Desired: The Untold Story of Samson and Delilah (Lost Loves of the Bible) (24 page)

Wandering in the market became my favorite pastime. If a dead heart can claim to be amused by anything, it was looking at the wares, watching the shoppers bargain and argue and rejoice over little victories. The market was life, and I walked through it, remembering.

A loom stood in one of the stalls, its wood beams clean and polished. The loom was old, the merchant had said. One eye wandered without control as he spoke, and gaps in his brown teeth showed themselves as he smiled without mercy on me. He clutched my hand in his, pushing his face closer.

“Why do you want an old loom? You should have the best. Go to Cornelius. He sells new ones.”

“No, but I thank you. This one will do.”

He dropped my hand with a sigh. “I will not argue with a woman.”

I tried a smile, though I felt nothing. “You don’t have the heart for it?”

He grunted. “I don’t have the strength. Take it. One piece of copper.”

I paid him and took up the loom in my arms, cradling it like a child. The thought struck me coldly, and I shifted it at once, carrying it in front of me. It was an older loom, true, but one that rested easily in my lap. One I would have wanted many years ago. So much had been abandoned in the years since.

Weeks passed, and I stared at the loom, setting by my bed. Another woman should have bought it, not me. I once knew how to weave, once had dreams of the fine things I could create. Maybe I had hoped the loom would stir something in me.

It didn’t. One night I poured myself a bowl of wine filled to the brim, determined to numb the pain for an hour, and climbed the steps to my roof, where I could sit and look at the stars. In the far distance stood the temple. I sat with my back to it.

The horizon was black, as was the sky above me. This was my life, the temple behind me, nothing before me. Just darkness.

I drank, emptying the bowl in one long draught, and waited to feel the warmth spread into my cold, dead limbs.

I didn’t know what to do with my freedom any more than I knew what to do with my past. Everything hurt.

The orange sun was setting in the west, leaving the sky a turquoise blue. White clouds dotted the sky above, rolling on to some distant adventure. I wished them gone. I was eager for the relief of night and of darkness, when the heat would soften and shadows covered my home.

Moving through the market, I needed to buy one last thing before returning home. Pits along the street hissed, with white smoke rising from them, dry bones scattered at their edges. The smoke stung my nose. I held out my coin, and the cook rose from his stool, pulling a skewer from the fire pot of blackened pork. He scraped it into a straw basket and handed it to me with his familiar nod of thanks.

I had never learned to cook. I appreciated his lack of interest in my problem.

A young girl stood watching me in the shadow of a doorway. One bare foot lifted to rub the top of the other. She tucked her chin down but still watched me, her foot rubbing faster.

Turning back to the cook, I held out another coin. He stood and filled a basket, with the same solemn expression that he had worn for me not even a minute ago. Taking the steaming meat from him, I turned and held it out to the girl.

She did not move, but her nostrils flared. I held the basket farther out to her. She glanced in either direction and scurried across the lane, scooping out the pork with one hand, eating like an animal, unaware of anything but the food and her hunger. With one hand I stroked her head as she ate. My chest tightened with the memory of this hunger, of any hunger. I envied her that she felt anything at all, and I said a silent word of thanks, that money could make someone happy.

I knew no one would hear the words spoken in my heart. There was no one left for that now, and no god, either. All had proven so fragile.

A man charged from the doorway of a wine shop, bursting upon the two of us, slapping the basket from my hands. Bits of meat scattered on the ground at my feet and the girl jumped behind me, hiding behind my tunic.

“What are you doing?” he screamed at me. “If I wanted her fed, wouldn’t I do it myself?”

He raised a hand to strike me in the face, and it was the last movement he made that night of his own free will. Another man, a strange and powerful creature, turned down our lane and attacked the man while his hand was still lifting through the air. The stranger leaped with the power of a lion, felling the man and toppling down after him. I turned, pushing the girl’s face into my tunic so she would not see. The stranger beat the man, screaming profanities, showering him with curses and fists.

When the noise stopped, I tilted my head to look at the stranger. He stood over the body, his chest heaving, his fists bloody.

