The Sinners and the Sea

by Rebecca Kanner

  “Do not recline while the sun is in the sky.”

  “It will take years—”

  “And do not question my decisions.”

  • • •

  Besides the overseers, only one of the men was able to keep any meat on his bones, and this was the cook. The rest toiled for no more reward than the smallest amount of goat and nuts it took to keep a man alive. They did not speak much, but when they did, it was in a language I had never heard.

  “Do you understand any of their language?” I asked Ham.

  “Enough to know that there are at least three. Some greet each other by touching their own chests, others by mouthing something they never say aloud.”

  I watched more carefully. Only some of the dark men had rings in their ears. These and the men who were the same color we were squatted while they wielded their hammers, while the others labored on hands and knees. They all starved and sweated beneath the pounding sun.

  Once they discovered Noah did not hear well, the men with rings in their ears sang together in low voices. Every time Japheth told his father of this and Noah came to listen, the men went silent.

  “Mother,” Japheth insisted, “tell him.”

  “I am sorry, son, but I heard nothing of the noise you speak of.”

  When Noah turned away, Japheth spat at the ground near my feet. It was so hot and dry that I feared the ark would catch fire, yet Japheth had brought forth what little moisture was left behind his parched lips to show his scorn for me.

  • • •

  I was carrying a pot of lentils to the cookfire one day when the desert seemed to wave in the distance. The wave came closer, as if a pack of animals was rushing toward me beneath the sand. I tried to move from its path, but the sun had taken my strength.

  The wave hit me, sending the hidden fire in the sand burning up the length of my legs, through my body and all the way to my head. I started to fall. Before I landed upon the ground I was lifted off my feet and carried to the new patch of shade the ark had given us. First my backside, then my back, and last my legs and head were gently laid upon the ground. Sweat that was not my own tingled on my cheek and arm.

  Suddenly there was a great commotion. Japheth was yelling and I heard the smack of a stick against flesh. “Leave him be,” I tried to say. But when I opened my mouth my throat seemed to crack in half.

  “Enough, Japheth,” Ham cried. “Mother has sun sickness. The slave has done yet more of our work for us and brought her to the shade. Now we must bring her water. Put down the stick.”

  “Shut up and draw her scarf down over her forehead,” Japheth commanded.

  I felt the scarf being pulled lower over my brow. I opened my eyes and there was Ham’s face before me. Not more than ten cubits from us Japheth beat the slave, who did not make a sound; it was not the first time he had been beaten. Japheth’s stick broke, and he hurried to the pile of lumber to get another. Noah followed him back. “What goes on here beneath the eyes of the Lord?” he demanded.

  “Mother fell beneath the sun’s strength, and this slave rushed her to the shade. I will fetch Mother some water.”

  “This slave saw Mother’s brow, and cannot be left to spread word of it,” Japheth said.

  I knew from trying to rescue the three boys born at the same time that once you help someone you do not want any harm to come to him. “No,” I whispered. “He will tell no one of my mark.”

  Noah held his hand out for the branch Japheth had brought back.

  Japheth kept hold of it. “It must be done, Father.”

  “This slave does not speak our language and Manosh would not heed his words even if he did,” Noah said. “He is no threat to the God of Adam or His plan for us. When the hull is complete Manosh’s slaves will leave this land and never return.” He took the branch from Japheth’s hand and threw it into the desert. Then he walked away.

  The stick lay more than thirty cubits from where Noah had thrown it. I was glad to see that though my husband’s eyes and ears were worn down by his many years, his strength remained.

  I was about to close my eyes again when I caught a glimpse of the slave’s back. I wish I had not. My son had raised welts high up from the man’s flesh.

  The man did not look at me, and he did not rise. When Ham came back, he handed me a waterskin, and then handed one to the man. The man would not take it. This seemed to be at least some consolation to Japheth who snorted and stomped away. The man had a pink scar above his right eye. Besides the scar, his skin was so dark and wet it was like someone smeared olive oil across the night sky.

  When I had drunk enough water to find my voice, I told the man, “I am sorry for my son’s foolish temper.” I hoped my tone would convey the meaning of my words. But the man’s face did not change, just as it had not changed while Japheth beat him. He rose slowly, backed away a few cubits, and went to pick up his hammer.

  “Bring him the waterskin, Ham. Then he will know he did nothing wrong, and we will not appear unjust to the rest of the men.”

  “If we appeared just,” Ham replied while he did as I instructed, “they would get up and leave.”

  • • •

  When the hull was almost complete, Noah told Manosh to take the slaves away. “We will finish the ark ourselves,” he said.

  Manosh’s eyes widened. “Have you other slaves?”

  “God requires only my sons’ hammers to complete His ark.”

  “Six hands cannot complete this task in only one lifetime.”

  “I can see why it is me He chose,” Noah said as if he were speaking to himself but loudly enough for Manosh to hear. “Those who do not know His might will learn soon enough.”

  He beckoned to our sons and turned back to the ark.

  • • •

  It did not take long for the overseers to start yelling commands. The slaves quickly set down their hammers and gathered together what was left of the rations. Do they never think to turn upon their masters with those hammers they so easily set down? Perhaps the mammoths scared them. Or perhaps their spirits had been broken.

