The Gods Look Down (20 page)

Here it came again. The light. This time it was brighter than before. Much brighter. More painful. He was shocked into life. The womb of gold shivered and shattered into huge golden fragments and he was naked before the light. And the light was outside him, blinding bright, and inside him, searing his brain. I cannot live, he thought, I cannot endure life. The light grew to white heat and fury inside him until he was separated from his body and became pure light.

Epileptic condition at optimum
.

Increase the voltage
.

He's gone. We've lost him
.

At sunrise the city began to stir. Thin streamers of smoke rose languidly into the cool still air as the cooking fires were kindled, and the tinny rattle of sheep bells could be heard as the flocks were driven from their pens and taken in search of the sparse pasture which sprouted like brown stubble along the course of what had been a river-bed. The spring which bubbled up from the lava-rock served the needs of the people and watered the crops but there wasn't enough to irrigate pastureland; the flocks had to nibble on whatever scrub and dry thorn they could find.

To all outward appearances it was a day like any other. The market-place was soon busy with traders setting up their stalls and greeting the sleepy-eyed early shoppers; groups of women were taking their wrapped bundles to the communal washhouse with its central groove cut in the stone where the water ran; in the main square, as the sun gained ascendency and the shadows crept closer to the houses, the old men came out to spit in the dust and squat on their haunches against the pink and yellow walls, having nothing better to do than watch the day get under way. Pariah dogs sniffed the morning air and skulked along alleyways, gathering in whining snapping packs on street corners until the children emerged to throw stones and chase them away.

It seemed on the face of it a normal day: but it was a city preparing for war.

At each boundary, several leagues into the desert on every side, men had been posted to watch for the invasion of the Dagonites. The High Priest had told the people of their demands and they had answered as with one mighty voice – that the Ark of the Lord should not be taken from the holy temple of Shiloh. It was their benefactor and protector and had
fed them during all those years in the wilderness; and it was the symbol of God. But even so Eli was afraid. He knew the fearsome strength of the Dagonites and had seen in years past a vast multitude of them on the plain. They were spawned of the devil because not one differed from another: their ranks comprised row upon row of faces shaped by the same hand and their stooping bodies formed in the same mould. He had seen them and known them to be unnatural, not the handiwork of the one true God, and when Uzza had described to him the emissary of the Dagonites he had recalled in vivid detail those ranks of faces which were as alike as if reflected in a pool.

He was afraid too because his sons had departed the Tribe and gone with the emissary to the city of Ashdod. He had disowned them and would no longer acknowledge them as his sons, but they knew the city and its defences, the number of men it could call to arms, its strong and its weak points, and those places where a determined force could break through and attack the temple. Eli had done all he could and he knew that the people would defend the city to the last man, yet he felt a great foreboding that nothing on earth could stand against the might of the Dagonites. They were warriors who seemed impervious to pain, who could march for days in the blazing sun without food or drink, and who had no fear for their own lives. No natural force could overcome them because they were without emotion, without fear, inhuman.

With his sons gone and Uzza dead Eli was alone in the temple. He couldn't manage on his own, being old and infirm and almost totally blind, and so a young boy (a waif whose mother had borne him out of wedlock and been driven into the desert) was sent to administer to his needs and to guide him in the rituals he had to perform in the service of the temple. The boy was called Samuel, a good-hearted child who went cheerfully and willingly about his duties (he was fed three times a day) and whom Eli permitted to sleep in the temple. It was about this time, not long after Hophni and Phinehas had gone, that a strange power became manifest and made itself known to the boy. It happened in this way:

In the early hours of the morning, when Eli and Samuel were still asleep, the boy was woken by a voice calling to him. Assuming it to be the High Priest he went directly to his chamber,
but Eli, on waking, said that he hadn't called him and that he should return to his bed. Samuel did as he was bidden and again he heard a voice calling to him and went to the High Priest, who said that he hadn't called him and that he should go back to bed. For the third time Samuel heard the voice calling him and ran to Eli, asking what was required of him. Then Eli perceived that the child had been visited by the Word of God and said they must go at once to the silent inner chamber. Samuel took the old man there, leading him by the hand, and they entered the silent inner chamber where the boy had never been before. Eli said, ‘You have been called by the Lord, Samuel, and you must say, “Speak, Lord, for thy servant heareth”.'

