Джеймс Миченер - The Source

The priest now spoke directly to the parents whose sons had died to protect the town: “It does not matter at what age a male dies to defend his community. The infant of months”—and here he looked at Urbaal and his wife—“is as notable a hero as the general of forty. Men are born to die gloriously and those who do so as children achieve greatness earlier than we who grow older. For them we do not grieve. They have fulfilled the destiny of males and their mothers shall feel pride.” It was an inspiring theory, and to some it brought inspiration, but not to stubborn Timna, who knew instinctively that an evil thing had been done: her son of six months had had before him the great years, and to cut him off for the good of the town was reprehensible. “But in the hour of death, even the death of a hero,” said the priest, “it is obligatory to remember life. To those whose children died to save this town Astarte, goddess of fertility and life, offers new life, new children, new fields and new animals grazing upon those fields. Now, in the hour of death, life is born again!”

The drums exploded and the songs of the singers rose to heaven as two priests from the interior of the temple led forth a priestess clothed in white. It was the moment that Urbaal had been awaiting—for this was the slave girl, tall and most radiantly beautiful. Standing at the edge of the temple steps, she kept her hands folded and her eyes downcast while the priest signaled for the music to cease, whereupon priestly hands began taking away her garments, one by one, allowing them to fall like petals until she stood naked for the approval of the town.

She was an exquisite human being, a perfection of the goddess Astarte, for no man could look at her provocative form without seeing in her the sublime representation of fertility. She was a girl whose purpose was to be loved, to be taken away and made fertile so that she could reproduce her grandeur and bless the earth. Urbaal stared with unbelieving eyes as the naked girl submitted herself to the crowd’s inspection. She was much more beautiful than he had imagined, much more desirable than he had guessed when he watched with such hungry eyes her infrequent appearances. The priests had been right in predicting that if they exhibited their new slave sparingly they could build up to the excitement that now throbbed in the crowd.

“She is Libamah,” the priest in charge announced, “servant of Astarte, and soon in the month of harvest she will go to the man who has this year produced the best, whether it be barley or olives or cattle or any growth of the soil.”

“Let it be me,” Urbaal whispered hoarsely. Clenching his fists he prayed to all his Astartes, “Let it be me.” But his rational-minded second wife, Timna, seeing this extraordinary thing—that a man who had just lost a son could be lusting so quickly after a slave girl—thought that he must be out of his mind. She saw his lips forming the prayer, “Let it be me,” and she felt sorry for him that his sense of life should have been so corrupted.

The priest raised his arms in blessing over the naked girl, then lowered them slowly to indicate that singing was wanted, and the musicians began a hushed chant to which the tall girl started quietly to dance. Keeping her head lowered she moved her arms and knees in seductive rhythms, increasing the tempo of her movements as the drums grew more prominent. Soon her feet were apart, and she was gyrating in taunting patterns until the men of the audience were biting their lips in hunger. Urbaal, watching like a fascinated boy, observed that never did the girl open her eyes. She danced like a remote goddess, being no part of the ceremony herself, but the passion of her virgin body summarized all the earth for him, and he wanted to leap onto the porch now and take her, to open her eyes, to bring her down to this world.

“In the month of harvest,” the priest shouted to the crowd, “she will belong to one of you.” Quickly his assistants covered her tall form with the discarded clothes and whisked her from sight. The crowd groaned, even the women, for they had hoped to see a more complete ceremony; but the steps were not empty for long: four well-known priestesses were led forth—many men had known these four—and they too were stripped naked, revealing far less inviting bodies than Libamah’s, but symbols of fertility nevertheless. With no delay the priests nominated four townsmen to join the priestesses, and the citizens—lucky or unlucky as the case might be—left their wives and leaped up the steps. Each grabbed for the woman designated for him, leading her to the chambers set aside for this periodic rite.

“Through them life will be born again!” the chorus chanted, and the drums echoed quietly, continuing until some time later when the men reappeared. In the days following the formal announcement that Libamah would be given ritually to the man who produced the finest crop, Urbaal spent most of his hours working at the oil press, often reaching the spot before his foreman had climbed down out of the booth in which he slept. Before he spoke to the man or looked at the results of the previous days’ pressing, Urbaal went to the rock into which the vats had been cut and there, at a knob in the rock, he paid obeisance to the baal of the oil press, thanking him for what he had accomplished yesterday and begging his help for today. He then prayed to the baal of the vats and the baal of the jugs in which the oil was stored, that it be kept sweet. Only then did he consult with the foreman, after which he went to the baal of the grove itself and to the small stone pillar representing the god of the highway along which his jugs would be transported, and to each of these baals he spoke as if the god were a living entity, for in the world that Urbaal knew, he was surrounded by an infinity of gods.

In his present preoccupation Urbaal found much assurance in the existence of these baals, for if he hoped to win the ravishing Libamah he required their assistance. It pleased him to know that he shared the earth with such puissant creatures—a god of the olive press, for example, who could produce a wonderful substance like olive oil: good for eating with bread, good to cook in, for spreading hot on one’s limbs or cool on one’s head, an oil appropriate for anointing gods or for burning at night in clay lamps. It was obvious that only a god could have called forth such a commodity, and the one who had done so should be cherished; such reliance created a psychological assurance that men of a later age would not know. The gods were immediately at hand and could be bargained with; they were friends as long as life lasted, and if perchance they turned against a man it was only because he had done some wrong which he could rectify:“Place the burdens on me, great El, that the gods may be free. Let my back bend, that theirs may be straight.”

Thus was the song of Urbaal as he sweated at his press, striving to squeeze out the last drops of oil.

The priests, watching the diligence of the free farmers, were satisfied with the stratagem their predecessors had devised thousands of years earlier: by giving the owners of free land an incentive to work hard the temple could establish standards for judging what its slaves should be expected to accomplish. But at the same time the priests were canny men, and although they held up to their slaves the examples set by men like Urbaal and Amalek, they knew that they could not enforce such quotas, nor did they try; for on the one hand the temple slaves did not own their land, and on the other they had not the powerful attraction of a living goddess like Libamah luring them on. It was remarkable, the priests reflected as they observed the sweating Urbaal, what men could accomplish under proper enticement, and it was reassuring to see that his example permeated the community, even though few could match it.