In the Shadow of the Ark (20 page)

My father no longer worked on the truss-boat. He radiated a quiet that confused me. He told my mother in detail about his little boat, saying he would stop building it if that was what she
wanted, but she showed little interest in this. What she did want to know was why he worked in the ark at the end of the day when all the workers returned home. He said, “For as long as we have been together, I have kept things from you. It was never out of malice. Now do not bear malice yourself and do not ask me questions.” She kept blinking her eye, and he sat with his back turned to her until she stopped. All this time he continued weeding his seedlings. He watered them from the pond as if he had no idea what was about to happen. And he still dug the stones out of the ground.

My father’s calm had an unexpected effect on Put. He begged him to continue work on the truss-boat in the field, but could not sway the man who stayed away all night and spent the day in his hammock, dead tired. Put tried to do it by himself, hammering nails into the wrong spots and hurting himself. He hurled stones around, he ripped just about every leaf from the tree that was supposed to give us shade. He behaved like a cornered animal, he barely slept anymore, he kept walking around us as if he could avert disaster by staying close to us. Our presence would stop the rolling rocks that were going to squash him, our weight would keep him on the ground when the whirlwind came.

Once, toward midday, he vomited up his food, small, thoroughly chewed pieces of fruit he had consumed that morning, frugally because they were the first of the season, from a remote bush. I terrified him by dragging him into the shrubs and saying, “Shall I tell my father how you gave away our secret?”

He pulled hair out of his head and used it to build nests like a bird. He slept underneath our hammocks, in the spot where, at
home in the marshes, the dogs would lie. In his sleep, he scratched shreds of wood from the boards.

Because he was a child, his despair was unbearable. His small talent for wordlessly asking questions, his ability to make an undeserved sorrow visible on his face, drove my father to say, “Child, stop screaming like that. Do not make it hard for me. Do not force me to tell what I must keep secret.”

Put sat up on his mat, I moved closer. “What is it?” we asked. “What is it you can’t tell us?” My mother was in the corner of the room, she could hear his every word.

“Ham has made me carry out a job on the ship. I have made something I have never made before. Something I have never before thought about. He made me build a niche in the wall of the ship, a space with an invisible entry, a hiding place. It is a big secret, he does not inform his brothers. He is sinning against his father’s will.”

“What is the purpose of this hiding place?”

“The space is large enough to hide a person. Possibly enough for a couple of people.”

“For us?” I asked softly.

“Who knows?” my father said and fell silent.

The color drained from Put’s face at this revelation. He left his sleeping place, the spot pervaded by the scent of his body, the sweat from his overwhelming impotence, and ran from the house, screaming that he was not my parents’ child, that we would leave him behind and forget him, and that he could not swim. I went after him. He ran along the field, farther up the cliffside. He ran so fast and so heedlessly that stones he dislodged hit my head,
forcing me to shout to make him stop and wait for me. He was still panting when I reached him. I pushed him onto the ground, he sat down with the slope at his back. The child who was always the first to notice if I needed something no longer wanted to be with me; it made me very sad, it was as if he was hurling stones at me.

“I don’t want to go in Neelata’s camel sack, I want to stay with all of you,” he sobbed. As I could not see any other solution, I told him the story of my little brother. I told him that, when my mother fell over into her boat never to get up again, I had not been the only one by the side of the water. Next to me lay my brother, a baby in a basket. After I heard her fall and saw her disappear into the boat, I had gone to her, even though I could not swim. I had struggled through the water, head under, no bottom under my feet, till I felt the edge of the boat. I had climbed into the boat where she lay motionless amongst the fish, whose thrashing about had got themselves hopelessly tangled in her hair. My mother had not offered me her breast. She did not sit up straight to make it easier for me. I had done it all by myself. When I had drunk my fill of her milk, we listened together to the steadily weakening crying of my little brother. I told her she should go and get him, that the sun was climbing and the water rising, but she only blinked her eye.

“It is not going to happen to us a second time,” I told Put. “Now it’s you who is our little boy; we will not leave you behind by the water’s edge.”

I asked Ham, “Whom is the niche for that you’ve made my father build?”

