After Abel and Other Stories (24 page)

“Surely, your father feels affection for you,” I said. Fathers love their children. This was a fact I knew as surely as the color of the sky or the sheep's birthing season.

She gave that laugh again, looked at me over the ass's back. It was the first time she and I had ever looked directly at one another. “When I was a child, my mother told me that I was not like other little girls, that the regular rules don't apply to daughters of the king. I thought she meant we were privileged, that we were meant for greater things. Now I realize how kind she was being, but she hid the truth from me. There's not a girl alive who really has freedom over her own life. They are bartered away for a sheep or a plot of arable land. But Saul's daughters are hemmed in like no others. We are at the mercy of history and the men who would trade us like prizes.”

It was hard for me to listen to her, struck as I was by the directness of her gaze, the way her eyes glistened,
black as brined olives, but I paid close attention. She was so young to have this much bitterness eating at her soul, I thought, but I couldn't say anything in return. Her life to that point had given her reason to think that way. So I stayed silent.

“There is a strict hierarchy,” she continued. “My sister was the real trophy. To be given her as a wife meant something. I have always been a second-best reward. Merav and I once thought our lives would unfold in a series of golden-hued dreams. Both married to great warriors, our lives dedicated to the future of Israel. As always, she got the dream, and I learned how silly girlish plans can be. Aren't you glad,” she said, turning to me again, a crooked smile on her lips, “to know how highly your king esteems you now?”

Perhaps she was right. But Saul had married her to David first, whose reputation was only growing at the time. Even in Gallim, the girls and women sang songs about his exploits. I began to ask about him, to question her logic, but my lips closed on the words. I didn't want to begin this marriage by learning how much more she still loved someone else.

We continued to walk. The hills grew steeper. We passed rows of tall scrub oaks and wended our way through Gallim's olive groves. Eventually, I insisted that she mount the donkey's back, which is how we rose past the terraces and entered the village, Michel astride
the animal. I held the reins and led her into town.

When we entered Gallim, I saw it as if through her eyes. It was just a tiny speck of a village. Immediately, she was the focus of everyone's attention. I watched her gather herself, and thought, this is what bravery looks like. She greeted each friend and relative of mine, ate the food that they had prepared for our arrival, cheered the boys and girls who sang for our delight, but I could see how it wore on her. In a single day, the life that she knew, the one she had expected, had been snatched from her.

Finally, I announced that we were tired. “It's been a long day. Go home, friends. Tonight's celebration doesn't mean we won't have to wake up for work early tomorrow morning.”

I led her past the smaller houses to my home. It sat at the top of the village, the largest structure in Gallim. I showed her around, the fire pit and cistern outside, pointed out the room my mother and younger brother shared, and then took her into the room I had slept in alone for so many years.

“You can take this room,” I said. “I'll sleep elsewhere until you're comfortable in my home.” I hoped she liked it in there. Thick woolen hangings in ochre and brown covered the walls to keep the cold out. The heavy blanket on the bed was woven from the softest wool our sheep produce. My mother had left a jug of wine and
some bread on the floor for her, in case she woke up hungry in this strange place.

“That's a nice gesture,” she said. “But I'm just another Israelite wife now. I'm not the first to be brought far from home to lie in her husband's bed.”

That wasn't the answer I had expected. She lay down on the bed. It seemed to me to be a gesture of resignation rather than eagerness.

I am a man of few words. It has never been easy for me to speak about myself. The walls of my house are made of thick limestone. No one could hear us, but I found myself whispering. Michel couldn't understand what a gift she was offering to me. “I am damaged,” I said. “I thought I'd never marry.”

She had to have noticed my dead arm right away, but so far, she had pretended not to see how it hung limp by my side, stripped of muscle, and useless. I didn't give her a chance to ask about it now. “The priests would reject any sacrifice I brought. I thought I would die childless.”

She sat up in alarm. “I will be your wife,” she said. “I will stand by your side and lie in your bed. But I can never have your children.”

“I don't understand,” I said. Confusion wiped away all my other thoughts. Would everything I thought about the world be turned over by this woman? “That's for God to decide.”

When she answered, her voice was firm, unyielding. I had heard that tone many times. It was the way Saul spoke when he made a pronouncement that was sure to elicit complaints. “Women and God have always worked together in bringing life into this world,” she said.

“But why?” I had finally been given a chance to have a life like other men. It was being taken from me before it even began.

There was cruelty in her voice when she replied. “No matter where I am or who you are, I will always be Saul's daughter. Any children of mine will be caught up in that lineage, no matter who their father is.”

“You are my wife now,” I said, as if that alone could push away any other reality. “I don't have much to offer, but I will give you the fullest life I can.”

