God Knows

  Another trait in all my wives, and nearly all my concubines, for which I certainly do pay homage to God or good luck is their compulsive predilection for excessive applications of powerful perfumes and colognes, and of rouges, body ointments, and skin and air fresheners of fragrant nature as well. A harem in a warm climate is not an easy thing to keep in mint condition. And the stench in other parts of my palace and in the noisy streets outside was no bracing improvement. I had endeavored without results to enlist the efforts of Adonijah and Solomon in wrestling with the challenging problems of garbage removal and sewage disposal. Adonijah remained dedicated to his social life, Solomon to his pornographic amulets, and the administrative awareness of each was restricted to the sources of royal revenues and to the cultivation of the good will of our military leaders, Joab and Benaiah, respectively. I had hoped for my beloved city of Jerusalem to flower into the sparkling showplace of the Middle East, comparable in beauty and significance to such distinguished capitals as Copenhagen, Prague, Vienna, and Budapest; instead, as Michal was quick to point out, it was turning into another Coney Island. Michal, that bride of my youth who never ceased invoking her royal pedigree, was on balance a royal pain in the ass and lived, unfortunately, to a ripe old age. I will never forget the cry of joy that soared from my lips when they brought me the news she was dying.

  It was indeed a mixed and colorfully diverse neighborhood in which we found ourselves living after Joshua led us across the Jordan and leveled the walled city of Jericho to start the conquest of Canaan. In the main, Hebrews, Canaanites, and Philistines got along rather well with each other when not engaged in war. From the friendly Phoenicians in Tyre we acquired the dyes and the knowledge of handling fabrics that enabled us, in time, to establish our own famous garment center. From Hiram king of Tyre I got the cedar trees, carpenters, and stone-squarers to construct my palace, after I had taken Jerusalem from the Jebusites. Just about the only thing missing in the entire area was an Arab, and no one was looking for one. By the time I was born, we were already using tools of iron bought from the Philistines, and from the people in Canaan we had learned how to farm and to live sedentary lives in houses built of mud brick with wooden beams and rafters. We had pastures, groves, vineyards, tillable acres for barley and wheat, and our own towns and cities. The homes were small, of course, without any privacy for sex, but vastly preferable to the goatskin tents of our nomadic past and infinitely more comfortable and refined than sleeping outdoors rolled up in our woolen cloaks, as we did when traveling. And that was another practice of Solomon's that was widely regarded as mean and grasping: if he took a man's cloak as a pledge in the morning, he would not always return it to him by nightfall.

  People with means still keep tents in the country for the summer months; others erect them on the roofs of their houses to catch the refreshing evening breezes from the sea. There is always more space and seclusion above than indoors below. In fact, it was during a meditative and solitary stroll on the roof of my palace, taken to insulate myself against another querulous diatribe from Michal, that my eye first lit upon the exquisite spectacle of Bathsheba taking her bath on the roof of her house. I stopped in my tracks. Up spoke the Devil. I lusted, sent for her, and had her that same day. And the next morning, and the evening following, and the next, and the next, and the next. I could not stop touching her once I began. I could not help staring at her. I could not end wanting her. This was love. I soaked her up--I could not stop breathing her in. I38 can't stop looking at her now. I wanted to fuck her every day. I want to fuck her now. We arranged after that first night that she would bathe on her roof each morning and each evening on days I could not have her with me but would be free to watch her. Her motions were lascivious when she knew I was staring.

  Lewdness was always more openly important to the Canaanites and Philistines than to us, and when we came upon them, their fertile ways proved a hearty catalyst for the close commercial, cultural, and sexual intercourse soon flourishing among us all. Moses and his men had never seen so much pussy as they were offered by the women of Moab on their tortuous trek from Egypt into the land of Canaan. We had the wine, wool, grain, and fruit once we settled here. The Canaanites had the pork and their religious idols and temple prostitutes; the Philistines had the seafood and beer and a monopoly on the secrets of ironworking, which they guarded ruthlessly. They sold us the tools but would not teach us to sharpen them or allow us weapons of iron. Travel was safe in peacetime, trade brisk, relations friendly. Now and then, I'll admit, we might run into a little anti-Semitism from the Philistines, but this seemed to be more a recognition of parochial distinctions than anything else. And, we, in turn, had our term of disparagement for them: they were uncircumcised, and we would never let them forget it.

