We sat, and he held out a fig to me. I brushed it away and turned to watch the sun’s last descent.
“Do I smell?”
“When do you not?”
“Why are you angry with me?”
He started eating. Whatever upset me was of no concern to him. He must have thought he could overpower anything, even my objections.
“I wish it would rain. I should make an offering to the gods. Maybe it will rain early this year,” I said.
“There is no ‘gods.’ There is only God.”
I exhaled in a loud rasp, my annoyance too big to hide. He didn’t even look up. I wanted to tear the pork rib from his hands and hit him with it. I had to stand up and walk away.
He finished eating, humming to himself as he did, content with ribs and figs and dirty fingers. I did not even want to think what his beard would smell like tonight when he tried to kiss me.
And he would. That was why I was inconsolable tonight. I realized this only when I had walked a good distance away, when I stood still and listened to the night encroaching, sneaking up on us, loud and dark. Insects began to shriek and in the trees, a flutter of wings. The heavy, fast panting of a big cat warned me to be careful, not to get too far from Samson.
I needed him.
No. I wanted him. That was worse.
And I was a liar, a filthy, cruel liar who would ruin everything for a chance at relief. I didn’t want justice or revenge. I wanted relief. I would hurt anyone I had to, even myself. I did not know why that sum had changed my heart about money. Maybe I had never had a chance to have so much. But theories about wealth fell apart when wealth became real.
But it was not too late. Nothing had been done, not really. I could pretend it had been a lover’s game. Samson was fond of those. He would not know how wretched I could be, how I had tried to use him. We could still go on.
His hands on my shoulders made me jump. The cat ran through the forest, alarmed by the sight of Samson, I am sure.
“Will you talk?” he asked.
I turned to look at him.
“The bowstrings, and the new ropes? It was a silly game for me to play,” I said.
He shrugged me off with a laugh. “Doesn’t matter. I didn’t tell you the truth anyway.”
My stomach tightened. Everything tightened and hardened and flushed red with anger. Whatever his powers were, he had the power to make me furious without trying.
“You lied to me? There really is a secret?”
“If you knew the truth, people might try to hurt you. I have enemies. You saw that for yourself.”
“I would never reveal your secret!”
“Of course you would.”
My mouth opened for a scream of fury before he finished his thought. “Under torture, anyone will reveal a secret. And then, once they killed me, what would they do to you?”
I couldn’t even hear what he was saying. I made fists from my hands and trembled, holding them up at my chest, so furious I could not even decide where to hit him first. He had lied to me. He had kept a secret from me. I hated secrets.
“Why are you so angry?”
I swear on the feet of the gods, he was trying not to laugh.
“Delilah, I was only protecting you.”
“You lied to me! You betrayed me!” I grabbed my head with both hands just trying to clear the rage from my vision. I did not know where we were or how to get home. I just wanted to hurt him.
So he kissed me. He grabbed me around the small of my back, his arms drawing me in, pressing down against my arms so that I was trapped. He kissed me, and I bit him. His eyes lit with anger and surprise, and I tried to step back, thinking I had won my release, but he drew me in tighter.
And what can I say? He was a very strong man. He got what he wanted, until I wanted it too.
“I love you,” he whispered in my ear. No man had ever said that to me. I wasn’t sure what I should feel.
When he had finished, I made my voice small and sweet as I rested my head on his chest, moving his beard aside and breathing through my mouth so I would not smell it.
“Please.”
He wanted sleep. He was a man of big appetites. He wanted to sleep, and I saw how that could be a useful appetite. All his appetites could be useful. He had no restraint, no discipline. He lived like a very bad donkey, his reins loose and untended. All he needed was someone to take the reins, and his strength could be used at last.
So I made my small, sweet voice in his ear, stalling his hunger for sleep, and he told me. He told me because he wanted sleep, more than he wanted to protect me, more than he loved me.
That is how I made my last choice. I knew his real secret long before he knew mine.
He did not love me, not really. No man ever would again.
After the first sleep, when others stirred at midnight and put out lamps and checked on the animals, we went home. Samson slept on the pallet below, simply because that was where I led him. He made no resistance, offered no criticism that the roof was surely cooler. He just wanted to sleep.
I let him.
I let him sleep while I carried the loom over to his sleeping form and rested it on my lap, settling down on my rear end near his head. One by one I lifted his fat rough braids and wove them into my loom.
His brown hair wove into my red pattern.
Slowly, I tightened the loom with its pin. His braids were secure but did not pull on his scalp. It was lovely work, my finest yet, and Samson would bring me more income than any fleece I had ever dreamed to make.
I arched my back, sore from bending over my work. Without disturbing him, I set the loom beside him. Gliding across the floor one last time with him sleeping in my bed, I opened my door to the night and did what I had to do.
When I returned, I had three Philistine guards with me. They waited outside the door. No matter what I said, they would not enter, not until they were sure he was weak.
“Samson, the Philistines are upon you!”
