'Let not my lord impute iniquity unto me,' the groveling, mean-spirited bastard blubbered again, flinching and squirming upon the ground on which he had flung himself. What the fuck did he expect me to impute to him if not iniquity? 'Neither do thou remember that which thy servant did perversely the day that my lord the king went out of Jerusalem, that the king should take it to his heart. For thy servant doth now know that I have sinned. Therefore, behold, I am come the first this day of all the house of Joseph to go down to meet my lord the king.'
Big deal, I said to myself, frowning, and chewed on the inside of my lip as I wondered what best to do with the knave. But trust to the extreme behavior of those sons of my sister Zeruiah to help me make up my mind! This time it was Abishai, with his hand already on the hilt of his sword.
'Shall not this dead dog Shimei be put to death for this, because he cursed the Lord's anointed? Let me take off his head.'
'Again his head?' I answered reproachfully. And I realized in answering him that I needed grateful subjects more than I needed headless corpses.
'Shall he be allowed to live?'
'Shall there be any man put to death this day in Israel?' said I sanctimoniously, transfigured on the spot into the very epitome of benevolence. 'Oh, Abishai, Abishai,' I mocked, 'what am I to do with you, ye sons of my sister Zeruiah, that ye should this day be adversaries unto me? This day will I pardon the whole world. For do not I know that this day I am king again in all Israel?'
And Shimei chimed in eagerly, 'Blessed be my lord and king.'
'Shimei,' I said to him in judgment, 'thou shalt not die this day.' I paused in thought a moment, then added craftily, 'I swear to you by the Lord that I will not put thee to death by the sword.'
The sly loophole left in that pledge I made the perception of Solomon still, although I have attempted to point him toward it a dozen times, and railed at his mother an equal number for his stupidity in failing to observe it. I would break my vow if I gave the order explicitly.
'I know what I meant,' I complain to Bathsheba yet again, 'you know what I meant, Abishag knows what I meant. Why doesn't he?'
'I will tell him.'
'Out of the mouths of very babes and sucklings comes ordained strength in true words of wisdom,' I observe.
'Oh, David, David,' she exclaims. 'That's so beautiful. I could listen forever.'
'Is it getting you horny?'
'But go on anyway.'
'Why can't I get one fucking word of common sense out of him!'
'I will tell him,' she promised, 'if you will say he will be king.'
'A dozen times I've tried to explain to him. Hold Shimei not guiltless, but his hoar head bring down to the grave with blood. He can't even keep in mind what a hoar head is.'
'I will sit at his right hand and explain.'
'Would he know what to do?'
'And Benaiah will do it. I'll make you that promise if you make Solomon king. But make him king now. Adonijah is busy and the city is tense.'
'The people of the city couldn't care less.'
'They talk of nothing else but Adonijah and his feast. And I am afraid. Ask Nathan, ask Zadok your priest, ask even Benaiah. We are all afraid!'
Afraid of Adonijah, and the more so of Joab, who would know in a second what I want for Shimei and execute my wish without hesitating, if I gave him the high sign. But Joab is another of the survivors I would like to have slain, and I hardly can count on Joab to get rid of himself too, can I? It's a real dilemma, I say to myself, and I hardly care, for soon I will die and leave nothing behind me but my children and my kingdom. A temple might have been nice, but Nathan said no, and a star named after me is not much to boast of. It would be vanity to add that I have no more vanity left. The dilemma I'm faced with is one I might enjoy talking over with God if I ever condescended to seek divine guidance again, for I can hear in my fancy the judgments I'd receive.
'Should I promise Adonijah that the kingdom will be his?' I would inquire of God.
And He would say unto me, 'Promise Adonijah.'
'But should I not promise Solomon also that I will let him be king?'
'Why not?' God would answer. 'Say unto Solomon also that you will let him be king.'
Here I would find myself lost in thought for a moment and would scratch reflectively at my head. 'But if I promise Adonijah that I will let him be king, and if I promise Solomon also that I will let him be king, won't I have to break my promise to one or the other?'
