In the Shadow of the Ark (7 page)

My father grieved deeply for the man for whom he had shown nothing but disdain during our journey. My grief was
even deeper. Alem had taught me about love and shown me the world. Ham had predicted a disaster, he had read the signs, but why did it have to strike Alem? I tried to explain to my father that a donkey was ready waiting, that I had water and food, that, even without a pathfinder, we had to get out of this place as fast as we could.

But he was not to be swayed. “Return that donkey this instant,” he said. “It will attract the wild animals. We cannot go back, the hills are full of untamed beasts lusting after our flesh.” He sat down with his silkworms and fed them the mulberry leaves I had picked on the slopes earlier in the day. My mother rolled and rolled her eye, she was full of horror at Alem’s death. And Put, the little man, rolled around in the gravel until he bled.

Because I did not have a place where I could hide with my horror, I went to the carpentry workshop. I had to go past the fire below the trusses. I had the feeling that it was about to leave its pit and come at me, leaping from one tinder-dry little patch of grass to another, to pour its heat all over me. The donkey, which I was leading by its halter, felt it too. It shied at every crackle in the wood. My stoical character, my willingness to take things as they come, had always reconciled me to my mother’s ailment and the restrictions it imposed. I did not feel condemned to live with her, rather the opposite: I was sorry for her because she had to put up with my crude help, with my lack of reliability and skill, and my inability to protect her from the sores that develop from having to lie down. But now everything became less self-evident. With her endless, nerve-racking blinking, she had taken us away
from our home, our boats, our waterways. It had cost Alem his life. We were stuck in a place where soon people were to be punished, and the only one of them I knew was a young man with a skin so fair it made me lose the feeling in my fingertips.

Ham saw me from his workbench. He hurried across. Because he looked at me without speaking, my grief burst forth. I had felt it growing in me, but when it reached my head it still took me by surprise, like a belch: It rose up in me and I overflowed. Water streamed from my eyes, my nose, my mouth, thick tears that fell from my cheeks onto my breasts.

“Does the Unnameable look like a great cat with stripes?” I stammered. “Is he a murderous, slavering monster?” I kept seeing Alem before me, his body, with its unusual scent, and which I had rubbed with oil, his cautious way of walking, intent on clues in the landscape. He taught me the gentlest possible hand contact, the touch that leaves no trace on the skin or in the sand. He taught me to move like a fish in a shoal, swerving fast without touching any other. He trained my skin, my fingertips, and the tip of my tongue.

“A man I loved has perished.”

“Your father?” he asked quickly.

“Not my father. Another man I loved.”

“Is your father back? Is he unharmed?”

“He has a wound in his heart, like me.” I could not stop sobbing. Was this the stone coming loose, the beginning of a landslide that would overwhelm us? “Help us get away from here,” I said. “See that we can leave this place safely, we have nothing to do with the punishment that will be imposed on you and your people.”

He raised his hand, his sleeve fell back onto his elbow, making his white forearm visible. He wheezed as he said, “Don’t be afraid. I will take care of you. But bring that donkey back. I can do nothing, absolutely nothing for you if you touch the animals.”

The timber around us creaked. I wanted to grab the hand he held out, if only for balance, but he withdrew it. He looked around quickly at the workmen who came and went, their eyes downcast. Because he did not offer me the hem of his cloak, I wiped my face dry with my hand.

“What can you do?” I asked with a sob. “You do not even control your own fate! There is a dwarf who makes the decisions for you.”

He hunched his back and put his hand over his mouth. The dust he worked in made him cough. Wood shavings from his hair fluttered down onto my arm. He stood away from me; his lack of breath made his face bulge and his eyes go red. He had barely any voice when he said, “The dwarf is an idiot, he’s scum. He is a seer who does not know what to do with his gift. Leave him be. Leave him be with what he imagines to be his knowledge. Go away now. But come back to me tonight. You will belong to me like my shadow. If our god does not choose you, I will.”

