Solomon replies with an elephantine nod. 'I get your meaning.'
'What is my meaning?'
'You swore that you would not put him to death,' he recites in a monotone, reading from his tablet. 'But you did not swear that I would not put him to death.'
He says this without a glimmer of levity brightening his lugubrious mien, and I begin to fear he does not get my meaning.
'Solomon--Abishag, my darling, let me have a little bit of that stuff you prepare that helps settle my stomach.'
'Bicarbonate of soda?'
'No, the stronger stuff today. That mixture of aloes, gentian, zedoary, cinchona, calumba, galangal, rhubarb, angelica, myrrh, chamomile, saffron, and peppermint oil.'
'Fernet-Branca? '
'Yes, my pet. Solomon, come a bit closer, closer--no, that's close enough.' I can't stand cologne on men or sweeteners on their breath; they reek to me of guilty knowledge of the pile of shit they're leaving behind and are sneakily attempting to disown. 'Solomon, my dearest son,' I say to him in a voice lowered to a level of seriousness almost sacrosanct, 'let me give you now a precious secret about kingship, about how to rule well and be honored by your subjects, even by your enemies. You would like to be king someday, wouldn't. you? Would you like to be a king?'
'I would like to be a king.'
'Why would you like to be a king?'
'Peacocks and apes.'
'Peacocks and apes? Shlomo, Shlomo, you said peacocks and apes?'
'I like peacocks and apes.'
'You like peacocks and apes?'
'I like sapphires too, and a throne of ivory overlaid with the best gold, with carved lions standing by the stays and twelve more lions standing there on one side and there on the other upon the six steps, and houses of cedar carved with knops and open flowers.'
'Knops and open flowers?'
'Knops and open flowers.'
'That's why you want to be king?'
'Mother wants me to be king.'
'What are knops?'
'I don't know. She thinks I'd be happy as king.'
'I'm not happy as king,' I tell him.
'Maybe if you had some peacocks and apes.'
'How many?'
'Lots.'
'Solomon, you don't smile when you say that. You never smile. I don't think I've ever seen you smile.'
'Maybe I've never had anything to smile about. Maybe if I had some peacocks and apes.'
'Solomon, my boy,' I say, 'let me give you some wisdom. Wisdom is better than rubies, you know, and maybe even better than peacocks and apes.'
'Let me write that down,' interrupts Solomon politely. 'It sounds wise.'
'Yes, very wise,' I answer, frowning.
'How does it go?'
'Wisdom is better than rubies,' I repeat, 'and maybe even better than peacocks and apes.'
'Wisdom is better than rubies.' He cannot write without moving his lips. 'And maybe even better than peacocks and apes? Is that wise?'
'Very wise, Solomon. Please hearken to me closely now.' My throat is dry again. 'If ever you do become a king, and if you want to be honored as a king and deemed worthy as a king, and if ever you find yourself drinking date wine or pomegranate wine from one of the royal goblets in the company of others whose good opinion you wish to retain, always make certain that you drink with your nose inside the brim of the royal goblet.'
'Inside the brim?'
'Inside the brim'
'With my nose inside the brim of the royal goblet,' Solomon repeats on himself, writing, and waits without the slightest trace of curiosity when he has finished.
'Aren't you going to ask me why?' I prod.
'Why?' he responds obediently. This is about as much mental agility as I've ever been able to whip up in him.
'Because otherwise,' I inform him, feeling let down, 'the wine will spill down the front of your neck, you goddamned fool! Abishag! Abishag! Show him the door. The fucking door! Show Shlomo the fucking door!'
'I've seen the door.'
'Get out, get out, you idiot, you dummy, get out, get out! Abishag, give me some more of that shit for my stomach. Oh, if only my words were written down in a book. Who would believe them?'Abishag would believe them.
Abishag will believe anything from me.
But Bathsheba would not, and tries to convince me that Solomon is the wisest man in the kingdom. 'Next to you, of course,' she throws in with ritual politeness. 'He writes down everything you say.'
'And doesn't understand a fucking word of it. And then goes about giving it out as his own. I know what he does. I've got spies.'
