It was a pigsty, a stable, a squalid, muggy dump. The Jebusites were constitutionally methodical about everything but cleanliness, and they went to bed early. It was a dingy, dull, and drab town, a godawful eyesore, small, walled in, boring, and claustrophobic. It was a jammed and smelly slum. Where could I live with all my wives and children? I couldn't wait to get away alone on weekends to my tent in the country, or to go off to war for whole summers, when heaven is shut up and there is no rain. It is not a blasphemy for me to talk this way about our sacred city, for Jerusalem was not a sacred city until, by my presence, I made it one, and not a holy city until I consecrated it by bringing in the ark of the covenant and setting it in its place in the midst of the tabernacle I had pitched to contain it. God forbade me to build a temple, but He raised no rumpus with me about the ark. I led that magnificent procession and split with Michal for good when she whirled upon me like a lynx to berate me for exposing myself in the street to every maidservant who wanted to see how a king was built. Even a maidservant can look at a king, and they would have chances to look at this one again, I informed her with blazing egalitarian fervour, and lay with her no more. By then, of course, Jerusalem was already the glittering showplace of the Western world. Jerusalem was not a showplace until I built my splendid palace and made it one.
The streets were narrow and dark when I got there, the low, muddy houses dripping with moisture and sagging in upon each other. Drainage was abominable, and the odors of the city were revolting and overpowering. Forget what you hear about clean mountain air--ours reeked of garbage, and still does; of livestock and human excretions. Why do you think we burn so much incense and lay on oceans of perfume? Even the acrid smell of punk and myrrh is preferable to our natural atmosphere. I've never been able to entice the interest of any of my sons to the problem of a sewer system. I've spoiled them all for honest labor. Not one can I picture who, to save himself or save God's world, would go into the clay, tread the mortar, and take hold of the brick mold. They grew tired of hearing me tell them I'd begun life as a shepherd.
'Oh, no,' said Amnon.
'Not again,' said Absalom.
There were no open spaces in the town proper when I arrived. I dwelt in the fort at first, and began building round about from Mello and inward. Everything was damp and rank all winter long. Wool would not dry. The days were miserably short. It was like living in the goddamn Middle Ages, and one of the first things I undertook was to contract with Hiram king of Tyre to do my building, for his people could work with wood, stone, and precious metals. Hiram sent messengers to me, and cedar trees, lots of cedar trees, and carpenters and masons and stone-squarers and workers in brass, to erect for me the finest house in Jerusalem, the palace which Michal deemed merited only by someone of her highborn station, with a place for a harem for her and my other women, and with a big roof to walk around upon at the end of the day, from which I could look down upon every other house in the city. The harem could have been bigger, as it turned out, with cloistered passages into some of the individual apartments, but who knew then that I was going to go on liking women as much as I did and want them even now? From that rooftop, you recall, I looked down on naked Bathsheba. After a minute or two, my breath stopped. After a minute or two, I was struck by the thunderbolt and fell deeply and suddenly in love. Give not your heart to women, I have written, give not your strength away. But that was only for appearances, in my wisdom literature, and no more meant to be taken as truth than my remarkable sonnet sequences about the pale rider and the dark lady. You want the real story? If the chance ever comes to you again to fall in love, grab it, every time. You might always live to regret it, but you won't find anything to beat it, and you won't know if it will ever come to you once more.
To Hiram king of Tyre, as one of the conditions of our contract, I sent workers to cut wood and hew stone. Forced labor? I wouldn't exactly call it forced labor. But that's what it was, forced labor. Yet nowhere on the scale that Solomon tells me he has in mind should he ever possess the power to build things of his own in my kingdom. A thousand wives seems a lot? Peacocks and apes sound pretentious? That's just for starters. Solomon is a man drearily attentive to truthful details, and I am sometimes in terror that he may mean what he's talking about. Thirty thousand men he would conscript to cut wood in Lebanon, maybe a hundred and fifty thousand more to bring stone from the mountains.
'That's lot of wood,' I point out delicately, 'and a lot of stone. What will you do with it all?'
'Build.'
'What?'
