He stopped, embarrassed by his unusual display of vehemence, and replaced the books, but as he did so he saw Schwartz climbing down from the tell, where he had been inspecting the day’s dig. “Eh, Schwartz!” he called, and when the dark-skinned secretary entered the tent, Eliav asked, “From here, how far north to the enemy border?”
“Ten miles.”
“East to the Syrians?”
“Twenty-three.”
“West to where Egypt tried to invade us?”
“Eight.”
“With the enemy so close? The threats you hear them make over the radio? Aren’t you scared?”
The tough Israeli snorted. “Since I’m living in Israel no week passes without at least one story in the newspaper how Egypt is going to wipe us out with rockets made by their German scientists. Or Syria massacre us. Or some Arab army push us into the sea.” He thrust his jaw at Cullinane and said dispassionately, “If I scared easy I wouldn’t be here. I feel a lot more relaxed right now than I ever did in Germany.”
• • •
The customary procedure when a man had lain for seven days and seven nights with one of the ritual prostitutes—for that is what Libamah was, no matter how often she was termed a priestess—was for him to go back to his regular wives and forget the girl, who often became pregnant with a child which was upon birth sacrificed to the fires of Melak; but this year the outcome was to be different, for Urbaal left the temple at the end of his performance inflamed with a permanent infatuation for the priestess. He had found her an enchanting, ingenuous girl who enjoyed telling in broken accents of her life in the north and of the manner in which her crafty father had defrauded the men of his region. She had a gift of mimicry and pantomimed the soldiers who had captured her in the various battles leading to her slavery, and with intriguing insight summarized their attempts to seduce her while others were not looking. She was especially amusing when she described in a husky voice, which Urbaal relished, how the local priests had coached her to look shy: “Keep your fingertips close to your knees and your eyes lowered. When you look sideways try to press your chin into your shoulder.” She also demonstrated how they had taught the erotic dances, and Urbaal found her capable both in her evaluations and in her love-making. It was not surprising that he became infatuated with her.
For her part, she recognized the sturdy farmer merely as an average man, more tender than most who had tried to make love with her, and certainly more honest than her father. One morning she said casually, “I admire you because you are not vain of yourself, nor too exalted in your opinions, nor overly bothered with mean thoughts.” The words excited him and he began wondering; he laughed noisily at her stories and was not offended when she pulled gray hairs from his head or mimicked the manner in which he had leaped onto the steps to take her; at the moments when she made believe she was Urbaal she became an awkward, likable farmer, and he conceived the idea that she was acting so because she desired him, an impression that was fortified by her ardent passion in love-making. Could the priests have spied into the sacred room during the hours that Libamah and Urbaal occupied it, they would have been distressed, for here there was no lofty sense of ritual, no male principle fructifying the handmaiden of Astarte; here were merely two uncomplicated human beings who enjoyed each other and who laughed a good deal while doing so. When the day of parting came, it was understandable that Urbaal could not accept it as final, for under the auspices of the goddess of love he had fallen in love, and when he kissed the enchanting girl good-bye he surprised her by making a dramatic promise, delivered in quivering voice, “You are to be mine.”
More from amusement than from passion she asked, “How?” and he did not understand that she was mocking him.
“I don’t know,” he said gravely. “But I’ll think of something.”
At the exit from the love-room the priests handed back his clothes, and as he put on his linen breeches, woolen shirt tied at the waist, and sandals, he scarcely knew what he was doing, for tall Libamah stood naked in his imagination and he could not dismiss her, nor could he reply when townsmen in the square asked with envy, “Did you get her with child?”
Refusing to share in the ribaldry customary at such times, he walked in a kind of daze through the streets until a loud-mouthed shepherd cried, “Five months from now at the new year I’ll be sleeping between those long brown legs.” Urbaal whipped about and would have struck the man for his insolence except that the stupid, lascivious face made striking inappropriate. Urbaal managed a sickly laugh, but as he approached his house he met his friend Amalek, tall and bronzed from his life with the cattle, and it was then that he began to conceive his powerful jealousy.
