I scratched my head. This was food for thought. 'How would you go about it?'
'Here's my plan.' Joab unfolded his maps. 'Let me have Abishai and six hundred men who can be trusted not to put down their swords when we kneel by a pool to drink but will lap water with their faces like a dog. We will travel upward through the isthmus of Turkey into the soft underbelly of Europe, sweeping all in our path before us. Once there, Abishai will turn east to his right hand with three hundred men to conquer the Caucasus, India, Afghanistan, Nepal, Tibet, Siberia, Mongolia, China, Vietnam, Korea, Japan, and Formosa. While Abishai is prevailing there, I will turn westward to my left hand with the other three hundred men to vanquish the rest of southern Russia from the Caspian Sea even unto the Black Sea, the Ukraine, and the Balkans. I will take Rumania, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Greece, Albania, Italy, Austria, Germany, France, the Low Countries, then Spain and Portugal. I will overcome Poland too, if there is one. I will leave a garrison on Gibraltar to dominate the entrance into the sea of the Philistines forever. I know what you're thinking.'
'It sounds grandiose.'
'You're laughing at me, aren't you?'
'You might run into opposition.'
'Haven't I thought of that? But if the people of Europe be too strong for me, then Abishai shall come and help me. And if the children of Asia be too strong for Abishai, then I will go and help him. What could be plainer? Did I not succeed that same way against both the children of Ammon and the Syrians? When Iberia and France have been reduced, I will cross over from Calais to Dover and conquer the English and the Welsh before departing from Liverpool to Dublin to subdue Ireland. With Ireland pacified, I will commence my return through Scotland. From the Firth of Forth I will go into the bottom of Norway, march upward along the coast to the top and come down through Sweden and Finland. How does it sound so far?'
'What will you do for kosher food?'
'We'll leave with goat cheese and barley bread, with clusters of raisins and cakes of figs. In Turkey and Greece we'll replenish our provisions with dates and honey. We'll bring lentils and flat beans for protein. In Scotland we'll have kippers and smoked salmon. In Scandinavia, Holland, and Denmark, we'll have all the herring and smoked fish we can eat. I'll bring some back if you want me to. In Russia there's sturgeon, caviar, and black bread.'
'Russia? You're going to conquer Russia too?'
'On the way home. Coming back, I will level a siege against Leningrad. Then I will take Moscow, Stalingrad, Rostov, Kiev, and Odessa. Returning southward into Turkey, I will join again with Abishai, homeward bound from overwhelming the Orient and all of the rest of Asia, and together we will journey back into Israel, arriving in time for the harvests of our grapes and olives and for the sowing of the seed for our barley, wheat, and flax. Could anything be easier?'
'How will you get from Scotland to Norway?' I wondered.
'By boat,' said Joab.
'We have no boats,' I reminded. 'And we wouldn't know how to use them if we did.'
Joab wrinkled his brow. 'Then how will I get from France to England?'
'Maybe you'd better just walk across the Jordan into Ammon instead and surround Rabbah again.'
'You wait here.'
The next thing I knew I was madly in love. It hit like a thunderbolt. I was gaping at this naked woman as though transfixed and communing with voices on my roof like a frenzied and licentious maniac, for I tarried still in Jerusalem after I sent Joab and my servants off on this campaign against Rabbah, and I had nothing much to do for excitement as I waited for the new summer wardrobe for which I had already been measured. So I went for a walk on my roof each evening and let my mind go wandering where it would. I was bored. A time before when I was bored in Jerusalem, I brought the ark of the covenant into the city. I could think of nothing better to do, so I settled on that and had my big row with Michal that at last put an end to our conjugal relationship and to any lenient impulses I might have felt for her thereafter. The fight with Michal turned out a blessing in disguise, for by that time we had both grown very sick of each other.