The boy spoke as he had been instructed, gazing up fearfully at the sphere of light which illuminated the walls of rock rising to the roughly-hewn dome high above. Hne had never before seen any natural or man-made thing with which to compare this strange object whose separate parts were so shiny and unblemished that they sparkled like the colour of burnished brass. Neither could he understand how the globe of light could burn so steadily and unremittingly.

‘Do you see anything, Samuel?' asked the High Priest, raising his head in that blind searching attitude of someone whose ears have taken over the function of their eyes.

‘There is nothing to see – except the light.'

‘Say again what I told you,' Eli said, and Samuel repeated it.

‘Is there still nothing?'

‘What am I supposed to see? What am I looking for?'

Eli didn't answer; he knew that Samuel had heard the Voice of the Lord; this was surely in answer to his prayer that the Tribe be delivered from the hands of the Dagonites. The Lord had heard and the Lord had answered: He would not forsake them.

Samuel said, very quietly, as if in a dream, ‘I do see something. I see it now.'

‘What is it? What do you see?'

Samuel answered dreamily, ‘A giant covered in light: like a burning flame: light comes out of him, from within his body. He glows like the sphere.'

‘Kneel,' Eli whispered. ‘We must pay homage before Him.'

As he said this he could vaguely see through the grey fog which circumscribed his world a faint radiance, penetrating the enclosed darkness, and he thought, Why did the Lord call to Samuel and not to me? Am I dishonoured in the sight of God?

Samuel was saying in the same faraway voice, ‘He's made of water. His body is like a clear pool through which the light shines. Is it a spirit? Is He the Lord?'

The figure of light stepped forward, exceedingly tall. The High Priest and the boy shrank away and became like statues in their genuflection.

‘Hear me, Son of man. You call me Lord but I am not the Lord. My name in your language is Qābal and I come to deliver you from the Dagonites.'

*

The news of his coming spread quickly throughout the city and there was great excitement and rejoicing. The boy Samuel was revered as a prophet because it was he who had been chosen as the first of the Tribe to receive the word of the messenger of the Lord. Eli held a service of praise and thanksgiving and preached that now they need have no fear, for the Angel of the Lord was with them and would protect them; though secretly, in his heart, he was dismayed. He sensed that something was wrong and the seed of doubt grew until it plagued him at all hours of the day and night, and he wasn't able to rest or sleep. He couldn't understand why it was that Samuel had been called: it seemed to be an omen, a presentiment of ill fortune that he, as High Priest, should have been spurned in this way. He felt that the end of his life was very near, the threat of death like a black shadow looming larger day by day.

The people, when they saw him, were astonished at the sight of the Angel of the Lord. ‘His flesh is like alabaster,' they said, ‘and he glows from within; the workings of his body are visible, the function of each part and organ clearly to be seen.'

Both the old man and the boy spent many hours in the silent inner chamber conversing with the Lord's messenger who, to Eli's surprise and mystification, asked question after question about the Ark. He wanted to know where it had come from and the High Priest told him the story which had been handed down through the generations from the time of Kish, First of the Prophets.

‘Then it was inside the rock when Kish first discovered it?' Qābal said. It was evidently very important for him to know the exact details. ‘And no one knows how it got there.'

‘It was placed there by the hand of God,' Eli answered gravely.

‘Yes of course. The hand of God.' Qābal smiled at Samuel. ‘Kish was about your age when he found the Ark, wasn't he? Perhaps in years to come you will be regarded as a prophet too, Samuel.'

