Laban laughed, too, then helped his trembling daughter back to the tent.
CHAPTER 29
Inside the tent, Rachel helped Leah pull off the veil and remove the dress. Both of them were weeping, as silently as possible, while they did it.
“So who is married to him,” Rachel finally whispered, when the dress was off. “You or me?”
“You or no one,” said Leah.
“It should be you,” said Rachel. “I don’t deserve him. I didn’t even have the courage to … You’re the one who’s strong enough to … He’s a prophet, you’re the one who knows the scriptures.”
“You’re the one who saw him in a vision,” said Leah.
“You’re the one who was born to be a prophet’s wife,” said Rachel. Though her words could hardly be understood, her voice was so distorted by her weeping.
“I wasn’t born to be anyone’s wife.”
“He’s going to be so angry at me tonight,” said Rachel.
“Not if you go to him as his true wife. You said the words here inside the tent, didn’t you?”
“But I didn’t walk around him or drink the wine,” said Rachel.
“Go to him tonight and lie with him,” said Leah. “Every married woman in the world has done it.”
“I’d go to him as a coward and a deceiver,” said Rachel.
“I think I’m the one who just deceived him.”
“Only because I’m such a coward.”
“Between the two of us,” said Leah, “we make one completely wretched woman.”
Rachel began to laugh in the midst of her crying. “We’re not even good enough to be bad by ourselves.”
“We probably didn’t even fool anybody,” said Leah. “How hard will it be for them to figure out that Leah wasn’t there to watch her own sister’s wedding?” Then she gave a short, bitter laugh. “Though come to think of it, it probably won’t surprise anyone at all. Poor miserable older sister, shamed by having her beautiful younger sister married before her, can’t even show her face at the wedding.”
“Well, you didn’t show your face,” said Rachel. Which set off another bout of quiet but slightly hysterical laughing.
They huddled alone in the tent for a long time. Not until the feast was well under way did their father come to them.
“Well, that’s done,” said Laban.
“Done?” asked Leah. “You mean people actually believed it was Rachel?”
“Of course,” said Laban. “You’re the same height. Your voices sound alike.”
“Not very much,” said Leah.
“Nobody said a thing,” said Laban. “Except to cluck their tongues about how shy Rachel is. And you’re just as happy to be missing the feast, since there have been more than a few jests from your brothers about a wedding night spent with a bride dressed in a thick woollen curtain.”
“Thank you for telling us that, Father,” said Leah. “But just between us, I think that having no bride at all will make his wedding night even more inconvenient.”
Rachel’s answer was to bury her face in the rugs.
“As for that,” said Laban, “I have a plan.”
“I hope it doesn’t involve me any further,” said Leah.
“It involves you completely,” said Laban. He glanced at Rachel and then smiled thinly at Leah. “We’ve had a wedding. The question of exactly who got married is still up in the air. So here’s my thought. Rachel isn’t ready to get married. But her older sister is.”
“Am I?” said Leah.
“So tonight, I’ll take my veiled daughter to Jacob’s tent,” said Laban. “If Rachel wants to be the daughter under the veil, so be it. But if she doesn’t, then Leah will go in and offer herself. If Jacob accepts her, then we’ve followed proper custom and the older daughter is married first. How can anyone make a scandal out of that?”
“Jacob won’t accept me,” said Leah. “I’m sure he’ll be very kind about it, but he’ll send me away.”
“Ah, but that’s why my plan is so brilliant. He’ll see that I did everything I could to keep my promise, including sending him my older daughter, whose value he and I both know better than any other men alive.”
Leah held her tongue.
“So he can’t be angry with me,” Laban went on. “He can’t be angry at Leah for offering herself in her sister’s place. As a sort of sacrifice. How can the son of Isaac complain about that? And he can’t be angry at Rachel, because she can’t help being so afraid. No shame, no scandal.”
“No shame for you, you mean,” said Leah. “Plenty of shame for Rachel and me.”
“No! None at all,” said Laban. “What shame?”
“Well, Rachel will be ashamed that she was afraid to marry a prophet of God,” said Leah. “Right, Rachel?”
Still face down in the rugs, Rachel nodded.
“And I’ll be ashamed because I offered myself to this man without any invitation from him, and of course he rejected me.”
“He hasn’t rejected you yet,” said Laban.
“But he will.”
“It won’t be a rejection,” said Laban. “It will be an opportunity that he chose not to accept.”
Leah laughed nastily at her father’s imaginary distinction between two versions of the same thing.
Laban leaned close to his older daughter and whispered in her ear, “If sending you to Jacob doesn’t get Rachel out of this tent, nothing will.”
Rachel rolled over and sat up. For a moment, they thought she had heard them. Then they thought the stratagem had already worked.
“Yes,” said Rachel. “Send her. She’s the one that Jacob should marry. He’ll see that and accept her.”
“No he won’t,” said Leah. “He’s been crazy with love for you for seven years. Do you think that will just go away because another woman shows up in his tent?”
“But the spirit of Wisdom will guide him,” said Rachel. “He’ll choose you. But if he doesn’t, then I’ll know that it’s truly the will of God that I marry him.”
