The Sinners and the Sea

by Rebecca Kanner

  Noah says nothing, but Shem does not miss the opportunity to please one of the few girls left in the world, even though she is many moons from ripeness. “Yes,” he says, “I have seen to it.”

  There is actually only one rope. What feels like a whole moon past but may be only yesterday, Noah wanted to throw it overboard. “Japheth could fall into the sea while defending the ark,” I protested. Noah sighed and walked away, leaving me with the rope and the small hope that if Javan is alive, we can rescue her.

  Zilpha looks gratefully up at Shem. “Thank you, brother.”

  Noah bangs his staff against the floor to get our attention back. “When Japheth needs to rest—”

  “I do not need to rest, Father. God keeps me awake.”

  “I am sure He does,” Ham says.

  “When Japheth needs to rest,” Noah repeats, “Ham or Shem will be lookout and will alert me at the first sign of life on the sea.”

  Everyone goes about his or her business except Ham, who comes and puts a hand on my back at the lowest part. The part that aches worse than any other. He rubs gently before going to shovel dung.

  • • •

  Later, the horn sounds one long note. Noah has a special pattern of blasts for each of us, and this one is mine.

  I come to sit beside him, each of us on our own sleeping blanket. Together we listen to the beasts and to the crashing of the sea all around. He does not speak. Yet I do not think he has called me here because he wants company. He has always preferred to be alone.

  “Wife,” he begins, “I am sorry.”

  “Do not be. Our sons will help me now, and I will no longer have to bend my back over the animals’ dung.”

  “I am sorry for much more than this.”

  It feels as though a hand has suddenly gripped my heart. What has happened? Or worse, What is going to happen?

  “You see, wife, after the first two hundred years, I began to get tired. All those I loved died, and the newness of life wore off; little brought me joy. Since then it has seemed that I watch life but am not truly a part of it. I do not remember what it is like to be in the center of it. Each year I observe from a greater distance.

  “And what I observe above all else is evil increasing upon the earth. It spreads from one person to the next like a plague—the worst plague I have ever seen, and I have seen many. There were a few good people, but they have long since passed.

  “Then one day God called to me, telling me to rectify the evil upon the earth. I was to call the people to the Lord the way I had been called, except He would not speak directly to them. He would speak only to me, and I would deliver His words.

  “I did as He commanded, yet still evil continued to dwell in the heart of man.

  “Though people have sinned since the time of Adam and murdered each other since the time of Cain, it has gotten worse each year. People are—were—wickeder than their parents, and their children were wickeder yet.”

  He leans toward me, trying to see my face. Our noses are not more than a cubit apart. I feel as though I can smell each of the years he has been upon the earth. His skin smells of dirt, desert, sorrow, and the smoke of a thousand fires.

  Still we are too far apart for him. He leans even closer and squints at my face. Has he ever truly looked at me? And when I looked at him, did I really see him? His eyes are full of tiny red veins the same shape as the lightning that cracks around the ark. They have seen enough of what they have seen already. Now they want to see me. I did not realize how much I wanted him to really look at me until this moment, when it is too late. I am certain he can no longer truly see anything.

  “Wife.” He reaches his old hand, which is as steady as a young man’s, out toward my leg and sets it upon my knee. Even through my tunic, I can feel the cracks and calluses on his palm. “I feared finding wickedness in our sons, so I could not bear to look too closely at them.”

  I am too shocked to reply. I thought he did not care very deeply for our sons, but perhaps the opposite was true. He cared too much.

  “I was not present for their boyhoods, and you were more alone than you should have been.”

  Husband, it is you who were alone. I do not say this aloud, because I do not wish to wound him. He is wounded already. Yet I cannot stop myself from saying, “Do not worry for me; I was far from alone. I was with our sons.”

  He does not flinch at my words, and he does not look away. “You were. And so it brings me a hundred years’ worth of happiness to tell you that since God has seen fit to save our sons, I have hope that they will not be wicked after all. And we must make certain of this, or God may decide to start again.”

