'Foreskins?' The question sounded from my swift and courageous young nephew Asahel, who even then was like one of the gazelles that are in the open field. 'David, why foreskins?'
'Who knows?' I answered candidly. I paused a moment for dramatic effect, licking my lips the while in appreciation of the impact I knew was to follow, and I was flushed with pride in myself when I continued in a rising voice. 'It is the dowry Saul hath requested I bring him that I might be that day the king's son-in-law. I am going to marry his daughter Michal.'
The loudest exclamation among the cries of surprise that resulted was the one erupting from Joab, who seized my arm in his hand and glared at me in disbelief. 'Michal!' he repeated loudly. 'Is that what you said? Michal?'
Naturally I was taken aback. 'What's wrong?'
'I just don't get it,' asserted Joab, thrown into a rage as usual by anything he failed to comprehend. 'That's what's wrong. Michal? You're really going to marry the king's daughter Michal?'
'Why shouldn't I marry the king's daughter Michal?'
'I thought Jonathan was the one you loved.'
I was jolted. 'Are you crazy?' I demanded. 'Where the hell did you ever get that idea?'
'From Jonathan,' Joab returned at once. 'Your soul is knit with his soul, isn't it?'
'Says who?'
'Says him,' Joab shot back. 'He gave you his girdle, didn't he, and his sword and his bow, and his robe and other garments. He tells everyone in Gibeah he loves you as his own soul.'
'His soul is knit with my soul, not mine with his,' I argued.
'There's a difference?'
'A big difference,' I replied with dignity. 'Now let's get going, if you don't mind.'
But Joab persisted, pulling me aside to counsel me in friendlier terms. 'Michal can be rough, David,' he said with worry. 'Are you sure you know what you're doing?'
'They tell me she loves me.'
'You still might be better off marrying Jonathan.'
'Let's go get those foreskins,' I ordered brusquely.
This time it was Asahel who appeared determined to thwart me. 'Foreskins are dangerous, David,' softly warned brave Asahel, who would die not from Philistines but on the hinder end of Abner's spear when he would not turn aside from pursuing him in his unremitting chase after a battle in our long civil war. 'They take lots of hard work. Whose idea was that anyway? Abner's? Circumcising Philistines is bad news, David, very bad news.'
'Well, here comes the good news,' I fairly burst out in reply. 'They want us to kill the Philistines, not convert them. They say we can bring back the whole prick?'
My announcement went over well, and 'bringing back the whole prick' shortly became a folk saying utilized in conversation as widely as the proverb about Saul and the prophets after he fell into that spell with them the first time, and then the second. When I gave the command to regroup, my little band of stouthearted men let out a wild, frolicsome cheer, and away we traipsed with the gaiety of schoolboys unleashed early from class, augmenting our morale with the lusty chorusing of a jolly bit of opportune doggerel I was successful in extemporizing for the occasion, to wit:
'Hi-ho, hi-ho
It's down to Gath we go.
Who'll give two pins
To get foreskins?
Hi-ho, hi-ho.
'My racy pun was received with hilarity, I am satisfied to recall.
I knew exactly where to take my men to find Philistines alone or in groups of two or three. Downward I led them toward Gath, through the rugged mountains of my native Judah into the low hills descending gradually to the marshy plains of the Philistines as one approached the sea.
The first hundred was short work for a man famed in song for having slain tens of thousands of Philistines. The second was child's play as well. Saul should have been much better prepared psychologically for the likelihood of my success. The trip back was a triumph marred only by some curious disturbances that were wholly unexpected. This time when the women came out of the cities with their psalteries and cymbals and tabrets, they sang:
'Saul has taken his thousand foreskins,
and David has taken his ten thousands.'
Who else had ever been as heroic in so novel an achievement, or lauded so robustly in song by women? How thrilled I was to be present to hear them. How relieved I felt that Saul was not. As we were almost through that first village, though, all at once, with no warning whatsoever of what was to come, a piercing shriek rent the air and a buxom woman of ripe years fell into the loudest and most terrible fit of weeping I had ever heard. Pointing into the basket displayed in our cart, almost close enough to touch, she howled:
'Urgat is dead! Urgat the Philistine is dead! Vey's mir. Urgat is dead!'
