The Sinners and the Sea

by Rebecca Kanner

  Another girl built upon the black-eyed girl’s insult: “Even the part that is not donkey is dreadful.” She was pregnant, had only one hand, and wore a necklace of human teeth. “We should be glad Noah would not rut any of the rest of us.”

  “I would still let the old bone collection mount me!” a woman with an X branded upon her forehead yelled. She looked older than the rest. She lifted her tunic above her waist and thrust at us a few times, until laughter overcame her balance.

  “God watches you, Javan,” Noah said, “and next time He has to throw you to the ground, He will do it with more force.”

  Some small children, most of whom were naked, ran up to us and pawed at the saddlebags. “I’m hungry!” yelled one little boy whose nose bled. He was nearly as thin as my leg.

  “My lord,” I said, “perhaps—”

  Before I was able to ask if we could spare any of our rations, Noah said, “Because you sin, you starve.” Then he turned his head, and I knew he was looking out over the horde. “But you do not have to starve or suffer at each other’s hands any longer. There is a way.”

  “We have heard this already! Have you thought of nothing new the whole time you have been away?”

  “There is a way,” Noah repeated, his voice suddenly so loud that the raucousness of the crowd died down. “God has called upon me to lead you to righteousness. Put down the dagger you threaten your neighbor with, give back the cloth you have stolen from him, and you will not starve another day.”

  Javan stood up again. “Do I look like I am starving?” This time she lifted her tunic not only above her waist but all the way over her large stomach and sagging breasts. When she let go of it, it fell to rest on the upper swell of her belly.

  The girl with the black eye yanked it down over Javan’s hips. “You are cruel to make us look upon any more of you than we see already,” the girl said. This seemed to delight Javan, who grabbed the girl by the hair and pulled the girl’s face between her drooping breasts.

  While the other children begged for food and untied our sandals, one tiny girl with a flat face and narrow eyes that slanted upward at the corners reached into my sandal to tickle the bottom of my foot. She smiled up at me. It was the first kind smile I had seen in Sorum. I was surprised to find myself smiling back at her.

  “You want my simpleton?” Javan yelled. “I will sell her to you for half an apricot.”

  Despite the unruliness of the crowd, they made a narrow path for us as we neared.

  “If your God were powerful, He would not have given you such an old wife,” cried a woman with a belt made of bones. I wondered if the bones of her belt were human. She had stepped back with the others, but she was not more than a cubit to our left, and her eyes were level with mine.

  The one-handed girl’s eyes were also level with mine. Jank’s threat rang in my ears: I will see her burned alive. I did not like how the girl narrowed her gaze upon my brow. She kept her position beside us by slashing in front of her with a dagger.

  I pulled my head scarf so low that I could see it and tied it tightly enough that it dug into my skin. When I blinked, my eyelashes brushed the bottom of the linen. The girl watched.

  “If the God of Adam has to show you His power, it will already be too late for you,” Noah said.

  “Too late for us to what?” The woman whose belt was made of bones grabbed Noah’s tunic. “What exactly is it we want to do but haven’t?”

  The tangle-headed girl with the black eye stood ahead to our left. She was breathing heavily from her brief imprisonment between Javan’s breasts. “I, in fact,” she panted, “have done everyone I wanted to and more.”

  Now the one-handed girl lowered her head, trying to peer beneath my head scarf.

  “Repent of your wicked ways, or soon it will be too late for you to find favor in the eyes of the Lord.”

  “Will His favor feel as good between my legs as my neighbor’s husband?” Javan asked. Then she turned somber and stepped into our path. “Will His favor undo my daughter’s simpleness?”

  Noah said, “Your daughter is your punishment for lying with a man who is not your husband.”

  I no longer saw the smiling little girl. I did not dare turn my head to look for her lest I upset my scarf. Was it really her mother’s sin that had made her slow? It seemed more likely to me that Javan had lain with a man after conceiving, and his thrusts—not the evil in her heart—had damaged the girl. In that case, I might also have a slow child. Noah had not let up in our son-making. If our child were slow, would Noah think I had lain with another man?

