The King’s Daughterby Tala Bar |
Table of Contents Synopsis Part 1 appears in this issue. |
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Chapter 3: Ahino’am part 2 of 3 |
* * *
Night fell. Torches were lit in town but the field remained in darkness. A round full moon peeped from beyond the hills of Amon, casting its pale lumination over the loving couple.
“You came to me in a dream; it’s the second time you come to me,” he whispered in her ear, supported on his elbow, his finger playing with her black hair, tracing the carved lines of her face.
“The third,” Ahino’am replied in a whisper, her cool palm stroking his skin; “don’t you remember, years ago, when you were still a boy?”
He wondered about her words, could not recall. “Why?”
“I wanted you.”
“Why?”
She chuckled, pulled his face towards hers, touched his cheek with her soft tongue. “You are King,” she said, “beloved King.”
“What’s your name?”
“Ahino’am. ‘Sister of Naaman’.”
“Who is Naaman?”
“You are Naaman.”
“My sister... My beloved...” He bent and kissed her. As much as her skin was cool and fresh, her embrace was fire, her kiss a flame. They made love again, out of deep awareness.
* * *
For three days she remained in Giv’at Sha’ul. The celebrations continued, Sha’ul slept alone with Anino’am in a special bedroom. They never went out, food was brought in to them. On the third night she informed him that in the morning she must go back to the Naaman temple at Naama.
“Why?” He asked.
“You are King now, you don’t need me any more. At least, not until next spring.”
“But I can’t be without you,” he said.
“You must. You belong to the people, I belong to Ashtoret.”
He felt his heart break. In those three days and nights she had captured his whole, as if there had never been Re’uma, or any other woman. No one beside Ahino’am. She was not a mere woman for him but the Goddess herself, Ashtoret incarnate had come down to him, granted him with her gifts, intoxicated him, addicted him, he could no longer live without her. Never.
* * *
When he rose the next morning as if from a coma, she had gone. Sunbeams broke through the window, lit up the day, lit the room, which was empty of her with their cruel light. A long time he continued in bed, until Re’uma peeped through the door.
“Sha’ul?” she asked, hesitating, apprehensive, in contrast to her usual manner. Their relationship was so stable, she never realized anything could shatter it. She knew that as King he had to fulfill his duty to Ashtoret; she never dreamed it would affect him so much, change him so completely.
Reluctantly, he turned his face to her, and had to shut his eyes. Her earthly figure, as bright as daylight, blinded him, hurt his eyes whose sole wish was to absorbed Ahino’am’s dark mysteries.
Re’uma entered the room, sat at his side, touched his forehead lightly. A drop of sweat sprouted to her touch. “Sha’ul,” she whispered, “what’s the matter? What’s happened to you?”
He did not answer. His soul had been torn, the wound still fresh, bleeding. At last she let him be. All day he lay alone in the room. In the evening, Maakha came in. “You are King now,” she said in an unusually sharp voice; “tomorrow you must get up and judge the people, as usual.”
He stared at his grandmother, his black eyes full of pain. Her eyes answered back with a strong look, then softened, and she stretched her thin arms to hug him. He lay his head on his grandmother’s shoulder and wept like a little child. When she had gone, he sat up on the bed, thinking for a long time. Then he got up and went to Re’uma’s room. The next day he sat for judgment as usual.
* * *
Sha’ul’s broken soul never healed, only covered in time with a fine scar tissue. He did his best to drive Ahino’am’s memory away from his mind, returned to a steady relationship with Re’uma, but the fire had gone from it. They knew each other too well for their lovemaking to break up, but it had assumed a routine, mechanical fashion.
Ahino’am, as I have known her, was a goddess only in the sense that she was a woman absolutely true to herself — independent, loving as she would, always loved. She was very human, her life was full of troubles and happiness, loves and hates, problems and difficulties like any other human being. She bore a number of children but did not raise them; the ones born at the temple, to the anonymous men offering Love gifts to the Goddess, stayed and were raised there by the priestesses; but King Sha’ul’s children she brought to the Court at Giv’at Sha’ul, to keep them together with their inheritance, their right for kingship. Ahino’am loved Sha’ul, perhaps more than she did her other lovers; but she never stayed with him, always returning to her appointed place at the temple, which was the center of her life.
