'You have breasts now,' I comfort her.
'Are they too small?'
'For what?' My smile is indulgent.
'For you.'
'I'm a little past seventy, dearest,' I counsel her apologetically. 'Adonijah desires you already, and Solomon will want you too. Because you are beautiful, and because you have been with a king.'
'Am I more beautiful than Bathsheba?'
'Much more beautiful.'
'Than when you saw her the first time?'
'You are a garden enclosed, a spring shut up, a fountain sealed. You are more beautiful to me now than anyone in the world has ever been.'
She would trade both my sons for me. I know how to talk to a woman now and they do not. Her darkly nip-pled breasts are like twin roes that feed among the lilies, her perfect buttocks like matched hinds. I am the first person in her life who delights in conversing with her, who will listen entranced to her replies and to all her casual meditations. Where could she find another like me?
She knows she is free now to say to me without shame anything that comes to her mind, and she knows that to me she can never say anything she will wish to take back. No wonder she thinks she is deeply in love with me and feels secure. When her head does rest in the hollow of my shoulder, I trace with my thumb the contour of her brow or the line of the side of her nose to the yielding rim of her spongy upper lip, which, in the dimming hues of my flickering and guttering lamplight, is the color of plums or pomegranate. I caress her that way addictively, insatiably. What good would the world be to me now without my Abishag? No other man she ever meets will draw as much happiness from her as I do, from simply contemplating her face and touching it, from the plain awareness of her presence. Through Abishag the Shunammite I now know about myself what I learned from Bathsheba and had forgotten, that all my life I have wanted to be in love. I can kiss her ears, her temples, neck, and eyes until the insides of my cheeks grow parched and my words barely audible, and then go on kissing her more and more with lips and tongue grown feeble with dryness. For reasons I cannot know, I frequently shy away from kissing her, fully on the mouth.
She is my rose of Sharon, I have told her from my heart with my face in her hair and my breath upon her ear, and she is my lily of the valley. I have made her more contented by doing just that than Bathsheba would be were I to yield to her entreaties and give my kingdom to Solomon. Bathsheba would feel relief but no gratitude, never gratitude; and in less than half a day she would feel herself unjustly disadvantaged again in some other respect and be anguished prey to the need for something else. As with the alabaster bathtub.
No sooner had she moved into my palace than she asked for a bathtub of alabaster and got one. Michal yelled blue murder and got an alabaster bathtub too.
What do women want, I have often wondered aloud in moods of matrimonial exasperation; what in the world do women want? An answer as good as any came from my gracious Abigail one afternoon when I dropped in to rest.
'It takes very little to make us happy,' Abigail explained, 'and more than is contained in heaven and earth to keep us that way.'
'That's a discerning answer, Abigail,' I said. 'And I shall always be so very, very grateful for your intelligence and your kindness. Would you like a bathtub of alabaster too?'
'No thank you, David. I'm perfectly content with the one I have.'
'You never ask for anything, do you?'
'I have everything I need to be happy.'
'Are you the woman who's the exception to what you've just described?'
Abigail smiled once more. 'Perhaps I'm the exception.'
'Isn't there anything you want, my darling? Really, Abigail, I would like to give you something.'
Abigail shook her head. 'No, David, there isn't. My cup runneth over.'
'That's sweet, Abigail, really a very sweet thing to say. I will remember it always.'
What Bathsheba wants now for her own quarters are my enormous, lush cushions of ramskin and badger dyed red and dyed blue. Solomon, she reflects, will let her have them when he is king. Solomon, I have fun in reminding her, will not be king.
'Suppose,' she conjectures, 'Adonijah dies.'
'Don't you dare,' I admonish her with a penetrating glance, 'even give one moment's thought to a possibility like that. Why should Adonijah die?'
'I've always wanted to have skin like yours,' she replies, to Abishag. 'Mine was never so smooth and silken. Even now I'd give anything to be that dark.'
'I would give anything to have skin that fair,' answers Abishag with sincerity. 'I got dark from the sun.' Abishag is black but comely, and most particular to let us know she is black only because the sun has looked upon her. 'It never went away.'