  “Have them bundle the timber too,” Manosh told his men.

  “No!” I cried. No one paid any attention to me.

  I hastened from the cookfire and ran ahead of the slaves to where Noah stood directing our sons, who by this point needed no direction in what length to cut each piece of gopher wood. “Husband,” I said, afraid that he had not heard.

  But Manosh had spoken loud enough for even Noah to hear. Noah slowly turned to face him. “You have already given us this gopher wood.”

  “And this gift you do not wish to return?”

  Slaves surrounded the pile of wood Japheth was measuring. Japheth glared up at them.

  “It is owed me, for taking Zilpha on board the ark.”

  “The ark is made by my slaves and of my lands—the lands I have lived on for six-hundred years. It will not forget me now. I will leave the lumber with you, for the girl, daughter of the prophet Kesh. But I do not leave it for good. Do not think to board the ark without us.”

  One of Manosh’s men shouted at the slaves. They lined up on either side of Manosh, facing the ark. It was time for Manosh to receive our thanks. He looked patiently down at Noah from where he sat upon his mammoth. I wished my husband would be quick about it so Manosh would take his eyes and his anger and his half-naked slaves away, and I could return to preparing the evening meal.

  “My sons have appreciated the help of your slaves,” Noah said stiffly.

  Manosh continued to stare down at him.

  “If we said ‘thank you’ a hundred times it would not be enough,” Shem said from where he stood beside Noah. “You have saved us many moons.”

  Manosh looked hard at Noah. “I know you would do the same for me. We are family, bonded by blood and the Lord’s blessing. We will journey together into the new world.” He walked his caravan in a tight half circle and turned back toward his home.

  If there truly was to be a flood,
then the men who had built the ark had saved our lives. I wanted to thank them, but they did not know my language, and I did not know theirs.

  CHAPTER 27

  A SIGN

  With construction of the hull almost complete, we could have spread out our sleeping blankets. Yet we never did. Zilpha and her slave slept next to each other on one end of the hull, while Noah, my boys, and I slept not more than a few cubits from one another on the other end. But I did not sleep much.

  After Manosh’s caravan left, people gathered around us once again. They seemed to sleep neither day nor night. The jeering had a new intensity. They called us mad, but they said it with such desperation that I began to think maybe we were not mad. I knew their secret; I could hear it in their voices. They were afraid.

  Rocks hit the side of the hull with so much force that each morning I expected to find holes in the wood. I might have assumed it was the children who threw them, except for the strength with which they hit. On the end, where there was only a skeleton of the great ark to come, we would occasionally see a stone somehow balanced upon the tip of a crossbeam. Noah called this a sign.

  “Of what?” I asked.

  “How perfect God’s aim will be when He hurls death upon the earth. He will drown the whole world except us.”

  To Noah and his God’s credit, we remained untouched by stones, despite that there were so many of them, we had to clean the hull multiple times a day. If we had been on sea instead of sand, we would have sunk.

  CHAPTER 28

  COUNTDOWN

  It took seven moons to build the ark. Once it was finished, you could not help but believe in the flood. As the ark’s shadow slowly passed over the crowd with the rising and setting of the sun, everyone must have known that they would die.

  My sons’ jaws were set as if in stone while they applied pitch—twice and sometimes three times—to the same section of gopher wood. Surrounded by desert drought for many leagues in all directions, we had begun to fear the sea.

  Noah tried to ease our dread. “It will rain not even two moons. Only forty days and forty nights.” To Japheth, he said, “I am entrusting you with slaughtering the herd.”

  Japheth went straight to work. He did not hesitate between slitting the throat of one goat and another except to wipe off his knife. The animals bleated, bled, lost control of their bowels, and died. My chore: to cut, clean, dry, and salt their meat.

  Zilpha would not rise from where she mourned her great beast. Noah stood over her and commanded her to help me.

  “No,” she said calmly from beneath her parasol.

  Noah did not have time to argue, so he turned to me and said, “Wife.”

  I knelt beside Zilpha’s sleeping blanket. “Daughter, I am sorry for the loss of your mammoth.”

  “Good,” she said.

  I asked if she would help me with the meat we needed for our journey.

  She did not want to damage her skin in the sun or roughen her hands with washing and scrubbing. “You are already worn,” she told me. “This skin”—she lightly touched her arm—“these eyes, and the bones of my fingers need to last me another six hundred and ninety-three years. The flood is only one tiny piece of my journey. I cannot spend all of myself on it.”

  I did not know how to argue with her and did not have time to figure it out. She seemed completely unconcerned about the end of the world, and this bothered me more than her refusal to help.

  • • •

  Finally, it came to pass that the one-eyed boy who had threatened to tell the world of my mark came back as a man whose arms and calves bulged with muscle. He had one green eye and one black and red eye socket that he uncovered for a moment when he saw me look down upon him. I quickly moved to the other side of the deck. “Grandmother!” he called after me.

  Noah did not leave the ark unless he had to relieve himself. None of us ever went far, and we seldom went alone. And so Jank camped near the ark and waited.

