The Sinners and the Sea

by Rebecca Kanner

  I told myself he did not say what was on his mind because his voice was hoarse from yelling at the sinners. But I did not really believe it. He trusted no one but his God, and perhaps not even Him. As for his faith in himself, it was dwindling.

  One morning he returned from riding through town and fell heavily upon his sleeping blanket. “Lord,” he cried, “I am utterly humbled by this task.”

  CHAPTER 16

  SHEM

  Though Shem had been clingy as a child, as a teenager, he was sometimes a mystery to me. He would sneak away too quickly for me to notice and run after him.

  Early one morning I woke up with Noah sleeping fitfully beside me and Ham and Japheth fast asleep on my other side. Shem’s sleeping blanket lay bare. Beside it were his club and his sword but not his dagger.

  Ham also had a dagger, and Japheth a sword that prevented him from squatting with the rest of us when we gathered around the cookfire for lentils and goat meat. Shem could not choose between several weapons, so he had three. My boys were never without their weapons.

  As much as I feared that someone would pull off my scarf and call me a demon woman, having children sometimes left me no choice but to go into town. I pulled my tunic over my sleeping garment, secured my head scarf, and picked up Shem’s club.

  I noticed the vultures circling overhead as I followed the footprints from Shem’s sandals. Once I got to the flesh tents, the footprints disappeared. There were too many tracks to separate them. Raucous laughter and yelling made it hard for me to hear my own thoughts.

  “We have been waiting for you,” a voice called out from one of the tents. I turned to stare into the kohl-ringed eyes of a woman who once was a beautiful girl. The patch of hair had long since grown back, but she was not half so beautiful as she had been when it was missing. Javan kept the difficult women and girls drunk, and there was a mean set to this one’s mouth that she could not hide with a playful voice. I did not know if she recognized me or if she said the same thing to everyone who passed.

  I quickened my pace, angry at Shem for leading me into the sinners. There was nothing but flesh tents and drunks stumbling in and out of them.

  And then I saw him. “Shem!” I called. He was coming toward me down the road but had not seen me because he was staring at one of the tents. “Shem!”

  He looked horrified to see me. “Mother!” He glanced nervously at my head scarf. “What are you doing?”

  “What does it appear I am doing?”

  “You did not need to come looking for me. I could not sleep, so I took a walk.”

  “Why did you walk in this direction instead of the opposite one?”

  “I did not want to come upon any wild animals west of Father’s tent.” I let the silence work on him a few breaths. “Mother, do not worry.”

  That seemed to be all I would get out of him. I turned toward home. He looked back over his shoulder when he thought I could not see him. But I could, out of the corner of my eye. What was he gazing at? There was nothing for many cubits in all directions that he should have an interest in.

  “Hurry. We must be home before your father wakes.”

  He smoothed his hair with one hand. Was it disheveled from tossing and turning upon his own sleeping blanket, or someone else’s?

  “Yes, Mother.”

  It was not only for fear of someone seeing my mark that I wanted to hasten our steps. I could not help hearing the voices that called from the tents as we walked away. Coy, beckoning voices. Calling my son’s name.

  CHAPTER 17

  JAVAN’S PROPOSAL

  Javan sometimes stopped by with wine and lewd remarks. “You grow more handsome each day,” she told Shem. “Soon you will not be able to walk down the road without girls throwing themselves upon their backs in front of you.”

  Shem looked at the ground as though he had dropped something precious there. He was not modest, so it did not seem a good sign that Javan’s remarks humbled him.

  “Best to marry him off before he gets into trouble,” she said to me.

  It would have pleased me greatly for Herai to marry one of my sons. I cherished her company, and I wanted to make sure she would be safe even if something happened to Javan. But Noah would not allow it—not only because Herai was slow but because he had decided that Javan was a demon. “What mere woman could kill so many people, including men who are stronger than she?” he asked.

  “What man can live for over five hundred years?”

  Fearing the back of his hand, I stepped away from him. But though his lips trembled with rage, he did not strike me. In fact, he had never struck me. He said only, “The God of Adam has given me each of those years.”

  Perhaps He has given Javan her strength as well.

  Noah was never within the tent when Javan came over, so I was left the task of telling her that Herai could not marry into our family.

  This was not easy. When Javan was not jovial, the sight of her face quickened my pulse. She had a bump on her nose from where it had been broken the night we tried to save the three sons of the one-handed girl. She had never been able to straighten it all the way, and so it sat slightly crooked upon her face—not enough to look comical and not so little as to escape notice. What once was a gash running from her brow to her chin had turned into a scar. Yet somehow she had survived to become the oldest woman for leagues in all directions.

  Our matriarch.

  I often wondered about the X upon her forehead. Perhaps she had taken a heavy hand to someone. Rare was the man who was able to escape quickly enough to enjoy a girl’s comforts for free. If a man bruised a girl’s face or bloodied her nose, Javan sent out boys with spears. “The girls are mine,” she told the men who came to her flesh tents. “Treat them accordingly.”

