The Secret Chord: A Novel
Read The Secret Chord: A Novel Online
Authors: Geraldine Brooks
Tags: #Religious, #Biographical, #Fiction, #Literary
The Secret Chord: A Novel
Geraldine Brooks
Viking (2015)
Rating: ★★★★☆
Tags: Fiction, Literary, Religious, Biographical
Fictionttt Literaryttt Religiousttt Biographicalttt
*
“A page turner. . .Brooks is a master at bringing the past alive. . .in her skillful hands the issues of the past echo our own deepest concerns: love and loss, drama and tragedy, chaos and brutality.” – Alice Hoffman
, The Washington Post
A rich and utterly absorbing novel about the life of King David, from the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of
People of the Book
and
March.
With more than two million copies of her novels sold,
New York Times bestselling author Geraldine Brooks has achieved both popular and critical acclaim. Now, *Brooks takes on one of literature’s richest and most enigmatic figures: a man who shimmers between history and legend. Peeling away the myth to bring David to life in Second Iron Age Israel, Brooks traces the arc of his journey from obscurity to fame, from shepherd to soldier, from hero to traitor, from beloved king to murderous despot and into his remorseful and diminished dotage.
The Secret Chord
provides new context for some of the best-known episodes of David’s life while also focusing on others, even more remarkable and emotionally intense, that have been neglected. We see David through the eyes of those who love him or fear him—from the prophet Natan, voice of his conscience, to his wives Mikal, Avigail, and Batsheva, and finally to Solomon, the late-born son who redeems his Lear-like old age. Brooks has an uncanny ability to hear and transform characters from history, and this beautifully written, unvarnished saga of faith, desire, family, ambition, betrayal, and power will enthrall her many fans.
From the Hardcover edition.
**
Also by Geraldine Brooks
FICTION
Caleb’s Crossing
People of the Book
March
Year of Wonders: A Novel of the Plague
NONFICTION
The Idea of Home: Boyer Lectures 2011
Foreign Correspondence: A Pen Pal’s Journey from Down Under to All Over
Nine Parts of Desire: The Hidden World of Islamic Women
VIKING
An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC
375 Hudson Street
New York, New York 10014
Copyright © 2015 by Geraldine Brooks
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ISBN 978-0-698-41148-7
Endpaper map by Laura Hartman Maestro
Version_1
Contents
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII
VIII
IX
X
XI
XII
XIII
XIV
XV
XVI
XVII
XVIII
XIX
XX
XXI
XXII
XXIII
XXIV
XXV
XXVI
XXVII
XXVIII
To Nathaniel . . .
“. . . the isle is full of noises,
Sounds and sweet airs that give delight and hurt not.”
“Now the acts of David the king, first and last, behold, they are written in the words of Samuel the seer, and in the words of Nathan the prophet . . .”
1 Chronicles 29
“Now the rest of the acts of Solomon, first and last, are they not written in the history of Nathan the prophet . . .”
2 Chronicles 9:29
A Note on Names
Throughout the novel I have used personal and place-names in their transliteration from the Hebrew of the Tanakh: Shaul, Shmuel and Shlomo, for example, rather than the perhaps more familiar Saul, Samuel and Solomon.
The Names
Nizevet, David’s mother according to the Talmud
Yishai (Jesse), David’s father
David’s Brothers and Sisters
Eliav
Avinadav
Shammah
Raddai
Natanel
Zeruiah
Avigal
David’s Wives
Mikhal, daughter of King Shaul, first wife of David
Ahinoam, second wife of David
Avigail of Carmel (Abigail), third wife of David
Maacah of Geshur
Hagit
Eglah
Avital
Batsheva
David’s Nephews
Yoav (Joab), David’s general, son of Zeruiah
Avishai, Yoav’s warrior brother
Asahel, Yoav’s warrior brother
Amasa, son of Avigal
Yonadav, son of Shammah
David’s Children
Amnon, son of Ahinoam
Daniel, son of Avigail
Avshalom, son of Maacah
Tamar, daughter of Maacah
Adoniyah, son of Hagit
Yitraam, son of Eglah
Shefatiah, son of Avital
Shlomo, son of Batsheva
Natan, son of Batsheva
Others
Shmuel (Samuel)
Avner (Abner), Shaul’s general
Moshe (Moses)
Yehoshua (Joshua)
Avram (Abraham)
T
here was an almond blossom, yesterday. It had opened its pale petals on a twig of the bough that curls and twists up to my windowsill. This morning, the blossom is gone; the paleness upon the twig is snow. It does one no good, in these hills, to set store by the earth’s steady warming.
