Is it any mystery that I valued Abigail still more once Michal had returned to demean and torment me? Or that once established in Jerusalem, I unfailingly preferred the serpentine lecherous writhings of Bathsheba to the grating clangor of Michal's habitual and carping disgruntlement? Take it from me, it is better to dwell in a desert with beetles than in a fine house with a woman who will not be pleased, better to reside with scorpions than with a sullen one whose voice is never still. It is better to marry than to burn, but if your wife go not as thou wouldst have her, it is better to burn: cut her off from thy flesh, and give her a bill of divorce, and let her go, for all wickedness is but little to the wickedness of a woman. The wickedness of a woman changeth her face, and darkeneth her countenance like sackcloth. Her husband shall sit among his neighbors and, when he heareth it, shall sigh bitterly. Let the portion of a sinner fall upon her, for of the woman came the beginning of sin, and through her we all die. From her garments cometh a moth. On the other hand, if you find a woman as virtuous as Abigail, let her be as the loving kind pleasant roe, let her breasts satisfy thee at all times, and be thou ravished always with her love. Unhappily for Abigail, the heart of man being fickle, it was with Bathsheba's love that I was ravished always, and I would be ravished again with Bathsheba's love if only she would give herself to me one more time, settle herself near me on my bed, and assist me in the parting of her thighs. I have tried inducing her. 'My sister, my love, my dove, my undefiled,' I have flattered. 'Let me hear the voice. Thou hast ravished my heart with one of thine eyes, with one chain of thy neck. Come to me, for sweet is thy voice, and thy countenance is comely. How beautiful are the feet with shoes.'
'That doesn't work anymore,' she answered, unmoved.
'How come?'
'You used to be strong enough to make me.'
She probably is speaking the truth when she murmurs these days that she is sick of love. Back then, she was wont to emit such delicious and delirious high-pitched cries in her lust, and Michal could hear us both in my harem--I wasn't always quiet as a church mouse either--and Michal would claw at her palms until the blood ran as she waited for me to finish and pass by her doorway on my way out. Often I would dart inside Abigail's rooms to evade her scathing flare-ups. Or I would give her the finger as she raged, and proceed on my way with a smirk.
'How glorious was the king of Israel today,' she would snarl, and she would hiss and sputter and stamp her foot.
Oh, the curses I heaped on the head of Hiram king of Tyre for the failure of his architects to provide me a harem with a more serviceable layout. Michal minced no words from the beginning.
'My father,' she took pains to remind me on the day we were reunited, 'was king over all Israel.' I later ordained that day of our reunion a national holiday. I called it Tishah b'Ab. 'You are only king of Judah.'
There, for the moment, was the only point on which she did have me. But Israel was next on my timetable, and Abner was already out doing whispering work for me with the elders there to bring them over to me. He had communication with them in one place and the next, and recalled to them how in the past, when rankled by Saul and restive with Ishbosheth, they had often sought with each other for me to be king over them. He also spoke all that seemed good about me into the ears of the fighting people and the whole house of Benjamin, the tribe of Saul. It was not that hard to convince them, considering the sad state of the world and their tenuous position in it. What was the alternative?
When the time was ripe, when assents had been given and handshakes exchanged, when the proposal of me as sole universal sovereign seemed as good to the establishment of Israel as it long had seemed to me, Abner came at my invitation to my house in Hebron, and twenty men with him, to finalize the pact. We conferred and shook hands. I made a big feast for him and the twenty men that were with him. With both sides exulting, I sent him away in peace to conclude the arrangements that would at last make it possible for me to rule over all that my heart had desired.
All were exultant but Joab, that perennial fly in my ointment, that albatross about my neck. Joab almost went berserk upon returning to the city with very great spoils after another rapacious swoop into Israel and heard that I had met with Abner, had him wholly in my power in Hebron, and then had permitted him to depart alive. That primitive nature of Joab's never did allow him to appreciate finesse. His anger was terrible.
'What have you done, you dope?' he bellowed at me. Those were still the days when I was king only in Hebron, and neither one of us was much in awe of the other. To him, I was just his Uncle David, and I half surmised that he often made mention of me disparagingly in just that fashion. 'Don't you know he came here only to deceive you, to spy on all of us, to know thy going out and thy coming in, and to find out all that you do? How could you be such a putz?'
