In the Shadow of the Ark (26 page)

Zaza blew the ram’s horn. At first we didn’t take notice. It was a familiar sound that was lost amongst all the others, but it started things moving. Animals came down from the hills. They squelched closer, but then held back. They came to a halt in front of the gangplank. They snorted and panted, their fur tangled. Then those who lived in the shipyard realized that the call of the ram’s horn had been the signal. The beginning of the end was here, the moment of truth had arrived. In their tens and hundreds, they gathered around the ark, carrying their possessions on their backs in bundles, beating off the cattle and the animals pressing around them with sticks. But the trapdoor did not open until after dark. By evening, they were standing in oozing dung.

When darkness had fallen, the Builder, Shem, and Japheth appeared on the deck. They put out a gangplank, which only the animals were permitted to cross. Most of them entered the hold willingly enough. Because of the mud on their feet, they stepped along the gangplank carefully, even those animals who were used to climbing ledges. The warriors were stationed at the gangplank in order to prevent uninvited guests from getting on board. Those who were waiting were becoming tired, understanding
they would be standing there for hours if the animals came first. When they realized Taneses and Zedebab were still sleeping in their tents, they too withdrew to rest. The animals, though, kept moving up the gangplank. The dark lent the embarkation a contrived air; it became an event such as you only hear about in stories. There was a solemn movement of paws on planks, careful and fearful, as if the rhythm it produced must never be forgotten. The composition of the boarding crowd was like an ancient recipe: seven clean animals, two unclean. They were distributed over the ship according to their weight. There were animals who panicked at the scent of others; they were kept apart. Some were refractory. The camel, for instance: Shem took hold of it by its halter, and the beast sprayed the contents of its stomach all over him. The snake was denied access to the ark. It had seduced one of the first ancestors of the Rrattika. Judging by its head, it had not really changed after all those years and was still up to no good, so it was chased back with sticks.

It turned out there were not enough cages. Ham was called away from us to help. He dragged up stakes and bars and in great haste divided the cages up into smaller spaces. Japheth carried animals into the hold, the legless ones, the ones so small you had to keep them in a jar, the animals who were so lazy or slow that without his help it would have taken them half the night.

Of each species they took the biggest and strongest. They didn’t seem to comprehend that once they had taken the leaders on board, the whole herd was desperate to follow. They had to pull up the gangplank and wait for the animals to calm down
before they could continue with the embarkation. From the little field on the slope, you could hear the shouting and, again and again, the counting.

Zaza shuffled across the shipyard. Till the very last moment, she kept shaking seeds out of flowers and putting dried fruits in straw-lined boxes. Neelata had handed her affairs over to her lady’s maids. She now stayed in the ship day and night. She had spread out her carpets and wall hangings and made herself a nest. Taneses stayed in her tent while she still could, like Zedebab. Zedebab had strengthened hers with ropes and pegs and would admit no one except her twin sister, whom she was going to have to leave behind.

We slept from sheer exhaustion, but not for long. We were woken by people shouting farther down. Their mats had been lifted by the water. They were afloat. Quickly, they pulled up the flaps of their tents, hoping the water would run out. Only then did they notice that the water was coming from outside. All around them floated the remains of the shipyard, pieces of bamboo from the scaffolding, branches and jugs. The ark still stood, rock solid, at its landing stage. The water lapped gingerly at its keel. Toward morning, we tried to sleep some more. Lying close enough together, stopping any leaks in the cover we lay under, and not getting wet seemed much more important than the embarkation going on below.

There were no longer any clear periods between downpours, the rain was constant hour after hour. We became motionless, as if the raindrops had nailed us to the ground by the hems of the blankets we wore over our shoulders like mantles, and which had become heavy as lead.

