Sinners and the Sea (19 page)

Rocks hit the side of the hull with so much force that each morning I expected to find holes in the wood. I might have assumed it was the children who threw them, except for the strength with which they hit. On the end, where there was only a skeleton of the great ark to come, we would occasionally see
a stone somehow balanced upon the tip of a crossbeam. Noah called this a sign.

“Of what?” I asked.

“How perfect God’s aim will be when He hurls death upon the earth. He will drown the whole world except us.”

To Noah and his God’s credit, we remained untouched by stones, despite that there were so many of them, we had to clean the hull multiple times a day. If we had been on sea instead of sand, we would have sunk.

CHAPTER 28

COUNTDOWN

I
t took seven moons to build the ark. Once it was finished, you could not help but believe in the flood. As the ark’s shadow slowly passed over the crowd with the rising and setting of the sun, everyone must have known that they would die.

My sons’ jaws were set as if in stone while they applied pitch—twice and sometimes three times—to the same section of gopher wood. Surrounded by desert drought for many leagues in all directions, we had begun to fear the sea.

Noah tried to ease our dread. “It will rain not even two moons. Only forty days and forty nights.” To Japheth, he said, “I am entrusting you with slaughtering the herd.”

Japheth went straight to work. He did not hesitate between slitting the throat of one goat and another except to wipe off his knife. The animals bleated, bled, lost control of their bowels, and died. My chore: to cut, clean, dry, and salt their meat.

Zilpha would not rise from where she mourned her great beast. Noah stood over her and commanded her to help me.

“No,” she said calmly from beneath her parasol.

Noah did not have time to argue, so he turned to me and said,
“Wife.”

I knelt beside Zilpha’s sleeping blanket. “Daughter, I am sorry for the loss of your mammoth.”

“Good,” she said.

I asked if she would help me with the meat we needed for our journey.

She did not want to damage her skin in the sun or roughen her hands with washing and scrubbing. “You are already worn,” she told me. “This skin”—she lightly touched her arm—“these eyes, and the bones of my fingers need to last me another six hundred and ninety-three years. The flood is only one tiny piece of my journey. I cannot spend all of myself on it.”

I did not know how to argue with her and did not have time to figure it out. She seemed completely unconcerned about the end of the world, and this bothered me more than her refusal to help.

• • •

F
inally, it came to pass that the one-eyed boy who had threatened to tell the world of my mark came back as a man whose arms and calves bulged with muscle. He had one green eye and one black and red eye socket that he uncovered for a moment when he saw me
look down upon him. I quickly moved to the other side of the deck. “Grandmother!” he called after me.

Noah did not leave the ark unless he had to relieve himself. None of us ever went far, and we seldom went alone. And so Jank camped near the ark and waited.

I did not know if I should alert Noah. I considered telling Japheth, but I did not want him to come to any harm. Jank was a more formidable opponent than a starving, overworked slave.

One afternoon when Noah walked onto the deck to survey his sons’ work, Jank called up to him. “Father! You must remember me.”

“No, I mustn’t,” Noah said irritably.

“I have come to ask for your blessing.”

But Noah no longer seemed to hear him. He had finished looking over the deck and walked away.

The next day Jank yelled, “The God of Adam has sent me here with a message for you. I must speak to you at once.”

Noah and I were again on the deck. Noah briefly squinted down at Jank, who lifted the cloth tied at a steep angle around his head to show Noah his eye socket. I doubted Noah could see well enough to recognize the boy, or that he would remember him even if he could clearly see him.

Noah easily ignored him. His hearing was fading almost as quickly as his sight. I envied him. It seemed as though God were shielding him from the world with the loss of his senses.

But the one-eyed man could not have known this. Especially not after one day when he managed to get Noah’s attention. Noah
was testing the side door of the ark, opening and closing it as if he had never seen a door before. I do not know why Noah stopped and squinted out at the man below.

