Source

by James A. Michener

  “He is in the whimper of the lamb I seek at night,

  Lo, he is in the stamping of the wild bull.”

  And after Gershom had sung for some weeks, while the tunnel was being finished, all in the house of Hoopoe were willing to accept him for what he had offered himself to be: a man who had run away from everything but the pursuing power of Yahweh.

  At Hoopoe’s his listeners heard the songs from three different levels of comprehension. The Moabite listened to statements about Yahweh as he would have listened to a Philistine chanting about Dagon or a Babylonian singing of Tammuz. Since Baal was not involved, he was not involved; he respected Yahweh as the Hebrew god—no better, no worse than the others—and that was all. Hoopoe, on the other hand, was confused. Even his name Jabaal bore testimony to the fact that Yahweh took precedence over Baal, and Hoopoe was therefore inclined to accept the message of Gershom’s songs. But he also knew, as a practical engineer, that Baal continued to be far more real than this stranger cared to admit. “Let him dig a tunnel through rock,” Hoopoe whispered to Meshab, “and he won’t dismiss Baal so easily.”

  Kerith exhibited a more complex reaction, evoked partly by the songs themselves but mostly by her maturing personal experiences. As for the songs, she was still gratified to hear in them a definition of Yahweh that included both austerity and lyric joy. As for herself, even before Gershom’s arrival she had been groping toward a more purified spiritual experience, as many in Israel would do in the centuries ahead, for the disappointments and contradictions of her life had proved that men and women required some central force to cling to. She had almost decided that for no man could this force operate effectively if it were shared between two different kinds of god: there could not be Yahweh and Baal. Reason told her that the time had come to accept one unifying entity who would absorb all lesser deities and she longed for identification with that all-embracing god. Personally she had long since abandoned Baal, but she was now prepared to condemn those who refused to do likewise, and these ideas she had nurtured by herself. To a minor degree they were an outgrowth of her longing for Jerusalem, but to a major degree they had generated that longing. She saw that Makor was merely a frontier settlement concerned with things that could be felt and touched, such as walls, olive presses and dye vats, and it was only logical that the town should insist upon holding on to its practical gods like Baal; but she had faith that in Jerusalem ideas were more important than things—the relationship of god to man, justice, the nature of worship—and she was convinced that in Jerusalem there must be many who thought as she did.

  Then Gershom had arrived, empty-handed and without a history except for the charge of murder, and in simple words that soared through the dimly lit white-walled rooms and through the narrow alleys of the town itself he had stated that all she had been dreaming of was true. There was one god of unlimited power who could evoke joy in the human heart and security among nations. She had spent more than six years preparing herself for the seven strings of this chance lyre, and its music reverberated in her heart as if she were an echoing cave constructed for just such melodies. In the long days that she talked with the outcast she never allowed him to touch her, nor when he was gone did she wish he had done so. He had brought her a message from the mountains, and one does not embrace messengers; one listens to them. For his part, he had understood Kerith in those first few moments when she had brought him the food in the temple: she was a woman hungry for the higher world, for the more complete song, and in Makor she was miserable, tied down to its uninspiring syncretism of ritual for Yahweh and worship of Baal. He respected her and found joy in singing for her, since she grasped what he was saying.

  As for his personal life, he kept one small, dirty room at the rear of the wool merchant’s. He worked as little as he could and still earn his pay. He ate wherever there was free food and drank what he could beg or steal in the wine shop. Among the slave girls of the town there were several who were pleased to entertain him, and he became expert in climbing walls. Whenever possible he picked up bits of silver which he passed along to the guards at the gate, so that they might warn him if the brothers of the dead man tried to creep back unexpectedly and murder him before he could reach the horns of the altar; in fact, wherever he was in Makor he marked the shortest way back to the temple, against that day when he might have to flee once more to its sanctuary.

  In the month of Ziv in the fourth year of the digging—when thistles bloomed in the valleys and yellow tulips along the edges of the marsh, when storks had flown to the north and bee eaters were seen darting above red poppies—Hoopoe and Meshab went to the quarry on the other side of the mountain and selected six great lengths of stone, cut in eighteen-foot sections and squared on the ends like timbers for use in building some gigantic temple. They sent slaves in great numbers to drag these six huge monoliths to the well, and during the days when the stones were being transported they directed other slaves to clean out all rubbish from the tunnel and haul it for the last time up through the opening at the well. The water system was now complete except for the final precaution which Hoopoe was about to take, the hiding of the well itself under such depth of rock that no invader could find it or uncover it if he did.

  When the rocks reached the well on sledges that ran on saplings thrown under the wooden runners, Hoopoe directed his slaves to dig three pairs of slots running north and south above the well, and when these cuts were straight and deep, three of the large stones were lowered into position, forming a grid over the well. When this was completed, big rocks from the waterwall were thrown in, followed by smaller stones, pebbles and earth, until all was covered. Then three more cuts were made running from east to west, and when these were dug the remaining three long stones were dropped into position, forming a second grid running crisscross to the first, and this too was covered until the surface of the earth was reached.