More and more tents were pulled down, mostly by laborers who were leaving. They left the shipyard but were back after only a few days. “The Builder is right,” they said. “The water is covering the whole world.” They were terrified, those simple souls, they nursed no hopes of being among the elect. They were the poorest of the poor, the lowest in society, they knew they did not stand a chance. They tried as best they could to put up their tents again and keep their children dry. They did not complain. The women went on bathing their children every evening and did their best to see they did not catch cold in their damp clothes. They went on trying to cook millet. There is no point in suffering from hunger, not even if you know you are going to drown. You could not talk to them any longer. Their gaze had been turned inward, and they showed that waiting for death takes place in total solitude.

But even those who thought they would be admitted to the ark became suspicious, particularly when some thirty stowaways, who had hidden in different parts of the ship, were driven out with sticks and whips by the warriors. If so many animals were let in, there would be very little space left over for people. Was it possible they had been deceived all this time, and that only the sons and the nephews and those warriors in their woolen skirts were amongst the elect? The arrogance of the warriors, the impudence they showed when they chased the poor devils from the ship, made it clear there would be fighting for a place. That was what everyone was preparing for: pushing and shoving and fighting. People had another look at their possessions, throwing away anything superfluous, packing anything absolutely essential in
even smaller bags. You wondered what these people thought they were going to do with bread that was soaked, with freshly washed clothes that were as wet as the ones on their backs, with small tools, with bags and packs that would make them sink to the bottom instantly.

We could hear questions being raised all around the shipyard: “Why are they letting the animals on first? Do they matter more than people?” When I passed by, some of them couldn’t stop themselves from saying, “This is the revenge of the dead. Led on by strangers, we violated their burial place and stole their water. Now they are repaying us with water.”

Things were still being loaded constantly. The Builder insisted, for instance, on taking our bathtub. The loading had to be done so fast that the contents of jars and baskets were no longer checked. At the most, Japheth saw to it that anyone who came on board left again. That is how it happened that someone brought some flat baskets on board. No one heard or saw it happen, but afterward the story got around: The carrier uttered curses as he entered the ark. In the baskets were the snakes that had been denied entry earlier. Apart from objects, only animals were admitted again that day. On the ground, near the entrance, their feet in the water, exhausted people stood where they could. They no longer dared leave their spots.

The next morning, the red tent had been pulled down. The pegs had been pulled up, the canvas lay on the ground like a dead bat. There were sounds, soft at first, rumbling like distant surf. The winds, coming from all four corners, carried the smells of storm and tempest. Then the rumbling swelled into a drumming
full of fury, gods banging on the cages in which they were locked. The earth began to tremble. I saw it in the water in my jugs, which took on a life of its own, rippling and splashing. From the hills sounded the hoofbeats of rushing herds. Dripping tumbleweeds rolled ahead of the storm, kicked along like outcasts.

Put had been brave up to now. But in the fury of the storm he saw Neelata bring llamas and camels on board. “I want to go with her,” he screamed. “It’s too scary here!” We let him go, his pockets filled with nuts and dates. We saw him run down the hill like a lost dog, his legs crooked under his body, his face twisted with fear.

The Builder was nowhere to be seen. My father stretched the tarpaulin over our boat and shouted over the roaring, “Why doesn’t that man offer a sacrifice? Whoever his god is, now is the time to tender his offering!” He poured milk on the ground for our gods, in particular for the god of the storm with his immense wings. But the earth did not accept the milk. It was already saturated with liquid.

I
t was the seventeenth day of the second month. All the fountains of the deep broke open. To the sound of howling winds, solid curtains of water came down. There was not only rain but also hail. The wind raged over the land. Trees bent, chickens were plucked alive on their roosts, tents broke loose, planks and boards were hurled around. The dead floated from the caves where they had been buried.

