Sunrise on the Mediterranean

by Suzanne Frank

  Cheftu moved behind me. As I turned to trade my empty jug for his full one, I whispered, “Our children are going to memorize their history books.” That way, if they happened to stumble into a time-traveling career, they’d be better equipped than their clueless mother.

  “Nachon,” he said as I moved off, a fresh jar on my shoulder.

  Would Cheftu know the timing here? If it was in the Bible, he would. Was it in the Bible, though?

  “Get me the city and the haHagana is yours,” Dadua said to the giborim. “The first man to open the doors to Jebus is forever my first in command.” This position wasn’t already taken? I glanced at Yoav, sitting motionless, his eyes like green glass. Was his job up for grabs here?

  In a single voice they responded, “Thy will be done.”

  I poured cup after cup of wine as I listened to the men’s mutterings, while dancers and jugglers entertained, in addition to the many musicians. HaMelekh Dadua, King David, reclined, a satisfied smile on his face. He knew how to motivate his men.

  The night passed on, the giborim fell asleep in their places, several of them staggering to their rooms, the others snoring by the doors. We slaves moved silently among them, picking up cups, plates, shooing away cats and dogs that thought it safe to dine while the soldiers rested.

  Cheftu waited for me so I would know where to go to sleep tonight. I couldn’t believe we’d just arrived this morning. “We are in a watch house,” he said as we walked through the vineyard. The leaves had just started to grow on the vines. Unlike French vines, these weren’t espaliered. They were left in little bushes, with one cord holding them in a line.

  In the center of the field was a cylindrical building, with a spiral staircase to the door. “Our home,” he said, squeezing my waist. We were going to live together, like a married couple. After two years of being married, we were finally going to play house. I leaned my head on his shoulder.

  It looked like paradise to me.

  Dawn was breaking as we mounted the steps, opened the door. It took a moment for my eyes to adjust. The interior was only slightly more luxurious than the exterior. It was dug like a pit, deep enough that I could stand and still see out, for the walls ended about two feet from the roof, giving a 360-degree view.

  A cursory glance revealed a few niches in the wall stocked with a pallet, musty and torn; two blankets, both of scratchy wool; a round, unglazed clay dish; a water jar; and an oil lamp.

  We made up the pallet, and Cheftu fell onto the bed. He was a fieldworker and had to be there within the hour— though the Israelites didn’t have a designation for times as short as an hour. A little light fell on the blankets across his calves. His hair was growing out, and he’d decided the reason highlanders had beards was because their bronze blades were too dull. He wore scabs from his attempts to remain clean-shaven.

  “Are you finished thinking?” he whispered. “How did you know I was thinking?” I whispered back. I thought he’d fallen asleep.

  “You frown.”

  Oh. I hadn’t known that.

  “Come to bed, beloved, let me remove that frown.” As he spoke he leaned over, propping himself up on his arm, blinking sleepily.

  “He’s set his men against each other as a competition to make it into Jebus,” I said as I removed my sash. “Does David wipe out Jebus at this time? I know he does somewhere along the way.”

  “How do you know that?” Cheftu asked, pulling back the blanket for me.

  “Because it is called the city of David …” I paused as I slipped out of my sandals. “Unless that is Bethlehem?”

  He chuckled. “Jebus is also David’s city.”

  I unbraided my hair, running my fingers through it, finger combing through the knots. “Why are we here in this time period?” I asked. “I came back just for you. This is the big time, Cheftu. We’re not in the middle of unknown history, or something most people think is fable. We are living a history that all of Western civilization inherits!” I heard the edge in my voice; I was really wired. I turned away, embarrassed at my emotion.

  As I slipped my dress over my head, I suddenly felt Cheftu against me, the sleepy warmth of his body against the night-cold skin of mine. His arms embraced me, pulling me safe into the cocoon of his heat. We were almost of a height, cheek to cheek in the dawn.

  “Tell me,” he said. “What do you fear?” I felt his words on my neck.

  “This is real,” I said. “What are we doing here? What if we screw up?”