  “Now tear down the old waterwall,” Hoopoe commanded, and the slaves attacked the Canaanite wall with pleasure, knocking it to pieces. The stones were taken inside the town for the building of new houses, and on a bright day when daisies covered the hills back of town, Hoopoe and Meshab climbed to their observation point to see if anything remained that might betray the existence of the well to a besieging army.

  “The lines of the old waterwall stand out too clearly,” Hoopoe said apprehensively.

  “Grass and weeds will take care of that,” Meshab said, “but there’s something else that would tell me the secret. Do you see it?”

  Hoopoe studied the town and saw the flags. “We’ll take them down tonight.”

  “I don’t mean the flags. I mean that line of mortar along the wall. It says in a clear voice that some construction used to be attached there.”

  “Of course!” Hoopoe agreed. It stood out like a signal, darker rocks that had been protected from sunlight by the waterwall, standing beside lighter ones that had weathered in the sun. The men considered what might be done to obliterate this telltale line and it was the Moabite who found the solution.

  “We could build a small tower. As if it were protecting the postern gate.”

  “That would do it,” Hoopoe agreed and he asked Meshab to remain the short time required for such a task.

  “No, I must go home,” the former slave replied.

  But when Kerith heard that Meshab was determined to leave she wept and kissed him as Gershom watched. “Stay with us a little longer,” she pleaded, and to Hoopoe and Gershom she said, “In a dark period of my life this man was greater than a brother.” So against his better judgment Meshab consented to build the tower at the postern gate.

  One morning as work progressed Hoopoe came from the governor’s quarters with the news that his wife had been anticipating for three years: King David was at last coming north from Shunem to inspect the water system and to dedicate it as the David Tunnel. When Kerith heard the report she retired to her room and prayed, “Yahweh, you alone brought him to these walls. You alone shall take us to yo
ur city Jerusalem.”

  At the end of the month of Ziv squadrons of riders appeared at the gate to inform the governor that King David was approaching along the Damascus road, and trumpets were blown, while priests in the temple blew rams’ horns in flurries of provocative sound. All the citizens of Makor lined the walls or stood upon housetops looking eastward, as they did when siege was threatened, and after some time they saw men on donkeys and then a few on horses and finally a palanquin carried by slaves, and this was treated with such deference that all knew the king must be therein.

  The procession came to the great gate, where the men on donkeys sounded their trumpets, which were answered from the wall, and the king’s palanquin was borne inside and set carefully before the governor’s house where all the trumpets sounded many times, after which the curtains parted, showing not King David, but one of the most beautiful young women in Israel. “It’s Abishag,” the women of Makor whispered, and all watched in wonder as she stepped forth to greet the governor.

  She was the marvel of these last years of King David’s reign, a peasant girl found in the remote village of Shunem after a nation-wide search for some gentle child to live with the old king in his declining years, “a girl to sleep with him on cold nights,” the counselors had explained when they were searching for her, and unlikely as it had seemed at the time, they had found the perfect maiden for the task, an almost flawless girl who served the king with compassion and made his terminal years endurable. A brief time from now, when David was dead, his sons would quarrel more over this radiant concubine than they would over his kingdom, and Adonijah, fleeing the rage of his half-brother Solomon, would be slain because of her, the most desirable woman in Israel.

  Now she reached into the palanquin and gave her hand to a frail old man nearing seventy, with white beard and half-trembling hands, and when she brought him before his subjects as if he were a child, Kerith whispered, “Can that be David?” But then the old man heard the adoring cry of the multitude, “David! David!” and he seemed to straighten; sunlight fell across his beard, showing a few strands which still retained the red coloring of his youth. He put Abishag aside and slowly turned his head, nodding his acceptance of the people’s homage, and there could be no question as to who in that assembly was king. His luminous eyes, set deep in their sockets, gleamed as the cheers continued, and his shoulders threw off their weight of age. His body moved with regal grace, and when twoscore trumpets sounded and drums rolled, he became once more the great king, the slayer of Goliath, the extender of boundaries, the builder of empire, the sweet singer of Israel, the sage, the judge, the generous, David of the Hebrews, in all the world the king nonpareil.

  Kerith, staring at him as if he were more than king, saw that his beard was trimmed and his garments carefully arranged, for he was vain of his appearance. He wore heavy sandals with golden thongs clasping his ankles, a garment shot through with gold and emerald, and a brocaded cap protecting his white hair. He walked through the crowd with such noble grace that none could have envisaged the emotional wars he had known with Michal, daughter of Saul, and Bathsheba, wife of Uriah. His passionate friendship for Jonathan, son of Saul, was now only an aching memory, and he gave the impression of a man who had finally subdued the violent impulses of his young manhood.

  Then suddenly the posture ended, and he replaced his hand in Abishag’s. The last trumpet echoed on the wall. The drums beat no more. And he allowed her to lead him quietly on, hearing nothing, seeing nothing, a man aloof from the world he had created. “He’s turning the kingdom over to Solomon,” a Phoenician whispered. “He no longer cares about the principalities of this world.” For Kerith it was a moment of exquisite pain, seeing the old king thus, and she knelt in the path that he must cross and grasped his hand and cried, “In Jerusalem you danced in the streets for us when you rescued the ark.” He looked at her and for a moment the fires returned to his eyes; then he smiled and said, “That was a long time ago.”

