The Red Tent

by Anita Diamant

  But just as I began to fear that I would betray myself to my mothers in a flood of tears, I was saved. The king himself sent for me. Hamor would deny his young consort nothing, and when Ashnan asked if Jacob’s kind young daughter could be brought to distract her during her confinement, a messenger was dispatched. The king’s man even brought a slave to take my place in the harvest. My mother found the gesture thoughtful and generous. “Let her go,” she said to my father. Jacob did not object, and sent Levi to accompany me to the door of the women’s quarters in Hamor’s palace.

  Waving to my mothers, I could see Bilhah and Rachel peering after me. Either my haste or my pleasure at the king’s bidding alerted them to something, but by then it was too late to ask. They waved back as I descended into the valley, but I could feel their questions at my back. A hawk circled high above us all the way down into the valley. Levi said it was a good sign, but the messenger spit on the ground every time the bird’s shadow crossed our path.

  My brother left me at the door of Hamor’s palace, charging me in a loud, pompous voice for the benefit of the messenger “to behave as befits one of the daughters of Jacob.” Since I was Jacob’s only surviving daughter, I smiled. I had been told to behave as myself, and I had every intention of doing that.

  In the next three weeks, I met the daughters of Shechem. The wives of all the important men came to visit Ashnan and her little boy, who would not be publicly named until he reached three months, according to the custom of Egypt. “So the demons will not know how to find him,” Ashnan whispered, fearing the presence of evil even within the safety of her comfortable rooms.

  Ashnan was rather a silly girl with fine teeth and big breasts, which regained their shape and beauty quickly after the baby was given to a nurse. I had never heard of a healthy woman giving an infant to another woman’s breast; in my world, a wet nurse was used only when the mother was dead or dying. But then, what did I know of the lives of royal women? Indeed, I was amazed by almost everything I saw at first.

  I did not much care for being Ashnan’s servant, for that is how she treated me. I brought her food and fed it to her. I bathed her feet and her face. She wanted massage, and so I learned the art from an old woman of the house. She wanted paints as well, and chattered away as she taught me how to apply kohl around my own eyes, and a ground green powder to my lids. “Not only does it make you look beautiful,” said Ashnan, “it keeps the gnats away.”

  Ashnan also taught me boredom, which is a dreadful calamity visited upon women in palaces. There was one afternoon I actually shed tears at the monotony of having to sit still as Ashnan slept. All I had to occupy myself with was worry over whether Shalem was aware of my presence under his father’s roof. I began to doubt that he remembered the unkempt assistant to his milk-sister’s midwife. I was trapped without answers, for the walls between the women’s world and men’s quarters were thick, and in the world of the palace there was no work to create a crossing of paths.

  After many days, Re-nefer looked in upon Ashnan and I tried to find the courage to speak to her about her son. But all I could do was stammer in her presence and blush. “Do you miss your mother, child?” she kindly asked. I shook my head, but looked so miserable that the queen took my hand and said, “You need some distraction, I think. A girl like you who lives under the sun must feel like a trapped bird within these walls.”

  I smiled at Re-nefer and she squeezed my fingers. “You will go out into the marketplace with my maid,” she said. “Help her pick the best of the pomegranates, and see if you can hunt up some fine figs for my son. Shalem likes figs.”

  The next morning I walked out of the palace and into the babble of the city, where I stared to my heart’s content. The servant by my side seemed in no hurry and let me wander where I would. I stopped at almost every stall and blanket, wonder-struck at the variety and quantity of lamps, fruits, woven goods, cheeses, dyes, tools, livestock, baskets, jewelry, flutes, herbs, everything.

  But there were no figs to be had that day. We searched for them until I was nearly dizzy from heat and thirst, but I hated to return to the palace without satisfying the queen’s request, without bringing fruit to my beloved. Finally, when we had looked in every corner, there was nothing to do but turn back.