I barely knew her. I had only the smallest glimpse into what she had suffered, but I wanted to show her that I wasn't like the other men she had known, that she could trust me.

She must have seen what a blow her words had struck in me. “I'm sorry,” she said. I saw that she meant it, although it didn't sting any less. “It's the only way.”

Gallim

W
e watched them become closer and finally understood the strength of their bond, but even
after we knew the truth, they never discussed her past with us. No one can know what happens behind the closed door of a marriage, not even in a place as small as Gallim. Some secrets can still be kept, and they guarded hers until the very end.

We never spoke of it, never convened a meeting to hash out differences or develop a plan. We were of one mind. Boys continued to go up to the watchtower to scan the hills for encroaching enemies, burdened with the responsibility of our increased danger. As always, there were Philistines, Ammonites, and Moabites who would come to snatch our lands. Now we had to protect her, as well. For a long time, we didn't know what we were protecting her from, but we are fierce in our fidelity here. From the moment she walked into this collection of buildings that we call home, she was ours. We would never give her up without a fight.

Palti

I
wanted to resist, to win her heart first, but I was still a young man. I had been denied the pleasures of a woman's body, first as part of my pledge to Saul and then because of my injury. And there she was, lying beside me every night, giving her body to me as she had promised.

I tried to be gentle and to give her pleasure. We were alike, she and I. We both had our losses. We both wore their signs on our hands, mine withered, hers blue. I'm not proud to say that I hoped even sadness could bring us together. But each time I came to her, I thought I was fighting the memory of another, more vigorous man, a better lover.

As usual when it came to her, I was wrong.

It had been months since I brought her home with me. She seemed more comfortable, as if she had grown used to the smaller boundaries of our lives here. But she remained closed to me, polite and distant, as daughters of the king are taught to be, so I took her to the one place that no one who had ever passed through this area could resist. I took her to see the secret pleasures of these mountains, a patch of pines one hilltop away that we locals knew so well. Gallim lay behind us. The short valley released its scent of flowering jasmine.

When we entered the copse, all of life seemed blotted out. Sound receded. The sun filtered weakly through the dense foliage. I had come here since I was a boy. It was a small place, an acre or two at most, but so different than the landscape around it, where the imprint of our presence was everywhere, from the terraced pastures and fields of barley to the village itself.

Here, I was never the eldest son who was expected to learn the ways of his father's business. In these woods,
I could play my childish games with all the other village children. The boys ran through the trees imagining themselves celebrated warriors, defeated armies lying at our feet. Girls imitated their mothers, draped branches to make small houses, cooked loaves of mud bread. Although we mimicked our parents, none of us knew we were practicing for adulthood, even though we had no idea how different a child's notion of war is from the real thing, with its stink of blood and fear, or that a woman's toil will lose its thrill in the grinding dailiness of her chores.

I led her around the trees, deeper into the thicket. Rocks embedded themselves in the covering of pine needles on the ground. As we stepped, thorns reached up to tear at our ankles and hems. At the top of the hill was a small pond, the water dark and clean. All the local children loved this pool. It was our private sanctuary. We snuck away to swim or bathe, thought of it as our own, away from the demands and tired talk of adults.

Michel breathed deeply. She removed her sandals, lifted her dress to her knees, stepped into the cold water, and discovered what everyone else did in that place. I watched her face empty and then fill again with a look I had never seen. It was how she looked, I realized, when she was alone and at ease. It was the effect of the place, the trees, the water, the cool air, and the distant sun,
kept at bay but benevolently present.

I sat on a boulder by the side of the pond, let her wander around its muddy bank. I imagined the wet dirt massaging the skin between her toes. I had felt that chilly comfort so many times.

Eventually, she turned back to me. “Ask what you want about him,” she said. It was an invitation, not a challenge. In all the time we had been together, David lay between us, a third member of our marriage, invisible but exerting his unseen influence.

I wanted to know what kept her so wary, why she only put on an act of happiness with my people, when the truth was so different. “What happened?”

“David deserted me. My father burst into our room to kill him. Jonathan had rushed in to warn us, so I shoved David out the window, told him to run. When Saul arrived, he took up so much space it was as if I was alone with a giant. He barely noticed me, but I put my hands on his chest, tried to stall him while my husband ran through the night without a thought to my fate. My devotion was rewarded with a broken rib and bruises all along my spine when my father flung me against a wall.

“David never looked back. Jonathan went to see him one more time. They said goodbye. He didn't even send a message to me.”

She moved her foot in the water, caused ripples to spread out from her still center.

“I expected him to take other wives. Powerful men do that. They surround themselves with as many women as they like, each to fulfill another pleasure—money, land, politics, lust. Women like me know from the first not to imagine anything else. But he took me first and said he loved me. I was stupid enough to believe him.”