To tell you the honest truth, I had no clear idea what the ark of the covenant even was when I decided to move it up into the city from the house of Obededom the Gittite, with no one but yours truly, the king himself, starring at the head of the spectacular procession I was beginning to orchestrate. But holy people did; the ark was important to them, and I saw no harm in propitiating the religious in the effort I was making to solidify all factions in a country that was proving to be hopelessly pluralistic and refractory. You think God had His troubles with Moses and those people in the desert? I had my hands full too. The ark was of acacia, and inside this chest of acacia wood were said to be those two original tablets of stone from Mount Sinai on which the basic ten words to Moses had been written by the finger of God. No one was permitted to look inside, so we never could ascertain if this was so or not. No one was permitted even to touch it. We deduced this from the sorry fate betiding poor Uzzah on my first attempt to transfer the ark three months earlier. Acting on reflex, and with only the most pietistic intentions, poor Uzzah put forth his hand to take hold of the ark when it shook on the wagon after one of the oxen stumbled. And the anger of God was kindled against Uzzah for this innocent misjudgment and God smote him there, and there he died by the ark of God, right there on the spot. The road to hell, I've written, is paved with good intentions. Admittedly, this was a small statistical basis for the verification of the inviolability of the ark; I could think of no humane way to enlarge it. Whom could I ask in the interest of experimentation to volunteer to touch it again?
This second time, I supervised the entire enterprise myself and gave closer attention to the details. No wagons, I ordained. Oxen could not be depended upon. This time I had poles put through the rings of the ark, as Moses once had commanded be done according to the word of God, and I employed human beings as bearers, Levites all, who would not have to come within ten feet of the chest of acacia, with those splendid carved figures of the two cherubims on top with their heads bowed, facing each other, and their arching wings stretched upward and forward on high so expressively. Levite carriers made a more dramatic effect than cattle and enhanced the occasion with a good deal of pomp. What a stirring day that was! The event transformed the city of David into the city of God, and Jerusalem continues as a center of worship even now. Where the ark was, there was God. Where the ark is today, God knows.
Weeks in advance, the voice of the trumpet sounded long through the land with proclamations encouraging all in Israel to come observe me parade if they wished to avail themselves of the opportunity to do so. It was not an action I was going to perform every day. Tentatively and cautiously, with bated breath, we lifted the ark out of the house of Obededom the Gittite, where it had rested since Uzzah touched it with his hand and dropped dead on the spot; Obededom had prospered since, and this was interpreted by my priests as an auspicious signal from God to go forward with my plan. And it was so that when they that bare the ark on the poles had gone six paces without any of them falling down dead, we knew we were home free. I let out a huzzah and sacrificed seven bullocks and seven fatlings. And then the celebration began. All Israel played before the Lord that day. Even I was carried away and sang hallelujah more times than I can remember. We played before the Lord on all manner of instruments made of fir wood, even on harps, and on psalteries, and on timbrels, and on cornets, and on cymbals. You never heard so much music or saw so much rejoicing as there was on the day we brought the ark of the covenant up into the city with shouting, and with the sound of the trumpet. There was never such music and such song and such shouting for joy since the spirit of God first moved upon the face of the waters and He said: 'Let there be light.' And there was light. And there was I, right out in front, leading them all, dancing before the Lord. I danced before the Lord with all my might, clothed in a robe of fine linen and girded with a linen ephod.
I was having the time of my life. I knew I was exposing my
self for the whole town to see while I danced with all my might. I did not know that Michal was looking at me through a window as I danced before the Lord, and that she was despising me in her heart as she saw me leaping and dancing that way. Or that she would lose all self-control and lash out at me before others the moment I set foot in my house.
'It had to be before others,' she tried lamely to extenuate herself afterward. 'You're never alone with me anymore.'
She was damned right about that, too.
But first there were those overactive hours of exhilarating ceremonies outside. Amid great toasting and great roaring jubilation, the ark of the Lord was set in its place in the midst of the tabernacle I'd had the foresight to order pitched for it, and I offered burnt offerings and peace offerings before the Lord and blessed the people in His name. And then I dealt out among all the people, as well to the women as the men, to everyone a cake of bread, and a good piece of flesh, and a flagon of wine. This was a day I made sure no Jew would ever forget. So all the people were gratified with me and departed everyone to his house.
