The Harlot by The Side of The Road: Forbidden Tales of The Bible (4 page)

A
blood-red moon anally rose after midnight, but a distant glow had been visible on the horizon long before, as if something afire were boiling up from the waters of the Dead Sea and spreading across the desert floor. Ever since that terrible morning when the earth shuddered and fire fell from the sky, the air was full of foul-smelling smoke and greasy ash by day, and the moon was stained red by night.

Day and night, the youngest daughter of the man called Lot watched from the mouth of the mountain cave where they had sought shelter. Her sister refused to come out at all; she lingered in the dark corners of the cavern, curled up alone, arms wrapped around her knees, rocking back and forth like a child in a bad temper. A few feet away, their father dozed in his own stony alcove, occasionally lifting himself up only to nibble something from the basket of food or sip from the bottle of wine that they had thought to bring along, then slipping into sleep again.

The younger one was not afraid to venture out of the cave. She skittered up and down the rocky slope, sometimes daring to go as far as a stoned throw from the mouth of the cave, but never so far that she could not scamper back inside if danger threatened. She looked for
something green that they might be able to eat, some small animal that they might be able to hunt and kill, and—God willing—a spring that might replenish the skins of water that they had dragged up from the oasis town far below them.

Above all, the younger one looked for the sign of another human being, whether man, woman, or child. She surveyed the jagged peak of the mountain, peered into the cracks of the black and gray rock on the lower slopes, shaded her eyes as she looked out over the empty desert floor, but she saw no one.

“You’re foolish, little sister,” the older one would insist whenever they spoke of her vigil outside the cave. “No one else is alive but us. And it’s a good thing, too, because if anyone
did
find us, he would be like one of those brutes from back home—he would take you, if and how he wishes, and then he would slay you.”

Then the older one would fall silent, and begin to rock back and forth again.

“But don’t worry, little sister,” she would always say. “No one will come—because no one else is alive but us.”

The older one was right, of course, about the kind of men who lived in Sodom. Back home, the younger one remembered, the menfolk were brutal to any stranger who was unlucky enough to reach the city gates,
and they were not much friendlier to their own neighbors. Toward women, they were like beasts. On the day before they fled to the mountains, Lot’s family had learned that lesson once again.

Their father returned to the house after nightfall with two hooded strangers. They had appeared at sunset at the gates to the city, where Lot bowed low to them and begged them to come home with him for a bath, an evening meal, and a bed for the night. At first the strangers refused: “We will spend the night on the street,” they said. But Lot begged and pleaded with them, as was his custom when he encountered strangers who might bring him some good fortune, and they finally agreed to follow him home.

“Make welcome our guests,” he commanded the women of the household, suddenly stern and imperious. “Wash their feet and make a meal for them!” And then Lot whispered to his wife the same wishful words she had heard many times before from her husband: “Who knows when an ordinary stranger on the road might turn out to be an angel sent from heaven?”

But the neighbors up and down the lane were not so welcoming. Someone had noticed the two strangers following Lot back to his house, and a knot of rowdy young men gathered outside his door. Perhaps they had been drinking, which was hardly surprising in Sodom, but wine alone did not explain their rough manners, which were common enough around town. Bored with the all-too-familiar pleasures readily available to them in Sodom, the townsfolk were aroused by the very presence of strangers: Here was fresh meat! Soon the young men were joined by other curiosity-seekers, young and old, and the crowd began to grow into a mob.

“Hey, bring them out,” someone shouted. “Bring out the strangers and let us have a look at them!”

“Yes, bring them out,” another one called in a slurred voice, “so we can bugger them!”

And the rest of the crowd took up the cry, not only the rowdy young men who always seemed to range through the streets in search of excitement but their fathers and uncles, too. To Lot’s younger daughter, who peered out from a window on the second floor while her sister cowered in bed, it seemed as if every lout and his brother had gathered outside their house.

Then she saw her father boldly step out of the house and close the door behind him. The crowd fell silent, as if in sheer amazement that Lot would actually leave the safety of his house and expose himself to their shouts, their fists—and worse.

“No, no, my friends,” he said to them in a lilting voice, seeking to ingratiate himself with them by a fatherly scolding. “Do not be so wicked!”

“We want to bugger
someone!”
a voice called out from somewhere in the crowd, a voice thick with liquor and dangerous with the threat of sudden violence. His words were greeted with laughter that sounded like the braying of donkeys. “Give them to us!”

