In the Shadow of the Ark

by Anne Provoost

  When the fyke came up again it was even heavier than before. Zedebab and Neelata ran forward to help the men.

  Soon we saw what made it so heavy. Squeezed in, his legs pulled up, his face weather-beaten, and his hair stiff with salt, crouched my father. Shem, Japheth, Zedebab, and Neelata abruptly stopped moving. So disconcerted were they, they had only enough strength left to stop him plummeting back.

  My father peered through the net. When he saw me, the corners of his mouth turned up briefly. “Re Jana, my child,” he said. Then he looked at the others on deck. I do not know if he was aware of how relations had changed. Swollen and dirty I was, but so were the others. In any case, he could see I was amongst them, which was probably the most important thing for him.

  “It was becoming so quiet on the ark,” he called after he had a good look at everybody. “I hardly heard a sound. And no more movement on deck, that could only be a bad sign.” Once more he pulled up the corners of his mouth. It was not a smile, rather the grimace of someone trying to remember a smile. I was concerned about the way those four were holding onto the rope. Shem’s grip seemed solid, but his hands were shaking.

  “Looks like you got a little hungry!” my father continued. “I thought to myself, let me give them some of my leftovers. I’ve served quite a few on this journey, I’ve had lots of guests, all the birds who had had enough of swimming. Just after we set out, I even had three mallard ducks: I gave each one of them a name, Shem, Ham, and Japheth, ha-ha-ha. They didn’t live long. My bread I couldn’t spare them, and fish they didn’t like. I’ve got an albatross too, but I chase it away from the roof, it has to swim, it takes up too much space.” His voice sounded shrill over the deck. A strange odor came from him, some small fish hung around him where they had stayed behind in the mesh of the net. He was not very comfortable, with his knees pressed up against his throat, but as if this did not bother him in the slightest, he continued, “Of course, you need a bit of cleverness to survive in such circumstances. What use is rightmindedness without cleverness?”

  I could see that Shem too was now shaking all over. “You’ve still got plenty to say for yourself, boat builder,” he said calmly. “We’re grateful for the fish, but we have not invited you.”

  My father looked through the mesh, his grin becoming wider and wider. The flies he had brought with him buzzed around him; he seemed to be so used to them he did not shoo them off even when they settled in the corners of his eyes. “We could cooperate,” he said. “I’ll take care of the supplies. That way we all get something: You have things to eat again, and I get some company. Because it’s all taking a long time, and I’m getting pretty bored!” His language was even blunter than it used to be. His isolation had made him forget his manners. I ought to have been embarrassed, but my heart rejoiced, I had to make an effort not to burst into laughter. I had not experienced so much cheerfulness in a long time.

  But Shem saw it differently. With his free hand, he gripped my neck and pushed me down to the railing. “This,” he shouted, “is what has become of us because we did not throw her overboard. She is the evil from the old world. Her life we’ll spare because women will be needed. But she is not amongst the chosen. We will recognize her by the color of her skin, her and all her offspring.”

  “Stop it!” shouted Ham. With his bandaged hands he pushed Shem. “She has nothing to do with evil.” It made Shem push me even harder against the railing. The pain meant nothing to me. I was mainly glad that Shem kept holding onto the rope.

  “This man, who is her father, has saved our lives,” Ham went on.

  “That’s exactly why,” Shem replied dryly. “Did you think I would haul him on board so we could listen to his smart cracks day after day? God knows how much longer we’ll be on the way. Let him circle us like a guard. Let him supply us with fresh fish from down there.”

  Ham gave his brother a long, cold look. “Being chosen does not give you the right to be heartless,” he said.

  “Well then, let’s call our father!” called Shem.