Now it was time for me to retire to my own dwelling to bask in my accomplishments. Flushed with triumph, glistening in the sheen of sweat of the merry athlete, I turned in toward my palace to bless my own household, overflowing with good feeling for each and every one of us. My heart was beating gladly. This was a capital day's work well done, I was thinking, for me and for my God; and I was thinking this way until I stepped across the threshold with my retinue of devoted admirers, and Michal, that daughter of Saul, before I could utter the first in the train of benedictory words I had prepared, sprang out to attack me and to shriek and bay at me like a maddened animal with a countenance so deformed by malevolence that she was hardly recognizable. I tell you truthfully, for a moment I was terrified, frozen in place. I gaped with horror. All her beauty was departed. It has never returned. I see her always with that same inhuman and distorted face, her eyes feral, her teeth bared. I do not know if she saw what she looked like. I do not know if she ever regretted the intemperate outburst with which she hurt and affronted me unforgivably for the very last time, even though the rest of her life was a misery because of it.
'How glorious was the king of Israel today,' were the sneering words with which she excoriated me, spewing into my face her bitterness and contempt, as though I were anyone but that king of Israel to whom she was alluding in her tirade, 'who uncovered himself in the eyes of the handmaids of his servants, as one of the vain fellows shamelessly uncovereth himself.'
And I came blazing right back at her, saying, 'It was before the Lord that I played, which chose me before thy father, and before all his house to anoint me ruler over the people of the Lord, over Israel. Not before you. Therefore will I play before the Lord again. I shalt make myself naked if I want to. And of the maidservants of which thou hast spoken, of them shall I be had in honor. Go now to thy quarters. And never with thy shadow darken this door of mine again, except thou first hast permission.'
Thus was she banished. I went no more to lie with her. Therefore Michal the daughter of Saul had no child unto the day of her death.
It was not, however, the last I heard from her, for she paid no more attention to my prohibition against harassing me than she had to. In painful fact, I heard from her daily. She sent messengers hourly with threatening agendas of what she would and would not put up with and unending manifestos of criticism and demand. She wanted an alabaster bathtub after I gave one to Bathsheba; she wanted queenly dressing tables, an antique cake-stand, and larger, more public rooms in which to hold court in the harem. I thought often of moving her into an apartment all the way in the back, where I might never have to run into her on my trips to the others. She wanted more maidservants, and she wanted me to provide them. She had fewer than the five beauties Abigail had brought with her into our marriage for her own domestic convenience and my lubricious diversion. They were darling little creatures, all five, and I had children by two or three. Michal's chronic bursts of outrage and invective would resound eerily through my palace like the denunciations of something supernatural and damned, and sometimes leave me longing to be deaf, or even dead. Don't think I can't hear her still. Don't think I still can't see that whited, sepulchral face solidified like stone into an expression of violent hatred and misanthropy. The honeymoon was over.
So it came to pass in an eveningtide after Joab had been dispatched into Ammon that I arose from off my bed to avoid another servant from her bearing another mortifying communication of discontent. I hastened upstairs to my roof for some peace and to escape the baking heat inside. And I saw this luscious woman washing herself on her roof less than a bowshot away and eyeing me without modesty as she saw me regarding her. She was as naked as a jaybird and not afraid. I was impressed by that. She was not ashamed of the female form she presented or of my arrogant scrutiny, and the woman was indeed very beautiful to look upon. In fact, she even turned herself toward me a bit more to allow me a better frontal view of her plump belly and thick mons veneris. I will not deny I was attracted. Deep was calling unto deep when our gazes met and remained resolutely locked.
'Do my eyes deceive me?' I mused aloud softly, 'or is her bird truly ash blonde?'