'Have dinner with him tonight,' she dictates to me. She has switched to a robe of aquamarine with a flouncing train that parts at the front and twirls about her ankles as she paces and swerves, and she has put on a pair of those skimpy bloomers she invented that she calls panties. Kneeling at my couch, she takes my hand. The warmth from her palms is agreeable. It is so seldom nowadays that she touches me. 'Get to know him better. That would be nice, wouldn't it? Just the two of you, right here. What's wrong?' She feels my shudder and lets go of my hand as though it were something reptilian. 'And maybe me too. And maybe Nathan. And Benaiah also.'
'No, no, no, no, not in a million years,' I tell her. 'Not in a billion. I'm not eating a meal with Solomon again in my whole life, and certainly not on one of its last days. He watches every mouthful I eat, and then makes sure to eat exactly as much. If he gives a person the right time, he always asks for it back. He never makes jokes. Do you ever see him laugh?'
'What's there to laugh about?' she answers with a shrug. 'His dear father is full of days and soon will be dead.'
I turn myself over on my side to confront her. 'He still goes around cursing deaf people, doesn't he?'
'That's proof of his sweetness,' my wife replies. 'Deaf people are unable to hear him and have no idea what he's saying.'
'And puts stumbling blocks before the blind, doesn't he?'
'Who else will fall over them?'
'When he takes a man's cloak as a pledge in the morning, he still won't give it back to him at sundown, will he? So the poor beggar will have something warm to sleep in at night.'
'How else can he be sure he'll be able to collect?'
'Sure, collect. I'll give him collect. That's the whole point of the commandment, damn it, that the man won't be forced into paying before he can afford to. The quality of mercy is not strained. You don't know that? It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven upon the place beneath. Don't you understand Exodus and Deuteronomy?'
'I don't read that stuff anymore.'
'No, you'd rather get a brief synopsis from Nathan, wouldn't you?'
'A synopsis from Nathan?'
'Solomon--that cheap prick won't even build a parapet around his roof to protect himself from blood guilt if people fall off. You watch. Deuteronomy will get him if Leviticus doesn't.'
'He's wise.'
'Solomon?'
'He never has people to his house,' she explains with an air of vindication. 'So why should he throw out money on a parapet he doesn't need? See how wise? He'll be good for the economy of the kingdom.'
'He'll be rotten for the kingdom.' I reply. 'Let him sell some of those filthy amulets he keeps collecting if he needs money for the battlement on the roof of his house. That's where he puts his money, into amulets. He wants apes and peacocks.'
'The amulets are a good investment. They have to go up.'
'Never mind investment. I'll give him investment. They get him hot, that's why he collects them. Oh, that's some Solomon you gave me. He goes a-whoring after strange women in Edom, Moab, and Ammon, doesn't he?'
'You didn't?'
'I took them into my harem. He builds altars to strange gods.'
'Ours is not so strange?'
'At least He's ours. And I always was faithful to my wives and concubines.'
'When you cheated with me?' she contradicts.
'Almost always,' I amend myself sheepishly.
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'That was adultery, David. And you knew it, even when we were doing it. And you know what Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, and Nathan have to say about that.'
Abishag the Shunammite is certainly getting an education just listening to us, I muse, although she tries not to stare and pretends not to hear.
'Come, let us reason together.' I suggest more quietly, in my most diplomatic manner. 'Solomon will bring ruin to us all if he worships strange gods. He'll bankrupt the kingdom with his apes and his ivory and his peacocks. Do you know what he wants for a throne? Here's what he told me he wants for a throne: a great throne of ivory overlaid with best gold, and two carved lions standing by the stays of the throne and twelve more lions--twelve--standing there on one side and on the other upon the six steps.'
'That sounds divine,' Bathsheba says with a straight face.
Is it any wonder I'm still so crazy about her? 'Fourteen lions?' I exclaim. 'Or maybe he means twenty-six. He thinks I should have a throne like that too.'
'If Solomon has lions,' she says, nodding, 'you should have lions too. And so should I.'
So different is she from constant, unselfish Abigail, for whom my regard was always higher, and my passion so much less. When Abigail died I was lonely, and I have been lonely ever since.
