The Sinners and the Sea

by Rebecca Kanner

  Before anyone could answer, I ran to gather goat meat and lentils.

  CHAPTER 21

  THE OTHER PROPHET’S DAUGHTER

  Zilpha and the slave were the first to come to the cookfire. Everyone except Noah soon followed. He remained in the road in the same place where he had stood when the caravan was barely discernible on the horizon. He stared in the direction his cousins had come from, as if he had no interest in us and were waiting for something more important to appear. He looked so ridiculous there that I felt both pity and anger.

  The rest of us crouched around the cookfire, all except Zilpha. The slave laid a blanket on the ground for her. “You will know,” Manosh said, “that Zilpha must not go unprotected from the sun.”

  “My father gave me this parasol, which he has blessed. It will keep the sun from stealing my years.”

  “Have you never seen daylight?” Ham asked her.

  Manosh ignored Ham’s question. “You will also know,” he said, “she does not—”

  “I saw it once,” Zilpha said. “Surely I will be blind a few years before I would have had I never looked at it, but I do not regret it. Now I have seen it and do not need to look again.”

  Manosh continued. This time he spoke too loudly to be interrupted. “You will also know that she does not squat or needlessly tire herself in any other way.”

  “My strength must be preserved for the many years to come,” Zilpha said. She propped her head up on one little arm and tried to drink her stew in this position. It slopped onto the blanket. Surely it would have been easier to drink in a squatting position, but she remained prone on the wet blanket, surely getting no less hungry than she had been when she arrived.

  I looked over at Ham to make sure he was not about to say something cruel. He was staring at Zilpha. I could not tell whether he was staring in awe or disgust.

  Watching her go hungry caused my jealousy to recede a hair’s width, which was enough that I got some bread for her. “Thank you, my good mother,” she said. Again, “mother.” Perhaps even the daughter of a prophet needs one.

  Without Noah near, Manosh looked from one of my sons to another, deciding which one to address, before grudgingly settling his gaze upon Ham. “Zilpha’s father was a great prophet. He told us of this drought we are in now, and of a great struggle between mankind and the God of Adam. Zilpha is his one remaining child. The rest grew old and died, as most people do. Zilpha must carry the blood of Kesh to many sons.”

  Though it was considered bold for a woman to ask questions, I ventured, “And Zilpha, how old is she?”

  “I am seven,” she said, “and I will live for seven hundred years. This is why Noah wants me with you when the end of the world comes. If I am going to live through it, there is a greater chance that the people around me will too.”

  Finally, I had met someone as mad as Noah.

  “Blaspheme!” Noah cried from his place in the road. He did not address Zilpha directly. “The girl is a virgin, and that is her worth.”

  “Then if I tell you I am not a virgin, you will not want me on your boat?”

  Manosh raised one bushy eyebrow at Zilpha but did not chastise or strike her. He also did not give anyone else time to do so. “She is the only chance that Kesh’s blood will be carried on to a son,” he said, “and her father prophesied that in this, she will be successful.”

  Zilpha would not be ignored. She raised her arm. The slave lifted the parasol slightly, and the girl calmly rose up and turned to Noah. “If I tell you I am not a virgin, you will not want me on your boat?” she repeated. The apricots and cream had not left her voice.

  When she first arrived, I’d thought that Ham had met his match. I now saw that it was not Ham who had met his match but Noah.

  “The girl is untouched, and that is her only value,” Noah said to his cousins, his sons, and me. I am certain none of us believed him. If that were his only concern in choosing a daughter-in-law, and seven-year-olds would do, he could have found countless others.

  His distaste for his cousins and Zilpha increased the suspicion I’d had ever since we rode into town on the back of his goat-sized donkey: He liked living among sinners. He did not care for anyone’s righteousness but his own.

  • • •

  “We are still one wife short,” I told Noah. In fact, we were two wives short; Javan had not let Shem’s wife leave her tent.

  “God will find another,” Noah said.

  Noah, my sons, and I were in our own tent. We had just lain down on our sleeping blankets. Zilpha and Noah’s cousins had made camp on the other side of our herd. I heard laughter, and I feared they were talking about us.

  Japheth looked at Noah but remained silent. The sun had not yet set, and Noah had not told him he could speak. Ham, for once, was quiet as well. And Noah. Noah was as grouchy as the grievances of half a millennium could make a man.

  “Kesh had wealth enough to buy himself the title of ‘prophet.’ He is not a prophet but a murderer of shepherds and a thief who steals from the dead.”

  I did not know how to ask him why he wanted to make Zilpha Ham’s wife without sounding as though I were questioning his wisdom. But I wanted to know. I said only, “Zilpha?”

  “Ham’s marriage to her will bring us many of the spoils they inherited from her father. They have goats enough to pay men to bring the animals God has commanded us to take onto the ark, and lumber enough to build it.”

  “What do they want in return?” I asked.

  “A place on the ark. They believe that Zilpha secures this place for them.”

  CHAPTER 22

  THE ARK

  Make yourself an ark of gopher wood; make it an ark with compartments, and cover it inside and out with pitch. This is how you shall make it: the length of the ark shall be three hundred cubits, its width fifty cubits, and its height thirty cubits.