What if this one should want to lie with her? he thought to himself. And unfortunately Amalek said half-jokingly, “We haven’t seen you for seven days.” There was no clever reply that Urbaal could think of. He couldn’t joke; he couldn’t show how deeply the week had affected him; and he dared not show his newly born jealousy. Dumbly he looked at the sunburned herdsman and passed on.
At home he paused in the courtyard to greet his wives and to play with his many children. A slave girl brought a jug of freshly pressed pomegranate juice and a set of clay cups made in Akka, so that in spite of his agitation he experienced a moment of quiet satisfaction in being home again with his noisy family. Tomorrow he would go down to the fields and report to the baal of his olive grove, to the deities of the honeycomb, the olive press and the wheat fields his gratification for the boon they had delivered to him. In that relaxed moment he would have been judged the leading citizen of Makor, at peace with his gods, respected by his neighbors and loved by his wives, his slaves and his children. But when he passed into his god-room to drink wine before Astarte in thanks for the crucial aid she had given him in his sexual triumph, he was gripped with cold fear. His goddesses had vanished. Rushing back to the courtyard he cried, “What happened?”
“To what?” Timna asked quietly, masking the fact that she had been awaiting this critical moment.
“The goddesses. They’ve gone.”
“No!” Matred cried. Followed by Timna she hurried to the room and promptly returned, anxiety showing in her dark face.
Urbaal fell onto the hard-earth bench that ran along two sides of the courtyard, showing a degree of fear Timna had not anticipated. “What could have happened?” he asked. In bewilderment he pushed away the food offered by the slaves.
“Even the four stones are gone,” Matred whispered.
Urbaal drew back from his women, and asked, “Has anyone been here who might want to hurt me?”
“No,” Matred said.
His face tensed. He had hoped that the goddesses had been stolen, for this would mean that they had left against their will; if they had fled of their own accord it could mean only that Astarte was displeased over something; his olive trees would wither and the press would yield no oil. He was so frightened at this prospect that Timna realized she should explain that she had destroyed the statues and there was no mystery. But intending to help her husband she temporized: “On the day of the burning we returned to find the door ajar.” She knew this was true, because she had left it so when running out to bury the Astartes.
“Yes!” Matred remembered. “When you took the priestess into the love-room, Urbaal, we stayed to hear the music. Later I found Timna and when we reached home the gate stood open.”
Eagerly Urbaal interrogated the slaves, and they also recollected. “We discussed it at the time,” one of them said. But who could the thief have been? Urbaal drew farther away and sat with his arms clasping his knees against his body, suspiciously reviewing a list of his enemies, until his nascent jealousy proposed one. “Amalek!” he cried. “When I met him today he was very shifty.” It had been the other way around; he had been the shifty one, not Amalek.
Then Timna, deploring the fear that had captured her silly husband, tried to comfort him by adding a lie that she would often regret: “I believe it must ha
ve been Amalek. He was jealous that you won the tall girl.”
Eagerly Urbaal accepted the solution: “That thief!” And since he could now believe that an ordinary enemy had stolen his goddesses instead of their having deserted him, he felt a burden of fear dissolve. It was with actual relief that he ran from the house and went to the shop of bearded Heth, where he refused to answer the Hittite’s questions about Libamah but did buy three new Astartes, which he installed on the shelf of his god-room. He then went out into the fields to find for his goddesses the phallic rocks they merited.
Through his olive grove he wandered, inspecting stones and pausing to worship his comforting baals, but when at the oil press he whispered, “Thank you for winning me Libamah,” the mention of her name reminded him how vulnerable he had become; for as he walked among the trees he saw her moving ahead of him, her sinuous form emerging from their twisted trunks. Through the shimmering leaves her voice called to him, joyously and with a promise of sex. When bees hummed in the autumn grass he heard her chuckling laughter and was reminded of how permanent his hunger for her had become.
