“No one will hear you, Shelomoam. This room is completely sealed off.”
“You’re not the only one who can scream. My vocal cords are just as strong as yours.”
“Sit with me, Shelomoam. I want to tell you the story of my life.”
Just then, the headache I had known so well in childhood returns. It must have something to do with lies. Whenever I encounter lies, my skull begins to pound.
“I’m not interested in your stories.”
“You will become more interested than you can imagine.”
“I’ve heard enough lies in my life.”
“I swear I will tell you only the truth.”
“Why should I believe the oaths of a liar who pretends to be mad?”
She does not lower her eyes. “You are welcome to ask me anything you want, Shelomoam, and you’ll receive a truthful answer. Try me, Shelomoam; you’ll see I’m not lying.”
“I’ve got nothing to ask you.”
“Ask me the questions that have been with you all your life and that have been driving you mad. Ask me the questions that keep you up at night.”
A cold gust of wind sends chills down my back. I lean against the wall. “You’re the last person in the world I want to discuss my life with.”
“If you don’t want to talk about your life, ask me about mine.”
“Fine,” I growl. “Why do you pretend to be mad? That’s my question. Are you happy now?”
She smiles with satisfaction, as if she’s defeated me in a game whose rules I had no part in setting. “I learned it from my husband, the previous king.”
“Was he mad as well?”
“It’s a long story, Shelomoam. Why don’t you sit here on the rug, and I’ll tell you everything, from beginning to end.”
“I told you I have no interest in your stories.”
“You asked a question, Shelomoam.”
“An answer that is short and to the point will do.”
“So be it.” She is silent for a moment, scrunching up her forehead, biting her lip, and shaking her head slowly. “Many years ago, the previous king escaped his pursuers in Israel and took refuge with the Philistines. His true identity was quickly discovered, and he was brought to trial before the king of Gath. And then, instead of falling to his knees and begging for his life, he started drooling all over his beard and making incoherent noises. The king of Gath watched him with revulsion and rebuked his servants: ‘Am I so short of madmen that you have to bring this fellow here to carry on like this in front of me?’”
“Nice story,” I say with scorn. “But I didn’t ask about the previous king’s madness. I asked about yours.”
She looks at me with those same hungry eyes. “People who are mad threaten no one, Shelomoam. They see but are not seen. That is the source of the power of the miserable: the fools, the lunatics, and the lepers.”
The word “lepers” makes my skin crawl. The blood rushes out of my face. I race to the exit and beat on the door with my fists. “Let me out!” I scream. “Get me out of here!”
“Shelomoam,” she calls, practically begging now. “Don’t be so stubborn. You need to hear my story.”
I run back toward her and hurl my torch at the rug beneath her feet, but before the flames can spread, Hadad’s three servants appear from out of the shadows and put the fire out calmly, as if it were something they did every day. Afterwards, they go around and light all the lamps in the room.
Hadad’s familiar arms of steel seize me from behind. It feels like an animal has taken control of him. “You see who we’re dealing with here?” he asks her. He shoves me down onto the partially scorched rug and grimaces in an expression of despair. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you. And this is after six months in the tunnels. Just imagine what he was like before.”
A smile of satisfaction lights up her face, as if she had just heard a piece of good news. “A wolf.” She stretches out the word with evident pleasure.
“A wild animal,” Hadad confirms.
“I tried to do it nicely, Shelomoam”—she speaks my name again softly—“but your suspicion and bitterness are an impassable barrier. So now you’ll listen to my story by force. We will not permit you to refuse; it’s the reason we brought you to the Palace of Candles.”
“Another lie,” I interrupt her. “I came by my own free will. I chose to join Hadad so that he could train me to be a soldier in the king’s army.”
Hadad huffs. “Your will wasn’t so free after those Benjaminite thugs left you with no money and a shattered leg.”
“Those Benjaminite boys are savages,” she says, chuckling.
“You’re from Benjamin, too,” I mutter angrily.