  I closed my eyes for a couple of homesick breaths. I had tried not to think of my father, but all his kindnesses came back to me, and each one hurt like a fresh wound. Instead of preparing his morning meal of porridge and barley cakes, I was holding tightly to an old man whose God punished a girl for the sins of her mother. An old man who wore a tunic so layered with dirt that I felt I might lose my grip at any step and be snatched away by one of the numerous vile women who surrounded me.

  “The simpleton could be my dead husband’s,” Javan said indignantly, as though Noah had offended her. Then she became jovial again. “Or at least somebody’s husband’s.”

  “Wicked woman,” Noah said, “the God of Adam will have a hard and heavy hand when he deals with you.”

  “That is how I most enjoy it,” Javan said.

  We were journeying upon the tent-lined road so slowly that I feared we might not make it to Noah’s land before someone—likely the one-handed girl—suspected there was something beneath my head scarf that had caused me to pull it so low. Another woman shoved Javan out of the way and took her place in front of us. It was the woman with a bald patch on the side of her head. Up close I could see that she was unusually beautiful. She had thick black hair, except where the handful-sized patch was missing, and big almond-colored eyes ringed with kohl. “After seeing your new wife, I know you will want to lie also with a young woman sometimes,” she said.

  Javan grabbed the girl by the hair. “I will halve your whore price by taking the rest of your mane,” she said merrily, throwing the girl in front of the donkey. The girl rolled out of the way in plenty of time to avoid the slow animal’s hooves.

  The one-handed girl gave up trying to see what lay beneath my scarf and demanded, “Are you branded, woman? What is your crime?”

  “Perhaps,” said the unusually beautiful woman, “she hides an X from her righteous old husband.”

  The little boy whose nose bled jumped up and yanked upon my scarf. I brought my hands hard against my head and held fast.

  “Look!” the one-handed girl cried. “She has a mark upon her brow. Demon woman!”

  I tried to hide behind Noah. I will be an exile among exiles, or perhaps they will burn me alive.

  “You would be better off blind than seeing demons everywhere you look,” Javan said, taking a step toward the girl. Color had rushed to Javan’s cheeks. “Your sight is even worse than your skill as a thief. Careful your loose tongue does not cost you the hand that remains.”

  Was this crude woman my ally? Her words had called people’s attention to her, and I had been able to pull my scarf lower without—I hoped—too much notice.

  Noah did not let Javan have the last word. He turned his head toward the one-handed girl. “You will bring God’s fist down upon your back with talk of a demon.” To the whole crowd, he yelled, “You are all wicked, and the wicked do not know the difference between demons and angels. My good wife will earn her way to the Lord and His blessings through righteousness.”

  The women’s laughter was a relief to me. They would not have laughed if they believed a demon woman were in their midst.

  “While she is busy being righteous,” the black-eyed girl said, “I will take in your withered old branch for a handful of the fruit on your trees.”

  I assumed the girl was taunting him when she spoke of the fruit on his trees. I had not seen a fruit-bearing tree in the last half day’s journ
ey.

  One giggling girl rushed forward to lift my tunic with a hand that looked as though it had not met with water or a clean animal skin in many rotations of the sun around the earth. She lowered her head to peer in. I kicked her in the eye, and her giggling turned to screams. She called me things I had never heard before.

  We continued to make our way slowly westward through the rows of tents, and the women and children continued to follow along beside us. They grabbed at our tunics and legs with dirty hands and said vile things. I wondered if this was how Noah’s tunic had become frayed.

  The donkey must have been used to the commotion, because he did not seem bothered enough by the mob to quicken his pace. I felt sick to my stomach, and not just because I worried that my honor would be taken from me. It was clear from the smell that the population of Noah’s town could not be troubled to wander any distance from the tents when they had to relieve themselves.