Save for a Persian rug in my dining room that she knows is expensive and a tapestry wall-hanging of umber and viridian that depicts two pairs of cherubims of ocher with outspread wings touching, everything in my rooms is inferior to Bathsheba's standard, although the posts of my doors are of olive tree. Bathsheba does not like wood from olive trees. My bed, I think, is of applewood. Adonijah and Solomon both already lie upon beds of ivory and stretch themselves upon their couches. Bathsheba would also like a bed of ivory upon which to stretch herself. Did you hear her before, that cunt? With her 'What famous elegy?' She knew, of course. That's just her nasty, selfish way of baiting me. With scheming vigilance, she takes note daily that Abishag my Shunammite is still attired in a maiden's robe of many colors. Adonijah notes it too. In just such a lively, carefree gown of divers colors was my virgin daughter Tamar, Absalom's sister, desired, deceived, raped, despised, and ejected.
There is import both moral and political in Abishag's virginity. Until I know her carnally, she is servant rather than concubine, and need not inevitably remain or pass on with my harem as a royal possession to go to my successor. A man going into another's woman is attempting to usurp the prerogatives of that other's office. You know what Absalom did in the sight of the sun with those ten concubines I left behind to keep the palace clean. You think it was because they were so beautiful? A streak of pragmatic electioneering is involved in the sporting eye Adonijah now rolls at Abishag. And canny Bathsheba is wary that I might encourage the union.
'You can still get out,' she advises Abishag frankly with me looking on, as though I were invisible, deaf, or absent. 'Nag him, aggravate him. Hurt him when you comb his hair. Bump into things and knock them over. I know how to drive him crazy. Don't bathe every day. Serve soup to him cold. Lose your temper. Complain. He'll give in. Don't make the same mistake I did. It's so much better outside.'
'I told you to stay outside,' I remind Bathsheba. 'You wouldn't listen.'
'Why don't you listen?' Bathsheba presses Abishag.
Smiling guardedly, my servant girl lowers her face and shakes her head. She glances at me shyly with eyes that are lustrous. I am David the king. Though ancient and decrepit, I am nonetheless her prince. I am her legend. She has no vision, she says, of ever being with anyone else.
'Where there is no vision,' Bathsheba observes dully, 'the people perish.'
'What's that supposed to mean?' I want to know. Bathsheba admits she doesn't know. 'I was just thinking out loud.'
'Is that another gem of wisdom from Solomon?'
'The apple doesn't fall far from the tree.'
'That's another one I still don't get.'
'Solomon says it all the time.'
'That the apple doesn't fall far from the tree? What does it mean?'
'Why don't you ask him?'
'Where is the apple supposed to fall? How far away do you think a pear falls?'
'Solomon will like you,' says Bathsheba to Abishag, skirting the need to reply. 'He is beginning to think well of you already.'
'If I do release her'--Bathsheba is not paying attention to me, and I turn and begin again with Abishag-- 'if I do release you, my dove, you will not go away from me with a light heart, will you? Yet my heart would fly away with you.' What awaits her outside? She would
be wife to whatever man her father took the price from, spend a lifetime in pregnancy and household drudgery. In sorrow and pain would she bring forth children, manage a home, and endlessly toil a thousand times harder than she would ever have to do for me. Where is the advantage?
'Husbands die, thank God,' Bathsheba answers in her matter-of-fact way. 'That's how he got Abigail, and that's how he got me. Or they can easily be provoked to get rid of you by divorce. Begin to aggravate him and see. Nag him and holler on him just to keep in trim. You'll see how easy it is to get what you want.'
'I get what I want.'
Bathsheba pays no more attention to her words than to mine. 'Never forget how to aggravate, aggravate,' she goes on, as though Abishag had answered in agreement. 'Nag and demand. And always aggravate. Marry an old one--they aggravate more quickly--and spy out the young ones you'd like to cavort with after he dies. That's so much fun.' Drink and painted harlotry, she advises the younger woman, have their wages too, and silver, gold, and precious stones are among them. Kneeling at the clay oven the grace of a lovely figurine, Abishag, meek but resolute, gives a tiny shake to her head and blushes a dark crimson. She keeps the charcoal fire low. She would rather remain with me. She gladdens my heart when she declares that.