'So?' saith the Lord. 'You'll break your promise.'
We got along fine like that back then, He and I.
The trouble is, despite my success in battle, I wasn't truly in a strong enough position to do everything I wanted when I made my return to Jerusalem, and I have not been a very strong ruler since. I have the feeling that the kingdom is going to fall apart not long after I let it go.
Take that new rebellion that almost arose even as I was returning to my throne in glory, and in full military strength. From the Jordan I was conducted on to Gilgal by all the people of Judah, and also half the people of Israel, each group vying with the other to be nearer me. Both had rejected me for Absalom; now they were jostling in rivalry to make amends. An equal division of influence was pleasing to neither, and I could think of no workable solution then for neutralizing their differences. Besides, my mind dwelt obsessively on the betrayal and death of Absalom more than on anything else, even as the controversy between my subjects deepened and grew more rancorous. The words of the men of Judah were fiercer than the words of the men of Israel-- they were behaving as badly as Benjamites--and I was hardly back in my palace before Sheba the son of Bichri, himself a Benjamite, was brazenly blowing his trumpet to call all the people of Israel up from following me, saying: 'We have no part in David,, neither have we inheritance in the son of Jesse. Every man to his tents, O Israel.'
And O, the people of Israel started moving up from following me to follow him. That did awaken me out of my doldrums. And I pounced at the opportunity I spied to advance Amasa ahead of Joab. I allotted him three days to assemble the men of Judah and set out with them after Sheba. There was no sign of him on the fourth. Where the fuck was he?
'They say he is coming,' said my recorder Jehoshaphat.
'So is Christmas!' I retorted, and directed Abishai to set forth immediately. 'Otherwise shall Sheba the son of Bichri do us more harm than did Absalom. Take thou my men, and pursue after him, lest he get him fenced cities, and escape us.'
And then I sent Joab out behind him to oversee and report back to me on any greater adverse effects we might not have foreseen. When my clumsy nephew Amasa finally did come bungling back into the city, he had forgotten a suitable robe and had forgotten his sword. I began to have discouraging premonitions of misjudgment about him. I let him take a robe and a sword from those belonging to Joab. Both were too large and too heavy for him--he looked like a buffoon when he went stumbling away--and I charged him to overtake Joab and Abishai and assume command. I even supplied him with a written authorization.
My sleep was fitful. In the dead of night, I came bolt upright on my bed with a shock of vivid clairvoyance and emitted my characteristic yawp of surprise: 'Holy shit!'
My servants stormed in with their swords drawn and their bodkins bared. I called for my recorder, I called for my scribe. I could see beyond doubt what inadvertently I had done. 'Send a wire!' I shouted.
'We have no wires,' Jehoshaphat recalled for me.
By noon the next day it was already too late, as my intuition had ominously foretold.
'Art thou in health, my brother?' double-dealing Joab said to Amasa with a fraternal smile, taking him by the beard to kiss him when they met at the great rock which is in Gibeon, where he had been biding his time like fate itself to ensnare him.
'I'm sure glad to find you here, cousin,' Amasa replied in a hurrying manner. 'Which way did they go?'
'Let me give you a hand,' offered Joab sociably, and ran him through the fifth rib, shedding
his bowels to the ground in the midst of the highway, so that he did not have to strike him again.
'What can I do with him?' I expostulated back home with Benaiah when they brought me the report.
Nothing then. For Joab was the lion of Judah after the people of Abel in Bethmaachah had cut off the head of Sheba and cast it out to him, and when he had returned to Jerusalem after putting down opposition in all of the territories of Israel. I was the king, but he was the prevailing hero, indeed the straw that stirred the drink, and I did not feel much like a king. I had known what it was like to feel like a hero, and I did not care to feel that way again.