  More typically, relations were mutually profitable and interdependent, and familiar to us all since childhood was the sight of the Philistine workingman trudging into view with his grinding wheel strapped to his back, arriving to sharpen the kitchen knives and scissors of the women and the goads and plowshares of the men of the field. And we would go down to Gaza, Gath, or Askelon with wares to sell or coulters, mattocks, and axes of iron to be filed, or sometimes just for a pleasant evening of fish and beer. On the way there or back, or both, we might break our journey at a Canaanite temple to participate with the reverent in their religious practices of temple prostitution and contribute that way to the general welfare of the community. It still is touch and go whether humping a single or married woman on the grounds of a temple does indeed enhance the fertility of our fields and our flocks. But the Canaanites knew more about agriculture than we did. And it certainly couldn't hurt.

  We had our Jehovah and our purification rites, and the Canaanites and Philistines had a nifty little deity in their goddess Astarte, who was always portrayed with her ample breasts bare, and with her thighs deep and her heavy hips rounding almost into full circles. Sometimes in all that hurly-burly, things got a little mixed up and we got the pork and the idols and they got our laws and our purification rites. As with Uriah, a Hittite, who would have felt himself unclean for battle had he lain with Bathsheba when I wanted him to. That was one of those laws God gave Moses that did not make things easier for us. A man lying with a woman was unclean. A man lying with another man was even more unclean: an abomination. And a man who lay with a beast, said the Lord, would surely die. And if he doesn't lie with a beast, I would have countered, he won't die?

  Naturally, intermarriage was commonplace in this melting pot and always had been. Bathsheba had her gentile husband, Joseph married an Egyptian, Moses had his Cushite and his Midianite, and girl-crazy Samson was a natural pushover for Philistine twat and feminine Philistine wiles. Even my own great-grandmother on my father's side was not Jewish: she was that same Moabite woman, the widow Ruth, who followed Naomi back into Judah, choosing our God and our people, and who married my great-grandfather Boaz. And that hairy man Esau took two Hittite women for wives, a grief to both Isaac and Rebekah, who doubtless had fixed their hopes on a big Jewish wedding party. We had wedding parties, though we had no such thing as a wedding or a marriage and no words for either. The man simply paid the price of the woman to her father and took her home as a wife. There might or might not be a celebration. I know I danced and drank at the festivities attending my taking of Michal with a gusto my new wife, the princess, strongly deplored and assured me was gross. I still feel I lost much of Michal, though she cost but the symbolic hundred Philistine foreskins Saul had requested for her. I threw in an extra hundred just to show I was a sport. Michal turned out a snob and a common scold and wasn't worth even one Philistine foreskin.

  The thing about Philistines is that they were more cultured than we were and had a higher form of civilization when we first ran into them. Everyone we met then had a higher civilization. No sooner did Joshua move us across to the west bank of the Jordan to conquer the Canaanites and learn from them how to farm and fuck and build houses than we found with dismay that the P
hilistines were really the dominant military forces in the area, and this was especially so back in the days of Samson, that goon, that troglodyte, that hairy ape. Oh, that Samson. Such a dope he was, a yold, an overgrown ignorant country rube stupidly tempting the savage wrath of the Philistines again and again with the headstrong misdeeds of an erring halfwit. Who could handle him? A Judge they named him yet! One day he's falling in love with a Philistine girl and playing games of riddles with her neighbors for thirty changes of sheets, pillow-cases, and shirts, the next he's killing a bunch of them wholesale and setting their fields, vineyards, and olive groves ablaze with firebrands tied to the tails of three hundred foxes. Oy vey. He couldn't think of an easier way? A hundred times the people of Judah pleaded with him to behave.

  'Samson, Samson, what are you trying to do to us?' the elders argued with him. 'Don't you know the Philistines are rulers over us and can make us servants as of yore?'

