he abandoned that habit because Jessie said that with his long face and sad, brown eyes, it made him look like an old crow stuck with an unpleasant wad of grass it couldn’t swallow and wouldn’t spit out.) He said, “If you want her side, I could think of some arguments for you. She valued the religion of her ancestors who had been in the land long before the Hebrews came. The Hebrews had their own God, and what’s more, it was an exclusive God. They weren’t content to worship Him themselves; they wanted everyone in reach to worship Him as well.
“Jezebel was a conservative, sticking to the oldbeliefs against the new ones. After all, if the new beliefs had a higher moral content, the old ones were more emotinally satisfying. The fact that she killed priests just marks her as a child of her times. It was the usual method of proselytization in those days. If you read I Kings, you must remember that Elijah (
my
namesake this time) had a contest with 850 prophets of Baal to see which could bring down fire from heaven. Elijah won and promptly ordered the crowd of onlookers to kill the 850 Baalites. And they did.”
Jessie bit her lip. “What about Naboth’s vineyard, Lije? Here was this Naboth not bothering anybody, except that he refused to sell the King his vineyard. So Jezebel arranged to have people perjure themselves and say that Naboth had committed blasphemy or something.”
“He was supposed to have ‘blasphemed God and the king,’ ” said Baley.
“Yes. So they confiscated his property after they executed him.”
“That was wrong. Of course, in modern times, Naboth would have been handled quite easily. If the City wanted his property or even if one of the Medieval nations had wanted his property, the courts would have ordered him off, had him removed by force if necessary, and paid him whatever they considered a fair price. King Ahab didn’t have that way out. Still, Jezebel’s solution was wrong. The only excuse for her is that Ahab was sick and unhappy over the situation and she felt that her love for her husband came ahead of Naboth’s welfare. I keep telling you, she was the model of a faithful wi—”
Jessie flung herself away from him, red-faced and angry. “I think you’re mean and spiteful.”
He looked at her with complete dismay. “What have I done? What’s the matter with you?”
She left the apartment without answering and spent the evening and half the night at the subetheric video levels, traveling petulantly from showing to showing and using up a two-month supply of her quota allowance (and her husband’s, to boot).
When she came back to a still wakeful Lije Baley, she had nothing further to say to him.
It occurred to Baley later, much later, that he had utterly smashed an important part of Jessie’s life. Her name had signified something intriguingly wicked to her. It was a delightful makeweight for her prim, over-respectable past. It gave her an aroma of licentiousness, and she adored that.
But it was gone. She never mentioned her full name again, not to Lije, not to her friends, and maybe, for all Baley knew, not even to herself. She was Jessie and took to signing her name so.
As the days passed she began speaking to him again, and after a week or so their relationship was on the old footing and, with all subsequent quarrels, nothing ever reached that one bad spot of intensity.
Only once was there even an indirect reference to the matter. It was in her eighth month of pregnancy. She had left her own position as dietitian’s assistant in Section Kitchen A-23 and with unaccustomed time on her hands was amusing herself in speculation and preparation for the baby’s birth.
She said, one evening, “What about Bentley?”
“Pardon me, dear?” said Baley, looking up from a sheaf of work he had brought home with him. (With an additional mouth soon to feed and Jessie’s pay stopped and his own promotions to the nonclerical levels as far off, seemingly, as ever, extra
“Jezebel was a conservative, sticking to the oldbeliefs against the new ones. After all, if the new beliefs had a higher moral content, the old ones were more emotinally satisfying. The fact that she killed priests just marks her as a child of her times. It was the usual method of proselytization in those days. If you read I Kings, you must remember that Elijah (
my
namesake this time) had a contest with 850 prophets of Baal to see which could bring down fire from heaven. Elijah won and promptly ordered the crowd of onlookers to kill the 850 Baalites. And they did.”
Jessie bit her lip. “What about Naboth’s vineyard, Lije? Here was this Naboth not bothering anybody, except that he refused to sell the King his vineyard. So Jezebel arranged to have people perjure themselves and say that Naboth had committed blasphemy or something.”
“He was supposed to have ‘blasphemed God and the king,’ ” said Baley.
“Yes. So they confiscated his property after they executed him.”
“That was wrong. Of course, in modern times, Naboth would have been handled quite easily. If the City wanted his property or even if one of the Medieval nations had wanted his property, the courts would have ordered him off, had him removed by force if necessary, and paid him whatever they considered a fair price. King Ahab didn’t have that way out. Still, Jezebel’s solution was wrong. The only excuse for her is that Ahab was sick and unhappy over the situation and she felt that her love for her husband came ahead of Naboth’s welfare. I keep telling you, she was the model of a faithful wi—”
Jessie flung herself away from him, red-faced and angry. “I think you’re mean and spiteful.”
He looked at her with complete dismay. “What have I done? What’s the matter with you?”
She left the apartment without answering and spent the evening and half the night at the subetheric video levels, traveling petulantly from showing to showing and using up a two-month supply of her quota allowance (and her husband’s, to boot).
When she came back to a still wakeful Lije Baley, she had nothing further to say to him.
It occurred to Baley later, much later, that he had utterly smashed an important part of Jessie’s life. Her name had signified something intriguingly wicked to her. It was a delightful makeweight for her prim, over-respectable past. It gave her an aroma of licentiousness, and she adored that.
But it was gone. She never mentioned her full name again, not to Lije, not to her friends, and maybe, for all Baley knew, not even to herself. She was Jessie and took to signing her name so.
As the days passed she began speaking to him again, and after a week or so their relationship was on the old footing and, with all subsequent quarrels, nothing ever reached that one bad spot of intensity.
Only once was there even an indirect reference to the matter. It was in her eighth month of pregnancy. She had left her own position as dietitian’s assistant in Section Kitchen A-23 and with unaccustomed time on her hands was amusing herself in speculation and preparation for the baby’s birth.
She said, one evening, “What about Bentley?”
“Pardon me, dear?” said Baley, looking up from a sheaf of work he had brought home with him. (With an additional mouth soon to feed and Jessie’s pay stopped and his own promotions to the nonclerical levels as far off, seemingly, as ever, extra
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