Signs and Wonders (28 page)

He was interrupted by a great clamor. “Yes! Yes! A woman. Yes! Yes!” And there were other shouts: “Delilah! Delilah! Delilah!”

“Who is this Delilah?” he said.

“A little whore from the valley of Sorek,” said the chief. “But very expensive. And worth it.”

“So be it,” said the crafty one. “Let us employ this worthy Delilah.”

The lords of the Philistines came to Delilah’s house in the valley of Sorek and told her what they wanted. The crafty one said: “This man Samson is a giant, true. But his strength is beyond that of a hundred giants. It must have some magic source. And every magic can be nullified if you know its secret. What you must do, Delilah, is entice him and see wherein his great strength lies, and by what means we may prevail against him. If you find out what we need to know, we will each give you nine hundred pieces of silver.”

“Fifteen hundred,” said Delilah.

“Do you dare to bargain with us?” said the chief.

“You have set me a very large task,” said Delilah. “My price is fifteen thousand pieces of silver, or fifteen hundred from each of you.”

“You seem to think you have an alternative,” said the chief. “Allow me to remind you that we here are the lords of the land. You are in our hand. All we have to do is close it, and you are crushed.”

She smiled at him. “I know I’m crushable,” she purred. “But what good would I be to you dead? Say fourteen thousand?”

The crafty one said: “You will have profit from him, also. He is a lavish spender.”

“Oh, well,” she said. “Out of esteem for you, great lords, I shall lower my price. Say eleven hundred pieces of silver from each of you.”

“Agreed. Do not fail us.”

She stretched and smiled. Her eyes were half closed. “Oh, no,” she murmured. “I’m looking forward to this.”

They departed. She wrote a letter and sent it to Samson by a servant. It read:

Greetings, mighty one.

I dwell in the valley of Sorek.

I saw you striding up the hill

bearing a gate on your shoulders.

My heart shivered with the anguish of

love,

and I wept that you were a stranger.

Let us not be strangers.

Come to me and I will welcome you.

Come at night.

I am Delilah.

Her house was a bower of flowers. It was dusky, lit only by three tall candles set in silver sticks. Samson saw a young woman whose face was narrow with yellow eyes. She walked to him, and her body was lithe and indolent and full of sleepy fire, like an Egyptian temple cat whom it is forbidden to thwart, and who feeds leisurely upon doves. She greeted him. Her voice was hoarse and full of sleep. She led him to a couch, and they conversed. His desire was upon him. He took her in his arms, but she slid away. “No,” she said.

“You sent for me,” he said. “Was it to mock me?”

“No one would dare to mock you,” she murmured. “But I have changed my mind.”

“Change it again. I am rich.”

She said: “Men buy me—those who can afford it, who are not many. But I will never sell myself to you. I love you. And where love is, there can be no buying and selling.”

“There can be giving and taking,” he said. “If you love me, then we love each other and it is all simple. Come here.”

“You must prove your love. For my passion is great, and if you deceive me I must die.”

“I am ready to prove my love.”

“That is not what I mean. Bulls show such readiness for any heifer. I know all about men as animals. From you I wish different knowledge. I want to know you through and through. I want to read your soul.”

“It resides in my body.”

“Tell me a secret.”

“What secret?”

“A fatal one. The secret of your strength.”

He was drunk with desire. But the warrior was not quite asleep in him, and he smelled danger. “My strength is known. There is no secret.”

“You are a giant in stature, but your might exceeds any giant of fable. It must have a magic source.” She stroked his shoulders. “Your strength is you. I love your strength. If you love me you must let me share its mystery.”

“Very well. If I am bound with green vines, then I shall lose my power and be like other men.”

She drifted into his embrace. She was pliant in his arms, serpentine and inventive. Her body was a garden of spices. He took her; he glutted his desire. And it was her art to rekindle desire in the most sated lover. But now she let him sleep. She bound him with seven green vines. She set a candle in the window. A band of Philistines who had been lying in wait outside saw the signal and roused themselves. They entered the house. Samson slept.

“Awake!” she cried. “The Philistines are upon you!”

