She was afraid she would endanger you-reveal you as a sorceress, a Cretan, a Siren. He never lets her talk about her old life. She didn’t even tell me about my past until a few weeks ago, when I met David and-”
“Loved him? And thought you had committed a terrible sin, the Sin of Sodom?”
“Yes. Before I had even touched him, I felt like a leper. But now we are lovers.”
“Then why do you need me?‘
“David is going to marry my sister.” He might have said: “David is going to die.”
“And you are hurt and angry and want to show him you can possess a woman too?”
“No,” he said. “I’ve come for practice. One day I will probably have to marry too-to produce an heir, don't you see. And I have to know what to do. My bride will undoubtedly be a virgin, and if I’m as ignorant as she is, well probably spend our wedding night playing draughts. I’ve never been with a woman. I think you are very beautiful, but even so I don’t want to-I don’t know how to-”
“Lie with me, Jonathan? The first thing is to feel that you don’t have to. If we spend the whole night in conversation, why, nothing is lost, and no one will ever know that you were not the most exhilarating lover of my life. First, though,
I shall, cook you a supper. Love languishes on an empty stomach.“
In spite of her disavowal of domesticity, she prepared a succulent dinner of quail cooked in figs, wheaten bread in which raisins swam like minnows, and a pudding whose ingredients she carefully withheld from him because they included a generous amount of powdered mandrake roots, the strongest aphrodisiac in Israel. “Now for some beer,” she said. “I expect you don’t often get that, do you?”
“Usually I drink milk or wine.” Beer, an import from Philistia, was looked upon with suspicion by the elders of Israel. “However-”
“There now, you’ve had enough.”
Jonathan, finishing the beer in his cup with one big gulp, blurted. “About this lovemaking. Won’t you, uh, disembowel me? After all, I’m a drone.”
Alecto said with professional pride. “You forget that I am a courtesan as well as a Siren. The usual queen-your mother, for example, if she still ruled a hive-disembowels her lovers by the frenzy of her passion. After all, she must wait a year for that one little moment of satisfaction and make do with an inexperienced drone who probably has a friend. Furthermore, she feels that she is honoring him by sending him directly to the Celestial Vineyard.”
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“It’s an honor I can do without.”
“Exactly. You don’t want to go without David. Besides, in Israel, who knows if you would wind up in the Vineyard or in Sheol? My point is that I will pleasure you so soothingly that you needn’t fear the loss of any vital organs, genitals, abdomen, what have you. I am a Siren. I am also a courtesan who has raised lust to art, and love to genius. Forgive my boasting. I only want you to trust me.”
“May I have another cup of beer?”
“Certainly not.”
“But I’m feeling so relaxed. So warm and light. As if I could float through the ceiling.”
“That’s the danger. To quote a Siren philosopher who has often been plagiarized, Too much drink excites desire but limits performance.‘”
“Oh,” he said with disappointment. “Some more raisin cake then.”
“Why don’t you remove your robe? You look as if you were dressed against a winter night in the hinterlands of Assyria. Allow me to be your blanket,”
He visibly winced at the offer.
“Jonathan, my sweet, is my body so repellent to you?”
“Oh, no,” he cried. “You’re a real Eve! It was what you said about being a blanket.”
“David said the same thing?”
“Yes,” he sighed.
“And said it better. Then I shall be a light linen coverlet Different, you see. Not his competitor but his ally.” She left the room and returned in a gossamer robe beneath which the splendors of her body showed with misty allurement, the painted nipples, the navel inset with a malachite, the long, powerful, yet feminine legs which had once propelled her through the sea with the speed of a flying fish. Total nudity could only alarm Jonathan; an intimation, she hoped, would excite him.
He sat uneasily in his loincloth beside a brazier. The firelight flickered over his honey-colored skin. How young and unblemished he looked to her! Did he understand, had his mother told him, that the life of a Siren, a drone no less than a queen, might outlast a civilization? That splendid David might wrinkle into winter while Jonathan walked in the summer of youth? And yet there was something about him which suggested a short life, a look not so much of fragility as of mortality. Perhaps, after all, mortal David would outlive him to rule a kingdom.
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