Athaliah, Daughter Of Jezebel

by Mordechai Landsberg

Bat Gad was still living in Beth El, at that point of time: Jehu inherited Ahab regime’s hired officials. He found lists of salaries paid to Jezebel’s women spies. After shortly investigating them, he learned that most of them had been God’s believers. He let half of those women, who had spied in Aram or Moab, to remain in his service, and the rest were fired. Jehu fired also Bat Gad and another woman, who had spied the prophets. He had an argument for that: their task had ended - because no God Believer would be Jehu’s enemy, knowing his unrelenting ‘treatment’ to Baal worshippers…

  It seemed like Jehu had not been informed about Bat Gad’s unsuccesful, scandalous and defamed marriage to Elisha. But she was afraid, that soon he would find out that a lot of people had seen her – and... ‘Who knows how this madman would react,’ she thought. ‘He would be sure that I had been a prostitute by my free will: A fornificator, an Idols’ worshipper, who had cheated innocent Elisha. All that complex of horrible accusations for sins against God – may bring my stoning by his court of justice.’

  Bat Gad decided to escape from the country, and get back to her homeland in Judea.

  A day after she returned from Samaria to Beth-El, she harnessed her female donkey,or ass, putting on it the ornamented saddle, that she had received from Jezebel, in addition to the nice jewellery. The royal highway to the south led her near the Calf Temple. After about half an hour ride, she had heard a light gallop from behind. Suddenly it stopped. As she turned her face back - she saw that her ass was courted by a sniffing male donkey. It was prophet Joseph’s tall male donkey. Bat Gad felt uneasy that the donkey tried to jump on her ass’ ass from behind, and pulled its rein to the right in order to sneak her animal aside. Her ass jumped and almost threw her down. Prophet Joseph scorned at his male sex-allured donkey, after he stopped it and dismounted. He was facing Bat Gad.

  “Excuse me, madam,” he said, looking at her annoyed face, while she was still sitting on her saddle, “and forgive my crazy animal .”

  She looked at him penetratingly, and pointed to the sky, declaiming: “You will save man and animal as well, Almighty God!”

  “Wonderful – you know some Psalms’ sentences by heart!” Joseph said in enthusiasm.. He was attracted by her eloquence, but more than that - by her flashing eyes, that flickered at him. Around them he saw a smear of Turquoize color, that fitted her dark hairs. Now the donkey sneezed from desire, and Joseph pulled its rein more tightly to avoid him re-attack Bat Gad’s ass. He looked at Bat Gad again and liked her brown leather belt and narrow hips. The view of her slim figure with curvy heavy breasts - instantaniously fascinated him. He stepped back, while she also got down from her tall ass.

  He glanced at her cotton white dress, and at the small bag given in her hand.

  “You were tracing me, sir?” she scorned him. He mumbled and discerned that her face became serious. She had thick lips, and he thought about his girl Nefertita… Bat Gad had been only a grand-granddaughter of an African man from Kush, who had arrived in Judea hundred years before, so she was told, with some hired Philistines of King David.

  “I am not a detective, madam,” he said, “it just happened that I foolowed you along the way, and my donkey became … you know.”

  “I halted from fear of that big horse-like animal,” she was like reflecting loudly, “I’ll use the opportunity to rest a little there, under the trees. I still have a long way to drive.”

  “I’ll take a rest there as well,” he said, and decided to be the first to reveal his distination, for prucuring her confidence, “I’ve a long way too. To Jerusalem.”

  “Hopefully - my good luck will lead me there too,” she said. He was wondering about her. She began to speak to him just frankly, without smiling at him, without a hint that she is interested in any contact with him. Neither he had thought about just betraying Nefertita so soon, if at all. He did not have any idea if the beautiful unknown woman would like to continue talking with him at all.

  They both tied their donkeys to two trees, far from each other, for calming the animals. Bat Gad soon asked where he had come from. He lied to her that he was a scribe from Judea, having travelled in Israel just for trying to get work in copying holy Torah scripts for the priests..

  “But now eveything has turned against me,” he remarked, “Somebody had informed Jehu’s man that I was a foreighner from Judea. Nobody would provide me work any more. In addition to the fact that now they have their scribes, who don’t need to copy the scripts so accurately as in my country, Judea.”

  “You had arrived to north Israel in a bewildering time,” she said.

