Джеймс Миченер - The Source

When the singing ended she walked boldly with Gershom to his hovel, and at the doorway she said quietly, “When you go with the king to Jerusalem, I shall go with you.”

He was in the act of throwing his lyre onto a pile of wool and he did not bother even to break the rhythm of his arm. “I want you to,” he said, without looking at her.

“Tonight I will stay here,” she said, but even with those words they were afraid to embrace.

Slowly she walked home, considering what she must tell Hoopoe, but when she entered the house by the shaft that had accomplished so little she said simply, “I am going to Jerusalem. With Gershom. I shall live with him the rest of my life.”

Later she recalled that as she said these words her fat little husband looked just like a hoopoe bird, twisting his neck this way and that, as if he were seeking a hole in which to sink his foolish, his lovable, his laughable head. “You mustn’t,” he pleaded, following her from room to room as she packed a few belongings. When they reached the room where they had spent their passionate nights he said, “You can take the rope of glass,” but she left it behind, not willing to hurt him by saying that it was gaudy Phoenician ware; but the chunk of amber set in Persian silver she took.

At the door of the house, standing by the great empty shaft that had mocked her plans, she said good-bye to the pathetic little engineer, and when he tried in trembling voice to ask why this wrong thing was happening, she said at last, “Stay with Makor and the old gods, I cannot.” And she was gone.

In his desolation, alone with two children that his wife had deserted and the tunnel that the king did not want, Hoopoe sought the one man who could give him counsel. In the gray and somber twilight he went to the postern gate where Meshab was finishing the tower that would hide the telltale marks and there in his perplexity he asked the Moabite to reason with Kerith, but to his surprise Meshab refused to leave the tower. “I shall keep hidden until King David leaves,” he explained.

“But why?” Hoopoe asked. All that was happening confused him.

“King David bears deep hatred for my people.”

“But he’s part Moabite himself,” Hoopoe protested, and his need for help was so obvious that Meshab, in spite of what he knew might happen, laid down his trowel, washed his hands and consented to talk with Kerith; but as the two men left the wall, one of King David’s captains spotted the Moabite and ran crying through the streets, “The assassin of Moab is among us.” At first Meshab tried to run back to the wall, but gleaming spears cut off that escape, so he did what he had long planned to do if trapped as he now was. He ran past the shaft, along the curving street that led from the postern gate and into the temple, where he threw himself upon the altar, clutching the stone horns.

Hoopoe had scarcely reached him in the sanctuary when soldiers appeared at the door, only to draw back when they saw what action the Moabite had taken, but shortly King David himself, unattended by Abishag, alone and old and white with fury, strode to the altar. “Are you the Meshab whose life I spared in Moab?”

“The same. I seek your sanctuary.”

“Did you not kill Jerebash, the brother of Amram?”

“In battle, yes.”

“And throw down the temple to Yahweh?”

“In siege, yes.”

“You have no sanctuary.”

“I plead the sanctuary you ordained.”

“I refuse it!” David thundered. “I saved you once and you warred against me. Guards! Seize him!”

A shocking fight marred the silence of the temple, for Meshab had no intention of being taken alive, and the struggle became more violent when Hoopoe sprang to the defense of his friend and shouted at the king, “He is a freedman claiming sanctuary.”

“He defied Yahweh!” David cried, half insane.

Spurred on by the king the guards knocked Hoopoe aside, but even as he fell to the floor he shouted once more, “David! Don’t defile your own sanctuary.” Then a guard kicked him in the mouth, bringing blood that choked him.

The guards were now free to concentrate on the Moabite, but he defended himself with mighty strength until ten dragged him from the altar, causing it to crash to the floor, where it broke into two pieces, and the sight of this shattered altar infuriated David even more: he was a man capable of nursing terrible enmities and he cried, “Slay him!” And seven came at the former slave with spears, and his powerful arms gathered them to his chest as flint sickles once gathered wheat, and he fell at the feet of the king, where he was stabbed many times until his blood flowed across the temple floor to where Hoopoe lay. A priest, reveling in the horror, chanted, “Yahweh is revenged. Thus Yahweh strikes those who oppose him.”

Finally the young girl Abishag found her king in the bloodstained temple and took him by the hand and led him to his couch. Then he had time to reflect upon the vengeful thing he had done, and he beat his forehead with his fist and repented this latest in a long chain of sudden passions that had scarred his life. He found that he could not banish from his mind the figure of the Moabite freedman clutching at the altar, nor from hearing the pleas for sanctuary. The execution had been an impulsive, ugly outburst and already David was haunted by regret.

In deepening repentance he asked for the young lyrist, whose consolation he needed, and messengers went to the small room at the back of the wool store, where they found not only Gershom but Kerith, kneeling over a small bundle of clothes which she had brought from her husband’s house; and when the messenger told Gershom that he must bring his kinnor to comfort the king, the psalmist said, “I must bring Kerith, too. I cannot leave her here.” And when he passed through the streets to serve his king, Kerith walked behind, wearing a gold-colored robe and an amber amulet.

They found King David huddled in a corner of the governor’s quarters, Abishag at his side and holding his left hand. He was ashen with remorse, an old man tormented by ghosts—the latest less than an hour old. “I have betrayed my own law,” he mumbled and he would have confessed more, but Gershom took a stool by the door and as Kerith sat on the floor beside his feet he began playing some of his songs, and he kept to those the king had already heard. And as he plucked the seven-stringed lyre, bringing from it sounds like the wind and the movement of lambs across the fields in spring, the old king lost his bitterness and he closed his eyes as if he were asleep, but the fear of loneliness with which he clutched the hand of Abishag proved that he was well awake and listening with great longing to the words of the young singer.

After Gershom had reviewed songs which the king knew, he was inspired, for some reason that he could never thereafter explain, to launch into a song which he had composed some years before on a day in the mountains when he had been wondering what things the ideal king would do; and his words echoed across that white room as the conversation between the people of Israel and their king:“Rejoice in Yahweh, you righteous men,

For praise becomes the upright.

Give thanks to Yahweh with the lyre,

Sing praises with a psaltery of ten strings.

Sing to him a new song.

Play skillfully with shouts of joy.For the word of Yahweh is upright.

His works are established in truth,

And he loveth righteousness and justice.”

The last three lines of the poem were but the preface to ideas of the kingly state, but they struck the guilty king with such vigor that without opening his eyes he signaled with his right hand that the music was to stop. He rose, and still self-blinded groped his way a few steps across the room, then fell on the floor, on his knees and elbows, from which position he beat his head several times on the floor until Abishag rescued him and forced him to open his eyes and make his way back to his chair.