In the Shadow of the Ark (17 page)

Of course, my mother could have no idea how much the Builder’s announcement from the dais had changed things. She lay on a high rock near the edge of the cliff and in the house on windy days. She did not hear how the taciturn, thoughtless Rrattika were beginning to talk. Young and old, they discussed the water and the flood. The children started having anxious dreams. They did not know what drowning was, but their fathers had said, “If you don’t watch out, the water will close over your head!” and they woke gasping for breath. Their fear grew, like that of the very old who knew their lives depended on their family’s fixed abode: Wandering about the land, they stood no chance and would be left behind in a shady spot with a couple of jugs of water and some bread. And as their fear grew, the inhabitants of the shipyard became convinced that, for the sake of the children, the elderly, the sick, and the weak, it would be better not to talk about it. In an almost magical way, all sorts of explanations arose of what the Builder had said, and no one any longer would draw the only correct conclusion: that many would die. And with the silence came forgetting. Because there was no new information to confirm the old, the usual happened: Messages of doom were forgotten despite their ominous content. Gaps were found in the predictions, unclear statements that confirmed the suspicion that they were lies. Eventually, the calamity also came to seem so very remote, as if it were not for this time but for another era altogether, not even that of their children or their children’s children. The Builder had already lived such a long time, perhaps he
would live to twice his age, and when at last the water came, new-fashioned solutions they could not even think of now would long since have appeared, or new gods, sons of this god, with different opinions and different ways. And what else was there to do but carry out the daily tasks, what else could they have attempted? Plot a rebellion? Stop sleeping and eating?

At first, I made an attempt at reminding them of the message of doom. I told people there was very little room on the ship, that only those who made their own vessel would have a chance against the flood, but all I got were bored, almost pitying looks. They peered under my hood and saw that I was not one of them. Only a minority took my advice seriously. They started collecting timber and improvising something. But although they had been working on a ship for years, not one of them knew how to put together a boat. Soon the timber was abandoned and put to other uses. And because time passed without anything happening, the mood became easier. Stacks of fuel from the dung of the cattle and large quantities of wool were available, and eggs galore. Bees willingly gave their honey. The ruminants were tame and let themselves be milked. People laid banquets outside their dwellings. They invited strangers; the women who saw me passing by beckoned to me, and it happened more than once that I had eaten before I got home. I met all sorts of folks, they came from faraway cities and wanted to settle here. Small businesses, starting with few resources, flourished; wanderers arrived and never left.

A
mongst all this abundance, there was one shortage that became worse: There was not enough timber. The stacks we had been able to get to so easily were now guarded by the warriors in their woolen skirts. People who still had timber did fantastic deals. If we wanted to continue working on our boat, I had to resort to going to the waste pile. That was a precarious enterprise, because the pile stood not far from Neelata’s embroidered tent, so I could only approach it disguised in a veil. I knew how close to disaster my meeting with Zaza had been; something like that must under no circumstances happen again. Put helped me look. He fossicked through the wood shavings, feeling blindly for something solid amongst the sawdust.

Before long, a guard appeared. The man pointed at the small pieces of timber I was holding under my dress. “Put it back,” he said, and at the same moment Put screamed. An abrupt movement had forced splinters into the skin between his thumb and forefinger. I dropped my booty, took Put’s hand, and saw at least five slivers of wood, their tips black, deep under his skin. He would not let me touch them. Before I could do anything about it, he ran from the waste pile toward the tent with the embroidered panels.

As if he had called her, Neelata appeared in the entrance to
the tent. Fast as lightning, I dived for cover. I hid behind a piece of fence that was protecting corncobs from the sun. I had not been so close to her since we fled to our terrace, not even when I hid in the shrubs to spy on Ham. I wanted to see what was going to happen, but I also quickly looked for escape routes, figuring what the chances were of being seen. Neelata immediately came toward Put. He threw himself amongst the folds of her robe, digging under her gown with one hand until he found her hips and pressed himself against her, holding his other hand away from his body as if it did not belong to him. His blood stained their clothes. She laid her hand on his arm and bent over him.