“It was no accident that Jacob bestowed that symbol upon you on his deathbed,” chuckles Hadad. “‘Benjamin is a ravenous wolf; in the morning he devours the prey, in the evening he divides the plunder.’” He quotes Jacob’s well-known testament with obvious pleasure while she nods with approval, as if they had orchestrated it all in advance.
Suddenly there is a ruckus behind me, and four musclebound brutes walk through the door. They are practically giants. I look at them with surprise, reassessing my circumstances and realizing that I’ve seen them before. I look at them again, and there can be no more doubt. It’s been almost two years, but I’m certain.
“How’s your leg?” one of them asks amiably. “We went a bit too far. We had planned something more gentle, but things got out of hand. It didn’t occur to us that you might be able to fly over our heads! You almost slipped through our fingers, so what else could we do? You tell us, what choice did we have?”
* * *
As my body remains in perfect stillness upon the rug, I hover above it and view my life from the outside, and once again, just like two years ago, I cannot understand how I could have been so blind. How did I not put two and two together? How did I fail to see it? Why didn’t I see how all the pieces fit together?
“Ask me, Shelomoam.”
I don’t want to ask. I don’t want to know. I don’t want to understand. I don’t want to feel. What I want is to go into a frozen state. It’s the state that suits me best. It’s the only thing that can give me peace. Instead of suffering further betrayal and deception in a world of falsehood, I’ll remain frozen for the rest of my life.
“You are twenty years old, Shelomoam,” she whispers. “The time has come for you to get real answers to your questions. All of them. Even the ones you haven’t dared to ask.”
The Princess
One
Still staring at me with that same angry helplessness, my wild wolf. Clinging to the mat as if it were the last plank from a sinking ship. You have nothing else left to hang on to. Everything around you has collapsed, disappeared, faded away. Nothing is as you thought it was. Every time you dug into a dark hole in your life, you found another underneath it, darker still.
My story is all you have left now. I’ve been preserving it for many long years, guarding its details inside me. Day after day, hour after hour, nothing is erased: the shreds of conversation, the colors, the smells, the touches, the laughter, the tears, the screams.
The memories flash before me. They are for you. Only for you. They have been waiting for you, for this time, for this moment. Even before you were born I knew you would draw them out of me, that you would grab hold of me with clenched fists and put me to your mouth, suckling every whisper that’s been seared into me in the passing of the years. I’ve been waiting for you for twenty years, turning my heart to ice in the daytime, lighting the candles at night, waiting for you to grow up.
I always thought that when the time came you would come to me willingly. I never imagined I would have to lock you up, tie you down, and force you to listen to my story. At first, I refused to believe the rumors that a wild animal had burst forth from out of that handsome boy, who might doom us all to go down in flames. They must be exaggerating, I thought to myself. It cannot be. That charming boy has become a violent thug
who robs other people? That delightful child now beats down anything standing in his way? How did that happen? Yes, his childhood was complicated, but so what? He was given so much love, how could he simply run roughshod over it? What demon told him to crush and uproot every flower in his life? Where did this disordered soul come from?
Slowly but surely, though, I began to like what I was hearing. This is just the kind of man we need, I told Hadad. The violence, the cruelty, even the ingratitude—we need these traits. Only the fits of rage are undesirable. That tendency is so familiar to me, and I understand so clearly where he got it, but it is simply too dangerous for us. We must teach him complete control of his body, and, more important, of his soul.
Hadad was actually optimistic. “Give me a year, or two at the most, and I will cook up the perfect wolf. The ancient Edomite training secrets, passed on from father to son, will turn him into someone else.”
“But I don’t want someone else,” I told him. “I prayed for this child.”
“The wildness and the cruelty will remain untouched,” Hadad promised. “I will excise only the rage.”
What choice did I have? If I had left you as you were, I wouldn’t have been able to entrust the story to you, and that was something I would not accept. How could I? That was the only reason I had stayed alive.
