In the Shadow of the Ark

by Anne Provoost

  But I could not reproach him, I was behaving like him. I sat amongst the shrubs to watch how the Builder’s sons made their toilet the way they used to, by pouring water over their shoulders. I saw how Ham waded thoughtfully through the pond. I kept my gaze on the skin of his back, on his hair that hung sleek from the water, down to his shoulders in strands. I could never get enough of watching the way he would sit down on a rock after bathing, pull up his leg, and bend up his foot so he could examine the sole.

  On occasion, Neelata dried him. And I knew that her heart did not go out to him. The thought that he was not loved was unbearable. I wanted to jump up and go and snatch the towel from her hands, but how could I? All I could do was return to our hiding place. For the rest of a day like that I kept feeling his skin everywhere: in the smooth stones that were to be found all over the cliff, when cutting the bulging flesh of white fruits, and in the evening when I rubbed my mother’s back with oil. I saw his hair in the grass and his nails amongst the pips of melons. None of it was mine, I knew, but my longing could not be soothed.

  27

  Zaza

  One day a woman climbed up the cliff. She wore a brightly colored dress and a head scarf to protect herself against the sun. She walked unsteadily, her legs insecure on the ridges and loose stones, and very soon I saw that it was because of her age. She was old, too old to be climbing up a cliff. Grass cutters regularly came up the track to the top, but practically never left it to come onto the terrace. They were in a hurry and on their way down carried heavy loads on their backs. The side of the cliff was not a place to stay around; it was an unavoidable obstacle you scaled and descended rapidly. But this woman was not heading for the ridge. It was the track itself that held her attention. She was looking around, bending over from time to time.

  I could not resist going to meet her. When I approached her, she did not seem to hear me. Her body, which had lost its shape so that it was no longer clear where her bosom ended and her belly began, was completely concentrated on something hardly visible amongst the stones. She picked something, smelled it, and that gesture made me realize what she was up to.

  “There is thyme here, and mulberry farther along,” I said.

  She looked up. I saw her face, her neck with the ornaments resembling scars, and felt a shock of recognition. It was Zaza, the Builder’s wife, Ham’s mother. I had seen her regularly in the red tent. She would enter the Builder’s quarters and invariably send the dwarf outside.

  Fear made my heart miss a beat. For weeks, we had managed to keep ourselves hidden from the ark builders. Now a moment’s carelessness on my part could bring all that effort to naught. Now she would recognize me. She would send her sons here, and yet again our lives would be in chaos.

  She carried a small knife and a piece of muslin to put the plants in. The muslin was light as a breath of air, but it was the knife that drew my attention, it glittered in the sun. It looked practical and sharp, and in short bright flashes, reminded me of how unsafe I had been feeling for some time. The constant threat of discovery and impending doom hung over my life and made me feel exhausted. Now I stood before Zaza. I had walked up to her of my own accord. I think I must have smiled at her, invitingly and friendly, hoping that would make her try to remember. I was hoping she would nod at me, say my name, or ask, “Wasn’t it you who used to groom my sons?” But already she was bending over again. “I’m looking for thistles,” she said curtly. “I want every kind there is.”

  “What do you want to do with the thistles?”

  “To take with us on the ship. The command is for a complete collection.”

  “But thistles are a pest.”

  “I know it sounds unwise to take them, but once we have taken a task on ourselves, once we’ve agreed, we must do it and do it well.”

  “But not just you alone?” I exclaimed ingenuously. I felt extraordinarily fearful and could not think straight about what I was saying. I knew I should run away, that this conversation posed a real danger to my family and the little truss-boat. But she paid proper attention to my questions. She did not give me the chance to disappear, and I was grateful to her for that.

  “I have my three sons; they are too busy to bother with small details. I had more sons, but two of them have gone away. They were restless, they refused to spend years building and staying in one place. It made the commitment of the remaining three even greater. Except for my youngest. For him, it made no difference, for what does a child know? He saw his brothers leaving and did not understand what was happening.”

  I felt the hairs on my arms stand up when she said “my youngest.” “Is that the one who is unwed?” I asked. I did not look at her, but kept my eyes fixed on the hard, pale edges of her feet.

  “He is about to be married, but grieves over a girl who has gone away,” she said. She kept working as she talked, pushing grasses aside with her feet, constantly comparing stems and leaf forms. “One morning he went to the quarry where she lived and everything was gone. He calls her name every day. When he lifts his head, the ashes he has strewn over his head from sorrow fall from his hair.”

  I stood still and nodded. She placed a plant in her muslin cloth, so small I wondered if she would find it when she got back home. Then she walked past me, and I could smell the coloring mixed with saffron and bone ash she had put on. Grateful for the things she had said, I picked a plant she could not reach and hoisted myself onto an overhanging rock. It seemed wrong, but I was glad that Ham was distressed. And that gladness confused me. It caused me to pick thistles with large prickles, without even thinking about my hands.

