The Secret Chord: A Novel by Geraldine Brooks Read Free Book Online Page B

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    And this, too: our holiest men have always gone into the wilderness to hear the voice of the Name. Avram was in the far desert under a star-encrusted sky when the Name promised him descendants as numberless as those stars. Moshe was in the distant hills, and also a shepherd, when Yah spoke to him in the crackling fire. David heard some echo of the divine voice out there, too, I am sure of it. For when the time came for him to speak in the world, his words carried the roar of holy fire. How else to account for his poetry, those words that fill our mouths and hearts and give us voice to praise, lament, beseech and atone.
    Struck by this realization, I had let my thoughts drift from Nizevet, who was recounting the more practical details of their lives at that time. “I was his only contact,” she said. “When he came down to the house for provisions, all the others shunned him. But I would steal hours with him. I would bathe him, cut his hair, dress him in the warm things I had woven for him. I tried to feed him enough love to make up for the way his father starved him. But it was never enough. How could it be?”
    I nodded as I set down her words. I understood then that I had witnessed his long search for that missing love. That need is, you could say, his great strength and his grave weakness. Then she said something that made me shift in my seat.
    “Yishai was a good man.” She saw my involuntary movement and turned her hand over and tilted her head in a gesture that seemed to ask me to attend more closely to what she was about to say. “I see, after what I have just told you, that you doubt me. But it is true. He was an upright man, who sacrificed often and kept the law, in letter and in spirit. He was known for it. People looked to him for guidance. I was just a child when I married him, so to me he was like father and husband both. Kind, gentle, generous. He inherited a middling flock and built it into the largest in all of Beit Lehem. Our house, too, he expanded, over time. Not this place—” She waved a dismissive hand at the pleasant yet modest buildings surrounding us. “Our beit av was made of dressed stone and cedar, very fine. It went to my eldest, Eliav, of course, when Yishai died, and now has passed down to Eliav’s son in his turn. But in those days I had a wing of my own, just for my servants and me, with a chamber for the looms so that we could work sheltered from the weather. I bore Yishai strong sons and modest daughters, and he honored me for that. What more should a woman expect in her life? I know well that most receive much less.
    “But you are a man; you must know how it is. When a woman has borne a man so many children, even if she is still young, she is no longer the bride he once desired.”
    I did not interrupt her. I did not, as she assumed, know how it was. How could I?
    “It is a common story,” she continued. “But for a man of Yishai’s character, it is not an easy thing to give way to lust as a lesser man might do. He could have taken other wives, but he had promised me, in the early heat of our union, that he would never do so. And he was a man of his word.
    “Still, I began to see his eyes drift elsewhere. I knew he struggled. And then came my new maidservant, a Knaanit. She looked so much like me. It was an uncanny thing. Younger, of course. I think that is why, in truth, he hired her, even if he was not aware of what he did. He could not take his eyes from her. She was a good girl, from a decent family, who had sent her to our service because of Yishai’s upright name. If she had been a willing slut, I might have acted differently. I might have turned my face away and let it unfold. But I could see how she drew her mantle higher when he walked into the room, how she hurried to complete her tasks and get away from him. How she contrived, as best she could, to avoid finding herself alone with him. His attentions frightened her. She wanted what any girl wants, honorable