My body is as bent as that bough. The cold is an ache in my bones. I am sure that this year’s reaping will be the last that I see. I hope only for one more season of summer fruit, for the ease of the hot sun on my back, for ripe figs, warm from the tree, spilling their sweet nectar through these splayed fingers. I have come to love this plain house, here among the groves. I have laid my head down in many places—on greasy sheepskins at the edge of battlefields, under the black expanse of goat hair tents, on the cold stone of caves and on the scented linens of palaces. But this is the only home that has been my own.
They are at work, already, on Har Moriah. From across the wadi, I can hear the thin squeal of the planes scraping upon the logs. Hard work to get these trees here; felled in the forests of the Lebanon, lashed together into rafts, floated south on the sea, dragged up from the coast by oxen. Now the tang of cut cedar perfumes the air. Soon, the king will come, as he does every morning, to inspect the progress of the work. I know when he arrives by the cheers of the men. Even conscripted workers and slaves call out in praise of him, because he treats them fairly and honors their skill.
I close my eyes, and imagine how it will be, when the walls have risen from the foundations of dressed stone: the vast pillars carved with lilies and pomegranates, sunlight glinting on cladding of gold . . .
It is the only way I will ever see it: these pictures in my mind’s eye. I will not live to make the ascent up the broad stairs, to stand within the gilded precincts as the scent of burning fat and incense rises to the sky. It is well. I would not wish to go without him. I thought, at one time, that we would go together. I can still see his eyes, bright with the joy of creation, as he chose and planned what materials, what embellishments, pacing the floor, throwing his arms up and shaping the pillars as he envisioned them, his long fingers carving the air. But that was before I had to tell him that he would never build the temple. Before I had to tell him that all his killing—the very blood that, one might say, slakes the mortar of those foundation stones—had stained him too deeply. Strange words, you might think, to come from the selfsame source that had required these killings of him.
Hard words, like blows. The blast from heaven, issuing from my mouth. Words born of thoughts I had not had, delivered with anger I did not feel, spilling out in a voice I did not even know for my own. Words whose reason no human heart could fathom. Civilization is built upon the backs of men like him, whose blood and sweat make it possible. But comes the peace, and the civil world has scant place for such men. It fell to me to tell him so.
And like all such words that have formed upon my lips, these have become true in fact. It has come to be just as the voice said it would: this one dear ambition denied him. A bequest, instead, to his heir.
In this, I am more fortunate than he. I have lived to complete my life’s great work. I have rolled and tied the scrolls with my own hands, sealed them with wax, secured them in clay vessels, and seen to their placement in the high, dry caves where I played as a child. In the nights, which have become so long for me, I think of those scrolls, and I feel a measure of peace. I remember it all so clearly, that day, at the turn of the year, the month when kings go out to battle. How warily I broached the matter. It might seem odd to say so, as my whole life in his service had been bent to this purpose: the speaking of truth, welcome or no. But it is one thing to transmit the divine through a blasting storm of holy noise, another thing entirely to write a history forged from human voices, imperfect memories, self-interested accounts.
I have set it all down, first and last, the light and the dark. Because of my work, he will live. And not just as a legend lives, a safe tale for the fireside, fit for the ears of the young. Nothing about him ever was safe. Because of me, he will live in death as he did in life: a man who dwelt in the searing glance of the divine, but who sweated and stank, rutted without restraint, butchered the innocent, betrayed those most loyal to him. Who loved hugely, and was kind; who listened to brutal truth and honored the truth teller; who flayed himself for his wrongdoing; who built a nation, made music that pleased heaven and left poems in our mouths that will be spoken by people yet unborn.