  He kissed my shoulder, then picked me up and carried me to the pallet. His body followed mine down, and as I felt the familiar rush of heat at the thought of being joined with him, he spoke. “What mistakes are there to make?”

  Instead of naming the millions of ways I could imagine, I drew him to me. His mouth was hot, sweet, his body growing to mine. “Look at me, chérie,” he said. “What mistakes are there to make? You speak of history as though it is carved from stone.”

  “Isn’t it?”

  “History is daily life, beloved. History is a couple making love, making a family, laughing and crying. No one knows what history is until that couple is ash and their children’s children are making love and making families.”

  “This is one of the reasons I love you,” I whispered, raising up to feel him enter me. What a miracle to be connected like this. What a freeing paradigm shift he suggested.

  “History is perspective,” he breathed against my skin, his pupils wide. I held him tightly with my arms and legs, tears trickling from the corners of my eyes. For me this was prayer.

  Cheftu pulled my arms over my head, holding me fixed, facing him. “Look at me, beloved. We are history. God has placed us here, who knows why. But”—he drove into me— “we will learn. Time passing will become history.”

  I leaned forward and licked a drop of sweat off his chin. “So are we about to make history?”

  “Lo,” he said with a devastating smile. “We are about to make ice cream.” Then he began to melt me, harden me, taste me, and revel in me, his delicious treat.

  From that apex, my day raced downhill; I met the millstone.

  Suddenly the clichés made sense to me. Tying a millstone around your neck could easily drown you. Bad news could be just like a millstone.

  And a woman’s work was never done.

  The basis of every ancient people’s diet—on which I’d become quite an expert—was bread. Bread required dough. Dough was made of water, yeast, and flour. God made water, yeast was kept from the last batch of bread, and making flour was my task.

  It was a mindless, backbreaking, two-person job.

  My teammate was a girl, a homely thing with bug eyes, buckteeth, and a lisp. She was all knees and elbows. Her mother had sold her into slavery when she was ten. Now she was twelve, with barely budding breasts. However, she was the first platinum blonde I’d seen this side of Malibu Barbie. White blonde, Viking blonde, California-dreamin’ blonde. She was called ’Sheva and didn’t speak, even when spoken to.

  Shana, the bossy redhead, showed me the millstone, which was a foot in diameter with a hole in the middle. It looked like a granite doughnut. “I need seven measures of grain,” she said. “There is the storeroom. ’Sheva here will help you.”

  She walked off. I looked at the girl. “Do you know what to do?”

  She stared at me blankly.

  “Do you? I don’t.”

  No response.

  Fearful of screwing up, I ran after Shana—the woman could walk fast for having such short legs. “Forgive me, g’vret, but—”

  She turned, hands on hips. “What now?”

  “I, uh, don’t know what you want me to do.”

  For a moment she was silent. “You don’t know how to make bread?”

  Hesitantly I shook my head. “You don’t know how to grind grain?” Her voice was rising. People all around the courtyard were starting to look, to see what the commotion was about.

  I shook my head again, tried to smile beseechingly. M
y face was warm.

  “You are the most useless slave I have ever known!” She turned to look at her audience. “Look at her! An adult woman! With a husband! She can’t make bread! She can’t even grind grain! Ach! Thank Shaday no children have graced you, isha. They would have starved!”

  My face was so hot, you could’ve fried an egg on it. She looked back at me, as though public humiliation might have taught me how to use the millstone. I focused on her feet, waiting for the next scathing remark.

  “Ach! So you were raised a g’vret, a lady. It is no wonder our god can beat yours; our women are not so delicate. Delicate women breed delicate babes.” Tch’ing her way back, we returned to the millstone.

  ’Sheva, the human mushroom, was sitting motionless, staring into space.

  “Yelad”—Shana called ’Sheva a child—“hurry and fetch some grain!” She clapped, and the mushroom ran. “You!” she said to me. “Sit here.”

  I was supposed to sit on the doughnut? Fumbling with my skirts, I managed to straddle it nicely.