Hadad’s faithful servants dug the tunnels in complete secrecy, and we were certain that no one up above had any idea of what was going on right under their noses. But we underestimated the redheaded fox that was sniffing around while maintaining the innocent face of an angel. We never imagined that viper would uncover not only the existence of the tunnels, but you as well. And we certainly didn’t believe that you would fall under his spell. Looking back, I’m embarrassed not to have foreseen that you would be attracted to him. I’ve seen it before, that same deep, wild, uncontrollable attraction. Many years ago I saw two other young men, one handsome and tall just like you, but unlike you in his innocence and noble spirit, and the other with beautiful eyes and full of charm. Oh, what charm. No one could resist his bewitching charm.
I really should thank your redheaded friend. Had it not been for the danger, Hadad would have kept putting off our meeting, and I would have gone on peeking at you surreptitiously from behind the mask of my madness, all the while my icy heart burning with a stifled flame and crumbling into shards of longing. “The time is not yet ripe,” Hadad would tell me whenever I demanded that he bring you to me. “I have not been able to tame him. He walls himself off with a fortification of stone. I cannot reach him to quiet his tormented soul. Everything they told us about him is true. In fact, things are worse than we thought.”
And now here you are, sitting before me on the mat, watching me with the angry eyes of a wolf. Do I detect a budding curiosity? Am I seeing a glimmer of the feelings you were hiding beneath the cover of your thuggishness?
I’ve been telling you this story for twenty years, working hard to retain every fragment of memory, rehearsing every word, every smell, every flavor. I’ve been waiting for you for twenty years, and now that you’re sitting before me I don’t know how to start.
If only I could begin at the end, holding that giant body close, kissing that menacing face, burying my head in that wild tangle of hair. But you won’t be able to bear the ending without hearing the story in order. I must tell you everything from the beginning.
And when I finish the story, my beloved boy, nothing in your life will ever again be as it was, and then we will know if I’ve pushed too far and too fast, as Hadad suspects, or if I’ve chosen just the right moment.
Two
I was born to my mother, Ahinoam daughter of Ahimaaz, and to my father, Saul son of Kish. My three older siblings, Jonathan, Malkishua, and Merab, were born when my father was still a simple peasant, while I and my two younger brothers, Abinadab and Ishvi, were royalty from birth. My father was crowned king over all the tribes of Israel while I was still in my mother’s belly, but it would be another six years before he agreed to move into the palace built for him in his hometown of Gibeah, which had become the capital of Benjamin. Had it been up to him, we would have stayed in our little house, but the Israelites, after yearning for a king for so many years, wanted their royal family in a palace. At first, my father ignored the people’s wishes and continued raising his cattle and plowing his fields. He claimed that working in nature sharpened his mind and helped him better run the affairs of the young kingdom. It was only thanks to Abner, his cousin and commander of the army, that he finally agreed to sit on a silver throne, wear a golden crown, and ride in an eight-horse chariot.
But he demanded that his children, especially his daughters, live lives of modesty and simplicity. “I have no choice,” he spat angrily whenever he saw our fine dresses. “Neither does Jonathan. People expect the king and the crown prince to wear finery. That’s what the people want. But you? There’s no reason for you to waste your brief childhoods in victory marches, choked by silk gowns and precious gems, instead of playing in comfortable linens like other girls.”
Father’s tasteful opinion made sense, but it could not compete with the seductions of regal splendor. Mother, who had a better understanding of human desires than he did, continued to take us to the parades held in honor of his military victories, seating us on the dais of honor in all our glory, so that the people of Israel could burst with pride at the sight of their beautiful princesses.
They especially loved me. The first Hebrew princess, that’s what they called me. And before I even turned ten, I had acquired a second title: the Most Beautiful Princess in the World. Poems were composed and stories were told about the young daughter of the first Hebrew king, who was born a princess and had inherited his incredible beauty. But while my beauty was always described as nothing but a pure gift of God, Father’s beauty became a weapon in the hands of his opponents. His critics maliciously claimed that the Israelites, after yearning for a king for so long, could not resist the handsome face, the broad shoulders, and the terrific height of the young peasant from Benjamin and forced Samuel to anoint him. These nasty stories led Father to demand even more vehemently that we deemphasize the family’s good looks. But Mother, who couldn’t hide the pleasure she took at the awestruck gasps of the crowd every time I walked onto the dais, continued to adorn my fair hair with pearl tiaras, to rub rose oil into my lips, and to dress me in silk gowns embroidered with gold.
