11 So It Came to Pass
Sweet is her voice and comely her countenance, and it came to pass that Bathsheba bore me another son after I went in unto her and lay with her again. We called his name Solomon, and the Lord loved him, according to her, although it's still impossible for me to figure out why.
'How come?' I had asked before and was compelled to wonder again, 'you never had children with Uriah? Or with any of the many other men who went in unto you before him?'
'I took precautions,' she told me, intently working an ointment of malachite around her eyes to shade them green. 'I was on the pill.'
'So how come you keep having children with me?'
'Someday I want to be the mother of a king. That's one of the reasons I moved in here.'
'You made a mistake,' I told her. 'You can't be the mother of a king.'
'Solomon?'
'Right now he's just about last in line.'
'Move him up front.'
'It's out of the question, my love, my dove--'
'Then keep your hands to yourself.'
'--my sister, my undefiled.'
'I don't want there to be any more sex between us until we settle this matter once and for all.'
'Thou art fair, my love, thou art fair.'
'Give up, David. That isn't going to work today. You know what I want, and I want you to give it to me. I want to be a queen.'
'We don't have queens. Must I tell you again?'
'Then make me the first,' she persisted. 'You can do whatever you want to. I'd like to be famous. I want to be in the Bible someday. Even your own mother isn't in the Bible by name.'
Here I had to laugh. 'Do you really think you're ever going to be forgotten after what you and I did to Uriah?' I laughed again. 'Don't worry, you'll be in the Bible. You might not like what it says, but you'll be in there.'
'Uriah will be more famous than I am,' Bathsheba forecast ruefully. 'He'll get more space as my husband than I'll get as his wife, or yours or as the mother of Solomon.'
'You are not going to be known much longer as the mother of Solomon if you continue to instigate so blatantly. The child will be in danger the minute I die, and so will you. Amnon is selfish and Absalom proud. People have murdered for less.'
'Then promise me now that you will name him your heir. You're going to do it for me anyway, sooner or later, so you might as well promise me now.'
Her effrontery was dazzling, and I grinned. 'Why would I ever do that?'
'Because I suck your cock, that's why. And I'm giving you the greatest fucking you ever had.'
'Give me some now.'
'Give me my promise. Just keep back. I said no. Don't touch me there. Don't you dare scratch me like that. I mean it, David, David. I do.'
Much of which she had boasted was true, I conceded, but not quite to the point. 'There is not a chance in a million that your little Solomon will ever be king,' I advised her, 'so you might just as well stop thinking about it now, and you must stop talking about it too. There's Amnon and Absalom ahead of him already, and then Adonijah, and that's only the A's. So lie down, my love, let me come into thy garden and eat thy pleasant fruits. Thou hast doves' eyes within thy locks. Thy navel is like a round goblet which wanteth not liquor, thy belly is like a heap of wheat set about with lilies. Thy teeth are like a flock of sheep that are even shorn.'
'Oh, David. No, David.'
'Thy breasts like to clusters of grapes on the vine. The joints of thy thighs are like jewels, the work of the hands of a cunning workman, thy neck is as a tower of ivory. Let my banner over thee be love. Let me stick it in your ear.'
'No, David. Oh, David. Oh, David, David--no, David.' And, saying she would ne'er consent, consented, and was not sorry afterward. 'David,' she sighed with bliss when we rested. 'That was divine. Where do you get such beautiful words?'
'I make them up out of whole cloth,' I told her, feeling pretty good about them myself. 'I could easily have forced you, my darling, you know.'
'And what would you get?' she replied with a snicker. 'You might just as well force Ahinoam or Abigail or Abital, for all the pleasure that would give you, and that's only the A's.'
'Abigail's not bad,' I felt obliged to put in loyally. 'But can she compare?' said Bathsheba with reason. 'Listen, David, about the succession. You weren't exactly the oldest when Samuel picked you, were you?'
'Samuel didn't pick me,' I revealed to her, 'and would have greatly preferred any one of my brothers. Samuel was not exactly crazy about me. God was. If God speaks to me, of course I would have to do what He says.'
