Outside Shemayah's house, Little Isaac and Yaqim stood watch grimly at a door that wouldn't open. Silent Hannah came up from the market with a small basket, heaped with fruit and bread. She looked at me as if she didn't know me. She gave a knock that was obviously a signal, and the door opened and I saw the dour face of the old serving woman before the door was slammed closed again.
I went on up the street and down and towards the stream. There was now so little water running down from the basins that the bed of the stream was gray, like everything else, with dust. The sun found sudden bursts of light here and there where the water still ran, deep and secretive and slow.
I went to the basin and slowly washed my hands and my face.
Then I went to the grove.
I knelt for a while and I prayed to the Lord for Avigail. I knew I'd weep, and only slowly did it occur to me that weeping here was perfectly acceptable. There was no one to see it but the Lord. And I gave way finally. "Father in Heaven, how has this happened? How is it that this girl is suffering when she's innocent, and how could my blunder have only made it worse?"
At last exhaustion came over me, almost a sweet exhaustion because it pushed all anxiety ahead of it, and I collapsed on the soft bed of moldering leaf.
I crooked my arm for a pillow and I went effortlessly into sleep.
It wasn't deep sleep. It was a kind of lovely melting into the soft sounds around me, the crunch of the freshly fallen leaves beneath me, and the whisper of those overhead. Soon I could no longer hear my own heart. The sweetest fragrances came to me. Half in sleep I wondered at it, that in this awful drought, little things, fragrant things, still blossomed in sun and in shadow, and these things were near to me.
Did an hour pass? Or was it longer?
I had some sense, the sense of the man who had to rouse himself well before dark and be home again. But I didn't really know.
I shifted and turned. A small collection of sounds had awakened me, something not usual for this place, or was it an aroma? A thick and delicious perfume.
An expensive perfume.
I didn't open my eyes yet; I did not want to shake off the web of sleep completely because I feared if I did, it wouldn't come back. And how lovely it was simply to float here, trying to define this pungent aroma, and then thinking, somewhere deep in my mind, of where I'd always caught that inviting fragrance . . . at weddings, when the jars of nard were opened for the bride and groom.
I opened my eyes. I heard the sound of garments rustling. I felt something heavy and soft drop down on my naked feet.
I turned and sat up quickly, but I was groggy. A dark mantle lay on my feet and over it a heavy black veil. Fine wool. Expensive wool. I tried to shake off the grogginess. Who was here with me and why?
I looked up, forcing the sleep off my eyes, and I saw a woman standing in front of me, a woman against the backdrop of glittering sunlight in the canopy of the trees.
Her hair was luxuriantly free. Gold on the edge of her tunic shimmered, both at her throat and along her hem. Gold embroidering, rich and thick, and from her hair and her garments came this irresistible perfume.
Avigail. Avigail in a wedding tunic. Avigail, with her hair undone and flowing down, resplendent in the light. Slowly the light defined the long smooth curve of her neck, and the naked flesh of her shoulders beneath the embroidered gold. Her tunic was unclasped. Her hands, glittering with rings and bracelets, hung at her sides.
All of her beauty blazed in the dimness as if she were a treasure discovered in secret, meant to be revealed only in secret.
And there came the awareness to me, as the last vestiges of sleep left me: she is here with me and we are alone.
All my long life I'd lived in crowded rooms, and worked in crowded rooms and crowded places, and come and gone amid crowds, and amid women who were sister, aunt, mother, cousin - daughters or wives of others, covered women, shrouded women, women wrapped to the neck with their heads covered, women swaddled in blankets or glimpsed at village weddings now and then in layers of finery, beyond cascading veils.
We were alone. The man in me knew that we were alone, and the man in me knew that I could have this woman. And all the many dreams, the tortured dreams and tortured nights of denial, might lead now into the undreamt softness of her arms.
Quickly, I climbed to my feet. I reached down for the mantle and woolen veil she'd dropped, and I picked them up.
"What are you doing?" I demanded. "What mad thought has come into your mind!" I put the mantle over her shoulders and I put the dark veil over her head. I clasped her shoulders. "You're beside yourself. You won't do this. Now, come and I'll take you home."
"No," she said. She pushed me away. "I go to the streets of the city of Tyre," she said. "I go to fling myself into those streets. No. Don't try to stop me. If you do not want for yourself here what many men will soon have for the asking, then I go now."
She turned, but I caught her wrist.
"Avigail, these are the ravings of a child," I whispered to her.
Her eyes were bitter and cold as she looked at me, but even hard as they were they began to quiver. "Yeshua, let me go," she said.
"You don't know what you're saying," I said. "The streets of Tyre! You've never even seen a city like Tyre. This is childish foolishness. You think the streets are a bosom on which you can lay your head? Avigail, you come home with me, come to my house, with my mother and my sisters. Avigail, do you think we've watched all these doings in silence, without doing anything?"
"I know what you've done," she said. "It's no use. I'm condemned and I will not starve to death under the roof of the man who's condemned me. I will not!"