I have really not felt much of anything since my wife Abigail died and my son Absalom betrayed me and was killed. I still do not know which of these two facts about Absalom has been more unhappy for me. I know I didn't feel like a victor when I started back from Mahanaim after that distressing triumph. I felt instead like a fugitive, and I feel like one now, a fugitive long pursued by invisible demons that can no longer be held at bay. In my intervals of broken sleep I feel like exhausted prey at the end of a fatal chase. As the days draw nigh when I am going to die, I remember with envy Barzillai the Gileadite. I do not have that serene sense of natural completion that he enjoyed as his end came near and his days were fulfilled. I call for Abishag when I desire her close, and she comes each time. But I get no heat from her, and I am just as desolate when she is gone as I was before. Yet I know I love her. I have a monkey on my back that I cannot shake off, and now I know who that monkey is: His name is God. I have seen His face and lived: He wears thick eyeglasses and leads us not only into temptation but into many mistakes. Conquering the land of Canaan He had promised to Abraham was not my biggest victory. Nor was delivering the people of Israel out of the hand of their enemies, either, although I may have thought so at the time. No. Defeating my son in battle was much more important to me, for that kind of victory is a loss, and I feel it still. God knows what I mean. I feel nearer to God when I am deepest in anguish. That's when I know He is closing in again, and I yearn to call out to Him now what I have longed to say to Him before, to address my Almighty God with those words of Ahab to Elijah in the vineyard of Naboth, 'Hast thou found me,O mine enemy?'
But Ahab built altars to Baal and slew true believers of Jehovah, and he and Jezebel were hated by God for these and the multitude of other evils performed by himself and his wife. All I did was fuck another woman.
'And send her husband to his death,' I can hear God correcting me if we were on speaking terms again as we have been in the past.
'The Devil made me do it,' I would remind Him in my defense.
'There's no such thing,' He would argue in reply.
'The Garden of Eden?'
And He'd say unto me, 'That was a snake. You can look it up.'
The fault, I know, was not it my stars but in myself. I've learned so many things that have not been much use to me. The human brain has a mind of its own.
13 In the Cave of Machpelah
But try telling anything complex to Bathsheba. 'There's a divinity that shapes our ends,' I explain altruistically, to cushion her for the disappointment I know is inevitable, 'rough-hew them how we will, and all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death.'
She pretends I'm talking gibberish and persists in another futile attempt to persuade me in favor of Solomon. 'Two down and one to go,' is the way she blithely assessed the situation after my return to Jerusalem from Mahanaim.
'I want you,' she requests of me now, 'to pass over Adonijah and name Solomon your heir. And I want you to do it before Adonijah's feast, while people still pay some attention to you, so there'll be no argument about it after you die.'
'Bathsheba, Bathsheba,' I cajole, 'now why in the world would I agree to that?'
She is honest in reply. 'Because I want you to.'
'No better reason?'
'Please don't make me think.'
Irresponsible certainty on her part has given way to fear as she has seen me sink into a more extreme desuetude and observed Adonijah ballooning out boldly to fill up the area in which I am shrinking. I hear more and more people talking about that outdoor feast he's planned at the foot of a hill not far outside the city. The hour has been set. I'm told he'll serve meat, and I'm almost sorry I said no. It's going to be a barbecue. Long tables of wood are being built in the shape of a square, and tents with stripes of yellow and white will be raised, in case there's rain. More and more often I hear criers in the street cheer, 'Long live Adonijah.' They sound like the voices of the fifty men he has hired to run before his chariot. What's wrong with that? What do I care how long he lives after I am no longer among the quick and have gone to sleep with my fathers? I find myself wondering if they will esteem me enough to bury me in the cave of Machpelah at Mamre before Hebron, to rest with my ancestors Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekah, and Jacob and Leah. That would be nice, wouldn't it--another signal honor to which I would be insensible. A lot I would enjoy it.
For a good while, Bathsheba openly sought to enlist the influence of Abishag until she realized the charming young servant girl doesn't have any.
'Solomon cannot be king,' I announce once more, for what I hope will be the last time. Solomon would function much better as one of those apes he covets. Adonijah could be a peacock. 'He's dumb, Bathsheba, dumb. He wouldn't last a minute.'
