On the other side of the spectrum, there is Solomon, alive and splendid, governing his lands from a throne held up by lions, fickle and spoiled, favorite son of Israel, his iridescent mantle and black hair spilling over his shoulders, master and lord of the green plains and rugged open land of Judea.
He makes joyful use of his great vitality, Solomon, the wildly handsome king. He enjoys bathing in perfumed water in a great bronze fountain he calls the Sea. He loves the heat of female bodies; the scent of burning wood, amber, and moss; he loves conversation, reading, chess, and wine. He’s captivated by the music of cymbals and zithers. He loves Jerusalem, his white city, and he preens with pride each time the shofar’s bellow proclaims his greatness.
All that. Yes. But not so much, not anymore. Neither time nor heat flows backward, they can’t do it, both run forward and hurtle right into the cold. No man can escape time’s inexorable flow, nor can kings, not even Solomon, the king of kings. He too has faced tragedies, one of them devastating: the news of Goat Foot’s brutal death. The King of Israel pulls on his beard and claws at his clothes. He becomes grim and withdrawn, neglects his sovereign’s duties, and wanders the palace like a ghost, turned gloomy, widowered, inconsolable.
Along with mourning came defeat, dishonor, exile, symbolic death. Solomon doesn’t govern anymore, his glory belongs to other times. He’s been run out by a mob, accused of fracturing the kingdom and stirring conflict between the twelve original tribes. His lion throne has fallen, he’s lost his rose garden and his dazzling colorful mantle, all his wives have fled, and his thirty concubines are languishing in dungeons.
Everything has its moment and everything its time under Heaven, even for Solomon, he of the seven blessed names, the Handsome, the Ancient, the One, the Donor, the Danger, the First, and the Last,on whom bad times have now fallen and who now bears the seven names of the banished: He’s become the Idolater, the Apostate, the Displaced, the Abominable, the Forgotten, the Alone... and the Disowned, him too, just like Goat Foot.
On a stone in old Jerusalem, the following inscription can still be read:HE LOVED A STRANGE, DARK WOMAN, AND HIS LOVE FOR HER WAS HIS UNDOING.
Solomon, the melancholy king, has sunk into a depression on hearing about the Princess of Sheba’s capture and slaughter by a butcher’s axe in a ceremony cheered on by her enemies. She, his favorite, the one he loves best, the mysterious Goat Foot, Lady of the People of the Dawn, his fiancée, his faraway love, his insistent dream. It’s said that her death pushes him to madness.
He officially proclaims her a crowned goddess and sacred symbol, as is fitting for a sacrificed monarch, and he enthrones her on the altar of a great temple. Believing that the gallows have made her immortal and given her eternal light, he surrounds her with goddesses worshipped by other peoples in other times, past, present, and future, thereby initiating the cult of feminine deities, whatever their names: Sheba, glory of her land; Asherah, the Ugaritic mother; Ishtar, venerable prostitute of Mesopotamia; María, brightest of stars; Hagia Sophia, head of the highest wisdom; Lucy Australopithecus, first of all women; Shekhinah, door of Heaven; Temaxcaltechi, heart of the earth; Kukulkan, feathered serpent; Persephone, bride of Hades; Kali, force of destruction; Pallas Athena, maiden of war; Bachué, who rises from the lake each morning at dawn.
“My house will be called a house of prayer for the people,” Solomon declares. “And our god will be the god of many, and will hear the pleas of all foreigners who come here.”
Not only does he sing the praises of foreign deities in that temple in Goat Foot’s honor, but he also opens the walled city’s eight doors wide and fills the streets and buildings of Jerusalem with women of all nations, each with her relatives and children, her dogs and theircubs, her cats and their kittens, her cows and their calves. In come the female Moabites from east of the Dead Sea; the Ammonites, falsely accused of incest and drunkenness; the Edomites, their hair red as fire; and the Phoenician, Hittite, and Egyptian women.