“So,” said Laban, “if he sends Leah back, you’ll go to him? Tonight?”
“Yes,” said Rachel. “Because then I’ll know it’s the will of God.”
CHAPTER 30
Leah knew that for the servants’ weddings, there were often loud revelries outside the wedding tent, with plenty of lewd jests. But for his daughter’s wedding, Father had forbidden any such vulgar activity. He had specifically forbidden his sons to leave their tents, and had posted men to watch from a distance to make sure no one disturbed Jacob’s nuptial tent.
So there was no one to look closely at her as her father led her from his own tent to Jacob’s.
“I’ll be waiting outside,” said Laban. “If he sends you back out.”
“When he sends me,” said Leah.
“God will guide him,” said Laban.
“If the Lord of heaven is running this wedding, wouldn’t he have arranged for somebody to tell somebody else the truth?”
“That’s your job right now,” said Laban.
Inside the tent, to Leah’s surprise, there was no lamp burning.
“It’s dark,” she said.
“I didn’t want you to feel shy with me,” said Jacob. “Did your father tell you what I said? There’s no need for us to do anything but sleep tonight, if you prefer.”
No, Father hadn’t mentioned it. “Jacob, don’t you know who I am?” asked Leah.
“I think you’re the same woman who stood with me under the canopy today,” said Jacob.
So he had noticed that it wasn’t Rachel inside the veil. “I am, if you’ll have me. Father brought me here tonight to fulfil the bargain, even though I’m a poor substitute.”
There was a long pause. In the darkness, Leah listened for Jacob’s breathing, his movement, to tell her what he was feeling. Wrath? Pity?
He took a couple of quick steps, his bare feet making little noise on the rugs. Surely he wasn’t going to strike her for daring to come to his tent
in Rachel’s place—not that she wouldn’t deserve it.
But instead, his hands took her by the shoulders and gently removed the veil from her. Then he pulled her to him, his hands strong but kind.
She heard his breath change, felt the slight wind of his movement as he bowed over her. His cheek brushed hers. His lips moved along her cheek until they found her own lips. He kissed her.
“Then you accept me?” she whispered. “After seven years of service, you’ll be content with me?”
“What God has given me, I would be ungrateful to refuse,” he whispered. “Will you accept me tonight? I’m content to wait, if you prefer.”
Leah’s head spun with giddiness. He had accepted her! Something she had never allowed herself even to dream of. Despite Rachel’s dream, Jacob had been brought here for her.
“No,” said Leah.
Jacob relaxed his grip and started to pull away.
“I mean, no, there’s no need to wait,” said Leah. “As you said, what God has given me, I would be ungrateful to refuse.”
“You’ll have to help me,” said Jacob. “I’ve never done this before.”
“Neither have I,” said Leah.
“No,” said Jacob. “I mean, I’ve never undressed a woman.”
Leah laughed lightly. “I can take care of that part.”
“Then … please do it … now. If you don’t mind my making you do all the hard work on the first night of our marriage.”
“May all your commands bring me so much joy, Husband,” she said.
“May God help me learn how to bring you joy every day, Wife,” he answered.
After that, few words were said. For Leah, though, the silence was full of music. The sound of his breath and her own breath, mingling. The feeling of his rough hands on her smooth skin, and his own smooth skin under her hands. The smells of their bodies and the woollen rugs and the desert air on this beautiful, musical, magical night.
* * *
And then it was morning.
She woke before him and lay there in the darkness of the tent and whispered a soft prayer of thanks for this great blessing God had given her. She prayed also that Rachel would be given happiness to equal her own.
Sometime during her prayer Jacob woke up—she could tell, from the difference in his breathing, though he didn’t move.
When her prayer ended with a soft “amen,” Jacob reached out and touched her. “What’s this about, child? I thought I heard you praying for yourself by name.”
“Not for myself,” said Leah, wondering what he had thought he heard, amid her whispering.
And then, with a wave of sickness passing through her body, she realized what he had heard.
“O Lord God,” she whispered, “let it not be true.”
“Let what not be true?” asked Jacob. He got up and walked to the flap that separated his inner chamber from the outer one.
“Jacob, you know who I am, don’t you? You told me you did last night. You told me that you know who I am.”
“What are you talking about?” he said. “What are you upset about?”
Then the curtain parted and light came into the chamber, and even though he was too far away for Leah to see anything more of him than a blur in the shape of a man, she knew that he could see her clearly.
“I thought you accepted me,” she said. “You said you accepted me.”
“What have you done?” said Jacob softly. No, coldly.
“Rachel was frightened,” said Leah. “Father brought me to offer myself as a substitute. I said so. I—how could you not know it was me?”
“It was dark,” said Jacob. His voice was soft, but sharp as a blade. “Dark, because your father said Rachel was so shy, afraid to be looked at. But I see now that it was for another purpose. To make a fool of me.”
“How could you mistake me for her?” said Leah. “Even in the dark, our voices aren’t so alike. We don’t move alike, we don’t use the same words, you’ve heard our voices a thousand times and you couldn’t tell it was me?”
“I couldn’t see,” said Jacob.