  They were talking to a wall. A hundred times they wanted to tie him up and deliver him bound to the Philistines. At last he let them; then, just when they seemed to be rid of him once and for all, he burst his cords amid his Philistine captors and slew a thousand more of them with the jawbone of an ass. And the next thing you knew, before anyone could blink an eye, there he was again, already in love with Delilah, another Philistine chippie, spilling his precious secret to her, and losing his hair, his strength, and his eyes in return. Milton was a mile off the mark in his Samson Agonistes. The Samson we remember was too coarse and obtuse to define himself as 'eyeless in Gaza, at the mill with slaves' or to picture himself dying with 'all passion spent.' Although his own last words aren't bad with his 'strengthen me, I pray thee, only this once, O God, that I may be at once avenged of the Philistines for my two eyes.'

  Though John Milton is frequently imperfect--the first of his two 'Tetrachordon' sonnets is contemptible and the second is not excellent--I beg the same indulgence for him that I occasionally require for myself. Our art comes first. He and I are poets, not historians or journalists, and his Samson Agonistes should be looked at in the same fair light as my famous elegy on the deaths of Saul and Jonathan, along with my psalms and proverbs and other outstanding works. Adore them as poems. Look to us for our beauty rather than factual accuracy. A striking case in point can be found in my notable. 'Tell it not in Gath, publish it not in the streets of Askelon, lest the daughters of the Philistines rejoice.' If literal truth and common sense were factors, there would be no way to account for the enduring popularity of this mellifluous statement, for the people in Gath and Askelon knew about Saul's defeat and death at Gilboa a good two and a half weeks before I did. Such departures from reality may generally be explained on aesthetic grounds. Milton was a man of considerable ability. Who knows--who can say for certain that his works will not last as long as mine have and perhaps enjoy someday a readership as large as does my famous elegy?

  What a merry dirge I was able to produce under pressure on the spur of the moment! Considered objectively, my famous elegy is really as high-spirited as an ode to victory and joy. The death of Saul did open doors to me and clear a path. How lively my humor when I saw what I had written and concluded as my own severest critic that I would have to change not a word and delete not a line. At times since, I'll admit, I have regretted that I did not look longer at my 'Jonathan: very pleasant hast thou been unto me: thy love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women.' Now that's the troubling statement that gave birth to all the unsavory and unfounded speculations by people seeing to deprecate me or wishing to supply impressive justification for their own deviate inclinations. What's wrong with it? My meaning is as clear and frank and wholesome to me now as it was when I wrote to it. John Milton might have said the same thing if he'd thought of it first.

  But Milton was a grave Puritan in a cold climate, while we were a raunchy and polygamous lot in a warm and teeming locale. So we reveled in intermarriage, inbreeding, and outbreeding, and always had, even in the days of Abraham, first father to us all. And here's something else. We started out with short beards and straight noses--you can look at the wall paintings--and who knows? With a slightly different genetic break in our wanderings and couplings, we might all be as blond and gorgeous today as Danish schoolchildren. No wonder our moral philosophers then and since have tended to be glum, censorious, and ascetic. Milton was a prude and a pedagogue and made his daughters learn Hebrew; I never made mine learn English. And I think I had a nobler subject in Saul and Jonathan than he did in Samson, that crude, blundering jackass who bullied his parents into arranging marriages they disapproved of and couldn't keep his cock out of Philistine harlots. A naar like him they make a Judge, while I don't even have one book in the Bible named after me. What really gets my goat is that Samuel has I and II, even though he dies in I and doesn't get a single mention in II, not one. Is that fair? And those two books of Samuel should be named for me, not for him. What's so great about Samuel?

  'Whoever said I was going to be fair?' I can just see God replying if ever I should ask. 'Where does it say I have to be fair?'

  'Do You always know what You're doing now?' I believe I might say if I ever could swallow my pride and speak to Him again.

  'What difference would it make?' I can hear Him retort with indestructible aplomb.

