Once settled on a bench she opened out a parchment game board and they both bent over it, trying to decide how the game was played. Every now and then when Anatah wanted to get his attention, she would reach out and touch his hand. Ordinarily this would have seemed very forward, but now in this garden, Isaac thought it was most exciting. He noticed the way her lashes framed her dark eyes and especially the way she tossed her head and half closed her eyes when she laughed at something he had said. Her lips were soft and the way she spoke his name was most provocative.
He felt a strange urge to reach out and hold her hand and perhaps to even kiss her. A certain irresistible feeling drew him to her. To make it even more intriguing, he noticed that she seemed to be feeling the same thing. He briefly wondered what the custom was in this Canaanite palace. Would his touching her hand or kissing her be considered an accepted dalliance, a shameful thing, or an invitation to marriage? How delightful to be forced to marry someone as lovely as Anatah.
Soon they no longer even pretended to be playing the game. He was alert to every movement she made and more than that to the scent of tuberoses that floated from her hair and her garments. Her laughter was like sistrum all jangling together, and her smile more brilliant than moonshine on water. He forgot where he was and, most of all, who he was.
When she reached out and took his hand firmly in hers and insisted that she could tell his destiny by reading the lines on his hand, he was so overcome with emotion he hardly heard a word she said. Only the word lovers penetrated and strangely moved him. Without waiting for his response, she jumped up, and pulling him to his feet, said, “Come, we must go and pledge ourselves to each other so no one can come between us.”
She led him around the edge of the small pond, then pulled some bushes aside to reveal a niche in the stone wall. In the niche was a clay figure. Slowly Isaac realized this was an image of the local earth goddess. The statue had the body of a naked woman with small pointed breasts and a frighteningly ugly head. She had a large nose but there was no mouth and the eyes were slitted and strange. Around her feet curled a snake.
Isaac drew back. He was jolted by the terrible reality of the thing. Anatah was lovely and beautiful, but this image was ugly and he could not imagine what the image could have to do with them.
Anatah laughed. “Don’t be afraid. This is my goddess and she will see that we have whatever we desire.”
“But she is only clay,” Isaac stammered.
“Of course she is clay, but inside the clay is a being of such power that she can grant any wish.”
Isaac was astounded. His father had told him about idols but he had said they were lifeless clay or stone and had no power at all. “How,” he asked, “can she do this?”
Anatah grew serious. “So it is a jinn but it can grant wishes.”
“The jinn are evil spirits,” Isaac said, drawing back.
Anatah tossed her head and laughed. “This jinn is good and will grant whatever I ask of it,” she said.
With that she flung her arms around Isaac and kissed him, then pulling back she said in a low chanting voice, “This is the man, oh my goddess, that I must have. Grant me my wish and let no one come between us.”
For a moment she had a strange look about her eyes and then she released him. “Now you can go,” she said in her normal voice. “Your stepmother is probably looking for you. Remember we have pledged in the presence of the great earth goddess and such pledges are binding.”
* * *
All the way back to camp Isaac was silent. He rode as in a dream, but it was a disturbing dream. One minute the lovely, desirable Anatah with her tempting lips and seductive glances appeared before him and the next he was remembering the ugly idol in the garden and the ritual he had witnessed and even been a part of.
He found that something strange had happened to him. He wanted Anatah with a terrible urgency like wanting water when out in the desert and the water skins were empty. To add to his torment Anatah had whispered just before he mounted his mule ready to leave, “Now that we are pledged to each other, I can give myself to you whenever you come.”
What would his father say to such things? He feared to tell him and yet he had never held anything back from his father. He must tell him. But instead of being excited and joyful, he dreaded the encounter.
Abraham noticed as the men sat around the campfire that night that Isaac was silent and looked disturbed. Something had happened to his son and it could well have to do with the trip to Gerar. It was always in the cities that evil occurred. Even when he had drawn himself and his family away from them, they still intruded with their evil.