A chunk of meat popped out of Laban’s mouth and flew into the bowl that Zilpah was holding.
Jacob looked at her and winked.
Somehow she understood immediately what his wink was meant to convey. Holding the bowl against her chest with one arm, she quickly moved the fruits around so that the chunk of meat could drop down out of sight deep in the bowl.
Meanwhile, as Reuel started slapping Laban on the back, Jacob sat back down on his rugs as calmly as if he had never moved. Laban looked up at the steward and irritably said, “What are you doing, you madman? My brother already saved my life, and now you seem to be trying to undo his work by killing me!”
“But I did nothing,” said Jacob. “I was only reaching out to ask if I could help you when your steward arrived. I believe he was the one who dislodged whatever was in your throat.”
“I could breathe clearly again before he ever started beating me,” said Laban, puzzled. “And didn’t I feel you … or somebody, anyway … didn’t I—”
“Look,” said Jacob, “this pretty girl has brought us dates, for digestion.”
Zilpah dutifully offered the bowl to Laban, who took one. Then he remembered his manners and almost put it back, before saying, “Look how distracted I am, I took a date myself before offering any to my guest.”
“You already offered me dates before you had that moment of choking, Brother Laban, and I took one. But now that you offer it again, how can I refuse? And from such lovely hands. I thought earlier today that it was astonishing that you would send your prettiest girl to wash my feet, instead of your most miserable wench; and now I see that you have a damsel even more beautiful to serve at dinner.”
Laban obviously had no idea that the girl who washed Jacob’s feet earlier had been the very one now kneeling before them with a bowl. “Oh, well, there are many pretty girls in our household. But none so beautiful as my … as my daughters.”
Zilpah rose smoothly to her feet and as she carried the bowl of dates out of the tent, she heard Jacob telling him that he had been blessed by God with the chance to behold his younger daughter at the well, and had to agree that she was lovelier than the moon in its fullness and other such nonsense.
“Quick,” Zilpah said to the cook. “What’s the next platter? They’re finally talking about our master’s daughters.”
“But that was the last,” said the cook. “Don’t you know anything? The digestives come last. Now it’s only wine.”
“Well, that’s just silly,” said Zilpah, exasperated. “Then they’ll get drunk. And we won’t hear anything.” She saw a basket of bread sitting near the door. Quickly she took out a couple of broken buns and rearranged the others into a nice mound so it didn’t look like leftovers.
“What do you think you’re doing?” demanded Reuel in a whisper.
“I’m going to kneel just to the side and have the bread ready in case they want it.”
“You’re going to eavesdrop,” said Reuel.
“I’m going to tell you everything I hear,” said Zilpah.
He let her pass.
But once she had knelt, bowing her head so as not to see Laban’s questioning glance, there was little left to the conversation. Apparently Laban had promised that sometime over the next few weeks, he hoped to be able to present his daughters to Jacob so he could tell Rebekah that his daughters were almost as beautiful as she had been in her youth, and Jacob had sworn that already the beauty of his daughters was legendary even as far away as Beersheba.
So much insincerity and formality was enough to wear out anyone, and if Jacob and therefore Laban had not been so sparing of the wine, they wouldn’t have got even that far. But the time had come, and so Jacob turned away for a moment to conceal a yawn, which was Laban’s cue to apologize for keeping a weary traveler up so late, while Jacob insisted that he longed to stay up all night in conversation with his new-met brother, and on and on, but not too long before they both arose and, quite steady on their feet, despite the wine and the long sitting, they made their way out of the tent.
But as he passed her, Jacob bent down and took a small loaf from her basket. “For the morning?” said Jacob. “I’ve rarely had loaves as sweet as these.” And for a moment, Zilpah wondered if he was making an oblique reference to … but no, Jacob probably did not even notice the neckline on this gown any more than he had noticed earlier in the day.
Or maybe he noticed her perfectly well both times, but was merely too polite and disciplined to let it show.
Once the host and the honored guest were out of the dining tent, with torchbearers lighting their way to their sleeping tents, Reuel rushed in and helped her to her feet. “What did they say?”
“He’s staying a month at least,” said Zilpah. “And there’s a promise to introduce him to Leah and Rachel. Also, he intends to help with the herds. I think the master intends him only to observe, but I think the honored guest intends to work with the animals and truly serve, with honest hard labor.”
“He never said that, did he?” said the cook doubtfully—for she was in the dining tent now, looking across the sleeping villagers and sons.
“Not in those words. But what he says, he means, I think,” said Zilpah.
“And no invitation to you?” asked Reuel.
“He had no invitation from me, sir,” said Zilpah coldly.
The steward was nonplussed for a moment. But Zilpah did not leave him speechless for long—after all, he had let her have this place of honor, and she owed him a respite from the embarrassment she was so deft at causing.
“I think he truly is weary. And I also think he’s not a man to please himself so casually. He might even be as chaste as our master.”
They questioned her a little longer, but there was still much work to do, and soon they set about doing it.