Cloudy Maimuna, misty Fattuma, Simsima the insubstantial, and her sister, transparent Rukaia; the indiscernible Rihana, fugitive Sakina, Zumorrud who mingles, and fleeting Nafissa.1 Solomon looks for her through the soft ripples of a dream, and starts finding her in every foreign woman; each of them is her. The king, mad with love, allows these women to invade and spill into Jerusalem like migratory birds and fill it with their songs, their sobs and laughter, their quarrels and parties. No two dress alike or wear their hair the same. Each kitchen emits a different smell depending on the foods and spices used by each family, wheat or barley, apples or pomegranates, turmeric or cinnamon, cumin or ginger. From some ovens, unleavened bread emerges, from others leavened. Bread is bread, says Solomon, ignoring the judges’ protests, letting the women do as they like: Food is food and all of it nourishes, let each person bake their bread the way they want.
It’s said that Hittite women wash their clothes with lavender water, and that Moabite women cure illness with eucalyptus steam. Solomon is happy. He opens his heart to all the ways, because nothing human scares him. He’s discovered the joy of learning the other, unknown languages, smells, and surprising flavors. He lets the wind blow into cloisters and sweep them clean, frees lepers from the wards where they rot, turns prisoners out of their cells. He sees himself in everything that is the other, that is different from him and his world, what’s strong within him is unstable, what sounds alarms in him confirms his certainties, signs of life rather than the decline of which he’s accused. He displays the tapestry’s underside, the knots of reality revealed. He enjoys it all, in the end, everything to which his heart could not have testified if he hadn’t allowed himself to open.
But every action has consequences and comes with a price, and the monarch’s eccentricities earn him bitter enemies. His constant pacing through his orchard of trees, which were brought from the outskirts, is raising suspicions. Rumors fly about the long hours he spends staring at the moon, unmoving, transported, as if in ecstasy. He’s exchanged his gold crown for a shepherd’s wool cap, and instead of a scepter he carries a crook; he prefers to sleep in the open air, and has been seen galloping off on his Arabic horses on the pathless paths of the desert, where it’s said he commands demons and genies.
What’s going on with Solomon, who no longer appears in the throne room and refuses to stay indoors? It’s muttered that he’s half mad, or mad and a half. He bathes naked in the bronze fountain, shamelessly exposing his admirable member, which hangs joyfully between his legs like the red anthurium flower, or like the clapper of a bell. It’s said that he eats flowers and talks to birds, in whose trills he claims to hear four musical keys: apparent, interior, mystic, and prosaic. He takes pleasure in the noise of women and pays tribute to all the goddesses, burning frankincense and myrrh.
New philosophies and novel ways of thinking revive the city’s air. Exotic music and dances open ears and stir enthusiasm. Sages bring a fresh curiosity to studying blue immensities and earthy depths. From their faraway lands, the women have brought new trades and unknown skills, different ways of spinning silk and wool, embroidering sheets, cleaning teeth, adorning eyes with paint, polishing stones, sculpting marble, forging gold. Stronger bricks appear for walls, as do better tiles for rooftops and more sanitary drainage systems.
Jerusalem, city of women, sanctuary of the deceased and venerated Goat Foot, whom the king cannot forget, be it day or night, possessed as he is by a passionate delirium, convinced of their intimate bond. His romantic idealization of her leads him to see gestures and subtle messages that hint at her presence. To him, everything hasbecome a sign, everything speaks to him of her, he feels that he can see her, touch her, hear her voice; and this almost embodied quality so enthralls him, seems so powerful, that he stages a lavish ceremony to marry her symbolically, postmortem. And that’s the straw that breaks the camel’s back, the drop that makes the glass overflow.