  “Start again?”

  “Kill us all.”

  CHAPTER 36

  BEYOND THE REACH OF LIGHT

  Most of the animals on the ark are too shaken and disturbed to mate, but no matter how pregnant Ona is, or how violently the sea rocks the ark, Shem slinks away from his tasks and goes to her. He pulls her deep down the rows of caged beasts, beyond the reach of the light from our little flames. Deep enough that our ears cannot separate human cries from those of the animals.

  Ona’s belly continues to grow, and one day she can no longer fit between the cages.

  I am feeding the chickens when I hear Shem coaxing her: “This is far enough. No one will see.”

  I am glad for her that the sea is calmer than usual. I hope the ark will remain steady until they are done.

  Noah climbs down the steps from the deck and sounds the horn. Two short blasts and a long one, the signal that we are all to come to him. “Gather with the lighter beasts!” he calls. I get more oil for our lamp and walk with Herai and Ham to the meeting place. I notice how gaunt our faces are and how big our eyes look. It is as if our eyes have eaten our cheeks. Zilpha is already there, reclining on some blankets that have been piled up for Noah to kneel upon when he speaks to God.

  Japheth appears, chest pressed proudly out in front of him as he declares, “I am here, Father.”

  “I know,” Noah says. “Do you think I am blind?”

  No one answers.

  “Now that we are all here—”

  Japheth interrupts, “Shem is not here, Father.”

  “I can see that.” Noah sounds the horn one short blast for Shem, but he does not come. “Well, go get him,” he commands Japheth. Then, as if it is Japheth’s fault that we are being delayed, he adds, “We will wait.”

  Japheth returns alone. “I cannot bring him, Father. He is with Ona.”

  “I ordered Ona to rest until my grandson arrives. Tell Shem not to speak with her; she must sleep.”

  “He is not speaking with her.”

  “Stubborn child, go get him at once!”

  “He is lying with her.”

  Color flares in Noah’s cheeks. He swings his staff back and forth on the floor before him to clear a path. He moves more quickly than he has in many moons. It is hard not to fall behind.

  When we reach Shem and Ona, Shem is just rising up from his knees. Noah uses his staff to knock Shem away from Ona. Her backside is red from the force of Shem’s attentions.

  “Ignorant mule,” Noah yells at Shem. “This is the first son of the new world! I will lock you in the bowels of the ship if you go near him again.”

  Ona rises heavily, unsteadily, from her hands and knees. The thin blanket beneath her has not kept the floor from scraping her palms. She stands, and her tunic falls over her swollen belly and hips. She listens to Noah’s words with her hand in its usual place upon her low back. Though her back must hurt even more than mine, her brow softens; she is relieved.

  “I am sorry, Father,” Shem says, “I did not know it was forbidden.”

  “Then why are you all the way back here instead of on your sleeping blankets?”

  “I did not want to bother anyone.”

  “You have failed in this,” Noah says, “as I know you will fail in many things. Only Japheth may lie with his wife, and only until she is with child.”
He does not chastise Ona. He raises his staff to point at her belly. “Herai will watch over you and the child,” he says. “You must rest now.”

  “What did you wish to talk about at the gathering place?” I ask.

  “The importance of appearing righteous before God.” Noah gives Shem a thwack to the ribs before he turns and walks away.

  I doubt a thwack from Noah’s staff will keep Shem from the pleasure of women for long. He stares at Herai as she helps Ona back to her sleeping blankets.

  CHAPTER 37

  A SHIP IN THE DISTANCE

  Whenever the storm subsides for more than a few breaths, our thoughts come back to us. It is not a happy reunion.

  The quieter the sea, the more haunted we are.

  Our heads are full of people who are not on the ark. We think of them more than we did when we knew them, and sometimes more than we think of one another. We find it impossible that they no longer exist in this world.

  They are here, all the more so in their absence.

