The Secret Chord (22 page)

I had seen myself as a man in the hand of the Name—serving the king chosen to lead his people in this Land. But what kind of god could will this baseness, this treachery? What kind of nation could rise under such a leader? If David was a man after this god's own heart, as my inner voice had told me often and again, what kind of black-hearted deity held me in his grip?

I grasped a hank of my hair and pulled it out by the bloody roots. Then I bent and gathered a handful of the dry yellow soil and smeared it on my throbbing scalp. I looked up and located the hot white sun, then turned south and west, toward the Valley of Salt. I walked until my legs turned to jelly, then I flung myself down under the flimsy protection of a thorn bush, and waited to die.

I wept until there was no water in my body left to spare for tears. I stopped sweating. At first, thirst was an itch, then it became an ache. My mouth became sticky, then dry, like dead leaves. My skin shriveled and aged before my eyes. There was a burning pain in my calves. Visions came: thick, swift, relentless. There was no rest from them, nowhere to turn away. At night, they spun and swirled out of the star-encrusted sky. By day, they were shadows on the sheer faces of cliffs, murmurs in the hot breath of the wind.

I dreamed that a passing herdsman dribbled water onto my parched lips, and in the dark I awoke to find a full waterskin lying by my hand. I had strength enough to set my lips to the mouth of it and
drink. I walked on then. Walked till my sandals broke and the knife-sharp rocks bit my soles. My burned skin shed itself in silver sheets, my flesh sagged on the frame of my bones. I drank from muddy seeps; I ate insects and worms. Some days, I walked in a press of muttering, shrieking ghosts. The butchered Moavites writhed once again on the ground, the shrieking horses stumbled. The Plishtim soldier whose neck I had crushed rose up and stood before me, holding his head upon his shoulders with his two bloody hands. On those days I was sure I was in the grip of madness. But then the crowds would depart from me, turning their backs, spinning away in a hundred different directions. Then came the others, who were not ghosts but people who yet walked quick upon the earth. I saw them not as they were but as they would be. They did not see me—indeed, at times they walked right through me, engaged in acts or conversations of which I was not part. I understood that I was being shown the future: shards of what would come to be. Often, I cried out for the pain of it. But other times, I was comforted, because I saw, for an instant, the pattern of the whole.

And then, one night, I woke from a restless sleep to find the world alight with the cold radiance of the full moon. I had been in the desert a full month. I was a hollowed-out gourd, as light as air. It was over. I had been shown all that I needed to see. I knew what I needed to do. The painful future stretched out before me. David would have the throne, the crown, the line of descendants that the Name had promised him. But for the rest of his life, he would be scalded by the consequences of his choices. My task would be twofold: to stand up to him, and to stand by him. To awaken his conscience, and to salve the pain this would cause him. To help him to endure through the hard days and years that lay ahead of him.

My shadow leaped out before me, as huge as a giant. With a vast effort, I put one foot before the other, and began the long walk home.

“Y
ou look like a stream of camel piss! I can see right through you!” He put his hard, muscled arms around my shoulders to embrace me, and I winced. He drew back. He held me at arm's length and looked me up and down. “I'm afraid you'll snap in half! What have you done to yourself? They told me you were called into the desert by one of your visions. I'm glad you've been called back—while there's still something left of you!” He took me by the arm, solicitous, as if I were an invalid. “Natan will take some food and drink in my quarters. Bring wine and roast goat—no, wait. Not goat. Too rich, after such a long fast. You need to go slowly, build up your strength. Bring bread and laban, zait and zatar—and some of those good red grapes from Ammon.”

All the way to his quarters, the words spilled from his lips. He was alight, joyful. Even his steps seemed to bounce, as if he were dancing through his life. “So much has happened while you were gone. You know Yoav called me to Rabbah? Yes! They wanted me—the army did—to finish off the Ammonites and take the royal city. Yoav had done all the hard work of course. He captured the water supply, so it was only a matter of time . . . but the thing is, Natan, the army—my army—they wanted me back. They wanted me to lead them to victory. They wanted it to be won in my name. I wish you'd been there when we took the crown off the head of their idol and placed it on my head. I'll tell you—I wasn't prepared for it.” He gave a great, joyful bark of laughter. “It weighed a talent! Pure gold, and the gemstones . . . I'll have them bring it so you can look, later . . .

