Judging Noa

by Strutin, Michel;

  When they were done laying a bed of leaves and grasses, the high priestess and priest stepped onto the platform. Two priests removed her robe, and she stood naked before them, below the golden bull-calf. Streaks of blood-brown henna undulated down her arms and legs like waves of life-giving water. Henna circled each breast in concentric rings and arced in bows that pointed toward her vulva, her body mapped for the life force.

  Because the young women saw her from afar, the priestess appeared less than life size.

  “She looks like mother’s Asherah.” Hoglah giggled nervously.

  And she did look like the palm-sized goddess figures that women kept by their hearths. In the dark, Noa and Yoela gripped each other’s hands.

  Then, the drums and rattles were silent and the priestess, throwing back her head and opening wide her arms, chanted:

  “I am Field made by the god. Who will plough and bring forth life?”

  “I am Ewe made by the god. Who will rut and bring forth life?”

  “I am Woman made by the god. Who will enter and bring forth life?”

  The young women could not hear her words, but watched, riveted, as two priests removed the robe of the head priest, his rod of life stiff with anticipation. He approached the priestess. And they began the strange, pulsing jig of life.

  The young women hiding among the rocks had seen goats and sheep mating. They had heard their parents’ low groans. But none had ever seen two people couple. Watching from above, they felt damp and desirous, confused and horrified.

  As the sacred coupling peaked, priests, priestesses, and the ecstatic crowd drummed, shook rattles, and beat timbrels in a wild cacophony of sound broken when the priests’ voices swelled: “Send down life.”

  The people howled to the god whose grace they craved, “Let it be so.”

  “Let life rise.”

  “Let it be so.”

  “In earth.”

  “Let it be so.”

  “In flesh.”

  “Let it be so.”

  “In us.”

  “Ya! El!”

  Sound and penetration climaxed, and the women ululated the triumph of the life force as they lifted their robes and whirled ecstatically. The union was complete.

  Then, people came forward with lambs and birds for sacrificial offerings. The smell of burnt flesh filled the air, rising to please the god of life, the golden bull-calf. The priests ate from the charred meat and handed the rest to the crowd. The smell of the roasted meat meant to please the god, pleased the people. Some were hungry for roasted flesh. Others, spurred by a primal pulse, were hungry for other pleasures of the flesh.

  Drumming and shaking timbrels, the crowd danced and shouted, men and women pulled off what they wore and fell on each other in an orgy of ecstasy. Like eels swarming in the sea, bodies twisted together in fierce, frantic couplings backlit by fire, doing what every animal is designed to do: make more, make more. So urgent was his to connect, one man ploughed himself into the sandy soil, copulating with the earth, plunging needy fingers into the sure breast beneath him, crying as he planted his seed.

  Noa and Yoela loosed their hands, touching tainted by what they saw below. Hoglah turned away, repulsed. Sweat pouring off her, she retched violently as Noa and Malah rushed to their sister, each silently regretting they had brought her.

  In Hoglah’s distress they found their reason to leave. The young women helped each other down the rocky slope, then picked their way across the plain, keeping as far from the bonfires and the writhing people as possible.

  As she tried to swallow the sour taste in her mouth, Hoglah vowed, “Never, even when I marry.”

  The sisters crept into their tents and wrapped themselves tightly in familiar blankets. They never spoke of that night again. Waiting for sleep, Noa tried to suppress images of frantic, crazed couplings warring with the Guardians’ brutal stones and knives, extremes that made her fear entering adulthood and wonder if the seesawing poles of people’s needs ever settled into balance.

  AS THE YOUNG women fled, they had not seen Moses descending the mountain. He looked down and saw wild pricks of light and motion. He carried with him two tablets that would seal the bond between seekers and the Sought, a holiness code for life. When he saw the abomination at the base of the mountain, the tablets of the law fell from his hands and broke. Some say the words themselves fled back to the heavens.

  Moses looked for Aaron, to learn the cause of the cultic atrocity. Aaron, his eyes darting everywhere to avoid his brother’s gaze, mumbled, “They demanded a god. They gave me gold. I hurled it into the fire. And out came a calf.”

