'Who is this David that I owe him anything?' he rashly ridiculed my men in front of his own, eager to return to his gorging and roistering at the feast of the sheepshearing in which he was just then indulging himself with a complete lack of restraint. He mocked my men in their noses with a snap of his fingers. 'Who is this son of Jesse? Is he the king, or even a servant of the king, that I must cater to him? A fig for your David--no, not even a fig, not one fig for your David. Ha, ha! '
God knows I was incensed when my messengers acquainted me with the rude fashion in which my modest proposal had been dismissed. I never could bear having emissaries of mine demeaned. When Hanun the son of Nahash of Ammon defiled the people I had sent in peace to help comfort him on the death of his father, I could not rest until I had exacted my revenge. He shaved off the one half of the beards of my messengers, and cut off their garments in the middle even to their buttocks, before he released them to return to me with their asses hanging out. I made war against all the cities of Ammon after that; from one year to the next, I did not let up until the last fortress was overthrown and all the people of Ammon were put under saws, and under harrows of iron, and under axes of iron, and were made to pass through the brick kiln, and their king's crown, the weight whereof was a talent of gold with the precious stones, was taken from off his head and set upon my own. And even then I did not feel wholly appeased. All of that was very much later, when I was already a mighty king, but it was with no less monumental a rage that I determined to avenge Nabal's insult in the only way I knew how, and began firing orders for my men to make ready for battle.
'Come not at your wives this night,' I began with a shout.
'We're going to war?'
'Against Nabal of Carmel.'
'No shit?'
'And no shit either. I want no one unclean. Gird ye on every man his sword.'
I don't kid around. At daybreak, I girded on my sword and set out toward Carmel leading four hundred of my men, leaving two hundred others behind to abide by our stuff.
Luckily I never got there. Luckily, Abigail, alerted by one of the young men in her husband's employ to the danger provoked so needlessly, had busied herself to help make amends and atone for the sin against me committed by her husband. I never knew a woman more practical. She took two hundred loaves, and two bottles of wine, and five sheep already dressed, and five measures of parched corn, and a hundred clusters of raisins, and two hundred cakes of figs, and laid them all on asses. She told not a word to her husband Nabal about what she was doing and rode out to meet us with five pretty damsels who were her servants.
I'm glad she did, for more reasons than one. In the long run, it probably would have redounded strongly to my disadvantage if I had pursued to completion my resolution not to leave alive any in Nabal's house that pissed against the wall.
We were all of us on foot. Forget about horses--we didn't have any, and no one anywhere then knew how to ride them. Abigail had rouged her cheeks and lips, made up her eyes, and brushed and tied her dark hair. She had attired herself in a robe and mantle of brilliant desert scarlet. I brought my march to a halt when I saw a string of asses bearing provisions come into view against the bright sky and move down by the covert of the hill to meet us. I did not know who she was until after she had arrived and dismounted and announced herself.
We had never seen each other before. She had not dreamt I was good-looking. I did not know she was beautiful. I think you could have heard a pin drop there on the road to Carmel as she hasted the final few yards on her animal, lighted off the ass, fell before me on her face at my feet, and bowed herself to the ground.
She prayed I would hear her words and beseeched me to restrain myself from shedding blood. She begged my pardon repeatedly. She was older than I, dear woman, and clearly more knowing and cosmopolitan and, from her place on her knees, she stared upward at me after the first few moments with an unwavering look of frank admiration. A gleam in her eye made no secret of what she thought of me. We were close enough to touch. For the longest time I could not move my gaze from her face. Then I could not take my eyes off her tits. I felt my member harden and begin to stand out. Abigail noticed it all, she confided a fortnight later when we were lying together as man and wife in one of the several good goatskin tents she had included in the dowry she had brought from the estate of her newly deceased husband. She was too much the lady to give any indication at the time. And besides, she was pleading for her life and, though she could hardly be certain, for the lives of all in the house of Nabal as well. Ten years later, I was struck for the second time in my life with that same dumbfounding thunderbolt of passionate love, when I looked into a bathtub on a roof a half block away and saw Bathsheba, assisted by a servant girl with an azure water pitcher, rinsing her pale and rosy voluptuous body with her head turned brazenly in my direction.
