The Red Tent

by Anita Diamant

  We turned to each other and made love as silently as fishes and slept like children rocking on the bosom of the great river, source and fulfillment.

  At Tanis we left the river and began the journey into the hills where the sons of Jacob lived. In Egypt, farmers and even tanners were held in higher esteem than shepherds, whose work was considered the lowest and most odious of occupations. The official purpose of Za-fenat Paneh-ah’s journey was to conduct a census of the flocks and to select the finest animals for the king’s table. In fact, this was a task beneath his station, the sort of thing usually assigned to a middle-ranked scribe. Still, it served my brother as an excuse to visit the relations he had not seen for ten years, since he granted them refuge from the famine in Canaan.

  Traveling in Zafenat Paneh-ah’s caravan was nothing like the journeys of my childhood. My brother was carried on a litter by his military bearers and his sons rode donkeys behind. Benia and I, who walked, were surrounded by servants who offered cool beer or fruit if we so much as raised a hand to shade our eyes. At night, we rested on thick pallets under pure white tents.

  Luxury was not the only difference. This journey was very quiet, almost hushed. Joseph sat alone, his brow knit, his knuckles white on the arms of his chair. I was uneasy too, but there was no way for me to speak to Benia without being overheard.

  Only the sons of Joseph were carefree. Menashe and Efraem dubbed their donkeys Huppim and Muppim and invented stories about them. They tossed a ball back and forth between them, and laughed and complained that their backsides were black and blue from riding. Had it not been for them, I might have forgotten how to smile.

  After four days, we came upon the camp where the sons of Jacob lived. I was shocked by the size of it. I had imagined a gathering like the one in Shechem, with a dozen tents and half as many cooking fires. But here was a whole village; scores of women with covered hair scurried back and forth, carrying water jugs and firewood. Babies’ cries rose up from the murmur of my mother tongue being spoken, shouted, and crooned in accents both familiar and unfamiliar. But it was the smells that brought me to tears: onions frying in olive oil, the musky dust of the herds mixing with the perfume of baking bread. Only Benia’s hand kept me from faltering.

  A delegation of the tribe’s leaders walked forward to meet the vizier, their kinsman. Joseph faced them with his sons at his sides, flanked by his handsome guards. Behind them stood servants, bearers, and slave girls, and off to one side, a carpenter and his wife. Joseph’s face was nearly white with anxiety, but he showed his teeth in a large, false smile.

  The sons of Jacob stood before us, but I recognized none of these old men. The eldest among them, his face deeply lined and hidden by dirty gray hair, spoke slowly, awkwardly, in the language of Egypt. He delivered formal greetings to Zafenat Paneh-ah, their protector and savior, the one who had brought them to the land in peace and fed them.

  It was only when he switched to the speech of his birth that I recognized the speaker. “In the name of our father, Jacob, I welcome you, brother, to our humble tents,” said Judah, who had been so beautiful in youth. “Daddy is near the end,” he said. “He is not always in his own mind and thrashes on the bed, calling for Rachel and Leah. He wakes out of a dream and curses one son, but in another hour blesses the same man with lavish praise and promises.

  “But he has been waiting for you, Joseph. You and your sons.”

  As Judah spoke, I began to recognize some of the men behind him. There was Dan, with his mother’s black, mosslike hair, his skin still unlined and his eyes calm as Bilhah’s. It was no longer difficult to distinguish Naphtali from Issachar, for Tali was lame and Issachar stooped. Zebulun still resembled Judah, though he looked far less worn down by life. Several of the younger men, my nephews I guessed, recalled Jacob as he had been in his youth. But I could not guess whose sons they were or which might be Benjamin.

  Joseph listened to Judah without once meeting his brother’s eyes, which were fixed upon him. Even when Judah was finished speaking, Joseph did not reply or lift his head.

  Finally Judah spoke again. “These must be your boys. What names did you give them?”

  “Menashe is the older and this is Efraem,” Joseph replied, placing his hands upon their heads in turn. Hearing their names, the boys looked up to their father, their faces shining with curiosity about what was being said in the strange-sounding tongue they had never before heard from their father’s mouth.