He replied, “For you.”

“I will not come if that is the way it is.”

“There is room for your father too.”

“And my mother?”

He looked away. We were sitting under the caterpillar cage. He had a strange expression around his mouth, he seemed to be full of pride because he was disregarding his father’s will. I knew what he was going to say next.

“Your mother is lame. My sin against the will of the Unnameable is already twofold. If I take her, it would be threefold. I’m doing my best, Re Jana. I’m trying everything I can think of.”

“And Put?” I asked. Not that I had any voice. Something in my throat had shifted, and it sounded as if I were whispering.

“There is a separate solution for him. He will be taken care of.”

I stood up and turned my back to him. I went inside our house. Put was there. He sat between my father and my mother, his legs pulled up, his hand touching my mother and his back leaning against my father. I did not tell any of them what I had learned.

E
very morning the tents were wetter than before. Every jug, every bowl that had been left outside had water in it. The story of how I had saved Neelata spread. I was allowed to return to work in the red tent. I no longer wore a cloak, but neither did I wear the shell tunic in which I had disguised myself. Put was with me to carry the jugs. Shem, Japheth, and Ham admitted us without a word, were startled by my nakedness, and hurriedly closed the tent curtain. I took care of them the way I used to. Put helped me. He was in high spirits. He was enthusiastically rubbing oil into Japheth’s buttocks and thighs, spilling an unnecessary amount. I pointed it out to him, but that did not help, he was nervous and excited, unable to control the flow.

When the dwarf came out of the Builder’s quarters, Put and I tried to carry on as unobtrusively as possible. A smell of fermenting fruit hung about him, and for a moment it looked as if the wine had clouded his vision so much he would walk past us. But he recognized me. As he went by, he whispered with a sweaty smirk, “Hey, you! What’s happened to your disguise? Have you had your beating yet?”

Put stood between us and could not restrain himself. The first secret, the spring in the cave, he had been able to keep. The second,
our hiding place on the side of the cliff, he had given away out of friendship for Neelata. This secret was altogether too big. He was confused, not able to order his thoughts and see the larger picture. He turned to the dwarf and said in the same whispery tone, “We are not going to drown. There is a hidey-hole, that’s where we’re going to be!”

At his words, I felt the same relief he must have felt: At last a response the hairy dwarf could not counter, at last he was reduced to silence. That triumphant feeling did not last long; everything around us had suddenly become immobilized. Not a canvas, not a tent pole moved.

“What did you say?” asked Japheth.

“A hidey-hole,” Put answered weakly. He had twisted the cloth in his hand so tightly around his finger that its tip turned white.

“And who has built that hidey-hole?” Put could not utter a word. Japheth had to repeat his question, and then once more, his teeth clenched.

“The man who knows how to build boats,” said Put. The dwarf fled outside, leaving a smell of wine behind him, his head down between his shoulders. Ham sat there, rigid as stone. Japheth got up. “Is that so?” he asked me. I bent my head. He started dressing, laughing, he seemed strangely excited. It took a long time to get his clothes right.

Shem too got up and dressed. His clothes were more elaborate than his brother’s. His girdle consisted of a number of thin strands linked together with pearls. As if he wanted to demonstrate how it is done, he was ready in a flash. He went out without waiting for his brother. Japheth went after him, his skirts undone.

Ham stayed behind in the tent, a gray, gleaming shadow. The curtain had barely stopped moving when he burst into a coughing fit. Spit flew about in flakes. Put and I sat near him, thinking of my father and his sketches. We knew exactly what would happen. They would find him in his hammock. Seeing the sawdust in his eyelashes, they would blow insolently in his face and order him to get up. He would inform them, this man who had exhausted himself, who had done exactly what was expected of him and who knew that now he would pay the price for it.

“He will not betray you,” I said to Ham. I put my hands flat on his skin to rub his shoulders. That seemed to be all I was capable of doing: to let his skin slide under my hands to make sure he stayed there.

“I know,” he whispered. He moved with me. If I pressed, he yielded, but I was not sure that he knew it was me touching him.