'He is my love,' she says modestly, with her large eyes cast downward toward the embers, 'and he has taken me into his garden.'
The girl is heaven-sent; I cannot avoid the feeling that perhaps I am entertaining an angel unawares. Is she too good to be true? Her figure is flawless, her spirit hypnotic. Her face is as brown garnet, her hair like sable at midnight, her stately neck is a column of molded copper, and her legs from the rear are as pillars of marble set upon sockets of fine gold. Her mouth is most sweet. The scent from between her legs is almost always of apples and acacia, of perfumes out of Lebanon. In front, her navel is like a round goblet that wanteth not liquor, and the patch of her thing is perfectly deltoid and as shiny and indelible as black coral.
'So much beauty,' warns Bathsheba in a dirge, 'so much loveliness you'll be wasting on him. There's nothing to do in here. I thought I would be the queen.'
'Sure, the queen,' I am quick to gloat. 'And I told her no queens. We have no queens.'
'And I wouldn't listen,' she concedes. Then she comes alive with another good idea for Abishag. 'Why don't you marry my Solomon now? He'll give you permission if we nag him enough. Will you let her marry Solomon? Hey, David, give me an answer, don't just lie there like a pancake. Then she and I can rule together and get everything we want. I believe my Solomon could learn to like her very much.'
'My other son Adonijah,' I interrupt sharply, 'already likes her very much.'
'And that's another reason you ought to marry my Solomon now,' Bathsheba goes on enthusiastically. 'Otherwise you might have to sleep with that conceited monkey Adonijah if he's the one that gets to be king. You'll belong to his harem.'
'And so,' I say with a malicious emphasis, 'will you.'
Her stricken gasp is music to my ears, her look of stunned revulsion a feast for sore eyes. Is it possible to hear a face fall?
'That's impossible!' she declares, as though able to nullify by her mere opposition all of the natural laws of society and the universe.
'He inherits the harem,' I point out smugly.
'He'll want to lie with me?'
'It's out of the question?'
'Deuteronomy won't stop him? Leviticus? A son can lie with the wife of his father?'
'Has Leviticus stopped others?'
'He'll really want to? That's not disgusting?'
'Don't I want to?'
'You're not disgusting?'
'He'd be stupid not to. What better way to solidify his rule than to possess the favorite wife of the former king?'
'Well, my son Solomon,' she asserts through drawn lips, 'would never allow that. My son Solomon would kill him if he tried.'
'Your son Solomon,' I warn her, staring fully into her face, 'will probably be dead in a matter of seconds if you keep this up, you dear, designing, confused old goose.' I have begun like a lion and am concluding like a lamb. 'And so will you be if you don't give up your campaign instantly and become more discreet. Didn't I warn you from the day he was born that you would be placing both your lives in jeopardy if you didn't stop talking about him as the future king?'
'Didn't you promise me that he would be king?'
'Why in the world would I promise you that?'
'Because I was giving you great fucking, that's why,' she retorts defiantly without an instant's delay. 'Wasn't I giving you the best head you ever had?'
'You were giving me the only head I ever had,' I answer, feeling very pleased with myself. 'How could I tell if it was good or not? But that's hardly going to carry much weight with Adonijah if you don't start doing everything possible to make him like you and get on his good side now.'
'I think I would rather die,' says Bathsheba with her jaw lifted stubbornly.
'That just might be the alternative,' I caution her sternly. 'You're playing politics and you don't know how. And I will not be alive to save you when you fail. There is just no way, no way in the world, you can succeed in making Solomon king.'
For only one moment does she appear to be sobered. And then the spell is over. 'There is always a way,' she responds, as though thinking aloud, 'where there is a will.'
'Another insufferable platitude from Solomon?'
'That one was mine.'
'What does it mean?'
'I don't think I know.'
