'What about Sarah? Sarah was past ninety when she had one. I'm just as good as she was.'
I was shaking my head slowly. 'Sarah was beloved of God, and beloved of Abraham. You're beloved of nobody, Michal. No one likes you. You think I do?'
'I have as much right to be liked as she had. Was her father a king?'
'Sarah was full of spirit and liked to laugh,' I began to argue. 'She even laughed when she got the word from God. That's why she named her child Isaac-- Isaac means "he laughed and played." She even made a joke about that. You never laughed and played. You never crack a smile.'
'What's there to laugh about?' said Michal. 'Why should I smile? Every time I look around, you're back with that whore again. Why does she make so many noises?'
'Not just with her.'
'You're telling me?'
Michal would howl like a harpy and screech like an owl each time she spotted me in my harem once Uriah was dead and the widow Bathsheba had installed herself in my household and was openly my favorite wife. I tried as hard as I could to convince Bathsheba to remain outside as my mistress. She wasn't buying that.
'I'd rather be a queen.'
'We don't have queens. And why do you want to be my wife? I've already got seven. Come in as a concubine.'
'There's no honor in that.'
'Why do you want to come in at all? It smells in here. Haven't you noticed? It's noisy and full of people. It's really a horrible place to live, even for me. You're better off outside.'
'I want to be the mother of a king.'
'There's no chance of that.'
'I'll be your best wife. I'll want my own apartment, with an indoor bathtub and a large studio for my work.'
'Stay where you are. I'll give you money to fix your place up. You'll have all the things you want.'
'What about the child?'
'Have it outside. Let them think you're a whore.'
'Nothing doing.'
'Once you come in, you can never get out. Don't you know that? You'll never be able to fuck another man.'
'Never?'
'Well, hardly ever.'
'I'll take my chances,' she resolved. 'I don't like meeting you in secret. It's almost as though you're ashamed of your association with me. I want everyone to know who I am.'
'But stolen waters are sweet, and bread eaten in--'
'Please don't tell me that one again!'
The intolerable indignity for Michal was that Bathsheba was already pregnant when she moved in, and got knocked up again soon after our first child had been delivered and died.
Activities in my harem did begin to take on an antic quality once Bathsheba was there and expansively making herself at home. Michal was perpetually livid. Now I can laugh about it. But what a hectic time I had between the two of them whenever I tried to slip by both for a sporting visit with one of my others. Going in, I would have to speed past Michal's rooms with my fingers in my ears if I hadn't been able to enter unobserved by her. Abigail and I would exchange friendly remarks and she would obligingly offer a cup of goat's milk with barley bread and honey. I would tell her I might prefer to refresh myself with her on the way out. Ahinoam still would not speak until she was spoken to, and Maccah of Geshur still did not know a word of Hebrew. Of the others, I never could keep in mind for long which one was Haggith and which Abital. Most of my wives were beginning to look alike. After I had made my way past all these, I would have to brave Bathsheba if I were on my way to someone else and hadn't been so fortunate as to arrive while she was napping or absorbed in dyeing her hair or in another in the series of ventures she called creative. She would stand in her doorway with her arms on her hips, so authoritative in demeanor that she did not have to bar my path.
'Where do you think you're going?' she would demand. 'You get in here right now.'
What the hell, I would always tell myself each time she waylaid me, knowing I could scarcely do better elsewhere, and the next thing that happened, we'd be riotously at it again, making that wholesome beast with two backs once more. I did have fun.
She was always libidinous, always ready, like the truest of pagans. No pause for her periods, no time out for pregnancies. Other than during her actual confinements, I don't think a day went by then that we didn't fall to it, till the time came to pass that we had Solomon and she decided she no longer wanted to. Who can tell what happened? She lost her lust when she embraced motherhood and settled on her true vocation, her life's work: to be a queen mother. Now, of course, it's to be a queen mother and save her life.
