1997 - The Red Tent (25 page)

On the fourth day of our happiness, Shalem arose from our bath, dressed, and told me he was going to speak to his father. “It is time for Hamor to arrange for the bride-price.” He looked so handsome in his tunic and sandals that my eyes filled with tears again. “No more weeping, not even for happiness,” he said, and lifted me, still wet from the water, and kissed my nose and my mouth and put me on the bed and said, “Wait for me, beloved. Do not dress. Only lie here so I may think of you like this. I won’t be long.”

I covered his face with kisses and told him to hurry back. I was asleep when he slipped beside me, smelling of the world beyond our bed for the first time in days.

Hamor departed for Jacob’s camp early the next morning, a laden wagon behind him. He did not bring a tent or servants for a night’s stay. He did not expect to stay or to haggle. How could he have imagined any objection to his good news and generous gift?

The news about Shalem and Jacob’s daughter was widespread in the city, but unknown in Jacob’s tents. When he heard that I had been taken as wife by the prince of the city, he said nothing and made no reply to Hamor’s offer. He stood like a stone, staring at the man of whom his sons Levi and Simon had spoken with such venom—a man of his own years, it turned out, but richly dressed, smooth spoken, and fat. The king waved at a cart laden with goods and trailing sheep and goats. He declared them kin, soon to share a grandchild.

Jacob hooded his eyes and covered his mouth with his hand so Hamor would not see his discomfort or surprise. He nodded as Hamor praised his daughter’s beauty. Jacob had given no thought to a marriage for his daughter, although his wife had begun to speak of it. She was of age, to be sure. But Jacob was uneasy about this match, although he could not say why, and he felt his neck stiffen at Hamor’s expectation that he would do as he was told.

He searched his mind for a way to postpone a decision, a way to regain the upper hand. “I will discuss this with my sons,” he told the king, with more force than he meant.

Hamor was stung. “Your daughter is no virgin, Jacob,” the king pressed. “Yet here is a bride-price fit for a virgin princess of Egypt—more than my own father gave for my wife. Not that your daughter is unworthy of this and more. Name what you wish and it is yours, for my son loves the girl. And I hear she is willing, too,” and here Hamor smiled a bit too broadly for Jacob’s taste. He did not like to hear his daughter spoken of so crudely, even though he could not quite conjure up the image of Dinah’s face. All he could recall clearly was the sight of hair, unruly and wild, as she chased after Joseph. The memory came from long ago.

“I will wait for my sons,” said Jacob, and he turned away from the king, as though the lord of Shechem were no more than a shepherd, and left it to his wives to welcome the king with drink and food. But Hamor saw no reason to stay and headed back to his palace, trailing his gifts behind him.

Jacob called for Leah and spoke to her in the hardest words he had ever used with a wife. “Your daughter is no longer a girl,” he said. “You were insolent to keep this from me. You have overreached before, but never to shame me. And now this.”

My mother was as surprised as her husband and pressed Jacob for news of her daughter. “The prince of Shechem has claimed her. His father comes to pay the full bride-price of a virgin. And so I assume that she was until she went within the walls of that dung heap of a city.” Jacob was bitter. “She is of Shechem now, I suppose, and of no use to me.”

Leah was furious. “Go seek out your wife, my sister,” she said. “It was Rachel who took her there. Rachel is the one with eyes for the city, not me, husband. Ask your wife.” And the smell of bile rose from my mother’s words.

I wonder if she thought of me at all then, if she suffered over whether I had consented or cried out, if her heart reached out to discover whether I wept or rejoiced. But her words spoke only of the loss of a daughter, gone to the city where she would reside with foreign women, learn their ways, and forget her mother.

My father called for Rachel next. “Husband!” cried Rachel, smiling as she approached him. “I hear there are happy tidings.”

But Jacob did not smile. “I do not like the city or its king,” he said. “But I like even less an untrustworthy daughter and a lying wife.”

“Say nothing you will regret,” replied Rachel. “My sister sets you against me and against your only daughter, who is beloved of your mother at Mamre. This is a good match. The king says they are fond, does he not? Have you forgotten your own fire, husband? Have you grown so old that you do not remember that longing?”