Then, as he crossed the road in search of a third stone in the shape that goddesses preferred, he happened to come upon Amalek tending his cattle, and the tall herdsman had the bad fortune—in view of its consequences it might almost be termed fatal—to ask casually, “What are you doing, Urbaal? Finding stones for your new goddesses?”
How could Amalek have known that Urbaal had new goddesses? The olive grower looked at his recent competitor suspiciously, placed his hands behind his back and asked, “How do you know what I’m doing?”
“If I’d won the tall one,” Amalek said generously, “I’d buy some new Astartes.”
Urbaal interpreted this devious reply as meaning that Amalek now had the four stolen goddesses working for him. “I suppose you know how to keep Astarte happy?” Urbaal asked in clumsy strategy.
“I wish I did. Then at new year maybe I’d win the tall one.”
To Urbaal the words were infuriating, and he tried to think of something effective to reply, but he was muted. He turned, still with his hands behind his back, and stalked off. “I see you found the stones,” Amalek said as he led his cattle away.
For Urbaal the day was ruined, and on his way back to the zigzag gate he launched the series of tragic dislocations that were to mark the last months of that year: he forgot to salute the baal of his olive grove. All he could visualize was the herdsman Amalek, who had stolen the Astartes. The man’s own words condemned him, and what was especially infuriating, he was bold enough to joke about the matter, as if he knew that Urbaal had lost his power. Gloomily he carried the stones to his god-room, but his three new Astartes gave no sign that they appreciated his thoughtfulness. His mouth had an ashen taste, proving that things had gone savagely wrong, and his mood was not improved when he walked to the temple area, lounging idly in hopes of seeing Libamah. She did not appear, but toward dusk Heth the Hittite closed his shop and came to speak with Urbaal. With his natural shrewdness the merchant could easily guess why Urbaal lingered there, and said, “Forget her, Urbaal. In the months ahead we’ll all enjoy that one.”
The farmer was outraged, morally shocked, and he would have struck Heth were he not forced to acknowledge that what the Hittite said was true: once Libamah had been used to sanctify the harvest, her uniqueness was spent and she would be quickly offered at the lesser feasts. When the new year came at the beginning of the planting season she would be brought forth again, and by the next autumn she would be available at monthly festivals while some new girl occupied premier place at the harvest. “A year from now you can have her any time you want,” Heth said. “Just knock on the temple door.” The Hittite’s insinuating laugh agitated Urbaal and in growing darkness he left the holy place but did not go home. By a narrow alley he made his way to the house of Amalek, where he stood in shadows trying to guess where his stolen goddesses might be. What galled him was the vision of Amalek’s using the stolen Astartes against him, and he constructed several ways whereby he might break into the enemy house and recover them. At the moment none of the plans seemed feasible, so he went home, mean in spirit and hungry for Libamah.
It was more than a week before he saw her again, but when he did the effect was more powerful than before: with stately grace she walked across the temple steps and when she saw him ogling her from the monoliths she gave him a casual glance which cut him like a copper arrowpoint, for he convinced himself that she had tried to send him the signal: “How will you rescue me?” He wanted to cry, “I’ll save you, Libamah.” But all he could do was stare at her as she disappeared.
The following days speeded his deterioration. He began to lose his sense of continuity; ignoring the fact that now his olive trees required attention, he stopped going down to the grove. He searched no more for the dead trees in which fall honey rested, and his wheat fields by the white oaks could wait. He spent his time alternately brooding over the wrong Amalek had done him and longing for the slave girl, and inescapably the two preoccupations began to blend, so that he could not keep his mind focused on either. One night when there was no moon he found a dark cloth and tied it over his face, slipping out of his house with the intention of harming Amalek—how, he did not know. He stayed all night in the street waiting for a practical idea but none came, and with the dawn he stuffed the cloth inside his shirt and went to the temple to study ways whereby he might break through its portals and rescue Libamah. Again he could devise nothing.