  “I hoped, that God would send me good luck here in Israel,” he said. “But He had not. Now I am tired from my visit…Maybe Jehu will be driven out by another commander. I see now that Athaliah’s regime in Judea is not so bad as I had thought before…”

  “Now everything here is in chaos, because of the Arameans… I don’t know what will happen, therefore I go south.”

  “Where would you like to be in Judea?” he dared to ask. The were already seated on stones – in the shadow of a fig tree.

  “I have a sister in a village near Jerusalem,” she said, “But I heard that she had moved to the holy city. It’s better and safer for me to be with her.”

  “You cannot be absolutely safe,” he remarked, “In Queen Athaliah’s regime. You know that she hates us, God’s believers. That’s one of the reasons that had led me before- to run out from there.”

  Joseph’s attraction to the young woman, maybe in his age, caused his curiosity about her. He was glad, while she continued to talk:

  “I was an official in the previous regime,” she said suddenly, not telling him the full and bare truth, “but Jehu’s regime has no need for me any more. Therefore I quit. I was responsible for preparing lists of God’s Believers arriving in Beth-el Temple. The secret police would use it against rioters.”

  He believed her, and presumed that she had told him that without fear, being sure about his innocence. Maybe she was also attracted by his nice black beard and nice talk. He did not know what Bat Gad had naturally suspected, that he may have been sent to spy her. But she preferred to be seemed sincere quite at the beginning. She just wanted to let him confide in her ‘honesty and reliability’.(spies in general try that behavior. From the plenty of spies surrounding them and being sorrounded by - they lose their true personality and begin to believe in their lies and pretensions.)

  The young prophet felt frustrated, while he continued talking to Bat Gad. His soul was struggling with what he defined to himself as the Satanic sight of that fascinating woman, with a body that announces strength, health, stability, Will Power. . .My skin like screams from longing to the warmness and sensitivity of that young female. No human being would understand the internal cry of a prophet, who so badly wishes to destroy the torturing prohibitions of religion, but he cannot. His internal power is too weak, facing the threatening past, that ensures a hard punishment on whoever will break his obedience to his religion – that would praise only life of justice and righteousness and integrity and innocence, and would promise a better future only to the believers in the plentifulness and goodness of the One, who can penetrate into human’s soul and change its beastly roots…Yes, man had been created by God as the last creature- after all others. And when everyone achieves God’s wish, he will feel God’s happiness inside himself. He will then know also his own nothingness - as a sole grain of dust feels its nonentity and existence simultaneously. But in that it is similar to God, who exists and becomes nothingness in a flip of a finger or a flicker of a candle-light…

  How many times have I tried to escape from God?…Though I know that every prophet of truth starts his duty in refusal- but it would end in acceptance of his duty. It is a permanent internal war of desertion and return to God’s target. Internal war- I’ve said. It’s like fighting a permanent War With and against God . . .Like myself now. I hesitate to inquire Bat Gad too deeply. Had she b
een right in her surrender to the orders of Jezebel’s officials? But the Lord was surely involved in that too, as He is the Almighty. But in that belief in His unending ability - I remove responsibility from the individual person. If God is involved in all, and knows all- I can get rid of my robe and stop my job to be the prosecutor, the outrageous prophet...

  “Joseph,” she asked suddenly, “You seem to me a very restrained youth. You are so cautious in your talk with me. You refrain from relying on a woman like me, are you?”

  “If you’re hinting, that I have no flesh desires,” he said, “you’re absolutely wrong. But I am really one of the youths, who try not to enslave themselves to a hallucinations and fantsy and ecstazy, or losing consciousness by sexual propfanity. Because I am aware of the results of such a behavior. It would bring young women to bear bastards, babies without a recognized father. That horrifies me. Such women will suffer all their life. Don’t you think so? Their hearts will be beaten by feeling of orphanage themselves, like their child…Yes, like myself.”

  “Oh, were you an orphan?” she asked.

  “Yes, I am one, whose spirit is tortured since childhood by missing a father. He had left my mother, because she had become pregnant to him. She had told me – and I blieved her – that I had not been important enough for him to live with me and with her, to take care of me and educate me. Like a wave in the sea he was, that would reach the shore and return to be redundant water, salty, bitter, horribly followed by miryads of other waves which break up to foam on the beach, having reached one goal: to be gone and annuled as the past…”

  “Oh, your words seem to be of a poet,” she said, “not of a poor writer in scrolls.”