'Lots of things. A brand-new palace. A larger, better dwelling of costly stone with lots of beaten gold of Ophir. I'd have nothing but the finest beaten gold.'
'For me? I'll soon be dead.'
'For me. I'd build a huge harem, much bigger than yours, for all the wives I'd take.'
'Really a thousand?'
'An even thousand, seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines, princesses all. I would try to marry the Pharaoh's daughter, if ever I was king. Imagine that--me, a Jew from Judah, married to the daughter of the Pharaoh.'
'You really like women that much?'
'No. I don't like women a bit.'
'And that's why you'd have so many?'
'I'd jazz them all. What did you ever do with those ten concubines you left behind that Absalom went into after you fled the city?'
'I put them in ward and fed them and shut them up until the day of their death, living in widowhood, and never went in unto any of them again.'
'I would have jazzed them all.'
'I was afraid of herpes.'
'I would have trusted in God and taken my chances. I'll build store-houses for grain in cities like Hazor, Megiddo, and Beersheba, and stables with stalls for more than four hundred and fifty chariot horses each. They're not much good up here, those horses. I'll build me a temple with an altar of brass and with a molten sea ten cubits from the one brim to the other, set upon twelve oxen looking outward. I'll have gigantic carvings of cherubims with their wings outstretched, fifteen feet high, made of olive wood and overlaid with gold, and carved figures of palm trees and open flowers, and the walls and ceilings of my temple also will be overlaid entirely with gold. I'll put people to work building towers in the wilderness and hewing out cisterns.'
'Why?'
'I've no idea.'
'I once thought of building a temple,' I recalled with a twinge of regret. 'But God told Nathan He wouldn't let me. "Have I ever asked for a house of cedar?" was the way Nathan told me God said no, but I think there was more to the refusal than that. All of us ask so many questions, don't we? Even God. "Where is Abel thy brother?" said the Lord unto Cain after Cain had slain him. Didn't God know?'
'I bet He'll let me,' boasted Solomon, ignoring my digression. 'Nathan thinks so too. You know why you weren't allowed to build a temple? Nathan tells me it was because you shed blood abundantly and made great wars. I wouldn't have to fight any more wars, thanks to you, because you've already won them all. I'll use stones from the mountains for the walls and foundation of my temple and have them sawn and measured at the quarry before they are brought here, so there will be neither hammer nor axe nor any tool of iron heard in the house while the temple is in building. It will last forever.'
All this talk was quite surprising from someone of miserly temperament who invested in amulets as a hedge against inflation, counted the number of lentils or grains of barley in a cup whenever he lent or borrowed any, and always ate and drank exactly as many mouthfuls as did whomever he dined with, never more but never any less, even when he dined with his mother.
'Isn't that all highly extravagant?' I couldn't forbear inquiring of this idiot son. 'How will you pay for it?'
'I will tax and spend, tax and spend,' he answered earnestly, visibly encouraged by my interest. 'I'll cede twenty cities to Hiram king of Tyre if I have to, from far away in northern Israel in Naphtali, where they'd never be missed by anyone here. I'll raise a levy of workers out of all Israel of
thirty thousand men to send into Lebanon, with ten thousand of them working one month of every three. A month they will be in Lebanon, and two months at home, and a hundred and fifty thousand more I will put in the mountains to hew stone and haul stone.'
'Really?' I suppressed a smile. My eyes, I felt, were starting to pop from my head as I listened to his ravings.
'Yes,' Solomon responded soberly. 'Threescore and ten thousand to bear the burdens and fourscore thousand to do the hewing. That makes up my hundred and fifty thousand. I will also give Hiram twenty thousand measures of wheat for food to his household and twenty measures of pure oil, year by year. And I'll still eat better than you.'
'You don't care for food.'
'That has little to do with it.'
'Then why would you want to?'
'I must live like a king. I'll divide up all Israel into twelve regions.'
'For each of the tribes?'
'For each of the months, and I will put officers over them. I'll make each region provide victuals for me and my household for a whole month; each man his month314 in a year will make provision to me. Every day I'll want thirty measures of fine flour, and threescore measures of meal, ten fat oxen, and twenty oxen out of the pastures, and a hundred sheep, besides harts and roebucks, and fallow deer, and fatted fowl. Not wild, but fatted.'