For many, the situation is highly annoying. The dour patriarchs gang up and conspire, scandalized and enraged by this invasion of rebellious females who go around with their breasts exposed and sway their bottoms without the least respect. Not to mention the irritation they feel at the hordes of boys and girls, Black, brown, and of every race, who go around yelling and making a racket, the damn riffraff! Since when have there been such droves of dirty, starving foreigners? If they don’t know how to obey silence, order, and decency, let them go somewhere else, let them leave once and for all for the savage lands from which they came.
The conspiracy takes shape, blaming Solomon for the situation, accusing him of losing his mind and going off the deep end. Down with Solomon, the apostate! The most willing chiefs hold a secret meeting. They show up in black cloaks and tall caps, their expressions shady, the decision made. They will demand the tyrant’s head. Solomon must go! The king will be dethroned and banished from Jerusalem, he’s got to leave with his whole circus of invading foreigners and corruptors of tradition, all those women, who should take their false goddesses along with them, offensive as they are to the one and only God.
The dour patriarchs grit their teeth and tuck their books of ancient wisdom under their arms, ready to defend their knowledge and customs with their lives, if necessary. They’re fed up with the chaos. Death to Solomon, with all his commotion and noise!
The verdict is brutal. In the Book, the sin is documented, the sentence declared in the harshest of terms: Solomon fell into idolatry, the foreign women led his heart astray. He worshipped other gods, brought many goddesses into sanctuaries, bowed before them,and paid them tribute, profaning the temple and drawing evil to Jerusalem. It’s known that he could amass gold as if it were so much tin, and that he multiplied silver as if it were lead, but he is accused of giving his body to impious women and letting them dominate him, profaning his own glory and bringing shame to his lineage. He brought fury on his sons and afflicted them with his madness and nonsense.
After the trial and sentencing, the great king is dethroned, stripped of goods and riches, cast out beyond the city wall, and ordered never to return. In his sorrow, Solomon sheds many tears and cries out many laments. From now on he’ll have to make do with gazing at his beautiful white city from a distance, from which it seems a little stone corral.
As for Princess Goat Foot, who plows through the dark and fog in search of that blue king, how, with what map or compass could she finally reach the edge of that sacred city? Saramago offers the reply: She was able to find her way becausein the end, we always arrive at the place where we are expected.2
A crucial moment, this one, their approach toward each other. Goat Foot and her faraway king have been waiting forever for this and it’s about to happen, but it won’t be easy, it’s never easy, the meeting of the otheris an enigma, an unknown quantity—I would even say a mystery.3
Goat Foot sees him in the distance, in the middle of the blackness, a small corner of night lit by a fire, and she approaches with the hope of finding a bit of warmth and company. A group of shepherds has gathered around the fire; they play soft, repetitive music. One of them is on his feet, dancing in a mesmerized state, between dreams, gaze turned inward, head thrown back. He spins without stopping, in a state of holy intoxication, arms outstretched, the palm of one hand open to the sky, the other facing the earth.
Goat Foot is mesmerized, watching him. Despite his large size, the dancing shepherd moves with the sinuousness of flight, as iftime stands still as he turns, as if his feet don’t touch the ground. He’s tall and gorgeous, in fact he’s very tall, his figure looks immense against the starry night sky, and yet he seems weightless. Still spinning, the shepherd crosses his arms over his chest, and in that moment Goat Foot could swear the man is still and that it’s the dome of stars that moves around him.
“Keep sleeping,” she says to him in a very low voice, so as not to wake him. “Let me stare at you while you sleep and spin...”
“Come, whoever you are, come,” he says to her, becoming aware of her presence.
“I can’t go with you, I’ve come here to marry the King of Jerusalem.”
“I am Jerusalem,” the shepherd says, and she immediately recognizes him.
She’s seen him before, she’s had him right beside her, she’s even spoken to him and taken objects from his hand. It’s him, without a doubt it’s him, always the same. Though with his identity changed and with a different appearance, this shepherd that now dances by a fire is the same magician with lynx’s eyes and hair like a knot of snakes, and is also the same beggar lit by fever, the living spasm.