  A man and woman peeked from one of the tents. “Look,” the man said, “the fool has found someone other than himself to talk to. Now he can stop pretending he is talking to a god.” They laughed and went back inside the tent.

  I looked behind us for the tiny girl who had tickled my foot, but I did not see her. Her mother, Javan, was still beside us. The X upon her forehead was not fresh; all the color had faded from it, so that it was not red or brownish like some of the ones I had seen on dead men in the battlefields.

  Hands yanked at my tunic, some attempting to lift it and some to pull it off. I was certain I would be naked by the time we reached Noah’s tent. I did not like to think of what might happen then.

  The horde began to slow their pace and to go quiet. All except Javan, who yelled, “Welcome to the sweet teat of Sorum!”

  “You are almost home,” Noah said. I had not yet heard him talk to his donkey, so he must have been speaking to me.

  The neighbors slowed until none was beside us any longer. I looked back and saw that they had come to a complete stop. I could not think of what, besides one of the giants made from a son of God coupling with a daughter of man, could have caused this.

  CHAPTER 6

  GIANTS

  When men began to increase on earth and daughters were born to them, the divine beings saw how beautiful the daughters of men were and took wives from among those that pleased them . . . It was then, and later too, that the Nephilim appeared on earth—when the divine beings cohabited with the daughters of men, who bore them offspring. They were the heroes of old, the men of renown.

  GENESIS 6:1–4

  I had never seen one of the Nephilim, but when I was a child, my father had tried to keep me from wandering from our tent when he was overseeing his grove by warning me that there were creatures that had fallen from heaven. “They are angry at humans, and also,” he said, “hungry.”

  “Why are they angry with people,” I asked, “when it was the sons of God who came down and defiled the daughters of man?”

  “And so they are angry at these daughters of man for their father’s seductions.”

  “But without these seductions, they would not exist.”

  “They do not understand this, and much else. They think girls are wicked. They will eat you and worse if you stray from the tent.”

  “But if they look at the ugliness upon my brow, they will see I could not seduce a mortal man, much less a son of God.”

  “They are so big that, to them, we all look like flies. They are not blessed with their fathers’ perfect sight.”

  My heart swelled like an infected wound. I knew my father was exaggerating to scare me and keep me safe. These Nephilim could not possibly be angry at mortal girls when, without these girls, they would not be alive.

  I tried not to smile or sing that day, for fear my father would know what I was thinking, which was that someday I might be able to win the favor of one of these massive creatures who could not make out the dark stain upon my brow.

  • • •

  In my father’s village, there had been only one girl who was not filled with fear at the sight of me. She did not want to be any less than ten cubits away from me, but that was closer than most people let me get, and her eyes did not shun me. I sensed that the other children did not want to be around this girl any more than they wanted to be around me. Otherwise, why would she have allowed me near her?

  Not half a moon after learning of the Nephilim’s poor sight, I sneaked out to the girl’s tent to borrow a cup of lentils. Like me, she had no mother, and her father was off plucking olives for my own father. I placed my cup on the ground, called to her, asking her to fill it with lentils, and backed away so she could pick it up. As she did, she told me a man had recently come to speak with her father about taking her as a wife. “Has any man come to talk to your father about taking you as a wife?”

  Surely she knew no man would have me. I was both angry and ashamed. I surprised myself by saying, “Yes.”

  The look of disappointment on her face was very satisfying, and I wished to deepen it. “Well, not really a man,” I said.

  She smiled. “I did not think so.”

  “No, not a man. One of the Nephilim.”

  She laughed. “Why would a grandson of God, who could have any girl he wanted, take a marked one for a wife?”

  “They do not see well,” I told her. “They choose their wives not by how they look but by the strength of their spirits and their ability to bear sons.”