“We've filled the grain stores and the treasury. Can't count how many mule trains crossed the Yarden. We had to build floating platforms. Everyone who fought is rich now. And the families of the fallen, too. Slaves . . . we've got the workforce now for every kind of project. Not just the people of Rabbah—all the Ammonite towns fell, once word got out. I spared their lives, even though they'd resisted. Did you hear about that? It was well done—helped get the others to surrender. You've never seen people so happy to be enslaved. They were expecting us to burn them alive and throw their infants on the sword. Well, why wouldn't they? They'd heard about the Moavites. But that was necessary. This time, I saw we could do differently. We've set them to brick making, and the skilled ones are doing ironmongery for us—axes, threshing boards. We will see some changes now. We'll double the size of this city as I dreamed we would, but in half the time. We'll make it a wonder. I have ideas, Natan. I've missed you! There's so much I want your advice on. . . . Look, look at this . . .” He drew me by the hand and pulled me across the room and into an alcove. A low table had been set up there, and upon it was a model for a building such as I had never seen . . . a great work such as they say our ancestors fashioned for the pharaohs. The model was unfinished. It had been made with pieces that could be picked up and moved around, so as to try different effects. David did this as he spoke, taking fluted columns and setting them down in pairs, or in triplets, all the time talking, talking . . .

“I thought, how is it that I live in this fine palace while the ark of the Name rests in a tent? We must house it in a temple, don't you see, Natan . . . the finest materials . . . the most majestic walls . . .” He whirled around the table, rearranging the elements. He was so lost in the joy of creation that he did not notice I was still, silent.

Only when the food came in did he snap out of his grandiose planning. We sat before the trays, and he pressed me to eat, but only took a few grapes for himself. He had one in his hand, turning it between thumb and forefinger.

“And, you know, I have a new wife. The widow of my officer Uriah.” He shot me a swift glance. I kept my face a mask. “Her name—I don't think you knew it, before. It's Batsheva. She's . . .” A flush had crept up from his neck—his fair skin had always been swift to the blush. Now it was on fire. “I've never had anyone like her, Natan. Ahinoam—I honor her, of course. How not, since she's the mother of my firstborn. And you know I'll always love Avigail. How I miss her! You loved her, too, I know that . . . the two of you, my wisest advisers . . . Maacah is beautiful, but this one . . . Maacah was a state marriage, and with Avigail I always felt like a boy. Batsheva makes me feel like a man.” I bit my tongue, trying to hold back a gust of revulsion. Did he really think I needed to hear this? I looked down, struggling to maintain a neutral expression. I must not have succeeded, for he put his hand on my arm. “Look. I know it wasn't well done. And you were right to be against it. But it
is
done. In any case, the child that gave us so much worry. It will be born midwinter.”

I said nothing. After a moment's awkward silence, he turned to chattering again about his projects and his plans. Then, out of nowhere:

“So, I am doing all the talking. Tell me what happened to you. Did you see anything interesting out there, alone all that time?”

“Oh, many things,” I said. “Things that will be of use to you, no doubt, when the time is right. But I wasn't always alone.” I thought of the crowds, the voices. “There was one man, victim of a grave injustice. I wanted to get your opinion on what should be done for him.”

“Tell me!” He leaned forward, attentive. He loved to play the judge.

“He was very poor. He had this one little ewe lamb—that was all. No flocks. He raised this lamb in his own hut, with his children. It would share his morsel of bread, even drink from his cup. You've never seen affection like that, between a man and a beast. He'd carry it around, nestled right up to his chest.”

“Did he so?” His face had softened. He had entered into the story
wholeheartedly. “I did that once, when I was a shepherd, with an orphan ewe. Got very attached. I know what that's like. Go on.”

“Then, one day, the richest man in the village, who has everything—flocks, herds—he gets a visitor, and instead of slaughtering one of his own beasts, he steals that poor man's little ewe, slaughters it, and serves it to his guest.”

David threw aside the grape stalk in his hand. “That man deserves to die! Tell me his name! I'll see to it that he pays for that lamb four times over, because he was greedy and had no pity.”

“His name?” I said quietly. “You really want to know who he is, that greedy, pitiless man? That man who had everything?”

“As the Name lives, so I do.”

“That man is you.”

He stood up, knocking the tray so that the grapes fell and rolled across the flagstones.