  Her girls did not elude her heavy hand either. She poured strong wine down the throats of any who became picky about which men they would lie with. And those who let themselves become undesirable suffered any number of insults and threats. I often heard her screaming from her flesh tents, “No wonder men never come to you more than once! What is this? Is it your face? I can hardly tell for all the dirt! Wash it, or I will use my fists to fashion you a new one.”

  • • •

  One day Javan and I watched Herai as she stood beneath a tree Ham was climbing. Herai held her hands out for fruit. “Ripe for bearing sons,” Javan said. “Look at her breasts, so full of milk. If childbirth undammed her nipples, she could suckle a whole village.”

  I had already planned what I would say, but my excuse sounded false even to my own ear. “She is too old, Javan.”

  “Let her and Shem lie together, and Herai will grow fat with Noah’s grandson. Then she and Shem can be married.”

  “Noah has decreed that two who are unmarried should not lie together. A son must obey the word of his father.”

  “Instead of his mother? Was Noah nearly ripped apart getting this son out into the world? Did he suckle the child and wipe his backside?”

  I didn’t answer. But her words stayed with me that night when I could not sleep. It was I who had cared for our sons while Noah thought only of his God and the sinners. Noah did not even show any interest in Japheth, who wanted so badly to be as righteous as his father. The boys were more mine than Noah’s.

  The next day Javan brought over a thin tube of clay. “So that they do not need to lie together. Shem can spill his seed, and it can be sucked up into this. Then it can be blown into Herai. I will do all of this.”

  Though she did not laugh or smile, I knew she mocked me. My anger at her, Noah, and most of all myself overtook my fear of her. “The child she would bear might be slow, and this is why they cannot marry.”

  “What’s so good about being quick?” Javan demanded so swiftly that I knew the question had been sitting on her tongue, waiting to leap off. “For instance, I am quick, and so it is dangerous to be within arm’s reach of me.” She came so close that her hot, sour breath entered my mouth. “If you displease me.”
She balled my tunic in her hand, tighter and tighter until I could not help but stumble into her solid, immovable bulk, which stopped me as completely as if I had run into a tree. For some reason, I was not afraid. My heart ached for her, Herai, and even myself.

  “I am sorry,” I said.

  “Do not apologize to me,” she replied, and looked out to where Herai stood by our trees. Herai was laughing like a strange and charming girl who had taken the form of a woman. “Noah might be wise in many things, but not about my daughter. She is more pure than Shem.” Javan returned her gaze to my face. “You know this is true.”

  “Yes,” I said, “I do.”

  That night I tried to sway Noah. “Herai is the only pure girl in all of Sorum. The God of Adam must be watching over her.”

  “She is not as sinful as most,” Noah said.

  This encouraged me to press further. “In what way has she sinned even the slightest bit?”

  “She is the daughter of Javan.”

  “Is that all?”

  “That is a lot.”

  “But what of how Javan has helped the one-handed girl, the one who bore three sons at once?”

  Javan had tried to sell the girl’s comforts. But word of the three demons had spread for leagues in all directions, and Javan could not entice anyone to lie with the girl. So she had offered wine and bones to the first three men who were willing to have the girl, in order to prove she was not a demon. One man died in battle soon afterward; one was killed by his son, who was yet a boy; the other moved on, and no one knew what happened to him. All of these things were commonplace in Sorum, but they did not bode well for the girl’s prospects. Javan finally told the girl, “You will be better off where no one knows you,” and traded her for dried goat meat and cosmetics—kohl for her girls’ eyes and olive oil for their hair.

  “What has become of you, woman, to say something so wicked?” Noah demanded. “Javan made the girl a prostitute. She and the girl are both corrupt in the eyes of the Lord and in the eyes of all good people.”

  “Of which good people do you speak?”

  He flinched as if I had struck him. He said only, “Javan sold the girl’s virtue and then sold the girl. The God of Adam will punish them both, and Herai as well.”

  “What will He do to them?”

  “I do not know, but He will do it soon. He will not let this evil go on much longer.”

  CHAPTER 18

  MUTTERING

  Noah’s eyes grew heavy with sadness. New wrinkles formed in the wrinkles already dividing his face into a hundred small parts. His footsteps slowed, and one day I realized he did not walk but shuffle.

  He did not speak to me of his sadness. He moved back and forth in the tent, his gaze dragging along the ground or looking to the heavens, not noticing anything around him. I do not even think he saw my sons and me.

  “Husband,” I said one day, “you are brought lower each year. You do not sleep, and the corners of your mouth draw your face down. I am your wife. Will you not unburden yourself to me?”

  He did not answer.

  “Hus—”

  “My duty is fastened upon my back no less than my own skin. I cannot set it down.”

  But husband, unlike your skin, you stumble beneath your duty. I am afraid you will fall and find that you are unable to get up again.

  It was too late to say anything; he was gone. I stared at the tent flap, watching it sway back and forth and finally go still. Then I stared at the empty space where he had been. Everything blurred until I did not see our stores of food, the loom, our sleeping blankets, knives, spoons, rugs.

  I thought, This is what it is like to be him.

  There are many things I would have told him if he had let me:

  You have taken on a burden no lone man could carry.