Jacob’s face betrayed nothing. He looked long at Rachel, and she returned his gaze. “Give them your blessing, husband,” Rachel said. “Take the wagons laden with silver and linen and give Hamor the welcome due a king. You are the master here. There is no need to wait.”

But Jacob stiffened at Rachel’s insistence. “When my sons return from their travels, I will decide.”

Hamor could not recall ever being treated so badly. Even so, he was well disposed toward Jacob. “A good ally, I think,” he told Shalem the next day. “But an enemy to avoid. He is a proud man,”

Hamor said. “He does not like to lose control of his family’s fate. Odd that he should not yet know how children stop serving their parents once they are grown. Even daughters.”

But Shalem pressed his father to return as soon as possible. “I love the girl,” he said.

Hamor grinned. “Fear not. The girl is yours. No father would want her back as she is now. Go back to your wife, and let me worry about the father.”

Another week passed, and my husband and I grew to love each other in subtler ways, with caresses and endearments. My feet did not touch ground. My face ached from smiling.

And then I received a special wedding gift: Bilhah came to see me. My aunt appeared at the palace gate asking for Dinah, wife of Shalem. She was taken first to Re-nefer, who plied her with questions about Jacob’s hesitancy over her husband’s offer. The queen asked about Leah and Rachel as well, and told Bilhah not to leave the palace without gifts for her daughter-in-law’s family. And then Re-nefer herself brought my aunt to me.

My hug lifted my little aunt off the ground, and I covered her dark face with a dozen kisses. “You are glowing,” she said, when she stood back, holding my hands in hers. “You are happy.” She smiled. “It is wonderful that you should find such happiness. I will tell Leah and she will be reconciled.”

“Is my mother angry?” I asked, bewildered.

“Leah believes Rachel sold you into the hands of evil. She is like your father in her distrust of the city, and she is not pleased that you will make your bed within walls. Mostly, I think, she misses you. But I will tell her of the light in your eyes, of the smile on your lips, and of your womanly bearing now that you are a wife.

“He is good to you, yes?” Bilhah asked, giving me the chance to praise my Shalem. I found myself bursting to tell someone the details of my happiness, and I spilled everything into Bilhah’s willing ear. She clapped her hands to hear me speak like a bride. “Oh, to love and be loved like this,” she sighed.

Bilhah ate with me and peeked at Shalem. She agreed that he was beautiful but refused to meet him. “I cannot speak to him before my husband does,” she demurred. “But I have seen enough to bring back a good report of our daughter.”

In the morning, she embraced me and left with Reuben, who had brought her. She carried the word of my happiness into my father’s tents, but her voice was drowned out by the shouts of my brothers, who called me harlot. And Jacob did nothing to stop their foul mouths.

Simon and Levi had returned to our father after several days, defeated in a secret purpose. They had been in Ashkelon seeking trade not merely for the family’s goats and sheep, wool, and oil, but to speak with slave traders, whose business could yield far greater wealth than any hard-earned harvest of the earth. Simon and Levi wanted wealth and the power it would bring them, but they had no hope of inheriting those from Jacob. It was clear that Reuben would get their father’s birthright and the blessing would go to Joseph, so they were determined to carve out their own glory, however they could.

But Levi and Simon discovered that the slavers wanted nothing but children. Business was bad. Too many traders had weakened the market, and now they were assured of a good price only for healthy youngsters. My brothers could get nothing at all in trade for the two old serving women they had from their wives’ dowries. They returned home thwarted and bitter.

When they heard that Hamor had offered my father a king’s bride-price for me, they raised their voices against the marriage, sensing that their own positions would be diminished by such an alliance. Jacob’s house would be swallowed up in the dynasties of Shechem, and while Reuben might expect to become a prince, they and their sons would remain shepherds, poor cousins, nobodies. “We will be lower than Esau,” they muttered to each other and to the brothers over whom they still held sway: Zebulun, Issachar, and Naphtali, of Leah’s womb, and Zilpah’s Gad and Asher.

When Jacob called all his sons to his tent to consider Hamor’s offer, Simon raised his fist and cried, “Revenge! My sister has been ravaged by an Egyptian dog!”

Reuben spoke on behalf of Shalem. “Our sister did not cry out,” he said, “nor does the prince cast her aside.”