As for Zilpah, she assumed that the gown would be taken back from her tonight, but apparently not. Derkah had gone to bed, and the woman who had done Zilpah’s hair was not happy to be wakened. “Sleep in it, for all I care,” she said, and went back inside the tent.
But of course she didn’t mean that, and would deny having said it if Zilpah was so daft as to follow her suggestion. Instead Zilpah took it off inside the darkness of her mother’s tent and laid it gently on the carpet beside where she would sleep, then snuggled down naked inside her light summer blankets.
“How did it go, you pushy girl?” asked her mother with sleepy affection.
“I didn’t spill anything,” said Zilpah. “Did you see me in the dress?”
“Oh, I know that dress well,” said Mother. “The last person to wear it was the mistress.”
“Laban’s wife wore it?”
“It didn’t look the same on her.”
“But … to have me wear his wife’s dress before him …”
“He knew it was the best dress in the camp, and since he couldn’t very well have his daughters appear in it without looking like he was holding an auction …”
“But his wife wore it?”
“As I said, it didn’t look the same on her. It … contained her much more completely.”
“So you saw me.”
“You were as beautiful as I ever saw my daughter in my happiest dreams,” said Mother. “But in the morning, you’ll still be Zilpah, and the dream will be over. So you need your sleep, my little hoopoe bird.”
“You were proud of me?” asked Zilpah.
Her mother took her hand and kissed it in the darkness. Soon she was asleep.
But not Zilpah. She lay awake thinking back over the night’s events. How Laban had been choking, and Jacob acting quick as a snake to punch the food right out of his throat. But then he denied having saved him, and gave the credit to the steward, and Laban, in his confusion, might well have believed him. Why was that? Why deny what he had done? It would have put Laban in his debt.
Here he was at dinner with a potential benefactor—for it was plain that Jacob really did have nothing in the world except his bundle, w
hich apparently contained nothing but books, and he would need help from Laban to reestablish himself in the world. While Laban’s sons were sleeping off their wine, Laban’s life is saved by Jacob—it’s the sort of thing that could make a man’s fortune. And yet Jacob turned down the opportunity, denied that it had happened, used the moment to enhance the steward in his master’s eyes.
Why? Didn’t he want to rise out of his poverty and restore himself to a princely state? If he had acted wisely, he might even have taken the place of Nahor and Terah, getting himself adopted as Laban’s heir. It was so obvious how unworthy Laban’s sons were, compared to Jacob.
Then it dawned on her. If he behaved that way, he would have to spend his life in fear of Nahor’s and Terah’s revenge. Eventually, he would either have to kill them or leave. And he had already proven himself to be the kind of man who would rather leave than join into a struggle over inheritance.
Did that mean he wouldn’t fight for anything? Was he, after all, weak?
Or did he want his possessions to be his by undisputed right? No rivals, no one who could say that they had made him rich. No adoption by Laban as his heir—he already had the birthright of princes. Yes, that’s what he is, a man of such honor that a fatherless girl like me can’t even conceive of the loftiness of his thoughts.
And I will have him. Not for myself alone, but I will have him, and my sons will be his sons. Because I’m not as lofty as he is. I can scheme. One way or another, I’ll find a way into his bed, and my sons will be recognized as his. I will be the mother of princes.
He definitely noticed me. He even joked with me about being prettier than the girl who washed his feet. And when he said that about never having had such sweet loaves—no matter what he meant, it was from my basket he took the bread. He saw me. And having seen, I’ll make sure he doesn’t forget.
PART IV
TENDER
EYES
CHAPTER 7
Leah didn’t like change. Didn’t like the way all the patterns of life were subtly altered by the presence in this camp of a poverty-stricken prince who was also a cousin and also unmarried and also the kind of man that everyone wanted to please.
She knew that part of her irritation was at the way attention was drawn away from her. Until now she had not realized how spoiled she had been, how much her father had shaped the routines of the camp to minimize her inconvenience and embarrassment from being so limited in her vision. If she had thought about it, she would have realized that it took conscious effort on everyone’s part to make sure things were left always in the same place, so she could always find them, and the smoothness of her paths was not an accident. Now that the people assigned to sweep the grounds were sometimes away on other work, she realized that in the normal order of things, stones, sticks, brush, animal droppings—many things found their way into the path and therefore onto her feet. Other people could see these objects and avoid them. Leah could not.
But she did not complain to anyone, not even to Bilhah. Leah was ashamed to think how much work others had always gone to to shelter her from the normal accidents of life. She was even more ashamed to know that her disability, far from being “unnoticeable,” as her father had always insisted, was instead like a great lion constantly prowling the camp. Everyone had to be aware of it at every moment, yet no one had the power to do anything about it. So far it had not consumed anyone, but it required relentless vigilance.
Perhaps none of them actually hates me, thought Leah, but they have to resent me—a privileged child who, born with less good fortune in her parentage, might have become a beggar, or simply died young from the kind of accident that, with a camp full of protectors, had never been a possibility for Leah, daughter of Laban.
If Jacob had not come, I would not have known this—about myself, about the care the whole camp has taken for me, about my father. So it’s a good thing; simply by being here, he has been my teacher.