The men rushed upon the sleeping giant, but he awoke and burst his bonds like thread. He seized a sword, wrenched it from the man’s hand, and butchered the Philistines before he was fully awake.

His hands dripped blood. His hair had come loose from its seven plaits and hung free. He seized Delilah. “You betrayed me,” he muttered.

“And you lied to me! You lied about the secret of your strength.”

“And saved my life. You bound me with vines and called the Philistines. If I had told you the truth, I would be lying there in many pieces.”

“I prefer you in one piece,” she murmured, and kissed his bloody hand. She slid out of his grip, into his embrace.

Her lips were bloody, but she smiled. He felt his bones melting. “I knew you were in no danger,” she said. “I bound you with vines and called the men to prove your lie.”

“They came when I slept. They could have killed me.”

“I awoke you from sleep. Remember? I knew you could not be killed. There were only twelve of them. How could they possibly kill my beautiful ogre, who has slain a thousand in one afternoon?”

He lifted her and carried her toward the bed. “No!” she said.

“No?”

“You must go. I know that you do not love me now, and I can’t bear it. Depart in peace. But depart. I shall always love you, but you must never come here again.”

He departed, telling himself it was better so. But in the evening he returned. She knew that he would come back and had informed the Philistines. Fifty of them now lay in ambush in the orchard beyond her house.

He entered. She retreated. “Please go,” she said. “The sight of you breaks my heart. I love you but you use me only to sate your lust. You mock me and tell me lies.”

He lifted her off the floor and dandled her like a child, laughing.

“You can force me,” she said. “I am powerless against you. But I cannot be enjoyed in that way.”

“I shall not force you,” he said. “I love you, also, foolish child.”

“Then tell me the secret of your strength.”

“My hair.”

“Your hair?”

He was about to tell her the secret, but a last prudence gripped his tongue. “It is plaited in seven locks, as you see. If these locks are woven in a web, then my power departs.”

She turned in his hands and kissed his mouth. He took her to bed, and then slept. She did not sleep. She left him and took up a spindle and returned to the bed. She unplaited his seven locks and spun them into a web. Still he slept. She set a candle in the window.

Fifty armed men entered the house and rushed upon him. “Wake up!” she cried.

Samson arose from the bed. His hair was a web about his head. He seized the captain, and lifted him in his hands, and flung him against the advancing men. They turned and fled. He caught one in each hand and smashed their heads together, cracking their skulls. He seized a third who screamed in terror. “Take them and bury them,” he said. “And thank your stone god that you do not lie with them.” The man dragged his dead companions out. Samson felt his web of hair and turned to Delilah, who was sobbing.

“More treachery?”

“More lies!” she cried. “Go now. Do not come again.”

He departed, telling himself she was a treacherous slut and that he would not return. But when the sun fell, his desire rose like sap. He fought with himself, but it was hopeless. He could not stay away. He returned to the house in the valley.

He walked about the orchards and the garden to see if anyone was lying in wait. But Delilah had sent a message to the Philistines: “Come tonight. But do not wait in the orchard. Wait in the woods beyond, for he is suspicious. But tonight I will learn his secret. Bring money.”

The Philistines waited in the wood beyond, and Samson did not see them. He entered the house. It was dark. “Delilah,” he called. There was no answer. But he smelled her spice-box fragrance and knew she was there. He heard a sound. It came from the bed. He went to the bed. She lay huddled like a child, sobbing. He took her in his arms. She slid away and seized a knife from under her pillow. She raised it above her breast. “Farewell, Samson. You do not love me, and I must die.”

He seized her wrist, twisting the knife away. He tried to comfort her. But she would not look upon him, or speak to him, and she wept.

“When you go,” she said, “I will kill myself. You mock me and lie to me and I cannot live.”

The night passed so and he could not go to her. And her weeping and reproaches vexed him beyond his endurance. Finally he said: “I will tell you now what I have never told anyone else.”

“Tell.”

“Will you betray me again?”

“Betray you?” she cried. “Never! Don’t you see my life is bound up with yours, and that I would kill myself for your favor. Tell me. Tell me.”