Judah agreed. “The size of the bride-price is a compliment to our sister, to our father, and to all the house of Jacob. We will become princes ourselves. We would be fools not to take the gifts that the gods give us. What kind of idiot mistakes a blessing for a curse?”

But Levi ripped his clothing as though mourning my death, and Simon warned, “This is a trap for the sons of Jacob. If we permit this marriage, the fleshpots of the city will consume my sons and my brothers’ sons. This marriage displeases the god of our father,” he said, challenging Jacob to disagree.

Their voices grew loud and my brothers glared at one another across the lamps, but Jacob did not let his own thoughts be known. “The uncircumcised dog rapes my sister every day,” Simon thundered. “Am I to permit this desecration of our only sister, my own mother’s daughter?”

At this, Joseph pulled a skeptical face and half-whispered to Reuben, “If my brother is so concerned about the shape of our brother-in-law’s penis, let our father demand his foreskin for a bride-price. Indeed, let all the men of Shechem become like us. Let them pile up their membranes as high as my father’s tent pole, so that their sons and ours will piss the same, and rut the same, and none will be able to tell us apart. And thus will the tribe of Jacob grow not merely in generations to come, but even tomorrow.”

Jacob seized upon Joseph’s words, which had been spoken only in mockery of the brothers who had tortured him since infancy. But Jacob did not hear the edge in his son’s words. He said, “Abram took up the knife for those of his household who were not of his covenant. If the men of Shechem agree to this, none could say that our daughter was injured. If the men of the city make such sacrifice to the god of my fathers, we shall be remembered as makers of souls, as gatherers of men. Like the stars in the heavens, as it was told to our father Abram. Like the sands of the sea, was it foretold by my mother Rebecca. And now I will make it come to pass. I will do what Joseph says, for he has my heart.” Jacob spoke with such passion that there was no use in further speech.

Levi’s face twisted in anger at Jacob’s decision, but Simon placed a hand on his brother’s arm and pulled him away into the night, far from the light of lamps and the ears of their brothers.

When Hamor journeyed to Jacob’s tent the second time, Shalem accompanied him. Determined not to return to the city without my father’s blessing, he brought two donkeys laden with still more gifts. My beloved was confident as he left, but when he reached my father’s tent, the king’s party was again met with crossed arms, and not so much as a ladle of water was offered before the men began discussing terms.

My father spoke first, and without ceremony. “You come for our daughter,” he said. “We will agree to the marriage, but I doubt if our terms will suit you, for they are severe.”

Hamor replied, his earlier warmth for the man blasted by the insulting lack of hospitality. “My son loves the girl,” the king said. “He will do anything for her, and I will do what my son wishes. Name your terms, Jacob. Shechem will fulfill them so that your children and my children will bring forth new generations upon the land.”

But when Jacob named the price for his daughter, Hamor paled. “What form of barbarity is this?” he asked. “Who do you think you are, shepherd, to demand the blood of my son’s manhood, and mine, and that of my kinsmen and subjects? You are mad from too much sun, too many years in the wilderness. Do you want the girl back, such as she is? You must think very little of this daughter to make such sport of her future.”

But Shalem stepped forward and put his hand on his father’s arm. “I agree to the demands,” he said to Jacob’s face. “Here and now, if you like. I will honor the custom of my wife’s family, and I will order my slaves and their sons to follow me. I know my father speaks out of fear for me and in loyalty to his men, who would suffer. But for me, there is no question. I hear and obey.”

Hamor would have argued against his son’s offer, and Levi and Simon were poised to spit in his face. The air smelled like lightning, and daggers might have been drawn had Bilhah not appeared, with water and wine. Women with bread and oil followed, and Jacob nodded for them to serve. They ate a few mouthfuls in silence.

The terms were agreed to that evening. Jacob accepted four laden donkeys for a bride-price. Shalem and Hamor would go under the knife in three days, as would the men of Shechem, noble and slave alike. All of the healthy men found within the walls of the city on that same morning would also accept the mark of Jacob upon them, and Hamor promised that every son born within the city from that time forth would be circumcised on the eighth day, as was the custom among the sons of Abram. Hamor also pledged that the god of Jacob would be worshiped in his temple, and the king went so far as to call him Elohim, the one god of the many gods.