Going out, there would be no way to avoid the displeasure of Michal, who by that time would have heard our rumpus even if she hadn't seen me come in. 'How glorious was the king of Israel today,' I would get from her again. She would castigate me pitilessly, like the evil witch who hasn't been invited to the christening. 'Humping and pumping away with that whore just now like a filthy vile beast of the field. Have you no shame? At long last, have you no shame left? You don't know how I despise you. Get away from me, leave me, you revolt me, you disgust me. Why don't you spend more time with me? Why don't you ever come into my rooms, instead of always going with the others?' She never thought of apologizing, inviting, or enticing.
'You're unpleasant, Michal,' I instructed her, without acrimony. 'Why should I want to be with you? You're a shrew. All you do is criticize, shout, demand, and complain. Nothing pleases you, nothing pleases you for long.'
'I'm married to you,' she answered self-righteously. 'A wife has a right to complain when her husband does things she disapproves of, doesn't she?'
'Michal, Michal,' I would attempt to explain patiently. 'I've got thirteen, fourteen, maybe fifteen wives now. If every one was going to complain about every little thing she disapproves of, I'd have no time to be king.'
Oh, the denunciations I heaped upon Hiram king of Tyre for providing me with this impractical layout for my harem--if curses were coals, I would have turned him to ashes. Where was his head when his architects showed him the design? Up his ass, that's where his head was. Didn't he have a harem of his own? Of course he knew better. You'd be surprised how far you have to walk for a toilet or a basin of clean water. Where was the privacy? Noises carried. My comings and goings were public. Too many times when making my way out, it was to a tittering chorus of embarrassing feminine whoops and catcalls from the concubines gathered at the grilled wooden gates fencing them in, sometimes to a round of their enthusiastic applause. I incurred a different kind of hazard if I brought Bathsheba to my own quarters for purposes of coitus. I discovered that about her right off the bat--she never wanted to leave. Bathsheba luxuriated shamelessly in the spaciousness of my rooms. She loved the king-sized bed.
'At least here I can stretch my legs out and roll around,' she'd say, and purr languorously and scratch her ribs and the insides of her thighs. 'Let me live in here with you. Make me your queen. You won't be sorry. I'll do such things to you--I know not what they are. They'll make you hum, they'll make you sing songs.'
'Take her back,' I directed. 'I sing songs now.'
I wasn't born yesterday.
Even at the start, when we were trysting clandestinely in my own part of the palace, she was asking for concessions and rewards that were unprecedented. She wanted open demonstrations of affection, a studio of her own in a building adjacent to the palace. I had never heard of an arrangement like that.
'Oh, David, you know very well what I'm talking about,' she said with the impatience of reprimand. 'Now that you know what great fucking is, you're not going to want to do without it.'
'Great fucking?'
'It's what you're getting from me,' she told me sternly, 'and don't you forget it. You're going to want to see me every day. When you aren't with me, I'll be able to get on with my work.'
This too was something new. What kind of work? In time, she tried just about everything in her futile pursuit of an independent income. She wanted to weave, she wanted to write, she wanted to paint.
'Pain
t what?' I pointed out quickly, certain that I'd tripped her up. 'We're not allowed to paint.'
'My toenails,' she said, and showed me her foot. She wanted cosmetics without limit. 'Buy me everything. Do you like this new color I mixed out of vermilion, magenta, cerise, scarlet, and maroon? I call it red.'
I got her the studio, of course, and if she had stuck to her writing, I probably would have provided her, sooner or later, with the word processor she angled for as well. And when Uriah was dead and she came full sail into my palace as my newest wife--she refused to the end to come in as a concubine and resisted my persuasions that she stay outside as a consort--I promptly provided her with extra rooms she could use as studios, workshops, or both. She wished to conduct classes in handicraft, but none of the other women there were interested in learning. I bought her a potter's wheel and an indoor kiln when she developed successive enthusiasms for ceramics and cloisonne. I gave them as birthday presents. She wanted more: topaz and sapphire. I bought her equipment for polishing gemstones. Her commitments flagged when she couldn't sell what she produced or make anything distinctive, and when she saw that her hands were soiled all day long and that the work was destroying her fingernails. She began to toy with the idea of inventing underwear.
