Delilah: A Novel (6 page)

It did, of course. Orev never deceived himself; he knew he could not afford that luxury.

“—why, my own wife, barren these many years, now bears fruit, thanks to Yahweh’s greatness. Now tell me, Hamor, can the idols of Philistia do as much?”

Yes, high time to go elsewhere. The conversation was about to turn heated, and Orev knew precisely who would say what.

Having left the circle of men, Orev headed down the hill from the gate to the well, where the women stood gossiping. Tsipporah, Manoah’s wife, smiled at Orev as he approached. “Have you come to carry my water jar for me, Orev?”

Without awaiting his answer, she continued talking. “You have had six children, Serach—tell me, did you crave strange foods when you were carrying a child?” Tsipporah didn’t give Serach a chance to speak, quickly adding, “I crave all manner of things forbidden to me now. Wine, and meat, and—”

Orev watched the two oldest women in the village whisper to each other behind their hands. He liked Tsipporah, who treated him kindly, when she noticed him. Unfortunately, like her husband, she also didn’t know when to stop talking.

“Let me carry your water jar, Wife of Manoah,” Orev said hastily, and more loudly than he usually spoke. He reached for the heavy jar, lost his balance, tipped cool well-water over Tsipporah’s feet.

“Have you
no
wits at all, Tsipporah? Orev can’t carry a full water jar, and neither should you, in your condition.” Basemath, wife of Asher, the wealthiest man in the village, began issuing orders. “Orev, go to my house and tell my handmaid Ellah to come carry water to Manoah’s house. And you, Tsipporah, walk with me. You remember that I promised you my recipe for spice-cake.”

As simply as that, the immediate danger vanished. Tsipporah walked off up the hill with Basemath, and Orev headed towards Asher’s house, as its mistress had bidden him.

You are a kind woman, Tsipporah, but neither you nor your husband has the sense Yahweh granted goats
. Even at fourteen, Orev knew how to judge men and women—another skill he had needed to learn young.

After giving Basemath’s message to Ellah, Orev continued on past the house and its garden, into the small orchard on the hillside behind the village. There he lowered himself carefully to the ground beneath the oldest olive tree in Zorah and stared back down at the clustered houses.

The sun stood at zenith; light poured down over the mud-brick buildings like molten gold until the village seemed formed of the precious metal. At midday, no shadows lurked between the houses or along the low stone walls.

Manoah’s house lay at the northern edge of Zorah, farthest from the village gate and the path down to the well, and had been built against the village wall, which formed the back wall of the house itself. Orev studied the house: small, old, and rather shabby-looking, Manoah’s dwelling possessed a singular advantage. A woman who did not wish to be seen leaving Zorah could easily slip out through the midden gate. Manoah’s house itself would hide her from inquisitive eyes.

And then, if she chose, she could walk swiftly away. Once over the rise of the hill, a two hours’ walk southward would take her to the Lady’s Grove at Timnath . . .

Was that what Tsipporah had done? If she had dared enter Timnath’s Grove on one of the nights of the full moon, she could have
found half a dozen men hot to lie with her before she had taken as many steps. If she had done so, who could blame her? Without a son to care for them in their old age, how would Manoah and his wife survive? No, Orev couldn’t blame either Tsipporah for daring so greatly or Manoah for proclaiming himself blessed by Yahweh.

And if Manoah and his wife had merely announced that she had at last conceived, the villagers would have congratulated them, and that would have been an end to the matter.

Why did they have to proclaim themselves visited by an angel of the Lord? Manoah should just have said “My wife has been blessed,” and no one would have thought any evil. Now—

Now there was gossip, and harsh whispers, and for all the coming child’s life, unkind people would be able to doubt. There would be trouble.

Orev realized later that he’d made the same mistake he often silently chastised others for: underestimated another’s power to bend events to his or her own will. For Basemath had used her unassailable position as the well-dowered wife of the richest—and therefore the most important—man in Zorah to force public compliance, if not private silence, with her implacable acceptance of Tsipporah’s story. Orev also listened outside the wall as Basemath ordered Tsipporah never again to mention angels, and told her that Manoah must seal his mouth as well.

It was the first time he’d witnessed small power used for great good. What, after all, was Basemath but a woman speaking to another woman? Yet the silencing of Tsipporah meant that the harsh gossip faltered and faded. By the time Tsipporah’s son was born, not only did no one bring up the child’s questionable paternity but several of the women admiring the sturdy infant swore they remembered Manoah’s father, or possibly his grandfather, had also had just such golden hair.

And as if to prove they had nothing to conceal, Manoah and Tsipporah bestowed upon their son a name honoring his sun-bright hair.

Samson. The Son of the Sun.

As if Samson’s very birth blessed all within his village, soon after Orev found himself granted something he had not dared dream of: a way to earn his place in the world—more, an honored place. For a harper traveling south from Shunem lost his way, and wandered into Zorah tired and hungry and offering to sing a tale of great deeds in exchange for his food and lodging. Later, Orev realized that Balim had been, at best, a poor harper and worse singer—but the man could weave a song out of any story, turning dull acts into grand deeds. With the rest of the villagers, Orev listened as the harper Balim sang of how the warrior Joshua had slain forty times forty men. And then, to please the women, Balim sang of a pretty widow who followed her husband’s mother to a new life with a rich new husband.

Balim swore the tales all true, which Orev doubted. But the telling of them drew Orev; out of nothing, the harper created life. More, it was a task Orev thought he could emulate. A lame man was useless, a burden. A lame harper gleaned praise and payment.

Before Balim left Zorah, Orev had vowed he, too, would become a harper—and a better one than Balim. All he needed was a tale to tell, and a harp.