  “You will spin around, while the yelad pours the grain into the hole, you see?” I nodded my head. I would have agreed even if I’d had no clue. I’d been embarrassed enough for one day.

  “See here,” she said, gesturing to a channel that ran from beneath the millstone. Then I realized that the millstone was two pieces, and the device made sense. I was using the combined weight of myself and granite to scrape the little grain pods until they were as fine as dirt. Then the yelad would collect them, weigh them, and either store or use them.

  “Grind seven measures,” Shana said, “then I will teach you, poor Pelesti fool, how to make bread.”

  She left just as ’Sheva returned.

  If this were ancient home ec, I would have failed. The first batch was too rough, so I had to regrind it. Then it was too fine, more like dust than flour. It looked like the stuff Mimi had used, but since I didn’t know what was next in the process I was quiet. Shana had given up yelling at me. She just sighed extravagantly, then poured more grain so I could do it again.

  By lunchtime I had three measures. Since I was running behind, I had to work instead of eat. ’Sheva mechanically poured grain in the hole while she picked her nose. I kept a careful watch on her two hands, just to make sure the pouring hand and the picking hand didn’t overlap.

  My back ached, my legs hurt, and my backside was really sore. This action reminded me of being a little kid, sitting on the playground roundabout and spinning it while seated. However, stone on stone didn’t move with any great ease.

  For the first time I really missed being a priestess or a princess or an oracle. Hell, even a mermaid! This was bloody hard work.

  By dusk I could barely move. Shana sighed but dismissed me. Once through the vineyard, I climbed the steps slowly. Our room was dark, empty. I fell face first across the pallet—

  Later Cheftu woke me. I think he tried to talk to me, but I kept falling asleep.

  I awoke with the rooster crowing at dawn. I felt as though I’d been under the granite doughnut. Cheftu was already gone.

  Since I’d worn my only set of clothes to grind in, then sleep in, I slipped into my old dress and hobbled through the vineyard. In the distance I could see the men working the barley fields already. Some were cutting, some were sorting grain from chaff by throwing it in the air, and some were standing around. I couldn’t pick out Cheftu from this distance.

  By midmorning I was through about five measures. Shana allowed me some food, then sent me back to work. Cheftu came home late, hot, and tired and we both lay on the pallet, too exhausted even to eat.

  By week’s end, however, we were in much better condition. In fact, we lived life so autonomously that, except for the chains, it was almost like being free. Though he was exhausted, Cheftu never complained. He said it was a nice change from medicine. That seemed an odd comment, but I didn’t ask any more. He taught me a song they sang in the barley fields, a farmer’s almanac set to swing.

  “Two months to harvest the olives; two months of planting grain. Then two months of late planting. The month of hoeing up flax, a month to harvest the barley. Then two months of vine tending, and a month of the fruits of summer.”

  Israel was an exhausting, hardworking place, but the people really did whistle while they worked. We could even hear them singing in the courtyard of the palace as we gave thanks for being pampered palace slaves.

  “Sing with joy to Shaday, it is fitting for his people to praise him. Praise him with harp, sing along with the tenstringed kinor, sing to him a new song. Play skillfully and shout with joy.

  “From the heavens el ha Shaday looks down, sees all the earthlings. From his dwelling place he watches all who live on earth. He who forms the hearts of all, who considers everything they do.”

  The barley fields were considered Dadua’s property, which of course haMelekh didn’t glean in person. The cutters walked in a circle as though they were oxen tied to a pivot point, for the harvest. The fields were square—and this cut a perfect round of grain for Dadua. I was out distributing water when I noticed them for the first time. The poor.

  Though I was technically enslaved, I had food and shelter. Though they were technically free, they didn’t. Suddenly I understood why so many people sold themselves or their children into slavery. In a way it was almost a better life. That seemed terribly perverse.

  I saw them clumped in the corners, picking barley. When I asked about it, Shana said, “It is the law. Not everyone has inherited fields, so those who have are bidden to share with those who have not. They are allowed to glean whatever is left, and the corners.”