I
waited till it was completely dark. Finally, after much tossing and turning, Put had fallen asleep, and I walked to the pitch vats. Ham was waiting for me, a knife, needles, and some small bags in his hand. He carefully put them down on a piece of timber that lay across the stones like a shelf. He pulled me down and asked me to move as close to the glow of the fires as I could. He bent over me to do to me what was done to Rrattika boys when they became adults. First he thinned out my hair, cutting some of my curls close to the skull and pulling the longer hair across to cover it. Then he spread beside him the needles and the little bags, from which he shook black dyes. He asked me to close my eyes. With the needles, he made small cuts in my forehead, forming the emblem of the male.

I did not slap his hand away when drops of blood trickled to my temples. I did not kick his needles into the fire, nor did I blow his dyes into a heap. I did not open my eyes, but I could hear him sigh with the effort. He no longer smelled of cattle, but of cassia and sweet Klamath. His breath brushed over my face. The glow of the charcoal made my limbs feel weak. He applied the dyes to the cuts, dabbing the blood with the edge of his shirt.

When he had finished, he said, “Bathe your mother by the
pond tomorrow. Cover your body with a cloak. Wipe out your memories of Canaan. Become one of us. Earn planks and nails and build your mother a shelter that is more durable than a tent. You will be highly esteemed because you have the best water.”

I nodded in confusion. The shallow cuts on my forehead burned as if salt had been mixed into the dyes.

“Don’t let anyone know where you obtain your water,” he continued. “Not me, not my brothers, not my father the day he is going to ask.”

I still did not reply, I was still unable to talk after this morning’s news. I had to get used to the way events closed in on me, as if I were lost in a cave that, like a snail shell, became narrower and narrower.

The next day, a boy bathed his crippled mother by the water. He did not scoop water from the pond, he had brought his own water, which was clearer and didn’t smell. The boy did not wear a cloak — that would have been too impractical when using that oil and that water — but a sleeveless tunic, irregular in shape so you could not see that a pair of small breasts hid under it. All attention was focused on the garment that was decorated with shells. No one here wore anything like that, not just because sleeveless garments gave poor protection against the dust and the sun, but because, so far inland, shells were too precious to be sewn onto clothes. The meticulous way the boy worked was astonishing. His fingers moved so carefully and incessantly they seemed like ants, like steadily moving workers who would go over an obstacle rather than walk around it. Amazement could
be seen on all faces, first of all the servants’. They looked furtively at the water in my bowl, nudged one another and whispered. They stood at the edge of the pond and gaped at every one of my movements. I was using my old sponge, even though it was falling apart from frequent use. And, of course, they paid attention to my mother, her face, and the adornment, which emphasized her beauty. They only withdrew when there were calls from a distance.

Shem, Japheth, and Ham approached, the sons of the Builder, and the bystanders made room for them, whispering. I did not have time to get up and watch them coming. Before I realized, they had walked past me and my mother. All three wore cloaks that nearly touched the ground. Dust fell out of them when they took them off. It was obvious they were brothers, they resembled one another, though the differences between them were not small. Shem had more of a paunch than his brothers, but had a narrower face. Japheth’s appearance was coarser, his lower jaw protruding as if it had been pushed out by a brutal blow. He had large hands and black furrows in his neck. Ham was much smaller and thinner than his brothers, still almost a child compared to them.

Shem and Japheth got undressed first. They sat in the water and made scratching movements over the surface to keep the insects away. The servants were next. They made their toilet in their own way: They scraped the dirt off the backs of their hands with their teeth and poured pond water over their shoulders. They all suffered from itching: You could tell from the way their faces relaxed when they sat down in the water, as if they put out
a fire deep inside their bodies. Ham was fiddling with his belt, which was hopelessly tangled and seemed to need all his attention. Even after he stood with his feet in the water, his gaze kept avoiding me. He was only knee deep when he threw himself into the water, as if he had felt a snake brush against his calf, and a moment later he plunged his head underwater.

As Shem and Japheth came out of the water to put their cloaks back on, they smelled my oils. They stood next to me, their legs spread, examining my jug, the bowl with the water, and the sponge that floated in it like a hunk of bread. “What do you do to her that makes her weak as wax?” they asked.

I stood up and bowed my head. My shell-covered tunic made soft clicking sounds and hid the rapid rise and fall of my breast under it. “We are marsh people,” I said, fearful that my voice would betray me. “We have a talent for water. With this, I can wash you the way I wash my mother.”