  For cynicism like that, who needs Gods like Him? Am I blind? More than fifty years ago I could perceive for myself that the race is not always to the swift nor the battle to the strong, but that time and chance happen to us all. The sun ariseth and the sun goeth down and the same things come alike to the righteous and the wicked. Bread does not always come to the wise, nor riches to men of understanding, nor favor to men of skill, but one event happens to us all. The wise man dies no better or more wisely than the fool. In what way, then, is the wise man wise? Therefore, I began to hate life and came to the conclusion that a man has no better thing to do under the sun than to eat to drink and to be merry, although that isn't always the easiest thing to do when all you've got is a pastrami. Just the forequarters of a cow and sheep He gives us to eat. What are we supposed to do with the rest?

  But Samson did want those shirts, Joseph treasured his coat, and I delighted in my crowns and bracelet. The daughters of Israel rejoiced in their clothing of scarlet, together with other delights, and in their ornaments of gold. I don't know where those descendants of ours from eastern Europe ever got the idea that somber black hats with wide brims and gloomy long alpaca or gabardine coats without decoration were part of our tradition or that the drab hues of mourning were especially appropriate for prayer. Probably from the lamentations of Isaiah and Jeremiah, the invasions and destruction of Israel by the Assyrians, Babylonians, Greeks, and Romans, the Diaspora, the medieval European persecutions, the pogroms of Poland and Russia, and Adolf Hitler.

  To this day just about anyone can tickle me with the gift of an exotic bauble or a flashy blanket, robe, or skirt, or with presents of clothing or jewelry to my servant Abishag. There is no hypocrisy or greed in the pleasure with which she receives them. Bathsheba was acquisitive, Abishag is not. I love to watch Abishag preening herself in something delightfully new. I like the way our women today mince along coquetishly, with roving, flirtatious eyes reflecting from the glass of their hand mirrors. I like their glittering headbands, earrings, bonnets, wimples, and crisping pins, the rings on their fingers and the bells on their ankles, their bracelets, chains, mantles, hoods, and veils. I love women, and I always have, and I enjoy their ambitious and exhausting efforts to make themselves attractive. They've got jewels coming out of their noses. And we've got our own Savonarolas too; we no sooner attain some stage at which we can relax a little and start enjoying the fruits of our progress than others begin foretelling our destruction for doing so--people who don't like our pleasures and entertainments at all and insist on prophesying our doom.

  'Instead of sweet smell,' goes the familiar street saying, 'there shall be stink. And instead of a girdle, a rent. And instead of well-set hair, ba
ldness. And instead of a stomacher, a girding of sackcloth. And burning instead of beauty.'

  Nevertheless, we've decided to take our chances. Who gives up opulence voluntarily?

  Also keep in mind that I had already been chosen by Samuel to succeed Saul as king by the time I traveled from Bethlehem to Shochoh with my carriage of cheeses, loaves, and parched corn on the day of my fight with Goliath, and I was therefore even more certain than formerly that I no longer had to take shit from my brothers or sisters, or, for that matter, from my father or mother, although they were never much bother to me. Consequently, it was in rather buoyant spirits that I gave the finger to my brothers Eliab, Abinadab, and Shammah when they commanded me to return home without delay after I had delivered the provisions for them and their captain. There was just no way in the world I was going to turn my back on that glorious spectacle of the two armies facing each other across the valley of Elah, or discard the chance to be a hero once I spied it beckoning to me.

  Leading his red heifer on a rope to outwit Saul's informers, Samuel had appeared at our house without notice and directed without waste of time that each of the sons be brought before him in order of descending age. I wondered about the red heifer as soon as I was told about it. The rest is much like the Cinderella story, for I, the youngest and least significant of the boys in that family, was out keeping the sheep and not in the forefront of anybody's thoughts on that historic day.

  'Come in,' said my father hospitably to the unsmiling and determined traveler who had walked with his red cow from Ramah to Bethlehem on instructions from the Lord. 'Take off your sandals and come inside. Wash your feet. Sit yourself down on the floor and have a bite to eat. Would you like to go up on the roof and rest awhile?'