'That seems a great deal.'
'I would rather waste than want.'
'What will be done with the people who lack bread for themselves?'
'Let them eat cake,' he said calmly. 'Man does not live by bread alone.'
'That is spoken,' I comment acidly, 'with the wisdom of Solomon.''
Thank you,' he replies. 'I got that from you.'
'You're a very hard man, Shlomo.'
'Thank you again. My heart will not bleed for my people. My finger will lade them with a heavy yoke, and I will chastise them with whips.'
'Suppose they object?'
'You have unified the country, centralized the government, solidified control. You have the largest army in the world, garrisons and militia at every crossroad, trained forces of mercenaries, a formidable palace guard under Benaiah, spies everywhere, and can bequeath all to your successor. You are snug as a bug in a rug. Why would anyone object?'
'Now that I am snug as a bug in a rug,' I observe with irony, 'I find I am dying.'
'Yes.' He agrees mechanically. 'And you have everything to live for.' He then goes on with that annoying trait of his mother's to pay no attention to what I've said. 'I would not sleep on a bed like yours of plain applewood. The patricians of Megiddo have better appointments. I would want for myself to lie on a fine bed inlaid with carved ivory, in a room with magnificent draperies of dark purple Tyrian cloth. The sumptuous curtains of Solomon would be coveted everywhere. My table vessels and utensils would be of bronze, silver, and gold. I wouldn't use clay.'
He says this while watching me wet my palate with wine from a flask of burned clay. 'Shlomo,' I say to him, putting aside my clay flask a touch self-consciously, 'do you ever understand why you've never been my favorite?'
'No. I have never understood why I've never been your favorite.'
'And I guess you never will. Fools hate knowledge.'
'Should I write that down?'
'Do what you want.'
'What does it mean?'
'You won't learn from me.'
'Would you tell Adonijah? Adonijah is your favorite, isn't he?'
'Adonijah wouldn't want to know. And he's not my favorite. I have no favorites.'
'Absalom was your favorite. I could tell.'
'And so was Amnon, before Absalom killed him. Solomon, don't be envious. Your mother tells me you're frugal.'
'Yes,' answers Solomon. 'With my own money, I am very frugal. I invest conservatively and always hoard as much as I can. But with the wealth of nations, the sky is the limit to what I could spend.'
'For the good of the country and the glorification of God?'
'For the good of myself. I care only about myself, Father. And, of course, about you.'
'And your mother?'
'I would do just about anything for my mother. And for you.'
'If you were king,' I put it to him, 'and your mother came to you with a request to permit Adonijah to marry Abishag, what would you do?'
'I would have him killed.'
'I can see you've been thinking.'
'I think a lot. I try to think at least one hour a day. And do you know what I think? I think that if God ever came to me in a dream and offered me any one thing I wanted, I think I would choose wisdom. Because then, if I were wise enough, I could get everything else I wanted. I've also been thinking about buildings.'
'Children and the building of a city continue a man's name,' I inform him.
'That's what I say also. Even though my name isn't David and yours is not Jesse. That's the reason I want to build a temple, to continue my name.'
'It's the reason I wanted to build mine.'
'I'll build and I'll build,' vowed Solomon, getting, for him, rather worked up. 'And everything I build will be famous and stand forever and be named after me. I'll make donations to hospitals.'
'Man's erections are only temporary,' I intone with mock seriousness, but he does not smile.
'Mine will last an eternity,' he asserts instead, 'a hundred years, till hell freezes over or the stars tumble from their courses, till the Messiah comes, till the Assyrians arise or the Babylonians grow strong enough to overthrow Judah. And you know what little chance there is of any of that happening.'
'In Ammon once,' I glumly have another crack at instructing him, 'I met a traveler from an antique land who said two vast and trunkless legs of stone stand in the desert. I went to see them for myself. Near them, on the sand, half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown, and wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, tell that its sculptor well those passions read which yet survive, stamped on those lifeless things. And on the pedestal these words appear: "My name is Ozyman-dias, king of kings. Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair." Nothing beside remains. Round the decay of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare, the lone and level sands stretch far away.'