  At the moment we set our path for the palace, I spied the oldest face I had ever seen—an herb seller whose black skin was lined deep as a dry wadi. I stood by her blanket and listened to her rattle on about some liniment “good for the backache.” But when I leaned down to finger a root I had never seen, she grabbed my wrist and stared up into my face. “Ah, the young lady wants something for her lover! Something magic that will bring her young man to bed, so she may be rid of her tiresome virginity.”

  I pulled my arm away, horrified that the conjurer had seen so far into my heart. It was probably only a speech she made to every young girl who approached, but Re-nefer’s maid saw my confusion and laughed. I was mortified, and rushed away from the old one.

  I did not see Shalem approach, but he stood before me, the afternoon sunlight filling the sky around his head like a glowing crown. I looked into his face and gasped. “Are you well, my lady?” he asked, in the sweet, reedy voice that I remembered. I was mute.

  He looked at me with the same hunger I felt, and put a warm hand on my elbow to squire me back to the palace, the queen’s woman following us, wearing a big grin. Her mistress had been right; there was a light between the prince and the granddaughter of Mamre.

  Unlike me, Re-nefer’s son had not been able to hide his heart from his mother. Re-nefer had despised the women of the city since she arrived in Shechem as a young bride. “Stupid and empty,” she branded them all. “They spin badly, weave atrociously, dress like men, and know nothing of herbs. They will bear you stupid children,” Re-nefer had told her son. “We will do better for you.”

  Re-nefer had been impressed by the bearing of the midwife from the hills, and she had liked the looks of the girl carrying her bag, too. She approved of my height and the strength of my arms, my coloring and the way I carried my head. The fact that one as young as I was already walking in a midwife’s path told her I was no fool. When Rachel had gone with the queen for refreshment during Ashnan’s labor, Re-nefer had gotten more information about me so discreetly that Rachel did not suspect her purpose as she was quizzed about my age, my mother’s status, my skill at hearth and loom.

  When Re-nefer and Rachel surprised me and Shalem in the anteroom, she discerned at once that the seed of her idea had already sprouted on its own. She did what she could to nurture its growth.

  Re-nefer told Ashnan to send for me from my father’s house, and she told her son to go out to seek me in the market that morning. “I’m afraid that the little girl from the hills will be lost,” she said to Shalem. “You know that my servant is fool enough to let her out of her sight. But maybe you do not remember the looks of the one called Dinah?” she asked her son. “She was the dark-eyed girl with the curly hair and the fine hands who came with the midwife. You spoke to her in the antechamber when Ashnan was in travail.” Shalem agreed to do his mother’s bidding with such speed that Re-nefer had trouble stifling a laugh.

  When the prince and I returned to the palace, we found the courtyard deserted, as Re-nefer had instructed. The servant disappeared. We stood in silence for only a moment and then Shalem drew me into the shadow of a corner and put his hands on my shoulders and covered my mouth with his mouth and pressed his body against mine. And I, who had never been touched or kissed by any man, was unafraid. He did not hurry or push, and I put my hands on his back and pressed into his chest and melted into his hands and his mouth.

  When his lips found my throat, I groaned and Shalem stopped. He looked into my face to discover my meaning, and seeing only yes, he took my hand and led me down an unfamiliar corridor into a room with a polished floor and a bed that stood on legs carved like the claws of a hawk. We lay down upon sweet-smelling black fleece and found one another.

  I
did not cry out when he took me, because, though he was young, my lover did not rush. Afterward, when Shalem lay still at last and discovered that my cheeks were wet, he said, “Oh, little wife. Do not let me hurt you again.” But I told him that my tears had nothing of pain in them. They were the first tears of happiness in my life. “Taste them,” I said to my beloved, and he found they were sweet. And he wept as well. We clung to each other until Shalem’s desire was renewed, and I did not hold my breath when he entered me, so I began to feel what was happening to my body, and to understand the pleasures of love.

  No one disturbed us. Night fell and food was left at the doorway—wonderful fruit and golden wine, fresh bread and olives and cakes dripping in honey. We ate every morsel like famished dogs.