  As by a sudden impetus- Joseph suddenly rose, took the stone that he was seated on- and rolled it toward Bat Gad. His eyes looked at her in a painful covetousness.

  “Before you fall in love with me,” he heard Bat Gad’s sexual whisper. “think about me as a bad woman. That’s what I really am.”

  She felt that she was very attractive to him, and he could hardly restrain his moves toward her body. His hand groped for her nice leg in.

  “I will not hide from you anything about myself,” she said, “You’ve to know, that till a year ago - I had a strange love affair…with no other than the great prophet Elisha.”

  “Oh,” said Joseph, “I have heard that he had married. If it had been with you- I appreciate you for that.”

  “We had become married…But it existed for only a month…When Jehu had become the ruler in Israel, the prophet had left. I guess that it had nothing to do with me personally.”

  “Oh! It’s hard to believe,” he said, “but why have you told me that so soon? It should have been kept by you as a great secret.”

  “I have revealed that, because I want mutual sincerity... I feel that you hide from me even far bigger secrets than my own.”

  “Hmmm,” He mumbled, “How …can a woman like you feel that?”

  “You insult me, saying: ‘a woman like you.’”

  “I beg your pardon.” He said, “But I won’t answer - if I have a certain secret or not. You do not consider yourself Delilah, do you?”

  She smiled. She was thinking what could keep his deep secret, that would make her aspire to discover, and she would die if she won’t.

  ‘She cannot imagine’, he meditated, ‘that a boy king is my only secret and hope. She is far from understanding the real and acute problem of small Judea; so this secret would seem futile to her- if she unveils it. But because she tells me that she had beem employed by God’s enemy, king Ahab’s family - any hint to her as to anybody - would be fatal. She is now driving to queen Athaliah, for sure.’

  “If you refuse to describe your secret exactly,” she said at last, “let me hear what your vision is - regarding Judea. I told that you seem to me…not the simple man, that you have pretended to be. You have a great dream, I am sure. Maybe that God will be appear to the people with an amazing act, something like that. . . Have you become to know that secret by reading some ancient scrolls?”

  “Well. That’s my secret – how I had become to know it. I hope that all of us will get a much better kingdom – than the unjust, tyrant queendom that we have now… That’s all I can say. Better for me to be dead - than expose more details about my thoughts and moves,” he said bluntly, “But as for you- I’m sure you have still much more secrets than I do have. I have a strong feeling about that: It derives from God.”

  “Oh Oh, Great God,” she tried to mock.

  “I would have proposed marriage to you,” he said, “if I had known that you accept it, dear Bat Gad.” he felt that she had already prepared herself to hear that.

  “If your you were really married to Elisha,” he continued, “you are worthy to me! I would really envy him for that. You are an extraordinary young woman. I had never met in my life such a pretty and smart woman!”

  “Thanks for the compliments. I’m used to get them. For the time being - we can’t marry, you understand. I don’t know your exact marital status, sir. Perhaps you are already married, and if so- you have to feed kids. It’s a heavy yoke.”

  She rose from her stony seat and turned to her ass. He rose too, understanding she would just prevent any further talk. They looked at each other in a sense of understanding they would proceed knowing each other, but it would and should take time. They were driving now- he ahead with his male donkey, and she behind - with her ass. He would use his whip against his animal as soon as it would turn its head, trying to look at and smell the ass. A stupid animal’s hope: to jump on an ass and stream its sperm inside her from its enlarged penis.

  Their way crossed hills, came along slopes of higher mountains, then descended to shallow ‘wadies’ - poor streams or torrents. The area became spread with rocks, and desert bushes dotted in between, without trees even on the horizon.

  Then they arrived to a narrow crevice. A week before - the Prophet had passed it without a notice of any barrier installed at its width. Now the riders saw it nearby, and heard shouts of the border kreepers. They had been Athaliah’s soldiers, and asked their destination. The prophet identified himself, telling that his merchandise had been selling papyrus to northern traders, and now he arrived back…

  “And the lady is your wife?” asked one of the gaurds. Both he and Bat Gad nodded.

  “I know you from somewhere,” told him the guard, “weren’t you once preaching to people about repent and redemption? I remember you.”

  “It was my tween brother,” lied Joseph. The couple were allowed to enter Judea, after writing their exact names – by a coaled wood on a papyrus.

  “I have to drive straight to the palace,” said Bat Gad. “Will you guide me? I had not been in the country for more than seven years.”