  The fate of a man in a fyke-net hanging off the railing of the ark did seem something only the Builder was fit to decide, so when the suggestion was made, everyone nodded, including Ham. And so it was that, a few moments later, the old man with his characteristic odor of wine and ointment appeared on deck. He looked at the remains on the deck, the fish heads in the sun, the mushy guts spread over them. His sores must have dried completely, because he walked upright and did not seem bothered by chafing from any items of clothing. A sigh of relief escaped me: If he felt well, he would be in a generous mood, and if he was in a generous mood he would allow my father a place on board. But the Builder did not walk toward my father. He took me by the elbow and led me away from the railing.

  “Do not hold it against Shem,” he said. “The boy is trying to earn his blessing. He has been waiting for it such a long time.” There were whitish spots around his neck, and his lips too were almost white. The thin fingers around my wrist did not shake. I looked at them as if they were my real lifeline, as if everything depended more on this grip than on the one that held the rope. “You belong with us now, Re Jana, my girl,” he continued. “Your child is now my child.” The fingers curled around my arm like vines, then let go. I looked at his green eyes, his spotty skin, his gray hair. How well he looked, my countless hours of caring had not been in vain. But, of course, he feared a second, healthier patriarch on the ark. Over my shoulder, he nodded at Shem and Japheth. Slowly, they lowered my father. Over the edge of the railing I could see how the albatross, the terns, the gulls beat their wings to let him pass.

  “He is a great man,” said the Builder. “A great progeny will be his.” Far below us, on the surface of the water, I heard the sound of oars. With splashing strokes my father rowed away from us. And while my father rowed away, the Builder blessed Shem. He blessed Japheth. And he blessed Ham. They bowed down to the ground before their father. Their eyes shone with relief.

  64

  Ararat

  I put a couple of fish in a dish and returned to my hut via the ladders. There Taneses was busy with her alabaster calves and bull; she had a lamp that she nervously screened every time she heard someone approaching. I set down the bowl in front of her and said, “Our offering has made your gods favorably disposed toward us. See: fresh food. Now show me where Put is hiding.”

  When she smelled the fish, she got up willingly. She was not excessively hungry, I suspected she had eaten the dove. She gave me a look of understanding and stood by the door.

  “Everybody is out on deck,” I said when I saw her hesitate to go up the corridor. “The men are receiving their blessing, so we have nothing to worry about.” To my surprise I saw, as we walked through the ark, that there were cages standing open. Animals walked into one another’s spaces, pushed against each other and jumped on each other in the galleries. The air had a sour smell, which made it hard to breathe.

  “What is the meaning of this?” I asked Taneses, but she was equally surprised at what was happening. We did not try to shut the gratings, there would never have been an end to it. We were on our way to the reptile cages when suddenly, with a long, plaintive sound of scraping planks, the ship stopped rocking.

  Anything that had not been bolted down shifted, things fell and rolled away from us, animals braced themselves, Taneses and I fell against each other.

  “My good gods, help!” wailed Taneses, because, again, it was as if the world was ending, but the shock was so brief that she too realized quickly that we had run aground.

  “We’re there,” she said in a shaky voice. “The ordeal is over.” She hugged and embraced me. I threw my arms around her too, I could not help it.

  “I’ll take you to the child before the others come this way,” she said. We went past the lizards, the iguanas, and the tree frogs. I quickly glanced into every cage in the hope of spotting Put. But that was not where I should have looked for him. Taneses pointed to the shaft through which the air came in. />
  “Stand on my shoulder,” she said, helping me up. It was not easy. We were both bulky, and when we finally managed all I found in the air shaft was a snakeskin and a camel-hair sack.

  Against my better judgment, I kept searching, in my head the memory of Put sitting in a corner nibbling the burned crusts of bread. He had those huge eyes that always looked innocent, even if he had just tied a knot in your girdle while you were asleep. He was like an attentive, faithful dog, who was always in the right place at the right time: If you were hungry, he would have just picked fruit from the tree, if you were driven mad by insects, he would have already squashed a lot of them with his hands.

  But I did not find him then, nor later, when the ark was empty. The joy I had felt when we ran aground turned to sorrow.

