Sunrise on the Mediterranean (64 page)

However, her tool had been discovered. She needed to return to Egypt soon, she needed to return with gold, and she needed
to return with a triumphant army bearing spoils of war, the image of Egypt long ago.

The time was now; Horetamun had been dead almost a month.

I
WAS STANDING ON MY BALCONY
, grinding my own grain, since I had no slave, when the rains began in earnest. They’d been teasing along, sprinkling, a shower
here and there. A little squall from cloudy skies most every afternoon. All week long it had been growing cooler. The fields
had been plowed and planted; the grapes trampled into wine; the olives preserved; the pomegranates plucked; and the grain
harvested.

Now the rainy season began.

It was my time to be “on the straw.” As I watched the rain fall, I felt like crying. Which was ridiculous because everything
was going well, really well. Better than any other time period I’d been in.

“You need a hobby,” I told myself aloud. “One that will keep you from talking to yourself.”

I missed my art, the wonder of creating something. Bread did not count as a creative outlet, though I had gotten very good
at baking. I heard a knock on the door, so I set down the stone and ran for it. The mushroom stood in the pouring rain, dancing
with a smile.

Right, she liked dancing in the rain. Footsteps of God or something.

“Avgay’el invites you to the first carding,” she said. “This afternoon.”

I stared at her; the girl was becoming a woman. Moreover, she was exquisite when she moved. Did she have any bones in her
body? “When?”

“This afternoon.”

“
B’seder
, but when?”

“Now.”

“Uh, do I need to bring anything?”

“It’s a carding,” she said. “Are you coming?”

Why not. I closed the door behind me and followed her into the rain.

I plodded along, she danced. Even as she walked, she danced. She was unaware of the glances, the men who stopped in their
tracks, reaching out to their friends to see this woman.

Ahead I saw a group of
giborim.
She was a child even though she moved like pouring oil. “You might want to walk normally for a bit,” I said under my breath.
She danced. They hadn’t sighted her yet. One of them was the Klingon. Maybe we could just go around them?

Thunder.

Suddenly the rains changed from a straight, medium shower into a monumental downpour. I looked around for an overhang, but
the mushroom shouted in delight. In the fading afternoon light she gyrated, twirled, and arabesqued her ways through the street.

The Klingon Uri’a saw her; I saw his face go slack with lust. Another
gibori
stepped forward, but Uri’a stopped him with his sword—Pelesti iron. They exchanged comments, which I could imagine were on
the lines of “I saw her first.”

And the mushroom danced on, her face raised. Your childhood is over, I thought. Uri’a watched. Angry at her, angry at myself,
I stalked through the deluge, ripped off my head covering, and threw it around her. Then I grabbed her by the shoulders and
we marched through the rain. She protested, but I couldn’t forget Uri’a’s expression.

Avgay’el and Shana needed to know this.

We arrived at the palace dripping wet, runny nosed, and generally gross.

An Egyptian stood in the courtyard, an Egyptian I hadn’t seen before. Though he was dressed as a priest, he wore a sword like
a soldier. His kohl had streaked down his face; in fact, he was drenched. No one was around. Curtly I told the mushroom to
go the women’s quarters. ’Sheva glanced balefully at me, then moved on.

“You have been attended, my lord?” I asked in Egyptian. He was startled at the sight of me; his fingers moved in the air,
making the motion against the Evil Eye since I had red hair and green eyes. “Nay, my, uh, lady,” he said.

“Whom are you here to see? Pharaoh Smenkhare camps on the opposite hillside,” I said, attempting usefulness. His eyes narrowed.
I began to think I’d done the wrong thing. “Or are you here to see
haNasi
Dadua?”

“I bring news of a new pharaoh,” he said.

“Akhenaten has flown to Osiris?”

“Akhenaten denied the existence of Osiris,” he said coolly.

Okay, I was doing really well here. I decided to shut up while I could.

“Is the boy, Tuti, is he with Pharaoh?”

