“Thus for Saul and Jonathan and the other mosquitoes of Israel,” he boasted. “If you do not accept my challenge, I will leap this little rivulet you call a river and swat your king with my fist and crush his son with my boot and take his queen for my pleasure.”
He laughed again and, having repeated his boast, knelt to drink from a quiet pond, protected from the mainstream by a ridge of stone and tree stumps. Ahinoam witnessed a curious sight, unnoticed, apparently, by the men. Momentarily Goliath saw his reflection in the pond. He shuddered and quickly stirred the waters to break the liquid mirror. He is appalled by his own ugliness, she recalled, and recalled, too, the tale that the Goddess had quarreled with the first Cyclopes because they had felled her trees and murdered her animals, and she had laid a curse of ugliness upon them: “You who see with two eyes and see no beauty in all of my creation, shall see with one eye, and ugliness shall stalk you to the end of your graceless days, and you shall be ugly even to each other and yourselves.” And the Cyclopes, who had been like bad, undisciplined children, now became ruthless and crafty adults who warred with all other peoples, smashing what was built, crushing what was grown, cultivating oaths as poets cultivate epithets. There was even a poem among Ahinoam’s people:
Dialogue
“Cyclops,
Red and squid-eyed,‘
Why do you plunder ships?
“Because, kneeling to drink, I meet Myself.”
Understanding could be a curse for Ahinoam. To surmise people’s secrets meant to pity their pain. But she did not pity Goliath, she hardened her heart against him for the sake of Jonathan.
She turned quickly to leave the stream.
Goliath called after her, “I will come for you, Honey Hair.” No one had called her Honey Hair since she had left her hive. Now the name seemed a desecration.
She turned and shouted back to him. “If my son were well-”
“Ah, he must be a young man now. And comely like his mother. I will enjoy breaking his back.”
He wrenched a tree from the ground and cast it into the stream. It seemed to please him to see the yellow flowers disintegrating in the frolicsome current.
“Water is for bathing as well as drinking. Or perhaps your odor is your deadliest weapon,” she said and, with dignity as well as courage, turned her back on him and walked to Jonathan’s tent.
She was shocked to see him standing without support in the door to the tent. His face was pale and thin from the weight he had lost. He looked like a slender figurine of alabaster, woundingly beautiful, pathetically breakable. He was Jonathan, the dreamer, instead of Jonathan, the warrior. He was Jonathan, the boy who had fled to his tree house when his father had scolded him for reading a scroll instead of practicing with his bow. It came to her like the slap of a wave that she who had lost a hundred lovers to hush-winged death, that she who had lost a country and found a kingdom only to lose its king, could not endure the loss of Jonathan.
“Jonathan, you should never have left your couch!” she cried.
“That monster woke me with his threats. Just a few more days and I'll be well enough to fight him.”
He swayed in the door and she reached to steady him. “Not if you rise too soon.”
“Walk with me then,” he said. “It will help me regain my strength.” He put his arm around her shoulders-she felt his thinness and thought of savory broths to plumpen him-and they began a slow inspection of the camp. The soldiers cheered when they saw him on his feet, and she heard them whisper among themselves.
“It’s her healing magic again. Twas a fierce demon he fought.”
“Without her he’d be dead.”
“Soon hell fight Goliath.”
“You hear what they say?” he asked.
“Ignore them,” she said with surprising vehemence. MH you were as strong as Saul in his prime, you still couldn’t match that beast.“
He looked like a little boy who had stubbed his toe. “You’re not a warrior, Mama. Why do you think so little of my skill? I wouldn’t let him touch me. He has the strength but I have the speed.”
“He is swifter than you think. Remember, I knew him on Crete.”
“But now he’s old, and maybe tired like Father. 1
“If you fight him, he will win.”
He shook his head. “Now you’re being a sphinx. The men know you came from Crete, but what must I say when they ask me other questions? You have told me that you are a Siren. But how can you hear the sound which has not been made and see the sight which has not been seen? How can you look so young that you drive the Israelite matrons to dye their hair with henna, and the virgins to practice your walk and your voice and your enigmatic smile? Why do you keep such secrets from your own son?”
“My dear,” she sighed, her hair a burst of sunflowers, her skin the pink flawless texture of the daffodils along the Philistine coast; an old woman who looked eternally young; a woman who would trade her youth to recover an old love. “We must each have secrets, you and I. Mine are those of age, yours of youth.”
“Secrets are for strangers,” he said. “But you are my mother.”
“All men and women are strangers. Sometimes I think that the Celestial Vineyard is the place where strangeness falls away from us and we accept each other as we are, without the need to condemn or idealize.
“Must we wait so long?”
“Here’s David,” she cried with relief. “Hell take you back to your tent.”
“I want you to take me,” Jonathan said stubbornly. But already David had joined them and encircled Jonathan’s shoulder with a powerful arm. ‹
“I can walk alone,” Jonathan protested.
“Hold still or you’ll fall,” said David. “I don't care if you are a prince. You’re going to do what I say.”
Covertly Ahinoam watched them as they accompanied her to the tent and observed the constraint which had come between them. She was neither misled nor displeased. She knew that unreasoning anger is often the other face of love.
“Stay with him,” said Ahinoam, once in the tent. “I’ll mix his drink. We don’t want the fever to return. The demons are probably still in the vale.”
David settled Jonathan on his couch, propped his head on a cushion, and summoned Mylas from his rug.
“Come and comfort your master,” he said and, obeyed by the bear, he sat on the edge of the couch while Jonathan, silent, stroked Mylas’ fur and tried to avoid David’s look. Ahinoam smiled-how this boy took command with stubborn Jonathan! — and left the tent to prepare her son’s potion from an herbal bag she had brought on her journey.
When she returned, David rose as if to leave her with Jonathan. “He wants to sleep, I think.”
“He will sleep better with you in his tent.”
“Will you, Jonathan?”
Jonathan was slow to answer. “Yes, David. If you sing to me first.”
“I haven’t a lyre with me. Shall I fetch one?”
“No. Just sing.”
David sang with a rough, halting tenderness, and Ahinoam guessed that he was composing the song expressly for Jonathan.
Ihis
— Ihis,
Amber and alabaster:
In the green caverns of papyrus,
He cannot hear the dahabeah’s prow
Sunder the Nile,
Nor the winds from Karnak,
Freighted with sand and incense. But the caverns speak With little myriad voices: Scarab, lizard, and dragonfly Eddying pollen among the lotuses.
What need has the amber bird For winds and rivers?“
Jonathan smiled and touched David on the shoulder. “Sometimes I don’t understand your songs, but they ease my spirit.”
Ahinoam restrained a protest. Understand! Why, the song was as clear as Goliath’s mirror-pool. Like most Israelite poets, David couched his language in metaphors from nature, but it was clear to her-and certainly to her son-that Jonathan was the ihis and that he had no need to confront the winds and rivers of war because David had come to protect him.