Merab took pride in me as well. Only when I grew older could I appreciate the magnanimity required of a young girl, herself very pretty, who constantly hears people praising the beauty of her little sister and reacts by glowing with pride rather than wallowing in jealousy. My admiration for her only increased when I came to know the sad story of Rachel and Leah, the sisters who became enemies due to their increasingly vicious rivalry over the love of the man that they shared. I didn’t know yet that our love would also be put to the test over a man who would want my sister and receive me instead. But let us not get ahead of ourselves. At this point in the story Merab and I were still cheerful, careless princesses, over whose love no shadow had yet been cast.
Father believed that the truth had a power of its own, and that everyone would eventually remember that his anointment as king followed his incredible victory over Nahash the Ammonite, which had restored the deterrent force the Israelites lost in the failed battle at Ebenezer. The stinging defeat at the hands of Philistines had been seared into the nation’s memory as if by fire and had turned them into a desperate and despondent nation. Thirty thousand soldiers had fallen in that war, among them the two sons of Eli, the old priest of the Shiloh temple, who fell out of his chair and broke his neck when he received the bitter news that the Holy Ark had fallen into the hands of uncircumcised foreigners. Samuel the Prophet, who inherited the priesthood from Eli and became the leader, served his people with rectitude and devotion but led them in not a single battle, and the enemies of Israel came to understand that the brave Hebrews of the days of Joshua had becom
e nothing more than a collection of miserable tribes that dared not even defend themselves and could be stomped upon at will. Indeed, when the King of Ammon demanded that the people of Jabesh Gilead become his slaves, everyone assumed they would submit quickly, offering no resistance, as had happened on every previous occasion. But Nahash the Ammonite was not satisfied merely piercing the ears of his new slaves; he demanded that their right eyes be put out as well. The poor Gileadites begged for help, but, as was to be expected, the tribes of Israel clucked their tongues, sighed deeply, and went on plowing their fields and pruning their vines. Only the people of Benjamin, the wolves of Israel, answered the call. Their wild nature wouldn’t allow them to sit idly by and watch as that evil snake disgraced their brothers. They left their fields and their homes, and banded together, preparing to cross the Jordan River, though they knew well that their chances of defeating the Ammonite army were slim. At that point Father stood before the tribal elders and asked for the opportunity to try to recruit fighters from all the tribes of Israel and create a strong, united army, just like in the days of Joshua. The skeptical elders told him that one could not all of a sudden inject a fighting spirit into the weak hearts of the Hebrews. Even the great Joshua needed forty years to turn a nation of slaves into mighty warriors who could take possession of a land. Instead of giving a response, Father selected a prime bull from his herd and cut it into twelve pieces as the stunned elders of Benjamin looked on. That very day, twelve messengers set out for the twelve regions of Israel, each one carrying a blood-soaked bundle and a message: thus will be done to the cattle of any person who refuses to join Saul’s army. This unusual call-up order worked better than expected. The Israelites knew better than to cross the wolves of Benjamin, and they hurried to send their bravest sons to Gibeah.
Father recruited three hundred thirty thousand fighters into his army, which became the region’s largest force. The complacent Ammonites, so certain of their victory, suffered a crushing surprise attack, proving to all the surrounding nations that the Hebrews were defending themselves once more. “Samson has slain his thousands, and Saul his tens of thousands,” sang the dancing girls in the thanksgiving parade, and the joyful masses joined their singing with choked voices, cheering the tall and handsome young man of Benjamin who had assembled the united army of Israel and led them to victory. Father was embarrassed by all this and tried to hide among the supplies, but Samuel the Prophet dragged him by his cloak up to the dais. Everyone understood that two hundred years of division had ended and that the united Kingdom of Israel had risen, and a suitable king had been found to stand at its head. Father’s resistance was futile. The old prophet made him kneel so that he could anoint his forehead with oil. “Long live Saul son of Kish, King of Israel!” the crowd roared, and jubilation spread throughout the tribes of Israel.
The Secret Book of Kings: A Novel Page 12