  28

  The Message of Doom Is Forgotten

  My mother suffered most from our flight to the field on the slope. In the red tent, she had felt herself to be at the heart of the shipyard. She had stayed near the place she had been accustomed to: the center, the easily found place that people came to for advice and assistance. Now she suffered from the loss of status and from deadly boredom. She had a need of admiring glances. Her adornment had kept her busy every day. Her demands had become even more exacting when more and more warriors visited the red tent. They were the Builder’s nephews, famed for their horsemanship, who decked themselves out with belts and skirts consisting of skeins of wool hanging down in rows. The warriors were needed to prevent an attack by the Nefilim. They had at their disposal the horses that were now arriving in the hills in ever greater numbers. Some of them rode a pony or a mule. They were belligerent, constantly practicing their skills at handling knives and swords. They spoke scathingly about the enemy, but that was not what had made my mother stare at them. They had hands like shovels and voices that would pulverize stone, but mostly they were beautifully built, with broad shoulders and firm thighs that darted out between the skeins of their skirts as they walked. Where we lived now it was rare for a warrior to pass by, and on the odd occasion when someone approached, Put would frequently throw a well-aimed stone.

  Of course, my mother could have no idea how much the Builder’s announcement from the dais had changed things. She lay on a high rock near the edge of the cliff and in the house on windy days. She did not hear how the taciturn, thoughtless Rrattika were beginning to talk. Young and old, they discussed the water and the flood. The children started having anxious dreams. They did not know what drowning was, but their fathers had said, “If you don’t watch out, the water will close over your head!” and they woke gasping for breath. Their fear grew, like that of the very old who knew their lives depended on their family’s fixed abode: Wandering about the land, they stood no chance and would be left behind in a shady spot with a couple of jugs of water and some bread. And as their fear grew, the inhabitants of the shipyard became convinced that, for the sake of the children, the elderly, the sick, and the weak, it would be better not to talk about it. In an almost magical way, all sorts of explanations arose of what the Builder had said, and no one any longer would draw the only correct conclusion: that many would die. And with the silence
came forgetting. Because there was no new information to confirm the old, the usual happened: Messages of doom were forgotten despite their ominous content. Gaps were found in the predictions, unclear statements that confirmed the suspicion that they were lies. Eventually, the calamity also came to seem so very remote, as if it were not for this time but for another era altogether, not even that of their children or their children’s children. The Builder had already lived such a long time, perhaps he would live to twice his age, and when at last the water came, new-fashioned solutions they could not even think of now would long since have appeared, or new gods, sons of this god, with different opinions and different ways. And what else was there to do but carry out the daily tasks, what else could they have attempted? Plot a rebellion? Stop sleeping and eating?

  At first, I made an attempt at reminding them of the message of doom. I told people there was very little room on the ship, that only those who made their own vessel would have a chance against the flood, but all I got were bored, almost pitying looks. They peered under my hood and saw that I was not one of them. Only a minority took my advice seriously. They started collecting timber and improvising something. But although they had been working on a ship for years, not one of them knew how to put together a boat. Soon the timber was abandoned and put to other uses. And because time passed without anything happening, the mood became easier. Stacks of fuel from the dung of the cattle and large quantities of wool were available, and eggs galore. Bees willingly gave their honey. The ruminants were tame and let themselves be milked. People laid banquets outside their dwellings. They invited strangers; the women who saw me passing by beckoned to me, and it happened more than once that I had eaten before I got home. I met all sorts of folks, they came from faraway cities and wanted to settle here. Small businesses, starting with few resources, flourished; wanderers arrived and never left.

  29

  “Come Back to Us”

  Amongst all this abundance, there was one shortage that became worse: There was not enough timber. The stacks we had been able to get to so easily were now guarded by the warriors in their woolen skirts. People who still had timber did fantastic deals. If we wanted to continue working on our boat, I had to resort to going to the waste pile. That was a precarious enterprise, because the pile stood not far from Neelata’s embroidered tent, so I could only approach it disguised in a veil. I knew how close to disaster my meeting with Zaza had been; something like that must under no circumstances happen again. Put helped me look. He fossicked through the wood shavings, feeling blindly for something solid amongst the sawdust.

  Before long, a guard appeared. The man pointed at the small pieces of timber I was holding under my dress. “Put it back,” he said, and at the same moment Put screamed. An abrupt movement had forced splinters into the skin between his thumb and forefinger. I dropped my booty, took Put’s hand, and saw at least five slivers of wood, their tips black, deep under his skin. He would not let me touch them. Before I could do anything about it, he ran from the waste pile toward the tent with the embroidered panels.

  As if he had called her, Neelata appeared in the entrance to the tent. Fast as lightning, I dived for cover. I hid behind a piece of fence that was protecting corncobs from the sun. I had not been so close to her since we fled to our terrace, not even when I hid in the shrubs to spy on Ham. I wanted to see what was going to happen, but I also quickly looked for escape routes, figuring what the chances were of being seen. Neelata immediately came toward Put. He threw himself amongst the folds of her robe, digging under her gown with one hand until he found her hips and pressed himself against her, holding his other hand away from his body as if it did not belong to him. His blood stained their clothes. She laid her hand on his arm and bent over him.