I stood, too, crushing the grapes under my feet. The red pulp oozed, like wounded flesh. I walked up to him until we were eye to eye. He returned my gaze, insolent. He intends to brazen this out, I thought. He thinks I'm chastising him for adultery. He doesn't realize I know about the murder.

I spoke in a low voice. “You. Given everything. You are a hundredfold more guilty than the rich man you just condemned. You took more than a man's wife from him. You took his very life.” His face changed in a second with the realization that I knew the full extent of his crimes.

I turned abruptly away and strode across the room to the alcove. I looked at the model pieces, the forest of towering columns, the sumptuously scrolled capitals. The arrogance of it nauseated me. I swept my hand across the table, knocking the pieces to the floor and grinding them under my heel. When I spoke again, it was not in my own
voice, but the other one. This time, however, I could hear my own words. There was no blinding pain, just coldness as the brutal judgment sprang from my lips.

“The God of Israel says this:
You will never build the temple. You are stained body and soul from your bloodshed and your butchery. Therefore, that great and holy task is not for you. I anointed you king of Israel. I rescued you from the hand of Shaul. I gave you Israel and Yudah. If that were not enough, I would give you twice as much and more. Why, then, have you flouted my commandments? You put Uriah to the sword. You took his wife in adultery. Then know you this: The sword will never depart from your house. I will make a calamity against you within your own house. I will take your wives and give them to another man before your very eyes and he will sleep with your wives under this very sun. You acted in the dark, but this I will make happen in the broad light of day, in the sight of all Israel!”

There was a silence in the room so complete I could hear the hushed footfalls of a servant's bare feet in the passageways and the clop of a donkey's hooves passing in the street below. David stood motionless, flushed. His eyes glittered. His fists clenched at his side. He raised them, balled, the muscles of his forearms jumping. He will kill me now, I thought. Then he raised his hands to his head and dragged at his hair.

“I stand guilty before the Name.”

He dropped to his knees and bowed his head, covering it with his arms as if to fend off a blow. His body shook. He wept. I put my two hands out and pushed his arms away gently. I rested my two hands in the soft thicket of his hair. I felt a wave of love and pity for him as the knowledge of his future pain surged through me.

I thought of Moshe, speaking to our ancestors after he transmitted the law to them. “I have set both before you, the blessing and the curse,” he said. “Life and death. Therefore, choose life.”

David's time of choice was behind him now, irrevocably. He would know both blessing and curse, each in the fullest possible measure. Everything had happened to him. Everything would happen to him. Every human joy. Every human sorrow.
Pay four times over
, he had said.
In his own words. And so it would come to pass. For the one life he had taken, four of those he loved would be swept away from him in violent ruin.

“Listen to me.” The voice was my own. I placed my hand under his chin and raised his wet face. “These things I have foretold—they are not all of them to happen to you yet. You will go on, and become renowned, and do great things and take joy in them. Later, when you are old, you will pay in full. For now, this: the first price you will pay. The baby you will have—this
mamzer
you have made—he will not live. Prepare for that. The rest, put out of your mind. Be glad that the Name has remitted your sin and let you live to atone it.”

And atone he did. He gave himself fully to the penitent life, fasting, praying, confessing his wickedness and execrating himself in public. He became a better man in the small matters of his days, an even better, wiser king in the greater matters of state. As confession of his misdeeds made the crimes public knowledge, so also did word of my prophecy spread out, first through the city and then across the Land. Our people, who had once taken comfort in Natan's oracle, now spoke instead, in hushed voices, of Natan's curse. If people had been wary of me before, now their aversion became extreme. Common folk would cross the street to avoid me; women would draw their mantles across their faces and make the sign against the evil eye.

Only David still sought me out, heaping me with honors and attention. I was the first to hear his song of lamentation and prayerful contrition. For days, weeks, it was the only song that he would sing. I believe it was one of the finest he ever composed.

Purge me with hyssop till I am pure;

wash me till I am whiter than snow . . .

Hide your face from my sins;

blot out all my iniquities.

Fashion a pure heart for me . . .

Save me from bloodguilt . . .

You do not want me to bring sacrifices;

You do not desire burnt offerings;

You desire the sacrifice of a sorrowful spirit;

You will not despise

a crushed and contrite heart.

So he sang. And so, I suppose, he believed. And yet, as I had told him, Yah did demand a sacrifice of him. Bloodguilt demanded a blood price.