  Moses turned from Aaron. He charged the Levites with cutting down the leaders of the idolatrous cult, as one cuts a rotting branch from a healthy tree. Before he returned to the mountain for a second set of tablets, Moses called on Korach to lead the way.

  Korach did not relish his work. It was beneath him.

  “But,” he reasoned, “if this God is now our champion and told Moses to rout out the canker and if I am the router, I will gain merit.”

  So Korach called out the Levites.

  “We will clean up this pack of pigs. For the sake of our souls,” he exhorted, as they ran to round up the idolaters.

  The cult priests shouted curses upon Korach and his men and, when that did not stop the Levites, the priests slashed at them with knives as the cleansers closed in. Howling to strange gods at the center of the carnage, the priestess whirled a rope threaded with metal balls. Korach pointed two of his men toward her. They brought her down and garroted her with her own rope, but not before she shattered the cheekbone of one, bequeathing him a new face. Afterward, the Levites washed themselves, laving away their deeds and the stink of slaughter.

  The idolatrous priests were not dead a day when a plague visited the rest of the participants. Those who consumed on that corrupted night were consumed—with fevers and chills sucking life from them, leaving yellowed skin wrapped around bones. The smell of the dead oozed throughout the camp.

  Hoglah dragged herself through her chores, subdued and depressed.

  “The cure is as awful as the sin,” Noa said.

  “Your father always said that finding the right path is never easy.” Her mother folded her hands in her lap as tidyas her homily.

  Noa did not hear. Thinking of the extremes of orgy and Guardians, she asked, “What does God want of us?”

  “‘HONOR FATHER AND mother.’ And how better to honor our father than to have his name continue on the land he would have inherited—by inheriting for him?” Noa asked.

  Committed to pleading their case for inheritance before the Judges of Tens, she finished her practice session with a flourish. Her audience, Hoglah, sat on her heels in front of the sheepfold and clapped in appreciation, creating a slight flurry among the sheep.

  “You are convinced?” Noa asked.

  “Who can reason like you,” Hoglah enthused, then remembered her role as a critic. “But maybe say father’s name with more force, so the judges will be reminded that we have an important name.”

  “Yes, excellent hole-poking, Hoglah. But I think our argument alone will win it. I will simply step in front of the judges and modestly present our plea. Who could deny justice?”

  Noa pulled Hoglah up and they walked toward their tent, their arms around each other’s waists, their feet kicking up dust.

  “Will Malah really marry Boaz?”

  “Yes,” Noa answered, “but I worry. She does not see the troubles she will have with Seglit. Boaz says she will have her own tent, but . . .”

  “You think Boaz does not mean what he says?”

  “I think he means it, but look where we are.” Noa’s free hand swept toward the vast wilderness. “And this is not our destination. We will be picking up, leaving at a moment’s notice again.”

  Hoglah was quiet for a few steps, carefully composing her next question.

  “Do you think there will be another marriage soon?”


  Noa’s laugh was layered with resignation. “You mean Hur?”

  “I WOULD CHOOSE no one else,” Malah said.

  “But I am too old to be a good husband. You deserve better, younger,” insisted Boaz, hoping she would refute him.

  “No,” she assured. “You are he.”

  They perambulated slowly around the perimeter of tents: tall Boaz, with his loping gait, and Malah, an erect, determined young woman, the top of her head reaching only to his shoulder. By now, most had guessed there was more to their evening walks than talk of sheep breeding.

  Boaz, realizing his position of authority, did not want to be accused of taking advantage, so tried to keep a semblance of propriety. But tonight, his restraint broke.

  He twined his fingers with hers and said, “Beholding your eyes is like . . . drinking from a well of sweet water.”

  Although he was secretly pleased with his expression, Boaz dipped his head in apology. “Poetry does not come to my tongue.”

  They laughed, to dissipate their desire.

  “Malah, you make me feel like a young man,” he exulted. “A man who would do anything to make you happy forever.”

  “So, when?” she demanded.