Yet even with this thought, she could not change the fact that her gratitude was fleeting, while her annoyance at the changes kept being revived with each thing she stepped on, each stumble, each item out of place, and each fresh remembering that she really was good for little in this world, that the tasks she was able to perform were generally those that little children were given. She could not sew—her stitches would all have to be taken out again. She could not even spin, for even though you did not have to stare at the yarn you still had to be aware of it, and aware of how much fleece remained. And you had to know whether the spindle was still spinning from the distaff. All impossible for her. So even the most continuous occupation of women was barred to her.
She could weed, once a garden was well started—once the plants were big enough that she could tell a bean or radish or squash from the weeds that sprang up. She could carry water—if someone kept the path clear—which probably took more time than if they simply carried the water themselves. Was it even possible that her voice did not please Father, that he only said it did because singing was one of the few things she could actually do without the work having to be redone by others?
There is no more useless person on earth than I am, thought Leah. She did not say this to anyone because, first, they would certainly agree with her, and she could not bear the slight hesitation before they reassured her that it wasn’t so. Second, she recognized that there was something very selfish and wicked about spending time moping about because of how limited she was, when instead she ought to be grateful every moment that she was so blessed by having a father who bent his whole household to taking care of her. And third, why should she complain to any living person when it was God who made her half-blind like this and therefore her tender eyes must somehow fulfil a purpose he had in mind for her?
Wouldn’t it be nice, though, if God would send her a dream to explain everything—like those dreams he kept sending to Rachel, who had perfectly good eyes. Wasn’t that just like God, to send the girl with good eyes the visions that assured her that God had a great purpose for her, while to Leah, who could not see with her natural eyes, he sent only spiritual blindness as well?
Maybe that was why God had brought Jacob to their camp. Rachel got dreams, but perhaps Leah had been sent a prophet. An angel, even—to hear everyone speak of him, he was almost divine in all his attributes, as an angel would appear to be, among ordinary mortals. He had the holy books, didn’t he? He had the words of God in a bundle he carried with him on the road, and he had the power to open them and wake up the sleeping words and speak them aloud. Could he not tell her what God meant her to make of her life?
That was why, along with her annoyance at the changes in the camp and her annoyance at herself for being annoyed, she also was filled with hope. For of course, when God wished to change your life, the change might not be comfortable in every way.
But what good did it do for God to send her an angel, or at least a cousin with God’s word in a sack, if she never had a chance to speak to him? He had been here more than a week and she had not been in his presence. He was everywhere—the gossip of the camp was about nothing but him, how he had gone here, done that, said this, smiled at someone, laughed at someone’s jest, noticed a problem with one of the animals, taught the cook how to make lamb taste like venison, and on and on. Everyone, it seemed, had had some encounter with him … except her.
Well, of course not Leah! Besides the natural modesty of women, which would keep her from meeting him casually in the camp, she was kept out of the way of the real work of the camp. And since he was endlessly working, and she was endlessly kept from the work, how would they meet?
She mentioned this once to Rachel, who said, “I know, they don’t let me see him either, except when I’m caring for the lambs and he comes to see the animals.” Naturally, Rachel did not realize that she was, in effect, saying, You’re right, Leah, everyone, including me, gets to spend time with him. Only you are excluded.” No, Rachel actually thought that their situations were somehow alike!
Then on
e morning Bilhah came back to the tent with breakfast and could hardly keep from spilling everything, she was so excited. “You and Rachel are to be officially presented to him tomorrow night, before dinner,” she said.
Leah knew whom she meant—to whom else would she be presented? Then again, why would Rachel be presented, since she and Jacob had seen each other almost every day, including that “cousinly” kiss at the well, which everyone thought was so sweet that they told the story over and over. Leah was the only one who needed to be presented. So maybe there was someone else who had met neither of them. “Presented to whom?” she said.
Bilhah laughed, one short titter, before she realized that Leah wasn’t joking. “Jacob,” she said. “He hasn’t met you.”
“But he’s met Rachel.”
“He wasn’t presented by your father.”
Presented by Father. As if he were a suitor.
“Do you think he means it like that?” asked Leah.
“Like what?”
“A presentation of his daughters to a man who might wish to marry one of them.”
Bilhah was taken aback. “I don’t know. Is that what’s done here?”
“It’s happened before, but Father never meant it. And it was always to a father looking for a bride for his son. This would be the first time he presented us to the suitor himself.”
“You’re too young to marry,” said Bilhah.
“But these things are often settled when you’re young. So there’s no uncertainty. And no delay when we reach child-bearing age. Wasn’t it done that way in the city?”
“I wasn’t at the age yet. To be presented, even.”
“But your father had a dowry for you.”
Bilhah nodded. Undoubtedly it was still a sore spot for her, to remember what happened to her father’s savings, so carefully kept for her.
“It’s what a father does for his daughters—tries to make sure that they have a good marriage. These things aren’t left to the last moment.”
Rachel and Leah (Women of Genesis) Page 8