'God isn't going to take to a throne like that,' I think out loud, feasting my eyes upon a face and form so beautiful to me still. 'Ours doesn't go in that much for ostentation.'
'Ours loves Solomon,' Bathsheba insists, 'and will go along with anything Solomon wants.'
'Don't bet on it,' I disagree. 'I used to think He felt that way about me. Until he killed our baby. Solomon has no chance of being king.'
'That's what you told me from the day he was born,' Bathsheba points out, unconvinced. 'And now he is second only to Adonijah.'
'Adonijah is popular,' I say to annoy her. 'Solomon is not.'
Bathsheba takes an unexpected veer toward the philosophical. 'The rich have many friends,' she remarks. 'But the poor is hateth even of his own neighbor.'
'What makes you say that?' I demand touchily.
'I heard Solomon say it, and I thought it was very wise. Why do you ask?'
'He got it from me,' I tell her coldly, 'that's why I ask. You'll find it among my proverbs.'
'Solomon has lots of proverbs too,' she boasts.
'And the best of them,' I tell her, 'are mine. The next thing you know, he'll be claiming he wrote my famous elegy.'
'What famous elegy?' asks my wife.
For the moment I am struck completely dumb. 'What famous elegy?' My piercing cry is one of indignation. 'What the hell do you mean, what famous elegy? My famous elegy, on the death of Saul and Jonathan. What other famous elegy is there?'
'I don't think I ever heard of it.'
'You never heard of it?' I am beside myself with disbelief. 'They know it in Sidon. They sing it in Ninevah. "The beauty of Israel is slain upon thy high places." You never heard that before? "They were swifter than eagles, they were stronger than lions." "How are the mighty fallen!" "He clothed you in scarlet, and with other delights, and put ornaments of gold upon your apparel."
'She sits up straighter, her eyes widening. 'You wrote that?' she inquires.
'What, then?' I demand. 'Who the fuck do you think wrote it?'
'Solomon?'
'Solomon?' I shout. I have a queasy sensation that none of what is taking place now is really happening. 'This was ten years before I even moved to Jerusalem!' I roar at her. 'They were telling it in Gath, they were publishing it in the streets of Askelon, a dozen years before I even met you. You don't remember it's mine? Solomon? How the fuck could Solomon have written it when he wasn't even born?'
'David, don't be so cross,' she reproaches me. 'You know how hopeless I've always been about dates.' She seats herself beside me on my bed and places her hand on my chest. For a second, it is like old times. My member thickens slightly. My senses are imbued with the sensual odors of myrrh, cassia, and sweet calamus radiating from her tissues and garments as though from an ivory palace. 'Don't,' she says when I drop my hand upon her knee.
'You didn't used to mind,' I am now the one who is imploring.
'Life doesn't stand still,' she observes.
'Another proverb from Solomon?'
'It moves along,' she continues without having heard me. 'David,' she appeals, 'I feel danger in my bones. Nathan fears that a royal banquet with Adonijah presiding could make prisoners of us all. Even of you. '
'That's funny,' I reply with deadpan irony. 'Abiathar was in here just this morning to tell me he thinks it's a fine idea.'
'Abiathar?' she repeats vacantly, as though the name were an alien sound she had never heard before.
'The one who's been around me just about all my life,' I remind her tartly, 'since my days as a fugitive. '
'You know how bad I've always been with names, ' she says, faking, and heaves a heavy sigh. 'So many A's. Who can keep track of them all? Abigail, Ahinoam, Abishai-- and now an Abiathar.'
'Not now. For fifty years.'
'I sometimes think that Benaiah and I are the only B's in the whole country. '
' Abiathar is my priest, ' I remind her slowly of what we both appreciate she knows very well. 'He was one of the first to join up with me, right after Saul killed his father.'
'Zadok is your priest. '
'I have two.'
'Well, Nathan is your prophet, ' she counters.
'Nathan is a windbag, and he never did approve of you, you know.'
'And a prophet is higher than a priest,' she calmly goes right on as though she did not hear me speak. 'Nathan doesn't think you can trust Adonijah. Goodness gracious, another A. We even have an Abishag now. And what was the name of that dead wife of yours, the dowdy one who never spoke? Abital, the mother of Shepatiah.'