Who ever loved that loved not at first sight? The setting was not as pictorially romantic as it might seem. Her building was low and deteriorated, the space on top littered and cramped. Good housing was already difficult to come by in Jerusalem, and even the roof of my own palace was, as usual, cluttered with figs, dates, and flax set out to dry, along with the family wash strung out on ropes. I had to pick my way along narrow lanes in the relaxing, cooling strolls I took each evening to escape the stenches and stale heat below and the obstreperous, interminable disagreements with Michal and perhaps a few of my other wives. Ahinoam, Maccah, and Haggith were perfect mates-- they hardly talked at all, and when they passed away, they attracted barely any notice. Abigail I still miss. I always loved her. Nevertheless, my mouth watered the moment I laid eyes on Bathsheba: she looked to me like peaches and cream, and the mounds of her tiny breasts were tipped with the colors of wild raspberries or fresh currants.
'What woman is that?' I wanted to know.
It was Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah.
I sent for her anyway and lay with her that same day, for she had finished her bath and was purified from her uncleanliness. Not that the opposite condition would have given either one of us any pause. I could tell within minutes after we began that I had got me a woman with sexual experience considerably more varied than my own. And even while finding her fruits so sweet to my taste, I began to detest the men from whom she had learned, to envy bitterly the very, very many who had enjoyed her and made versatile use of her in the more artless periods of her girlhood when she still looked up to people and it still was possible to impress and surprise her with something different, something new or better. I felt basely overshadowed by them. All I could offer was love. It was with a combination of gladness and dismay that I told myself I had taken a tigress by the tail I would be happy to be rid of and whom I would also feel, hopelessly, I could not live without.* I would follow her on bleeding feet. I would follow her as weeping Phalti did my wife Michal when I demanded her back as a preliminary to negotiations.
I was less autocratic with Abigail, and she was more deferential, though I was not yet king. I was bewitched by her eloquence and reserve, by her lustrous grooming and her refinement and dignity.
'Upon me, my lord, upon me let this iniquity be,' she humbly began from her place on the ground at my feet. 'I pray thee, hear the words of thine handmaid.'
It wasn't always clear to me whose life she was seeking to save, for she seemed to be condemning Nabal along with all the rest of my enemies. But she gave me her blessing and entreated me to leave the matter of vengeance to heaven sooner than shed blood myself in an enterprise that might bring grief unto me afterward. Abigail always made sense. And she was another in the growing roster of those foreseeing that someday soon the Lord would appoint me ruler over Israel.
'From your mouth,' I replied with regal courtesy, dipping my head in assent, 'to God's ears. Blessed be the Lord God of Israel,' I went on with warmth, 'which sent thee this day to meet me. And blessed be thy advice, for in very deed, as the Lord God liveth, if thou hadst not come to meet me, surely there had not been left unt
o Nabal by the morning light any that pisseth against the wall.' I accepted from her the goods she had brought and bestowed upon her the reassurances she had come for. What a nice love story, I thought. I had never met a woman for whom I had a higher regard. 'See, I have hearkened to thy voice. Go up in peace to thine house.'
It was with a pang that I watched her take leave, an aching sense of unfair deprivation with which I watched her remount and ride away back to her husband with the good news that killed him about ten days later. Joab was studying me sharply. I gave a start of uneasiness.
'What's wrong?' I inquired, fidgeting.
'Why were you lisping?' he demanded angrily.
'Lisping?' I was baffled. 'Who was lisping?'
'You were.'
'When?'
'Before.'
'Lisping?' I repeated in disbelief. 'What are you talking about? I wasn't lisping. I never lisp.'
'You said pisseth, didn't you?'
'Pisseth?'
'That'th right. You thaid all who pisseth against the wall.'
'I thaid pisseth?' I was furious now and answered him with a heat that equaled his own. 'I thaid no thuch thing.'
'Yeth, you did. Athk anyone.'
'Let'th get these provisions moving, Joab, before they thpoil in the sun. I command thee. Pisseth? Indeed!'
He gave ground grudgingly. 'I wish she'd brought more.'