'Joab, Joab,' I coaxed, hoping to turn away his wrath with my soft answer. 'This is Hebron, not Ai or Jericho. Why would anyone come here to spy? What could a person find out here that isn't already out in the open?'
But Joab was unyielding and merciless. Without speaking anything to me, he sent messengers after Abner to return him to Hebron as though to transmit to him on my behalf some diplomatic afterthoughts. Joab gave him a warm greeting in the gate of the city. He took him aside with the air of a man who wishes to speak in a confidential manner to an esteemed colleague, or breathe into his ear the newest dirty joke making the rounds, while his brother Abishai loitered nearby in an attitude of nonchalance, prepared to leap to Joab's assistance if needed. With Abner thus lulled into a mood of rapt concentration, Joab struck without warning and smote him suddenly there in the side, right out in the open, right under the fifth rib, so that Abner fell down there and died.
It happened so quickly I could hardly believe it. The town was thunderstruck. For seven years and six difficult months I'd wanted Abner dead; and now, when I finally needed him alive, Joab, my nephew Joab, killed him, with Abishai looking on. Oh, those three sons of my sister Zeruiah were too hard for me.
'I did it,' Joab repeated obstinately to me, with a face set rigidly, when the roof seemed ready to cave in and I called him on the carpet inside my house to pour out my fury, 'to avenge the blood of my brother Asahel.'
This time I was the one in a temper. 'A lie, a lie, a barefaced and unconscionable lie!' I shouted at him with such volume that I expected the whole country to hear, from Dan all the way even to Beersheba. 'That's plain horseshit, Joab. Why in the world did you have to kill him now?' I kept my hand on the hilt of my sword as I took him to task, with the elbow of my other arm at the ready as a buffer protecting my fifth rib.
'And I don't like rivals,' Joab continued grimly, without change of expression and without backing away in the least from the first justification he had given. His eyes did not flinch from my gaze. 'You would have had to make him your captain over everyone, wouldn't you, even over me.'
I begged the question adroitly. 'He was delivering unto me all of the armies of Israel that had been loyal unto Saul, and now unto Ishbosheth also.'
'And how long, how long,' Joab came back at me, 'before we began to wonder if he was plotting to depose you with those armies? David, David, I did you a favor. Use your head. I know you, I know your heart. You don't enjoy disagreements. You want praise from everyone, only praise. You will try to get along with anyone if you think it will do you good. I have been with you from the beginning, at Adullam and Keilah and Ziklag. Would you really expect me to consent in our hour of triumph to serve as an underling to the man who hounded us for years? And the one who then killed my brother?'
'That was in war, Joab,' I reminded him, 'and Abner did not even want to fight with him. But you, Joab, you took Abner aside in peace as a trusting ally and slew him in his innocence with the sharp blade of a knife.'
'My sword, David--my short sword, David,' Joab corrected. 'I kept it hidden inside my cloak while I started to relate to him a dirty joke--'
'You said a dirty joke?'
'Why not?' h
e admitted with a shrug. 'That new one about the traveling knight in armor and the wife of Bath. And when I saw him bob his head and lean closer to hear better, I drew my sword and ran him through.'
'Just like that, you ran him through?'
'Just like that.'
'You really like killing people. I can see you do.'
'It's as easy as pie. Don't you?'
'I don't mind it,' I admitted, 'when it's necessary. I wouldn't say I enjoyed it. But you really get pleasure out of smiting, don't you? Smiting anyone.'
'Just about.' He nodded with patent self-satisfaction. 'Under the fifth rib I smote him. What a good zetz I gave him!'
'You really like that fifth rib, don't you?' I observed.
'It's the best place, David, especially when you're smiting somebody from the side. David, David, tell me the truth, look me in the eye--did you really want Abner alive? Why?'
'What would it hurt to leave him alive?'
'What does it hurt to kill him? You like him so much? He's been such a charming friend to you? Sooner or later you would have felt you had to destroy him. Don't you want to be king?'