'Your eyes,' my faithful servant Benaiah responded with honesty, 'do not deceive you.'
I sent to inquire after the woman and, scarcely breathing, hardly moving, gawked as she continued to lather and rinse seductively the rounded hills and pleasant valleys of her body, where I was already thirsting to pasture and knew in the marrow of my bones I would soon be grazing. She was making my mouth water as she stood there bare-assed on the roof in her basin of fired clay. In a sidelong, challenging way, she watched me steadily all the while. No one had ever looked so beautiful to me; no one has ever looked so beautiful to me since, not even she. Before I knew it, my cock was hard. I stroked it firmly beneath the fine white linen of my summer skirt. I wanted to put it into this strange unblushing woman. Who was she? Who she was turned less and less important as we prolonged our salacious eye contact while I waited to find out.
Everything about Bathsheba then was provocative and odd. She was no less haunting physically when she was already my mistress and I scanned her close up. I had never seen such peculiar breasts: they were small, and tipped with pink rather than dead-leaf brown. She had the weirdest eyes: they were blue. I had never beheld so strange a skin: it was practically white. Her legs as well were most extraordinary: they were long, they were thin, they were shapely and fetching. She herself--I don't know how to describe so striking a phenomenon--was tall, as tall almost as I, and her pelvis was ample without appearing thick. She was not stocky, not the least bit eastern European. Her nose was small, precise and straight, and a trifle retrousse. Yet in spite of all these physical irregularities, she was not unpleasant to look at. In fact, she Was rather pretty. The uneven and abnormal color of her hair was already as light as honey, the fairer strands as pale as hay, with here and there some streaks of yellow. When we were married and I came upon her one day experimenting diligently with brushes of hyssop twigs to turn herself blonde in the tincture of loosestrife and saffron she had blended, I fathomed with a gasp what Bathsheba was up to: Bathsheba was trying to turn herself into a wasp! Between Michal and Bathsheba I had married the entire range. I was missing a schvartze, although Ahinoam and Maccah were both almost dark enough to pass.
How Michal envied and hated her! Wrinkled ass and all, Bathsheba was something truly commanding to look at then and knew better than any other woman in the world how to make a man feel good. And doubtless she would know how to please one again if the spirit moved her to do so. She had stretch marks on her buttocks from using them so much.
How Michal resented and detested her, along with the plethora of others equally at home in my household who now had as much right as she to be there. The list of names of wives and concubines and maidservants had grown too long for either one of us to fling at the other in its entirety. This one was to
o noisy, that one unsociable, this one snored, that one didn't bathe enough, the other bathed too often and wasted water. What a plague she was. Michal, who scorned my elegant Abigail as provincial, barren, and middle class, was afflicted sorely each time I fathered another child by Bathsheba or by one of the winsome damsels Abigail had brought into my household as maidservants for both of us.
'It is better,' was one of the maxims with which she lectured me repeatedly, 'to spill your seed on the ground than in the belly of a whore.'
That shows how much she knew.
Michal never tired of telling me she despised me for consorting with such trollops as my other wives, instead of spending more time with her. How she whined and fulminated for a child of her own! She slammed doors and stamped her foot and smashed mirrors and rouge pots and perfume flasks, as though the procreation of the species took place in tantrums of petulance and tempestuous discharges of irrational antipathies. Hell hath no fury, she taught me, like a woman scorned. What was the point in telling her over and over again that she no longer could bear one and, after childless marriages to two men, had possibly always been barren?
'Why can't I bear one?' she snapped. 'I'm just as good as everyone else. I've been married to you longer than any of those others, haven't I? And I am the daughter of a king.'
'You're too old now,' I told her mildly, hoping once more, against the weight of all previous evidence to the contrary, to succeed in turning away somebody's wrath with a soft answer. 'You should have thought more about that twenty and thirty years ago, when you wouldn't put out more than once a month.'
'That has nothing to do with it,' she flashed back at me. 'I'll put out now.'
'It's too late now. You're past the age.'
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