  Kerith, looking up at the tired, white face as it passed on, was tempted to think that the great man’s vitality had fled, but later in the governor’s quarters she realized her error when he divested himself of his outer robes and sat at ease in a large chair, holding Abishag by his side. Then Kerith saw that his body was still strong and free of lazy fat and she heard him utter words that made her heart leap: “The walls of the city are excellent. Fetch me the builder.”

  “Here is the man,” the governor volunteered, and he pushed Hoopoe forward. But the little engineer stopped to reach for Kerith and together they bowed before the king.

  “Are you also the builder of the water tunnel?” David asked.

  “I am he,” Hoopoe said with another bow.

  “I should like to see it,” the king announced.

  “When you are rested,” the governor suggested, but the king said that he would go now to the tunnel, and with hammering excitement Kerith joined the procession to the shaft, where the governor surprised everyone by making a secretly rehearsed speech which ended flamboyantly: “And we of Makor, who have worked so hard to dig this tunnel, hereby dedicate it to be the David Tunnel.” The crowd cheered, but Kerith noticed that the king paid no attention, while Hoopoe saw that the one man who should have shared in the celebration was not there: Meshab had no intention of paying homage to King David.

  A cordon of special ropes, festooned with flowers, had been strung down the stairs; but when David reached the opening he refused to descend and merely looked down into the gaping hole.

  “And where does the tunnel run?” he asked.

  “You’ll see when you reach the bottom,” Hoopoe explained, but the king said that he did not wish to see the bottom.

  “Which direction?” he asked impatiently.

  Hoopoe was too stunned to respond. It was inconceivable that a king would come so far to see a tunnel and then not explore it. The governor nudged Hoopoe, who still could not reply, so the governor said, “It runs over there, Your Majesty,” and he led David to the top of the northern wall to show him where the well lay; but with the removal of the water-wall and the clever masking of the former lines, the fumbling governor could not discern where the well lay hidden, and there was a moment of embarrassment, after which he called for Meshab, but the big Moabite had hidden himself and was not available.

  “Where’s the well?” the governor snapped at Hoopoe.

  Kerith nudged her husband and finally he came to the wall, pointing in a confused manner toward a slope which looked like any other. He might have said, “Your Majesty, we have hidden the well so cleverly that not even the townspeople remember where it is. How could an enemy find it?” Instead he mumbled, “It’s down there.”

  “I see,” said David, seeing nothing. In some irritation he left the wall and asked, “The slaves? What will they be doing now?”

  The governor looked at Hoopoe, who had nothing to say, so Kerith volunteered, “They can be sent to Jerusalem.”

  “We need them there,” the king grunted. At this point Abishag indicated that David must return for his rest, but he was in a difficult mood and refused to comply. “I have been told that you have in Makor a singer who plays on the lyre.”

  The governor looked about to see who this might be, and Kerith said to the king, “There is a fine singer. Shall I fetch him to my house?”

  “I’ll go to his,” David said, and not one of the officials knew where Gershom lived, but Kerith did, and she led the king to the temple, then to the wine shop, then to the wool merchant’s, and finally to the small room in back where Gershom lay sleeping beside a jug of wine. The place was dark and smelled of rancid sheepskins, and the governor started to drag the king away, but David insisted upon entering the room, where he stood with Abishag on one side and Kerith on the other, looking down at the sleeping man.

  “It’s the king,” Kerith whispered, shaking him.

  Gershom looked up, thinking that children had come upon him as they often did, and he saw that the king had lifte
d his lyre and was trying the seven strings, which were slack upon the pegs. Gershom brushed his hair back, adjusted his dirty garment and pulled himself to his feet. “It’s a good lyre,” the young man said.

  “And I’ve been told that you’re a good singer,” the king replied. He handed the young man the instrument and waited. Gershom reached down, took a swig of wine, washed it about his mouth and spat it into the street. He indicated a broken chair, which Abishag brought for the king, but he paid no attention to Kerith or the king’s beautiful attendant. He sat on a pile of wool which had not yet been combed and spent some time adjusting himself and tuning the strings. It was a quiet moment, with men in the alleyway pressing against the door as the governor warned them to be silent. It was an apprehensive moment when no one should speak, but Kerith said quietly, “Sing of the lamb and the bull.”

  Gershom looked at her in surprise, as if she were an intruder, but the king asked, “Is that a fine song?”

  “It is one you would like,” Kerith said, and the king nodded.

  Gershom was now finished with tuning his lyre, and he played random music until, unexpectedly, he struck a series of harsh, commanding chords which seemed to please the king. Then, in a powerful cry, he called:

  “Oh, who among us can speak of Yahweh?

  Who knows his mysterious ways?

  He is in the whimper of the lamb I seek at night,

  Lo, he is in the stamping of the wild bull.”