The boy gazed up at the figure which to him seemed gigantic and awe-inspiring. He had never seen anyone so tall before, nor with flesh that seemed to glow – but then he had never seen an angel. He was frightened and dumbfounded by the vision. He didn't want to be a prophet, he wanted to remain a normal boy who threw stones at the pariah dogs and chased them down alleyways. It was wrong that people expected so much of him when inside he felt just like all the others; he didn't want to be different, he wanted to be like everyone else.

‘The Ark provided food for your people,' Qābal said to Eli.

‘When our Tribe was in the wilderness. For forty years it sustained us. Without the Ark we should have perished.'

‘And all this happened before you were born.'

‘Eight, perhaps nine generations before my lifetime. But the account is written in full in the Scriptures: we have a record which shall be preserved for future generations to see.'

‘And beyond,' said Qābal.

‘It is so? You know this, Lord?'

‘I can see through all the ages and it is so. Samuel will carry your history forward and write his own account of this place and time.'

‘I can't write,' Samuel said, hoping that this might excuse him the arduous task already planned for his adult life.

Qābal laughed and the old man smiled.

‘There will be plenty of time to teach you,' Qābal said. ‘Destiny has cast you in a role and you must fulfil it; there is no escape.'

The High Priest said, ‘Has destiny also decided whether we shall go to war with the Dagonites? And if so, what the outcome will be?'

‘There will be a battle at a place on the desert plateau called
Aphek. So it is written. The Dagonites will triumph and many of the Tribe will perish. After this the people will be in despair and will call for the Ark to be brought forth from Shiloh and set against the Dagonites.'

Eli's face had lost its colour. ‘The Ark must remain here in the temple, safe from our enemies.'

‘It will be taken from the temple and set against the Dagonites,' Qābal said quietly and deliberately. ‘This is the way it must be. There will be another battle and again the Dagonites will be victorious and the Ark will be captured and taken to the city of Ashdod.'

Eli swayed back on his seat. His breathing was shallow and quick. His mouth opened and trembled, forming a soundless protest.

Qābal said, ‘You needn't fear for the safety of the Ark. The Dagonites will capture it and place it before the god Dagon in their temple.
This is the way it shall be and must be:
nothing you can do will change that which is already written.'

Samuel spoke up. ‘But I heard you say, Lord, that you have come to deliver us from the hands of our enemies.' His thin young face was hot and flushed. ‘If the Ark is taken from us how will we survive?'

‘You must have faith.' Qābal put out his hand to touch the boy's head and he flinched and moved away. A hand that seemed to be without substance – even the hand of an angel – was a terrifying phenomenon. Eli said:

‘We do have faith, Lord, but we are mortal creatures, born in ignorance and at the mercy of Almighty providence. The Ark has been our protection and our salvation for hundreds of years, the symbol of our religion, and it is hard for us to contemplate the possibility that it might fall into the hands of unbelievers. Their god is Dagon, who we know to be an evil and malicious god, intent on the destruction of the Tribe. You must forgive our weakness in doubting the word of the Lord's messenger.'

‘As your sons doubt the word of God Himself,' Qābal said.

Eli bowed his head. The opaque discs of his eyes stared blindly at the temple floor. ‘It seems that I've lived my life to no purpose. I have sought always to follow the paths of righteousness and now, at the end, it comes to this, to nothing. If it is true that I've failed I don't know how or why or what I
could have done; my sons were brought up to fear God and to become His holy ministers. I don't know where the evil in their hearts has sprung from.'

‘There is always evil in the hearts of men,' Qābal said. ‘There always will be for all time.'

‘You say that the Ark will be taken from us and yet we musn't fear for its safety,' Samuel said. His eyes were bright, alive with an expression that was almost a challenge. ‘But what if the Dagonites turn the Ark against us?'

‘They won't do that. The god Dagon wants the Ark as a symbol of victory, not a weapon of war. If you truly believe that in the end good will triumph over evil and that the Dagonites will be overcome, then so it shall come to pass. Above all else you must believe.'