She had important things to do: in and around her tent lay scales, mortars, pestles, sets of weights, all of which had to be carefully packed and taken into the ark. But she squatted and removed the splinters one by one. I did not know then that she kept his milk teeth in a pouch around her neck.

For many weeks, Put had been living with us on the cliff, supposedly isolated from the life in the shipyard, but it was obvious from their behavior that they saw each other regularly. She bandaged his hand and kissed his hair. He stood leaning against her. After a while, he no longer cried from pain — the splinters lay in one of the mortars like trophies — but I think because of what she said. She obviously had said nothing that could comfort him. It could not be otherwise: She was not given to lying, and comfort there was none. She said, “Timber you can no longer obtain. That time is gone. The Builder needs it, every spline is going to count.”

I am not sure what happened next. Put said something, and Neelata looked in my direction. She saw me, let go of Put,
and came toward me, her robes rustling. I jumped up and started running. But her legs were much longer than mine. She was used to walking in those clothes, I still kept stumbling over the skirts. She grabbed me, pulled me down to the ground, and gasped, “I knew you were nearby. If Put was here, you couldn’t be far away.” She was lying on top of me. Her breath brushed my face. I could not help seeing that her body showed the imprint of serrated fingernails, she had scratches on her neck and on her face. I turned my face away from her.

“You must not bear us ill will,” she said. “We’ve done our best to save you.”

I groaned and put my elbow against her shoulder. Grit in my mouth made speaking difficult as I said, “You have taken my place in Ham’s heart. And hence my place on the ship.”

Pushing my elbow away, she bent toward me. She pressed her mouth against my ear and whispered, “He has chosen me to be his wife because he cannot resist my uncle’s terms. Your reproaches concern him, not me.”

She loosened her grip. She must have thought I would not run away, but I did, and fast, and because she had to get up on those long legs of hers, I got away.

“Come back,” she said. “We need you.”

I jumped from stone to stone. “Come to the wedding! Come back to us!”

I ran up the hill like a hare. I did not wait for Put. I hurled myself into the brushwood far from any trodden path, so that when I arrived at the top, my legs were red from the lashing grass, the thorns, and the poisonous plants.

W
e hid our house with big bundles of branches and swept our fireplace. We were on our guard for any approaching footsteps. Neelata was searching for us. We saw her walking up and down the slope. It was unavoidable that she would find us. Put, sick from the tension, led her into our field on the day of her wedding. My father was busy some way farther amongst the mulberry trees. I saw them coming, Neelata in a wide dress, Put chewing on a cake, both out of breath from the steep climb. I rolled into the brushwood. He took Neelata across the field to our truss-boat. She was made up for the day’s festivities, her hair invisible beneath a sheaf of feathers, her breast richly covered in clinking beads. Here everything was on display for her: The timber we’d stolen, the pitch we’d stolen, the nails we’d extorted, and the tools. Here she found the things Ham had missed. Put turned and quickly walked down the slope again. He came right past my hiding place, sobbing fit to break one’s heart.

Neelata walked around and around the boat. She looked for the most trodden path and found it. It led to our house. She cautiously crossed the field and approached the stack of branches. She walked calmly, like a cow swaying to its drinking place, looking around watchfully as if she could feel me looking at her. The
sun lit up her feather headdress. Like Put, she walked right past me. I stayed motionless, rigid like the stones pressing into my arms and legs.

She reached the pile of branches that covered our house. She walked around it until she found the door, threw the bundles that covered it aside, and entered.

That was the moment I had waited for to get up and approach. Soundlessly, I walked to the back of the house. There I could hear everything. Not very clearly, but I could hear how she spoke to my mother, who was lying on her stretcher. She talked about the small yard at the other end of the field and the truss-boat that was being built there. I could imagine what my mother was thinking: that the sky was falling down on her a second time, that paralysis was being added to paralysis, that unfairness would triumph. I stumbled around in the brushwood, climbing over the branches as fast as I could, the dry leaves rustling, you would have had to be deaf not to hear me coming. Headlong I walked through the doorway, feeling like a dog that responds to a whistle because that is what it has been trained to do, not because it wants to.

