by Marek Halter
THEY were standing flat against the wall, breathing in short gulps, their faces distorted by the flickering flames. In spite of the sharp edges of rock digging into her buttocks and shoulders, Zipporah was aware of nothing but Moses’ body pressed against hers. What was happening now was something she had wanted with as much fear and as much passion as others might put into wanting to live and die happy. She thought of pushing him away, but that would have been to lie to herself.
“You know who I am!” she heard him say again. “Oh Zipporah, don’t look at me as if I were a prince of Egypt! Don’t be like your sister! I have nothing! I’m a Hebrew with no god and no family. Your father gave me my first camel and my first flock. You are rich in every way, and I am nothing but the reflection I see in your eyes. You are the woman who desires my kiss, and I thirst for you.”
Moses’ fierce breath was like a wind stoking the fire of her lips. The heat of his body protected her so well from the wind and the vast night outside! He was right. That was what she was, and only that: the woman who desired his kiss. He was right, too, that she could not help thinking of him as a prince, a powerful man, a Pharaoh’s son, and of how different they were, how white he was and how black she was—black, and even weaker than the Hebrews themselves.
Moses touched her lips lightly with his fingers, as he had done once before, in this very cave, the day she had been overwhelmed by the sight of him. She wanted to say: “No, Moses! We can’t, it’s a sin! I’ve never been touched by a man!”
She could feel his member pressed against her belly, and its hardness took the words out of her mouth. She could hold back no longer. Urgently, she gripped Moses’ neck, pulled his face to hers, and opened her lips to let him draw her moan from her. . . . If Horeb had rumbled at that moment, she would not have heard him.
THEY were rolling on the blanket. The flames were less bright now, but they could still see each other.
“I see you, I see you!” Moses was saying. “Your skin is no longer as black as the night.”
She was kissing him as if their kisses could wipe away the tears forming in her eyes.
Moses removed the brooches to loosen her tunic, kissed the hollow of her shoulders, and placed his bare cheek on the tender curve of her breasts. She pushed him away, stunned, already hungry for the skin she could feel beneath her Cushite fingers. She closed her eyes.
Moses undressed her completely, heedless of the icy wind. He, too, closed his eyes now. “I see you with my fingers!” he said.
He caressed her hips and belly and thighs as if sculpting the darkness. Zipporah felt and saw Moses’ slender fingers, his princely white hands giving shape to his desire.
He leaned over her. “I see you with my lips,” he said. “You are my light.”
She saw his luminous brow, his lips kissing the hollow between her breasts, searching for the nipples as if drinking some mysterious intoxicating draft, parting her thighs and drawing his pleasure there like water from a well.
She gave her whole body to him, gripping his shoulders, putting her hands together on the small of his back, crying out to catch her breath. There was a pain that lasted an instant, and then he was inside her. Fire spread through her chest, fire that did not come from the flames. She was shaking like a little girl. Dizziness ran down her spine and whirled around the increasingly fine, sharp, tender mixture of pain and pleasure that opened her chest to Moses’ mouth as he bent over her, swayed over her, and whispered words she neither heard nor understood. She gripped his thighs and buttocks as she had gripped the man who had saved her from drowning at the bottom of the sea, bringing her back from dream to day. At that moment, in a moan the wind carried away, they at last breathed in unison.
COMING together and moving apart, exhausted but not sated, they barely slept that night. When dawn came, the wind was still blowing, and Horeb’s mountain was still disgorging turbulent clouds like smoke from a forge, but, between the clouds, the sky was getting bluer.
Zipporah was the first to rise. She bustled about, washing herself in the cave with water from the gourd, out of sight of Moses. Soon she was the same woman she had been when she arrived the night before.
Below, on the beach, the surf also seemed the same, although the sea was more transparent. In the light of day, the hollow formed by the terrace and the cave seemed as tiny as a nest. They themselves were merely a man and a woman lost in the immensity.
Moses had crept up behind her. Now he put his arms around her waist. He was still naked. “I’m going to see Jethro,” he said, his mouth close to her ear. “I’m going to speak to him and ask him to grant me his most precious daughter.”