  “They barely understand why we are here,” Joseph said. “I do not know myself.”

  Anger flashed across Judah’s face, but it quickly changed to defeat. “There is no undoing the wrongs of the past,” he said. “Still, it is good of you to give the old man a peaceful death. He lived in torment from the moment we called you dead, and he never recovered even after he learned you were still alive.

  “Come,” said Judah. “Let us go and see if our father is awake. Or will you eat and drink first?”

  “No,” Joseph answered. “Better to do it.”

  Taking his sons by the hand, Joseph followed Judah to the tent where Jacob lay dying. I stood with the rest of Zafenat Paneh-ah’s servants and retainers, watching as they disappeared into the dusty village.

  I was fixed to the earth, trembling, furious that not one of them knew me. But I was relieved, too. Benia led me gently to where the servants were setting up tents for the evening, and we waited there.

  There was barely time to number my feelings before Joseph reappeared, with Menashe and Efraem, their eyes fixed on the ground in fear. My brother strode past me and into his tent without a word.

  Benia could not coax me to eat that night, and although I lay down beside him, I did not close my eyes. I stared into darkness and let the past wash over me as it would.

  I remembered Reuben’s kindness and Judah’s beauty. I remembered Dan’s voice in song and the way Gad and Asher mimicked our grandfather until I collapsed in laughter. I remembered how Issa and Tali wept when Levi and Simon tormented them and said they were interchangeable in their mother’s eyes. I remembered how Judah once tickled me until I peed, but never told a soul. I remembered how Reuben used to carry me on his shoulders, from where I could touch the clouds.

  Finally, I could lie still no longer and walked out into the night, where Joseph waited for me, pacing by the side of my tent. We walked away from the camp slowly, for there was no moon and darkness covered everything. After some distance Joseph flung himself onto the ground and told me what had happened.

  “At first, he did not know me,” my brother said. “Daddy whimpered like a tired child, crying, ‘Joseph. Where is Joseph?’

  “I said, ‘Here I am.’ But still he asked, ‘Where is my son Joseph? Why does he not come?’

  “I put my mouth to his ear and said, ‘Joseph is here with his sons, just as you asked.’

  “After many such exchanges he suddenly understood and grabbed at my face, my hands, my robes. Weeping, he repeated my name over and over and begged forgiveness of me and of my mother. He cursed the memory of Levi and Simon and Reuben, too. Then he wailed because he had not forgiven his firstborn.

  “He named each of my brothers in turn, blessing them and cursing them, turning them into animals, sighing over their boyhood pranks, calling out to their mothers to wipe their bottoms.

  “How horrid to grow old like that,” said Joseph, with pity and disgust in his voice. “I pray I die before the day comes when I do not know if my sons are infants or grandfathers.

  “Jacob seemed to sleep, but after a moment he called out again, ‘Where is Joseph?’ as though he had not already kissed me.

  “ ‘Here am I," I answered.

  “ ‘Let me bless the boys,’ said Jacob. ‘Let me see them now.’

  “My sons trembled at my side. The tent stank with his illness and his ranting had frightened them, but I told them that their grandfather wished to bless them, and I pushed them toward him, one on either side.

  “He put his right hand on Efraem�
��s head and his left hand on Menashe’s. He blessed them in the name of Abram and Isaac, then sat up and roared, ‘Remember me!’ They shrank back and hid behind me.

  “I told Jacob his grandsons’ names, but he did not hear me. He stared, sightless, at the roof of the tent, and spoke to Rachel, apologizing for abandoning her bones at the side of a road. He wept for his beloved, and begged her to let him die in peace. “He did not notice when I left with my sons.” As Joseph spoke, I felt an old heaviness return to my heart and recognized the weight I had carried during my years in Nakht-re’s house. The burden was not made of sorrow as I had thought. It was anger that rose out of me and found its lost voice. “What of me?” I said. “Did he mention me? Did he repent of what he did to me?

  “Did he speak of the murder of Shechem? Did he weep for the innocent blood of Shalem and Hamor? Did he repent for the slaughter of his own honor?”

  There was silence from the ground where Joseph lay. “He said nothing of you. Dinah is forgotten in the house of Jacob.”