Was it my imagination or did the word
pharaoh
come with a lifetime of sarcasm? I shrugged. I didn’t know. I offered him water, then headed to the women’s quarters. Once
inside, with Dadua’s screaming, running children, I sought out Shana, told her of the messenger. Then I told her of the mushroom
and Uri’a. She
tch
’d and sent me to the straw.

The children were laid down for a nap, and we were all passed tufts of wool and two pieces of wood: a tool with two prongs,
another with only one. I was convinced, between carding wool and kneading dough, I would never have to tone again. It was
hard work, and a hard workout, being an ancient woman.

Was I always going to be one? I touched my stomach and fought back tears. Did I want to be?

“Tell us a story, Avgay’el!” the women demanded. Avgay’el was pregnant, though you couldn’t tell. On the other hand, Dadua’s
newest wife, a foreign princess, was largely pregnant. In one sense it seemed weird; on the other, not. Polygamy, theoretically,
seemed acceptable to me; was I becoming an ancient woman?

The skies had opened above Tziyon, drenching us. We could hear the pounding on the roof; the storms had darkened the room.
Ahino’am bade the mushroom light lamps. Then I noticed that ’Sheva had slipped away. More rain dancing, I thought. At least
now she was in the safety of the palace.

Avgay’el picked up her tools and began scraping her cotton tuft, speaking in time to the sound, her voice strong and melodious.
“Given the weather,” she said, “I think I know which story to tell.”

The women laughed. I focused on tearing apart my wool tuft so I could begin carding it.

“The story begins after the First Family had grown,” Avgay’el began. “They covered the face of the earth. Now there was a
race of giants,
anakim:
sons of heaven entered into the daughters of men. Hero figures roamed the land, men and women of mythic fame.”

I squirmed around on my bit of straw, stretching out my puff of wool. Did this mean that the Bible made allowances for those
creatures of mythology? Did I even have the same Bible? Somehow I thought if I’d read about God having a picnic, or giants
and mythological figures being real, I would have been more interested.

Instead it had seemed like a lot of thous and begats.

I looked around the room, the one nursing woman, the two expecting wives, the four concubines, all in various stages of pregnancy:
the begats were pretty accurate.

Avgay’el turned her carders, pausing to look around at us all. “So then: Yahwe looked upon the earthling, for he was growing
to be a monster in the land. His imagination created evil thoughts, which grew into bad actions. Yahwe’s heart was saddened,
as a father whose son chooses an infertile life. ‘I will cleanse the earthlings from the land,’ he said. ‘Human and animal,
crawling creature and flying bird. I regret that I made them.’ ”

The women watched her, sad eyed at the thought of God’s pain. I tried to force myself not to make her words fit anything I
knew. I wanted just to hear the story and enjoy it for what it was: rainy day in the harem, the camaraderie of women working
together, spellbound.

“Noach the Innocent warmed Yahwe’s heart, though.” Noah, of course. Why should I be surprised? Rainy weather like this did
make one think of arks. I heard her say that God told Noach to enter the ark because he was upright among the nations. “Gather
in seven by seven—male and female who are mated—from every clean creature.”

Seven by seven? What happened to two by two? “From the unclean creatures take one male and one female. Seven by seven birds,
male and female. They spread the seeds of life across the earth’s face.”

“I wish he would have left the snakes,” Hag’it said. “They could have drowned along with the unclean people. I wouldn’t have
missed them.” The rest of the women laughed. Avgay’el smiled, then turned her carding tools again.

“So: Yahwe said that in another seven days, water would fall on the earth, unrelenting for forty days and nights. In this
way he would wipe the earth of all the creatures he had formed from clay. Noach, his wife, his sons, and their wives entered
the ark as Yahwe had said.

“Now look: For seven days, then the water falls for forty days and nights. Yahwe shuts the door on Noach. The water lifted
the ark, and for forty days it floated above the land. The water consumed everything, wiping the face of the earth clean.
The ark floated across the face of the earth. All the high mountains were subdued by the water.”

