Джеймс Миченер - The Source

The two women prayed for some minutes, re-establishing their friendly relationship with the ancient god, and as they rose to place their frugal offerings before the monolith, one happened to see Meshab in the moonlight, and she screamed. Hoopoe ran to her, and when she recognized who he was she laughed nervously. “I saw that one,” she said, “and I thought the slave had come to kill me.”

“He kills no one,” Hoopoe assured her.

He recognized the women as Leah and Miriam, two housewives who depended upon Yahweh to guide them on essential matters but who also needed Baal to reassure them on family affairs.

“Why are you praying, Miriam?” Hoopoe asked the second woman.

“My son is going to Jerusalem, and I pray that King David will look upon him favorably and find a place for him in the army.”

“He will,” Hoopoe promised, and she sighed, but when the women were gone back down the hill Hoopoe said to Meshab, “You shall sit here while I pray,” and he went alone to the ancient monolith and prostrated himself before Baal, bringing before that god the domestic problem from which he had retreated: “Dear Baal, my wife Kerith yearns to live in Jerusalem, there with the god of her father. My home is Makor, here with you. But let it be that I shall build my tunnel well and that King David shall see it and call me to Jerusalem to build the things he needs for the glory of Yahweh.” He pressed his face into his hands and with powerful fingertips tried to crush his own skull in a gesture of humility before his god. When the pain in his temples became acute he relaxed his fingers and ended: “Baal, it is not for myself that I ask this thing, for I am content to live with you. But my wife Kerith must go to Jerusalem. Her god is there. Her heart is there. Great Baal, send us to Jerusalem.”

Never before had he dared to voice this confession, either to himself or to his wife, but now he shared it with Baal, and saw nothing contradictory in what he was doing: praying to Baal that he might be summoned to Jerusalem, where he would build temples in honor of Yahweh. Meshab, the stern Moabite, could he have heard the contradictory prayer, would have been filled with disdain; a man should cling to his own god.

For the next two weeks Hoopoe accomplished nothing in his scheme for digging a water system, and he was taxed to find other work for his slaves: the wall was done, the temple court was paved, and soon the silos would be dug. Unless he could think of something soon, his efficient team would be scattered through the kingdom, so he tried anew to enlist the governor’s interest in his shaft-and-tunnel idea, but that official remained unable to comprehend the possibilities and Hoopoe was overcome by gloom, which was not relieved when his wife chanced to question him about their future.

It was a warm spring day, the kind that made the Galilee seem one vast flower garden, and she had gone into the olive grove to pick bouquets with which she adorned the house. Then, because she was tired from the work, she bathed and chose for her dress, by whim and not by design, the costume which her husband loved best: her gray woolen robe with yellow borders at hem and cuff, plus the amber pendant shining like the late afternoon sun. At the door she kissed Hoopoe and cried, “Look at the flowers!” And as he looked she said, for no apparent reason, “I’ll miss the Galilee when we’re gone.”

He tensed, then asked, “Where are we going?” And before she spoke he knew the answer.

“Your work’s done here. We’ll go where they need builders. Jerusalem.”

He took her hands and drew her to him, kissing her again. “Desperately I want to take you there, Kerith. But I wonder …”

“If they’d have you?” She laughed gaily at his fears and told him, “Jabaal, you’re the best builder in the empire. They know.” And for a moment they stood in silent hesitation at the threshold of a discussion which could have brought them understanding; but the stolid engineer was afraid to speak about his fears regarding Jerusalem, and Kerith had not yet formulated those profound moral and philosophical problems which had begun to haunt her. So the golden moment when the pollen of ideas was in the air vanished and she said prosaically, “Something will happen.” And that was all they said that day about Jerusalem.

But in the middle of the month of Ziv, when wheat was in the grain and barley in the bag, Kerith was visiting the governor’s wife when she heard news that seemed to have been created especially for her. “General Amram is coming north to inspect Megiddo,” the governor said, “and he’s promised to visit Makor. Wants to see our new fortifications.”

“Who is General Amram?” Kerith asked.

“He’s in charge of fortifications for King David.”

Kerith clenched her hands to keep from crying out with excitement, but through her being hammered a mighty drum thundering one word, “Jerusalem, Jerusalem!” Finally, when she had gained control, she asked the governor, “May I be excused?”

“You want to tell Hoopoe? More holes for him to dig?” He flashed his head up and down, and Kerith knew she was supposed to smile.

“If I may. Please.” And at the gate she asked the guards, “Have you seen Jabaal?”

“Who?”

“The Hoopoe.” She said this without showing her distaste for the name.

“He’s at the slave camp.”

And she crossed over to the olive grove from which she had recently picked flowers, but this time she passed through it and came to the walled compound where the slaves were kept, and even before she entered that noisome place she was revolted by the smell. She asked the guards, “Where is Jabaal?” and when they did not know she had to explain with some embarrassment, “The one you call Hoopoe.”

“Follow me,” and without noticing what he was leading Kerith into, the guard walked nonchalantly through the filthy outer circle of hovels: rats ran in the road and sunlight fell on piles of straw so rancid that each had its colonies of bugs and lice. The water standing in clay jars was covered with scum, and in the few spots where some slave had tried to beautify the place where he would die, the neatness looked obscene. “Almighty Yahweh!” Kerith whispered. “You let men live here?”

But then the guard opened the inner gate and led her to the walled section where dangerous prisoners were kept, and here not even the sun was allowed: dismal huts with floors still muddy from the rains of spring were marked with piles of rotting straw and shreds of cloth. Broken bowls and food pots gray with filth stood in corners, while the section reserved for the privy was unspeakable. A slave captured on some desert raid, now too old to work, shuffled by unable to stand erect, while young men who would have been tall in their homeland orchards north of Tyre moved glassy-eyed to their death.

“Yahweh, Yahweh!” she whispered, and the thought that this hell existed in the same land with Jerusalem was almost more than she could bear and she felt faint. And then she passed into the meanest hovel of all, and there she saw her husband talking with a man she had not noticed before, the slave Meshab, and something in his controlled, resourceful manner as he bent over the hide filled with drawings gave the place a dignity she could not have believed.

After nodding to the slave she said, “Husband, General Amram is coming to inspect your walls.”

The effect of this information upon the two men was striking. Hoopoe leaped to his feet, not afraid to show his pleasure. “At last we’ll have a man who understands.” But Meshab drew back toward a corner, not through fear, Kerith thought, but in response to some instinctive prudence; and it was obvious that he had known General Amram before, perhaps on a battlefield, for to the Moabites the Hebrew generals had brought much destruction and Kerith could see that Meshab had no desire to meet this particular general again.