'I get so wet,' she sighed so often.
We debauched without stop in our uncommon ecstasy of renewed discovery and fulfillment. Other women cloy the appetites they feed, but Bathsheba made hungry where most she satisfied. No wonder I tarried in Jerusalem much longer than I had planned and did not go forth into the sands of Ammon to join Joab at Rabbah until the city was ready to fall.
In the beginning I still had foreign foes galore. Something in man requires an enemy, something in mankind demands a hostile balance of power. Without one, things fall apart. Absalom struck in a time of peace when the causes of all national strife had been eliminated, and Sheba rose when Absalom was gone. I was fortunate in the possession of so many unifying alien enemies when my reign was new and insecure.
Victory in war was exhilarating too. I had God on my side. Want to bet? My conquests were achieved with so little struggle and so few setbacks that it was natural for the world to conclude I was loved by the Lord and that he was taking care to preserve me whithersoever I decided to expand. The Ammonites fell to me last, as a matter of fact, and were really not much trouble after I had helped pull Joab's chestnuts out of the fire in the campaign the year before and beaten back the few Syrian rulers left with the balls to oppose me by siding with the Ammonites. That just took time, the final siege--enough time for me to impregnate Bathsheba and liquidate her husband after he refused to play into my hands by lying with her. He preferred staying in my palace and getting drunk there to going home to his wife. I can't think how I would have coped with that burgeoning scandal otherwise and still retained my charisma as a legendary religious figure meriting the veneration I receive today. I had much less difficulty with the whole array of my foreign opponents than Zedekiah did later on with only Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonians: they slaughtered the sons of Zedekiah before his eyes and then blinded him and bound him with fetters of brass. These are rough times we live in, very rough times. We play for keeps.
First on my schedule of military objectives, of course, came the Philistines, who were more and more ruffled by the progress and growth in strength of their erstwhile vassal and protege, but delayed too long in taking steps to curb me. Philistines are cumbersome in making decisions. They were never a single community. And this time we were. I was better organized. And I knew I had to dispose of these people as overlords before I could set my sights realistically on any of the others. By the time they were ready to attempt to suppress me, I practically outnumbered them.
When you consider their long history of domination, the Philistines were vanquished by me more easily than you might guess. Seven years of civil war had not been wasted on us: I had my standing army now, and my militias in every community of size in the north and the south that could be mustered by a blast of the trumpet or ram's horn and be on the march by nightfall. The Philistines were content so long as Judah and Israel were separate and at odds, and so long as they enjoyed unhindered access to their bastions in the north through the valley of Jezreel, which divided the mountains of Galilee from Samaria, and to the cities in Judah they found it profitable to occupy. Even my home town of Bethlehem was presently under the rule of Philistine hoodlums who had moved in and taken over.
Now, however, the situation was considerably altered. We were one nation, indivisible. The Philistines had let me know they were very disturbed that I'd been anointed king over Israel too. They were further provoked when they saw me secure myself against easy retribution by taking the fortress city of Jerusalem and making it my capital. They sent up messengers bearing ultimatums of disapproval. I responded impenitently that this was the land promised by the Lord of my fathers Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and that they could all go back to Crete and the other Greek islands if they didn't like it.
Instead of accepting my suggestion that they return to the Aegean settlements from which their seafaring forefathers had migrated, they came up toward Jerusalem for war and spread themselves in the valley of Rephaim. This was peachy with me; Philistines never were much good on high ground. I went down to the stronghold for safety and issued a call to arms. My mood was one of unreserved confidence as I waited for the people to come and my forces to grow. I talked with God, just to make sure.
'Shall I go up to the Philistines?' I inquired of the Lord in a solitary place where no one could overhear. 'Wilt Thou deliver them into my hand?'
'Will I deliver them into thy hand,' the Lord repeated without the inflection of an interrogative, as though my question were both tedious and unnecessary.
'Will you?'