The uproar that ensued was indescribable. Other women hurried to her side to hold and console her. Two or three of them began wailing mournfully as well. But others in the crowd were reacting differently, with faces scowling in callous disapproval. Men's brows darkened, eyes shrank into snake-like slits with looks of violated honor, minds moved sullenly through deduction to arrive at irate conclusions.
'Stone her! Stone her!' the cry went up in a minute.
'Spare her! Spare her!' others rallied in her defense. 'Isn't she suffering enough?'
'Urgat the Philistine is dead!'
'What's going on?' I inquired of the only person in sight who seemed in his right mind, a shrunken, white-bearded old man with twinkling light eyes who was taking the whole scene in calmly.
'May her thigh rot and her belly swell with salt water,' he remarked to me philosophically, in a most benign manner.
'Pardon?'
He spoke a little louder, smiling, 'May her thigh rot and her belly swell with salt water.'
We were glad to get out of there. But in the next village, which was but a mile or two distant, the identical thing occurred, except that in this second place there were scores of women who were grief-stricken. Again we were all of us refreshed by the general welcome we received as we neared. Again the women in their bright-colored holiday dresses, again the singing and dancing, again the refrain:
'Saul has taken his thousand foreskins
and David has taken his ten thousands.'
Here as we walked along we were gorged with presents of dates and figs and sesame cakes of almonds and honey. And then all of a sudden that same fucking shriek. Again there was that shock of recognition, again the mood of celebration was shattered by a heart-stopping cry, again the deafening sobs of heartbreak and loss, again those undulating, inconsolable lamentations for the departed Philistine and his defunct and irreplaceable phallus. Urgat was dead-- Urgat the Philistine was gone. But here the bereaved women appeared in a violent majority and soon were assailing us with feet and fists over the death of their favorite Philistine. One of them rushed at my face with her fingernails and raked my cheek and my neck into long bloody scratches. The bewildering uproar was out of control. I tell you truthfully it was no easy matter to fend off these countrywomen of ours without smiting them hip and thigh.
'What the hell is happening here?' cried out my nephew Abishai, who normally was as unexcitable as it is possible for a living thing to be.
'Mix them all up!' I bellowed an order to Joab, indicating with alarm our heap of penises in the basket. 'Cover the pile!'
'Mix up the fucking pile!' Joab relayed my instructions in a voice even more booming. 'Cover the cart! The cart, cover the cart! Which one of you mothers killed Urgat?'
It was a miracle indeed that we escaped with our lives.
'May your thighs rot and all your bellies swell with salt water!' was the imprecation I yelled back at all of the women in that entire village.
The cart covered, and the territories of Philistia left farther and farther to the rear, it was roses, all the way, one victory carnival after another, until we arrived back in Gibeah and I had counted out to the foreskin the two hundred trophies I had brought Saul, who scrutinized me darkly the whole time with a venomous malice, as thoug
h, in honoring his request, I had arrogantly confirmed his blackest intuitions and fantasies. True to his word, he would give me his daughter Michal to wife. He knew, he said, that the Lord was with me, but the way in which he uttered this opinion sent a shiver down my back.
He did not dance at my wedding. Neither did Michal. I hardly stopped. Oh, what a good time I had! Egged on by her brothers and her more convivial cousins and uncles and aunts, I danced harder and harder with all my might, kicking up my heels and my knees higher and higher until the skirt of my tunic was awhirl about my waist and I knew at last that my tossing genitals were in open view and could be observed by all present except the blind and the dying. The ovation I received was thunderous. We drank like Ephraimites and perspired like pigs. One goblet of wine after another Jonathan and his brothers poured into me. Every once in a while, I noticed that Michal and Saul were not having much fun. With rigid and censorious countenances, both kept stubbornly in the background and held themselves aloof from the festivities, the unhappy pair looking, I thought, as though the father had eaten a sour grape and the daughter's teeth had been set on edge. The chilling presentiment struck me as I went reeling happily past and caught her tight, reproachful eyes fixed upon me that it was always going to be impossible for me to please her for long. And the thought crossed my mind that my nephew Joab had perhaps been right and that maybe I would have been better off marrying Jonathan instead. So riotous a good time did I have at my wedding party that six times-- six--I was compelled to desist from my carousing to stagger outside the main door of Saul's house in Gibeah to piss against his front wall. They told me later that six was a record for a young man.