  His words should have laid me low, but they did not. I left Joseph on the ground and stumbled back to the camp by myself. I was suddenly exhausted and every step was an effort, but my eyes were dry.

  After Joseph arrived, Jacob stopped eating and drinking. His death would come within hours, days at the most. So we waited.

  I passed the time sitting at the door of my tent, spinning linen, studying the children of Leah, Rachel, Zilpah, and Bilhah. I saw my mothers’ smiles and gestures, and heard their laughter. Some of the connections were as clear as daylight. I recognized an exact copy of Bilhah in what had to be Dan’s daughter; another little girl wore my aunt Rachel’s hair. Leah’s sharp nose was evident everywhere.

  On the second day of Jacob’s deathwatch, a girl approached, a basket of fresh bread in her hands. She introduced herself in the language of Egypt as Gera, the daughter of Benjamin and his Egyptian wife, Neset. Gera was curious to discover how a woman of my status sat and spun while the others who attended Zafenat Paneh-ah cooked and fetched and cleaned all day.

  “I told my sisters that you must be nurse to the sons of the vizier, my uncle,” she said. “Is it so? Did I guess well?”

  I smiled and said, “You made a good guess,” and asked her to sit down and tell me of her sisters and brothers. Gera accepted my invitation with a satisfied grin and began to lay out the warp and weft of her family.

  “My sisters are still children,” said the girl, herself still a few years away from womanhood. “We have twins, Meuza and Naamah, who are too young even to spin. My father, Benjamin, had sons in Canaan as well by another wife who died. My brothers are called Bela, Becher, Ehi, and Ard, and they are good enough fellows, though I do not know them any better than the sons of my uncles, who are as numerous as our flocks and just as noisy,” she said, and winked at me as though we were old friends.

  “You have many uncles?” I said.

  “Eleven,” Gera said. “But the three oldest are dead.”

  “Ah,” I nodded, bidding farewell to Reuben in my heart.

  My niece settled in beside me, drawing a spindle from her apron and setting to work as she unraveled the skein of our family’s history. “The eldest was Reuben, son of Leah, my grandfather’s first wife. The scandal there is that Reuben was found lying with Bilhah, the youngest of Jacob’s wives. Jacob never forgave his firstborn, even after Bilhah died, even though Reuben gave him grandsons and more wealth than the rest of the brothers combined. They say my uncle wept for Jacob’s forgiveness when he died, but his father would not come to him.

  “Simon and Levi, also born of Leah, were murdered in Tanis when I was a baby. No one knows the whole tale there, but among the women there is talk that the two of them tried to get the better of a trader in some small matter. For their victim they chose the most ruthless cutthroat in Egypt, who killed them for their greed.”

  Gera looked up and saw Judah walking into Jacob’s tent. “Uncle Judah, son of Leah, has been clan leader for many years. He is a fair man and bears the burdens of the family well, though some of my cousins think he’s grown too cautious in his old age.”

  Gera went on, teaching me the story of my brothers and their wives, pointing out their children, reciting the names of nieces and nephews, flesh of my flesh, with whom I would never exchange a word.

  Reuben had three sons with a wife named Zillah. His second wife, Attar, bore him two girls, Bina and Efrat.

  Simon had five sons by the odious lalutu, whom Gera remembered as an awful scold with bad breath. He had another son by a Shechemite woman, but that one walked into a flooded wadi and drowned. “My mother says he killed himself” said Gera in a whisper.

  “That man over there is called Merari,” she said. “The miracle in him is that he is a good fellow despite the fact that he was born to Levi and Inbu. His brothers are as bad as their father was.”

  A slack-jawed man shuffled up to Gera, who handed him a bit of bread and sent him away. “That was Shela,” she explained, “Judah’s son by Shua. He is feeble-minded, but sweet. My uncle had a second wife named Tamar, who gave him Peretz and Zerach, and my best friend, Dafna. She is the beauty of my family in this generation.

  “Over there is Hesia,” she said, nodding to a woman nearly my own age. “Wife to Issachar, son of Leah. Hesia is the mother of three sons and Tola, who has taken up the midwife’s life. If Dafna is heir to Rachel’s beauty, Tola has her golden hands.”