'Why do you even ask?' said the Lord unto me. 'Go up, go up. For I will doubtless deliver the Philistines into thine hand.'
So I went up, I went up, for the word of the Lord back then was good enough for me. The Philistines had come forth almost casually, as on a minor punitive expedition, and their size was not daunting. This time, in fact, we did outnumber them, and we confronted them head-on in a straightforward way and beat them badly--no sun stood still, no turbulent, heaven-sent hailstorms or thunderstorms to mire or discomfit them--the first such pitched battle in which we had triumphed since the beginning of the earth. Had we hats, we would have tossed them in the air in the first flush of victory. Instead, I gave commands regarding the images of worship left behind by the Philistines in the field from whence they had fled-- icons of Dagon, the fish god, and of Astarte, the goddess with the bared breasts of a woman and the trousers of a man--and we burned them. We burned them with fire and cheered once more as they went up in smoke.
It was not long before the Philistines were back with a vengeance. This time they marched up with the fullest complements of regiments, battalions, and platoons they could assemble from all of their big cities, and the ranks in which they plodded upward toward Jerusalem from their settlements in the coastal plains and spread themselves a second time in the valley of Rephaim were greatly increased and very formidable to behold. Joab quivered with joy in anticipation as we watched them come. I have never seen a person so eager for the fray.
They're all here!' He couldn't wait. He clapped his hands, and his nostrils were flaring like those of a war-horse breathing fire. 'Let's run right down at them and make a score of them sorry for a while.'
'Why don't we walk down,' I mused, 'and make all of them sorry for good?'
'What do you mean?'
'I want to mull it over.' This was going to be the big [ one. I borrowed the ephod from Abiathar and walked ! off by myself into the woods to get my guarantee from i God. And I inquired of the Lord, 'Shall I go up to the ! Philistines just as I did the time before? Wilt thou deliver them into my hand?'
And the Lord said, 'No.'
For the moment I was shaken. 'No?'
'No.'
'What do You mean, no?' I was indignant. 'You won't deliver them into my hand?'
And the Lord said, 'Do not go up against the Philistines as thou did before.'
'What then?'
'But fetch a compass behind them, and come upon them over against the mulberry trees.'
'A compass?'
'A compass.'
'What's a compass?'
'Encircle them. Ambush and aggravate them.'
'You're not going to believe this, O Lord,' I said, 'but I had that same idea myself, of sneaking around them through the mulberry trees on the sides of the plains and pouncing upon them from there and aggravating them from the flanks.'
'Sure, sure you did.'
'What worries me, O Lord, is the noise we might make as we move closer to them in the woods and prepare to charge. Is it possible they won't hear us? Wilt Thou deliver them?'
'Didn't you already ask Me that?'
'Did You give me an honest answer? Tell me yes or tell me no.'
'I'll deliver them, I'll deliver them,' said God. 'What more do you want from Me?'
'What about the noise?'
'Fetch a compass through the mulberry trees. I already told you the compass, didn't I? When you're all in place, wait.'
&nb
sp; 'Wait?'
'For the wind. Without a whisper. When thou hearest the sound of a wind going in the top of the mulberry trees, only then shalt thou bestir thyself. Let the movement of the branches be thy cue. Come forward with the rustle of the woods. They will not know you are there until you are already well upon them. Thus will all be delivered into thy hand.'
And that was the last time God ever spoke to me, I realize now. Time flies. Thirty years have passed, and it seems like only yesterday. And excepting those seven days of prayer when my baby was stricken with illness and I lay all night on the earth, I've spoken to Him only one more time, when He sent that pestilence upon all Israel for the Census I took that everybody disapproved of. Now He saves us, now He kills us. People were dropping like flies from His disease, despite the scent bags of camphire from the vineyards of Engedi worn about the neck in sachets of linen. Camphire is good with mumps, but worthless against bubonic plague. The country stank from camphire. Even Joab took issue with my registering humans who belonged to my God and not to my government.
'Moses did it,' I argued. 'Read Numbers.'
