Elijah (19 page)

The boy could stand it no longer. He wrenched himself from his mother’s hold and ran to Elijah. The prophet raised his arm just in time to deflect the small fist that came hard toward his face. Bosheth’s thin arms flailed at Elijah, but the prophet caught every blow on his arm. The boy screamed, “You thief!” and in exasperation ran to the sleeping pads on the other side of the room and buried his face in them.

Elijah looked at the woman. Her face was buried in her hands. He took the last bite of the cake and turned the waterbowl up to drink the rest of it.

He set the bowl down, then rose and went around the table to the woman. He pulled her hands into his and held them until she looked up. Her face was wet, the flesh puffed from her silent crying. “Now,” he said, “go and fix that meal for yourself and your son.”

She stared into his eyes.

“You proved your confidence in Yahweh,” he said, “even in spite of your fear and anger, as you watched me eat the last of your food. You would have stopped me if your doubt had been stronger than your faith. Go and cook the meal.”

Slowly, she pulled her hands away from Elijah’s, still staring with wonder at him. She backed away, then turned at the door and walked to the oven. She bent down to the two small jars and looked into each one. Her eyes widened. She picked up one of them and reached into it with her fingers to confirm what her eyes saw. A powdered grain met her touch. She reached into the other jar, then pulled back her fingers. She held them up in the sunlight. Clear oil glistened on their tips. She looked back toward the house, then up toward the sky. With stiff, uncertain steps she walked toward the open door. Elijah stood just inside. She collapsed to her knees and threw her arms around his ankles. Oblivious to the soil that covered them, she began to kiss his feet. The boy watched in amazement from the pads.

Elijah reached down to pull her up. Holding her shoulders, he spoke softly but firmly. “I did not give you the oil and meal. Yahweh did. Do not kneel before me.” He pulled her to him and held her until her weeping subsided. Then she pushed her away gently. “The boy is hungry,” he said. “Go and prepare his food.”

Chapter Ten

The sharp point of the awl touched Baana’s ear. The priest jabbed the tool quickly through the flesh until its point pressed into the piece of thick leather he held behind the lobe. Baana did not flinch. He stared ahead, at nothing. The villagers clustered in the street around the door of the sanctuary to watch the ceremony. Abinadab stood opposite the priest, smiling, dressed resplendently in wine-colored robes. He was a tall man, broad-shouldered, and carried himself as a prince who might had earned rather than inherited his royalty.

Baana’s friends watched in silence. Their faces were as expressionless as the stones of the coastline beyond the city’s gates. The priest reached to take the earring from Abinadab. As he fitted the mark of ownership into the newly-pierced ear, the skin of each watching face tightened a bit. Baana was one of their own. Now he was a slave for life.

The winter wind from the Great Sea brought a chill, and most of the people stayed no longer than was necessary to see the ceremony through. They drifted away then, almost silently, one or two at a time. Baana should have been the first to leave, but he remained at the door. Abinadab reached to take his arm, but the priest signaled the master to leave his new slave alone for a while.

The master walked away. The priest stood beside Baana, watching the crowd disperse. There was no speaking, either from Baana and the priest or from the crowd. Only Baana’s slow, labored breathing and the shuffle of sandals on the stone street broke the silence. Closer friends stayed moments longer than the rest, but soon they left, too, until only Baana and the priest remained. The holy man did not speak. He waited for Baana to give some sign of his need. Finally, when the new slave remained silent, the priest clapped him encouragingly on the shoulder, then turned to enter the sanctuary.

Baana still did not move. He stared at but did not see the street or the shops and stalls that lined it. His glazed eyes saw a wheatfield and rows of grapevines, with a watchtower rising from its center. Once it had been his. And his father’s. And his father’s father’s. For centuries. Now it was Abinadab’s.

That was before Meor-baal and the prophet companion came to Dor. He had listened to the prophet, and even now with the throb of his ear and the weight of the slave ring he could feel the excitement that grew that night in his loins. With his friend Shammah and several other young men he had run wildly, laughing, up the hill to the sacred grove. He remembered the hot embrace of the zonah under the entwined branches of the oak trees, and on his nakedness the cool breeze from the Great Sea. It had been the most ecstatic night of his life.

When he returned home late in the night his wife had listened well to his recounting of the prophet’s talk of fertility. She accepted his visit to the sacred zonah as an act of necessity and worship, and his sexual prowess in their own marriage bed that night certified that the goddess indeed had granted greater fertility to the house of Baana.

She became pregnant that night, another sign of the power of Asherah. The women who talked with her at the well in the chill of the mornings and evenings did not try to conceal their amazement that at last their friend was with child, and because of the intervention of Asherah. She became honored among her friends.

Then they visited the priest of Baal, the holy man Meor-baal sent to dwell at Dor. They told him of their good fortune. Indeed, he told them, it was a clear sign that Asherah had heard their prayers. The spirit of Baal must truly have dwelt in the zonah. But the pregnancy was a test. Surely a child conceived of such a union on such a night was holy to the goddess.

“You must give the child to Asherah,” the priest advised. “When it is but a week old, while the redness of the womb still clings to its flesh and yet after it has taken milk at the breast of its mother.”

Baana had placed his hand on his wife’s stomach that night, and at that moment the baby moved for the first time. It must be another sign. Yes, the priests agreed that it must be another sign. The baby is holy to Asherah.

His wife wept. She wept more as the time of her delivery approached, and Baana tried to understand. But it was the word of the god. Not to give the child to Baal would be to court disaster; to give it would ensure more children, healthy children, boy children, later on. And Baal would bless the grain and the vines with greater heads and larger clusters.