'Then you speak to Him,' she demanded. 'He owes you a favor, doesn't He?'
'He owes me an apology,' I corrected. 'Can't you see the difference?'
'I don't want to.'
'He doesn't have to atone to me; He just has to apologize. And I'm not going to talk to Him again until He does. He'll speak up Himself when He feels He has something to say, don't worry about that. Amnon comes first, and Absalom right behind him, if both live. And whichever one I do name will get rid of the other promptly, if he has any brains.'
'If both don't live?'
'Then next comes Adonijah. But why shouldn't they live? What are you thinking of, you little fox?'
'I'll stick needles into images.'
'Don't you dare!'
And both my sons were swept away with such stunning and monstrous finality that I have to check myself, even now, from concluding that perhaps she did. Amnon sent word he was sick. People, I'd heard, have power to bring about such failures in health in others through pins and needles, insect powders, and other varieties of black magic, and, of course,-through poison. But Amnon was faking, as it turned out--so Bathsheba was exculpated--and setting me up as the credulous dupe to deliver my innocent daughter Tamar, his half sister, into his house and into his fell clutches. Not even Bathsheba, with all her duplicity and all the pins and needles in the world, could have worked up that scenario. I have to exonerate her, tempting as it is to grasp at any explanation for the train of events leading to the disintegration of my family that would leave me blameless. The fault lay elsewhere, because each of us--Amnon, Absalom, and I--was aggressive contributor to the brutal climaxes betiding us, and Amnon and Absalom died by the sword.
Only Tamar was innocent.
Because Tamar, the sister of Absalom, was very fair and a virgin, Amnon thought it would be hard for him to do anything with her through legitimate wooing. Yet he fancied himself sick with love for her and was vexed. Handsome, idle, and overprivileged, Amnon, my first born, was one of those vain youths to whom the merest caprice is an imperative demand and the slightest denial a crushing misfortune too agonizing to be borne. So he concocted his unconscionable plot to rape her, and I went for the fiction of his illness hook, line, and sinker. By sparing the rod, I had spoiled this child; by sparing him again, I set the stage for much worse. Perhaps I deserved it. I had never had a quarrel with Absalom over anything before this thing of Amnon's to Tamar. Thereafter, I never found end to my quarrel with Absalom until Joab put three darts into his heart while he hung from the tree by his head and then had him cut down and cast into a filthy pit in the woods like an animal unfit for orthodox human burial. There was death in the pot.
'I pray thee,' Amnon asked me when I came to call on my son, who had sent word he was ailing, 'let Tamar my sister come to take care of me.' He had laid himself down like a man who was ill.
'It's probably a virus.'
He nodded, looking faint and depressed. 'Let her make me a couple of cakes in my sight, that I may eat at her hand and be more cheerful.'
What parent would have said no? They had played together as children. He had servants in his house; they would not be alone.
'Go now to thy brother Amnon's house,' I said to Tamar when I was back in my own home, 'and dress him meat. He is sick and in bed and has asked you to be with him.'
So Tamar went to her brother Amnon's house, and she had a garment of divers colors upon h
er that was as luminous and gay and gaudy as the rich, resplendent robes worn daily by my winsome servant Abishag. It was that pretty virgin's robe, perhaps, that made her irresistibly desirable to Amnon, for there's no making sense otherwise of the way he treated her afterward.
Amnon had made sure he was laid down and looking pathetic when Tamar arrived. She rolled up her sleeves and went to work like a trooper with the things she had come to do. She took flour and kneaded it, and made cakes in his sight, and did bake the cakes where he could watch. And she took a pan when they were finished and poured them out before him; but Amnon shook his head and refused to eat.
'You aren't hungry?' the girl inquired shyly, solicitous.
'I am hungry,' he answered listlessly, 'but so fatigued. Have everyone else out from me. Please. I feel so weak. They make me crazy.' And when all had gone out, he said unto Tamar, 'Bring the meat in my chamber, where 1 have more room, that I may eat of thine hand. Help me up, my sister. I think I can walk, but please help me up.'