Our shelter tore apart. The section that was left was just large enough to keep me dry, but my father sat in the rain. From where we were fighting the wind, we could see what was happening to the others. The large group waiting at the base of the ship were taken unawares by the tempest. The gangplank was still out, but guarded by so many warriors with long swords that anyone who set foot on it was immediately beaten back. Many were killed, pushed onto the gangplank by the mass of people and instantly impaled on the spears. Even at that stage, they might appear to be victims of an accident, and most of them still seemed to expect the hatch to be opened soon. There were some who had armed themselves and practiced an assault in the hills. Now they too arrived, forming small groups and going around the ship with ladders and ropes to attack it from its unguarded side. But already
the chaos was too great. Even armed groups with careful plans were scattered. The hulk they wanted to climb was tall and the wind against them. Together with hordes of others, they fled up the cliff. They assumed the water could never rise to that height. To be able to overlook the land made them feel certain they would not be taken by surprise. But they were troubled by the wind. They had to lie down to stop themselves from being blown off the cliff.

We saw how Zedebab’s twin sister was led away from the ship by warriors. And we saw Ham coming up the cliff! We had been waiting for him for a long time. The light was failing and the landscape changing. We had worried about how he would find the path in this storm, and now we thought he was coming for us. But we were wrong, it was the brushwood a long way below us that he was heading for. Groping around, he found a tree stump to which he tied the dog. The animal was sodden with rain and hung its head. I jumped up, my father following quickly to protect me, and shouted, “Come on, Ham, come on! The calamity has arrived! What’s keeping you?”

But Ham did not hear me. Without once looking back at the dog tugging at its rope, he returned to the ship.

Here and there, small boats appeared in the landscape. Like ours, they had been hidden under branches. But around each of them, there was a commotion. I recognized the movements of those on board. They were bailing. “They’re taking in water, Father! Look at what sort of boats you’ve built them!”

My father leaned against me like a wet, formless sack. He replied, “The boats you see down there, they all leak. For a bit,
the people in them will manage to plug the holes. Then they’ll start bailing. But in the end, as Shem instructed me, they will sink. I had to do this to save us. Only on that condition was I allowed to keep our truss-boat.”

The rattling of the hail and the raging of the wind made thinking about what he said difficult. I felt numbed, as if from a blow that takes you beyond pain. I sat bent over beneath the scrap of shelter my father held up, motionless, as if all I had to do was wait for it to be all over. There was nothing to persuade me that this was really happening, that the world was being inundated, that through my father’s doing, the little boats down there were leaking.

But while I waited, still, there was a new commotion in the shipyard.

“They’re going on board,” I said dully. My father let go of the guy ropes. The wind howled and the shelter flapped away behind us like a bird flying up. He took me by the hand. Together we ran to our boat and dragged the bundles of branches away from it. It was well-built, our boat, it had an upper deck with a hatch that could be closed against the rain and against people who, when they saw our vessel, would try to get in. In the bilge was a layer of sand for the fire, and stores of food and water stood in every available spot.

“The heads of the ark builders are filled with strange thoughts,” said my father as we looked for a spot in the hold. “Their forebears have eaten a fruit that made them able to distinguish between good and evil. Good means obedience, evil means disobedience. They can think no further. But look at me! I make the boats leak and find delight in thus taking revenge for what they
have done to my wife. Yet all I am doing is obeying the order of the elect Shem and Japheth!”

Once again, the sound of horns rang out from the encampment. We heard the clatter of hooves on the gangplank, sometimes followed by plunging sounds from the water below. We heard the crack of a whip. It must have been the last of the animals, the kinds that came from afar and had only just made it. The Builder must have said, “It is time.” Ham had to carry the varan, wildly lashing out, on board on his shoulder, together with other reluctant or slow reptiles.

“Let me have a look,” I begged my father.

“We have to close the hatch, Re Jana, don’t be so reckless!”

“But there is so much noise. What if Ham comes and we don’t hear him?”

Because I insisted, he left the hatch partly open. From its lee, I saw how Camia’s mother lost her little daughter. She was blind, and in a way that was an advantage for her: She was used to finding her way by touch. She calmly called her child’s name, but in her fear, Camia ran the wrong way. That was the last thing I saw. The sky turned black as a sackcloth of hair. The darkness made the chaos around the ark complete: People were storming the ship blindly, screams of fury and of pain went up, many were trampled.