In the Shadow of the Ark

by Anne Provoost

  “This will have to be destroyed,” said Shem. “How will the Unnameable’s plan succeed if we allow this?”

  “They are free people,” replied Ham, his mouth still full of nails. “They can build a boat if they want to. The Unnameable has not ordered us to destroy other people’s boats.”

  “But their work does not make sense,” said Shem with the fixed stare of someone whose eyelashes have been singed. “This is a stony desert. If people build a boat here, it can only be in order to escape the wrath of the Unnameable. They ape His commands. They ridicule Him. This is a trick by that boat builder from the marshes, can’t you see? First he persuades our old father that everybody has to be warned. Only if you do that do you give people time to repent, he says. And now that everyone knows what is coming, instead of being penitent, they go and build boats! You know what will happen: When the flood comes, the Nefilim will rush onto these boats. In no time at all, they’ll populate the new world and the divine plan will be undermined, for the gestation time for the children they beget is not forty weeks but forty days.”

  Even the cliff had become sodden the last few days. You did not climb up the path for fun, it was far too slippery. So Shem’s argument was dead serious, he was covered in mud, and he had no understanding whatever of a brother who was involved in this enterprise. He nodded at Japheth. Japheth looked around, went to Ham’s tool basket, and took up the ax that had long since been used to cut down the last tree in the area.

  Ham was the first to realize what he intended. He dived for his brother to try and stop him. He stood between him and the boat, spread out his arms, and said, “Do not touch the boat that will be my deliverance. If you make that leak, I too will drown: I am not going on our father’s ark.” Ham’s greyhound whined. Japheth lowered the ax until its head touched the ground.

  “Don’t carry on like that,” Shem said angrily. His shoes were not made for this sort of weather. They soaked up the water and sagged crookedly over his instep.

  But Ham was not joking. Even to me this only became clear when he said, “The ark is doomed. How can I believe in my brothers’ righteousness if they allow a crippled woman to be abused in their tent? Some of us will be blessed, others cursed, the oracle said. I will earn the blessing. I am going on this boat.”

  My father and I were speechless. The greyhound barked. Shem and Japheth left the field. Japheth had not spoken one word, but that was not unusual for him. Shem said no more either, which should have warned us. But we were so moved by Ham’s decision that we missed some of what was going on.

  That evening Ham had a nose ring put in, shaped like a snake swallowing its tail. “The symbol of my determination,” he claimed. Going with us instead of with his father seemed a logical decision. He was convinced that, if the Unnameable wanted him to live, He would spare the truss-boat. In a touching way, he was certain that now nothing else could go wrong. “Our boat is just as good as theirs,” he said. It was better, he considered a bit later, more maneuverable, better arranged, easier to steer. To which my father, with the emphasis of someone who has chewed too many herbs, replied, “If not, we will await death with all our strength.”

  Shem and Japheth did not order our boat to be confiscated. Of course, some accord was reached, though I had no idea what, but I could see that my father was shackled like a prisoner to an agreement. Suddenly he no longer talked to everybody, and he was not seen in the shipyard anymore.

  Shem, Ham, and Japheth went and begged their mother, “Make Father bless us. Don’t let him wait until we are on the ship. There will not be enough time then.” They wanted the blessing for all three together, so he could not curse anyone.

  “There is plenty of time for the blessing, I am not dead yet,” replied the Builder, and sent Zaza back to her sons.

  Neelata knew of Ham’s intention to go on the truss-boat when the water came.

  “That is good,” she said. “It is a good plan.”

  “But we won’t be together,” I said.

  “I’ll keep Put, you take Ham.”

  “Put belongs with us, he is our child.”

  “Leave Put with me. I have a large store of honey and dates. He is better off with me than with you.”

  We were convinced that our separation would only be temporary. We had an unreasonably strong belief in our chance of survival. Yet we suffered the sort of sadness that does not leave you at night. The only thing that could make us forget it was the beauty of the ark: It was flawless, it was perfect. Its dimensions complied with divine proportions. It was not a ship, but a heavenly image of one. Looking at it was true comfort.