Shem and Japheth did not stay away long. They were talking loudly and excitedly when they came back. “Cleverly done, what an economical way to use a double wall,” they said. “But what did you have in mind, brother?” My father was not with them. Possibly, he was already lying bent double at the foot of my mother’s stretcher. Possibly, he had destroyed his sketches and broken his measuring stick.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Exactly, yes, that’s what that boat builder said too. He insists you know nothing about this, that he acted on his own. He claims he sneaked into the ship at night. Do we believe that? Can we believe that, brother?” Japheth laughed with a snort at Shem and then looked fixedly at Ham again. “And all that against Father’s
will. Against the Unnameable’s command.” Shem’s manner was full of false indignation. A thin smile played around his mouth. He did not speak loudly when he said, “You are game, true enough.”

Japheth hooked his fingers in the braids of his beard. His manner too was agitated. Keeping an eye on the curtain of the Builder’s quarters, he leaned toward Ham and asked, “Tell us, Ham. That man is covering for you, you can be pleased with him. But we just want to know the truth. Who was that hiding place for? Who were you going to take?”

Ham saw that his brothers were not at all angry. They were curious. The idea of the niche appealed to them. He sat on the edge of his chair and looked them in the face. He fiddled with the cloth I had used to dry him, running the seam carefully between his thumb and forefinger. He was not aware of doing it, his thoughts were concentrated on his words. “What will we have for diversion? What will our entertainment be? We will not be allowed to go where our wives sleep. We will be bored to death.”

“That is so,” said Shem. “The days will be long.”

“It would be good to have someone with us who can make us forget the time.”

“What are you getting at, brother?”

“An ox would be able to guess who I had in mind,” said Ham.

I am sure they all looked at me. I lowered my eyes. That did not prevent me seeing how Japheth involuntarily stroked his hair. He dug around in his thatch with his fingers. Shem took a long, loud breath. I bent over Ham’s feet as if they were the only thing I was concerned about.

“The dwarf,” said Ham.

I went through my knees. The ground felt like mud or water. It was the way it used to be when we were crossing the marshes. If a heavily loaded boat struck rough water, we jumped overboard. We swam until the wind dropped. It was a cold, scary action we learned at an early age. That was how it seemed when Ham named the dwarf: as if a wind had sprung up that could sink our cargo.

“The dwarf,” Shem repeated thoughtfully. His gaze still rested on me and moved away when I looked back. I rubbed oil into Ham’s legs.

Ham let me go on and continued, “Father can’t do without him, even though he claims the opposite. Once we have properly taken off, we produce him. If it then turns out this does not please the Unnameable and He commands us to throw the dwarf overboard, we can still do that. The presence of a stowaway on board won’t be Father’s fault, but ours, and that will calm the Unnameable. We are only young, we make mistakes.”

Shem and Japheth nodded. I hung on to Ham’s leg. His skin and muscles were taut.

“Let’s go and get him,” said Ham. He looked at his brothers.

Japheth slipped his cloak off his shoulder, as if the heat in the tent had become too much for him. He laboriously wiped his neck. “But the child said …” he said, indicating Put.

“The child said what I’d made him believe,” Ham said dryly.

I saw Put look at me as if for him too the ground was shifting under his feet.

“Shall we?” Ham asked when he got no reply. He waited, giving his brothers a last chance to object. But Japheth seemed unable to move. Shem blinked like someone who sees things around
him go up in flames. He did come out with a brief “Yes, yes, yes,” not expressing agreement, only a request for more time to think. Then he raised his hand. “Can’t someone else …?” he muttered almost inaudibly. “The dwarf is difficult company, why not someone nice and quiet rather than that show-off? Someone who is of use to the three of us, who takes care of us for instance, who bathes and grooms us?”

But Ham was striding through the tent. “Do you mean Re Jana, the girl who bathes us? That is impossible. The dwarf knows about the niche, the child has given its existence away. Now we have no choice.” He pulled the curtain aside and called the dwarf who was sitting on the ground a short distance away. When he heard Ham calling him, he wrenched himself around as if he had been hit in the back by a stone. He jumped up and entered the tent with a theatrical bow. “You can come,” said Ham. “The niche is for you, of course you can come.”