In the Shadow of the Ark

by Anne Provoost

  There were holes in various places in the floors and ceilings. Through them dangled rope ladders that looked as if they were meant for light, quick creatures. I went down one level on one of them, the ropes creaking under my weight, and I came to new cages, larger than the ones higher up, with capacious fodder troughs and mangers. I was now at one side of the ship, probably right next to the outer wall; if I tapped on the wood now, they would quite likely hear me out there. I kept still. I wanted to go back to the center section, to the gallery that seemed to curve toward a particular spot deep in the belly of the ship.

  By shuffling along carefully and giving my eyes enough time to adjust to the light that was growing ever fainter, I finally reached the open space at the end of the gallery, the only area that was not divided up into small cages and pens. This could be closed by a set of low double doors with wedges along the jambs in case the timber shrank or swelled, but for now they stood open invitingly. The space was walled with thick planks; outside sounds did not penetrate here. It felt like a cave from which you could not see the setting of the sun, let alone the sunrise. Once the door was shut, no light would ever penetrate this space. This had to be the place where what I feared would take place.

  The space was rather like a reception hall, with low seats along the walls, similar to the ones I had seen in large reed buildings constructed near the wetlands by important men to conduct discussions and drink tea. There were sacks of grain, fat jars of oil, pots and pans, spoons and stirring sticks. On the floor was a layer of sand to make a fire on, there was a hollow in the ground for playing shovelboard, a harp stood in one corner, and a lyre hung on a nail.

  This was not a place for dying. This was a living space, full of promise, where people would be talking and laughing, with the dwarf perhaps, if his song had made enough of an impression. It was the center where the builders, after much feinting, made their intentions clear. If this was a coffin, then where were the indications of a slow death? The stands for the amphoras were gigantic. How much drinking water could a jug that size hold?

  The ship sent a double message. It was a senseless structure in the middle of the desert, obviously intended to stay here and be scoured by the sand that would eventually smooth out the grooves and remove the layer of pitch. I had expected gloom and darkness, but what I had discovered was a city turned in upon itself, a hillside thickly built over, looking out on itself. This structure was intended to hum with life. Here there was room for stores of food and drinking water; here there were going to be people prepared for many things.

  I left the central space and hurried back up the gallery, but standing there again, looking at the maze of passages and ladders, made me feel even more overwhelmed. What was the builders’ grand plan, what bizarre dream had brought them to this? Who was the god who imposed this on them? And what was I doing here, in this cave full of pits and hollows for which there was no map and over which night was now rapidly falling, in this succession of snail shells, in this monstrous inner ear? Me, used to open plains, to wide waters, and boats with honest bellies full of fish and mats and jars, but never a roof. A roof is only for very long journeys, for leaving the wetlands, going up the river and then farther, up to the lagoon, and beyond that out to sea, being quite certain that the starting point will disappear and will never be found again….

  I heard a sound from a little higher up. Footsteps, very soft, because they were muffled by the wood shavings on the floor, but becoming clearer as they came closer. Put had followed me, the little villain who accused me of being curious! I darted into an open cage and waited for him to get closer. I would give him a fright.

  When he got to my level, I jumped out with a yell.

  But it was not Put. Someone shouted back: a woman’s voice. In the half dark, it did not take me long to see it was Neelata. I recognized her figure. She dropped her basket in fright, and its contents spilled out. She did not try to stop her things falling out, she just looked at me, aghast. I bent forward, grabbing for her things; round objects amongst them started rolling down the gallery; they would go on rolling as far as the ship’s well. They were small, painted boxes and smooth, colored stones for playing games, but also combs and beads and her little pumice stone.

  “Don’t shout like that, please,” she said. She did not scold me, but rather sounded surprised, as if this were a sanctuary.

  “The dog let me past,” I said.

  “I know. I saw you.”

  I felt around me for her things and put them back in the basket.

  “They’ll beat you if they find you here,” she said.

  With every movement of my hand, I became more aware that these were her personal belongings, that she was apparently bringing those on board, that obviously a place on the ark had been provided for her. “I was curious. I wanted to know … Is this a ship for people?”

  She gave no reply. She was counting the small stones, painted in glossy colors. They were part of a game that I knew. She had to have all of them or the game would not work. She rubbed them on her sleeve before putting them in the basket.

  “This is where we are going to wait till the water rises.” She looked at her stones. I was amazed at how well she could see in the gloom, because she kept polishing them and looking at them. “You are good with water,” she said when her basket was full. “Can you feel it coming? Will you warn us when it comes?” Hearing her talk about rising water made me think of the lakes where I had grown up, of floating reeds, of jumping from one flat boat to another, holding a taller person’s hand, spluttering and screaming with laughter if one of them capsized. But for her, the words had a very different effect. Nervously, she looked at the walls of the ship and at the layer of pitch, as if she suspected there were holes in it.