  65

  The Receding of the Waters

  Having run aground changed everything. The voyagers’ hope revived, they again dreamed of the land that would be lovely, undulating, without cliffs and without rocks, without ravines and caves that could harbor dangerous animals. For days, the ark lay in the water like a beacon. In the distance, the tops of acacias and cypresses became visible. The wind blew the moisture out of the gray crowns of the trees. We saw their branches covered in black seaweed, as if we were eagles soaring above everything. All that time, the Builder sat on a chair in the sun. I sat next to him, my hand under his. We watched the waters going down, which seemed to go on endlessly. What emerged was not beautiful to see. There was only slush and stones overgrown with algae. Slowly it became clear what our abode would be: a miserable little settlement by a string of ponds and lakes. This was no longer the old order, the rolling landscape we remembered. This landscape was repulsive and inhospitable, it was full of ugly outcrops, bulges, and sharp ridges. Ham voiced the questions that plagued us: “Are these the fields full of clover we have been promised? Was there not going to be a tree that bore fruit forever? What shall we eat?”

  “Through the waters of death we have journeyed into life. Be grateful, my son,” said the Builder. But Ham coughed as if he wanted to make it impossible to understand his father’s words.

  Once the water had gone down sufficiently, the Builder made his sons put down a gangplank, a new one, much wider than the one we had left behind. They used an extravagant number of undamaged planks taken from the roof. The animals stood petrified in the full sun; they squeezed themselves into the dark corners of their cages. For others, however, things did not move fast enough: They smashed the bars and bolts with their horns or their hind legs. The birds stretched their wings and left the ark through the gallery in such numbers that the sky was obscured by them.

  When the ship was just about empty, I went back to my hut to help Taneses. We searched for a good spot for the alabaster statues, somewhere deep inside the ship. I took her to the niche my father had built. I found it fairly easily behind the terns’ cage, the obvious spot, selected by my father to save his family. The niche was unused, spacious, and easily locked, a place worthy of images of gods. Shem, Japheth, and Ham knew where it was, but I did not expect them to come looking for anything there now that the journey was over.

  Then I took Taneses to the others. They stood watching the procession of the animals, every living creature, all moving animals, all that crawls on the earth. Nobody had expected her appearance.

  “Very early on the voyage I found a child,” she said while everyone remained speechless. “A wild boy who would not speak. I knew it was not permitted, but my mother’s heart spoke; I went into hiding in order to take pity on him.”

  Japheth went to her and threw himself at her feet. “I have given your place to someone else,” he said hoarsely.

  “I know,” Taneses replied. “And now I take it up again.”

  66

  Our Arrival in What Was Said to Be Paradise

  The Builder went down the gangplank. The new land was still soggy, but it carried his weight. When he came to a raised area on the rock he called a few words to his sons. They came out with blankets and shade cloths, they set up screens so as not to feel the damp wind and scanned the surroundings for landmarks. Meanwhile, the Builder chose a rock over which he poured oil. “Let us thank the Unnameable,” he said.

  A wide-eyed ewe had stopped on the gangplank, and Zedebab led it down. Carrying the animal on his shoulders, Shem waded through the mud. He put it down on the rock and held it down by the wool, the legs folded under the body. Japheth whetted the knife. The Builder took it from him. His thin cloak flapped in the wind. He made a slow, graceful movement. The ewe looked into the Builder’s eyes, right through the gesture. The shudder that went through its body was the only thing that betrayed the pain. The blood ran into the hollow in the rock.

  “Now that the flood is over, we may eat the animals. We were promised that,” he said. They seized a second sheep, not for the sacrificial altar, but for themselves.

  They asked me to look for something in Zaza’s hut that would soften the taste of the meat. I brought them dried thyme, dill, and the last bit of salt I could find. Following my instructions, they put the cuts on the fire. Soon after, the scent of roasted meat filled the new air. Taneses was the first to cut a piece from the carcass. She ate, smacking her lips. The others ate hesitantly. As quails flew overhead, they sat with their backs to the fire, hoping to get the dampness out of their clothes. The legs and guts stayed behind on the rock. The ewe’s head turned black quickly, but with its eyes closed and the tip of its tongue hanging from its mouth, it seemed lost in a dream. On the swampy horizon stood a rainbow only the Builder paid attention to.