  “Won’t you go to your sister first?” he asked.

  “I had disconnected from her all these years. Maybe someone in the palace could tell me where she is. I hope she has got married.”

  “What’s her name?” asked the prophet. She told him. He did not know any Rachel.

  They were still riding about two hours, till they came to Jerusalem and passed the northern gate. He showed her the path leading to the royal palace and asked in a trembling voice:

  “When will I see you again, pretty lass?”

  “I don’t know where my dwelling will be. So, you will have to find my sister and ask her. She is known to the woman who is now Queen Athaliah. She was her maidservant for some years.”

  “I understand. So, I will stay at the gate and wait for you, till you clarify your sister’s address - with the queen’s servants.”

  The gate keepers sent one of their collegues to call Evedel, the chief household keeper of Athaliah. He came to the gate, and heard Bat Gad’s wish to meet her sister. He told her that Rachel has born a child, and she is married to the Commander in Chief, Abner.

  ‘Oh, God’s curse on my head’- said surprised Bat Gad t
o herself. ‘My ex-fiance had married my beautiful sister. She was worthy of that. Surely- Abner had become a General, commander of the army. He would not be happy at all -to meet me. He may even kill me, God. I’ll have to sneak to Rachel’s home, while Abner won’t be there…Well. I guess that most of his nights he is in duty. A devoted soldier like him, a solemn person, a thick hard piece of timber, that’s what he is...I am cursed. I could be today a respectable woman, a wife of a most vigorous men in this country. My crazy mind had desroyed my life. ..But my jerky character can’t afford me satisfacion as a home sitter. I am not a regular type of person like my young sister. May God defend her, when her husband will be killed somewhere somehow…Oh, pessimistic rotten witch-prophetess like me…’

  “Please wait for me tomorrow evening here, at the palace Gate,” she said to priest Joseph, “I have to ride to my sister now. They told me where she lives.”

  They departed with hand waves, and smiled to each other. He was not angry on himself for his quick surrender to meet again that woman. He could not manage himself otherwise.

  On the following evening Joseph met Bat Gad near the palace gate, as they had dated.

  “Have you found your sister?” he asked.

  “Yes, but she could not provide me a room in her nice house. She let me sleep in her deserted goats-fold. She was afraid of her tough husband.”

  They began to stroll around, looking at small gardens in the neighborhood, planted with trees or deserted. The night had been lighted by full moonlight.

  “Your sister afraid,” he said, “that her man will see you, and be seduced or something?”

  “Perhaps. He knows who I am. Eh, It’s a long, remote story,” she sighed.

  “A Story about you and him?”

  “You are very curious, sir. Very eager to know everything. Very likely to gossip afterward, like… Excuse me for blaming you, Joseph.”

  “Nothing in real life,” he was quite screaming, “would be or seem to be strange in my eyes or mind. . . I’m a prophet of God. A small Judean prophet, not as great as Elisha, but…”

  “Oh, unbelievable…” she said ironically. She felt embarrassed. He knew well that she had a hard marriage experience with the most remarkable prophet. So, why had he told her that he was also holding the staff of a prophet, just now?

  “May I ask something, that bothers me, as a prophet?” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “About Elisha and you, of course.”

  “I can tell you everything; and you - can think that what I’ll tell is a subjective point of view on him…and that I intentionally want to smirch him. But- he had really behaved very aggresively to me, as a husband… and a man in general. I look at him as so blasphemous against God, that nobody can imagine.”

  “Had he discovered something about you, that forced him to break relationship …?” asked Joseph.

  “No, I had revealed to him all my sins of the past. And despite that he agreed to marry…And what were they, at all? An uncontrollable desire for pleasures. It was what many people would like to have, but only few dare to imply. You can simply simply define that as profanity…I mean, he had known all that before he became my husband. ”

  “He was crazy to have you, notwithstanding.”

  “Yes, but afterwartd he suddenly fled. So, it wasn’t due to my past adultery. He had understood, that he had hurt my soul. He ruined me. He secretlty cursed me, I’m sure, like he had cursed Gehazi, his servant. He’d put a curse on my spirit. I’m damned now, you can’t imagine how much depressed I am.”

  “I’ve just begun to read something that Gehazi wrote. It was about Elish’s wife, without mentioning your name. He described your beauty very artfully. However, he avoided writing about any wrong doing by Elisha to you. The opposite. Gehazi remarked that the prophet soon got rid of his wife, blaming her for bothring him, madenning him with extravagant demands…”

  “Had he described what were those …demands?” she asked .