  I did not know if I should alert Noah. I considered telling Japheth, but I did not want him to come to any harm. Jank was a more formidable opponent than a starving, overworked slave.

  One afternoon when Noah walked onto the deck to survey his sons’ work, Jank called up to him. “Father! You must remember me.”

  “No, I mustn’t,” Noah said irritably.

  “I have come to ask for your blessing.”

  But Noah no longer seemed to hear him. He had finished looking over the deck and walked away.

  The next day Jank yelled, “The God of Adam has sent me here with a message for you. I must speak to you at once.”

  Noah and I were again on the deck. Noah briefly squinted down at Jank, who lifted the cloth tied at a steep angle around his head to show Noah his eye socket. I doubted Noah could see well enough to recognize the boy, or that he would remember him even if he could clearly see him.

  Noah easily ignored him. His hearing was fading almost as quickly as his sight. I envied him. It seemed as though God were shielding him from the world with the loss of his senses.

  But the one-eyed man could not have known this. Especially not after one day when he managed to get Noah’s attention. Noah was testing the side door of the ark, opening and closing it as if he had never seen a door before. I do not know why Noah stopped and squinted out at the man below.

  “Hello, my father! It is Jank. I spared your life. Can you spare your ear for a few breaths?”

  Without responding, Noah turned his attention back to the door.

  “God commands it,” the one-eyed man said.

  Noah’s nostrils flared. “Blasphemy! God did not send you to speak with me. He speaks to me Himself.”

  “I come bearing the knowledge of your God that you gave me nineteen years ago. I let you live, and your God let me live. And I told no one of what you now keep secret.” He looked hard at my head scarf. “Please repay my kindness by preserving my life. God asks that you take me with you on the ark.”

  Noah did remember Jank. I could tell by the blood that surged into his temples. He was coming alive as he used to when he yelled at the townspeople about the wrath of God. He had the look of a man in front of whom a large meal had just been placed.

  “You could not kill me, and that is why you believe in the God of Adam. But He does not believe any more in you than He does in all the other sinners whose evil He will drown along with their bodies.”

  “But Father, how did I get so old if He is not watching over me?”

  “You have gotten as old as you will.”

  “Why would the God of Adam save a man who is going to die?”

  “We are all going to die, child.”

  “Maybe it is you who has gotten as old as you will and will be the first to die. I think you can hardly see me at all.”

  “And yet I know who you are.”

  The one-eyed man spat, and despite the distance between us, I saw the canines he had sanded into sharp points. “Do not test me as you test that door, old man. I will tell people what I saw upon your wife’s brow. Then you will be killed, and God will be wise enough to give this ship to a younger man—one who has his sight, his hearing, and seed young enough to populate the new world.”

  Noah was unmoved by Jank’s threat. “The God of Adam will not let you on this ark even if you are the last man left alive. Your blood is unholy, and there is no place for it in the new world. God would rather begin all over again than begin with you.”

  “But God commands—”

  “Good-bye, boy,” Noah said, and closed the door.

  “Do not walk away from me!” Jank threatened the door. He waited, as if it might answer him. Then he yelled, “Do not make me reveal what I know!”

  “I have a bad feeling about this,” I told Noah that night. “Perhaps we should take the one-eyed man on the ark.”

  Noah refused.

  • • •

  The next morning, when I went to the cookfire, he was there. His green eye flashed at me, and before I could say or
do anything, he began screaming, “This woman is a demon! Tear the scarf from her head, and you will see!”

  I ran back into the ark. “What is it?” Ham demanded.

  “We are doomed,” I said. I could still remember my father saying this nineteen years earlier, but it had not seemed true until only a breath before.

  • • •

  The crowd screamed day and night for me to reveal myself, so they could know whether Jank spoke true. Fires were carried in from the town, and on Manosh’s first visit to the ark after taking away the slaves, he had to leave not only mammoths but also several overseers, to throw sand into the flames before they reached the ark.

  Manosh lowered his gaze onto my head scarf. “What is this talk of a demon?” he asked.

  “There is no demon among us unless you have brought one,” Noah replied.

  Manosh continued to stare at my head scarf. But he did not ask me to take it off.

  • • •

  The jeering became nastier, and I became less afraid of being adrift in the darkness with three hundred cubits’ worth of bugs and wild beasts.

  So perhaps I will be forgiven this cruelty: When the flood swelled inside distant clouds, I looked to them and tried to draw them near with my gaze. I hoped that Noah’s prophecy was true, despite all the people who had to die in order to make it so.

  I was not the only one who lost my reason. People made claims of thunder and lightning that only they could hear or see. Little girls pointed to bird droppings and swore that they came not from any bird but from the cloudless blue sky. “White rain,” they called it.

  Other clans were starting to build ships as well, and I was afraid they would tear our ark apart for wood.

  • • •

  It was a relief when one morning, after praying all night, Noah announced, “We must hurry to prepare. We have only seven days.”

  That evening Ham came to stand inside my little fence of stones. I was roasting goat meat and the smoke was so thick I could hardly see his face. “What of how Father told Manosh only a few days ago that the flood would not come for another moon?” he asked.