'What will I tell to the people?'
'Tell to the people the truth,' said Joab virtuously. 'That I did it to avenge the blood of my brother Asahel, that was killed by this same Abner at Gibeon.'
'That's not the truth,' I argued.
'The truth,' said Joab, 'is whatever people will believe is the truth. Don't you know history?'
'I know history, and I make history, so don't tell me about history. Why should they believe that? Some might believe I was the one who contrived his murder. Oh, Joab, Joab, what have you done to me? There was not much else Abner could do at the battle, was there? Everyone knows that Asahel chased after him without wavering to the left or the right. Didn't Abner keep begging him to stop? How long, how long did he call out to him to turn aside, and to seek after someone else? How many times? Two, three? Was Asahel a match for Abner? Did Asahel listen? What got into him? He brought it all on himself.'
'He was still my brother.'
'Then why didn't you stop him? Where were you when all this was happening? You were there. You were in command. I know what you were doing. You were probably rooting him on all the time, weren't you? Don't I have witnesses? And you yourself made a truce with Abner afterward, didn't you? Now you murder him--in cold blood you murder him. Oh, Joab, Joab. You call it a family feud? That's horseshit, Joab, plain, unadulterated horseshit, and both of us know it.'
I did have witnesses. To this day, every good man present at that battle at the pool in Gibeon will tell his son how Asahel fixed himself upon Abner as a panther upon prey in the disorderly retreat that followed the tournament and how he turned not to the right hand nor to the left from pursuing him. Relentlessly, he narrowed the distance between them with his magically smooth and dazzling speed. A greyhound or a cheetah does not go more fleetly than could Asahel move then. Abner identified him that way. Who else but Asahel could sprint like a hind or be swifter than the eagles of heaven?
'Art thou Asahel?' Abner called back to him, after he had looked behind him and saw he was followed.
And Asahel, flashing a reckless grin, replied, T am.'
Then turn thee aside to the right hand or the left,' Abner beseeched him, 'and lay hold of one of the young men and take thee his armor. Believe me, it's for your sake I ask, not mine.' But Asahel would not turn aside from the following of him. And Abner, who, all in all, was both a practical man and a fair one, tried at least one more time to discourage him. 'Turn thee aside from following me,' he entreated, and gave warning. 'I ask you again, in a nice way. Wherefore should I smite thee to the ground? What good would it do? How then should I hold up my face to thy brother Joab? Do us both a big favor. Can't you foresee the tumult in the end if you don't return from chasing me and force me to slay you?' But Asahel would not turn aside. Like a hawk he flew toward him, like an arrow he rushed through the air separating them. Abner endeavored to the last to avoid doing battle with him, even to the turning around of his spear when overtaken to beat back the youth with blows from the butt. Like a strong young lion, Asahel sprang at the veteran older man, and like a skinny, puzzled, astounded, adolescent nincompoop, he found himself mortally impaled when Abner smote at him with the hinder end of his weapon to ward him off. The spear came out behind him under the fifth rib. Poor Asahel was done for. The young man fell down there and died in the same place.
And this was the time picked by Joab to even the score with the killing of Abner, in the gate of the city yet, where everyone could remark and the whole world be told of it. I never did have much luck with my relatives, did I? Remember my father-in-law Saul? My brothers Eliab, Abinadab, and Shammah? And those three sons of my flinty sister Zeruiah--Joab, Abishai, and Asahel--they had always been too hard for me.