Zipporah did not move, did not reply. She did not stroke the arms that embraced her, nor did she lean against the body that had left the imprint of its desire on every pore of her skin. She kept her eyes fixed on the horizon. Somewhere out there was the shore of Egypt, although she could not see it. She remained motionless and silent—so much so that Moses took his arms away and stepped to one side to get a better look at her, anxiety written on his brow.
“What were you saying to your god yesterday?” she asked.
Moses looked even more disappointed. Without taking her eyes off the sea, Zipporah held out her hand, lightly brushed Moses’ chest, stroked his stomach, slid her fingertips over his member, then took his hand in hers and squeezed it.
“Yesterday,” she said, very gently, “you were praying for your mother. I’d like to know the words you cast on the sea.”
“I’m not sure I could say them in the language of Midian.”
“Oh yes, you can.”
He hesitated. She gave his hand an impatient little shake. His body close against hers, Moses turned his eyes toward the unseen shore of Egypt.
“I am a perfect Mummy,
“I am a Mummy living in the truth,
“I am pure, I am pure,
“Here are my hands, here on my palms is my mother’s heart,
“It is pure, it is pure.
“Let this heart be weighed in the balance of Truth,
“I am a Mummy nourished by truth, I have not known the hardness of the heart, I have given cool water to whoever was thirsty, wheat to whoever needed it, linen to
whoever walked naked.
“Oh forms of Eternity, cover with your wings the egg of a sweet mother.”
Zipporah’s eye’s filled with tears. Without letting go of her hand, Moses moved closer to her so that their bodies touched. “It isn’t that I worship Amon, or any of the other gods of Egypt. I no longer belong to them, and their heaven is no longer for me. This prayer is spoken as the boat takes the dead person toward the heaven of rebirth. My mother Hatshepsut was very faithful to Amon.”
A limpid tear ran down Zipporah’s cheek, perfectly transparent against her dark skin in the daylight. She waited until there was no longer a knot in her throat. “My mother died on that sea as she led me to the arms of Jethro,” she whispered.
Moses looked at her, waiting for her to say more, ready to listen.
“You were right to want to return to Egypt,” she said. “Your place is there.”
He could not have been more astonished if she had hit him. He let go of her hand and stepped back. “What are you saying?” He suddenly appeared much more naked.
She did not reply, merely smiled patiently.
“My place is here, Zipporah, with you and your father. What is there for me in Egypt?”
“When you killed that overseer, you began your battle against Pharaoh,” she said, in a clear voice, the voice her sister Orma disliked so much. “You have to continue.”
Moses stared at her, uncomprehending, pain spreading over his features. “Are you chasing me away? After last night? I told you, I’m going with you to see Jethro. This very morning, on the camel he gave me. I’ll talk to him. I’m going to pitch my tent again beneath the sycamore on the road to Epha . . .”
She shook her head.
Moses held his arm out in the direct
ion of Jethro’s domain. “’Jethro,’ I’ll say to him, ‘give me your daughter Zipporah as a wife! She is the seed of my future life. I will be your son and will give you back a hundredfold all you gave me—’”
“Moses—”
“I’ll build up my flock. I’ll go to every pasture in Midian. I’ll sell the animals next winter. We’ll have several tents. You will be Zipporah, the wife of Moses, a respected woman. Nobody will ever again mutter about the Cushite. Nobody will ever again dare raise his hand to you!” He could have spoken until he was breathless.
She pressed both her hands against his chest. “Moses! Moses! Don’t lie! You know who you are now. You are not a nobody, as your false brother in Egypt claims. You are a Hebrew. A son of Abraham and Joseph.”
“Why should that matter to you?” he cried. “You yourself aren’t a Hebrew!”
She saw terror in his golden eyes. How could so much fear have been instilled in a man like him? She dug her nails into Moses’ chest and pushed her hips against his. “Last night,” she breathed, “when you were screaming into the wind, you weren’t weeping for your mother. You were crying out in anger against the suffering of the slaves. That was what Horeb heard.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about! Horeb isn’t my god; he doesn’t know me.”