'Well, it doesn't make any sense. Now will you please desist from your kingmaking? Dye your hair again, or tweeze some hairs from your mole, or invent more underwear. It's just no contest. Adonijah will be king, and Solomon will not.'
But hope, unfortunately, springs eternal in the human breast, and I know that this wife of mine is not the type to comply. I rail introspectively again at the libidinous male vanity that made me want so many wives when younger. Look at the trouble they cause me. And their children too.
Celibacy has few pleasures, I know, but marriage has many pains. And harems are not always what they're cracked up to be. Rarely in the long run are they worth the cost and endless bother. They congest the palace with people, noise, and odors, and they intensify the problems of garbage removal and sewage disposal, which are already hopelessly insurmountable throughout this raucous, teeming city. So many people these days are pissing against the walls that they practically have to wear boots. It's futile to try to divert any of my sons from their pleasures and personal goals to contend with the commonplace problems of civic administration. A lot they care, these fruits of my unions. And if marriage has many pains, polygamous marriage multiplies those pains to an unforeseeable extent with the commotion generating from squabbling wives and contending offspring. Even God's faithful servant Abraham had his poor hands full, didn't he?
In the beginning there was Abraham, in that first Jewish family, expelling, with Sarah egging him on, the one son Ishmael from the nomadic fold for mocking the second son Isaac at the celebration of his weaning and for any future aggressions against him foreshadowed by that action. Ishmael, the son of that alien bondswoman Hagar, was an archer who would turn out to be a wild man with his hand against every man, and with every man's hand against him. They were better off without him. But then--when Abraham was finally rid of Hagar and Ishmael, guess what he did next. He took another wife! He had six more children! And at his age?
He needed more children? Like a hole in the head. He couldn't live without another wife? A man like him so full of years? I guess he did need another woman. Sex is so powerful in this Mediterranean heat, and I was not the first to turn at times as horn/as a goat. Reuben humped Bilhah, and Judah swerved off the road to stick it to the woman in harlot's dress who proved to be his dead son's wife. Lust isn't bad in a warm climate with long dry summers. Return, O my Shunammite, that I might fondle and contemplate thee once more. Bathsheba, my old love, stretch thyself down
beside me and place your fat ass in my hands again; open thy legs to me as thou did in the past, that I might indeed know thee at least one more time and taste again, perhaps, that joy that cometh in the morning. Lay your sleeping head, my love, upon my arm, I wish when most sad to croon to her, as though a full lifetime of enchantments still were in store, for we must needs love each other or die.
Saul had no harem--I was the first in Israel to think up that extravagance--but he had troubles enough without one after Samuel dumped him. Saul begged to be pardoned for his transgression and for Samuel to return to him so that he could continue worshipping the Lord. What was so bad about taking some cattle and sparing a king for ransom? The Lord has forgiven worse. But Samuel would not be swayed. As he whirled to depart, Saul laid hold upon the skirt of his mantle to detain him, and it rent. Some days Saul couldn't do anything right; that day was among his worst.
And Samuel said unto Saul stringently, The Lord hath rent the kingdom of Israel from thee this day and hath given it to a neighbor of thine, that is better than thou.'
Now, strictly speaking, this was not true. In fact, it was a bald lie, for it was not until afterward, in Samuel I, Chapter 16, that the Lord, repenting that He had made Saul king over Israel, commanded Samuel to go to Jesse of Bethlehem to find the king He had provided Himself from among Jesse's sons.
The rest, of course, is history, and everything occurring in the universe earlier seems but an overture to my birth and a prelude to the eminence I've enjoyed. Samuel came to Bethlehem with his red heifer on a rope. The elders of the town trembled at his arrival, of course, until he assured them he had come in peace to sacrifice to the Lord. No one but me would have questioned why he had to come to Bethlehem in Judah to sacrifice. They had no altars in Benjamin? He calls for Jesse and his sons and that's pretty much the way I come into the picture, when none of my brothers could qualify with God. The spirit of the Lord came upon me from that day forward, and the spirit of the Lord departed from Saul at that identical time, leaving him mad as a hatter and lonely as a stone. In no time at all he was ready for the nuthouse.