  Look instead to your sons. Are the words you waste on the sinners not better suited to them? Take the sharpness from your voice, and bestow your wisdom upon your own flesh and blood. My own flesh and blood.

  I knew there would be no use in saying these things to Noah. He listened only to the God of Adam.

  • • •

  He returned later and later from town each afternoon for supper. His stew often grew cold in front of him while he muttered to the heavens.

  One night his bowl shook in his hands, steam seeming to follow his gaze upward. “They sin morning to night and night into morning. I have not words enough to convince them, and all I have are words.”

  I watched with our sons while Noah rocked back and forth upon his feet, slopping his stew over the edges of his bowl. Shem was the least troubled by Noah’s rants. He continued to slurp his stew and look off toward town, hardly thinking of Noah, just as Noah hardly thought of him.

  “My eyes are worn from all they have seen,” Noah muttered. “I feel I can look no more, yet still I go to them.” Suddenly, he threw his bowl onto the ground, splattering stew onto his sandals. “I did not ask to be the one to convince them of You. Perhaps you have chosen the wrong man.”

  Yes, husband! I thought. Surrender this impossible duty, and do what I cannot—show our sons how to be men.

  “Is not there someone cleverer?” he continued. “Someone with a voice that could find its way to their souls?”

  “No, Father,” Japheth whispered through trembling lips. “There is no one above you.”

  But Noah did not hear his son over his despair.

  His despair did not let up for any part of the night. Sometimes I felt the air swish past, and I knew he was waving his arms around, much more alive than anyone should be in the dead of night. I had to roll off my sleeping blanket, away from him, to avoid his flailing. “They think me a madman. They laugh at my donkey, they laugh at my words, they laugh at my face. I thought one day their laughter might end. But each generation laughs louder.”

  I wanted to reach my hand out to him, but I was afraid of his flailing limbs.

  “They are full of evil, every one. Not a man, woman, nor child has heeded my words.”

  What of our middle son, husband? I did not speak aloud. Noah probably would not hear me, and I was afraid of what he would say if he did. Our sons did not concern him.

  • • •

  In the morning he did not eat his porridge.

  “Each day I learn the same lesson—I am of no use. You have given me only one task. And in that I have failed.”

  “Husband, you will grow weak. Please, you must eat.”

  He stood and walked away, yet still I heard him:

  “You have given me many powers—the power to easily make fire, to live hundreds of years, to go unscathed through a mob. But I would trade any of them, or what is left of my sight, or even, Lord, my sons, for the one power I most desire. The power to convince them of You.”

  • • •

  One day he finally gave up. He was certain that he had done all he could on his own to sway the sinners, and He called upon God to do what he could not.

  “If You would somehow fill them with awe at Your power, surely then I could lead them to righteousness. Please, show them a sign.”

  I wondered how the God of Adam might do this. Turn a raven into a dove, a cloud into a star, wind into sunlight?

  Though Noah pleaded for a few moons, God did not show the sinners a sign. Noah began muttering not only to God but also to himself. “The Lord has given up on them. Only I can hold on to His faith in His creation. I can do nothing wrong. Nothing. Or He will give up on us all.”

  A couple of times he whipped around while he shuffled through the tent, as though looking for someone. “Can I ever talk only to myself, or am I always talking to God? Who am I speaking to now?”

  “Please, husband, will not you squat and have some goat’s milk and barley cakes, or recline and let me rub your feet?”

  “They have not listened,” he cried. A vein pulsed in his brow. “I will plead for them no longer!”

  He stopped riding through town yelling at the sinners. He sat beneath the da
te tree with his donkey, ear cocked to the sky as if listening for something.

  One morning he leaned his head all the way back against the rough bark of the tree and tilted his face to the heavens. Tears streamed down his face. “Very well, Lord,” he said. “It is settled. I will prepare.”

  • • •

  That night I dreamt of him as he was that day, his face tilted to the heavens, tears flowing from his eyes. In my dream, the tears puddled around him, and the puddles grew into a shallow pond. He began to cry harder, and the pond spread beyond the reach of his arms and then rose.

  I felt it lapping at my toes from where I stood and watched it rise over his legs.

  Now the tears did not so much flow as pour out of his eyes. The pond became a lake. It whipped back up at his chest. I looked to either side of him and could see no end to them; they stretched out over the desert in all directions.

  I gazed down and watched my ankles, then my knees, disappear into them.

  He must stop crying.

  “Husband!” I started toward him, but the sea was heavy and held tightly to my legs. “Husband!” The sea rose over his beard to his lips, and still he cried. I called out to him again and again. I begged him to stop crying.

  But he did not stop crying, he did not stand up, and he did not float.

  CHAPTER 19

  DAUGHTERS-IN-LAW

  The following day Noah told me, “I am going away. I will be back by the next moon.”

  “Where will you go?”

  “Wherever the God of Adam commands me.”

  While I was glad to think of the sleep my sons and I might get with Noah away, I did not like to think of him riding aimlessly, waiting for God’s command. Yet he did not seem aimless. His voice had none of the uncertainty I had grown accustomed to. He was resolute. He did not look around; he looked only where he intended to go.