'I would sit by his right hand and advise him.'
'Do you know what he told me when I spoke to him last? You won't believe it!'
'He told me you didn't give him a chance to explain.'
'He wants to build a navy.'
'What's wrong with a navy?'
'You're as smart as he is when it comes to ruling a country. He has no brains at all.'
'What difference does that make,' she asks, 'when it comes to ruling a country?'
And there, of course, she has me, but I stick to our point. 'Salute Adonijah,' I counsel and forewarn her. 'Hail him and serve him.'
'I'd rather scrub floors.'
'He'll be king when I die.'
'Then you might as well live!'
That made me laugh.
Things happened so quickly when I finally took charge that I had no time for second thoughts.
14 Kings
'Well, it's all over, isn't it?' I say, and Abishag the Shunammite hears me in silence with a face that is serious, composed, and noncommittal. She gives off the scent of jasmine and soap; her fingers convey a pleasing hint of coriander. She grooms me for the night, combing my white hair with very delicate strokes and cleaning the corners of my eyes with a solution of glycerine and water on a damp, warm cloth of white wool. Her passion to serve me is serene and fulfilled. She will cover me with clothes when I lie down on my bed. And then, after she washes and anoints and perfumes herself anew, she will stand before me unclothed for a few moments, that we may cherish each other with our gazes before she curls in beside me to lie in my bosom. It doesn't sound bad, does it? But I will get no heat. And I will not know her in marriage. And again I will wish for Bathsheba, who refuses me still.
'After all I've done for you?'
'I have my hands full.'
Bathsheba is queen mother now and sits upon the right hand of her son, and she submits in her defense the added excuse that it would not be seemly. Solomon has won, and Adonijah has lost. Indecision no longer hangs in the air. Solomon sits upon my throne in my stead, and Adonijah has pledged himself to be a good boy, after catching hold on the horns of the altar for sanctuary and begging that he not be slain with the sword. If he showed himself worthy he would not be slain, Solomon sent to him entirely on his own, surprising me. The people are heartened that there will not be civil war, and again they go about the street rejoicing, saying this time, 'Long live the king. God save King Solomon.' That doesn't upset me either, although the words sound somewhat queer to me, as though I will never grow used to them. Why it has all turned out this way remains something of a mystery, even to me.
I do know that reason had not much to do with it. I did not pick one son over the other, the useless frugal one over the useless, shallow rakish one with the manners of a dance master and the morals of a whore. To tell you the truth, I had preference for neither. To tell you the truth, I did it in pique and I did it for love. I decided for Bathsheba, because once, for a few years of my life, she had made me happy, and no one but Abigail had ever done that.
I did not like to see her looking so frightened.
And for once in her life she came in with the truth, egged on by Nathan, who was indeed in terror when he perceived the crisis that was materializing on the day of Adonijah's feast.
All who'd been summoned by Adonijah were there to attend, and he slew sheep and oxen and fat cattle in abundance by the stone of Zoheleth which is by Enrogel. The long tables were in place, with coverings of purple and cloths of blue, and the tents with stripes of gold and white had been raised. It sounded quite nifty, but you couldn't tell that from Bathsheba's distress. Adonijah had conferred with Joab the son of Zeruiah, and with Abiathar my old priest, both of whom had followed him from the start and were helping him now. But Zadok my young priest, and Nathan the prophet, and Benaiah the son of Jehoiada had not turned to the party of Adonijah, and they had not been invited, nor had any of the mighty men who still belonged to me, for they were not with Adonijah. It was beginning to look like the old guard against the new, with Nathan black-balled because he hadn't jumped aboard. And Adonijah called all his other brethren, all the king's other sons, out to his feast. But Solomon his brother he called not, and this deliberate and portentous omission began to bode grave evil to many. Wherefore Nathan spoke up to Bathsheba that she might save her own life and the life of her son Solomon, and sent her in to see me, instructing her to bow and do obeisance to me and acquaint me with the particulars of the event.