A minor festival for Baal-of-the-Storm arrived, and Libamah was brought forth to dance, keeping her eyes downcast as she had been coached, but twice she happened to look in the general direction of Urbaal and again he was satisfied that she was signaling him. At the conclusion of her erotic performance, when Urbaal was burning with desire for her, she retired and the priests threw out the four old prostitutes, nominating him for one of them. The idea was repugnant and he refused to move forward, but Timna, who appreciated what was happening, whispered, “If you misbehave they will kill you,” and he simulated eagerness in going to the steps. But when he was alone with his substitute priestess he could do nothing, not even visualize her as a woman, though she stood naked before him, and this behavior the disappointed prostitute reported to the priests, who became suspicious; they compared this performance with his earlier reaction to Libamah and shrewdly guessed what was in his mind.
Now, lost in a hopeless mania, he devised a clever trick for killing Amalek. He would meet him on the street and drive a spear through his chest. Escape afterward? He had no time to bother about such details. Punishment if caught? All he could see was the laughing face of Amalek and the sudden fear that would take possession when Urbaal leaped at him. In his god-room he practiced the fatal leap many times, then heard Timna standing beside him in her nightclothes: “Husband, evil days have overtaken you. Can I help?”
Unable to determine exactly who she was, he looked at her stately form and half remembered the joy they had shared when she had first become pregnant with the son who had been burned. He saw those fires of death and drew back. Then he recalled that he had loved Timna in those placid days as now he loved Libamah, but in a deeper, more mature manner. He saw Timna as the smiling Astarte of life and his brain became confused. She was in the way and he pushed her from his room.
Knowing that she was needed, she stubbornly returned and said, “Urbaal, if you continue in this madness your groves will diminish. Forget the prostitute. Forget Amalek.”
Gripping her by the arm he asked fiercely, “How do you know my fears?”
“The night you were planning to kill Amalek …”
“How do you know that?”
“Urbaal,” she confessed gently, “I stayed near you in the street, watching for hours to help you.”
He pushed her away as if she were a spy. “Who has told you these things?”
Patiently she explained, “It’s you who tell everyone. Don’t you suppose the priests already k
now? At the festival if I hadn’t urged you …”
He felt a strangling rage. On the one hand he wanted to rush out and kill Amalek wherever he stood, and on the other he wanted to surrender to Timna’s quiet consolation. He wanted to rescue Libamah—no matter how many priests protected her—and yet he wanted to recapture the simplicity he had known with Timna. In the darkness, broken only by the flickering light that came from a clay lamp burning oil from his olives, he looked with surrender toward the dignified woman who had come to him from the strangeness of Akka. He knew her now as his loving wife, quiet and understanding, with more wisdom than the ordinary woman, and he was not surprised that she had been the one to fathom his secrets. He allowed her to sit on his bed and the strangling insanity subsided. For the first time in many weeks he prayed to Astarte, but as he did so, Timna said, “Forget the goddesses, Urbaal. They have no power over a man like you.”
He did not argue. The idea was strange and repugnant, but on this weary night he did not wish to debate, so she continued unhindered, “Forget your hatred of Amalek. He didn’t steal your goddesses. It was an ordinary thief, of that I’m sure.” He leaned forward, wanting to believe her words, for he had long known Amalek to be an honest husbandman.
“You think he was not to blame?” he asked hopefully.
“I know he wasn’t. And you must also forget …”
“Don’t tell me to forget the priestess,” he begged.
Timna smiled. It was preposterous, and she knew it, for a wife to be consoling her husband over a temple prostitute, but she stifled her repugnance and reasoned, “Urbaal, if you love her so much, perhaps later on you’ll be chosen again to lie with her …”
“No! She will be brought to this house and she will be my wife.” He took Timna’s hands and insisted, “You’ll teach her to weave and sew cloth.”
“I will,” Timna promised. “But truly, husband, what chance is there?”
The Source: A Novel Page 18