“Hello, my father! It is Jank. I spared your life. Can you spare your ear for a few breaths?”

Without responding, Noah turned his attention back to the door.

“God commands it,” the one-eyed man said.

Noah’s nostrils flared. “Blasphemy! God did not send you to speak with me. He speaks to me Himself.”

“I come bearing the knowledge of your God that you gave me nineteen years ago. I let you live, and your God let me live.
And I told no one of what you now keep secret.”
He looked hard at my head scarf. “Please repay my kindness by preserving my life. God asks that you take me with you on the ark.”

Noah did remember Jank. I could tell by the blood that surged into his temples. He was coming alive as he used to when he yelled at the townspeople about the wrath of God. He had the look of a man in front of whom a large meal had just been placed.

“You could not kill me, and that is why you believe in the God of Adam. But He does not believe any more in you than He does in all the other sinners whose evil He will drown along with their bodies.”

“But Father, how did I get so old if He is not watching over me?”

“You have gotten as old as you will.”

“Why would the God of Adam save a man who is going to die?”

“We are all going to die, child.”

“Maybe it is you who has gotten as old as you will and will be the first to die. I think you can hardly see me at all.”

“And yet I know who you are.”

The one-eyed man spat, and despite the distance between us, I saw the canines he had sanded into sharp points. “Do not test me as you test that door, old man. I will tell people what I saw upon your wife’s brow. Then you will be killed, and God will be wise enough to give this ship to a younger man—one who has his sight, his hearing, and seed young enough to populate the new world.”

Noah was unmoved by Jank’s threat. “The God of Adam will not let you on this ark even if you are the last man left alive. Your blood is unholy, and there is no place for it in the new world. God would rather begin all over again than begin with you.”

“But God commands—”

“Good-bye, boy,” Noah said, and closed the door.

“Do not walk away from me!” Jank threatened the door. He waited, as if it might answer him. Then he yelled, “
Do not make me reveal what I know!
”

“I have a bad feeling about this,” I told Noah that night. “Perhaps we should take the one-eyed man on the ark.”

Noah refused.

• • •

T
he next morning, when I went to the cookfire, he was there. His green eye flashed at me, and before I could say or do anything, he
began screaming, “This woman is a demon! Tear the scarf from her head, and you will see!”

I ran back into the ark. “What is it?” Ham demanded.

“We are doomed,” I said. I could still remember my father saying this nineteen years earlier, but it had not seemed true until only a breath before.

• • •

T
he crowd screamed day and night for me to reveal myself, so they could know whether Jank spoke true. Fires were carried in from the town, and on Manosh’s first visit to the ark after taking away the slaves, he had to leave not only mammoths but also several overseers, to throw sand into the flames before they reached the ark.

Manosh lowered his gaze onto my head scarf. “What is this talk of a demon?” he asked.

“There is no demon among us unless you have brought one,” Noah replied.

Manosh continued to stare at my head scarf. But he did not ask me to take it off.

• • •

T
he jeering became nastier, and I became less afraid of being adrift in the darkness with three hundred cubits’ worth of bugs and wild beasts.

So perhaps I will be forgiven this cruelty: When the flood swelled inside distant clouds, I looked to them and tried to draw them near with my gaze. I hoped that Noah’s prophecy was true, despite all the people who had to die in order to make it so.

I was not the only one who lost my reason. People made claims of thunder and lightning that only they could hear or see. Little girls pointed to bird droppings and swore that they came not from any bird but from the cloudless blue sky. “White rain,” they called it.

Other clans were starting to build ships as well, and I was afraid they would tear our ark apart for wood.

• • •

I
t was a relief when one morning, after praying all night, Noah announced, “We must hurry to prepare. We have only seven days.”

That evening Ham came to stand inside my little fence of stones. I was roasting goat meat and the smoke was so thick I could hardly see his face. “What of how Father told Manosh only a few days ago that the flood would not come for another moon?” he asked.