I thought of flying over the Swiss Alps, the snowy peaks that poked through the clouds, easily visible from twenty-five thousand
feet. Those heights covered by water? It seemed ludicrous, but my skepticism lever was getting rusty. God seemed to manage
well outside my ability to understand or believe. And in the end, did my belief, or disbelief, really change anything?

Avgay’el continued. “The waters rose fifteen cubits above the submerged mountains. The
nefesh
had vanished from the land. All that had walked, or flown, or crawled; all were erased. Only Noach and his company continued
to exist.

“Now the rain from the sky was held back. The waters came, so they were going. Now look: The window Noach had built is opened.
He reaches out with a dove, to see if the waters have rolled back from the Land.”

How many versions of this had I seen in art? From the Renaissance to the present day: the animals’ heads poking out of the
windows in the ark, Noah releasing the dove, waiting for its return.

But this time I saw what I’d never noticed before. The terrible loneliness of being the only people on the planet; the overwhelming
fear of a God who was introspective and flexible enough—in a way—to destroy his creation because it wasn’t up to his standards.
As though those people and animals had been pots; thrown, glazed, and fired but warped beyond repair and useless. Thus they
had to be destroyed.

But for the first time, I understood God. This was a perspective that I could understand. God as a creator—who was less than
pleased with his work. How many times had I painted over a canvas? Pitched out a sculpture? Rethrown a pot?

My musing made me miss when the dove didn’t return, though I knew already that moment in the story. Avgay’el sipped some wine,
refreshing her voice before continuing. “Now Noach built an altar to Yahwe, took from the clean creatures, the clean birds,
offering them up: burned sacrifices on the altar.

“Yahwe’s heart was soothed; his nose smelled a pleasing scent. He thought: Never again will I pass judgment on the earth because
of the actions of the earthling. When they use the gift of my creativity for evil thoughts, it results in evil deeds. Nevertheless,
I will never again destroy all that lives, just to destroy him.”

I heard the first small voice calling for his mother. Avgay’el finished quickly. “So here they were: the sons of Noach leaving
the ark. Shem, Ham, and Yafat. From these three sons, man spread across the earth.”

We’d all carded our tufts into strands that would be made into thread. As we handed back the paddles, I saw the mushroom stagger
in. She was bloody, her face bruised.

I felt sick, filled with premonition. “’Sheva,” I said, running to her side. “’Sheva, what happened?”

She said nothing, just stared into the distance. Shana took her arm, shook her sharply. “You! ’Sheva!” but even that brought
no result. Avgay’el touched her hair, noting a bite mark on her neck.

A big bite mark. Oh no, no, no, I thought.

“Lift her dress,” Shana said.

I was one of the ones who helped. The girl had been mauled. Assaulted in the mud. The women’s expressions were all solemn,
but no one was weeping. Avgay’el and Shana exchanged glances.

“Carry her into the straw, Klo-ee,” Avgay’el said. “Shana will examine her.”

I picked her up, slipping my arm beneath her knees. She was so fragile, now catatonic. Someone had abused her? This seemed
inconceivable. These people didn’t even rape when they sacked a city! I laid her down on the straw, while the women brought
wine for her, then lamps so they could see. Hag’it acted as her pillow, cradling the mushroom’s head in her lap, brushing
her moonbeam-colored hair away from her face. Ahino’am brought heated rags, which we used to gently clean off the mud and
blood.

Her dress was removed, and she was wrapped in an animal skin, shivering and teeth chattering. Shana, Avgay’el holding up a
lamp over her shoulder, examined the girl. I didn’t watch, but I did note that she had just started growing pubic hair. She
was a child, no matter what her body proclaimed.

Bruises marred her skin; it was easy to follow what had happened: he’d held her down with his forearm, just above her throat.
If she moved, she would choke. A big knee had ended up in her soft belly. What kind of brute were we talking about? Her thighs
had been wrenched apart and held. We practically could have taken fingerprints of the assailant!