  GENESIS 6:14–15

  “Three hundred by fifty?” Ham complained to Noah. “Does God want to tip us over?”

  “That is plenty wide, fool,” Japheth said. “Besides, you will be lucky if He lets you on at all.” Japheth should not have said this aloud, knowing how Noah considered talk of luck to be blasphemy.

  But Noah did not waste time chastising either son. He said only, “Hurry.”

  This was what he said each morning before the sun came up as well. “Hurry. There is not much time.” The hard work helped keep us from thinking of the ridiculousness of our undertaking. We were much too tired to question Noah.

  Our first task was buying three hundred by fifty cubits of land, which was possible only because of the hundreds of goats, dyed fabrics, and gems Manosh had brought from his home in the fertile north. Noah wanted to be the one to present these riches. He made sure to stand in front of his cousin as they bargained the neighbors off their land. But people gazed right over the shock of hair on top of Noah’s head, sometimes even standing on tiptoe to behold Manosh.

  My sons pulled out stakes and took down the neighbors’ tents, letting the patched-together goatskins fall to the ground as they hurried on to the next plot of Noah’s new land.

  Zilpha had left with her second cousins. “Now you have seen her virtue and her youth. We will give her to you when we all return to board the ark,” Monosh had said. This left only me to do all of the women’s work. I alone cooked, cleaned, and helped the neighbors fold their tents and pack their stakes. But I did not feel like I was helping them so much as I was helping my family to their land. I did not ask whether they had somewhere to go.

  One woman kept looking at the sack of gems her son was holding. When my boys came to take down her tent, she cried, “Wait!” She ran to open the sack and gaze inside it for a few breaths, allowing herself to be convinced. She turned to my boys. “Very well,” she said, “go ahead.”

  • • •

  Once there was a space large enough to construct the ark, Noah drew an outline, counting paces as he dragged his staff through the sand. Some of the townspeople came to
watch. They did not enter the space where the ark would be, and I was surprised by this show of respect until I saw that they were running their feet back and forth over the lines Noah had drawn. Almost as soon as he completed a section, another was lost.

  On the third day, people tired of this game. Or perhaps they wanted Noah to finish the outline so they could see it. Noah did not need light to work, and sometime in the early morning of the fourth day, he completed his drawing of the ark.

  When the sun rose, we stood with the townspeople, staring at it. The outline was so big that we could see it only in parts. We could make out more as it stretched away and got smaller. Then the impression of Noah’s staff in the dusty earth seemed to fade away, leaving the ark open at the far end. If the wind picked up, our ark might disappear. That may have been a relief, except for the townspeople’s unending ridicule.

  We walked the length of it, weaving through the people of the mob. They were so taken with the drawing that they did not bother us. We saw that everywhere the ark was the same size, it did not get smaller at the far end, as it had appeared to. It was a long narrow rectangle with three levels.

  “A flat bottom?” Ham asked. “Are not boats supposed to be pointed at the bottom?”

  “And are you going to hold it balanced while we build it?” Japheth sneered.

  “It will be weighted on the lowest level with the large beasts,” Noah said. He explained that the diagonal line between levels was a ramp, and the two lines near each other toward the top were where a long window would be all around the ark.

  Not that there would be much light to let in.

  Long into the night, I lay awake on my sleeping blanket. I could not sort the dread from the euphoria from the exhaustion from the feeling that already one world was ending and another beginning. Maybe the sea really would spread to our ark. If not, perhaps we could take the ark north in pieces and put it together right beside the sea.

  I had never been on a boat before. In fact, I had never seen the sea. My father’s tent was half a league west of the Nile, and the closest I’d come to witnessing a great sea was being near the river during the hottest moons of the year when it rushed over its banks faster than man or beast could run. Once it even rushed over the mud dykes that men had built around our village to stop it. Though the water came only as high as my sandals, my heart pounded hard enough that I feared it might burst. I did not know how to be in the water—how to keep it from swallowing me. I had heard that people could survive in it for short periods if they kicked it with their legs and hit it down with their hands. They called this battle “swimming.” I hoped never to have to engage in it.

  One night while my father snored upon his sleeping blankets, I had used a meat knife to cut off a lock of my hair. Then I slipped quietly from the tent. Some villages sacrificed virgins, but I prayed that the lock of hair I threw to the Nile would sate the hungry waters within.

  • • •

  The morning after Noah completed the outline of the ark, we were awakened by shouting. It was so many voices thick I could not separate one person’s words from another’s. The people sounded as incoherent as a distant mob, yet too loud to be distant.

  There was no use in speaking—no one would hear, least of all Noah. I looked at him, and he squinted back at me. Then he took a deep breath and rose from his sleeping blanket.

  My boys and I followed him to the tent’s door flap, and peeked around his bony shoulder at the mob. They were staring at the outline of the ark. Children, and even some adults, stood on each other’s shoulders, pointing, shouting, and laughing so hard they fell to the ground.

  They were not looking at us. Yet I knew that it was us they laughed at.

  Noah rushed from the tent without his staff and elbowed his way through the horde. I checked that my head scarf was secure and followed. “What is it?” he asked.