“Did you kill him?” I whispered. I did not want the girl to hear.

“Should I?” He had the voice of an innocent. I looked in his eyes to be sure he didn’t mock me, but his eyes were pure and questioning.

“No. She needs him. Perhaps he will be kinder in the future.”

He craned his neck, spying the girl hidden in my tunic. Squatting down, he held out a hand to her. “Did he hurt you?”

Her body stiffened. I stroked her hair. “It’s all right, my pet. Go home and tell your mother what has happened.”

She crept to the edge of my body and stole a glance at the stranger, who still squatted, one hand extended. He did not see the blood on his hand, did not understand what it meant to her.

She broke free and ran.

He stood, wiping his hands on his own tunic with a shrug. “I thought she was your daughter.”

“No. I have no daughter.” I wasn’t sure if that was a lie. I wasn’t sure it mattered, not anymore.

He held out his hand to me.

“I’m Samson.”

If only Marcos could have seen it! The troubler of the Philistines, making peace in our streets, saving a young Philistine girl from her father.

“Don’t you have some crops to burn?”

He did not react. “What is your name? Why was he going to beat you?”

I picked up my tunic, moving quickly through the market.

He followed me through the narrow stalls, weaving his way around people who stopped and stared, struck stupid by his appearance. He looked like a monster from a tale of the Greeks, with that bushy brown hair hanging past his hips, and that beard, and his size. Gath had the giants, but we had a few in Ashdod, too, and Samson almost came up to their height.

Marcos would have driven him from the city.

I realized, too late, my error. At my door, I turned to face him.

“If you do not leave, I will have you chained and beaten.”

“By your own hand? I might stay for that.”

I spat on the ground and went inside, shutting the door hard in his face.

Tomorrow I would find Lord Galenos. Samson did not belong in our valley. He would be forced to leave.

But that plan, like so many of mine, failed. Samson, indeed, did not return.

He never left.

When I rose the next day, I knew I must first open my door to look out into the street, to make sure he did not watch for me. Like a fool, I had run straight here yesterday. He knew where I lived, and perhaps, if he was an observant man, he knew I lived alone.

I did not know what a Hebrew man would think of such a woman. They had once been slaves, Marcos said, who had revolted against their masters. They were not to be trusted. How could such a man like that Hebrew understand a woman with freedom?

I rested my hand on the door handle and pulled gently to open it.

The door flew toward me, and Samson landed on his back, opening his eyes, staring up at me. He stank of drink.

“Good morning.”

“Get up, or I will have you stripped and beaten.” Immediately, I wished I hadn’t said that. He giggled like a boy. He was still drunk, a mischievous gleam in his eyes, as if he was being bad.

No one here cared.

“You’re filthy.” I pushed him with my foot, holding my nose with my fingers. “If you go and wash, I will wait for you at the market.”

“You will?”

“Yes. Now go wash.”

He lifted his torso up, swaying even as he sat. I helped him stand and gave him a push out the door, pointing him in the direction of the gates. He held out one hand, bracing himself against the wall of my home.

I motioned for the neighbor’s boy to come near. He was watching from his own doorway, fascinated by the Hebrew.

“Go and find Lord Galenos. Tell him Samson of the Hebrews is in the valley and drunk. He will know what to do.”

I stepped back inside my house and closed the door, wishing for a way to brace it, to make it stronger, so I would be assured the Hebrew could do no harm if he came back.

For two days I remained in my house, not going to market even when I ran out of food and wine. But I could not last like this forever. The more life returned to my heart, the more life my body wanted. Hunger was again my enemy.

Samson was not outside my door. He was not in the streets and not in the market. Lord Galenos had expelled him. My thoughts turned to the day ahead, the expanse of empty hours I would have to fill before night came again. In the market, I bought a salted fish, its dead white eyes staring at nothing; and a loaf of bread, flat and brown; and a skin of wine. All this I carried in my arms, trying to hold it away from my body, at my sides.

I turned for home, and there he was again, his face unwashed and sunburned from living outside for three days. He was a madman. His eyes shone with a fat, fine pleasure when he saw me.

I turned away in disgust.