“Don’t blaspheme! You know nothing about Horeb. He is wrathful and he is just. And you were born among the slaves, even though you acquired the knowledge and strength of Pharaoh. Why else did you kill the overseer?”
Moses pushed her away. “Nonsense!” he cried. “You know nothing of the power of Pharaoh. You know nothing of the cruelty of Thutmose! It’s impossible to fight Amon’s designated one!”
“I know you must put on your gold bracelets and go among those who are your people. You must hold back the whip that strikes them.”
“I killed a man because I was angry, and I ran away like a little boy! That’s the truth. There is no other. No man can hold back Pharaoh’s whip. You don’t know what you’re talking about!”
She let him shout and said nothing. Her silence increased his rage.
“What do you take me for? I told you, I’m not a prince. I thought you were more sensible than your sister. Don’t you want to see the man I am?” Moses’ cries echoed against the cliff.
Zipporah seized his wrists. “I know the man you are! I saw you in a dream before I even met you. I know who you are and who you can become. Your future is not here, among the pastures of Midian.”
Moses’ anger suddenly faded, and he laughed long and loud and mockingly. He shook his head, then raised Zipporah’s hands to his lips and kissed them. “If your father Jethro didn’t place such trust in you, I’d think the woman I want as my wife is not only a Cushite but also a little mad.”
Zipporah pulled away abruptly, her eyes as dark as her skin. “If you don’t believe me, there’s no point in going back to see my father.”
“Zipporah, how can you be so sure of my future?”
“I repeat. I saw you in a dream. You are one of those who save life when it’s in danger of being swallowed up.”
Moses shook his head, an ironic smile still on his lips. “Tell me about your dream.”
“There’s no point. You wouldn’t understand.” She walked past him and set off up the cliff path.
Moses put his hand on her stomach to stop her. “Don’t push me away! Tell me the dream. Let me go to your father.”
She pushed his arm away, gently, and could not stop herself stroking his cheek, where the beard was starting to grow back. “First, you must understand who you are.”
“I know who I am! I’m nobody anymore. Those who flee Pharaoh lose even their shadows!”
“So I, too, am nobody anymore. My skin is the color of shadows and, although you’ve possessed me, we will never be husband and wife. Shadows don’t marry.”
The Wrath of Horeb
“Is that what you told him? Really? That you’re not going to marry him?”
There was incredulity in Sefoba’s voice—as there was, too, in Jethro’s gaze, along with a touch of reproach, which the old sage tried to soften.
When she had returned, Zipporah had seen everyone looking up at the clouds massing around the summit of Horeb’s mountain. She had gone straight to her father and told him the truth about Moses, how he had been Pharaoh’s son and had then been banished as a Hebrew thanks to his false brother’s hatred and jealousy.
“His anger against Pharaoh’s injustice is greater than he thinks,” she had added. “Just thinking about the sufferings inflicted on the slaves makes him scream with rage. And, when he screamed, Horeb rumbled with him. But he knows nothing of Horeb, and he’s afraid.”
Her sisters had come running to hear her, and Jethro had not ordered them away.
“Did you sleep there?” Orma had asked. “In the cave? Next to him?”
Zipporah had looked directly at Jethro. “He wanted me,” she had replied, her voice as strong as ever, “and I was happy to let him take me.”
They were all speechless with astonishment.
“Moses is like any other man,” she went on. “I know that. I see it on his face and sense it when I’m close to him. But he himself doesn’t yet know his own strength. All he thinks about is his past in Pharaoh’s house. He is blind to the future.”
Jethro looked steadily at his daughter. Zipporah knew him well enough to sense the mixture of embarrassment, joy, disapproval, and even hope in his gaze. She was ready to listen to his judgment, perhaps even to obey it. But he did not have time to utter a word. Orma was already on her feet, her lips white.
“Listen to her! Just listen to her! How dare she talk like that? She who has just cast a blemish on us. Father, how can you let her say such horrid things? She offered herself to the Egyptian, and you say nothing.”