Samson awoke from his sleep and jumped up, his braids ripping the fabric from the loom, a sharp crack echoing from the stone walls as the loom exploded.
The guards ran away, their swords slapping against their sides as they ran.
Samson was busy picking the splinters of wood from his hair.
I crossed the floor, not bothering to be silent, and struck him on the chest. “How can you say, ‘I love you,’ when you won’t confide in me? This is the third time you have made a fool of me and haven’t told me the secret of your great strength.”
“Delilah—”
“Get out!”
“No.”
“This is my home!”
“Not anymore.”
He sat down on my pallet and tucked his arms behind his stinking foolish head. “When you calm down, you can come back. I won’t even punish you. Unless you ask me to.” He wriggled his eyebrows at me, which made his beard wriggle, which let a few fat splinters fall free into his lap.
I stomped out the door and slammed it, making as much noise as possible.
“No razor has ever been used on my head, because I have been a Nazarite dedicated to God from my mother’s womb. If my head were shaved, my strength would leave me, and I would become as weak as any other man.”
That was his secret. And I did not win it by seduction, by promise or threats, but by persistence. When Samson let me return in the morning, I was neither shocked by the experience nor shaken. Worse had been done to me.
What Samson wanted from me, I thought, was a rare kindness. He wanted someone who knew his destiny and did not judge him by it. I did not care about him, and he mistook that for the acceptance he craved. But what if I did accept him without judgment? What if I pretended to love, and because I loved, wanted to know everything?
I returned in the morning with a plan. I would love him. I would love him, and because I loved, I would nag. I would ask, and inquire, and prod, and hope. I would love him as no other woman had, until he was ready to die from
so much devotion.
He lasted less than a week.
Even neighbors noticed the change in me, and old women gave me such frowns. Sleeping with an enemy is one thing, but loving him? That was poor character, especially for a Philistine.
So when I called for the lords and their men this time, they all came, silver in hand. I bid them wait outside until the first sleep had begun. My little friend, my boy who ran and fetched these men for me on the other occasions, stood alone at the door, a knife in his hand.
I spoke kindly to Samson that night, running my hands along his hair, stroking his cheek, letting my fingers graze his skin with tender attention. He rested his head in my lap as we sat on my pallet together and spoke of the future.
“How many children do you want?” he murmured, sleep coming to him already.
The question was a cold one. But he could not have known.
“None. I had one, once.”
“What?” he murmured, the end of the word falling off like the speech of a drunk.
He was asleep.
What happened next has been repeated in the streets many times. Often I was asked to tell it myself. I never did, not once. The lords did not pay me to tell it. My work was done.
I felt nothing, not for days. When the feelings came, they were so frightening, so unlike what I had thought possible, that even now, this story is like sand in my mouth.
I put him to sleep in my lap and whistled low for the boy. He cut off the braids, one by one. They fell like severed ropes at my side in a tangled pile.
Samson changed. We both did, actually, but I would not know that for days.
He seemed smaller, softer.
Then I called to him, “Samson, the Philistines are upon you!”
He awoke and stumbled as he stood, like a newborn doe.
Then the Philistine guards seized him, and with those fine smelted daggers they gouged out his eyes right there, in my home, as I watched. He looked right at me as they did it. I was the last thing he saw on this earth.
I could not turn away, as if some unseen hand grabbed the back of my neck, forcing me to watch.
With that, he screamed like an animal, like a small, wounded animal. And they dragged him outside, through the streets, where people threw stones at him and emptied pots on him until the lords begged them to stop, if only for the guards.
They took him down to Gaza. It was a journey of a week’s time, and I have heard tell how they stopped in every village so the people could see their enemy shamed and bleeding and blind. How he survived the walk, I do not know. Perhaps some strength remained, strength I knew nothing of, the strength of a very mortal man who knows a very real god.
I was free at last to live long and in luxury. I could buy anything my heart desired, but no one had told me this: My heart still desired nothing. Money left me cold, colder than the dead.
I could not forget how his hand reached for me, after he was blinded and struck with many blows, how he reached for me still, even knowing I had betrayed him.
He had still been calling my name as they dragged him away.
MOTHER
Manoah was wringing his hands like a woman. I had never seen him like this, frantic with worry, pale and sweating. Kaleb and Liam had sneaked away to a Philistine festival. Our neighbors had told us, with a certain amount of pious satisfaction.
“Get a stick. I’m going to beat them when they return.” Manoah gestured to the door. It was late summer, and there would be dead wood about. “I will not allow the same mistakes to be made.”
He was not strong enough anymore to lead the family, but what could I say? I took him by the arm and led him to our table.
“Sit. Let me worry about the boys.”
“I will not allow my brother’s name to be dishonored. Not like ours. I blame myself for this. I blame myself for it all.”
“Shh. Sit. I will make you something to eat. What would you like?”
The boys stumbled through the door, making me jump from fright. Manoah’s mouth opened in shock as we saw them, stripped and bruised, red with shame.