He trotted to my side, walking alongside me. I turned abruptly, changing directions, walking toward the sea.

“Your house is not in this direction.”

I walked.

“What have you heard of me?” He was eager to talk.

I stopped, setting down my dinner carefully, then dusting off my hands. I shoved him with both hands against his chest.

“What do you want from me? What is it?”

He would later say that he had already fallen in love, but I had no such feelings. My dead heart had not stirred, until I saw his expression when I asked that question.

His face went blank. He had no answer. He could think of nothing he wanted from me.

He just wanted me.

It was then, at that moment, that I remembered how often the living feel afraid. The cold sinking weights in my stomach, the numbness of my fingers and toes, the pinch of my lips pressed together. I wanted nothing to do with this man.

We sat under the stars on my roof, drinking the last of the wine. My face was flushed and warm; the wine had no obvious effect on him. The sky glowed lavender at the horizon, and the dusty brown stone buildings looked beautiful for just that one hour, when twilight softened the day.

“Your hair is beautiful in the light.”

I raised my eyes from my bowl to look at him. How odd that any man could find beauty in me. But I had my reason for bringing him up here, a reason that would only sound reasonable to a woman as exhausted and broken as I.

“Hebrews hate the Philistines,” I answered.

“I’ve attended the festivals at harvest. I’ve even been to the temple of Dagon.”

“In Ekron?” I had never seen him there.

“In Gaza.”

“You like to wander far from home.”

“Not much to keep me there.”

I smiled to myself. I understood the sentiment. Pouring out the last of the wine into his bowl, I settled back on the cushions, yawning.

Samson looked uncomfortable, glancing about as if he would find a reason to make more conversation. He frowned, as I shook the skin to make the point. It was empty. Our agreement was met. One skin, one hour, and then he would leave me in peace. I had a talent for negotiating with him. This pleased me, his acceptance of my offer.

But he had something new to say, some desperate, deep topic that was ready to surface. At last. He assumed I would care.

“No one wants to be delivered. Except children. And they’re all afraid of me.”

“Cut your hair.”

He recoiled. I leaned forward. He needed to leave.

“You look like an animal.”

“And your people live like one.”

I laughed. He pouted like a child when hurt. His lower lip trembled in anger.

“Then why are you here, Samson? We do not want to be delivered either. No one wants you here.”

He stood, knocking over the little table that separated us. I did not flinch. “Go home, Samson. Go home to your family.”

He stomped down the stairs, making the roof shake like thunder had struck close by. The door opened and slammed shut, and his footsteps faded into the night.

I lifted my bowl, letting one last drop roll across the lip and into my mouth, a last burst of sweetness before the dreams came.

I was not surprised by the knock at my door the following morning. Only the hour seemed unreasonable.

I rubbed my eyes as I moved across the cool earth floor. Opening the door, I saw Lord Galenos nodding in greeting. I knew he would be calling for me. I had made no attempt to hide Samson’s visit from my neighbors. And Lord Galenos had a family, and families did not sit up half the night drinking wine. He had, no doubt, slept for hours.

“Good morning, Delilah. May I enter?”

“No.” I grabbed a sash from the dressing table nearest the bed, then returned to the door. “We will walk in the market. I need to buy my food for today.”

Lord Galenos made no protest, and so we walked. I did not want him in my home, although Marcos had spoken well of him. Lord Galenos was a man of power. I did not want to be swept into that world again.

“So the Hebrew, Samson.” Lord Galenos sampled a bit of roasted grain proffered by a woman with young children grabbing her legs as she worked. He raised his eyebrows in praise and held up two fingers to buy us two loaves of her bread. The wheat harvest had just finished coming in all over the valley. Already, I could see dusty clouds billowing up from rooftops above us. The time had come for threshing. Those with smaller fields threshed on their roofs, letting the wind carry the chaff away.

“I do not know why he visited me. And he is not what I expected.”

“Go on.” Galenos handed me a small round loaf, no bigger than my palm, dotted with raisins. I held it to my nose out of habit, inhaling before the first bite that would crack the brown crust and send crumbs all down my tunic.