  “You wanted Elisha to settle in a stone house, and lead a luxurious way of life. The prophet couldn’t afford that…So his assistant wrote.”

  “Pooohhh. Gehazy is a famous lier, extravagant narrator, exaggerative and manipulative. He had known the truth, dear Joseph. And he was the witness to the divorce book, that Elisha signed. Naturally, in his tales’ book Gehazi avoided to blamed his boss - in an unrespectable, terrible behavior to me…”

  “I am really a simple man, maybe an unimportant prophet,” Joseph so defined himself to her, “but I ask you, please reveal to me if my adoration for this Prophet’s of Marvels is justified… Can you describe what had really happened between you and Prophet Elisha?”

  “He married me, so was my initial impression, because at first he was madly in love with…my body,” she only partly praised herself saying that, and therefore seemed truthful, “But then I revealed, that from the first day he had intended to use me!”

  “Use you?”

  “He wanted to live with me like…a prostitutes’ shepherd would treat his sinful women. His rough behavior was not only in private. He had not dragged me into an invisible cevice, or to a cellar or to a side-alley. He wanted to show me to people as a symbol for the sinful nation of Israel! Do you undersatand what I’m telling?”

  “What had he done to you exactly?”

  “Would you believe, that God had sent him to behave like that? To manage my body like the most criminal raper, like a robber of a body and soul?”

  “Had he hidden his violent intentions before you’d married?”

  “Of course. When I had lied with him before our wedding - he was so delicate and good to me. He cajoled me in such a sweet honey tone. His caresses have brought me to feel like melting from bliss and enjoyment. ..”

  “So, what …what had happened to him?” asked astonished Joseph, “that had turned everything upside down? Something had maddened him about you…”

  “He told me, that God revealed to him, that I’d been a whore before. And that was exactly what he had searched for: His ideal was to marry a whore. That was God’s command. He tried to convince me, that I should exhibit for the sake of preaching to people all over Israel. At first I agreed to be shown in a full nakedness. He said: “You stand before the crowd as a whore in her natural size, and be an example - for the behavior of the nation of to God.” He bound me with ropes, in a manner that would expose my bare breasts. He held me by reins tied to my throat, as fearing that I would try to escape, and compare me to an animal... After a week - the line of humiliations became more ugly and torturing. . .The vicious prophet obtained a cage, from one of his followers, who had been lions’ tamer.”

  “And he enclosed you inside, like a beast?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she added, “And to attract the mob to look at that circus, the prophet had covered my crack with a narrow red kerchief. He drew a black arrow on it, and invited men to send their fingers into my ass and so on. Then he permitted three young men to come in and fuck me inside that cage, to the eyes of tens and hundreds. “A vivid show of God’s sinful daughter of Israel,” he was shouting, and calling even stinky and old men to rise over me. Some were just climbing to touch and caress and kiss me, and I had lost my force to resist them…Every week he invented a a new trick to attract the audience: First he showed me nicely dressed - and then was tearing my cloths in public…And one day he was cutting my hairs - curl by curl and let me remain bald like him. As a symbol for the future punishment of the sinful daughter…”

  “Do you still remember his words,” asked Joseph, “while showing all that?”

  “This is the Vision that God had ordered me,” Elisha said, “to show you. sinful people! Pay attention how ugly and rude everyone of you had become to be! You had all contaminated my holy land. Now I will have a son from this whore, who may not be mine. Or a daughter, who would surely follow her mother. Is that what you had prayed for – since God had delivered the holy land to your forefat
hers many years ago? Is that the kind of honesty and respect to each other, that you long for? Tell me, Sons Of Israel…’”

  “Oh, it’s very hard to bear, even only hearing,” said Joseph, “I really pity you, Bat Gad….”

  “The brutal prophet had not achieved his purpose in that show, of course,” she said, “Many from the audience were laughing, sure that all was a funny play. That he was just a vagabond tamer, who now would tame me. Some asked him where were his tiger or lion or bear. They wanted to put there a wild beast, together with me…”

  “And I understand, that you could not run away, dear Bat Gad?”

  “I was jailed, young prophet. The authority and fame of Elisha among the people - had ensured his tyrany on me. Even if I had run out – somebody would have returned me to him.”

  Joseph saw her sincere tears, and became very irritated.

  “I see your situation,” he said, “It’s difficult to imagine.”.