  “Water is a blessing,” I said. “Water brings wind and life. It makes the crops grow and gives the world color. It should not make you feel bad.”

  “The amount of it scares me,” she said. “The featureless, disorienting bulk of it.”

  That is how I came to know the real purpose of the ark. It was built because of the water. I must have made a sound of relief somewhere deep in my throat. How could I explain to her that water made me feel secure? The ship was a shelter. Not an altar, as I had supposed.

  “I thought it was a shrine for a holy sacrifice,” I said.

  “Which animals are coming here?”

  “All animals.”

  “So there! If it were a sacrifice, only the clean animals would be coming. Imagine making a sacrifice of a swan! A piglet! A camel!”

  “What is a clean animal for people who do not eat meat?”

  “An animal that can be sacrificed, naturally,” she said. I tried to see her as well as I could. She stood quite close, but because of what she was saying, the darkness around us seemed to get denser.

  “Why is nobody saying this?”

  “Don’t you ask Ham questions?”

  “He doesn’t tell me anything.”

  “Ham is silent for his god. The water we expect is savage. It will be of a terrifying beauty, but it will be all-consuming. It will not be like the water you sprinkle on our men. What do you think would happen if everybody knew what was coming? The Builder exhorts us to behave righteously. We need know no more than that, for how would you distinguish righteousness from fear of punishment?”

  She left the space, and I followed. I felt excited thinking of the kinds of water I knew from stories. I had heard of raging rivers and waterfalls. How beautiful, I used to say, what a treat for the skin, water that scours the dirt away and that rubs your muscles loose. Of course, I was mainly used to water that came up under you, brought by a sea behind a lagoon, I barely had any concept of streaming rain.

  “Does he feel regret, then, this god of the Rrattika?”

  “If He felt regret, He would create a new kind of human being. It is not human nature that is evil, it is just that humans have allowed themselves to become surrounded by evil. They will get another chance af
ter the depraved have been killed. The Unnameable will populate His new world with the same humans as before. Is that not a tribute to humankind?” She was silent for a moment. I could feel her watching me.

  I stood in front of her with my mouth open. We were deep inside the ship, in the middle of the gallery, in a spot where nobody could hear us.

  She said, “I have followed you because of your water. I want to know where you obtain it.”

  “My sister draws it from a spring,” I replied calmly. “It is a long way from here, a really long way.”

  “And you don’t know where it is?” she asked. “Then why is it that whenever I follow you into the hills, I never meet your sister?” She turned her head on that long neck of hers. She was, of course, thinking about how wicked what I did was. Unless I was a woman, I could not keep secret a place where there was water. Refusing to tell her the location of the spring was enough to split the planks we were standing on. But I was thinking mainly of the many who would die. Ham had told me about the god who was going to kill all those without principles, but now, in this place, the prediction sounded much more disturbing.

  “My mother is lame,” I said quickly. “We have an orphan with us. We try to stay alive.”

  She did not seem to want to insist. She wanted to let me believe that she did not need my water, that she could find water herself that was just as good. All this time she was looking at me intently. She put her hand on my hair and said, “You are not who you pretend to be. You’re disguised.” She grabbed me and kissed me. I could not quite work out what caused her sudden sparkling laugh, her excitement. I could only frown and listen as she said, “You wash Ham and you are a girl! It is his ruse! Me he will save, he has said. Does he promise you the same?”

  I could not manage a reply. My tongue felt thick and dry.

  “Has he taken you as his wife?” she asked seriously.

  “Yes.”

  “Me also. How many sleeping places are there, have you counted them?”

  “I haven’t counted them.”

  “The ship is large. There is room for you as well as me. But is there room for my mother, even though she does not deserve it? For Zedebab’s twin sister? For your mother, who has suffered so much already?”

  “No,” I said.

  She moved her hand along my arm. “That’s why Ham tells you nothing. He cannot believe that he will have to choose. His god bewilders him. He cannot accept that the ship he has built is too small for his dreams.”

  21

  A Conversation in the Tent

  It was worst for my mother. Just when she had become convinced that rising waters no longer threatened her, this is what I discovered. I did not tell her. I would not have known what to say; the things I understood I could not tell, and what I could tell — that water was coming, that it would be terrible — I did not understand. Children drowned, I knew that, and the water in some pools could make you sick. But what water took account of your righteousness? And who were the depraved that had to be killed? Were they the men and women who sang at night near the big tents, the foremen with their dancing wives, the warriors carrying swords who wandered about chewing herbs and saying they could see themselves walk? Were they the women of the family farther along who threw their food scraps onto our path? The man who staggered drunkenly across our little fields at night? The child who had eaten a piece of my sponge?

