In the Shadow of the Ark (21 page)

The short, dark man straightened. His flamboyance left him, and he looked unsure of himself. His arms were long in proportion to his legs. He was bony and unattractive. He looked from one to the other. “Has not the god of the Builder said ‘Only his’?” he asked carefully.

“That is correct,” Ham continued. “But you know the other conditions. The animals can come. One pair of each kind, seven of the clean ones. We’re not quite sure yet how this works with the different kinds of apes, there are so many of them, but we think your kind is admitted.”

The dwarf seemed to shrink, his shoulders dropped, his pelvis tilted, making him look even shorter. His face too seemed
to wither, his skin to shrivel up. Was he sighing with relief, or did something else make him gasp? He went out and disappeared into the sunlight.

No one in the red tent really laughed, the laughter died in their throats before it could reach their faces. All three sat down, crestfallen. Shem rested his elbows on his knees, Japheth leaned back as if thoroughly exhausted by what had happened. “Why are you doing this?” he asked.

Ham sat on the edge of his seat with a grimace the like of which I had never witnessed before. It was a smile frozen on his face, but his eyes trembled in their sockets.

“I don’t know, I couldn’t think of anything better. All I could think was: How can I stop him going into Father’s quarters and telling what the child has said? I thought this was a way…. But this is not good. This will end badly. Let’s go to the crevice.”

I was wringing my sponge so hard it tore. I could not believe that because of a couple of thoughtless words from the wanderers’ child, our death warrants had been signed. I could not believe that a joke on Ham’s part had made Put’s indiscretion irreparable. I should have run to the field on the slope to urge my father to work very hard and very fast to complete our truss-boat. But I did not. I continued the grooming until the brothers felt clean enough to go to the oracle in the crevice and, unsteady with nervousness, preceded us outside.

W
e were requested to accompany them to the crevice where the oracle lived. Behind the request was an order, of course, they did not need to spell that out for us. The men were clean, their hair was shiny, and they brought the wholesome scent of Klamath into the crevice, but the path was dusty and so steep you needed to use your hands to manage it. Put and I carried flagons and poured water for them whenever necessary. My thoughts were with my father, I peered around hoping I might see his shape. I splashed water on their clothes and on my legs. They dried their hands on the cloak they had thrown over my shoulders for the trip. I carried a comb and a set of brushes.

Put stumbled. “We’ve lost our niche. We’re going to die,” he whispered. “But will we reach the realm of the dead? If that unnameable god wipes us out, will he not do it totally? Does he not wipe out even our spirit and our thoughts?”

“He will not wipe you out. He will let your spirit wander about for all eternity as punishment for your careless talk.”

“Do you think so? Will I wander about forever?” His thin face looked scared.

“Of course not,” I said quickly. “You’re not bad. You’re just dumb, that will save you.”

“If I must wander about, I want to be with you. How will I find you in the realm? Will you look the same as you do now?”

I turned my back on him. His ignorance made me see red. Small as he was, his despair was no less than mine.

The Builder’s sons had brought gifts. They were offerings to the gods their father neglected. For the priestess, they had a basket of fruit, picked, as usual, far too early. It was not their first visit to her, that was obvious from the practiced way they sat on the floor in the right posture. The priestess spread a handful of stones on the ground and said, “The water has not changed its course. It still comes this way. As ever, your father will prove to have been right.” From the bowl that stood by her side, she took some bones, the vertebrae and ribs of a small animal, and threw them down in front of her. “I see the proof of his wisdom and understanding: I see a blessing and a curse,” she said, bending forward. In her sanctum, she sat out of the wind, but our clothes flapped in a draft. “Your father will not treat you equally,” she continued. She raised her eyes. She looked at each of the brothers in turn. “He will pronounce a curse.”

I saw Ham’s face turning ashen. Drops of sweat appeared on his neck and his temples.

With a slow gesture, the oracle gathered up the bones. She dropped them one by one into the bowl. She erased the traces in the sand and rearranged her sleeves. “That is all. I can tell you no more,” she said.