Shem had a hairy chest, Japheth was hairy just about all over. They looked at each other and smiled. They took the belts their servants held out to them and tied them low and tight around their waists. They walked to the red tent, looking back now and then, and went each into his own part of the tent. Ham went after them, but he did not look back.

I packed up my gear. I stood in front of the tent, made a greeting, and offered the Builder’s sons a wash and oil treatment. They wanted to stand up, but I told them that was not necessary. I put down my bowl and knelt. I ignored the fact that they had just bathed in the pond, washing them the way it should be done. Because they were not used to me yet, I began with their hands,
their arms, their feet, Shem first as he was the eldest. He was a bit giggly and friendly, talking with his brothers, but not with me.

Next I washed Japheth. His skin was gray. I was generous with the water, letting it drip from the sponge onto the pebbles and grit, something he watched with amazement. He asked me to braid his beard. His reactions were more sensitive than Shem’s, almost irritable. He seemed to find my touch pleasant, but had no patience to enjoy it. He squinted, so I had no idea what he was looking at. I could not relax his tension.

Last I washed Ham, the same way as the others, no longer or more slowly. As I rubbed his arms, I could feel his pulse beat. He had not dried himself properly after his bath in the pond. Water was dripping from his hair down his neck, and as I wiped the drops with my sponge, I could see him repressing an urge to close his eyes. His breath was not wheezy, he was breathing more freely and lightly than before.

There was another part to the tent, made from much heavier canvas. Its curtain was down, the gaps plugged up with straw. Sounds came from behind it at times, the knock of stone against stone, low male voices. There the Builder lived; there also lived the dwarf I had seen near the pitch pots. But the Builder could not leave his sickbed, and nobody asked for a boy to bathe him. I could feel Ham grow tense under my hands when the dwarf came and looked at us through the curtain and said, “How curious, a boy who is as particular as a girl. Didn’t you have a sister who is terribly like you?”

“His sister gets the water. She is away at the spring,” Ham replied quickly, and the dwarf went back.

From that day on, I was assured of work. They did not ask me to come again, they simply assumed I would. They asked bystanders where he was, this washerboy who dragged his crippled mother along with him. After their daily labors, they waited with sluggish impatience. When they returned, they pushed back the canvas and did not request anything, but their eyes were burning.

A
fter work I would sit down with my father. One day I noticed small pieces of charcoal lying under his feet: jet-black traces of someone who has been drawing.

“What were you doing?” I asked.

Nervously he looked away into the shrubs, and I knew that somewhere in there, there were boards with sketches of a vessel. I said, “Father, are you a righteous man?”

Surprised, he straightened his back. His eyes became clear at my question, he forgot the chaos in the quarry and out there. “I do not know if I am,” he said slowly. “But I strive to be.”

“Then go to Ham and offer your services. You have promised.”

M
y father worked for Ham during the day and, in the evenings, built a house for four with the timber we earned. He placed the house at the end of the quarry, not far from the ash dump where he obtained the charcoal for his sketches for the ship, and far enough away from the tents and barracks not to be bothered by the constant sound of grinding hand mills. He worked fast. It was the desire to sleep in a hammock again, and no longer on the ground like cattle, that made him drive nails into timber long into the night. But every morning, long before I left for the spring, he was already at the scaffolds. Sometimes he would walk up to the red tent even before sunrise, carrying a lantern, avoiding the sleeping bodies of the workers.

What did he do there? He spoke with Ham. Parts of the ship were demolished, ribs pulled down and set up anew. He was building a genuine ship, not just some structure that looked like one. He knew of the need of ancient peoples to leave behind markers in the landscape, a stone table or a lime-filled furrow in the shape of a snake, and he felt indulgent at the thought that he was contributing to an effort to leave a mark in time. My father made the ship seaworthy without believing it would
ever sail. In this region, water was not part of one’s thoughts; if you thought of calamity, it was drought you imagined. He was realizing a dream. What he was building was a ship of ships, so perfect it would be a shame to launch it into the water. It was enough for him to know that in the future famous characters would be linked with the structure, and that in its ruins people would search for the remains of kings and children of the gods.