So Tamar took the cakes that she had made and brought them into the chamber, where Amnon had laid himself down on his larger bed. He left room for Tamar to sit at his side with the pan and feed him. But when she offered to give him the cakes from the pan, he took hold of her then with strength and roughness she did not expect and said, 'Come lie with me, my sister.'
The startled girl attempted to pull back. He held her fast.
'Nay, my brother,' Tamar pleaded with him in fright. 'Do not do this thing.'
'Please,' he commanded her gruffly. 'I must have you.'
'Do not force me,' she sued, 'for no such thing ought to be done in Israel.'
'You won't be sorry.'
'Do not thou this folly.'
'I won't let you say no.'
'And I?' she tried timidly, desperately, to convince him. 'Whither shall I cause my shame to go? And as for thee, thou shalt be as one of the fools in Israel. Now therefore, I pray thee, speak unto the king to have me, for he will not withhold me from thee.'
Her guess was a good one. Since Leviticus, a man is forbidden to lie with the daughter of his father's wife, but I would have said yes had his intentions been reputable and he'd asked to marry her. Such laws often are more honored in the breach than in the observance, and I would have looked the other way and danced at their wedding. But marriage was not what Amnon had in mind. By then he was no longer hearkening to her voice, but crushing her down beneath him.
'Don't cry out,' he threatened. 'Or my servants will know about us too.'
And being stronger than she, he forced her down to the bed. He pulled up her skirt. And then he raped her.
Oh, the harm he caused, the ruin he brought about. To himself as well, for Tamar was not the only victim. Because of him, I was fleeing for my life from my city of Jerusalem seven years later. Time goes so swiftly when we look back, doesn't it? It seemed more like seven seconds. Because of this, and what came after, for Amnon did not love her any longer when he was through. Instead, he hated her exceedingly, so that the hatred wherewith he hated her was greater than the love wherewith he had loved her. He did not know or question the cause. What in hell did he expect from a virgin?
'Arise and be gone,' he ordered her with cruelty, scorn, and revulsion. He shoved her from him.
The bewildered, violated girl was close to collapse. 'There is no cause,' she said unto him tearfully. 'This evil in sending me away is greater than the other that thou didst unto me.'
But he would not hearken unto her now either, and he debased her further by calling back inside the servant that ministered unto him and, while she cringed at his words as though they were whips, giving orders to the man: 'Put now this woman out from me, and bolt the door after her. Do not admit her if she comes seeking me more.'
Then the man, his servant, with a leer and a snigger, brought her out of the house without a word and bolted the door after her.
Amnon threw her out. Why? So much is hidden from the seeing eye and the hearing ear.
And Tamar, ejected so rudely, put ashes on her head, and rent her garment that was on her, that festive robe of divers colors, and she did as she would do when she mourned for someone who was dead. She laid her hand on her head and went on crying till she came to Absalom her brother, who guessed the whole from her distraught beginning, so she did not have to speak it then. 'Hath Amnon thy brother been with thee? Hold now thy peace and tell it to no one else,' he instructed her, 'because he is thy brother.' She remained desolate in her brother Absalom's house and would not come out.
'That was good, Absalom,' I complimented him when the event was laid before me. The dread that weighed heaviest upon me was that I was now in very deep trouble again and would find myself with ticklish decisions to make. My darkest and most demoralizing regret at first was that my eldest son had made a fool of me. 'That was a good thing for you to tell her to do.'
'And what will you do?' Absalom asked, and watched me intently as he awaited my answer.
'To Amnon?'
'To punish him.'
'He is my son.'
'My sister is your daughter.'
'She's only a girl. And she didn't cry out, did she?'
'Who would have come? Amnon is the king's son.'
'That makes no difference. A damsel taken in the city who does not cry out is as much to blame as the man.'
'Really?' said Absalom, almost apathetically. But he raised his eyebrows.
'Yes, it's in the Bible. You can look it up.'