'What's underwear?'
'Let me invent it first.'
She was dead right about that premarital studio, though, as a love nest for our secret, immoral meetings. Stolen waters are sweet, and bread eaten in secret is pleasant, as I frequently remarked to her. I can vouch for that from personal experience. I was often jealous of her work. I was in love. I could not keep away. Separation was jealousy, and love was strong as death, and jealousy as cruel as the grave.
She was right about one thing more: I did want to see her every day once I knew I was in love with her and once I had found out from her what great fucking was. I did not want to be without it. Those words were hers, not mine. She taught me how to speak and think obscenely. My alluring, flattering, sensual, amoral sweetheart was as natural as nature itself in the language and all the practices of love, many of which, to me, seemed innovations too extreme.
'Would you like to fuck me in the ass?' she astounded me by asking one day when I casually slid a leg over her while she was lying on her belly.
You can believe me when I tell you I was horrified. That's a terrible thing to say!' I exploded at once, in stark disbelief.
That's one thing I won't let you do,' she notified me firmly. 'I'm telling you now.'
'Who would want to?' I demanded to know. That's just about the dirtiest thing I've ever heard of!'
'I'm still not going to let you do it.'
'Don't even mention such a thing. Where in the world did you even get such a foul and perverted idea?'
She was not in the least unsettled. 'From a Canaanite girlfriend I used to know who worked as a harlot. We were friends when I was growing up.'
'You should be ashamed of yourself for even thinking of something like that. It's absolutely awful. Awful! That one's so filthy we don't even have a law against it! The mere idea is depraved!'
'Have it your way,' she murmured lackadaisically.
I did have her my way, many, many times, which mainly was in the missionary position. Furthermore, I was led to see myself as monumentally masculine, thanks to her remark, volunteered thoughtfully, that I had a large penis--was built, in fact, like an Egyptian, whose members are those of asses, and whose issue is like that of horses. When I finished congratulating myself, I had to learn more.
'Bathsheba, Bathsheba,' I inquired with mock levity to cloak my misgivings, 'where did you ever find out so much about Egyptian men?'
'I know you're going to find this hard to believe,' she answered, 'but I heard it from a different Canaanite girlfriend of mine, who was also a harlot.'
'Again a harlot?' I exclaimed. 'What were you doing with so many harlots for friends?'
'Learning,' she replied. 'Who better than harlots? And what's wrong with harlots? You know, David, you'd probably be much better off with a harlot than with someone like me. A harlot may be hired for a loaf of bread, but an adulteress stalks a man's very life.'
I was impressed. 'Where'd you find that piece of wisdom?'
'I made it up. I'm into proverbs now.'
'No more psalms?'
'You told me I was rotten at them.'
I was pleased at having chased her out of that field of creative endeavor in record time; it annoyed me that she thought she could toss them off with her left hand.
'Psalms don't even have to rhyme,' she had told me.
'The Lord is my shepherd,' I had scoffed when she showed me her first effort. 'Are you crazy? How fantastic can you get? That's crap, Bathsheba, pure crap. Where's your sense of metaphor? You're turning God into a laborer and your audience into animals. That's practically blasphemy. Shall not want what? You're raising questions instead of answering them. At least change it to "won't" and save a syllable. You think all of mine are much too long?'
'Some are masterpieces,' she stated calmly, 'but, like everything you write, they're flawed by excessive length.'
That cheeky, patronizing bitch. ' "Won't want' is better.' I kept my temper and remained objective. 'He maketh no one to lie down in green pastures, either. Where did you ever get a grotesque idea like that?'
'Didn't you ever sleep outdoors?'
'Only when I had to. And I felt no kindness toward the people who made me do it.'
'Sheep sleep outdoors.'
'We're not sheep. That's what's wrong with the whole concept. And here's another big error. Either "valley of death" or "shadow of death," not both. Not "walk through the valley of the shadow of death." Oh, give it up, Bathsheba, give it up. You don't have the head of it. You think writing psalms is snap? Go back to macrame.'
'Can I have that alabaster bathtub?'