'I thought you were bad with names.'
'And A's are bad luck. Asahel, and Ahitophel, Amnon, Absalom, Abner, Amasa--look what happened to them all. Darling,' she wheedles, and I reflect as she leans down toward me again that an expression so quintessentially good just has to be composed of nothing but duplicity, 'promise me that you will never pick as king anyone whose name begins with the letter A. That's all I ask.'
Her temerity does take away my breath. 'I'll give that request some serious consideration,' I tell her, and wonder just how senile she thinks I fucking am.
'Yesterday,' Bathsheba starts right in the following morning, 'you gave me your word that you would never name Adonijah king.'
She is wearing a fiery red robe of chiffon, and her head is adorned with a diadem of pearls and other precious gems. She is still so provocative when she dresses up that I want, as always, to tear off her clothes and strip her naked.
'That's not the way I remember it,' I answer, admiring her effrontery.
'Abishag was here and heard what you said.'
Abishag is steadfast in discretion as she sits at her stand of cosmetic pots, and I know she will never betray me.
'Don't you know that Abishag will be witness to whatever I want her to be?' I reply to Bathsheba with pride.
'What smells in here?' she inquires so innocently, executing another one of her nimble changes of subject that never fail to bedazzle me. She looks timorous as a rabbit as she wrinkles her nose, exposing her tiny, chipped teeth. 'Someone open a window.'
I laugh. Abishag displays dimples when she smiles. A coppery rouge she is applying to her face highlights the domes of her rich brown cheeks.
What smells, of course, is me, musty, linty, withering, old-aging me. They have perfumed my bed with aloes, cinnamon, and myrrh, but I still smell me. I stink of mortality and reek of mankind.
Pungent frankincense smolders everywhere in my palace. There are maybe a thousand incense burners. It must cost me a king's ransom each year in aromatic gums and resins. No wonder our balance of trade is poor. There is antiseptic myrrh and honey in the sweet-smelling ointments and medicines with which Ab
ishag dresses my scratches and bedsores. My rashes and pimples she covers with a poultice of figs. The girl is loving and tireless in the care she lavishes upon me and is always entirely at my service. She glides about gracefully on soundless steps, her carriage poised in perfect alignment. There is never a moment of imbalance. Do I imagine Abishag the Shunammite, construct her out of wishes? She is as fragrant as grapes on a mountain of spices and like apples of gold in a picture of silver. She is vibrant with bliss when I pet and stroke her and cup her face in my hand and softly rest her head upon my chest or in the hollow of my shoulder. I regret in such moments of soulful union that the dear girl did not know me at my best, long before the hair on my chest turned white. The glory of young men is their strength, you know, and the beauty of old men is their gray hair. God knows I've got plenty of that kind of beauty now, but Abishag confides that she is drawn to the white hair on my chest. She caresses me there often, fingering the curls. She would not like a hairless man. She would not like a shaggy one, she admits with a pout, a man like Esau with bushy growths on his shoulders and back. It seems I fit the bill, if the child is not lying, and I know she is not.
In Shunem, Abishag informs us with native candor when queried, her father owns good land and her life was opulent. She kept the vineyards of the other children of her mother and neglected her own. The youngest and shyest in her large, flourishing family, she was often jollied by the others and was readily self-persuaded of her own inadequacies. To them it was play. She has always been anxious for praise. That same relentless inclination to please and sacrifice herself for others is manifest now with me. I wish I were sufficiently spry to do things for her. I would like to serve her a meal now and then, help her on or off with her clothing, carry in for her use a basin of fresh water, or bring to her a basket of summer fruits. They searched and found her for me because she was the most beautiful virgin to be located throughout all the coasts of Israel. I induce her to talk. I love hearing her.
'I remember the song with which they used to tease me and make me so unhappy,' she relates in her lowered voice. ' "We have a little sister and she has no breasts." Once they sang it about me at a wedding. I hid my face in my hands and ran out into the darkness. I wanted to die. I did not return until morning. I did not answer when I heard them searching for me. I wept on the ground, feeling frail as a leaf, and slept amid melons near the roots of trees.'