After Abel and Other Stories (26 page)

“I tried to make her flee,” the woman continued, “but she wouldn't leave her sons, even though they were lifeless corpses. Reason left her at the end, I'm sure of it,” she said, as if offering a small kindness amid a roaring chaos. “She told me to kill her, but I couldn't. I tried to take her by the arm, to drag her away, into the fields. I thought we could run here together. She shook me off, rushed toward the soldiers. Your sister threw herself onto a sword and died with her boys. I have been running since to get here, to tell you.”

At first, everyone was silent. Then the keening started, low at first, one woman's wail picked up by another,
until all the women of Gallim joined in. We were crying for her loss. Only Michel didn't cry. She stared at the woman on the ground, but it was as if she had gone sightless and saw nothing. Then she turned away, walked to her house, and closed the door behind her.

Palti

I
got back from the pasture as fast as I could. The old women tried to pat my arm, the young to comfort me with looks that showed sympathy and something more, a pain that had become personal. But no matter how they loved her, this was not their loss. Michel bore it alone.

I rushed past them all, ran into our room. She lay on our bed in the dark. I couldn't tell if she was asleep, but she spoke as soon as I walked in.

“I'm next. There's no one else left.”

“You're safe here.” I tried to assure her. “David is only sending his army for the men who could take the throne from him.”

She turned, put her hand to my face, which retained the warmth of my run against the chill of her fingers. “I tried to tell you.” There was such sadness in her voice. “I will never be anything other than Saul's daughter.”

“You are my wife,” I said. “David abandoned you to
your fate. He never looked back.”

“There are still men in this country who would follow Saul, even if they had to do it through me.”

“Please, my love, have faith. David has forgotten you.” I could hear myself begging, whether of her or of God I still don't know.

She cried then. She buried herself in me and let loose all the sorrow of a person whose past has been destroyed. Michel was all that was left of the house of Saul, which had rejected her. They had given her to me.

Gallim

S
he changed after that. We watched her grow thinner, her skin grey as sage leaves. She still rose to work with us in the morning, came out into the fields to help with the lambing, sat down to eat at dusk, but she rushed away to vomit up whatever she ate, then reeled back to us, her eyes rimmed red, lips chapped and dry. She always looked on the edge of illness. Finally, she stopped coming out of her house. Day after day, a neighbor girl went in to look after her, spent long hours at her side, along with Palti, the silence he had finally shook off overtaking him again.

The better part of a year passed. We tried to go on, but the nation remained in turmoil. David was king in
the south, growing stronger by the day, but the north still rebelled against him. Gallim was caught on the border between the two. Our watchtowers were never empty now. Israel's unrest gave the Philistines and Ammonites, all our old adversaries, an opening to wreak more havoc, and we were on our own, loyal to a dead king, a headless state.

The Moabites came closest. First, the birds took to the sky in the hundreds, released shrill calls of distress as they surged away. We saw the smoke before the flames licked the hilltops and tried to swallow heaven. Our enemy had set the pines on fire to clear a path directly to our village. The smell wove thickly into our lungs. Every villager mourned the loss of that place, the cool shade and the cold pond. We remembered playing there as children. Couples wrapped their arms around each other, clung tight to the memory of loving there out of sight and protected.

So we were ready for the alarm when one of our scouts ran down the hill, warning that a band of soldiers was approaching. The men of Gallim gathered at the mouth of the town, strongest at the front, to defend us any way they could. Our relief was great, then, when we saw who walked toward us. Abner, whom Saul had trusted, led his men among us. We greeted him with a cheer, thinking he was our savior, the bearer of the first good news we'd heard in years.

But we had opened our arms to the devil. He hadn't come to give us comfort, but to rip us apart.

“I'm here to speak to Palti,” he said, looking around the crowd. Palti stepped out from among the other men, smiling to see his old captain.

“I've come to take her back to her husband,” Abner said, his face hardened even to his former soldier.

“I'm her husband.”

“A woman can't be married to two men at once. I wouldn't think I'd have to explain that to you,” Abner said, his voice filled with scorn. “But the king thanks you for watching over her so well these past years.”