  67

  The Emptiness of the Land

  In the ark, that symbol of a death with dignity, I was the only one who stayed behind, together with the hundreds of flies that had settled on the animal droppings, with the parasites, the molds, and the fungi, and with the lingering stench of the badgers, beavers, muskrats, and skunks. The deck offered me views of surroundings where there was little to see. Yet there was something in the empty landscape that drew my attention, a point on the empty horizon, no more than a dot in the deserted plain. I dragged myself toward it. I was so big I could hardly move. The ground under my feet was not nearly as stable as I had hoped: It rocked like a ship.

  As I moved away from the ark, I could not help looking quickly, from the corners of my eyes, the way Alem-the-ragged had taught me: This is how it should have been, this ship, this landscape, this small encampment with its fire, the colorless ground, I saw it all the way it had been meant to be without me. Me walking here observing it was not part of the divine plan. I belonged with the others in those perished cities where I had never been. The dot increased in size. I walked straight toward it. I recognized the faded, torn cloak and the blackened prow of the papyrus boat.

  I waddled up to it and looked inside. There were traces of life, but life itself seemed to have disappeared. I walked around the boat as if I expected to find double walls or hiding places. I passed my hand over the sunshade and over the fishing net on the side. But there were tracks in the dried-up mud, footprints of someone who had gone away.

  Panting from the effort of the walk, I stood for a while. The sun continued on its course. Around me was nothing but vastness.

  I’ll follow the tracks, I thought, I’ll go after my father, but first I’ll rest a little while. I had not sat down before I heard a rustling on the deck. I pulled away the smelly net in which dead fish were rotting and expected to discover some animal. But the creature that looked at me round-eyed and with disheveled hair was no animal. It could have been one, its movements were jittery, and it had its hands on the ground as if they were forelegs. It was Put.

  I held out my arms to embrace him, but he reared back, uttering a low growl like an angry monkey.

  “Did you escape here, little boy? Did the ark frighten you?”

  He made no reply. He looked past me nervously, his face twisted.

  “Shush, shush, easy,” I said. “Nobody here wants you
to die. Taneses just scared you. That time is gone. With me, you’re safe.” But he still would not say a word.

  “Did you come too late? Had my father left already when you got here? Was he the only one you still trusted, and have you lost him too now?”

  He watered where he sat, I saw the yellow puddle spread by his feet. Every time I tried to put my hand out to him, he cowered and hissed like a snake. I talked to him for hours. I kept repeating the same phrases. He listened as if he had never before heard the words I used. “You’re my little brother. The world is gone, but you and I are still here.”

  I wanted to stay with him. I had already worked out how to make a bed with my mother’s cloak for cover, so I might be with him, slowly regaining his confidence. But I could not. The pain in my belly made me stagger. Water trickled from my body. I had to go back.

  68

  Birth of the Child

  My child was born in the ark. Neelata was there. I lay in the wet hay. I sang storm songs, rowing songs, and songs for hauling up nets, while inside my body the slow beat of a wave grew. It resembled the swell of the waves we were so familiar with, that sluggish, almost pleasurable pain in my back and thighs.

  I’m becoming a spring, I thought, when my waters broke. The water came as a gift. It was like when you find a stone under which you think there is moisture; I experienced the same release, the same feeling of refreshment. You lift it up and you find sun-warmed water. The flow prevented me bursting apart.

  Neelata pulled me down over her. She pressed her fingers so deeply into my arms that blue bruises appeared. It was no longer clear from whom the child was coming. She bore great pain. She called for a woman, her mother, I expect. “Eve!” she shouted. “You cursed slut! It’s your fault I am here, because of you my body is tearing apart!” The child broke out of our body, it gushed out of us as from an inner river, with still more water, as if there was not enough of that in this world already.