  She had important things to do: in and around her tent lay scales, mortars, pestles, sets of weights, all of which had to be carefully packed and taken into the ark. But she squatted and removed the splinters one by one. I did not know then that she kept his milk teeth in a pouch around her neck.

  For many weeks, Put had been living with us on the cliff, supposedly isolated from the life in the shipyard, but it was obvious from their behavior that they saw each other regularly. She bandaged his hand and kissed his hair. He stood leaning against her. After a while, he no longer cried from pain — the splinters lay in one of the mortars like trophies — but I think because of what she said. She obviously had said nothing that could comfort him. It could not be otherwise: She was not given to lying, and comfort there was none. She said, “Timber you can no longer obtain. That time is gone. The Builder needs it, every spline is going to count.”

  I am not sure what happened next. Put said something, and Neelata looked in my direction. She saw me, let go of Put, and came toward me, her robes rustling. I jumped up and started running. But her legs were much longer than mine. She was used to walking in those clothes, I still kept stumbling over the skirts. She grabbed me, pulled me down to the ground, and gasped, “I knew you were nearby. If Put was here, you couldn’t be far away.” She was lying on top of me. Her breath brushed my face. I could not help seeing that her body showed the imprint of serrated fingernails, she had scratches on her neck and on her face. I turned my face away from her.

  “You must not bear us ill will,” she said. “We’ve done our best to save you.”

  I groaned and put my elbow against her shoulder. Grit in my mouth made speaking difficult as I said, “You have taken my place in Ham’s heart. And hence my place on the ship.”

  Pushing my elbow away, she bent toward me. She pressed her mouth against my ear and whispered, “He has chosen me to be his wife because he cannot resist my uncle’s terms. Your reproaches concern him, not me.”

  She loosened her grip. She must have thought I would not run away, but I did, and fast, and because she had to get up on those long legs of hers, I got away.

  “Come back,” she said. “We need you.”

  I jumped from stone to stone. “Come to the wedding! Come back to us!”

  I ran up the hill like a hare. I did not wait for Put. I hurled myself into the brushwood far from any trodden path, so that when I arrived at the top, my legs were red from the lashing grass, the thorns, and the poisonous plants.

  30

  Neelata and Ham’s Wedding

  We hid our house with big bundles of branches and swept our fireplace. We were on our guard for any approaching footsteps. Neelata was searching for us. We saw her walking up and down the slope. It was unavoidable that she would find us. Put, sick from the tension, led her into our field on the day of her wedding. My father was busy some way farther amongst the mulberry trees. I saw them coming, Neelata in a wide dress, Put chewing on a cake, both out of breath from the steep climb. I rolled into the brushwood. He took Neelata across the field to our truss-boat. She was made up for the day’s festivities, her hair invisible beneath a sheaf of feathers, her breast richly covered in clinking beads. Here everything was on display for her: The timber we’d stolen, the pitch we’d stolen, the nails we’d extorted, and the tools. Here she found the things Ham had missed. Put turned and quickly walked down the slope again. He came right past my hiding place, sobbing fit to break one’s heart.

  Neelata walked around and around the boat. She looked for the most trodden path and found it. It led to our house. She cautiously crossed the field and approached the stack of branches. She walked calmly, like a cow swaying to its drinking place, looking around watchfully as if she could feel me looking at her. The sun lit up her feather headdress. Like Put, she walked right past me. I stayed motionless, rigid like the stones pressing into my arms and legs.

  She reached the pile of branches that covered our house. She walked around it until she found the door, threw the bundles that covered it aside, and entered.

  That was the moment I had waited for to get up and approach. Soundlessly, I walked to the back of the house. There I could hear everything. Not very clearly, but I could hear how she spoke to my mot
her, who was lying on her stretcher. She talked about the small yard at the other end of the field and the truss-boat that was being built there. I could imagine what my mother was thinking: that the sky was falling down on her a second time, that paralysis was being added to paralysis, that unfairness would triumph. I stumbled around in the brushwood, climbing over the branches as fast as I could, the dry leaves rustling, you would have had to be deaf not to hear me coming. Headlong I walked through the doorway, feeling like a dog that responds to a whistle because that is what it has been trained to do, not because it wants to.

  “Greetings,” Neelata said sweetly when she saw me. She was sitting on the floor next to the lamp that was burning for my mother. My mother lay in her arms, her head hanging. Immediately after I entered, her eye turned to me. Neelata was not holding her properly, supporting her too low in the back.

  “Why don’t you tell this poor woman anything? Why do you treat her like a child?” she asked calmly.

  “We tell her … we know … what is there to know?” My tongue faltered, my mouth was dry as cork. I knew it: Every word from my mouth was a slap in the face of my poor, lame mother. Anything I said produced another lie, and so did anything I did not say. Our eyes turned to each other and away again in a rapid series of movements.

  Neelata pretended not to notice what was happening between us. “You are building a boat, and this woman knows nothing.” She threw my mother’s head upward to change the pressure on her arm. My stomach moved in the same manner, and my mouth was filled with a taste I did not recognize.

  “You don’t understand,” I replied, my lips feeling like leather. “This is not a boat. How could my father have advised you about size and proportions if he had not first designed the ship to scale?”