The Harlot by The Side of The Road: Forbidden Tales of The Bible (38 page)

“No, not here,” said the Levite. “Not in a town full of strangers!”

“But the storm—” the servant began to protest.

“We will go to a place where we are sure to find a friendly welcome and a warm bed—Gibeah is not far off, or perhaps Ramah,” the Levite insisted, naming places along the road where he knew he would find himself among fellow Israelites. “I couldn’t sleep knowing I was alone among strangers who might slaughter us in our beds!”

Looking back on that terrible night, the Levite often wished that he
had consented to stay among strangers in Jerusalem. As it turned out, the Jebusites could not have been less welcoming than the Israelites in whose town they bedded down.

The concubine would certainly have felt the same way, if she were asked her opinion—and if she were able to offer one.

The sun was setting just as the party of travelers—the Levite and his concubine, their servant and the two donkeys—reached the town of Gibeah in the land that belonged to the tribe of Benjamin. They trudged through the streets, chilled and hungry and soaking wet, but no one opened a door to them. At last, they sat themselves down in the town square and waited for some good-hearted soul to offer them food and lodging. But not a single Benjaminite offered to take them into his house for the night.

At last, the empty streets of Gibeah echoed with the footfalls of an old man crossing the town square on his way back from a long day in the fields outside town. The old man’s birthplace was in the hill-country of Ephraim, but now he lived among the Benjaminites in Gibeah. He walked with his head down to keep the rain out of his face, and when he glanced up, he saw the travelers in the middle of the square.

“Where are you going?” he asked in a friendly way. “And where do you come from?”

“We are coming from Bethlehem in Judah, and we are heading toward my home in the hill-country of Ephraim,” the Levite explained. “We stopped here to find shelter from the storm, but no one has offered us a place to stay.”

Then, lest the old man think him to be a beggar and a vagrant, the traveler continued:

“I have straw and fodder for the asses, food and wine for myself and the girl and the young man,” he said. “We have all we need, sir, except a roof over our heads.”

“I am a man of Ephraim, too!” the old man said with real warmth. “You are welcome under my roof—I will give you food and drink—but you must not spend the night in the street, I beg you!”

So the Levite traveler and his party followed the old man as he led them to his home. As hospitality requires, the old man put out straw in the courtyard for the asses, set out bowls of water so his guests could wash their feet, and ordered his daughter to lay out food and drink for a late supper. The concubine ate sparingly and in silence, then followed
the old man’s daughter to a back room and promptly went to sleep on a pile of bedding in the corner. The servant slept on a pile of straw in a storeroom at the back of the house. But the traveler and the old man stayed up late into the night, laughing and drinking, sharing stories of the good country where the tribe of Ephraim dwelled, and bemoaning their misfortune in ending up among the Benjaminites.

“At least for you and your woman,” said the old man from the land of Ephraim, seeking to comfort the Levite after his ungracious reception in the streets of Gibeah, “it is only for one night.”

The two of them were still trading stories and sipping wine when they heard sudden noises in the alley outside the old man’s house—a shout, a scuffle of feet, a thud. The Levite traveler looked at his host in alarm, but the old man only laughed and reached for the wine jar. Then they heard the sound of urgent whispering right outside the door, and even the old man seemed suddenly alert.

“Hey in there!” someone shouted from outside the front door, pounding on the wooden door with a fist. “Open up!”

“What do you want?” the old man called out, his quavering voice betraying his fear. “It’s late. Go home. Leave us alone!”

Then suddenly the noise seemed to come from all directions at once, as if a gang of men had surrounded the little house and were trying to force their way in through every window. A few moments later, the pounding and shouting stopped just as suddenly as it had started, and now a voice was heard again at the front door.

“Bring out the man who is inside there with you,” a hoarse voice shouted on the other side of the door. “Bring him out!”

“Yes, bring him out,” a second man said with unmistakable menace, “so that we may get to
know
him—” and his words incited harsh laughter from the crowd.

The traveler looked at his host. “What do they mean?” he asked, although he already feared the worst.

The old man only confirmed his fears. “Around here,” the old man said, “the sons of hell among these foul Benjaminites like to ‘know’ a man the way a man knows a woman.”

“What will we do?” the traveler asked, looking in vain around the room for a place to hide.