  After we ate, he washed me in a large tub of warm water that appeared as mysteriously as the food. He told me of Egypt and of the great river where he would take me to bask and swim.

  “I cannot swim,” I told Shalem.

  “Good,” he replied. “Then I can be the one to teach you.” !

  He put his hands into my hair until they were tangled in knots and it took us long moments to free him. “I love these shackles,” he said, when he could not free himself, and he grew large and our loo coupling was exquisitely slow. His hands caressed my face, and we cried out in pleasure together.

  Whenever we were not kissing or coupling or sleeping, Shalem and I traded stories. I told him of my father and my mothers and described my brothers, one by one. He was delighted by their names and learned each one, in the order of his birth, and knew which one came from the womb of which mother. I’m not sure my own father could have listed them so well.

  He told me of his tutor, a cripple with a wonderful voice, who taught him to sing and to read. Shalem told me of his mother’s devotion and his five half brothers, none of whom had learned the arts of Egypt. He told me of his trip to the priestess, who initiated him in the art of love in the name of heaven. “I never saw her face,” he said. “The rites take place in the innermost chamber, where there is no light. It was like a dream locked inside a dream.” He told me of three times he had slept with a slave girl, who giggled in his embrace and asked for payment afterward.

  But by the end of our second day together, our embraces outnumbered his experiences with other women. “I have forgotten them all,” he said.

  “Then I will forgive you them all,” I said.

  We made love again and again. We slept and awoke with our hands on each other. We kissed each other everywhere, and I learned the flavor of my lover’s toes, the smell of his sex before and after coupling, the dampness of his neck.

  We were together as bride and groom for three days before I began to wonder why I had not been fetched to go and wash Ash-nan’s feet or rub her back. Shalem, too, forgot his obligatory evening meals with his father. But Re-nefer took care that we should know nothing of the world and that the world should give us peace. She sent choice foods at all hours of the day and night and instructed the servants to fill Shalem’s bath with fresh scented water whenever we slept.

  I had no worries for the future. Shalem said our lovemaking sealed our marriage. He teased me about the bride-price he would bring to my father: buckets of gold coins, camels laden with lapis and linen, a caravan of slaves, a herd of sheep so fine their wool never needed washing. “You deserve a queen’s ransom,” he whispered, as we drifted back to our shared dreams.

  “I will build you a tomb of surpassing beauty,” Shalem said. “The world will never forget the name of Dinah, who judged my heart worthy.”

  I wish I had been as bold with my words. Not that I was shy. Shalem knew of my delight in him, my gratitude for him, my lust for him. I gave him everything. I abandoned myself to him and in him. It was only that I could not find a voice for the flood of my happiness.

  While I lay in Shalem’s first embrace, Levi was storming out of Hamor’s palace, furious that he had not been given the audience with the king that he considered his due. My brother had been dispatched to see when I would be sent home, and had he been given a fine meal and a bed for the night, my life might have had a different telling.

  Later, I wondered what might have happened had Reuben or Judah come for me. Hamor was not eager to meet with that particular son of Jacob, the quarrelsome one who had accused him of swindling the family. Why should the king suffer through another round of accusations by some whining son of a shepherd?

  If it had been Reuben, Hamor would have welcomed him to dine and spend the night. Indeed, if it had been any of the others, even Joseph, he would have received a fine welcome. Hamor approved of Jacob nearly as much as his queen liked Jacob’s wives. The king knew that my father tended his flocks with such skill that he had quickly become the richest shepherd in the valley. Jacob’s wool was the softest, his wives skilled, and his sons loyal. He caused no feuds among neighbors. He had enriched the valley, and Hamor was eager for good relations with him. Marriages between their two houses were much to be desired, so Hamor was pleased when Re-nefer whispered that his son favored Jacob’s daughter. Indeed, as soon as the king heard that Shalem was lying with me, he began to count out a handsome bride-price.