  44

  Camia

  We had to move once again. My father and I were used to dealing with rising water levels. How often had we spent the night in our boats in the marshes because there had been heavy rain? We dug channels and, if necessary, cleared them every day. But after a while, despite all our precautions, it became too muddy in the quarry. It became so cold that we had to wear two hair shirts. We lived in a constant dilemma: Do we wash the mud out of our clothes, and if so, how do we get them dry? Supplies went bad, tools rusted, and wounds would not heal. Whoever still lived in the valley packed up their belongings and moved into the hills. Naturally, we went back to our field.

  More people had come to live on the slope, like little Camia and her blind mother. Her eyes had been taken out, which made us suspicious, because we were aware that, for some of the peoples we knew, putting out the eyes was the punishment for treason; but she was so warm and affectionate with the child that she soon won our friendship. She seemed to have found a strange kind of reassurance in the fact that the same fate awaited everyone. She dispelled her daughter’s fear by making up a story about a beautiful blue river that would carry all people with it; all you needed to do was shut your eyes and let yourself float, and not be afraid when the water closed above you, because that was the way it should be. Underwater you traveled faster. It was quiet there. You became lighter, and your hair moved in the current. The blind woman made gestures to go with her story, she threw Camia’s hair up and slowly let it come down again.

  For Put, the girl was a playmate. They knew each other’s rhymes; the words were different, but the cadences were the same. The little girl seemed to thrive in our wet surroundings. Like her mother, she constantly sniffed the air; they were still getting used to the scent of moisture and the winds blowing from a different direction than they used to. She visited us, soaked but elegant, to shout words that made us laugh because even Put did not understand them. It was strange to experience how differently you see people when you know they are going to die soon.

  45

  The Rain

  Places you could once easily run across were now slippery and inaccessible. You couldn’t rely on rocks and boulders for support, because they had been loosened. All around, people were digging ditches as fast as they could, but to my surprise nobody built any footbridges. In the marshes, we’d had footbridges linking everything to everything. Here all you’d find was the occasional platform that soon sank into the mud. Everybody took to sleeping on platforms. Out of bamboo and scarce boards, stilt villages were constructed. Because the water was now running off the hillsides in streams, people moved back toward the ark: It didn’t matter much where you lived, you were going to get wet. We woke up with swollen throats. The little ones caught colds, their ears ran with pus, and they cried through the night. My father waded across the plots where his millet was rotting.

  The wet did not come from the rain alone. It came from under us and from around us, it rose from everything. The earth slid away beneath us. Mosses grew in the fireplaces. Lakes and streams formed. Flowers bloomed in places where we had never seen any green before. The refuse that had been heaped up began to ferment, food scraps, excrement, everything became one big mash. The flies stung. In the hills, the swallows seemed to hit the ground in full flight. The blackbirds huddled in the trees, smoothing their feathers. The chickens scrabbled in
the mud. The cattle stood at one end of the enclosure, their heads into the wind. Sometimes the rain caught us in the middle of the night. Then we lay curled up, soaked, waiting for morning. And when it dawned, it always was like a betrayal: All it meant was yet more dampness we couldn’t bear.

  Zaza blew the ram’s horn. At first we didn’t take notice. It was a familiar sound that was lost amongst all the others, but it started things moving. Animals came down from the hills. They squelched closer, but then held back. They came to a halt in front of the gangplank. They snorted and panted, their fur tangled. Then those who lived in the shipyard realized that the call of the ram’s horn had been the signal. The beginning of the end was here, the moment of truth had arrived. In their tens and hundreds, they gathered around the ark, carrying their possessions on their backs in bundles, beating off the cattle and the animals pressing around them with sticks. But the trapdoor did not open until after dark. By evening, they were standing in oozing dung.