  He seemed so helpless with neither his staff nor his sight. I had never seen him this way, and I was certain my sons had not either. I wanted to get him back to the tent before they did. The crowd had quieted to watch us.

  I could see the part of the outline closest to us. Or rather, I couldn’t see it. The ark Noah had drawn in the sand was covered in rocks. At least one day’s work would be lost clearing all of them away. A man picked up one of the rocks and threw it at us. It landed with a clack against the rocks in front of our feet.

  “Husband,” I whispered into his old ear, “let us return to the tent.”

  “I do not understand,” he said.

  I grabbed his arm and turned around. Someone blocked my path. “It is your boat, sunken to the bottom of a sea of rocks,” Javan said.

  There were so many people gathered that I hadn’t heard her sneaking up behind us. The townspeople had let her through, her and her brutes. She smiled threateningly at Noah, and then—for much longer—at me. Perhaps I should have been flattered that she refused to believe what was so obvious to me: I had no say in the matter of Herai’s marriage into Noah’s family. I am not like you, I wanted to say to her. I am a good, obedient wife. But maybe the real difference between us was that I lacked courage.

  Javan raised her hand and I flinched. The flinch was good enough for her, she did not strike me. She stepped around us, and her boys followed. They admired their handiwork for a few breaths before leaving us with it, and with the laughter of the townspeople, which began again with even greater fervor.

  If we could not do something as simple as keep Javan from destroying an outline in the sand, how could we hope to build an ark?

  As though Noah could hear my thoughts, he said, “We do not need an outline. God will guide us.”

  • • •

  Whole forests of gopher wood were dragged through the desert sand, pulled by oxen and great beasts. Noah had told me the beasts were called mammoths.

  As soon as whichever cousin brought the wood had left with his slaves and mammoths, the onlookers came and hauled it all away. Noah yelled about God’s wrath, but this did not concern the people as much as jewels.

  “Have you any more gems to buy this wood from us?” a man asked.

  Noah had no more jewels, so they kept our wood and mocked us.

  “What do you need this wood for? A ship to sail across the desert dust? We will put this wood to better uses—brothels and taverns.”

  “Why don’t you build a ship of rocks? You can give it a rudder of sand and a sail of air.”

  Someone threw a stone at us. Another soon followed. Noah did not seem to notice. “There is more gopher wood in the world,” he told his sons and me as a stone flew right under his nose.

  More rocks rushed past us. They came close enough that I felt the air move, but they did not hit us. Noah’s God was great indeed.

  Yet He did not hinder the skill of Sorum’s thieves. Even if one of Noah’s cousins brought more wood the next day, we would lose a day’s work. And what good would more lumber be if we could not keep hold of it?

  “Javan could help us,” I told Noah. I was thinking that her protection of our ark could only truly be repaid by allowing Herai to marry one of our sons.

  Noah knew my thoughts. “Herai can never be part of my line,” he said.

  “We still have no wife for Japheth. The God of Adam has instructed you to put your sons and their wives on the ark. How will we repopulate the world with only a whore and a little girl?”

  “When the flood hits, we will have our pick of every girl who wants to live.”

  I did not know whether there would be a flood, but it would not help my cause to say so. “With no lumber to finish our ark, we will drown.” Because not being special to his God would seem many times worse to Noah than death, I added, “Like everybody else.”

  “My cousin will leave us a mammoth tomorrow, and we will lose no more lumber.”

  The cousin came not only with his slaves but with Zilpha. It was her mammoth that was left to protect our lumber. “When I heard about the loss of our lumber, I insisted I return to you
,” she said. “My beast has been trained his whole life to guard me. Methuselah has bestowed upon him a blessing of wisdom and strength. No one can take anything the beast watches over.”

  CHAPTER 23

  ZILPHA’S BELOVED MAMMOTH

  Zilpha loved her beast. She often stroked his trunk or had her slave help her onto his back while she held the parasol over her head herself. She stayed up there for many positions of the sun, looking down on the world as she had done when she traveled with Noah’s cousins to our camp.

  Great and much loved as the mammoth was, I feared for his safety. While it was true that the stones flying past Noah, my boys, Zilpha, and me never once touched us, the mammoth was not so lucky. Fortunately, hitting a beast that large with a stone is like striking a grown man with a date seed.

  But the would-be thieves continued to search for ways to bring the mammoth down.

  • • •

  Early one morning, as the sun had only just started to reach across the desert, there was a ground-shaking THUD. Japheth rushed to peek around a large mound of gopher wood. Ham and Shem came up behind him. When Noah tapped on Japheth’s back with his staff, all three boys moved to the side to make way for him; they had to do their best to believe in their father and the flood he prophesied, or feel like weaklings and fools for obeying him. None of us wanted to think about what the mob camped all around the ark would do to us if the flood never came.

  Zilpha walked as quickly as she could without moving ahead of the parasol the slave held between her and the sun. “No,” she said when she saw the mammoth lying on the ground. She rushed to kneel beside it, and the slave followed with the parasol. She caressed the beast’s tusk and pressed her head against his cheek. Instead of lying with his legs tucked under his large body, he lay completely on his side.