What her father said in reply, the younger daughter found hard to believe even though she heard it plainly.

“Look, my friends, I have two daughters in my house,” cried Lot, raising both hands in a gesture of prayer. “Both of them virgins!”

A murmur rolled through the crowd, and the younger daughter shivered.

“I beg you to let me bring them out to you,” Lot continued, “and you can do what you want with them …”

Yes, that’s right
, the younger daughter later told her incredulous sister, not once but many times,
that is exactly what our father said
.

“… do whatever pleases you with my daughters, I beg you,” Lot repeated pleadingly, “but do not touch the strangers who have sought shelter under my roof!”

If the prospect of having their way with two young virgins was appealing to the men in the crowd, they gave no sign of it. Indeed, Lot’s offer seemed to stir them to an even hotter rage than before.

“Out of our way,” one of the men shouted at Lot.
“You
are a stranger, too! And now you set yourself up so high and mighty—you think you can tell us what to do? Out of our way,
stranger!”

“Or,” another man took up, “we’ll bugger
you
instead of them!”

The crowd surged forward, and Lot’s daughter feared that her father would be crushed and dragged away. But then she saw the front door fly open, and the light from the lamps inside the house fall on the faces of the crowd. The two strangers reached out from the doorway, clapped their hands on Lot’s shoulders, and yanked him back inside the house so suddenly that he seemed to disappear.

The crowd lingered outside the house, calling out and pounding on the door, but she could tell that their bloodlust had begun to ebb. A few men drifted away, laughing and singing bawdily, and the ones who remained were content to pass around flasks from which they occasionally took a long pull. Now and then, Lot’s daughter heard the sound of shouting and cursing, but the words were directed from one man in the crowd toward another; they seemed to have forgotten about the strangers—and the young women—inside the house. Now and then, she heard a
thunk
and then a cry of pain—
“Owww!”
—as one of the men, blind drunk, bumped into a wall or a corner of the house. Before long, the stalwarts who lingered outside Lot’s house were so drunk that they could not have found the front door if they tried, and even they began to stagger off in one direction or another.

But there was still a quiet commotion in Lot’s house, and his youngest daughter positioned herself at the top of the staircase so she could hear the words that her parents were whispering to one another in such urgent tones.

“Who
are
these strangers?” demanded Lot’s wife, looking to the corner next to the hearth where the two figures, wrapped in their long cloaks, appeared to sleep. “And why have you brought them here to afflict us?”

“As I have told you, they are angels! They are messengers of the Lord who have come to bestow some gift upon us, which is what I have predicted many times, if you will recall,” Lot said solemnly. “I could do no less than welcome them into our home.”

“Angels, you say!” His wife laughed bitterly. “Demons, more likely. Or madmen.”

“Quiet,” Lot pleaded. “Did you not see them pluck me out of the
hands of the crowd? Did you not see the light that shone when they opened the door to rescue me? Did you not see how the men in the street were struck blind? They
must
be angels—”

“What I saw,” Lot’s wife hissed, “is a man who would sacrifice the virtue of his own flesh and blood in order to protect a couple of strangers!”

“Angels, that’s what they are,” he repeated. “Listen to what they told me: ‘Get out of Sodom, you and your family, because God has sent us to destroy this place! Take your wife, your children, take anyone who belongs to you—and flee!’ That is what they told me.”

“And, of course, you will do what
they
say even though you never do what I say, your own wife and the mother of your daughters?” his wife parried. “If, in fact, you are not simply making up another tale.”

“I swear, good wife, this is what they told me: The evildoers in Sodom are so many and so vile in the eyes of the Lord that He sent them to destroy the whole place and everyone in it, right down to the last blade of grass.”

“Husband, you are mad, too!”

Never before had Lot’s daughter seen her father so agitated, and she watched as he paced back and forth, kneading one hand in the other, stopping occasionally to sway back and forth as if in prayer. Then, suddenly, he headed for the door.

“Where are you going, madman?” her mother called. “It’s the middle of the night!”

“To fetch our married daughters and their husbands!” her father called. “So they, too, can flee!”

Lot’s youngest daughter slept where she sat, leaning against the wall at the top of the stairs, but she was wakened before dawn by the sound of
her father clambering back into the house. Her mother, too, stirred and rose to approach the old man, who was no less agitated than when he had left an hour or two before.