  When darkness had fallen, the Builder, Shem, and Japheth appeared on the deck. They put out a gangplank, which only the animals were permitted to cross. Most of them entered the hold willingly enough. Because of the mud on their feet, they stepped along the gangplank carefully, even those animals who were used to climbing ledges. The warriors were stationed at the gangplank in order to prevent uninvited guests from getting on board. Those who were waiting were becoming tired, understanding they would be standing there for hours if the animals came first. When they realized Taneses and Zedebab were still sleeping in their tents, they too withdrew to rest. The animals, though, kept moving up the gangplank. The dark lent the embarkation a contrived air; it became an event such as you only hear about in stories. There was a solemn movement of paws on planks, careful and fearful, as if the rhythm it produced must never be forgotten. The composition of the boarding crowd was like an ancient recipe: seven clean animals, two unclean. They were distributed over the ship according to their weight. There were animals who panicked at the scent of others; they were kept apart. Some were refractory. The camel, for instance: Shem took hold of it by its halter, and the beast sprayed the contents of its stomach all over him. The snake was denied access to the ark. It had seduced one of the first ancestors of the Rrattika. Judging by its head, it had not really changed after all those years and was still up to no good, so it was chased back with sticks.

  It turned out there were not enough cages. Ham was called away from us to help. He dragged up stakes and bars and in great haste divided the cages up into smaller spaces. Japheth carried animals into the hold, the legless ones, the ones so small you had to keep them in a jar, the animals who were so lazy or slow that without his help it would have taken them half the night.

  Of each species they took the biggest and strongest. They didn’t seem to comprehend that once they had taken the leaders on board, the whole herd was desperate to follow. They had to pull up the gangplank and wait for the animals to calm down before they could continue with the embarkation. From the little field on the slope, you could hear the shouting and, again and again, the counting.

  Zaza shuffled across the shipyard. Till the very last moment, she kept shaking seeds out of flowers and putting dried fruits in straw-lined boxes. Neelata had handed her affairs over to her lady’s maids. She now stayed in the ship day and night. She had spread out her carpets and wall hangings and made herself a nest. Taneses stayed in her tent while she still could, like Zedebab. Zedebab had strengthened hers with ropes and pegs and would admit no one except her twin sister, whom she was going to have to leave behind.

  We slept from sheer exhaustion, but not for long. We were woken by people shouting farther down. Their mats had been lifted by the water. They were afloat. Quickly, they pulled up the flaps of their tents, hoping the water would run out. Only then did they notice that the water was coming from outside. All around them floated the remains of the shipyard, pieces of bamboo from the scaffolding, branches and jugs. The ark still stood, rock solid, at its landing stage. The water lapped gingerly at its keel. Toward morning, we tried to sleep some more. Lying close enough together, stopping any leaks in the cover we lay under, and not getting wet seemed much more important than the embarkation going on below.

  There were no longer any clear periods between downpours, the rain was constant hour after hour. We became motionless, as if the raindrops had nailed us to the ground by the hems of the blankets we wore over our shoulders like mantles, and which had become heavy as lead.

  More and more tents were pulled down, mostly by laborers who were leaving. They left the shipyard but were back after only a few days. “The Builder is right,” they said. “The water is covering the whole world.” They were terrified, those simple souls, they nursed no hopes of being among the elect. They were the poorest of the poor, the lowest in society, they knew they did not stand a chance. They tried as best they could to put up their tents again and keep their children dry. They did not complain. The women went on bathing their children every evening and did their best to see they did not catch cold in their damp clothes. They went on trying to cook millet. There is no point in suffering from hunger, not even if you know you are going to drown. You could not talk to them any longer. Their gaze had been turned inward, and they showed that waiting for death takes place in total solitude.