  When I gaze at Herai, I think of Javan saving her from drunken mercenaries. When I look at Zilpha, I picture Manosh with his long fingers wrapped around the handle of his sword until Zilpha touches him and he releases his grip.

  When I look at the sea, I think always of my giant.

  Each time I hear Noah talking to God, I wonder if he too is afraid of the ship in the distance. Does he even know of it? I have started to think of that ship as much as the one that shelters me.

  Sometimes we accidentally call out the names of the dead. One day Noah goes to the hatch to summon Japheth down from the deck: “Manosh,” he yells impatiently. When Shem sleeps, I hear him muttering the names of women I assume are whores. I call Herai Javan so often that she comes to her dead mother’s name.

  It is not only by accident that we invoke the names of those who are not here. Zilpha prays aloud for her second cousins, perhaps so we will not forget our debt to them. She thanks them for the lumber they have given us, “without which we would all have drowned.” Herai cries for Javan. She has someone to mourn, so she has learned to speak, naming her loss to keep from losing it completely. “Mwahfah,” she cries.

  I cry too sometimes. I know with a certainty I did not before that my father has passed into the afterlife. A deep well of sadness has opened within me. Perhaps this is why I have started to think of the three boys that came out of their mother at the same time. I wonder if I will see them when I die, and if my sons are worthy replacements.

  • • •

  “Father,” Japheth calls one day as lightning violently rends the sky. “There is a ship no more than half a league away!”

  I hear Herai’s eager, inflectionless wail, and then her footsteps sound up the ramp to the deck.

  Together we look out across the sea. There is only darkness. The lightning has returned to the palms of God. He holds it there no matter how desperately we beg Him to let even the smallest spark fall so that we might see the ship Japheth speaks of.

  Noah sounds the horn two short and then one long note. “Prepare,” he says. We light the lamps. Shem and Japheth frantically sharpen copper swords and daggers. Zilpha brings a mammoth to the second level. She wants to take it on deck in case the ship in the distance is Manosh’s. She says, “My second cousins are large, but we will have little trouble pulling them aboard.”

  “Wait at the ramp to the deck,” Noah yells down to her. “You are not used to so much wind.”

  “I have traveled the desert. The only wind I am not used to is none.”

  “This wind is sharp and full of teeth. It will break your skin.”

  She hesitates, then steps away from the ramp.

  Ham collects dung shovels and other tools that can be used as weapons. Noah asks for my meat knife. I retrieve it from under my sleeping blanket. It is a weapon small enough for me to wield, and I am used to the feel of it in my hand. “Will not I need it?” I ask as I give it to him. I have kept it hidden so Japheth could not claim it as a weapon that he, as defender of the ark, should possess.

  Noah closes his eyes with the knife clutched tightly in his hand, trying to summon the answer. He opens them abruptly and holds the knife out to me. “I do not know,” he says. I wish he had not chosen this time to be honest. I wish even that he had said “yes” instead of “I do not know.”

  I leave my hands at my sides. “There is something I need more than this knife.”

  “Right now there is not. Take it.”

  “Husband, do not let me die without a name.”

  He presses his lips together. Has he not thought of a name for me in the nineteen years that I have been his wife? I will forgive him for this if he gives me one now.

  Instead, he says, “This is your thought as we prepare to fight for future generations? You are the wife of Noah and mother to three sons. Is this not enough? Do not ask for too much, or God will see that you are ungrateful and take what He has given you already.”

  He lets the knife fall from his hand onto the floor at my feet. Then he walks away. I suppose he is going to find another place to pray, since I have ruined this one.

  After a moment, I pick up the knife. If Noah and my sons die when we meet the other ship, who will I be?

  • • •

  I help Ona into the sheep cage and gaze with them at her strange, beautiful face before I cover it with straw. If anyone finds her, he will keep her, even if only to gaze upon.

  She sneezes.

  “Do not do that,” I say.

  She sneezes again.

  The sheep are staring at where Ona’s eyes were visible only a breath ago. The ewe comes and rubs her wet nose against the hay. Ona sneezes, then sneezes again. I unbury her face.

