“May Yahweh look kindly on your union and bring you many sons,” said Jonathan, turning his back to smooth a stone in the elephant’s side.
“Come now, my daughter, leave our young men to their elephantine labors and walk to the palace with me. We must tell Rizpah our news. Ahinoam too. She will know how to manage a betrothal feast in the grand manner. In my own youth, we shared a fatted calf, exchanged vows, and that was that. But now I suppose there must be bridal gowns and processions by torchlight and-well, we shall leave the arrangements to Ahinoam, who has a gift for such niceties.”
David and Jonathan remained with the elephant, David bemused by his sudden rise in fortune. To become the husband of the king’s favorite daughter! To become Jonathan’s brother-in-law!
Jonathan kicked the leg of his elephant and the whole outlandish beast, oversized ears, longish snout, and diminutive eyes, crumbled to their feet in a cloud of dust.
“Jonathan, what’s the matter?”
Jonathan’s eyes were full of tears. “I hate peace,” he said. “People get married in peaceful times and bear children. In war we could be together always.”
“It’s war you hate, not peace. You've always said so. And you knew I would marry one day. You even suggested Michal, because you love both of us.”
“Better Michal than Merab,” he sighed. “I didn’t think you would marry her so soon, though. I was vain, wasn’t I? To think I could keep you making gardens or throwing spears with me when you might be lying with Michal and producing the next heir to the throne.”
Ashtoreth had gone out of David’s day. Till now, the prospect of marriage had not meant a broken bond between him and Jonathan, but a bond which made him irrevocably Jonathan’s brother. His flexible conscience allowed him to marry a girl and remain her brother’s lover. A man’s duty to a woman, he reasoned, was to father her children and provide for their safety and security. He was obliged to esteem her but not to love her.
“Jonathan,” he cried. “Michal is a waterhole in the desert, but you are the Promised Land! Could she ever come before you?”
“Of course you must marry,” Jonathan sighed. ‘And Michal will make you a faithful and loving wife. And I'll be your friend forever, even if I have to make elephants by myself.“
“But you’ll marry too, Jonathan, one of these days, and your son will be heir to the throne, not mine.”
Jonathan shook his head. “I suppose I could marry. I like women. I like to talk to them. Their small talk puts me at ease, and I don’t have to think about things like battles and sieges and armor. As for Michal and my mother, I love both of them very much, and I even love Merab when she’s scolding me. And I would rather worship Ashtoreth than Yahweh. But I just don’t think I want to marry. You can’t be quiet with a woman. They expect sweet talk most of the time. If they wear a new robe and you forget to mention it, you get a cold supper without wine. And they’re always after you to have babies, and more babies, and they never leave you alone with your friends. The only exceptions I know are my mother and, I hope, Michal.”
“You might experiment before you decide against marriage,” David suggested. “Not a virgin, Yahweh forbid, because then you would have to marry her. I was thinking of a harlot, though Saul has driven them out of Gibeah.”
“Except Rizpah,” Jonathan reminded him.
“She’s retired. She doesn’t count. All the others are gone. But they still flourish in towns like Endor, and the nice thing about them is that they help. They don’t just lie there and wait as if they were expecting the Red Sea to open. And when you want to be alone, you pay your shekels and dismiss them with a compliment.”
“I'll think about it,” said Jonathan. Resolutely he knelt to rebuild his elephant. But his shoulders were hunched and he looked like a sad little boy whose toys had been nibbled by mice.
David embraced him and took the pale and forlorn face between his hands, and, because there appeared to be no one closer than the palace, which was hidden by poplar trees, kissed him on the mouth.
He did not hear Rizpah’s approach, he felt her shadow shut them from the sun. (Two visitors, two shadows. What was the proverb brought out of Egypt? “One shadow cools, two shadows kill.”) He looked into her wide, bland eyes and wondered if they concealed a perception which only Saul had perceived.
He released Jonathan as casually as if he had been adjusting his friend’s tunic and said quickly, “I’m going to marry Michal. Has Saul told you?” He was careful to make his voice sound happy and expectant like that of a new bridegroom.
“Yes. I came to congratulate you. I feel that you are well suited to each other.” She was wearing her usual soiled robe, originally red but discolored with saffron flour from the palace kitchen, which fell to her supervision. She might have been an aging slave instead of a concubine who had replaced a queen.
“Jonathan was wishing me success in my marriage.” Even in undemonstrative Israel, fathers kissed their sons and brothers kissed their brothers, but not on the mouth, no, never on the mouth. Perhaps, however, customs differed among Rizpah’s people, the Ammonites, and she would interpret the kiss as merely fraternal.
“Jonathan has become a very affectionate boy since you came to court” Irony? Reproach? Threat? Spoken by Saul, the words would have bristled with sinister implications. But Rizpah’s simplicity was the perfect disguise.
‘I too wish you success, 1 she said, “though love is not always successful, is it? There are too many ghosts.” She smiled wanly and disappeared down the trail.
“Is she going to tell the king?” David asked.
“It’s hard to say,” said Jonathan. “She likes you, I know, and she loves Michal. But I've always taken my mother’s part against her, and I rather think she dislikes me. She may go directly to Saul. Or to Michal. Or she may do nothing at all. She isn’t the fool she seems, you know. She doesn’t think, but she does feel, and some of her intuitions are worthy of a Siren. Have you ever noticed how often she begins a sentence with ‘I feel’?‘
“Never mind,” said David. “Saul won’t have us stoned for kissing each other.”
“Probably not,” said Jonathan. “But he may separate us. I can see him sending you to fight the Philistines and me to fight the Edomites. I’d rather be stoned!”
“Jonathan, nobody can separate us, not even the king.‘ Marriages of state, unpredictable concubines, compromising kisses, even another war… such circumstances were like locusts, pestiferous but not dangerous (yet a plague of locusts had brought famine to Egypt).
“David, you make good things happen because you want them to, and you work like Jacob for anything you want But there are some things that even you can’t accomplish. It was too perfect, our loving each other. You know what they say: ‘Perfection belongs to the gods. Show them your imperfections and then they will answer your prayers.’ ”
“I've shown them enough imperfections for both of us, laughed David.
“I think,” said Jonathan slowly, “that you will be king one day. And Michal will be your queen.”
It was the next day in the garden that an old man, as full of years as Abraham before his death, beckoned to David with yellow, crooked fingers. Unlike Abraham, who had worn his age like a mantle of white egret feathers, he resembled a fallen eagle. His talons were broken but his eyes were keen and fierce.
His voice was surprisingly soft when he said: “My son, you are Yahweh’s chosen to rule his people.
CHAPTER NINE
It was a hardship; indeed, it was a deprivation to be a Siren and not to live by the sea; to live in a streamless village whose single well erupted from sulfurous Sheol. It had been worse than a deprivation to leave the coves of Crete with their sea caves and rainbow fish, the sun-drenched forests where woodpeckers chattered to Dryads, and come to the squalid town of Endor, which lay directly between Philistia and Israel and changed masters as often as the moon changed phases. But here she was safe from the pirates who scourged the coast; here she was comfortable, even if not wealthy, from her alternating practice of prostitution and soothsaying. When the Philistines controlled the town, she practiced either art; when the hardbitten, guilt-ridden Israelites ousted the permissive Philistines, she concealed her powdered newt and eye of toad in her cellar and gave herself totally, if discreetly, to love.
Often she wondered about that other Siren who had come from Crete to Israel, her friend Abinoam. Alecto pitied her, since the king she had married was frequently mad and, even when sane, preferred the frumpish
