Джеймс Миченер - The Source

In the long months of the dry season when the Egyptians were moving into position to crush the Babylonians permanently, so that the land between the rivers might know peace, Gomer and her daughter Mikal managed to construct a life for themselves which, if not pleasant, was at least endurable. As the Egyptian general had predicted, with the farm families gone and all men of working age conscripted, it did not take long for the women of Makor to find their way into the fields, where they worked like animals to gather what little food had been left by the marauders. Mikal, as the daughter of the governor, could have escaped this drudgery—her four sisters did—but even though she was pregnant she felt that she must work with Gomer.

Each morning she volunteered to fetch the water, and each morning Gomer refused her offer, for two reasons. She knew that if she were ever to hear the voice again it would come to her within the depths of the tunnel; she therefore climbed down the dizzy spiral, along the damp passageway to the well, where a small clay lamp reflected its light from the surface of the water, and then back up the slope, waiting for the voice. But the more important reason was that she wished to protect Mikal. This fetching of water was not easy, for the stone steps which the slaves of Jabaal the Hoopoe had dug three hundred and sixty-one years before had been used each day by at least a hundred women—which meant that more than thirteen million trips had been made so far—and these had worn pockets in the stones so that every step had to be taken with care lest the woman slip sideways, lose her balance and pitch headlong down the shaft. Old women and pregnant ones ofttimes lost their lives in this way, and Gomer felt that she, as one who had trod the tunnel for fifty years, could better protect herself than a pregnant young girl whose father had never required her to draw water. So each day Gomer went to the well, praising Yahweh that he had sent her absent son such a wife.

Only one thing disturbed her about Mikal: the girl followed the traditions of Canaan and often climbed to the high place where she worshiped Baal. And as the time approached when her child must be delivered, she stopped working the fields and consulted with the priestesses of Astarte, asking them what she must do. In the little temple which stood over the site of the original monolith to El, three sacred prostitutes lived, their services rarely needed in these mournful days when men were gone. They were pleasant girls and they knew the sacred rites for delivering babies, so that when the days of Mikal were completed she went not to Gomer and the Hebrew midwives but to the priestesses, who delivered her of a fine boy whom she named Ishbaal, signifying that he was a man of Baal.

When Mikal brought the boy home from the temple Gomer could not hide her displeasure, and when she heard the boy’s name she spat in the dust; but when she observed the love that Mikal lavished on the child and when she saw how much he resembled Rimmon she had to accept him, and she went into the fields for sixteen and seventeen hours a day, grubbing food to keep her little family alive. As soon as Mikal was strong enough to help in the work she placed her son with an old Canaanite woman and joined Gomer at the slave’s work; and the two women working side by side developed a love such as mothers and daughters know. It was the love of women striving to their utmost so that a family might be preserved.

Each morning and night they prayed to Yahweh that Rimmon might return from the solemn battle that was forming in the north, and if at other times Mikal climbed the mountain to ask for Baal’s intercession, too, Gomer chose not to know, for these were days of tragedy and if Mikal could do anything to bring her husband home alive she was free to try it. In the tunnel there was no voice; the people of Makor had forgotten Gomer’s strange prophecies to the Egyptians, and she herself did not remember that she had once shouted with the voice of Yahweh.

Then messengers began arriving from the fields of Carchemish, far to the north on the Euphrates. They ran gasping up the ramps to the gates of Makor and fell exhausted with dust in their mouths and terror in their eyes. “Great Egypt is destroyed! The chariots of Babylon were like seeds of the cypress tree blowing across the fields in winter. Woe, woe! Egypt is no more!” They rested, with gloom upon their foreheads, then resumed their running toward the Nile, where the court would cause them to be strangled because of the calamity they were reporting.

Other fugitives followed. “The Babylonians captured our generals and blinded them on the battlefield, leading them off with yokes about their necks. Our charioteers had their tongues and ears cut away and they were led to slavery.”

“The men of Makor?” Governor Jeremoth asked. “What happened?”

“Those who lived were blinded on the battlefield, then taken away to tread water pumps for the rest of their lives.”

“How many?” the governor asked, his knees trembling with anguish for his town.

“Not many,” the messengers said, and they too ran on.

Finally a man whom the Egyptians had conscripted from Aecho wandered through the gates. He had lost his arm in the battle and had been released by the Babylonians to report the battle properly. “We marched north with overwhelming power,” he said as if he were a ghost reporting to the ancient gods of Phoenicia in some afterworld, “but Nebuchadrezzar of Babylon was waiting for us with an army that was ten to our one. At Carchemish he led us cleverly into a trap where his chariots destroyed us as if we were wheat at the harvest. He was so powerful that Egypt had no chance. Her generals were like children and her lieutenants like sucklings. But you had better prepare. For soon Nebuchadrezzar will march down the wadis. Makor and Aecho are no more. The little kingdoms that we played with are no more.”

Gomer and the other women besieged the man to see if he remembered their men. “They are all dead,” he said indifferently. Then he looked at the pathetic walls, broken by Sennacherib, and he began to laugh hysterically.

“What is it?” Governor Jeremoth demanded.

“These pitiful walls! Manned by pitiful women! You remember Sennacherib as a fearful man. But can you imagine what Nebuchadrezzar is like?” He stopped laughing at the helplessness of Makor, and his silence, the look of terror that came over his face, told the citizens all they needed to know.

The next months represented one of the most despairing times in the history of Makor. When Sennacherib had destroyed the town it was a swift, terrible vengeance that eliminated almost two thousand people in a few hours; but when it was ended the town was permitted to rebuild as an outpost of an Assyrian province. The months following Carchemish were more hideous because of the near-starvation, the captivity of the men and the uncertainty as to when Nebuchadrezzar would strike in revenge because the Hebrews had sided with the Egyptians.

“We didn’t want to fight with them,” Mikal pointed out, but her father said that the Babylonians would not take such subtleties into account.

“We must gird ourselves to withstand the first shock,” he warned, and rarely in the long history of the Family of Ur was one of their members to behave with such voluntary courage as Governor Jeremoth now displayed. Assembling his people he announced, “We are a poor group with few men. But we have found in the past that if we can hide behind these walls for three or four months the besieger grows weary and goes away.”

“We have no walls,” an old man pointed out.

“When Nebuchadrezzar arrives, we shall have,” Jeremoth replied, “and you will have blisters on your hands from building them.”