  She looked skeptical, but the disappointment did not fade from her face, so my work was done. “Thank you for the lentils,” I said. “I hope your husband is a big and powerful man. Or at least as big and powerful as a mere man can be.”

  I secretly followed my father the next day as he made his way to the trade route with a sack of olives he intended to barter for some incense. That is when I saw the man, the donkey, and the girl. The man was neither large nor powerful. Well, he was not tall and powerful. He was so fat, and his donkey so old, that he did not ride it.

  The girl rode the ass, staring down at the animal’s neck as though she might wring it and bring the slow journey to a halt. Then she cast her gaze around her to see who witnessed her humiliation, and her eyes landed on me. She straightened her back and held her head high. Perhaps it occurred to her that this only made her husband look even shorter, because she immediately dropped her head again.

  I had no right to pity her. Unlike me she had a husband to serve. But I was sorry for her nonetheless and said a little prayer for her to the gods of happiness, wealth, and fertility.

  If I ever did manage to win the favor of one of the Nephilim, no one would have to pray for me. I would get to ride away on one of his shoulders, holding a lock of his legendary purple-tinged black hair, while my neighbors stared up at me in awe.

  Despite my secret wanderings after receiving my father’s good news about the Nephilim’s poor sight, I had never seen one. And so it was with great anticipation that I peeked my head around Noah’s shoulder.

  CHAPTER 7

  MY HUSBAND’S TENT

  To my disappointment, I saw only trees.

  Someday soon I hope to see one of the Nephilim and have him look upon me and find me ordinary and unmarked, no different than any other woman. Gods, is this so much to ask?

  “You see how God provides for the righteous,” Noah said.

  My disappointment faded, though not completely. “Are those your trees, my lord?”

  “They are mine, but their gifts shall be ours.”

  And what gifts! There were bunches of dates hanging heavily from beneath a palm’s long leaves. Nuts from another palm decorated the dirt. Leaf-shaped pieces of shade lay sweetly upon the ground. Yet somehow the horde of women and children’s voices continued to grow quieter, and when I looked back, I saw that they did not follow, but instead grew smaller and smaller as we traveled away from them.

  “My lord, how do you keep the neighbors from raiding your bounty?”

  “Any man who tries to steal from me risks his
life. If he takes one of my sheep or goats, it will bite him and cause him to stumble so that he falls and breaks his neck. If he steals from my well, he will tumble in and drown. The God of Adam also watches over my trees. He riddles their leaves with thorns so that only I can reach between them for the fruit. You will sometimes hear people thudding to the ground, and these are the wicked who try to steal our fruits. The Lord sends poisoned juices down the bark when thieves come near.” These were as many words in a row as Noah had spoken to me, and I hoped they were true.

  The ass huffed in indignation as he was forced to step on the nuts that lay in his path. But he continued until he reached the deepest shade of the palm trees, where, abruptly, he came to a halt.

  “We are home, child,” Noah said.

  In the morning shade of the palm trees was a small tent. Noah’s tent.

  I waited for his command. “We are home,” he repeated. “Get down.” I dismounted as quickly as I could, considering the raw state of my hindquarters. Noah dropped the reins and climbed down in front of me.

  The trunks of the trees were too large to tie a donkey to without a long rope. Noah did not seem concerned. He took the riding blanket and saddlebags off the animal. The donkey sat down, and I could not blame him.

  I, however, would not sit down again for as long as possible. Before journeying across the desert on Noah’s donkey, I had spent most of my life standing, squatting, or lying on my side. My hindquarters were so thoroughly chafed that I would have to sleep on my stomach for many nights. If I could manage to sleep in a town so full of barbarians.

  A herd of goats and another of sheep grazed on the first patch of grass I had seen all day. I had never observed goats so close to a sleeping tent, but perhaps Noah had no choice. If the women wanted to tear off my tunic, then they might also risk being bitten and stumbling upon their heads in order to tear the wool off Noah’s sheep and roast the meat beneath.