“Greetings,” Neelata said sweetly when she saw me. She was sitting on the floor next to the lamp that was burning for my mother. My mother lay in her arms, her head hanging. Immediately after I entered, her eye turned to me. Neelata was not holding her properly, supporting her too low in the back.

“Why don’t you tell this poor woman anything? Why do you treat her like a child?” she asked calmly.

“We tell her … we know … what is there to know?” My
tongue faltered, my mouth was dry as cork. I knew it: Every word from my mouth was a slap in the face of my poor, lame mother. Anything I said produced another lie, and so did anything I did not say. Our eyes turned to each other and away again in a rapid series of movements.

Neelata pretended not to notice what was happening between us. “You are building a boat, and this woman knows nothing.” She threw my mother’s head upward to change the pressure on her arm. My stomach moved in the same manner, and my mouth was filled with a taste I did not recognize.

“You don’t understand,” I replied, my lips feeling like leather. “This is not a boat. How could my father have advised you about size and proportions if he had not first designed the ship to scale?”

“What I saw is not a scale model. It is a truss-boat, with a roof. It is built from beautiful, sound planks. Enough timber, maybe, to complete the Builder’s ship.”

My eyes had not yet adapted to the darkness sufficiently to distinguish her expression. I mainly saw the feathers moving around her head.

“I have talked to her,” she continued. “I have asked her where your good water comes from.”

My mother no longer bothered trying to look at me, her eye was like a pearl sewn onto her face.

“Did she tell you?” I asked.

“I think so,” Neelata answered. “But I can’t yet understand her properly. It takes a little getting used to a woman who talks with her eyelid. But I suspect we have come to an agreement.” She put
my mother carefully but clumsily into my arms. “Here, you do it. Show her your boat and tell her what is going to happen. You are her daughter, not me.” She walked out of the door, feathers flying from her hair.

With my arms far too low on my mother’s back, I sat motionless. Her head hung so far back that the ends of her hair touched the ground. Her breathing was speeding up, she swallowed fitfully, and in her agitation she managed to make her vocal cords pop. But I looked straight ahead and thought:
Just say it. Just ask what you want to know and do not get all worked up.

Of course, she became heavy after a while. This was not a good position, for me or for her, my back and shoulders were aching. I held her until my father returned with bags full of mulberry leaves, and spitting with indignation, he shouted, “Why are you holding her like that?” and took her from me.

I went to watch the wedding. I wanted to see slender Neelata standing beside gentle, sensitive, torn Ham. I made a headdress of feathers, not because I liked that, but so as not to be conspicuous. I put color on my face and drew lines around my eyes to make myself unrecognizable. I took nuts to lay on the table. I was not alone. Hundreds of people were gathering in the yard. The rich came with gifts for the Builder, contributions to an enterprise so grand it made them dream. Never have I seen so much food, so many plates and beakers at a feast. Things were broken, but nobody uttered an upset cry, everything was instantly replaced by something new.

Neelata was wearing her ordinary dress, the same one she
had worn when she came to our hiding place. She relied on her beauty and knew that a robe of expensive material would contribute nothing to it. Ham wore a cloak almost as white as the flesh of that nut with the hard, hairy shell. He had more of a beard than when I had last rubbed him with oil, and his Adam’s apple stood out more sharply under his skin. I could see someone had made an attempt at washing him for the occasion; he had a rash in spots where they had been too vigorous. The warriors, carrying their daggers, helped him stack rocks into a column. It became a grand, impressive structure, in line with the columns Japheth and Shem had erected when they married. It was said that he had widened his quarters in the tent and lengthened the ropes. He had spread out the carpets from his largest sanctuary to receive his wife. That is how he looked when I saw him in the place where the ceremony was to take place, standing next to his stack of rocks, devoted but covered in spots, his hair combed flat against his head and wearing brand-new, tight-fitting clothes, the seams obviously chafing his skin. I looked at him from a distance, and could only think about how, in the darkness of his tent, he would undo his girdle and instruct me to sit astride him.