Now Sefoba, too, stood up, tears in her eyes. For once, she could not understand Zipporah, and thought Orma’s anger justified. Jethro was not even looking at them. He seemed suddenly made of stone, his mouth hidden by his beard, his eyelids closed and smooth as ivory.
Orma took this silence as a weakness. “I was the first!” she shouted angrily. “I was the first, I told you, I knew he was a prince. Here, under the canopy, Father, I told you, you heard me, I said he was lying when he claimed to be a slave. As soon as he appeared at the well of Irmna, I knew! And Zipporah and you humiliated me by believing his lie!”
In the courtyard, the handmaids turned to listen, but did not dare approach. They were more worried than curious, and even somewhat scared by Orma’s strident voice, as though the wrath of Horeb had descended to earth in a mass of black clouds.
Zipporah stood up. Her hands were shaking, and her throat was dry. Orma’s hatred was a living thing, a wild beast. She felt it clinging to her face and chest, tearing at her body, wiping out the memory of Moses’ caresses. And she, too, was beginning to feel hatred. She made as if to respond, but Orma screamed even louder than before:
“Quiet! Every word you say is a blemish on this household. You are a blemish on all of us! That’s why Horeb is angry!”
“Silence!” Jethro’s solemn voice rang out. He had raised his arms, with a strength that belied his frail body. “Silence, stupid girl!” he thundered. “Shut your mouth before it spews out any more hate!”
Orma swayed, as though Jethro had slapped her. In the stunned silence that followed, she let out a strange moan, clearly a prelude to a flood of tears.
Sefoba bit her lips, not daring to go to her aid. She threw an anguished look at Zipporah, who had covered her mouth with her hands. Never before had the two sisters seen Jethro’s face like this: his eyes and cheeks hollow with rage, the skin at his temples so taut as to be transparent and as pale as the bones beneath.
“Stop this foolish whining,” he said, pointing imperiously at Orma. “Don’t use Horeb’s name to me! Don’t speak of his wrath. You know nothing about it,” he thundered on, pointing now at the mountain.
Al
l eyes in the courtyard turned to the threatening summit, which had been jarring their nerves since dawn.
Orma moaned again. Her knees gave way, and she collapsed on the cushions. Neither Sefoba not Zipporah dared touch her. Nobody in the courtyard even risked batting an eyelid.
Jethro stood over his huddled daughter, towering above her, frightening now for all his thinness. “You are the child of my loins, but you are my shame. You have nothing in you but envy and spite! I can’t stand your jabbering anymore.”
Although her shoulders heaved with sobs, Orma was not ready to admit defeat. Moving with the agility of a young lioness, she clutched her father’s knees and kissed them passionately. “Don’t be unjust, Father, please don’t be unjust!”
With a grimace, Jethro seized her shoulder and pushed her away. Orma only clung to him even tighter. “Stop this nonsense,” Jethro growled.
“Zipporah fornicates with the Egyptian without being married to him and I’m the one in the wrong? Is that your justice, Father?”
“My justice is something you can’t understand.”
Orma let out a sharp cry, and let go of Jethro as if a snake had bitten her, an insane laugh distorting what remained of her beauty. “The only reason Zipporah opened her thighs to Moses was to take him from me! I was the first to recognize him for what he was. And I was the one he chose! I saw in his eyes!”
“No,” Zipporah cried. “No, you’re lying!”
She was about to do something violent, perhaps, when a crack rent the air. The summit of Horeb’s mountain was like a thousand mouths of fire spitting white and yellow clouds into the endless sky, where they were twisted by an unseen hand. Screams echoed through the courtyard as the rumbling increased in volume and intensity.
“Horeb! Horeb!”
Sefoba rushed into Zipporah’s arms, while Orma clutched Jethro’s legs. He looked up at the fearsome convulsions of the mountain and calmly put his arm around her shoulders. The ground shook. Another rumble echoed across the desert. Blackness poured from the mouth of the mountain, a blackness flecked with incandescent jets of flame.