  But, of course, my mother felt that we were concealing things. As soon as I came near her, she made it clear with her one eye that she wanted explanations. Before I realized, I shouted at her, “Stop nagging at me. I’m telling you, I don’t know what they are planning!” That is how short-tempered I had become since I had understood I did not have Ham’s love to myself. Put and I felt slighted and gulled, we racked our brains to find a way of discovering from which direction danger threatened. Would there be water that selected by poisoning? By drowning? Was it a question of seeking refuge on the right hill or in the right tent? Was the ship the right place, and if so, why all those animal cages? I assumed that everyone I knew in the yard would be saved. They were all people of good will, and if indeed they had sinned in their lives, the sins had only been lapses, not something that was part of their nature. And they were not evil. Even my father, with his natural aversion for the Rrattika, did not find these people depraved. What disturbed him about them was the absence of good qualities. He found them uninspiring, unable to arouse feelings. They were dim, characterless people, suffering a lack of enterprise, desire, or curiosity. At least, most of them were. As he got to know the Rrattika better, he saw the exceptions. The Builder he found outstanding: He was passionate, he had a plan, it was not surprising he had won a special place in the heart of his god. And similar to the Builder were his sons, with Shem the most sympathetic, and Ham and his timber workers the most challenging. Their attitudes were quite similar to those of the marsh people; they were totally different from the dull-witted, stinking pitch pourers, or the potters who, if a pot broke, pulverized it to prevent anyone from getting some gain out of the shards.

  My father was not shocked by the news that people would go on the ark: He had built the living spaces. “Should this horrify me?” he asked. “How many predictions of disaster like this do you think I have heard in my life? I can’t keep count of the prophecies of doomsayers, that’s how it goes in good times.

  These people have had some fat years, that’s when the fear of losing everything arises. People who have to scratch out a living don’t waste time on this sort of fantasy.” But his voice was not steady. His beaker trembled as he lifted it to his mouth. Porridge was left in bowls, and at night we listened to each other’s breathing.

  I became more attentive. Painstakingly, like one gathering shells, I searched for signs and prognostications, even if they were not meant for me, and I noticed Put doing the same. The way Ham behaved with me had not changed. I reluctantly resigned myself to the thought that I had to share his love with Neelata. What had I expected? My parents had warned me, we knew Rrattika formed unions with woman after woman and arranged rosters for the night. And Neelata was so attractive — that was why I felt flattered in a strange sort of way when she conceived a passion for him. The main problem now seemed to be that Ham’s part of the tent was suddenly busy with visitors. As if we were being guarded, the curtain that closed it off moved constantly on its rod, and grass plugs kept falling from the gaps in the canvas.

  I no longer went home when meals were served. Even if the grooming was long finished, there would always be someone with dirty hands or sore muscles, and I would be asked to stay. The cleanliness of their limbs made them dependent. Before, they had not known the desire for oil, but now that they were accustomed to their skin being clean, a dirty fingernail or a crust in the navel suddenly appeared much worse. They could no longer bear knots in their hair. Their clothes were washed four times as often as before. And I did not refuse any service: I thought that from inside the tent I would have a better grip on whatever was going to happen, and that I would count for something.

  If, after the bathing, Shem, Japheth, and Ham went to watch the dancing women, I did not go with them. I found a spot in the servants’ quarters near where the Builder and the dwarf were, and there mixed my oil according to my grandmother’s formula. I took good care not to make a sound. For a long time, I sat there and listened to the conversations behind the partition. It required patience. Question and reply were widely separated because each weighed his words. But on days when the Builder was in reasonable health and, thanks to the drink poured by the dwarf, his voice forceful, I could understand every word. Sometimes it was about the payment of the workers, sometimes about the layout of the ship. One time it was about the provisioning.

  “There will be shortages. Perhaps we will go hungry.”

  “You must procure all edible foodstuffs,” I heard the dwarf say, “and take them all with you to provide nourishment for you and yours.”

  “How will I know if it is suff
icient?” asked the Builder.

  “You can take everything you can think of. The ship is large. Stow it full.”

  “There is still no good water. There would be good water, you said, the Unnameable would provide it.”

  “Do not humiliate me, lord, by making me search for water,” said the dwarf. “That will have to come from the women.”

  “And when food becomes scarce? What shall we eat? The ashes from our fireplaces?”

  “There are always fish,” said the dwarf.

  “Who will want to eat them? I know there are people who enjoy eating them, but my boys have not been brought up that way. They will refuse it.”

  “The insects then?”

  “Insects? Am I taking insects? Nothing was said to me about that. Insects survive on driftwood, as far as I know. They do not need our ship.”

  “You could eat the warm-blooded animals! The clean ones seem to have a good flavor.”

  “Revolting!” exclaimed the Builder. “How can we eat something that is as warm as ourselves?”

  “Have you never noticed, when making a sacrifice, that flesh becomes entirely different over fire? Doesn’t its stench turn into an agreeable smell? Why do you think it is that the Unnameable liked the smell of Abel’s sacrifice so well? Because he likes meat!” The dwarf was getting more and more worked up, I recognized the way he was speaking. He spat and sucked trying to swallow the spit he had lost.