  Days before, Boaz had stolen a look at himself in Seglit’s copper mirror and saw a blurred image of the man Malah saw, with a solid jaw, but graying hair. He surreptitiously mixed charcoal and fat in a small bowl and rubbed it into his hair and beard to blunt the specter of age. Seglit saw and said nothing. She knew she would soon have a rival wife.

  CHAPTER 6

  BETROTHAL

  THE FORMAL BETROTHAL took place a week before their marriage. Boaz displayed the bride-price items he had pledged to his sister-in-law. Although his gifts officially went to Malah’s mother, Ada would dispense most of them to Malah as marital insurance. Ada sat on Zelophechad’s side of the tent, surrounded by a semicircle of her daughters, who she vowed to marry off quickly before Zelophechad’s tribal stature faded and she became a pitiable widow-woman.

  She was determined to secure Hur, the son of Gaddi, for Noa and she had pressed Boaz to proceed with negotiations for Noa’s hand.

  “The match will be a triumph,” she told Noa, earlier that day. “And by agreeing to speak at your sister’s wedding, Gaddi has practically told us he agrees to the match.”

  Noa said nothing, but her mother was too busy to notice, fingering the linen cloth that Boaz handed over for her inspection. Linen was rare and precious now that they were far from fields where flax grew. As she ran her hand over the smooth cloth, her face clouded. She knew she could stay with Malah and Boaz if she could not carry on by herself. But she knew of one widow who became a bondswoman when her daughter died in childbirth and the husband married a heartless new wife.

  Noa, seeing her mother’s thoughts had wandered, lifted the linen from her and put it aside as Boaz offered tanned leather, the color of toasted grain, soft and pliable, not the coarse hides that most used. Next, a small copper mirror, its round edges etched with a repeating flower pattern. Earrings and bracelets of gold, a silver toe ring. A silver headband to hold the veil that Malah would wear during the week between betrothal and marriage. A pure white ass tethered to a stake at the door.

  Tirzah flung herself upon it, crying, “Oh, my beautiful white one. I want you.”

  Boaz promised Malah she would receive her final gift not long after their seven days in the marriage booth.

  “Your own tent. A home shared only by you and me.”

  Her sisters had worked to finish their daily chores early so they could complete Malah’s bridal robe and prepare food for the wedding feast. They trimmed wool cloth with bands of red and yellow, dyed and designed by Milcah. Noa had used some of their cloth to purchase small gold earrings for Malah, the sisters’ present to her. Shaped like pomegranates, the earrings promised as many children as the seeds of the fruit.

  “One more thing,” said Noa. “A reminder. Have Boaz secure a hearing before the best Judges of Tens—the first step on our journey of inheritance.”

  “This wedding is about me, not some legal problem.”

  “Malah . . .” Noa warned.

  “Yes. All right.”

  In the evening, after Boaz had presented his gifts, Tirzah snatched Malah’s veil, filmy as a cloud. She flung it over her head and twirled, the long cloth hanging nearly to her knees.

  “I am a bride, a beautiful, beautiful bride,” Tirzah sang in a fruity falsetto as she spun. Blinded by the veil and her own careening speed, she stepped on a corner of the veil, tripped, and fell in a laughing heap onto a floor mat, with her sisters yelling and scolding.

  Malah retrieved her veil and her mother groaned. “Tirzah, Tirzah . . .” She turned back to Malah and said, “Now, here is a most important gift.”

  Ada handed a small clay idol to Malah—Asherah, the goddess of life, with tumid breasts and belly.

  “Keep Her near at night to bring down the Goddess’s grace and give you children.”

  ALL EYES WERE on the wedding canopy, its poles twined with vines. With guests waiting, the sisters and their mother gathered around Malah to escort the veiled bride to the happy canopy with song and timbrel. Tribesmen formed a processional around Boaz as they set forward with shouts of “Behold!”

  Near the canopy, in the lee of Boaz’s tent, stood a small, temporary bridal booth. Thatched with palm fronds and walled with a weave of limber branches, the structure would allow breezes and light to caress the couple within. Family and friends would bring meals and the couple would know each other as much as they wished for the next seven days.

