Delilah
Delilah was the first set of short monologues that I wrote for this project, and I think that (however unfitting in the biography of Catherine of Siena) the interaction between them might be the most important and helpful for the story of Avignon. They talk about Catherine being able to see people's souls, but I wonder (and can't wait to get to that part of the book) how she did with bringing people like the lady in Avignon who spiritually stank so much Catherine nearly fainted back to God.
So I imagine talking to Delilah and her showing Catherine what it is that makes a nonbeliever see how beautiful is God, how great the love of God is.
DELILAH
I was just a girl when they burned Samson's first wife. She was a sweet, frightened thing, they said, who let herself be passed from man to man. Even my own people have said worse of me, but I don't know that my death would have enraged him as hers did, by the end. But then, no one loved like Samson.
I did not fully believe the stories they told until I found the bone in our house one day. I asked him and he said it was the donkey's bone. The donkey's jawbone with which he killed a thousand men for burning his first wife. It had been some time since I had last been scared of him. He was so fearless, the beautiful fool, whose first wife betrayed him because of a riddle that he didn't seem to understand wasn't a riddle. He watched for a moment as the jawbone that had killed a thousand men trembled in my hand, and then he came over and took it - so gently. This mighty man who came so gently to my hand. He pulled it away and folded me in his arms. I clutched the strands of his long, long hair between my fingers for strength, as I had so many times, and he murmured over and over into my own, "Oh, my love, my love."
CATHERINE
Your love?
DELILAH
I was his love, little Benincasa. A fearful man, he was to me.
CATHERINE
He was blessed by God.
DELILAH
His gift was destruction. His gift was war and death. Think if you can, for a moment, little Benincasa, what he looked like to a Philistine.
The war made my mother a widow. A raid made her sonless. Starvation made my niece an orphan. Patriotism made me forsaken. My people made me a whore for their purposes, but Samson and his God made me a wife. I stood with him before his God for my people, who made me their harlot, and he made me his love. Afterward I asked him why. He took my face in his hands, and he looked so sad and so serious, but all that he said was, "Oh, my love, my love."
CATHERINE
God loves you more than your own people did.
DELILAH
No one loved as he loved. AS he loved me or as he loved his God. I lay beside him in the night, this beautiful fool lying beside me with no fear. Naked, utterly exposed, and yet at peace - not one whit the terror I had summoned the courage to face when they first came to me. I watched his chest rise and fall, and I told myself that whatever the propaganda said, he was not the entire Israelite army. The chance that he killed them was still small. And I wished, as I looked at his beautiful face in the moonlight, wished that the chance was smaller. When he woke, all I could say was, "Oh, my love, my love."
CATHERINE
Then why? Why cut his hair?
DELILAH
Why did he tell me, little Benincasa? He had so many chances, so many proofs that I would tell my people. Why did he tell me?
CATHERINE
He trusted you.
DELILAH
Not even the first time. Not even then did he trust me.
The first time I asked and he told me how he could be defeated, I thought it was a test. I thought he wanted to know if he could truly have me and his God in one united love. O, my beautiful fool, I tied him in seven new bowstrings, and I thought I was dead when he sprang out of them as if they were spiderwebs.
If I had not cried out what I thought a useless warning, would he have burned me in turn? Would he have thought that I, like his first wife, yielded before threats of death? O, my beautiful fool, did you forget you were no marvel when you married her? That she thought they were more fearful than you? O, my beautiful fool, did you forget that I knew better?
But all he said, as I huddled in the corner in terror, was a resigned, disheartened, but kind, "Oh, my love, my love."
CATHERINE
He thought you were threatened?
DELILAH
I was threatened. But that's not why I did it.
CATHERINE
Then why? Why do people fear the things of this world?