  When I returned to the courtyard and talked about it, ’Sheva got excited for the first time, offering to go to the fields with me. It was possibly the longest sentence she’d ever constructed. We walked there together, and then she left me, running toward some of the gleaners.

  “It’s her family,” another of the slaves said. “They sold her because they couldn’t afford two girls and a boy.”

  I watched as ’Sheva stood before a stoop-shouldered man and a cowering woman with a baby at her breast.

  “As soon as she was sold, they had another child. A son,” the slave explained. Obviously they had kept him. Poor ’Sheva.

  No one touched the mushroom, and then we saw her family walk away. She bowed her head, picked up her jug, and stumbled farther into the fields. She was going the wrong way, neither toward the palace nor toward the town. We watched her in silence.

  “All those corners end up being about a quarter of the harvest. That seems a lot to lose,” I said conversationally.

  The other slave’s eyes turned cold. “They are tribesmen. Either we care for them this way, or they will have to beg or become as we are. Slaves.” She moved on, leaving me standing, pondering, until I heard my cue:

  “You! Isha! Water!”

  That afternoon I tried to be sweet to the mushroom. She was in prime fungal form, bundled up and inwardly focused. There were lifetimes between us, though she wasn’t much younger than Wadia and I’d bonded with him immediately. I sighed, turning the stone.

  “She comes!” suddenly echoed through the courtyard. Shana came out of nowhere and pushed me off the grindstone. One of Dadua’s concubines, Hag’it, gathered the flour quickly, then both women vanished through the courtyard gates.

  Who was coming? Men and women began to flood through the courtyard, and no one paid me and ’Sheva any attention. “Did you see the spectacle he is making of himself over her?” I heard.

  ’Sheva’s head rose up, like a puppet on a string. She turned to me, eyes focused. “Mik’el,” she said, grabbing my hand. We ran through the courtyard, out the gate, and into the crowd.

  It seemed as though every citizen of Mamre was outside, all pushing toward the gate. ’Sheva was lean and slippery, and she never let go of my hand as we squeezed through the crowds, pushed and shoved through the throng by the gates, until we stood in the front. Dadua stood a
t the city gate wall, dressed in his finery.

  Sunlight glinted off the crown on his head. He wore a purplish blue dress edged in gold that spiraled around his legs. His beard and hair were oiled, and gold hoops hung in his ears. Even his sandals were gold. N’tan stood to his side, his official white ensemble brilliant in the afternoon light. At certain angles N’tan looked really familiar.

  “Isn’t he divine?” ’Sheva said, staring at the monarch.

  What was going on? I glanced at Dadua. “Ken, he is very comely.”

  “He writes the most divine music,” she said, entranced.

  I was peering over the crowd, trying to see what we were all waiting for. The crowd had bottlenecked, so we couldn’t move forward. I muttered something affirmative to ’Sheva.

  “He is divine with a slingshot,” she continued. The girl was a groupie, I realized. With a one-word vocabulary.

  “I see the years haven’t humbled her,” somebody behind me said.

  Through the shadows of the gateway a woman approached on a white donkey led by a finely dressed warrior. A man followed behind, ashes smeared on his head, his clothes torn so that the dingy white of his undershirt showed. Behind him trailed four small children, the eldest carrying an infant.

  “It took so long to gather her because she needed to wait out her time of impurity. She just birthed her last son,” another crowd member said.

  “Look at her, dressed as a bride,” a woman scoffed. “A virgin, by the eye of Ashterty, I think not!”

  “Only those arrogant Binyami would dare send a bride who was married to another man.”

  “It’s a wonder Dadua wants her back.”

  “She’s a harlot!”

  “She was a tool of Labayu’s revenge.”

  Comments floated all around me, useless since I didn’t know what was going on and no explanations were forthcoming. Even ’Sheva was paying no attention, just watching Dadua and sighing. This child had a major huge crush on the king of Israel. I imagined she could get in a long line on that count. Though he always had the option of adding to his collection, I doubted he’d ever look at her.