It ith--it is a source of continual amazement to me that Joab, despite the lifelong antagonism simmering between us, has never once betrayed me, although I was certain he had switched sides the night I abandoned Jerusalem to escape the converging forces of Absalom. Where was he? I felt that night that I had spent half my life running from Saul and the other half fleeing my son and his allies. I still remain unconvinced that Joab was not in league with him at the beginning and broke with him afterward. Against my wishes, he murdered Abner, he murdered Amasa, he executed Absalom as he hung by his head from the boughs of that oak tree by which he had been caught up. For this last, I have never been able to forgive him, although he did me an extraordinary favor by doing so. How could I possibly have spared the life of a beloved child when loyal soldiers had laid down their own lives to prevent him from killing me? Yet how could I have taken it?
But ever since, I have been waiting for Joab to make that one mistake that would give me sufficient public reason to take off his head. I would like to hear a national outcry against him. He may be committing that blunder now when he staunchly befriends my eldest son, Adonijah, and encourages his preparations for that outdoor feast they wish to give. Do they intend to proclaim Adonijah king? There is a significant difference between saying he will be king and declaring he is. Bathsheba snitches to me that Joab has already recommended a caterer for the affair, his wife's brother. And Joab was the one who, with criminal motive or not, induced me to bring back into the city the one thing in the world I wanted most to have near-- that same son Absalom.
Go figure out that one. In no time at all, it seemed, Absalom was setting fire to Joab's barley field. I grinned with pride in my audacious son as I listened to doughty Joab complain like a milksop.
'He says he will set fire to all my fields if I do not come and plead with you to let him see you. It's been two years now, David. Why did you allow him to return from exile if you did not wish him to see your face?'
'Why did you urge me to?'
'Don't you want to look at him and talk to him again?'
My heart broke, and I relented and lifted the order of banishment keeping him from my presence, and I did at long last allow Absalom to come into my house. I kissed him when I saw him. I took him in my arms and held him and burst into tears before he even began to justify himself for the slaying of his brother Amnon. I never even forced him to beg my forgiveness. I put him to work as my surrogate, to deal with people with complaints for which I had no patience. Once again he was the apple of my eye.
And in no time at all, it seemed, the apple of my eye was sweeping toward Jerusalem in a whirlwind of fire and in chariots of fiery horses, and I was fleeing my city with my large household as rapidly as I could move. How was he able to mount so large a rebellion so swiftly and fiercely? Why did he want to?
It was not the best of times, I'll admit, but was it the worst? I could not believe he had come so far so fast without the subversive connivance of powerful people very close to me. And I was right. Amasa, my nephew by my other sister, was captain of his host. Ahitophel, the shrewdest and most stoically pragmatic of my advisers, turned traitor too. And I could not drive from my mind that it was Joab, of all people, who had importuned me to terminate the banishment of Absalom and grant him the amnesty allowing his return. As I wended my way downward in a descent that seemed to correspond symbolically to my loss of powers, I saw Joab waiting behind every bush, like a bear.
So surprising it was for this man impervious to all sentimental feelings to read my heart so accurately and take the trouble to intervene that way. It wasn't like him at all. It was, in fact, the only time in our long lives that he made proper obeisance to me as a king, another galling detail that keeps my hunches about him operating even now. I still believe it was the incident of the barley field that divided him from Absalom. Joab does not forgive indignities easily.
He enlisted the aid of the wise woman of Tekoah to play on my emotions in his stratagem for Absalom's return. He dressed her in widow's weeds and sent her in to me with a dolorous cock-and-bull story of family murder and flight paralleling my own distressful tragedy so closely that she was able to turn the charitable verdict I rendered into a moral for resolving my own dilemma. I nearly jumped out of my skin when I heard her say: 'Wherefore then doth the king not fetch home again his own banished son? For we must needs die and are as water spilt on the ground, which cannot be gathered up again.'
I have never liked parables. 'Who put you up to this?' I wanted to know.
Joab was soon on the scene to advocate openly. 'Oh, David, David, why be so foolish? Bring him back, bring him back. It's clear you miss him. You're a king. You can do whatever you want.'
'He broke a law.' I heard quavers in my voice. I could not handle that subject without emotion. 'He committed a crime.'
Joab was almost patronizing. 'There are no laws. This is Joab, David. No laws are legitimate. And there is no such thing as crime.'
'God's laws?'
'God's laws,' he echoed cynically.
'Thou shalt not kill?'
'We kill all the time.'
'Thou shalt not kill thy brother?'
