even inanimate objects like stones or streams aroused him to praise. For example, he built a garden behind the palace in Gibeah, with little paths wandering among stone animals-bears, cheetahs, hyenas, fennecs, foxes-and clumps of oleander bushes and tamarisks tended as carefully as children, watered, trimmed and shaded from the withering sun.
“It’s for the Great Mother because she helped you against Goliath,” Jonathan explained. Israelites did not as a rule grow gardens for the sake of beauty. They had fought the barren land to eke a thin subsistence or fought ungenerous neighbors for a richer land, and to them a garden was meant to supply food. A tree should give fruit or shade. A stream should turn mill wheels or fill pitchers. It was the same practicality which had inspired the law against the Sin of Sodom. The Israelite elders, Jonathan explained, argued that a man’s love for a man was an affront to nature; a barrenness which would first limit the birth of children, then the number of soldiers, then Israel’s power to defend herself against her enemies. Like a garden of chrysanthemums, it produced no practical benefits; the elders therefore decreed that men should love only women and father many children.
“But Ashtoreth knows there will always be men to love women. If men love men, why not let them honor the Goddess in another way? Let them affirm the order and beauty-of her creation by a continual hymn of praise-your psalms, my garden, and most important, our love. To love means to link; to link means to express the continuity of life, the unity of existence.”
“Jonathan, you sound like a Philistine philosopher.” Jonathan laughed. “Truly, David? It’s the Lady who speaks through me, but she has had her say. Let’s continue our worship. You sing a song to her while I work in her garden.” And David sang:
“Listen! Ashtoreth is in the corn.
The lithe stalks bend beneath her subtle hands
And sigh to fill the furrows of her path.
Now still she stands,
Inviolate as stone…“
At first the garden looked strange and useless to him. A path ought to lead to a house or a road and not meander like an undecided snake. And rocks-who ever heard of piling them into animals-hyenas at that, which everybody except Jonathan disliked-and crouching them not among edible vegetables but inedible narcissi? (“Thou shalt make no graven image ”)
“We could at least grow some carrots,” said David. “A garden ought to be good for something.”
“But that’s the point.” Jonathan smiled. “It has no practical purpose. It simply is.”
David shook his head. “I feel as if I ought to be practicing with my bow.”
“Practicing, practical. We hear too much of those words. Here, hand me that stone.”
David obeyed with a wistful smile. “Do you know,” he said, “that you are as stubborn as I am? I’m going to call you the lovable tyrant. What’s more, in a strange kind of way, we have changed places with each other.”
“No,” said Jonathan. “Our souls have knit, that’s all.”
Soon David was helping to build an elephant, a beast which neither he nor Jonathan had ever seen but which they had heard described by an Egyptian traveler who had seen the descendants of the elephants imported from Nubia by the boy-pharaoh Pepi.
“The snout’s too long,” said David with finality.
“It’s supposed to be long enough for him to dash water over his back.”
“This way he will trip over it or snare it in thickets. And whoever heard of such ears? They look like oversized parasols. Does he raise them over his head to keep out the sun?”
“Everything ought to be big except his eyes. The ears are for swatting flies.”
“He’s as uncouth as a camel,” muttered David, who, like most Israelites, ranked camels and dogs-the first intractable, the second verminous-among the lowest animals and infinitely below asses and oxen.
“Not uncouth, just different,” said Jonathan. “Am I uncouth because of my wings?”
The finished elephant sported a long snout and preternaturally large ears.
Sometimes Michal helped them in the garden. A woman’s tasks-weaving, drying flax on the flat-roofed palace-did not interest her. She respected their frequent need for solitude and sensed, too, when they would like her company. She offered good advice about the garden, whose purpose-or purposelessness-she understood more quickly than David. She discussed the rumor that the Philistines were building bronze chariots in their foundries near Gaza. She openly admired David’s ruddy looks, and yet looked up to Jonathan as the ideal against whom she must measure even David. All in all she was frequently welcome, and David admired her trim runner’s body, resembling that of her brother, and the sun-bronzed skin, almost honey-colored, which would have made carmine or kohl an affront to her face. David suspected that he would have fallen in love with her had it not been for Jonathan. Though her beauty to that of Jonathan and Ahinoam was the Nile compared to the Great Green Sea, and though she lacked their command of magic and the magic of their persons, she was frank, open, and highly companionable, and she made no secret of loving David, whom she called the Red Warrior because of his hair.
One afternoon, when the sun was a pleasant prickle instead of a blaze, they showed her the stone elephant.
“His snout is too long,” she pronounced.
Before Jonathan could defend his creation, a shadow fell across their path. Saul had approached on soundless sandals and paused, unspeaking, to watch the work in the garden. David smiled at him and tried to assess his mood. For the moment, he seemed both sane and amiable, the father and not the madman. It was his curse that a simple farmer had multiplied into many selves, and he could not make them work in unison; he was now one person, now another, and the two, the three, the four were distinct personalities, and one of them at least was distinctly dangerous. David likened him to a cart drawn by wild asses, each pulling in a different direction notwithstanding the frantic instructions of the driver.
“It’s good to see my children at play,” he beamed. “We’ve had enough of war.” In the bright afternoon light, he looked bent and gray-if not old in years like Samuel, he was old in burdens-but he had gained weight at Gibeah and people whispered that he was a better king when he delivered judgments for his subjects, sentencing thieves, condemning usurers, than when he had sat for a month with his army at Elah facing Goliath and the Philistines across the stream.
He opened his arms to Michal and kissed her undisciplined hair.
“Michal, my heart, I have always said that you could choose your own husband. Am I right in thinking that you have made your choice?”
Michal blushed and began to stammer. “Father, I have made no choice. I liked Agag, but Samuel slew him.”
He turned to David. “And what have you to say, my boy?”
David did not need to deliberate his answer. Michal loved him, of that he was sure, and she would, he hoped, become a biddable bride who, underestimating its power and overlooking its passion, would not object to his friendship with Jonathan. Furthermore, it was good to be captain over a thousand men in time of war, but now, in peace, he had no official duties except as lutist to the king.
“I have long aspired to your radiant daughter’s hand,” said David, who knew that Saul, having once been an unlettered farmer, delighted in courtly speeches. “But who am I, a simple shepherd from Benjamin, to join the noble House of Kish?”
“Say no more. Your great-grandfather Boaz was a man of means and generosity. Though he married the foreign Ruth, he quickly won her to Yahweh. You yourself have proven to be a splendid warrior and a loyal subject Does the choice please you, Michal?”
“Oh, yes, yes, may Ashtoreth be blessed!”
Saul shook his head with mock severity. “It was not Ashtoreth who delivered us from the Philistines.”
“But it is she who understands a maiden’s heart.” Everyone knew that Michal’s room held a shrine of Ashtoreth or images of the Goddess. Yahweh was a man’s god. The women of Israel, though they followed his commandments and observed his festivals, sometimes gave their hearts to the Goddess, who was courtesan, wife, and mother.
“Perhaps you are right. At any rate we shall celebrate your betrothal as soon as you like.”
“Soon?” asked Michal to David, no longer the boyish companion to her brother and his friend, but a soft young virgin enraptured with her first love.
“Soon.” David smiled. “Jonathan, aren’t you going to congratulate us?”