Shem was shivering in his clothes. “I have let a woman wash me,” he said haltingly. “He will surely curse me.”

“No,” said Japheth, his mouth twisted. “It will be me. I had
thought of hiding Re Jana in Ham’s niche. He will surely curse me.”

Ham knew, of course, that he was the one who had committed the real sin. He had given my father the tools, the timber, and the order. His shoulders drooped. The sky was full of seagulls, we did not know where they had come from. They screamed like children and skimmed over our heads as if they expected the bones in the bowl to change into bread crusts.

My father was nowhere to be seen. We scanned the horizon and searched for him behind the bushes and around the small ponds. I asked Put to go south and went north myself. I had barely got as far as the almond trees when loud screams resounded from the hills. It sounded like the wailing of a shepherd who sees his whole herd disappear into a ravine. I was not the only one to hear it. In the distance, I saw dozens of people going up the slope toward the sound. I saw Shem, Ham, and Japheth not far from the sheds with the sacks and baskets. They ran like boys, the skirts of their cloaks flapping around their legs.

I hurried up the slope. It took some time before I could see what they were looking at so curiously, or what they were uttering their horror about. But as I got closer, it became clear that they were looking at a tree, a low olive tree in which hung a body.

My feet caught on the stones. I was stumbling rather than making headway. Inside me raged the ugliest premonition since the mallard ducks had risen above my mother’s limp body. But I kept walking, and as I came closer, I was reassured. The body in
the tree was small and dark. It was the dwarf. He had hanged himself, that grubby old joker who pretended he knew no distress.

Shem was shouting at Ham, “Did you have to humiliate him like that? Was that necessary?”

They took down the body and lifted it onto their shoulders after removing the rope. It was not heavy. Shem insisted on carrying it by himself. He made the descent carefully as if he were afraid of hurting it.

They took the dead dwarf to their father. The Builder was in the front part of the tent, bent over the spots my oil had left on one of the carpets. When his sons came in he looked up, rubbed the oil spot some more with his fingernail, and said, “He has freed himself of his earthly body. It does not surprise me at all. He was a messenger.” Then he withdrew into his private quarters.

I made a mixture that would remove the oil stains from the carpet, but when I was about to enter his quarters, I was touched by what I saw: His wife, Zaza, was with him, and the Builder lay limp across her legs, breathing heavily. Zaza had her white hand on his back, tapping it with a gentle rhythm. His whole fragile body shook. I feared for the porous ribs and the thin skin around them. “Shem,” he sobbed. “Japheth. Ham.” Then it became clear to me. The dwarf had not gone without taking revenge. He had told the Builder about his sons’ blasphemous plan. I left, because I could not bear seeing an old man lying with his head almost touching the ground.

When I passed Neelata’s embroidered tent, one of her maids beckoned me. I bent under the curtain and went in. The tent was so low you could not stand up in it. Neelata was sitting on a cushion on the floor and the maids sat with their backs against the side of the tent. Put sat in a corner, looking like a prince in a beautiful woolen mantle, made to his size.

Neelata gestured for me to sit down. A few lamps burned, but none of them shone on her face. The whites of her eyes showed how fast her glance was moving over my face.

“Put has told them about the niche,” I said.

“I know,” she said. There was no reproach in her voice, any more than there had been in mine. We were both filled with understanding for the child, who was playing with the seams in the canvas of the tent, running his finger along them as if they were long paths that should be traversed. He fiddled with the edges of the tent’s opening and with the cords that held back the curtain. He was attentive, but had no understanding of the situation he was in.

“And Ham piles mistake on mistake.”

“That is true,” she said.

I knew Ham was there, because I could smell him. He sat behind the cane partition at the back of the tent, trying for all he was worth to stop wheezing.

“Everything is lost,” I said. “My hope is dead, my courage gone.” I was not exaggerating. My father’s silk moths seemed to have nestled in my head, there was such a nervous beating of wings behind my eardrums.

Neelata shook her head. “You still have the truss-boat. I have not given its existence away.” She nodded at one of her maids. She always managed to place her lamps so that her tent seemed like a palace. From a far corner, the heavily made-up servant handed me a small pouch of herbs on a saucer.

