Джеймс Миченер - The Source

He drove his starving people at a pitch that they would not have believed possible. He became the builder, the hortator, the priest, the general. Wherever he went he inspired his people to additional work, and when a committee of the faint-hearted approached him with the idea that perhaps it would be better in the long run if the town surrendered to Nebuchadrezzar, trusting to his benevolence, he dismissed them scornfully: “Our fathers surrendered. They trusted Sennacherib. And four hours after he took the booty the town was demolished. This time if we perish we perish on the walls and at the gates.”

One morning, when the fortifications were beginning to regain their former strength, he climbed down into the tunnel to inspect the water system, and on the way back he stopped in the darkness to mutter a prayer to Baal for the miracle that the god had permitted Jeremoth’s ancestors to accomplish. “With this water in our hands, great Baal, we can hold off the Babylonians.” As he rose he saw Gomer coming toward him with her water jug balanced on her head, and she stopped to greet him.

“You’re a brave man, Jeremoth,” she said. “Yahweh will bless you.”

Governor Jeremoth thanked her, and she added, “For all the fine men we lost, for our sons, we shall be avenged.” She took the governor’s hand and kissed it.

“Thank you, Gomer,” he said. “When the day for fighting comes you shall stand beside me on the wall.”

“For the memory of my son I shall kill fifty Babylonians.” And they passed on.

But after the governor had climbed the stairs, and after Gomer had gone to the well and filled her jug, she was returning alone through the tunnel when an extraordinary thing happened. She was walking toward the shaft, brooding upon the revenge she would take on the Babylonians, when she was suddenly knocked to the stone floor, where her clay jug was broken, sending water upon her face, while from the bottom of the shaft shone a light more powerful than the sun.

From her prone position Gomer had one curious thought: Our shaft is so located that the sun never shines to the bottom. It had never done so and she knew it never could, but there it was.

A voice said, “Gomer, widow of Jathan, in the days ahead I shall speak through your lips.”

“Is my son alive?” she asked.

“Through your lips will I save Israel.”

“Is my son Rimmon alive?”

“The walls must not be finished, Gomer, widow of Israel.”

“But we must destroy the Babylonians,” she cried, still prone on the wet stones.

“In chains and yokes shall you march to Babylon. It is the destiny of Israel to perish from the land it has known, that it may find its god once more.”

“I cannot understand your words,” Gomer muttered.

“Gomer, widow of Israel, the walls must not be finished.” The light diminished and the voice was gone.

She picked herself up and looked at the broken water jug, and the sight of its fragments brought her back to reality and she began to weep, for she did not have enough money to purchase a new jug and did not know what to do.

Climbing the shaft she placed her feet carefully so as not to slip into the deep holes, and all she could think of was that the voice had refused to speak of her son, so when she reached her home and saw her grandson Ishbaal playing in the sun and her cherished daughter-in-law Mikal working at the noon meal, she wept again, moaning, “Now I am sure that Rimmon is dead, and I have broken our water jug.”

The two tragedies were of equal weight to the unfortunate women, and they wept together, for the loss of the jug was so unexpected and so costly that they could not comprehend what had happened to them; and in this lamenting Gomer ignored the wall, and it was finished.

Then came the day that made the long months endurable. A child was playing on the new wall and to the east he saw a flurry of dust rising along the Damascus road, and he cried, “Some men are coming home!” No one attended his foolish words, but after a while he saw real men and shouted, “Our men are coming home!” And again no one bothered to listen to him, but finally he saw a man whose face he knew and he screamed, “Gomer! Gomer! Rimmon is coming home.”

The cry spread out across the town, and Gomer and her daughter hurried to the walls and saw below them Captain Rimmon, tall and blond and very thin. He had with him thirty or forty men of Makor, neither blinded nor mutilated, and no one spoke, neither the men in the road nor the women who saw them through tears that were beyond pain, but the child kept calling off the names: “There’s Rimmon and Shobal and Azareel and Hadad the Edomite and Mattan the Phoenician …” One by one he called them from the dead and they climbed the ramp to their poor town.

The released prisoners clutched at their women, embraced their children and uttered little animal cries of joy. At the temple of Astarte the three young prostitutes danced naked and took all men, one after the other, into their booths for celebration, after which a procession headed by the priestesses and two old priests marched to the mountain, where sacrifices were offered before the monolith of Baal. Food that had been hoarded for months was brought out, and there was dancing and crying and love-making and men and women alike getting drunk without the help of wine. The men were home! Once again Baal had saved the little town.

It was dawn before Rimmon and his friends had finished telling of Carchemish and the wonders of Babylon. Of the battle they said only that Egypt was so crushed that it would never rise again. No more would Makor know the tramp of Egyptian armies; the scarabs of the officials could be thrown away, for they would no longer be needed to sign official documents. At this news there was little mourning, for Egypt had been a careless and a cruel administrator, and perhaps the first weakness was worse than the second, for under her dominion the land had deteriorated, the forests had diminished and security had changed to anarchy. Egypt was dead, and Hebrews who had suffered under the Pharaohs felt no grief.

“But Babylon!” Rimmon cried. “A city of magnificence beyond imagination! At the Gate of Ishtar …” He wondered how he could explain. “Mikal,” he called to his wife, “fetch me your jewel,” and his happy wife ran to their home and brought back a piece of glazed ware from Greece shaped in the form of a bird. “This is precious,” Rimmon said, holding the brooch so that it shone in the night flares, “but at the Ishtar Gate there are walls three times as high as Makor, all studded with glaze finer than this fragment.” Above his head rose the imaginary gates of Babylon.

“They have canals that bring the river from a greater distance than Aecho, gardens that float in the air, temples as big as all of Makor, and at the edge of the city a tower so big and so tall that words cannot describe it.”

“Why did they let you go free?” an old man asked.

“So that we could tell Israel of Babylon,” Rimmon said.

From the shadows Governor Jeremoth stepped forward, a stubby, hard man of demonstrated courage, to say, “They sent you back to frighten us. But we are going to defend this town with our courage and with our blood. Rimmon, tell us no more of Babylon’s might. Let us tell you that here we shall defend ourselves.”

To the surprise of the townspeople the governor’s harsh words did not offend Rimmon, for with a broad smile he grasped Jeremoth’s hand and said, “Azareel, tell him what we’ve been talking about.” And a battle-tough man with a bandaged head explained, “All the way home we’ve been deciding what to do. We’re going to defend this town. Because we found that when a town resists, it wins a more favorable treaty. We pledged, ‘When we get home, we’ll rebuild the walls.’” Through the night shadows he peered at the battlements and asked, “Who had the courage to do that?”