“Songs are everywhere,” Balim told him. “That one of the widow—I heard it as gossip by half a dozen wells down near Bethlehem. And most men and women will listen to anything that lets them rest and laugh and weep for others.”

“I need a harp, too,” Orev said, and Balim smiled and untied the cloth he carried his belongings in. He pulled out a harp that even Orev could tell was old, its wood dry and its strings fraying.

“Take this one,” Balim said.

Orev accepted the harp, thinking already how he would oil the wood to make it shine again. “Why?” he asked, and Balim shrugged, as if handing a harp to a boy he barely knew was of no import, rather than a great gift.

“Because all harpers are brothers, I suppose. And because you are
the one who truly listened to my tales—I could see you thinking how you would sing them better, you know. And because I’m tired of carrying my old harp as well as my new one. But don’t go telling people I taught you, because I have my reputation to think of, boy.”

Orev had thanked him, and promised he would say nothing, if Balim would only show him once how to coax music from harp-strings. The bargain struck, Balim remained another day, taught Orev enough to begin. Creating songs proved simpler than Orev had feared; unexpectedly, he had found his true gift from Yahweh.

He was no longer Orev, the crippled orphan. He was Orev, Zorah’s harper.

As if in gratitude, the village of Zorah provided Orev with the substance that formed his greatest song.

Samson.

Samson grew swiftly from an infant waving his hands at everything he saw, as if trying to grasp the world, to a boy asking endless questions that no one quite knew how to answer. Oddly enough, it was Orev who became the boy’s closest friend. Life opened few gates for a lame man; luck and determination had led Orev to one that opened a path to honor and praise. A harper needed tales to tell, and a boy whose birth was foretold by an angel provided food for at least one song. Orev did not realize, at first, that Samson’s life would become the heart of his own, be the spark that kindled an undying flame in his songs. Orev was already nearly grown when Samson was born, and what interest did a babe hold for a boy of fourteen? But as Orev grew into manhood and Samson became a boy—a sun-haired boy taller and stronger than any other boy in Zorah—Orev found that Samson owned something worth more than the size and strength bestowed upon him by their god.

Samson also possessed a kind heart.

By the time he was seven, it was simply a fact of life in the village of Zorah that Samson would willingly shake rattles to amuse infants as their mothers baked or spun, happily pick stones out of the fields to
clear them for planting, carry water jugs up the hill from the well, sit patiently as the eldest woman in the village droned endless complaints.

So of course it was Samson who befriended Orev, the lame harper. At first Samson’s cheerful interest had angered Orev.
Too good to be true
had been Orev’s thought when Samson asked, most politely, to sit and listen as Orev labored to master the skills he hoped would be his livelihood. And then,
Must I suffer watching Samson flaunt his perfection? Do I not endure enough without being forced to admire the angel’s son?

But before he could summon the words to send the boy away, Samson asked, with the shattering frankness of the very young, “Why does your face look like that?”

Odd words, to change a life forever, but they made Orev look again at the boy standing before him. Samson regarded Orev with eyes clear and blue as the summer sky, waiting.

“Because I was thinking unkind thoughts,” Orev said. “Do you truly wish to listen as I work?”

“I like songs.” Samson apparently took Orev’s question as permission, and sat down cross-legged at Orev’s feet.

“You may not like mine. I am not going to be singing whole tales but practicing, testing to learn which words sound best together, and how many times I must repeat them—or if I must sing them only once.”

“Like Abner with his spears, only with words? All right. Test them.”

Orev looked down at Samson and fought the urge to laugh.
No, you have no pride, Samson, but you have something that may prove even more dangerous—you are as stubborn as a badger
. Most would let Orev alone, unless they needed something from him. Samson insisted that Orev open himself to another’s interest.

Ah well, he’s only a boy, no matter how highly he’s regarded. It can’t hurt me to befriend the darling of all the village
. “Very well, Samson, I will test my songs, and you will listen and tell me if they sound well or ill.”

“Will they be true songs?”

“Are not all songs true tales?” Orev suddenly wished he had spoken less freely; there were tales it was not wise to examine too closely.

“My mother says,” Samson began, and Orev held up his hand before Samson could mention angels.

“And a boy should listen to his mother, and obey her, of course. But is your mother a harper? No, of course she is not—”

“Why aren’t women harpers?” Samson asked, and Orev grasped this distraction, discussed the matter as if it were of serious import. Orev neither knew nor cared why women were not harpers—but he did know it was better to argue whether a girl might sing for her living as well as a boy than to answer awkward questions about a mother’s bedtime tales.

Pious truth or blasphemous lie, Tsipporah? Neither is good for your son to hear. Did you and Manoah never think what a burden you laid upon the boy’s shoulders? Samson—Son of the Sun—could you not at least have named him something less potent?

Orev gradually turned their talk back to how songs were made. “Like a pearl, each contains a grain of hard truth. But they are coated with pretty words and polished with dreams. That is how men create songs—much as women weave thread into cloth, and then embroider upon that cloth until it becomes bright with—let us say with scarlet poppies.

“Now, if I weave dreams and truth together well in my songs, men will think them the same. That is the truth of songs.”

Proud of this explanation, Orev reminded himself to memorize those fine words to use again. He smiled at Samson, who regarded him with grave eyes and said, “But isn’t that the same as lying?”

Oddly, Orev felt the urge to laugh. He set his harp aside and laid his hand on Samson’s bright hair. “Yes, in a way. And no, in another.” Orev reached for the harp again, and set his fingers upon its strings.

“Now listen. ‘Once there dwelt a man who longed for a good wife. A fair maiden pleased his heart, and it pleased him to work many years to win her. Many years he labored, and was repaid, repaid at last by two good wives instead of only one.’ Do you recognize the tale?”