'Can the Devil cite Scripture for his purpose?'
'I am not the Devil, Absalom. And your sister Tamar is not even betrothed. There is really no law against raping a woman who is not betrothed. Did you know that?'
'Pass one,' said Absalom. 'Maybe my brother Amnon will impose a law against rape when he becomes king.'
I had not known he possessed this gift for enigmatic sarcasm. I was concerned. I could not guess what he was thinking.
'Have you spoken to Amnon?' I was anxious to find out.
'I have said nothing unto Amnon, either good or bad.'
'That's a good boy,' I commended him.
'What would be the point?' His face remained inscrutable, but his penetrating dark eyes did not waver from studying me. 'I am only trying to learn.'
'There would be no point. Amnon is your brother.'
'And Tamar is just my sister.' I could not tell if he was being ironic.
'Yes.'
'Will you speak to Amnon? ' Absalom wanted to know.
'I will be very wroth with him,' I replied. 'I can promise you that.'
'Do you want to see her?'
'Who?'
'Tamar.'
'Why?'
'To speak with her.'
'About what?'
'She is in my house and won't come out. She is not the same. She does not want to talk to anybody. Ever again.'
'Then why should I want to talk to her? What can I tell her to help her?'
'You sent her to him.'
'He said he was sick.'
'He lied to you.'
'I'll tax him with that.'
'She is desolate in my home. She weeps continually.'
'Can I console her?'
'She feels there is nowhere in Israel she can hide her shame.'
'We can hush it up. Who has to know?'
'Can she hide it from herself? He had her cast out from his house, by a servant, as though she were something obscene.'
'I'll put this question to you,' I said to him. 'What can I say to her? That I'll make Amnon marry her?'
'She doesn't want that now,' Absalom answered.
'What does she want?'
'She does not want to be seen in Israel again.'
'Where shall I send her?'
'May I send her to Geshur to the house of the king, our mother's father?'
'I like that idea,' I consented immediately. 'Bring her there yourself.'
'And what will you do?'
'To Amnon?' It was a hard q
uestion. 'Heed the words of your father, my son.' I tried to avoid answering it; my manner was professorial.
'I am listening,' declared Absalom, waiting. 'I am trying my best to learn.'
'Then heed these words of thy father. She is only your sister, Absalom. It is not as though she were your wife, or your concubine, or your daughter.'
'Tamar is your daughter.'
'Should I avenge a daughter or save a son? You tell me that, if you think it's so easy.'
'Which will you do?'
'Would you really expect me to have him killed?'
In the end I did nothing, of course, except attempt without success to bully my son Amnon into some sense of contrition. It is sometimes so much easier to look the other way. And Absalom never forgave me. I understand that now. I would not let myself understand then that he even blamed me. But how did he expect me to punish Amnon? How in the world could I have punished Absalom himself if Joab had not done it for me? Kept him in chains?
I indeed was very wroth with Amnon--or tried to be--when I spoke with him alone, for all the good that did. He was languid and bored and could not have cared less when I upbraided him for this deed he had done. He pretended to humor me with a detached and superior smile, taking for granted that I would impose no penalty. He combed his curls in the midst of my reprimand. His locks were freshly oiled and he wore more arm bracelets than I care to see on a man. He no more repented his violation of Tamar than he did his irreverent offense in so deceitfully reducing me, his king and father, to his procurer. I let him have it for that one too, and made no deeper impression on him for that transgression than for the other.
'You should not have used me in your scheme,' I reproved him. 'Why did you have to make such a dunce of me?'
My objection amused him. 'I wanted to see if I could. Can't you take a joke? You're wroth with me, aren't you? I can tell.'
'I am very wroth.'
'I can tell you're wroth. I really can't see what you're so angry about. I loved Tamar, and was so vexed with love for her that I couldn't eat, and made myself lean from day to day. After I had her, I no longer loved her. Is that really so hard to understand? Or so unusual? She's really very much to blame, you know. Wouldn't you say she led me on? She should not have come to my house if she didn't want me to force her.'