The baby was a boy, another good sign. Shammah had two daughters, almost grown. Until now, they had none. Baana felt regret then, for his joy was great when he saw the boy that had come from his own loins. But he choked back the grief, and he and his wife took the child to the priest on the eighth day.

Together, the three of them mounted the sloping hill to the shrine. Inside, the priest laid the infant on the altar. The baby cried when he was taken from his mother’s arms, and louder when he was placed naked on the cold stone of the altar. The zonahs stood outside, their hands joined together to encircle the shrine. They chanted in unison, a monotonous, haunting chant that repeated Asherah’s name again and again until the oaks themselves took up the chant, and the leaves and branches spoke her name.

The priest drew a thin-bladed, very sharp knife from a hole bored into the stone of the altar. He turned the infant to its side, and in one swift movement the baby’s crying was interrupted by a choking gurgle. Then he was silent. His blood, tapped by expert strokes, ran quickly down the altar’s drainhole.

The wife shrieked and collapsed at the first stroke of the knife. Baana caught her and knelt to cradle her in his arms.

“Now,” the priest was saying to him, “you must lie quickly with a zonah.” He was at Baana’s side, pulling at his arm. “Quickly, now, you must select a zonah.” He ushered Baana to the entrance. “They are there. Choose one and lie with her beneath the sacred trees.”

The priest went to the wife. He held her face in his hands, then with her veil he wiped the tears from her eyes and cheeks. She watched him, dazed, and he removed the veil. She felt his hands take the veil from her head, and as deftly as he handled the knife to draw the blood from her child, she felt his hands pull away her robes. His hands moved to her breasts and his lips to her mouth as he pressed her down onto her strewn robes.

She did not resist, nor did she move as he consummated his act amid the pain and blood of her recent delivery. Her thoughts were on the dead body of the boy child on the altar above them.

Baana carried his wife in his arms back to their home. Neither of them spoke. The priest remained at the shrine. She wept all that night, but when she arose the next morning her face shined with a new radiance. She talked of lying with the gods, both of them, she and Baana. As the days passed and she resumed her place at the well and with the women, she talked more and more about the promises of Asherah. She would have more children. Baana’s field would yield more than ever before.

She encouraged Baana to borrow from Abinadab for new tools, and for a new storehouse to store the goods Asherah would give them at the next harvest, and for a new ox to replace the old, tired one that had belonged to his father.

Baana listened to her, excited by the obvious favor Asherah had bestowed on them. He went to Abinadab.

He could not repay the loan. The crops that year were average, but he had planned for abundance. Never in the years before Meor-baal and the prophet came to Dor had Abinadab been so unyielding. The moneylender would not grant an extension. Abinadab took away his field. He could live in his house only if he became a slave.

Through the winter he searched for work, while his wife stayed with Shammah and Shammah’s daughters. To repay his friend he helped him break up the field after the early rains loosened the soil. They planted, and then Baana left. There was no work in Dor, and none in Dothan, and none in Samaria. The slaves brought back from Ahab’s victories worked the fields of their new masters. An Israelite laborer could not compete. In the end, he returned to Abinadab and gave himself as a slave. The Sabbatic Year was but a year away; then all Israelites who had sold themselves into slavery would be freed. He moved back into the home he had been born in, on the land of his fathers, and worked the land of his fathers for Abinadab.

Before the year was gone, the drought came. Baana could claim his freedom only to see himself and his wife starve. He had no choice.

But he went to talk with Abinadab, to beg him to let him serve until the drought ended, and then to claim his freedom. Abinadab received him well, and even called for wine to be served, but he would not yield.

“Baana,” the master said, “Baal’s ways are different from Yahweh’s. Melkart is the God of Power, and he will make Dor a powerful city. But the old ways must go. A new class of landowners must spring up to make best use of the land, powerful enough to make trade agreements, rich enough to finance great undertakings.”

Baana told his master of his experience with Asherah. He told him all of it, and tried to persuade Abinadab that Baal wanted to bless him, too.

Abinadab’s answer surprised Baana, but it made sense in a way that never had occurred to him.

“You are a good man, Baana,” the master said. “Now that I know of the blessing Asherah has promised you, I consider myself doubly fortunate to have you in my service. Could it be that your blessings will come through me?”

The master talked of his dreams, and his need for men who knew that land and the people, men who could supervise. “You will live better in my service, Baana, than you ever could on your small field. If you serve me well, I will set you over other men. Perhaps one day I may even set you over all my fields.” Abinadab embraced him then, and Baana recalled a curious pride at being treated so intimately by such a wealthy and powerful man. He agreed to become a slave for life.

Shammah had been angry. His good friend did not understand. They had argued, and Shammah had accused him of giving up his birthright. But what is freedom? He was free only to starve, to be cast about by the gods of nature who were angry one year and bountiful the next, to borrow money in bad years and repay in good ones. And soon, friend Shammah himself must face the decision. To know that the land he worked was his own, and that it was a legacy to pass to his children, was that sense of freedom worth the suffering required to hold it? Would Shammah choose to be free when faced with the cost of freedom? Baana thought not.

Now, standing alone at the door to the sanctuary, staring up and down the empty street, feeling the painful weight of the slave ring in his earlobe, the decision did not feel as he had thought it would. It was too final. He would work the land of his fathers, but the land would not be his. The grain and wine were Abinadab’s. He was Abinadab’s. His children would be Abinadab’s.

But no matter. The choice had been made. It was done now, and it must be the way of Baal. Perhaps Asherah and Melkart blessed Abinadab more because he worshiped more. Perhaps so.

Baana pulled himself out of his trance and descended the stairs. “Yes,” he whispered aloud, “I shall worship more.” Perhaps one day Asherah would give her reward.