'You're Moses?'
I went ahead anyway, for I needed the records to facilitate conscription and taxation. The Devil made me do it. And there died of the people from Dan even to Beersheba seventy thousand men and women, and children too. When I saw the angel that had smote the people stretch out his hand upon Jerusalem to destroy it, I repented myself of the evil and cried out in panic, 'What are you doing, what are you doing? Lo, I have sinned, and I have done wickedly. But these sheep, what have they done? Let thine hand, I pray thee, be against me, and against my father's house. Stop! Stop! What the fuck is the matter with all of you, anyway?'
I was not certain whether I was talking to the angel or talking to God. Either way, God pointedly refrained from answering me, and blandly addressed the angel instead, saying, 'It is enough. Stay now thy hand.' The city of Jerusalem was saved by a hair. And through my prophet He told me: buy the threshing floor on which the angel had stood and rear an altar. That was all it took in the end to appease our angry Diety, another goddamned altar. He needed that altar? Like Gilead needs balm and Heshbon fish pools. What does He want with so many altars? It was a stupid thing to do, for both of us, God and me.
We were smarter together against the Philistines, operating hand in glove in the flawless execution of our plan for utilizing the cover of the mulberry trees in the second battle of Rephaim. It worked like a charm. When the daily breeze from the sea of the Philistines reached us after we had fetched our compass, we advanced beneath the rising, blustery commotion of the leaves of the mulberry trees. That was our signal. The noise of our footsteps was drowned in the natural commotion of forest murmurs, and almost all together we came flying out from the sides with maniacal, bloodcurdling war cries and threw ourselves upon ranks and ranks of lumbering men in heavy armor routinely arranged in rows of battle lines facing .. . nothing. They were taken completely unawares. What could you expect from people with no more brains than to come a second time and spread themselves the same way in the same field from which they had so recently been routed, instead of dividing themselves into separate columns and continuing directly upward to the city to besiege it? Caught without warning by these assaults on the flanks, they were not able to reform, and they could strike at nothing but each other. What could they do but turn and flee? We pursued without letup. I was not satisfied with their five major cities. We hounded and smote them from Geba all the way until thou come to Gezer, beating them all down finally into an unconditional surrender and making extinct forever what little they had that passed for their culture.
I put bailiffs in Gath. I took their iron. I took their fish. I had their swords beaten into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks, and they could not make war anymore unless they did so for me. I took their blacksmiths and smelters and miners and bade them teach us the uses of metal, and I recruted Ittai the Gittite and six hundred other Philistines to serve me-- that same Ittai who, bereft of homeland a second time, wrung my heart with his devotion on the flight from Jerusalem when he chose to stay loyal to me after I had released him from his oath of service to enable him to seek a safe position with my enemy Absalom. Almost overnight I had made a quantum leap into the modern world--I had taken my people of Israel and led them out of the Bronze Age and into the Iron Age, which, for us, proved a golden age.
Strengthened all the more now by Philistine iron and Philistine fighting men, I gained one success after another. It was hard to keep track. Moab fell to my might and became a tributary state. I put garrisons in Edom and in the land of the Amelekites. From Aqaba in Edom I extracted the copper and iron ore needed to nourish our thriving new metalworking industry, which soon was rivaling our excellent garment center in fame and productivity. Opportunities for further expansion and appropriation dropped into my lap like apples of gold from a tree of silver. I could not believe Imy good luck when travelers passing through in trade on the highway into Egypt reported that the Syrian Hadadezer, the son of Rehob king of Zobah, was going j north against Toi of Hamath to recover his border at the river Euphrates, leaving the Golan heights and the rest of his southern border practically undefended. I was already fully mobilized and searching for new worlds to conquer. Here was tougher game. Fortune favors the brave.
'Bid the men gird on their swords,' I commanded Joab as soon as I made up my mind to jump at the chance. 'Tell them to come not at their wives.'
'No shit?'