“Perhaps the God of Adam has changed His plan.”

“Or perhaps not. Father did not tell Manosh this until Manosh had said good-bye to Zilpha. She thinks Manosh and his cousins will be back soon enough to board the ark.”

I did not want to let go of my relief. “I can worry only so much, son. I will not add this to my list.”

CHAPTER 29

FLESH

And of all that lives, of all flesh, you shall take two of each into the ark to keep alive with you; they shall be male and female. From birds of every kind, cattle of every kind, every kind of creeping thing on earth, two of each shall come to you to stay alive.

GENESIS 6:19
–
20

W
e could take only two of each unclean animal, yet many came in packs. All but two of each were slaughtered. We were allowed seven pairs of every animal that chewed its cud and had fully cloven hooves: oxen, sheep, goats, deer, gazelles, ibex, antelope, and mountain sheep.

“Why do we take more of those who chew their cud, husband?”

“Because those are clean animals. Their meat will sustain us.”

“What is so clean about chewing, swallowing, and bringing forth the same straws of wheat over and over?”

“Wife, do not speak ill of God’s laws.”

He hurried away, staff swinging wildly in front of him. I looked silently into the sky.
Why do You make strange laws? And why have You called so many animals to Japheth’s knife?

Japheth snorted gleefully as a herd of camels appeared on the
horizon. Though camels chewed their cud, they did not have fully cloven hooves and were therefore unclean. “More meat,” Japheth said as Manosh’s overseers escorted the beasts through the horde. Some men threw stones, but these fell a couple of cubits from the beasts, as if they had hit a wall.

Japheth was not awed by the spectacle. He thought only of slaughter.

“Son,” I told him, “these animals are not clean. We cannot eat them.”

This didn’t stop Japheth’s knife.

“I do not know how you manage to keep your blade so sharp, considering how generously you wield it,” I said.

“It would not be right to do God’s work with a dull one.”

Though Noah had instructed Japheth to complete this bloody task, I trusted that if he knew the joy with which Japheth went about it, he would be as displeased as I was.

Japheth continued, “The more lives I take, the less of this chore I leave to the God of Adam.”

To keep the animals from running away, he tied them together. He unsheathed his knife while I was standing in front of him. I averted my gaze, but I had no way to keep out the animals’ panicked cries.

“We must burn them, Father, to make a sacrifice,” Japheth told Noah one evening.

“Do not tell me again that we must do something. You will remain silent until the sun has come and gone once more.”

So Japheth let the animals’ screams speak for him. He must have
believed that they told of his righteousness, but the voice that went up from the beasts testified only to his ruthlessness.

Of those left alive, many were hobbled. A great number of birds lost their wings. “Mother,” Japheth called. “Come sweep these away! I can barely see my sandals.”

Cages had been made for the animals, and they were herded onto the ark bleating, snorting, and roaring, and locked inside them. “You are Chosen,” Noah told them as he walked the dark paths between the pens, waving his staff on the floor in front of him so that it hit the bars of the cages. The lowest level of the ark had no window, but Noah did not carry a candle. “You are Saved,” he called into the darkness.

It took many positions of the sun to coax Noah’s donkey into the ark. “Husband,” I said, “I am afraid there will not be another generation of donkeys if this is one of the two we take.” Though I was not fond of donkeys, they could be helpful for traveling and farming when they wanted to be.

“He is as virile as oldest son but more virtuous. He will do God’s work when the time comes.”

After all the animals were loaded into the ark, Noah ordered our sons to dismantle the ramp. “And you are never to leave the rope ladder down.”

Soon people brought their own ladders. My sons were kept busy pushing them back to the ground. “No one but us can come aboard,” Noah said, “or we will all die.”

Zilpha preferred the animals’ company to ours and was with them belowdecks. I was glad she was not around to hear this. I knew
Manosh and his cousins were no exception to this decree, even if they made it back before the God of Adam unleashed the floodwaters upon the earth.