Джеймс Миченер - The Source

“If Bathsheba succeeds in making Solomon your next king,” he told her on the fourth night, “it’s supposed that he’ll try to build Jerusalem into a rival of Tyre and Nineveh. I’m sure that if that’s the case, a builder as diligent as Hoopoe will find a welcome.”

“Are you?” she pleaded, and after a while she turned the conversation to Moab, asking Meshab if life there was similar to Makor’s, and he described the beautiful upland valleys that lay to the east of the Dead Sea.

“We always fought with the Hebrews,” he explained, “and I’m sure we always will.” He told her the enchanting story of his countrywoman Ruth, who had left Moab to become the wife of a Hebrew. “This made her the great-grandmother of your King David,” he added.

“I didn’t know that!” Kerith said, leaning her head back as she tried to visualize this unlikely story.

“So David’s really a Moabite,” Meshab said, “and at the same time our most cruel enemy.”

“David? Cruel?” A slave had spoken disparagingly of her king and she felt insulted.

“Have you not heard? When he first conquered the Moabites he caused all prisoners to kneel before him on the battlefield and we were numbered One, Two, Three, each man with one of those numbers.”

“Then what?”

“Then David sent his soldiers among us, unarmed as we were, and all prisoners numbered One and Two were slain.”

In the silence Kerith asked in a kind of fascinated horror, “And you were Three?”

“No, I was Two, but as the soldiers were about to slay me David stopped them and asked, Ts this not Meshab the leader of the Moabites?’ And when he found that I was, he said, ‘He shall not be slain. He is brave and shall become my general,’ and he asked me, ‘Will you accept Yahweh and become a freedman?’ and I said, ‘I live and die with Baal.’ His face grew dark with rage and I thought he would kill me then, but he ground his teeth and cried, ‘No matter. He’s a brave man. Set him free.’ And with my freedom I rallied my defeated people and during an honorable foray I tried to overwhelm the tents of the Hebrew generals. It was then I killed the brother of Amram.”

“That first day Amram said he had wanted to destroy you with his own hands. Why didn’t he?”

“Because David had once offered me sanctuary. Instead of death, Amram gave me slavery.”

She sighed and turned to other matters. “The other day the governor said that David might come north to see the water system. Tell me, is there a chance he would take Hoopoe south with him?”

“Possibly.” The Moabite wished he could say something that would calm this impatient woman, but all he could think of was, “Jerusalem with a yoke around your neck is nothing to yearn for.”

“I shall not be going with such a yoke,” she said firmly.

“You’re burdened with it already,” he said. “A far heavier one than I wore that day.”

On the fifth and sixth nights they met again, talking till the middle watch, and the big Moabite again felt a desire to remove the hunger that was endangering Hoopoe’s wife, and on the last night he said, “Kerith, is it possible that you fail to see what a great man your husband is, no matter whether he stays here or goes to Jerusalem?”

“No one thinks of Hoopoe as a great man,” she replied.

“I do. When it looked as if our tunnels were not going to meet, he took the blame upon himself. Even though he was the master and I the slave.”

“He’s honest,” she granted. “But his name Hoopoe tells the story.” She laughed pleasantly, and not in derision. “He’s a dear man, and we all love him. I, too,” she added. “But in the past three years I have discovered that he is not the kind of man kings call to Jerusalem. And I am afraid.”

“Remember the story of what your god Yahweh said not far from here? ‘Look not on his countenance, or on the height of his stature. Yahweh seeth not as man seeth, for man looketh on the outward appearance, but Yahweh looketh on the heart.’”

Kerith accepted the rebuke but did not respond to it, for the slave’s mention of Yahweh diverted her attention and caused her to ask, “Meshab, why not accept Yahweh now and become a freedman?”

“I will not turn my back on Baal of the Moabites,” the slave said, and this reiteration of faith, evoking in Kerith’s mind the misery of the slave camp, had a profound effect upon her and she asked in a hushed voice, “You would endure that camp?” She shivered at her recollection of it. “For how many years?”

“Seven.”

She bowed her head in recognition of a man who would accept such humiliation and filth rather than deny his god, but next evening toward sundown her thoughts were brought back to Hoopoe, for he came stumbling home at the end of a six-day drunk. He had walked the distance from Aecho and was unkempt, dusty and chuckling to himself, He had walked because the Phoenician officials had become so attached to him that when he left Aecho they gave him not only all the iron tools he had paid for but another portion as well, and he had deemed it preferable that the donkey haul these tools rather than himself. At the guard post he had forgotten to reclaim his dagger, for there he and the guards had finished his last jug of beer and had sung songs from Sidon, but in its place he had a beautiful Cypriot sword, given him by the governor of Aecho, and two iron spearheads. He was relaxed and happy, and when he pushed his donkey through the gate he dumped off the cargo in front of the governor’s quarters, bowed to that official and staggered home to his wife. But as soon as he had washed up and cleared his head he called for Meshab, and the two men climbed down the shaft, where Hoopoe scrambled into the face of the rock to hear with startling clarity the night crew at the other facing, and he looked back at the Moabite with joy showing across his bearded face.

“You were on the exact heading!” he said with generous approval, but when they climbed down into the well and started into that tunnel he saw at once the sharp correction Meshab had made in his absence. He crawled to the facing rock, listened to the hammers in the other tunnel and realized how far off course he had been and how Meshab’s intervention had protected him from what would have been a conspicuous error. He embraced the Moabite and said, “As we broaden the tunnel we can smooth out the bump and no one will ever know,” and when they had retreated back to the well he pledged his gratitude: “When your chisel penetrates that last rock, you’re a free man.” And he scrambled out of the well and ran home to tell Kerith, pointing to one of the baked tablets and saying, “What we scratched on clay three years ago we’ve dug in solid rock.” Pushing the tablet aside he hugged Kerith and cried with sheer joy, “Jerusalem is yours.” He kissed her many times and whispered, “It was for you I dug the tunnel.” He was about to lead her to their bedroom when he thought of an important responsibility, and he banged on the wall to attract Meshab’s attention.

“Let’s take the new tools down to the men right now. That’s why I went to Aecho,” and before he went to bed he saw to it that his slaves got the sharp new tools for cutting away the last of the intervening rock.

Late in the month of Ethanim, at the end of the hot season in the third year, when early rains began and plowing and sowing were possible, it became obvious that within a few days the two teams would meet, but the relative positions of the approaching tunnels could not yet be determined; almost certainly one would be higher than the other, or off to one side, but there seemed little doubt that at least part of the two openings would coincide and that subsequent corrections could be easily made. Excitement grew and even the governor got into old sandals and crawled along the little tunnel, gaining for himself a sense of the wonder that had been accomplished: each man had dug for nearly a hundred and forty feet through solid rock, relying upon the most primitive surveying equipment, and were about to meet as planned, within a tolerance of two feet in any direction.