The party ending, the musicians and singers departing, unruly revelers carried us homeward through the streets by torchlight in separate mauve blankets of wool, raucously bellowing obscene songs of the multitudinous nuptial couplings to follow. I joined in giddily in a voice as drunken as the rest. It suddenly occurred to me that I had not heard a peep out of Michal the whole evening. Saul had handed her over to me as wife. I had set her to one side to acknowledge with bows the cheers of her relatives. No one from my family had been invited. Comfortably recumbent on my back, I could not see over the border of my blanket and was lazily reluctant to try.
'Michal?' I inquired. 'Are you there.'
'Call me princess,' I heard her respond.
Hoots of merriment from the young men bearing us broke out at these words, and I felt emboldened, after an instant's uneasiness, to laugh along with them. At the entrance to the dwelling Saul had allotted us, they stood me up and lifted her into my arms. I carried her across the threshold and pulled the door shut behind me. I knew I was in for trouble when I set her down on her feet and beheld the austere look with which she was regarding me. Her eyes, naturally small to begin with, were screwed into glinting, beady pinpoints. Any possibilities that I might be mistaken about her humor were dispelled by her first words.
'Go take a bath,' she directed, with a mouth drawn into a taut, bloodless line. 'Wash under your arms. Make sure you comb your hair after you've dried it, the back of your head too. Rinse your teeth with a mouthwash. Use a perfume on your face.'
She was no more agreeable when I returned to her, all spick-and-span, after complying meticulously with her instructions. She confronted me with her arms folded, as obdurate as a wall, and said nothing. I was as meek as Moses, who at times, as you know, was the meekest man on earth, and importuned her in an abject whimper when I could endure her silence no longer.
'Is anything wrong?' I made myself ask.
'What could be wrong?' she answered with a shrug, eyeing me coldly.
'You don't seem to be saying much to me.'
'What's there to say?' A martyred took accompanied this reply, belying her air of passionless indifference.
'You seem to be angry about something.'
'Angry?' She spoke with sarcasm, dilating her eyes in mock surprise. 'Why should I be angry? What's there to be angry about? Do I have anything to be angry about?'
I felt that ground growing shakier beneath me. 'Isn't there anything you want to talk to me about?'
'What's there to talk about?'
'Michal,' I cajoled.
'I'm a princess,' she reminded.
'Must I always call you princess?'
'If there's anything I've done wrong,' I begged her almost apologetically, 'I'd like you to tell me about it.'
'What's there to tell?' she answered with another exaggerated shrug of unconcern. And then, after a menacing silence of about ten seconds during which she seemed to be marking off the time, she proceeded to say a great deal. 'That you shamed me and disgraced me in front of my father and my brothers? On my wedding night yet? You did it, David, you did it to me, by drinking and dancing and singing, by having a good time like an ordinary drunken lout. That was gross, David, really gross.'
I tried reasoning with her. 'Michal, your brothers were the ones who were telling me to dance and sing and drink. They were doing the same thing.'
'My brothers,' she let me know, 'are the sons of a king who can do whatever they want and never be gross. You are gross for suggesting they're gross. I guess I'm only getting what I deserve.' Her voice dipped an octave and she seemed to be blinking back tears. 'I never should have married a commoner.'
I continued trying to reason with her in a manner most conciliatory. 'Michal, my dear--'
'Princess Michal,' she broke in.
'Anybody you married had to be commoner. Saul is our first king and we have no aristocracy. You aren't being entirely fair.'