'Would you like an alabaster bathtub too?' I inquired of Abigail when I stopped in to see her on my way out.
And I must confess that when Abigail gracefully demurred and articulated to me tenderly that her cup runneth over, phrases began to fall into place in my head, and I was soon transported by my muse to the ingenious proposition that if cows can be contented, sheep and goats can be too, and that perhaps the bud of a good idea might be found in the presumptuous and chaotic ramblings of my spouse Bathsheba. I have given thanks ever since for her being too scatterbrained to retain any specific recollection of our conversation relating to the Lord and shepherds.
So instead of psalms and proverbs, Bathsheba invented underwear. While I, in one of those stimulated outpourings of constructive energy that are often the intoxicating concomitants of love, threw myself into new creative endeavors of my own. Almost before you could look around, I had organized the temple musicians into guilds, and then I did even more: I set singers also before the altar, that by their voices they might make sweet melody, and daily sing praises in their songs. While she got busy devising underwear, I invented the choir. I don't know why someone didn't think of a choir sooner. And once I had my choir, I went to work feverishly to put it to use, and in hardly more than a fortnight, I composed my B-Minor Mass, Mozart's Requiem, and Handel's Messiah. I came dashing into her room one day to whistle for her ears only my newly minted, high-spirited 'Hallelujah' Chorus, but I didn't get very far. I stopped and stared open-mouthed when she discarded her robe to expose the article of apparel she was wearing underneath, next to her skin. It was a truncated, billowy, flesh-colored garment of rather filmy, sheer material that enclosed her waist and descended in two dangling cylinders around much of each of her thighs separately, looking kind of comical and ridiculous.
'Do you like it?' she asked, assuming a seductive posture and displaying herself.
'What is it?' I responded. 'What do you mean, do I like it?'
'Underwear,' she told me. 'I invented it. It's clothing.'
'For a man or a woman?'
'What difference does it make?'
'A big difference,'
I explained. 'A man is never supposed to wear anything that pertainenth to a woman, and a woman is never supposed to wear anything that pertaineth to a man.'
'Says who?'
'Deuteronomy, that's who.'
'I don't care about any of that,' she said tartly. 'I'm going to make a million dollars on these. Every woman will want them. I'll need a thousand sewing machines.'
'We don't have sewing machines.'
'Invent them. If I can invent these, you can invent a sewing machine. Aren't they lovely? I call them bloomers.'
'Bloomers?'
'Don't they make me bloom?'
'What are they for?'
'To make me sexier, to make women more attractive to men. I have these smaller ones with lace that I call panties. And these I call bikinis. Do they work?'
'How should I know if they work? Pull them down and let me get at you.'
'They work.'
She didn't make a dime and soon was demanding something else. But nothing material she ever requested was anything in comparison to what she began to press for the second time she was made pregnant from lying with me.
'Why can't we name him King?' she proposed again at the circumcision, with transparent duplicity.
We called him Solomon instead.
I almost didn't lie with Bathsheba at all that first day on the roof when the intelligence was brought back to me that this woman for whom I had been lusting so avidly was Bathsheba the daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah the Hittite, my faithful servant who even that same day was at war in the field for me against the children of Ammon. Uriah the Hittite? What was I to do? I was not wholly without conscience, you know. My initiative weakened. But just in time, up spoke the Devil to rally my faltering spirit and give me the heart I needed to throw at least a little bit of caution to the wind and march to the insistent beat of this different drummer. Let me give the Devil his due.
'Go get her,' I heard a voice edged with mirth and irony instruct. 'Take her, you dope. Go on. Fuck her belly off. You want her, don't you? What are you waiting for, stupid? You're a king, ain't you?'
'Is that you, God?' I asked diffidently.
'Mephistopheles. '
'Oh, shit,' I said, groaning with disappointment. 'Are you after my soul?'
'Do I need souls?' was the mocking answer. 'I want mischief, not souls. I want laughs, fun. I want to watch. Bring her here. Hurry. Before she finishes drying and goes inside. Just look at those tits. Ooh, oooh, ooooh!'