Читать книгу David - Allan Boone's Wargon - Страница 5

At thirteen, with tawny hair beginning to sprout on his tanned cheeks, David was slim, lithe and exceptionally good-looking. He was polite, and deferential to his parents, but ordinarily unsmiling. Every member of the family had an inner life, but outwardly the others grouped together and related to one another. David kept to himself. The terrible memory he carried remained well hidden. His brothers, though they disdained him and were often sarcastic, were wary of getting into a quarrel with him. He was so quick witted and adroit with words that he always made their aggressions seem foolish. It was similar to the feeling about their handsome family cat, who kept the home free of mice: everyone was annoyed at his inconvenient comings and goings, but unwillingly pleased with his prowess.

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Entertainment was sought in villages, and David gained a reputation in Bethlehem as a lutist. Moreover he usually sang to his own accompaniment. Travellers repeated the tale, and people started calling him ‘The sweet singer of Israel’. But he had special private compositions, sung only in the wilderness, for God. That all-seeing Presence was stern, but also, David felt, understanding. He bore with the lad’s frequent desires. For girls were arousing. When he was home he watched the neighbourhood maidens, his eyes caressing their rounded forms as they carried water or pounded grain. The sound of crushing was a continual daylong refrain, as every household had to prepare bread. But the up and down movements of the pestle were suggestive. Servant girls flared his imagination. Even his mother, lined as she was, caused him curiosity about what was under her robe. He had a vague memory, or thought he had, of having suckled; nonetheless the shape of a breast remained a rounded, desirable line. In his fantasies he committed lustful acts of which he was afterwards ashamed, as if the cravings were unattainable food, like figs out of reach.

Compelled by his urges, when he was sure no one was looking, he stole from off a clothesline outside an isolated home an old, ragged, light-coloured waist cloth — a garment some women, if they were inclined to be pretentious, wore under their robes. Hurrying with it over rocks, far from people, and reclining between two large boulders, he used it to relieve himself. This, at last, was more agreeable than fingers alone. Or his many erotic wet dreams, which invited discovery and excruciating embarrassment. He repeated the self-stimulation often, until his skin was becoming raw and the fabric had to have the stiffness washed out of it. He had found a spring where he could do this. In the right season there were many secret springs in the hills.