III
When midsummer of that first year of his rule arrived, a mission came from Naaman’s temple demanding to bring the king as sacrifice. A riot broke around Sha’ul, who remained sitting silently on the throne, unmoving. “We did not crown Sha’ul in the spring in order to kill him in summer!” his close attendants cried, and when the rumor of the demand for sacrifice went around, people were ready to pick up their swords.
“We have a king!” shouted Avner, Sha’ul’s cousin and chief of staff. “We don’t need Ashtoret, we don’t need Naaman’s temple! We don’t need sacrifices!”
His father and uncle shut him up. “You don’t understand,” Kish explained to him, using a quiet, firm language, “we have made a covenant with Ashtoret and her people, we cannot break it now!”
The leaders of the tribe of Binyamin and its allies gathered for a meeting, giving Maakha the right of speech first. “There is no king without sacrifice!” She announced. A heavy, bitter silence fell over the people.
“Listen,” said Ner, who, contrary to his brother Kish and his son Avner, was faithful to Ashtoret, having learned her ways from his Canaanite wife; “Listen! Some peoples outside Israel do not sacrifice the king, but a surrogate — they have found it too wasteful to do otherwise.”
A whispering hum passed through the gathering, with a sigh of relief.
“But what kind of surrogates can we use?” asked Avner, still sullen for the rejection of his opinion; his family’s behavior seemed to him as a weakness, unsuitable for the warlike tribe of Binyamin.
“There are many kinds of surrogates — war prisoners, passing strangers, children...”
Sha’ul, as usual, did not take part in the discussion. Since Ahino’am had gone, he had become even more silent than usual, as if the earthly world was far from his mind. If anyone came and told him there was no choice and he had to be sacrificed to Ashtoret, and that Ahino’am would be the one to take his life — he would not hesitate, not be afraid. Just to see her face once more, to hold her body in his arms — he would gladly put the knife in her hand, open to her his bleeding heart.
* * *
Sha’ul was a born victim, but he was not allowed either to live with Ahino’am as his permanent lover, or to give his life to her. Only in later years, when he was disappointed in Ahino’am’s love, he also became reluctant to give his life to the Goddess.
In the mean time, the argument around Sha’ul raged on, no attention paid to his own preferences. War prisoners were considered good material for sacrifice, and our neighboring peoples used them much; I remember the name of one of them — Aggag King of Amaleq — who was used as one of the surrogate sacrifices for Sha’ul. These victims, especially if they had shown great bravery in battle, were most suitable, as they would gladly give away their lives for a good cause. They are always happy to go on the altar to win an eternal name for themselves and a chance for rebirth, rather than die as old men in their beds.
But the sacrifice of innocent strangers is a foul custom; these are worthless victims, both for their low social standing and because they would never do it of their own free will. At last, Maakha suggested the sacrifice of a baby. “It is a very ancient custom,” she said, “and a baby would have the best chance of being reborn. I suggest we take Bosmat’s child; he was born in the autumn, like Naaman, and if he dies on the altar at Midsummer, his soul would unite with that of the god, his spirit will gain eternal life in the Underworld, and he will be born again to his own mother in the body of another child.”
“But why Bosmat’s baby, especially?” Avner protested; the woman was the concubine of his brother Avdon, who was a taciturn man and Avner used to speak for him. “He is a healthy, pretty child, and it will be a pity; why don’t we find someone who is dying anyway.”
“You are belittling the honor of the Goddess!” Maakha scolded him, piercing him with her sharp eyes, and Avner kept his tongue.
* * *
The old woman called the young mother to her house after the conference; Bosmat, a buxom woman with a plain, smiling face, was holding her plump child tightly to her full, large bosom, her eyes full of tears. “Listen, my child,” Maakha’s voice was unusually soft; “he will win great honor, will be called after Naaman, and you will be ‘Lady’ for a whole year. And next spring you will have another child whom you can call after his name.” Her voice was very persuasive, and the mother, acting under some inner compulsion, quietly handed her the boy.