“The Builder is full of sorrow,” said Neelata. Her eyes glittered. “Go to him. Take care of him. Tell him about the cave.”

“But the water is surrounded by the dead.”

“Tell him anyway. And do it quickly. The rain is approaching. Once it comes, the Builder will have no more need of your spring, and then it will be too late.”

I
walked home and chewed the herbs. I lay down and felt how, as time passed, the hammock sagged less and less under my weight. First I felt my courage returning. It came in a blast of wind. It made the planks in the wall shake. I spat out the remains of the herbs and rolled a fresh ball. The second mouthful fed my fighting spirit. I saw scenes of women struggling. They pulled one another’s hair and bit each other till they bled. Amongst them were women with bleeding backs, pregnant women, lame women. Neelata’s mother was there, she stood wailing at her ruler’s door. I chewed more of the herb, and although I became more and more ecstatic, I fell asleep.

My father returned. The dark was already lifting, a soft light glowed through it, the sun was waiting behind the hills. The first thing he did when he got home was to put my mother outside so he would not have to react to her sighing and whistling. He fetched the bag where he kept his tools: everything he needed for his silkworms, his repair kit, and his woodworking gear.
He is leaving,
I thought, but I was wrong. He emptied the bag. He passed each object through his hands and considered if he still needed it. He found, for instance, some rabbit-fur boots that in the marshes were used to warm people who have been in the water too long.

Here he did not have much use for them. He packed up his spools of silk. Those he could not throw out, they were the result of years of boiling and twining. As soon as he had enough of them, he would have it woven into a wrap such as he had seen around the bodies of women from the east, a wrap so soft it would once and for all be a remedy for my mother’s sores and pain. It would put an end to her constant suffering. He put the spools aside with care and took up the pieces of beeswax, kept to remove hair from a body but never used. He broke them up between his hands, they crumbled to the ground. Then he crushed the shells, the beads, the carefully carved bones we had carried with us all that time. The knife he used to keep his hair cropped close to his skull, the chisels for carving designs in wood, the file for his nails and his teeth, all of that he smashed between stones. Meanwhile he whispered the questions that filled his head to the point of exhaustion: What was this ship, an exercise in endurance? A proof of faith? A test of ability? What was the matter with the family who was building it, who set others to work to furnish that proof and so were able to produce a grandiose work of art, who then spat out the makers of that work of art as if they were bits of ash in bread? I could read the pain in his body, could see the blisters on his feet and the spots where his girdle had rubbed all day.

“What is it you are doing?” I asked.

“I destroy what I have,” he replied. “Belongings are misleading, they give you the feeling that you have a future and prospects.”

“The dwarf is dead,” I said. “He hanged himself after Ham promised him a spot in your niche.”

He looked up, a little surprised, he obviously had not heard
this news yet. “Is that so?” he asked. And then again, more emphatically, “Is that really so?” He lowered the stone in his hand until it fell to the floor with a dry thump. He stood up and looked around.

“What is it? What’s making you so excited?”

“The dwarf is dead,” he said as if it were he who was bringing me the news.

“What about it? Do you mean there is room in the niche again?” I asked. “The Builder knows about it, so you can forget about that niche.”

“I mean that there is room in the Builder’s heart again.”

He hung the rabbit-fur boots on his girdle and ordered me to put on my shell tunic. I did it up faster and tighter than usual; it did not hurt because I was still under the influence of the herbs. We left the house and went to the corral, for once without being irritated by the junk that always lay all over the paths. We led a sturdy donkey out of the corral. We harnessed it to a small cart on which we loaded my bathtub. We filled it with water that we warmed on the fires of the pitch vats. While my father was busy heating the water, I went with the donkey to the cave to get more water, ignoring the trail I was leaving in the hills.

When it was light again outside, we stood before the Builder’s quarters and asked permission to enter. Never before had it been so easy to enter these quarters: There was no dwarf to stop us, and the herb-chewing boys who usually hung around outside the tent were at breakfast. My father entered first, I followed.