  When Hamor heard from the servants that the young couple were well matched, adoring, and busy producing his grandson, the news aroused him so much that he called Ashnan to his bed a full week before her confinement was due to end. When Re-nefer discovered them, she barely scolded her husband and the girl, so great was her joy at her son’s match.

  On the fourth day of our happiness, Shalem arose from our bath, dressed, and told me he was going to speak to his father. “It is time for Hamor to arrange for the bride-price.” He looked so handsome in his tunic and sandals that my eyes filled with tears again. “No more weeping, not even for happiness,” he said, and lifted me, still wet from the water, and kissed my nose and my mouth and put me on the bed and said, “Wait for me, beloved. Do not dress. Only lie here so I may think of you like this. I won’t be long.”

  I covered his face with kisses and told him to hurry back. I was asleep when he slipped beside me, smelling of the world beyond our bed for the first time in days.

  Hamor departed for Jacob’s camp early the next morning, a laden wagon behind him. He did not bring a tent or servants for a night’s stay. He did not expect to stay or to haggle. How could he have imagined any objection to his good news and generous gift?

  The news about Shalem and Jacob’s daughter was widespread in the city, but unknown in Jacob’s tents. When he heard that I had been taken as wife by the prince of the city, he said nothing and made no reply to Hamor’s offer. He stood like a stone, staring at the man of whom his sons Levi and Simon had spoken with such venom—a man of his own years, it turned out, but richly dressed, smooth spoken, and fat. The king waved at a cart laden with goods and trailing sheep and goats. He declared them kin, soon to share a grandchild.

  Jacob hooded his eyes and covered his mouth with his hand so Hamor would not see his discomfort or surprise. He nodded as Hamor praised his daughter’s beauty. Jacob had given no thought to a marriage for his daughter, although his wife had begun to speak of it. She was of age, to be sure. But Jacob was uneasy about this match, although he could not say why, and he felt his neck stiffen at Hamor’s expectation that he would do as he was told.

  He searched his mind for a way to postpone a decision, a way to regain the upper hand. “I will discuss this with my sons,” he told the king, with more force than he meant.

  Hamor was stung. “Your daughter is no virgin, Jacob,” the king pressed. “Yet here is a bride-price fit for a virgin princess of Egypt—more than my own father gave for my wife. Not that your daughter is unworthy of this and more. Name what you wish and it is yours, for my son loves the girl. And I hear she is willing, too,” and here Hamor smiled a bit too broadly for Jacob’s taste. He did not like to hear his daughter spoken of so crudely, even though he could not quite conjure up the image of Dinah’s face. All he could recall cle
arly was the sight of hair, unruly and wild, as she chased after Joseph. The memory came from long ago.

  “I will wait for my sons,” said Jacob, and he turned away from the king, as though the lord of Shechem were no more than a shepherd, and left it to his wives to welcome the king with drink and food. But Hamor saw no reason to stay and headed back to his palace, trailing his gifts behind him.

  Jacob called for Leah and spoke to her in the hardest words he had ever used with a wife. “Your daughter is no longer a girl,” he said. “You were insolent to keep this from me. You have overreached before, but never to shame me. And now this.”

  My mother was as surprised as her husband and pressed Jacob for news of her daughter. “The prince of Shechem has claimed her. His father comes to pay the full bride-price of a virgin. And so I assume that she was until she went within the walls of that dung heap of a city.” Jacob was bitter. “She is of Shechem now, I suppose, and of no use to me.”

  Leah was furious. “Go seek out your wife, my sister,” she said. “It was Rachel who took her there. Rachel is the one with eyes for the city, not me, husband. Ask your wife.” And the smell of bile rose from my mother’s words.

  I wonder if she thought of me at all then, if she suffered over whether I had consented or cried out, if her heart reached out to discover whether I wept or rejoiced. But her words spoke only of the loss of a daughter, gone to the city where she would reside with foreign women, learn their ways, and forget her mother.

  My father called for Rachel next. “Husband!” cried Rachel, smiling as she approached him. “I hear there are happy tidings.”