The True Story of King Solomon

By Max Blanchard

"I shall cut the baby in half," King Solomon proclaimed, "and you shall each receive, you know, half a baby."

He sat there, in his big gaudy throne, smiling at his brilliance. He thought to himself, "this really was a great idea. I am so very clever. Whoever is the real mother will love her child so much she will admit to stealing it so that at least the baby gets to live. The other woman'll be perfectly happy with half a baby."

He was lost in his reverie, so at first failed to notice the looks of horror and disgust on the faces of everyone in the court, as well as both the women standing before him.

"What are you talking about, you goddamn lunatic!" one of the woman screamed, "Don't cut this baby in half!"

"Yeah, Jesus, what the hell? Why would either of us want half a baby?"

"Yeah, what are we going to do with half a baby? That is literally the worst plan in the world! I mean, normally I'm all for compromise, but nobody has ever thought to themselves, "well, half a baby is better than nothing." That's not a thing that has happened."

"Yeah, I mean, this whole thing is because one of us already lost a baby, and we're arguing over who gets to keep the other one. Why would you kill this baby too? Is this like, some crazy, "If you can't work out who owns that thing peacefully, then neither of you get to keep it" thing? Because I mean, normally that seems reasonable, but in this instance you are legitimately suggesting we cut a baby in half. That's... that's not an okay thing."

King Solomon looked around himself, and realised he had misread the situation. His advisors were looking on him with a mixture of revulsion, disgust, fascination and contempt.

His Chief Advisor wandered over to him, trying to smile calmly, and failing miserably.

"Now, King, you know how you're the smartest man in all the land, yes," the Chief Advisor said.

"Yes. I am King Solomon! Smartest man in all the land!" King Solomon proclaimed, as people continued to gape.

"Uh huh, sure, of course. Now, but you know how last week, we decided that you'd always ask me before you made any judgements?"

"You mean," King Solomon said, nodding, "Just in case they were... too brilliant for people to understand?"

"Exactly. That's exactly what I said. What we decided. Right." The Advisor stammered, trying to smile, "so... what... happened here? If you don't mind me asking?"

"Well, I didn't need your advice on this one, because it was exactly the same as that goat one," the king said.

The Chief Advisor felt his face begin to crack as his rigor mortis grin started shooting craziness out of his eyeballs, "What... Goat... One?"

"THE goat one," the king replied, "The goat one. That brilliant one were I came up with that plan to cut the goat in half. Because of... wait... why was I going to cut the goat in half?"

The Advisor slumped forward, finally understanding. "Oh. Right." He shook his head for a few seconds before he was able to continue, "yes. The two women with the goat, one of them had had a goat that died, the other one had an alive goat, the one with the dead goat swapped hers for the live one, they argued, went to court, and then I... err... I mean... YOU... obviously YOU decided... that the best way to determine who the goat belonged to was to threaten to cut it in half, and the woman who was fine with that would be in the wrong, because half a goat is better than no goat, but if you actually loved the goat, then you would want it to survive."

"Exactly. That's the case. The goat one."

"Right. But... sir. The problem here is that... half a baby isn't better than no baby."

"It isn't?"

"In many respects, it is far worse."

"Are you saying that the wisdom of Solomon is wrong?" The king said, eyeing his Chief Advisor, as if trying to determine the perfect sized axe for his neck.

"Ah ha ha ha, of course not, sire, no, I would never suggest such a thing," the Chief Advisor said, smiling and bowing, smiling and bowing, "of course not. It's just that... ummm... Just give me a second."

The Chief Adivsor ran over to the two women, who were both still furious.

"Listen... he... he's an idiot, you know that, right?" He whispered to the two women.

"Well obviously," one replied.

"Yeah, duh, everyone knows that," the other said, cradling the baby.

"And so, you know, if you don't play along with this, that baby is getting chopped in half," the Advisor said, one arm around each woman in a conspiratorial huddle.

"Well what the hell? What do we do?"

"Look, just, one of you just has to pretend that they don't care about the baby getting cut in half."

"What? Who wouldn't care about a baby getting cut in half?"

"Yeah, I mean, even if it was a baby I didn't know, and some stranger came up to me on the street and said, "Hey, I have this baby, you want half of it? I've got an axe!" I wouldn't just be like, "yeah, sure, I'll have half a baby!" What would you even do with half a baby? Display it on the mantelpiece?"

"Also," the other woman said, "and I know this is a weird time to be raising this, but why does he have 700 wives and 300 concubines? Who has more wives than concubines? Just have, like, ten wives, and a thousand concubines. That'd make sense. All those goddamn wives all over the place, that seems like a lot of work."

"Oh, I know with the wives thing," the Chief Advisor said, rolling his eyes, "I've told him about the wives thing. Every time he meets a new woman, he's always making them his wife. I'm like, "stop with the wives already, you've got enough wives as it is! Just sleep with her and move on! You have wives already that you never use, what do you want more wives for?" But he just keeps adding wives. I'm surprised he hasn't proposed to either of you yet."

The woman who hadn't brought this up got frustrated and said, "Look, this is neither the time nor the place. We need to save this baby, not complain about him having too many wives."

"Look, okay, you're right," the Chief Advisor said, "Sorry. Look. One of you pretend you want half a baby, the other one say something like, "no, don't cut that baby in half, I'd rather see it with her than dead on my display cabinet," or something like that. He'll give whoever says that the baby, and then you're out of here and you can get back to squabbling about this in peace."

"How do we work out who does what?"

"I don't know," the Advisor said, "How about one of those games children play, like Rock, Papyrus, Two-Knives-Nailed-Together?"

"Alright, fine."