  “Help me over to the large manlike creatures” she says, struggling to a sitting position. “If you do not, I will scream and punch my belly.”

  “There are other, more peaceful animals.”

  “Not huge furry ones I can hide behind.”

  “Ones that will not kill you.”

  She laughs. “They are gentle with me.”

  As soon as the words leave her mouth, I imagine they are true. The furry beasts are indeed like men, except that they do not ride donkeys or go on about God.

  “They are not so fond of Shem,” Ona says. “But they will not hate you.”

  I have been saving the majority of my rations of dried fruit. She waits until I return with them. Her stomach is so large, she can barely walk. We move slowly down the ramp to the bowels of the ark. I have been forced to come down here only once before, when Ham was throwing up too violently to feed the larger beasts and Shem was nowhere to be found.

  A roar comes from a few cubits away. Another roar answers the first. Soon beasts on every side are joining their voices to the terrible chorus.

  Ona talks as we make our way to the large manlike creatures. “They are all saying, ‘I am alive!’ Some are saying, ‘Fear me, I am alive,’ and others are saying, ‘I am alive, please, look at me!’ This little beast”—she points to a large fur-covered animal with stocky legs, a long snout, and thick claws—“who is pacing back and forth, says, ‘I am hungry,’ and this she-wolf says, ‘Do not come any closer to my cubs, or you and I might both lose our lives.’ This rough-skinned beast with a horn upon his nose is saying, ‘I am grouchy again today,’ and this great lizard wants to know where all the light went.”

  “I fear it is gone for good.”

  “God will tire of the clouds. He will wake up with them one morning and decide He no longer likes them. Then He will use the wind to smack them and send them away, like men do to the girls who lose their beauty while you lie with them.”

  I raise the lamp to look into her huge eyes. She ignores the lamplight and my stare. “What would you know of not being beautiful?” I ask.

  “Well, nothing yet.”

  I am certain that as long as she can open her eyes, she will not know what it is like not to be anything but lovely.

  I move the l
amp in front of us again and look at the bars of each cage along our path, to make sure a paw cannot reach out from between them. Ona does not fit easily in small spaces. When we come to a narrow path between a cage of the beasts with horns upon their noses and another of llamas, I let her go first, and then I push while she curses.

  I finally force Ona between the cages. I am breathing so heavily, I almost do not notice that the animals have gone silent in order to listen. Though I am faint, I am afraid to rest against the cages or place my hand on the bars to relieve the weight on my feet. Instead, I lean against Ona. She falls on her hands and knees, and I fall with her.

  I see a fat ashy-gray hand several cubits ahead of us. The hand is turned sideways, reaching through the bars of its cage to secure the latch on the outside of the door. I wonder if the sea has driven me to madness.

  The large manlike beast stands at least two heads taller than I do. He appraises me with a single sweep of his eyes, then reaches his ashy-gray hand back through the bars of the cage to unlatch the door. He holds it open, and Ona gives him the fruit. The she-beast, who is sitting at the back of the cage, makes a noise that sounds like a happy belch. When Ona lies beside the she-beast, it begins to sift through her hair. The male closes the door and drops back onto all fours to eat the dried prunes and apricots.

  I have not been invited in. I would not go in even if I were, but still it would have been nice to be asked. I turn and go back the way I came. The animals look different to me now; their eyes seem more like people’s. I wonder what they are thinking. They do not roar for me this time. Perhaps they were not roaring for me before but for Ona. I wish I too could rest with the manlike beasts and not worry about anything for a few breaths.

  I return to my sleeping blanket to get the meat knife from where I have hidden it beneath my sleeping blanket. It is gone. Did Noah decide to take it after all? I go up on deck without it.

  The rain is like little hatchets hurled from the sky. I could return to the second level and remain with Zilpha and her mammoth. But my feet will not move me from my place against the wall of the deck. I want to know who besides us exists in the world.