As I heard, things came about as Maakha had said. The boy was led with his parents in a celebrating colorful procession to the temple of Naaman; there they conducted symbolic marriage between him and one of the priestesses, then sacrificed him on the altar at the top of the hill. He was called after Naaman, was buried under the temple’s gate to protect it from evil spirits, and a plaque was hung there in his honor. From that moment and until next autumn Bosmat was called Lady by everyone, and next spring she bore another boy, whom she called after the dead one (I had forgotten what his name was). This new boy I knew as a very spoiled child, worshipped as a god by his mother who corrupted his character by always letting him have his own way.
Still, when I bring to mind my own son Avino’am, I think there is no greater crime than sacrificing babies, who could never be willing victims; Maakha’s share in this crime seems to me one of the greater factors in the shattering of Ashtoret’s authority over the people.
IV
The next spring, when Ahino’am came back to Giv’at Sha’ul to celebrate the annual sacred marriage and the renewal of Sha’ul’s kingship, she was carrying me on her arms. I have never known the meaning of a real mother. Ahino’am acted as a mother to my daughter Tamar, but not to me as a child; I did call her ‘Mother’ in later days — and why not? I had never had another.
Re’uma never accepted us, me and my brother Ishbaal, as her children. She accepted our existence as Sha’ul’s children — there was nothing she could do about that. But it was our privilege as the king’s and the Ashtoret’s priestess’ children which gnawed at her heart; this was the first feeling of jealousy which had ever threatened her peacefulness, even before she was aware of Sha’ul’s unremitting love for Ahino’am.
* * *
Perhaps that is the reason why my first, strongest love was given to Sha’ul, who was like a mother for me as far as it was possible. Sha’ul loved children as children, as he loved animals as children. He loved even his own sons and daughters in the same way, not especially because they were his own. In children, his naive heart found mates who answered his yearning for the natural, simple life without adult sophistication.
Sha’ul loved me as a child in the general way, but also as a reminder of Ahino’am, I replaced for him his absent love. When he took me in his strong but shaking arms holding me tight to his heart, he was holding in his mind Ahino’am’s thin body. When he looked into my black eyes, he saw there the reflection of Ahino’am. As he stroked the baby’s pale cheek and kissed her dark brow, he was visualizing her mother’s face. My father opened up his heart to me, as he had never done to any of his other children and I dwelled in it until his death.
Re’uma, of course, did not like the look of things. At that moment, all her possessive character focused on her love for her own issue, who had no obvious right for kingship, and she resented the invasion of these new strangers to her home. But she was a clever woman. She kept her revulsion in her heart, did not show it openly. She was expected to act as mother to Ahino’am’s children, and on the face of it she performed that duty, looking after their physical needs; but she had never accepted a mother’s role toward them. She treated them decently, as she thought, but she never gave them her love.
* * *
And where was my mother in all that? Once, years later, I asked her if she had ever loved the children she had born to Sha’ul, and how was she able to give them into the hands of strangers. Her answer was not clear to me, and I had to supply one of my own: Ahino’am identified herself with the Goddess with all her heart, body and soul, and these children were the result of such identification. They were born as heirs to kingship in the name of Ashtoret, and the continuation of the rule of Ashtoret — especially through Mikhal — was considered one of the most urgent needs of the Goddess’s worshipers. Establishing this heritage with the help of the priestess’s issue was most important at the time, and Ahino’am thought she could not do better than leave them at Court.
In those days, kingship was a new idea in Israel, and one of the unknown things about it was who was going to inherit the throne, and when. Ahino’am had risen above her own personal feelings in order to fulfill the ideas she believed in.
My mother had always been a mystery to me. I have often wondered, for instance, how much she loved Sha’ul. In time, I have formed a theory about Ahino’am’s love for the men who had offered their gift to the Goddess through her. I think she treated them according to the three seasons of the year: In the autumn, she regarded her lovers as a merciful mother regard her children; at springtime, she acted as a female in heat, loving them passionately with body and soul as she did my father; but when summer arrived, she behaved as a poisonous snake that kills and swallows its prey.
Sha’ul received the fire of Ahino’am’s spring love, his flesh happily burning in it; but when he realized that her love would not be his alone, he felt betrayed, he no longer wished to be sacrificed in her name. As a result, the flame in his heart turned to scorch his own soul.
Copyright © 2005 by Tala Bar