DELILAH
The second time I asked and he told me how he could be defeated, I thought he believed my jealous. That all I wanted was one night as his only love - and that he could give me that, the illusion of that. O, my beautiful fool, did you think I wanted all your love showered on me alone? O, my beautiful fool, I was jealous of your love of your God, but not for that. O, my beautiful fool, I had never loved anyone or anything as you love your God.
When the new ropes snapped like threads, I was glad. If I had not cried in joy, would your donkey's jawbone have killed one thousand and one? But you only took me in your arms and held me, and whispered, as if in apology, "Oh, my love, my love."
CATHERINE
God loves you, as he loves Samson. That love could have been yours.
DELILAH
Samson was born a prophet. How young were you when you had your first vision? Some people take longer, Catherine.
The third time I asked and he told me how he could be defeated, I thought he wanted to prove that his God would never leave him. This God he loved so much, who asked so much and gave so much, I thought he wanted to show me that his God's love was solid, not some fragile talisman. And he was right. I hated his God that it was some magic spell after all. Something so silly a hairdo would take his God's love from him. This All-Powerful Bully with foolish precepts.
So when he pulled free of the loom and rose to save me, he turned to me as if to say that his God was still with him. But even he, even he who loved as no one loved, his God above all, did not dare put it to the test. It was almost sadness, the shadow of fear, and I took his face in my hands, and said, "Oh, my love, my love."
CATHERINE
That's not how He works.
DELILAH
I know that, little Benincasa. I come to tell you how I learned it. How someone who is not raised by Jacopo Benincasa learns about true love of God.
The time I asked and he told me truly how he could be defeated, I thought he wanted me to free him of this tyrannous, arbitrary God. They all made me the bad guy, why not my beautiful fool? I could bear being the bad guy to stop the bleeding of my family, my people. I could be the bad guy to set my beautiful fool free of his God who did not love him as much as Samson loved Him. I cut his hair as he slept, so gently, so he would not wake, so he would bear no blame for what freed him.
CATHERINE
You have no idea how precious a thing you took from him.
DELILAH
No, little Benincasa. How precious a thing he gave me.
What did he think, my beautiful fool? That I would not cut his hair as I had tied him in the varied, ridiculous ways? That now I would leave him his testament to his love for his God if I knew he loved me enough to tell the truth? That the men would not come again that night as they always had before? No, not even my beautiful fool. Not even he would believe that.
I stood still in the doorway to our bedroom, where he had dared to sleep without fear of this - of precisely this. He stumbled toward me, having evaded them for a moment, broken and bloody for the first time in his life. He was breathing heavily. "We need to hide - get out of here - " He was frightened. I think he had thought his God would not abandon him even so. I had never heard him breathe like that before. Still he seemed to believe that I was innocent of the ambush, if not the hair. All I could say was, "Oh, my love, my love."
And then they struck him, and he felt it for the first time - how the blows feel to those of us God leaves unprotected. I watched, unmoving, as they dragged him away. Samson, whom God asked to be a holy man and a terrorist because His people needed a terror to have hope. Samson who gave it all up, to show me.
I watched him chained to the pillars, guarded lest I throw myself between him and his death. I watched him pulling against the chains, his face serene as it had always been in prayer, but every muscle in his body struggling as he never had before. In pain, as he never was before, but fighting all the same. Fighting still, still in love with His God. The strain of a miracle written across his body, suddenly so exposed to my view.
The pain not just from the effort but from the day I and his God abandoned him at once. And only he believed that it wasn't true, for either of us. The pain that could not stop him from fighting or loving. The pain that was God's price, not the gift itself. His strength was still there. God never did abandon him. And all I could say as the walls came tumbling down was, "Oh, my love, my love."
CATHERINE
He told you...you think he told you so that he would show you that God would not abandon him? That the hair was nothing to the love he had for God?
DELILAH
No one loved as Samson did.
CATHERINE
You want me to cut my hair?
DELILAH
I want you to persevere, before their eyes, even if they take it.
--
Well, it might be something with more work, anyway.
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