  As Malah and Boaz stood together under the canopy, the men cheered and the women ululated until Gaddi ben Susi held up his hand for silence. He spoke words of celebration, of a glorious future made possible by wise leadership in the tribe of Manasseh. After Gaddi’s speech, part marriage blessings and part political advertisement, others added their blessings, and poets sang songs. Children raced around the poles of the canopy, while women bustled out food, setting down platters at either end, one for men and one for women: barley cakes, flatbread seasoned with oil and herbs, onions stewed with lentils, chickpeas flavored with cumin, dates stuffed with pistachios, and, as it was a wedding, succulent chunks of roast lamb.

  Weddings were among the rare days that no one’s stomach growled with hunger. Killing a lamb was a sacrifice to families whose wealth was counted in livestock, so weddings, with their guarantee of a meat dish, were doubly joyous.

  Noa had feared Seglit’s presence would add a sour note to the day, but at the last moment Seglit remembered a reason to return to her clan’s compound. Humiliation was not a dish she savored.

  When the time came, the women shooed the couple into the marriage booth. Once inside, Boaz loosened the pin that held open the cloth door. The covering fell into place. They heard the world outside celebrating their marriage and saw splashes of sunlight and blue sky through the open-weave structure. Near the bottom of the booth three sets of small eyes stared in at them.

  “Out, out, out! Or I will take a broom to your bottoms,” a woman with a deep voice shouted as three little boys darted off.

  Malah laughed, tightly, at the boys, but more at what would happen next. Boaz carefully lifted her veil, folded it back, then pushed it so that it dropped to the mat. After waiting for weeks with this in mind, he sank his hands into her hair as they pressed together.

  “What must we do now?” she whispered, knowing.

  “Whatever we want.”

  They stood, arms around each other, until Malah reached up to touch his cheek and the bangles he had given her slid down her arm. One looked like a twin to a band Seglit wore.

  “You,” she said, carefully, “have had two other such weeks.”

  Caught off guard, Boaz stumbled, “Yes, but . . .”

  “What should I know?”

  Racing to recover, he said, “The first time I was too young to know. The second I was taken in by . . . by beauty.�
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  Malah stepped back, her arms crossed, glaring at him. Boaz realized he had just compounded his mistake. Suddenly the marriage booth felt tight and airless.

  “Beauty only for the eyes, not for the soul. What I mean . . . before, I was blinded. You, you have both. Had I known, I would have waited for you.”

  “I was right there, under your nose, the whole time,” Malah returned, anger heating her face in hot waves. She turned from him, hoping he would appease her.

  He saw that she required entreaty and immediately knew his role. He bent to the bowl of fruit the women had left and chose a ripe pomegranate. He ripped open the leathery red skin. Clusters of ruby-fleshed seeds arched up, bursting from their seedbed.

  He offered her a section of fruit and said, “Let’s not argue. I love you. It is the only reason I am here.” He pressed the fruit into her hand. “You must be hungry. Here, a rare treat, even if I am not.”

  She allowed herself to be coaxed and bit into the fruit. Juice trickled down her fingers and spilled onto her wedding robe, staining it with drops of red. They each thought of the night ahead. Malah blushed. Boaz took her free hand.

  “Come. Sit. We have time for everything.”

  They ate and talked, carefully avoiding the subject of former wives. With darkness, they lay down, exhausted. He held her, and they fell asleep to the sounds of men telling stories into the night. In the middle of the night, Boaz awoke and could wait no longer. Relaxed by sleep, she was open to him. He entered, and she became a woman. They slept again.

  Sometime later, Malah awoke, sore and startled by the vestigial throb of her torn hymen. She rolled over and there, her swollen clay breasts and belly lit by the moon, Asherah stared at her with unblinking eyes.

  THE NEXT DAY, the cloth was taken up and examined. The bride had been a virgin and the marriage had been consummated. All was as it should be. Malah’s mother examined the pattern of bloodstains, looking for signs and portents.