“My strength does reside in my hair, as I told you before. It has never been cut. For I am a Nazarite, dedicated to the service of God from birth. I may not drink wine or eat anything unclean. And my hair may not be cut. If it is cut, my power will go from me, and I shall be as weak as any other man.”

She caressed him then, and made love to him. And when he slept she caressed him until he awoke and rekindled his desire. For she wished to weary him, so that he would sleep a deep sleep and not be easily awakened. Again and again that night she used all her art to rekindle his desire. Finally, at dawn, she let him sleep. He slept upon her knees. She took a knife and cut off the seven long, plaited locks of his hair that had never been cut and were the sign of his separation from other men and his service to God. She cut them short, then laid his head gently upon the pillow, slipped away, and put a candle in the window.

The Philistines rushed into the house. “Awake!” she cried. He awoke and sprang from the bed. He felt the coolness of air upon his shorn head, and a weakness in his arms and legs that he had never felt before. And he knew that the spirit had departed from him, taking his strength. The enemy was upon him. He tried to fight but could not resist them. They bound him. With the same knife that Delilah had used on his hair, they stabbed out his eyes.

But blind and shaven and strengthless as he was, they still feared him. They loaded him with fetters of brass and took him down to Gaza, the city whose gates he had carried away in the days of his strength. There they put him with the other slaves, turning a mill wheel and grinding corn.

But they could not forget their hatred of him. They were not content to have him toil at the mill wheel. From time to time, they took him out and stood in a circle about him, pricking him with the points of their swords. He would try to seize one tormentor, who would dodge away, and another would go and prick him. And he would whirl and try to catch that one. And the young men would stab at him and dodge and laugh. They called it the blind man’s game, and they had much sport.

When he was taken back to grind, he said to himself: I can manage my own death. Why do I allow myself to live in this misery? Then he thought: I must live for vengeance. I will not allow them to torment me into suicide. I will wait until my hair grows again, and I will pray to God for my strength to be restored. Then we will see what I can do without eyes.

But his strength did not return, although his hair had grown somewhat. And he despaired. In the next month the Philistines gathered to offer a sacrifice to Dagon, their sea god, and to hold a great feast. “For our god has delivered our enemy into our hands,” they said. “The destroyer of our troops, the slayer of thousands, is now our slave.”

All the lords of the Philistines gathered in Gaza, and their captains, and their best warriors. And their women, too. There was a great crowd of them, about three thousand, the cream of the Philistine nobility. They feasted in an enormous hall, the temple of Dagon. They sacrificed to Dagon a bull, a ram, a stallion—and an unborn child, also, for it was gilled like a fish and was pleasing to the sea god. They cut it out of its mother’s belly and laid it on the altar with the bodies of the beasts.

Then they feasted. They caroused. They glutted themselves on meat and drank much wine. Then the prince of Gaza called, “Bring us Samson! We will have sport!”

Samson was taken from the mill. A small boy led him by the hand, and the blind giant ambled after him. The young men formed a circle about him in the courtyard of the temple. Everyone streamed out to watch. People climbed to the roof and watched from there. The players of the game stabbed him lightly with their swords, and he chased them. They dodged away, and whirled about, and stabbed him again. He heard enormous laughter and knew that he was in a mob of people, entertaining them all with his helpless fury. And he knew a great anguish. The shame of it stabbed to the very depth of his soul.

“Lord,” he cried, “remember me, I pray you. Strengthen me again only this one time, O God, that I may be avenged. Lord, Lord, give me vengeance for my two eyes.”

There was a great clamor about him and he did not hear God’s voice. But he seemed to feel strength flowing back into him. A current of energy was running into his arms and legs, he felt the great muscles of his back begin to harden. “Is it so?” he said to himself. “Or does my wish make it seem so?”

They had finished their game now, but they wished him to remain on view to the multitude. They set him between the pillars of the temple. And he said to the little lad: “Lead me to the pillars, for I am weary and would lean on them.” And the little boy led the blind giant by the hand to the pillars of the temple.