'What's it mean?' asks Solomon.
'You see no moral?'
'I would build towers there and hew out cisterns.'
'There is no rainfall.'
'What difference would it make? There are no people either. Before I'm through, there'll be a temple of Solomon and a palace of Solomon, the stables of Solomon and the mines of Solomon. Don't worry, you'll be famous too. Everyone will remember that you were my father when they sing hosannas to me and my enduring works. And all of this time, while I am disciplining myself by thinking at least one hour a day, my older brother Adonijah squanders his money and himself on fifty chariots and men to run before him, just as Absalom did, and on wasteful banquets that are as ephemeral as chaff and bring you no honor. Will you attend his luncheon, Father? I am told that it will be a catered affair and that all of the food will be warmed over. Mother informed me of that and told me to ask if you will go.'
It has always been difficult for me to think of saucy Bathsheba as somebody's mother. 'I haven't been invited yet.'
'Nor have I,' says Solomon. 'Neither has Mother been invited, nor Nathan, nor Benaiah. Doesn't it begin to look like a plot by Adonijah to take over your kingdom?'
'Adonijah wouldn't do that. He's much too lazy. Tell me, has anyone been invited? Has he sent out invitations yet? Has a date been set?'
'I don't know. I won't go if Mother is not invited. Unless, of course, you direct me to.'
'I haven't even given Adonijah permission to have his party yet.'
'Did you tell him not to?'
'Did Bathsheba tell you to ask me that?'
'Mother bade me tell you,' he replies systematically, 'that if you said what you just did say, I was to answer that if Adonijah can go about saying he will be king, there is no reason he can't also go around saying he will give a feas
t.'
'That's what she bade you tell me?'
'That's what she bade me tell you.'
'Solomon, my wise child, how in the world did you ever remember all that?'
'She wrote it down for me on my tablet. She also put this little bell around my neck. To remind me to look.'
'Sooner or later I was going to have to ask you about that bell. I thought it might be in case you got lost. You and your mother are very close, aren't you?'
'I like to believe that we are,' Solomon answers with a nod. 'She sits at my right hand whenever we are together. We always think only the very best of each other. She thinks I'm a god, and I think she's a virgin. Tell me, Father,' he inquires with enormous gravity, 'is it possible that my mother can be a virgin?'
'There you have me.'
'She's been married twice.'
'I wouldn't jump to conclusions.'
'I've been thinking hard about it.'
'I thought I smelled wood burning.'
'I've been thinking also that I would have forty thousand horses and twelve thousand horsemen. I want to speak three thousand proverbs, and my songs will be about a thousand and five. From Dan even to Beersheba, when I have my way, every man will dwell safely under his vine and his fig tree, if I leave him his vine and leave him his fig tree. I want to cut a baby in half.'
'Good God! You do?'
'I do.'
'Why?'
'To show how fair I can be. Everyone will think I was very fair.'
'Everyone will think you're nuts,' I feel I have to let him know. 'I think you'll go down in history as the biggest damned imbecile who ever lived if you tried even a single one of the things you've mentioned today. I won't breathe a word of your stupidity to a soul, and t you don't say anything to anyone about any of this ; either. We will keep it our secret.'
'I want to build a navy.'
'Oh, my God!'
'I can float timber of cedar and timber of fir down by sea on barges from--'
'Abishag!'
My own manifold transgressions with the liberty of others were as farts in a blizzard when stacked up beside the mountain of tyrannies contemplated by this stolid offspring of my torrid copulations with Bathsheba. We met in the spring and were married by fall, with Uriah dead and her belly just starting to swell with the child who would die. She and I could not bear being apart in that feverish and astonishing and vertiginous lewd beginning. We plucked without stop at each other's flesh, in stroking and pinching caresses of the waist, hips, arms, backside, and thighs. Our fingers snatched touches. We kept touching tenderly when we weren't in violent embrace. We were constantly hot for each other.