'And no shit either. I don't want the camp unclean.'
'We're going to war?'
'Against Hadadezer.'
'Who?'
'Hadadezer.'
'Hadarezer?'
'Hadadezer.'
'Oh.'
Many people were burdened with exotic names like that back then, and often, in my speculations on the esoteric, I theorize that the singular reason men like Joseph, Moses, Abraham, Jacob, Samuel, and me were selected by the currents of destiny to stand out from the ordinary was that we all have solid English names that are recognizable and familiar. It's no big wonder to me that my recorder Jehoshaphat leaps a foot into the air each time he's called. I would jump too if my name were Jehoshaphat or Hadadezer.
Hadadezer jumped plenty once I gave him a zetz, for I went up on the double to smite him, and I took from him a thousand chariots, and seven hundred horsemen, and twenty thousand footmen. And I hocked all the chariot horses, except those for a hundred chariots I decided to keep. And when the foolhardy Syrians of Damascus came to succor Hadadezer, I moved right through them like shit through a goose and slew two and twenty thousand men. The Syrians became servants to me and brought gifts, and I took the shields of gold that were on the servants of Hadadezer and brought them to Jerusalem. From Betah and Berotthia, two cities of Hadadezer, I took exceeding much brass, for to the victor belong the spoils. And on the way back I got me a name from smiting more of the Syrians in the valley of salt, being another eighteen thousand men. I looked back into that valley, which was full of dry bones, and wondered, can these dry bones really live? All my trials, it seemed to me then, were just about over. I put garrisons in Damascus and in the Golan heights, and I knew that the Syrians would never again be a problem for the children of Israel. That was another very good year.
I certainly was riding high, for in between my battles with the Philistines and my reduction of Moab, I had also brought the ark of the covenant into Jerusalem. Michal was indeed an enduring tribulation, but even a king must sometimes take the rough with the smooth and the bitter with the sweet.
When I had rest from my enemies and time to draw a breath, I could look around me in leisure and measure all I had accomplished. I was impressed. It was no little thing I had wrought. From the Euphrates in the north to Egypt in the south, just about everything in existence on the face of the earth was mine, from the sea of the Philistines into the desert of the east, excepting the scattered settlements of the Ammonites, who had not yet begun
to stink in my eyes. I could, if I wished, stand on a peak in Darien, look about me in each direction, and know I was master of all I surveyed. No wonder I was satisfied with myself. I felt slick as owl shit. Who wouldn't? I was proud as a peacock, for I had taken a kingdom the size of Vermont and created an empire as large as the state of Maine!
There was nowhere to go but down.
10 Naked We Were
So surprising a thing it is for a man who doesn't believe in love to find himself so deeply in it. Naked we both were, almost every day, sometimes three or four times a day, and we were not ashamed. It began when the almond trees were coming into blossom. I know this because I remember his saying they were. I waited to hear more. Joab is not a man with much poetry in his spirit, and he usually has more important things on his mind than the rhythm of the seasons and the renewal of spring. The earth was putting forth green leaves already, he notified me with a quiver. Before we could look around, the voice of the turtle would again be heard in the land.
'So what?' I confessed my perplexity.
There was no time to lose. Europe was wide open. Asia too. Now that we had iron, he argued, we should strike while it was hot.
'What's the hurry?' I asked, affected with lethargy by the balmy change in the weather. 'Where's the need?'
'The English are coming down from the trees,' he informed me as though menaced. 'The Germans are coming out of their caves. We have to act now. Before you know it, there could be an industrial revolution. Progress can destroy the world. Someone might discover America. I'm not exaggerating. They'll invent democracy and degenerate into capitalism, fascism, and communism. They could find a use for petroleum someday. What would happen if they harness electricity, or invent the internal combustion machine, or the steam engine? You want automobiles? Choo choo trains? There could be concentration camps. There might even be Nazis. There'll be lots of goys. They might not like us. They'll take our religion and forget where it came from.'