“What have you done?” I shouted. I grabbed them by their ears and drew their faces to mine. “You almost killed us with worry! And look at you both!”
“It’s Samson!” Kaleb said.
I dropped my hands from their ears, grabbing them by the elbow to lead them outside. I didn’t want Manoah to hear this. My heart was ice.
Manoah tried to stand, keeping one hand braced on the table for strength. “Tell us.”
The boys went to him, and I stood, helpless. The world was a man’s affair, not mine.
“The Philistines captured him and are taking him to Gaza.” Kaleb’s face was white with fright. He must have been near when it happened, but why had Samson not saved him? Probably wanted Kaleb and Liam to learn a lesson about sneaking away from home.
I clapped my hands together and laughed, too loud. “Then there is no worry, my boys! Samson has defeated many, many Philistines, even all at once! I’ve seen it myself. He is only playing a trick on them. You wait. This will be his greatest act yet!”
I wanted to believe myself, that this was the moment God had been leading us all to.
Liam shook his head. “No. They gouged out his eyes. They beat him until …”
Manoah collapsed onto the table, a groan breaking open from deep in his heart.
“And they shaved his head,” Kaleb added.
I fell to my knees in shock. That is why, when Manoah died, I was not holding his hand.
DELILAH
My feet bled, cracked and dry. The road to Gaza was punishing. I once had willed this pain, found it sweet, but I could not remember that girl now, the girl who wanted to control her pain. I was a woman, and a woman knows that there is too much pain in the world, too much pain that hobbles us all.
I entered the gates of Gaza, a huge stone arch flanked on either side by two towers. Inside the archway, shadows fell upon me, feasting, and I shuddered.
I followed the rejoicing crowd to the temple, though I could have found it without them. I knew it by its scent, the incense and perfume heavy, not just for worship, but to cover the stench of their works. The people were assembling to offer a great sacrifice to Dagon, to celebrate Samson’s capture. “Our god has delivered Samson, our enemy, into our hands.” This was the cry in the streets that brought all good Philistines to Gaza on this day.
Dagon had not given Samson over to us. I had.
I looked at my people and saw that they had blinded themselves, too. They would never see the truth. They did not want to.
I understood why Samson had been born. Not everyone could be saved. I had to find Samson, though, and ask him one question. I hoped he would still speak to me. I hoped he would still do that.
I approached the temple and pushed past the crowds gathering at the entrance, some seeing it for the first time, like me. I was not impressed. A temple is only as good as its god.
But I did see at once that the temple in Gaza was nothing like the one in Ashdod. In Gaza, the temple was like a box with one side missing, and this was the entrance. The roof was long and wide, supported by the three walls and two massive columns in front, smoothed and polished and shining in the summer heat.
Grain offerings were being burned on a horned altar in the center of this temple as onlookers peered over the roof, already crowded with hundreds—perhaps a thousand or more—hungry Philistines.
I did not recognize Samson. I had to ask a temple servant where he was being kept, and the young boy laughed and pointed to the back of the temple. I found Samson walking in slow, labored circles, the yoke of an ox resting on his shoulders as he moved around and around, threshing wheat. He did the job reserved for donkeys.
Bronze shackles were on his ankles and hands, with bronze links running between them. Bronze! The metal that was too weak for battle was strong enough to control Samson. He looked old to me. Blood had dried on his face from his eyes and wounds, and the blood had
settled into the wrinkles and lines, flaking off and peeling away, making him look older than his years, with his shaved hair only now growing back. His hair grew in wild patches, like river weeds.
He lifted his head as I came near, a grimace on his face. It might have been a smile.
“Delilah?” He stopped walking. “I recognize your perfume.”
“Why did your god not save you?”
“Maybe I was saved from myself.”
“You are sure he is real?”
“Yes.”
“Could he save me? Even now?”
Samson groaned under weight of yoke. I saw that his shoulders had open sores. They must have stunk. I did not notice. I reached out with my fingers to touch them, gently.
“I am sorry,” I said, my voice small from shame. “I did this.”
“You did what you had to do.”
“I loved you.”
“I know. I am glad you came.”
“I don’t know who I have become.”
“I have a question for you,” he said.
“Yes.”
“What did you really want? What would have made you happy?”
I sighed and swallowed, my stomach stinging with the agony of the moment. “I just wanted … relief. From this world. From what happened to me, to my daughter.”
He nodded, letting my words affect him before replying. “I must become who I was born to be. But my eyes are gone. Help me.”
I could not help him, this strange and beautiful man. I had nothing to offer.
“Tell me what you see,” he whispered.
I did not understand what he wanted, but I told him everything. There were no lover’s games, or spiteful words, or cold silences. I just told him all I saw at the temple.
“Delilah, will you make me a promise?” His breath was ragged. I suspected they had not given him water, perhaps even for days. His life was fading, that part of him that was wholly human, wholly his.
“Yes.” I meant it as a vow, the only vow I would ever make to him.
Desired: The Untold Story of Samson and Delilah (Lost Loves of the Bible) Page 25