“I cannot swim,” I told Shalem.
“Good,” he replied. “Then I can be the one to teach you.” !
He put his hands into my hair until they were tangled in knots and it took us long moments to free him. “I love these shackles,” he said, when he could not free himself, and he grew large and our loo coupling was exquisitely slow. His hands caressed my face, and we cried out in pleasure together.
Whenever we were not kissing or coupling or sleeping, Shalem and I traded stories. I told him of my father and my mothers and described my brothers, one by one. He was delighted by their names and learned each one, in the order of his birth, and knew which one came from the womb of which mother. I’m not sure my own father could have listed them so well.
He told me of his tutor, a cripple with a wonderful voice, who taught him to sing and to read. Shalem told me of his mother’s devotion and his five half brothers, none of whom had learned the arts of Egypt. He told me of his trip to the priestess, who initiated him in the art of love in the name of heaven. “I never saw her face,” he said. “The rites take place in the innermost chamber, where there is no light. It was like a dream locked inside a dream.” He told me of three times he had slept with a slave girl, who giggled in his embrace and asked for payment afterward.
But by the end of our second day together, our embraces outnumbered his experiences with other women. “I have forgotten them all,” he said.
“Then I will forgive you them all,” I said.
We made love again and again. We slept and awoke with our hands on each other. We kissed each other everywhere, and I learned the flavor of my lover’s toes, the smell of his sex before and after coupling, the dampness of his neck.
We were together as bride and groom for three days before I began to wonder why I had not been fetched to go and wash Ash-nan’s feet or rub her back. Shalem, too, forgot his obligatory evening meals with his father. But Re-nefer took care that we should know nothing of the world and that the world should give us peace. She sent choice foods at all hours of the day and night and instructed the servants to fill Shalem’s bath with fresh scented water whenever we slept.
I had no worries for the future. Shalem said our lovemaking sealed our marriage. He teased me about the bride-price he would bring to my father: buckets of gold coins, camels laden with lapis and linen, a caravan of slaves, a herd of sheep so fine their wool never needed washing. “You deserve a queen’s ransom,” he whispered, as we drifted back to our shared dreams.
“I will build you a tomb of surpassing beauty,” Shalem said. “The world will never forget the name of Dinah, who judged my heart worthy.”
I wish I had been as bold with my words. Not that I was shy. Shalem knew of my delight in him, my gratitude for him, my lust for him. I gave him everything. I abandoned myself to him and in him. It was only that I could not find a voice for the flood of my happiness.
While I lay in Shalem’s first embrace, Levi was storming out of Hamor’s palace, furious that he had not been given the audience with the king that he considered his due. My brother had been dispatched to see when I would be sent home, and had he been given a fine meal and a bed for the night, my life might have had a different telling.
Later, I wondered what might have happened had Reuben or Judah come for me. Hamor was not eager to meet with that particular son of Jacob, the quarrelsome one who had accused him of swindling the family. Why should the king suffer through another round of accusations by some whining son of a shepherd?
If it had been Reuben, Hamor would have welcomed him to dine and spend the night. Indeed, if it had been any of the others, even Joseph, he would have received a fine welcome. Hamor approved of Jacob nearly as much as his queen liked Jacob’s wives. The king knew that my father tended his flocks with such skill that he had quickly become the richest shepherd in the valley. Jacob’s wool was the softest, his wives skilled, and his sons loyal. He caused no feuds among neighbors. He had enriched the valley, and Hamor was eager for good relations with him. Marriages between their two houses were much to be desired, so Hamor was pleased when Re-nefer whispered that his son favored Jacob’s daughter. Indeed, as soon as the king heard that Shalem was lying with me, he began to count out a handsome bride-price.
When Hamor heard from the servants that the young couple were well matched, adoring, and busy producing his grandson, the news aroused him so much that he called Ashnan to his bed a full week before her confinement was due to end. When Re-nefer discovered them, she barely scolded her husband and the girl, so great was her joy at her son’s match.
On the fourth day of our happiness, Shalem arose from our bath, dressed, and told me he was going to speak to his father. “It is time for Hamor to arrange for the bride-price.” He looked so handsome in his tunic and sandals that my eyes filled with tears again. “No more weeping, not even for happiness,” he said, and lifted me, still wet from the water, and kissed my nose and my mouth and put me on the bed and said, “Wait for me, beloved. Do not dress. Only lie here so I may think of you like this. I won’t be long.”
I covered his face with kisses and told him to hurry back. I was asleep when he slipped beside me, smelling of the world beyond our bed for the first time in days.
Hamor departed for Jacob’s camp early the next morning, a laden wagon behind him. He did not bring a tent or servants for a night’s stay. He did not expect to stay or to haggle. How could he have imagined any objection to his good news and generous gift?
The news about Shalem and Jacob’s daughter was widespread in the city, but unknown in Jacob’s tents. When he heard that I had been taken as wife by the prince of the city, he said nothing and made no reply to Hamor’s offer. He stood like a stone, staring at the man of whom his sons Levi and Simon had spoken with such venom—a man of his own years, it turned out, but richly dressed, smooth spoken, and fat. The king waved at a cart laden with goods and trailing sheep and goats. He declared them kin, soon to share a grandchild.
Jacob hooded his eyes and covered his mouth with his hand so Hamor would not see his discomfort or surprise. He nodded as Hamor praised his daughter’s beauty. Jacob had given no thought to a marriage for his daughter, although his wife had begun to speak of it. She was of age, to be sure. But Jacob was uneasy about this match, although he could not say why, and he felt his neck stiffen at Hamor’s expectation that he would do as he was told.
He searched his mind for a way to postpone a decision, a way to regain the upper hand. “I will discuss this with my sons,” he told the king, with more force than he meant.
Hamor was stung. “Your daughter is no virgin, Jacob,” the king pressed. “Yet here is a bride-price fit for a virgin princess of Egypt—more than my own father gave for my wife. Not that your daughter is unworthy of this and more. Name what you wish and it is yours, for my son loves the girl. And I hear she is willing, too,” and here Hamor smiled a bit too broadly for Jacob’s taste. He did not like to hear his daughter spoken of so crudely, even though he could not quite conjure up the image of Dinah’s face. All he could recall cle
arly was the sight of hair, unruly and wild, as she chased after Joseph. The memory came from long ago.
“I will wait for my sons,” said Jacob, and he turned away from the king, as though the lord of Shechem were no more than a shepherd, and left it to his wives to welcome the king with drink and food. But Hamor saw no reason to stay and headed back to his palace, trailing his gifts behind him.
Jacob called for Leah and spoke to her in the hardest words he had ever used with a wife. “Your daughter is no longer a girl,” he said. “You were insolent to keep this from me. You have overreached before, but never to shame me. And now this.”
My mother was as surprised as her husband and pressed Jacob for news of her daughter. “The prince of Shechem has claimed her. His father comes to pay the full bride-price of a virgin. And so I assume that she was until she went within the walls of that dung heap of a city.” Jacob was bitter. “She is of Shechem now, I suppose, and of no use to me.”
Leah was furious. “Go seek out your wife, my sister,” she said. “It was Rachel who took her there. Rachel is the one with eyes for the city, not me, husband. Ask your wife.” And the smell of bile rose from my mother’s words.
I wonder if she thought of me at all then, if she suffered over whether I had consented or cried out, if her heart reached out to discover whether I wept or rejoiced. But her words spoke only of the loss of a daughter, gone to the city where she would reside with foreign women, learn their ways, and forget her mother.
My father called for Rachel next. “Husband!” cried Rachel, smiling as she approached him. “I hear there are happy tidings.”