'Where does it say I have to be fair?' she retorted. 'Show me where it's written that I have to be fair. And how dare you, from Judah, accuse me, a princess, of being unfair? You didn't find me in the gutter, you know, I found you.'
'Michal,' I corrected her firmly, 'I was at the head of a parade when you saw me in the gutter. I was a hero and everyone was cheering me. That was right after I slew Goliath.'
'Who?' she asked.
'Goliath, the giant, the Philistine champion everyone was afraid of, even your father. You painted your face and sat by the window to see me didn't you? Of course I was in the gutter. Did you expect them to hold the parade on the sidewalk?'
'We have no sidewalks in Gibeah.'
'So? Anyone you found would have to have been in the gutter.'
'But I took you out,' she asserted, and adamantly crossed her arms.
'Saul took me out, by letting me go no more home to my father and then making me captain of a thousand. He sent word that you loved me, and that's why we married.' I looked at her longingly and asked, 'Michal, aren't you in love with me, at least a little?'
'Yes, David, I am in love with you,' she admitted, relenting slightly. 'But only in my own fashion, as a member of the royal family who expects always to be obeyed.'
'Your Highness.'
'That's better. Promise you will always remember that you are married to a princess.'
'I very much doubt you will let me forget it,' I replied.
'I will want you to bathe every night and to brush your teeth after every meal. Always use deodorants. You must wash your hands with strong soap after defecating and urinating, especially before you start preparing my food. Always make sure that your hair is combed, especially in the back. I can't stand a man with flat hair in the back; it always looks as though he's lying down and is lazy. Don't pick your nose in front of me. That's gross.'
'I'm not picking my nose. I never pick my nose.'
'Don't contradict me. That's gross too. Never fart.'
'Never?'
'That's what I said. You must change your clothes when you come home each afternoon. Can a man be at ease in the evening with the raiment he wore in the day?'
'I do all right.'
'I will want you to sleep in pajamas. File your nails and keep them clean. I like well-groomed men with an air of authority who dress impeccably and always smell of soap and deodorants.'
'I w
ill do my best.'
'I want to be mother to a great race of kings.'
'I'll do my best with that too.'
Mollified at last, she relaxed her arms, and we moved side by side to the mat of straw unrolled on the floor. Our bed had not been delivered yet. Michal was a virgin when she allowed me to hold her and sank down beneath me. She was no longer a virgin when she rose to her feet less than ten seconds later.
'Well, thank God that's over with,' said the first of my brides on our wedding night. 'I certainly hope we have a son so I'll never have to go through that again!'
It took but an instant for her words to sink in with all their implications and for me to comprehend the seriousness of my plight. Michal, my bride, was not just the daughter of a king but a bona-fide Jewish American Princess! I had married a jap! I am the first in the Old Testament to be stuck with one.
Michal did not conceive a son on our wedding night and looked as crabby as Saul in disillusionment with me when the custom of women was upon her and it was182 unmistakably clear I had fallen short of her expectations in that solitary connubial encounter. As soon as her flowers were no longer upon her and she had completed cleansing herself from her menstrual impurity, she summoned me back to her side with a grimace of painful submission to a duty that was repugnant, and permitted me to get into her pants for the second time. In the interim, she had caused me to sleep by myself on a narrow couch in the chamber adjacent to hers. By that time, all our furniture had arrived. Saul had provided us with a fine two-story house in a good neighborhood of Gibeah, and both our private rooms were on the upper floor, separated from each other by a door of limed wattle. Again there was but one quick coupling, followed by another month of inviolable abstinence and deprivation in which I was banished each evening to my lonely couch in the other room. Something told me the results would be no more fruitful than before, yet I held my tongue until the new moon waxed full once more and the custom of women was upon her again. Never was there a woman, I'll bet, who suffered the multifarious pangs of her period with more ill grace. I failed miserably in my efforts to convince her that, statistically at the least, she was reducing enormously the chances for impregnation by this puritanical rhythm system of sexual congress she was imposing so inflexibly. She thought my efforts at persuasion were bestial, self-serving, and gross.
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