We didn't know what to do, what to say. Michel solved that for us. She pushed her way through the crowd, shoving us aside. We had never seen her like this. Her face was soft and haggard, her hair wild. She looked as if she hadn't slept in days, but she blazed with rage. She shook with it. “You too, Uncle?” she demanded. “You would betray my father's memory, turn away from a lifetime's loyalty?”

Abner looked almost apologetic. The mask of cold detachment dropped from his face. “I am still a soldier. The war is over. David is my king now. He has demanded that his wife be returned to him. I will obey him.”

She threw herself at him then. Fury gave her vigor, and she attacked him with her whole body. This, we saw,
was the woman who had faced down the king. Too late we realized that she had always been filled with anger, that it lay brimming beneath the surface. How well she hid it from us behind her open-mouthed laughter and love for Palti.

They were matched in height, but he had the advantage of weight and strength, and a lifetime of battle. Abner easily caught her hands, held them tight until Palti intervened, gently removed her from the older man's grip, kept her close by his side.

“Please,” Palti begged. “Don't do this. I have given so much and have so little.” It was the first we had heard him speak of the sacrifice he had made for king and country. He had held it until that moment, when he needed it most.

“I always liked you,” Abner replied. “I wouldn't want to hurt you over this. Don't make me take her by force.”

We were shocked at how casually Abner spoke. Palti had no answer to his threat. He could do nothing but hold onto his wife. Abner considered for a moment, then made an offer. It was nothing, an insult, but Palti grabbed at it. “We will take her with us, but you can walk with her for a bit, so you can say goodbye.”

We watched them leave, Palti and Michel, their hands grasped tightly to the other, surrounded by soldiers. Their feet kicked dust into the air. Soon, that was
all that was left of them.

Palti

I
cried the whole way. I begged Abner to reconsider. I told him Michel and I would leave Gallim, leave Israel, that no one would hear from us again. I told him I just wanted my wife.

Michel walked silently beside me the whole time. Whatever will she had shown before was gone. Her hand clutched mine, but otherwise she seemed slack, emptied out. The fight had left her.

Eventually, she spoke. “Stop. You won't change his mind. We'll lose our last moments together.”

Tears fell freely down my cheeks. “Why don't you argue?” I was desperate, angry even at her. “Do you want to go back there, to your
real
husband?”

She stayed quiet, mild no matter what I said. “You have taught me how to love and be loved. I will take that with me, because there will be no love where I am going.”

We kept walking. The soldiers had given us a little room. They walked ahead of us and behind us, but we were alone.

“My time with you has been my real life. Everything before, everything that is to come, is nothing. You are the husband of my heart, but you need to forget me now.”

I sobbed, “I can't.”

“You can. Go home. Take another wife. She will be lucky to have you. Cherish what we've done. There is no fighting this anymore. They'll kill everyone in Gallim if I don't go back to him. They'll burn the village to the ground until nothing is left.” She was so resigned, so unlike the woman I had brought into my home years before. She was also right. We were powerless against the new king.

“I'm so sorry,” she said. “I wish I had trusted you sooner. I wish you hadn't been drawn into the mess of my life. You have so much left to do.” Her voice became urgent. “You must do it. You must do it, because I will never be allowed to again. Do you understand?”

There was so much more I wanted to say, but I did understand. I was crying too hard by then to answer. I nodded. I would obey.

We walked a long way, but we came to the end too quickly. I could see David's camp on the next ridge. It spread over the entire mountain, a dragon with a fearsome head and a mighty tail.

“This is as far as you go, Palti,” Abner said. There was no malice left in him. It seemed he even felt bad for me. “Don't make this harder on yourself than it has to be. Go home, man. Don't make so much fuss over a woman.”

There was no answer I could give him. There was nothing
I could say to a man who didn't understand why I would want this woman, how she had freed me from myself, had opened me to life after I had given up on it. He pulled her hand from mine. I stood frozen as they made their way into the valley, my last sight of her clouded by my own tears.