The old man did not answer. He sat for a few moments in silence, then struggled to his feet and staggered toward the front door, still a bit tipsy but sobering up fast. He leaned up to the door and shouted loudly so the men outside would be able to hear him plainly enough.

“No, my brothers,” the old man said, his words slightly slurred on his tongue. “Do not do such a wicked thing—”

“Bring him out!” came the shout from outside.

“You can see he is my guest!” the old man continued in a pleading tone. “Do not treat a guest in such a wanton way!”

The crowd answered with a fresh flurry of shouting and pounding, and the old man feared that they would simply break down the door and have their way with him
and
his guest. He glanced toward the curtained opening to the room where his daughter and the traveler’s concubine had gone to sleep. Surely they were awake now, he thought to him-self—who could sleep through all that commotion? And then quite a different thought forced its way into his wine-soaked brain.

“Hey!” he shouted to the men outside. “I have a daughter—a virgin!”

The Levite turned and stared at the old man.

“And my guest is traveling with a very pretty young woman!” the old man continued. “They’re both here right now!”

The noise outside stopped suddenly. The traveler, too, listened in amazement.

“I will bring them out to you now,” the old man continued. “Do whatever you want with them—whatever strikes your fancy—but leave the two of us alone!”

At first, the traveler bristled at the old man’s words. What right did
he
, have to offer up the concubine to the mob? The old man’s own daughter—well, that was one thing. But the concubine belonged to
him
, the Levite thought to himself, and no one had asked
him
whether she might be thrown to the mob like a piece of raw meat to a pack of dogs! But he said nothing, waiting to see whether the old man’s offer would satisfy the men outside the door. But it only seemed to incite the crowd outside the door to an even louder chorus of catcalls and whistles.

“It’s no good,” the old man said miserably. “It’s not a woman these sons of hell want!”

The Levite, however, was not ready to give up on the idea, which began to seem quite compelling as he contemplated what the mob intended to do to him. After all, he told himself, the concubine was such an annoyance, such a burden, and she had caused him so much grief over the last few months. Why should he put himself at risk of the mob’s vile appetites in order to spare her?

So the Levite rose from the corner where he had been huddling in fear, stalked into the room where the concubine, too, was cowering, and manhandled her to the door. When the old man saw what the traveler
intended to do, he lifted the stout length of wood that barred the threshold and opened the door just wide enough for the traveler to shove his concubine into the street.

The young woman hissed and scratched as she tried to brace herself in the doorway, but now a half dozen of the men outside seized her by the hair, by the wrist, by the ankle. Pushed from behind and pulled forward at the same time, the young woman tumbled into the street to the jeers of the crowd. Then the old man and the traveler shouldered the door closed again, dropped the bolt of wood in place, and fell to the floor in exhaustion. Outside, the crowd fell suddenly and ominously silent, at least for one long moment, and then new and even more terrible sounds began to reach the ears of the old man and his honored guest as they sat with their backs against the door.

That is where they stayed all night long, the old man and the traveler, each one mute, each one avoiding the other one’s eyes, each one listening to the terrible sounds from the street, the sounds that a gang of men make when they take turns raping a woman over and over again, doing exactly what they please to her, until the sun began to come up.

At first light, the Levite looked over and saw the old man was asleep—or at least he was pretending to sleep. Then he heard a soft thud as if someone had let a sack of flour fall against the door. A moment later, he heard the sound of voices fading into the distance as the men hastened away from the old man’s house. The traveler waited a long time to be sure that they were finally gone, then cautiously opened the door of the house.

The young woman was sprawled in front of the house. Her two arms were outstretched, her hands were reaching toward the door, but she was still and silent. She seemed almost at rest, as if she were merely asleep, and the mad thought occurred to him that it had all been a bad dream. Yes, of course, a dream! Somehow, despite everything he had heard during the long night, the Levite traveler succeeded in convincing himself that it was so.

“Up!” the man said out loud, addressing the woman as he crossed the threshold, stepped over her body, and headed toward the courtyard where the two asses were tied up. “Up,” he said briskly, “and let us be going!”

No one heard, and no one answered.

The donkey she had ridden from her father’s house carried the mutilated corpse of the concubine back to the hill-country of Ephraim. By
the time the traveler and his servant reached home with their gruesome baggage, the Levite had worked himself up into a pious frenzy at the way the Benjaminite sons of hell back in Gibeah had abused her beautiful young body—and he had devised a plan to punish them for what they had done.