“So what?” said Leah. “I can’t ever see anybody, and I have no trouble telling them apart.”
“Very clever,” said Jacob. “I’m sure you’ll have an answer for everything. But the truth is very plain. I served Laban seven years for the hand of Rachel, and on my wedding night, he brought you instead, in the darkness.”
“He was waiting outside for you to send me away, if you didn’t want me,” said Leah. “And Rachel … she was waiting for you to decide. Which of us you wanted.”
“I decided seven years ago. By what sign did I lead you or anyone else to think that I might have changed my mind?”
“No sign, nothing, you did nothing, you said nothing. But Rachel was so frightened, and Father was afraid that we’d be shamed in front of—”
“But tricking me into marrying the wrong daughter, that doesn’t shame him?” Jacob laughed bitterly. “Get dressed. I need to go find my wife.”
“I’m your wife,” said Leah.
“A woman who sneaks into a man’s tent and offers him her body might be many things, but she is not a wife.”
“I stood beside you, I walked around you, I drank from the cup with you,” said Leah. “And when I came here I told you I was a poor substitute, and you said you accepted me. I am no harlot, and if you treat me as one then let God choose between your injustice and mine.”
Jacob seemed not to have heard her. “So Rachel was part of this deception, too? Whose idea was it? Did Laban compel you? Or was it your idea? Why did Rachel go along with it? She loves me—I know she does.”
“Yes, she does,” said Leah. “But she was terrified of marriage. Things that people told her. Hassaweh.”
“Rachel’s not a fool—why would she believe anything that woman said?”
“Why wouldn’t she believe her dearest brother’s wife?” said Leah. “But yes, go find her, Jacob, because when you accepted me last night, Rachel must have thought—her heart must be broken.”
“If she has a heart,” said Jacob. “If anyone in your family has a heart.”
And then he was gone.
Leah got up and looked around for clothing, but then she realized that she had nothing but the wedding dress to wear. If Jacob had loved her, if he had known what she thought he knew, then she could have worn that dress proudly out of his tent. But he hated her, he believed she had tricked him, he as much as called her a harlot. She could never put on that dress again.
But she also couldn’t put on a man’s clothing, and she couldn’t leave the tent naked as she now was.
So she waited, weeping and praying, for Jacob to return or for Zilpah to come for her. Or would it be Bilhah? Had Father told their handmaidens who it was who was going into Jacob’s tent last night?
“O God in heaven,” she prayed. “How could you let this happen? You put the words into my mouth, that if Rachel went to Father, everything would happen according to your will. Was this what you wanted? For me to give myself to a husband who hates me? Who thinks I’m a harlot, a deceiver? Why couldn’t you let me die as a baby instead of living this terrible life?”
Then she wept again. And prayed again, and wept again, until finally she heard someone come into the tent.
It was Bilhah.
“What happened here?” asked Bilhah. “What are you doing in Jacob’s tent? And … naked?”
Leah could only weep more bitterly, as Bilhah reached her own conclusion and fled from her.
She was praying again when Zilpah came, carrying clothing for her.
“It’s too late to pray for God to let you die as a baby,” said Zilpah. “Why do you waste God’s time with prayers that even he can’t answer?”
“Leave me alone,” said Leah.
“I brought you clothes.”
“Leave them.”
“And a pot, just in case you drank any liquid yesterday that you don’t want to leave just anywhere this morning.”
Leah resigned herself to her fate and got up from the rugs. Zilpah quickly slid a dress over her head and helped her pull it down all around.
“Is there anyone outside watching?”
“That’s really two questions,” said Zilpah. “In answer to the first question, yes, everybody knows what happened last night. In one version or another. But the answer to the second question is, no, there’s nobody outside the tent to watch you leave. Your father banned everyone from the area.”
“Which means they’ll all be watching from a distance,” said Leah. “Which version do people believe? That I’m a harlot? That I stole my sister’s husband?”
“Nobody’s putting out the harlot one,” said Zilpah. “You’re the first one to say anything of the kind.”
“No I’m not,” said Leah.
“The first one I heard,” Zilpah corrected herself. “There are a few people saying that it’s a shame you stole your sister’s husband. Those are the ones who are sure Jacob will divorce you immediately. But most people are saying your father forced you both to go along with tricking Jacob. So they think you’re nothing worse than an obedient daughter. Then again, there are those who remember how you used to get your father to give you your way, so they combine the stories into one where you threw tantrums until your father gave in and set up this elaborate trick. Of course, in every version Jacob comes out looking dumb as your thumb, not to be able to tell the difference between you and Rachel.”
“It was dark,” said Leah bitterly. “All girls are beautiful in the dark.”
“Not all,” said Zilpah cheerfully. “One thinks, for instance, of girls with goiters. And amputated limbs. Not to mention lepers. But I get your point.”
“Thank you for telling me the truth about what people are saying,” said Leah.
“Let them say whatever they want. You should hear what they say about me.”
Leah pressed her lips together rather than say the hurtful truth that came immediately to her mind—that she must have sunk low indeed, to have someone with Zilpah’s reputation think it would comfort her that her own was no worse.
Rachel and Leah (Women of Genesis) Page 30