  But even those who thought they would be admitted to the ark became suspicious, particularly when some thirty stowaways, who had hidden in different parts of the ship, were driven out with sticks and whips by the warriors. If so many animals were let in, there would be very little space left over for people. Was it possible they had been deceived all this time, and that only the sons and the nephews and those warriors in their woolen skirts were amongst the elect? The arrogance of the warriors, the impudence they showed when they chased the poor devils from the ship, made it clear there would be fighting for a place. That was what everyone was preparing for: pushing and shoving and fighting. People had another look at their possessions, throwing away anything superfluous, packing anything absolutely essential in even smaller bags. You wondered what these people thought they were going to do with bread that was soaked, with freshly washed clothes that were as wet as the ones on their backs, with small tools, with bags and packs that would make them sink to the bottom instantly.

  We could hear questions being raised all around the shipyard: “Why are they letting the animals on first? Do they matter more than people?” When I passed by, some of them couldn’t stop themselves from saying, “This is the revenge of the dead. Led on by strangers, we violated their burial place and stole their water. Now they are repaying us with water.”

  Things were still being loaded constantly. The Builder insisted, for instance, on taking our bathtub. The loading had to be done so fast that the contents of jars and baskets were no longer checked. At the most, Japheth saw to it that anyone who came on board left again. That is how it happened that someone brought some flat baskets on board. No one heard or saw it happen, but afterward the story got around: The carrier uttered curses as he entered the ark. In the baskets were the snakes that had been denied entry earlier. Apart from objects, only animals were admitted again that day. On the ground, near the entrance, their feet in the water, exhausted people stood where they could. They no longer dared leave their spots.

  The next morning, the red tent had been pulled down. The pegs had been pulled up, the canvas lay on the ground like a dead bat. There were sounds, soft at first, rumbling like distant surf. The winds, coming from all four corners, carried the smells of storm and tempest. Then the rumbling swelled into a drumming full of fury, gods banging on the cages in which they were locked. The earth began to tremble. I saw it in the water in my jugs, which took on a life of its own, rippling and splashing. From the hills sounded the hoofbeats of rushing herds. Dripping tumbleweeds rolled ahead of the storm, kicked along like outcasts.

  Put had been brave up to now. But in the fury of the storm he saw Neelata bring llamas and camels on boar
d. “I want to go with her,” he screamed. “It’s too scary here!” We let him go, his pockets filled with nuts and dates. We saw him run down the hill like a lost dog, his legs crooked under his body, his face twisted with fear.

  The Builder was nowhere to be seen. My father stretched the tarpaulin over our boat and shouted over the roaring, “Why doesn’t that man offer a sacrifice? Whoever his god is, now is the time to tender his offering!” He poured milk on the ground for our gods, in particular for the god of the storm with his immense wings. But the earth did not accept the milk. It was already saturated with liquid.

  46

  The Windows of the Heavens Are Opened

  It was the seventeenth day of the second month. All the fountains of the deep broke open. To the sound of howling winds, solid curtains of water came down. There was not only rain but also hail. The wind raged over the land. Trees bent, chickens were plucked alive on their roosts, tents broke loose, planks and boards were hurled around. The dead floated from the caves where they had been buried.

  Our shelter tore apart. The section that was left was just large enough to keep me dry, but my father sat in the rain. From where we were fighting the wind, we could see what was happening to the others. The large group waiting at the base of the ship were taken unawares by the tempest. The gangplank was still out, but guarded by so many warriors with long swords that anyone who set foot on it was immediately beaten back. Many were killed, pushed onto the gangplank by the mass of people and instantly impaled on the spears. Even at that stage, they might appear to be victims of an accident, and most of them still seemed to expect the hatch to be opened soon. There were some who had armed themselves and practiced an assault in the hills. Now they too arrived, forming small groups and going around the ship with ladders and ropes to attack it from its unguarded side. But already the chaos was too great. Even armed groups with careful plans were scattered. The hulk they wanted to climb was tall and the wind against them. Together with hordes of others, they fled up the cliff. They assumed the water could never rise to that height. To be able to overlook the land made them feel certain they would not be taken by surprise. But they were troubled by the wind. They had to lie down to stop themselves from being blown off the cliff.