I made certain to say so out loud, in exactly those words, in public where everyone could take note and spread the news of my condemnation of the base deed. I put my curse on the house of Joab as I boisterously bewailed the death of Abner, that heroic, gentle Israelite, and denounced the barbarous, treacherous crime. I stormily avowed to eat no meat while it was yet day, or taste bread or aught else till the sun went down. The people took notice of my misery and approved that I fasted. All of the people were pleased with everything I did that day. 'Abner died a trusting fool,' I wept in the street with heartrending cries and copious tears, 'and not as a captive whose hands were bound and whose feet were put into fetters. I had nothing to do with it. My hands, these hands, are clean.' I hardly stopped there. I made all of my servants rend their clothes and gird themselves in sackcloth and mourn after Abner with me. 'As a man falleth before wicked men, so fellest thou,' I said, lifting up my voice in such mighty lamentation that I soon was admiring my own sorrow. How are the mighty fallen, I was tempted to declaim, but I already had used that noble line three times in my famous elegy. 'Oh, what a fall was there? I came out with instead. With my head hanging heavily, I followed the swarthy bastard in his bier and wept at his grave, and all the people pertaining to me wept too. How I eulogized that obdurate, pockmarked, self-serving son of a bitch! 'Know ye not that there is a prince and a great man fallen this day in Israel?' I ranted in anguish at the huge assemblage, as though none but myself had even a glimmer of understanding of the reason for our coming together. 'Wasn't this the noblest Israelite of them all?' Onlookers were soon more sorry for me than they were for him.
Now, Abner was not a prince and he was not especially great. And he definitely was not the noblest Israelite of them all. I was, even though I was still Judean. Would anyone observing me that day have guessed that these lofty tributes were for the death of a human who, alive, had meant as much to me, precisely, as a stone in my shoe, or a frog in my throat? I used up some of my best phrases on that unfeeling opportunist who'd striven for seven years, seven long years, to bestow monarchical authority upon someone, anyone, still left alive from Saul's family, and did so mainly to conserve a share of it for himself. Michal was now the only legitimate issue left in the house of Saul, and Michal belonged to me. Maybe I did know what I was doing when I took her back.
Somehow, as though by a miracle, it all came together. The people took notice of how I carried on at the funeral, and all Israel could see that it was not to my knowing or purpose to slay Abner the son of Ner.
In the end, everything fell neatly into place. In fact, I was better off than I would have been had Joab shown self-restraint, for Abner was now out of the way. And with Abner gone, the days of Ishbosheth were numbered. His hands were feeble when he heard of Abner's death, and all the Israelites yet with him were troubled to see him so sickly and fainthearted. Two of his more enterprising captains chose to act. They entered his house as though fetching wheat and smote him under the fifth rib as he lay in his bed in the heat of day, slaying him and then beheading him, and escaping with his head through the plain all night. They sought favor with me by delivering it into my hands. D
id I need a head? Like Achish of Gath had need of a madman. They fawned expectantly, awaiting my blessing. I rewarded their initiative by having them executed. Then I cut off their hands and feet and hanged the remains up over the pool in Hebron as an object lesson. I did not want one soul in the land to harbor the idea that it was safe to kill even an illegitimate king-- or believe for a minute I'd had anything to do with the slaying of this one.
The liquidation of Ishbosheth just about took care of the contenders for the crown from the house of Saul. But I festered increasingly with mistrust for Joab, and resolved to restrict this brutal man of fiery disposition and independent will who'd just given evidence that he would not hesitate to do whatever he wanted, regardless of my wishes. I thought I spied the perfect opportunity to formalize and make permanent his demotion in status when I decided to take the city of Jerusalem from the Jebusites and establish my capital in this mountain stronghold near the border between Benjamin and Judah. It made better political sense to move closer to the neutral center of the united nation of which I was now the accepted leader than to remain in Judah, far from my latently antagonistic new subjects, or to headquarter in Gibeah, the city which was connected so closely to the reign of Saul. He'd been king for eighteen years, you know. I wished to preclude absolutely the impression that I was descended in any way from crazy Saul or indebted to him for a goddamned thing. You can imagine how my princess Michal reacted to that decision of mine to let slide into an oblivion of neglect the city in which she'd had her coming-out party and that otherwise might be immortalized as the site of her ancestral home. She bawled like a she-ass.
I completed my successful assault against Jerusalem in a single night with a picked band of mighty men. The walls of the city were impregnable and we would have failed in an attempt to scale them. The peaceful Jebusites were confident, and they jeered from inside that their lame and their blind could safeguard the battlements against us. And probably they were right. But I had done my homework meticulously and had ascertained that the subterranean waterways feeding into the city were shallow and unprotected and accessible on foot through the caves outside. Taking Jerusalem began to appear to me no more difficult a feat than eating a piece of cake.