Thomas Swann - How are the Mighty fallen

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.

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 concubine Rizpah, and Ahinoam must endure the agonies of the chaste or risk being stoned by envious wives. At least the Goddess had befriended both of them by disposing of their mutual enemy, the Cyclops Goliath.

She was filling a pitcher at the well when she saw the strangers. Since the good wives of Endor avoided her company, she was careful to visit the well in the late afternoon, when no one dipped water except the thirsty travelers who paused to break their journey and seek a lodging for the night, and the dying sun laid a many-colored mantle over the colorless town. The bucket tinkled melodiously as it rose on its chain with its precious freight. Quietly she hummed the ancient song with which her unprincipled ancestors had tried to ensnare Odysseus, and a voice in her whispered: “Something remarkable is going to happen to me tonight.”

The men had muffled their faces with their robes, but they stared at her curiously and, she was pleased to note, admiringly, although one seemed shy and looked at the well whenever she met his gaze. Their eyes bespoke youth. With a Siren’s keen vision she could even detect their color in the diminishing light of dusk. The shorter, stockier youth had eyes of penetrating blue; his friend had eyes of green which made her think of lost islands and limitless oceans (/ have known such eyes…).

“The water is a trifle brackish, I fear.‘ She smiled. ”But this is Endor, forgotten and decaying, like a backwater of the sea.“

Blue Eyes was quick to answer. “But not its women. Is this Rebecca I see before me, as Jacob saw her at the well?”

“Please,” whispered Green Eyes to his friend. “She doesn’t look like a whore. She may be somebody’s wife. You’ll have her husband on our necks.”

“She’s a whore,” said Blue Eyes. “Can’t you tell by her boldness? And she comes alone to a well at dusk and without a veil”

Of course she had heard them; not even a whisper escaped a Siren’s ears. “It pleases you to call me a whore,” she said without anger. “And you are right. Long ago I learned that I have one gift. I am neither quick nor clever. I can weave a basket of rushes and grow a passable garden, but I keep house more to the satisfaction of mice than men. All in all, I would make a barely tolerable wife and a forgetful mother. But Ashtoreth has seen fit to give me an ample body and, I hope, a not unpleasing face. Since they are my best possessions, I use them to best advantage. If I were proud, I might call myself by the high-sounding name of courtesan and make you think that I had lain with kings, or better yet, I could pretend to be a widow who was waiting to marry the brother of her deceased husband. But pride goeth before a fall, and I have fallen far too many times already to risk another bruise. I am, as you say, a whore. The question that remains is this. Do I please you-either or both-and have you the wherewithal to engage my lodging and my person for the night? That is to say, if either of you pleases me. I have yet to decide.”

Blue Eyes opened a pouch at his belt and withdrew a handful of the flat copper shekels.

“I have decided,” she said.

“My friend wishes to engage you for the night,” said Blue Eyes.

“Can’t he speak for himself?”

“I wish to engage you for the night,” said Green Eyes, though she quickly surmised that he would prefer his friend. It was not mat he was foppish or fey. His voice was deep and manly in spite of his shyness, his figure straight as the mast on a galley. He was probably a stalwart warrior. Nor was he brash and assertively male, the lover who tries to conceal his inclinations with boasts and extravagant compliments. It was the way he looked at her which revealed his secret: as if she were his sister. She felt that he liked her but loved his friend; certainly he loved his friend. They stood so inseparably close that their arms must be touching beneath their robes.