  “His hideous attendant Gehazi, was my guard and inspector. I saw the poor fellow with the rotten hands and fallen down teeth and skin-peeled legs. He was touching me from time to time…Just for his own fun and sickened desire. It was at night, while he permitted me to sleep.”

  “You had become …a beast in a zoo,” he said.

  “In four weeks we had crossed four villages, and at last came from Jezre-el to Samaria. There the crowd was bigger, and I knew that we would stay there more weeks. The prophet rejoiced like mad. He danced before the public, and told that God had ordered him to marry, and show his pofane wife to the mob. He was encircling me in a dance of ecstasy, while a son-of-prophet was playing a flute, and Gahazi co-repetited him by a drum. The prophet became like a wirlpool of spirit, humming melodies with prophecy lyrics, dancing around me with ecstazy. Many gangs from the mob immitated him. They began jolting around and forcing women from the market to undress and join their dances.The audience had increased every day. Curious and joyful eyes of sex hungry males, Israelis and Phistines and Greeks and Tsydons and Moabites- were on him and on me. Then he forced me to have sex in public with him…Unimaginable, shocking scenes. Enough…” She wiped her tears.

  “Really hard to believe,” mumbled Joseph, though he still doubted the truth of some scenes she had described.

  “Then - one day,” she continued, “Elisha punished me by a worse means than before, to attract and incite the mob…”

  She fell to sob again, and he said: “If you feel bad with that - don’t continue your story, please.”

  “Elisha began to whip me by a branch of a terebinth. Or was it of a cedar. It was a very tough and narrow weed,” she continued, “He whipped me all over my naked body. My bruises had recoverd only a week ago. But I have still signs of his beats on my skin. It was a most fearfull show, before all Samarians on the square. I became blood faced…Along a whole week he was bruising and carving my skin…”

  “Oh, it’s really a very bloody story,” Prophet Joseph said. He was feeling her tenderness while she suddenly fell like swooning into his arms.

  “Now you have pity on me,” she murmured, “Now you can find courage inside yourself - to oppose the ideas and activities of the most hallucinatious prophet ever seen!”

  “I think you are right,” said the prophet and became even more merciful. She caressed the curls falling on his forhead and smoothed his beard’s twisting hairs, and was looking very desparate. Both got close to each other and slowly put their hands one into the other’s dress, and cajoled sweet words and were slowly putting their lips on one another and kissing, breathing heavily from a sensational desire . But before enjoying fully each other’s flesh , Joseph asked in a whisper:

  “Are you still marrried to him? I shouldn’t lie with a married woman.”

  “No, I’m not married,” she answered, “in the evening that Elisha quit, he signed a scroll of divorce for me. Gehazi had signed beside that Divorce papyrus’ letter, as a witness…I have it in my hut.”

  Then they were embracing and kissing again while striding like astray about half an hour. She saw that he had led her into his tent. Lying with her on a straw matress, he felt that whatever had her sins been in the past, he should forgive her. So he vowed to her:

  “If God orders me to marry you, and behave like Elisha had - I shall refuse Him. I’ll run out from Him.” He remembered that the Bible was telling about people who tried to argue with God, like Abraham or Moses, and had succeeded…

  After their desire had been satiated, the prophet escorted her back to her hut. Along the way she said that she had been so lonely, and now her feeling got better. Her sister happened to marry the Head of Athaliah’s army. She was a little estranged to her, she said. Like she- Bat Gad, had become to be a refugee, and unimportant.

  “Rachel has her baby now, maybe threfore she is so cold to me,” Bat Gad loudly meditated…

  On his way back to his tent, prophet Joseph thought, that better he would concentrate to taking care of the people in Judea, and not preach so much. Words are fading in the air.

  “Like a mother would try to hush her child’s weep,” he thought eloquently, “so I shall plant a flower of hope in the deserted hearts of the poor people. I heard that Elisha had done like that. In the past I used only to stride around in the markets and townsqaures, and harangue. I thought that the misery and poverty had disappeared in Judea, but that was not the reality… Elisha had disappeared like his master Elijah. Maybe he also walked by foot to the desert of Horeb-Sinai or to the Judean eastern desert before Jericho? I will not walk to search him. It’s a waste of time, that dream that I would learn from him how to buy the hearts of people. God would hide most of the time, that a human being lives. So, you- man, should live as long as you can exist.’

  CHAPTER 19