  “Who is Rachel?” I asked, hoping to hear more of my aunt.

  “That is your master’s mother,” she said, surprised at my ignorance. “Though I suppose there is no reason for you to know her name. Rachel was the second wife, Jacob’s beloved, the beauty. She died giving birth to Benjamin, my father.”

  I nodded, and patted her hand, seeing the shape of Rachel’s fingers there. “Go on, dear,” I said. “Tell me more. I like the sound of your family’s names.”

  “Dan was the only son of Bilhah,” Gera said. “She was Jacob’s third wife, Rachel’s handmaid and the one who lay with Reuben. Dan has three daughters by Timna, named Edna, Tirza, and Berit. All of them are kindhearted women; they are the ones who tend to Jacob.

  “Zilpah was the fourth wife, handmaiden to Leah, and she bore twins. The first was Gad, who loved his wife, Serah Imnah, with a great love. But she died giving birth to her fourth child, her first daughter, Serah, who is gifted with song,” said Gera.

  “Asher, Gad’s twin brother, married Oreet,” she continued. “Their eldest was a daughter, Areli, who gave birth to a daughter last week, the newest soul in the family, whose name is Nina.

  “Leah’s Naphtali fathered six children upon Yedida, whose daughters are Elisheva and Vaniah. And of course, you know the sons of Joseph better than anyone,” Gera said. “He has no daughters?” she asked.

  “Not yet,” I replied.

  Gera caught sight of two young women and, pointing at me, nodded her head emphatically. “Those are two of the daughters of Zebulun, son of Leah. Their mother, Ahavah, produced six girls who are their own little tribe. I like it when they include me in their circle. It’s a merry group.

  “Liora, Mahalat, Giah, Yara, Noadya, and Yael,” she said, counting out their names on her fingers. “They have the best gossip. It was they who told me the story of the Shechemite woman’s son who killed himself. He went mad,” she said, lowering her voice, “when he learned the terrible circumstances of his birth.”

  “What could have caused him such despair?” I asked.

  “It’s an ugly tale,” she replied coyly, leaning in to whet my interest.

  “Those often make for the best stories,” I answered.

  “Very well,” Gera said, setting down her spinning and looking me straight in the eye. “According to Auntie Ahavah’s story, Leah had one daughter who lived. She must have been a great beauty, for she was taken in marriage by a Shechemite nobleman, a prince, in fact. The son of King Hamor!

  “The king brought Jacob a handsome bride-price wit
h his own hands, but it wasn’t enough for Simon and Levi. They claimed that their sister had been kidnapped and raped, and that the family honor was demeaned. They put up such a noise that the king, bowing to his son’s great passion for Leah’s daughter, doubled the bride-price.

  “Still my uncles were not satisfied. They claimed it was a plot of the Canaanites to take what was Jacob’s and make it Hamor’s. So Levi and Simon tried to undo the marriage by demanding that the Shechemites give up their foreskins and become Jacobites.

  “Now comes the part of this story that makes me think it is nothing more than a tale that girls tell each other. The prince submitted to the knife! He and his father and all the men in the city! My cousins say this is impossible, because men are not capable of such love.

  “In the story, though, the prince agreed. He and the men of the city were circumcised.” Gera lowered her voice, setting a dark tone for the sorrowful ending.

  “Two nights after the cutting, while the men of the city groaned in pain, Levi and Simon stole into the city and slaughtered the prince, the king, and all the men they found within its gates.

  “They took the livestock and the women of the city too, which is how Simon came to have a Shechemite wife. When their son learned about his father’s villainy, he drowned himself.”

  My eyes had been fixed upon my spindle as she recounted the tale. “And what of the sister?” I asked. “The one who was loved by the prince?”

  “That is a mystery,” said Gera. “I think she died of grief. Serah made up a song about her being gathered by the Queen of Heaven and turned into a falling star.”

  “Is her name remembered?” I asked softly.

  “Dinah,” she said. “I like the sound of it, don’t you? Someday, if I am delivered of a daughter, I will call her Dinah.”