'He was only a half brother. And where is that written? Cain killed Abel, and didn't God give him a seal of protection? And what difference does it make, if you miss him? Do what you want. David, David, life is short. We shall all return to the dust, even you. Bring him back. Why make yourself suffer? Do I talk to you often about things like this?'
'You can't stand to see me suffer?' I guessed.
'I can stand to see you suffer,' he contradicted me calmly. 'I just don't like to see a sad king. I never liked Saul. If a king be sad, what little is there left for anyone to hope for? Shall I go to Geshur and bring him?'
'Go.' I gave in gladly at the end with a tremendous wave of relief. 'Go to Geshur and bring the young man Absalom home again. Let him be as safe as Cain. But let him turn to his own house, and let him not see my face. I can't give him all.'
Then it was that Joab fell to the ground--the only time in the forty years I've been king that he did so--and bowed himself and thanked me, saying, 'Today thy servant knows I have found grace in thy sight.' Who would have supposed that he even thought of himself as my servant?
'Make clear to him also,' I added, dropping my voice discreetly as a cue to him, 'in a whisper into his ear, so that nobody about will know, that I am sorry. Tell him I apologize. I should have punished Amnon some way after he did what he did, but I still wouldn't know how. Amnon was my child also.'
Bet your bottom dollar Joab would have known how. What business w
as all this of his anyway?
My son Absalom was the talk of the town as soon as he was back, and I waxed with pride in the adulation I knew he was receiving. I longed to see him in the two years I permitted him so near, yet kept him away. I thrived on every piece of information about him. In all Israel there was none to be much praised as Absalom for beauty. From the sole of his foot even to the crown of his head there was no blemish on him. And when he polled his head at every year's end--it was only at year's end that he polled it, for by then the hair was long and heavy on him--he weighed the hair at two hundred shekels, that's more than five pounds of hair. Even with the ointment factored out, that's still a pretty good head of hair. Many's the time I yearned to look upon him and deplored the injunction of separation I had imposed. Absalom prepared him chariots and horses and fifty men to run before him to clear the streets when he rode. No one thought much of Adonijah then, who is but a pallid copy now. Solomon? Ignored. And before you knew it, Absalom was setting Joab's barley field on fire. I must admit I laughed.
'That's Absalom,' I commented to Joab, with a happy lift of my arms, and consented to the full reconciliation I craved with the son I now pardoned.
And before you know it, I was arising with those I could take with me who wanted to come, and fleeing the city lest he find me there and smite Jerusalem with the edge of the sword to capture me. He was humping my concubines. It was with as much incredulity as umbrage that we heard how, in a tent spread for him upon the top of my palace, he went in unto the ten women I had left behind to keep the house.
'On the same day?' I exclaimed with amazement. 'All ten?'
'That's what they say.'
'But those were my ten worst concubines!'
'That's Absalom,' they exclaimed with indulgence. 'It would have taken me a whole year.'
It did not seem altogether believable to me that someone so ruthlessly direct as Joab would scheme so ploddingly in his supplication affecting the split between a father and the only one of his children for whom he truly felt love. I have no real evidence that he did. But where was he, I brooded fearfully as I abandoned the city with those who were faithful to me and made my way first to brook Kidron at the edge of Jerusalem. From there I went up barefoot by the ascent of the Mount of Olives to weep with my head covered and to try to take stock of my disastrous predicament. Trumpets proclaiming Absalom king had sounded all over the land, in the south and in the north. My Cherethites and Pelethites were with me. So was Ittai the Gittite, bless his heart, that man without a homeland now, and he brought with him the six hundred mercenaries who had come up with him from Gath after I had subdued and dispersed the Philistines. And Abishai was along with a regiment, muddling with still greater confusion my doleful speculations about Joab. I no sooner had escaped Jerusalem from Absalom than I found myself exposed as I passed Bahurim to the loathsome vituperations of that obscene and obnoxious baboon Shimei, who, red-eyed and red-gummed, subjected me to a tirade of such verbal abuse as I had never been exposed to before. Another bad-tempered Benjamite he was--Sheba, who blew a trumpet to call all Israel to renounce me after I had triumphed over Absalom, was still another intractable Benjamite prick who wanted to make trouble for me. I had to send men all the way north to Abel of Bethmaachah to kill Sheba, and Joab killed Amasa at the start in order to put himself in charge of that assignment himself. I had to restrain my men from killing Shimei.