The Sinners and the Sea

by Rebecca Kanner

  We wait for lightning. I have never been so cold in all my life.

  I do not know if we will survive to see the new world. If we do, I hope there will be no more heavy rains or cold winds. Sometimes I think it is not how the ark tosses me around, or how I labor without sleep for long periods that makes me ache, but the cold. Why did Noah’s God create the cold? Perhaps He meant only to bring forth a cool breeze to relieve us as we labored on the ark, but at some point—as with the sinners—He lost control.

  Japheth begins to pace and then to mutter that we should hurl spears into the darkness below.

  “Stop strutting about. Surely you have worn footprints into the deck,” Ham says. “If we cannot see them, they cannot see us.”

  “Lightning will come, Japheth,” I say. “Keep hold of your spear.”

  When jagged lines of white fire strike from the sky, we stare out into the rough sea, stumbling from one side of the ark to the other. There is only froth and what remains of the world that has been destroyed: bare branches, empty tunics, and sometimes tunics with bloated bodies inside them. Why do the living sink and the dead float?

  “What did it look like?” I ask Japheth. “How big was it?”

  “Big enough to see from half a league away.”

  “How do you know it was half a league away?” Ham asks. “Maybe it was just small.”

  “Exactly what a coward would tell himself. You are careless for a coward. Most would know better than to pronounce their cowardice aloud.”

  “I am even more cowardly than this, brother. I think there was no ship at all.”

  “When the rains stop, you will see that you are wrong, perhaps even before your skull is cracked open by sinners.”

  If only the clouds would part for a breath. I would rather know what is coming, and from what direction, than wait for the unknown. My heart squeezes painfully in my chest, afraid to beat because then I might miss the sounds of survivors—trespassers to the new world—who have come too close through the endless night.

  I will not know a moment’s peace until we meet the other ark and I find that the people aboard are friendly, or until they kill me. If they are friendly, what will Noah have us do?

  • • •

  When we give up and return to the second level of the ark, Noah gazes away from me. This is how I know he is not completely blind. He puts rations of dried meat into all of our shivering hands, even though it does not seem long since we last ate. Perhaps he does not think we will live long enough that we need to save our stores.

  After we eat and the children return to their duties, Noah turns to me. “Wife, I . . . I did not want you to think you could die.” He is embarrassed.

  As he should be. Not that I do not feel moved by his desire that I live. But still, his feelings are finally known. He does not think I need a name. I will have to find a way to change his mind. “I did not plan to die.”

  He bows his head as if in thanks. Though surely he gives thanks to the God of Adam and not me.

  “Did you want to use my knife after all?” I ask.

  “No, my wife. You will keep it.”

  My stomach lurches as if the sea has just tossed us halfway to the heavens. If Noah did not take my knife, who did?

  CHAPTER 38

  A MISSED MOON

  “Has it not been even one moon yet?” Ham asks.

  “The girl does not bleed.”

  “Herai,” Ham corrects Noah, as if speaking to someone from a distant land who doesn’t know the language. Ham does not like for Noah to call Herai “the girl.” Noah does not like being corrected.

  “The seven ewes have already cycled twice,” Zilpha says.

  “How would you know this?” Japheth asks.

  “You would not understand no matter how carefully I explained.” She does not say it cruelly. She says it as if simply remarking that the wood is brown or the animals are in pairs.

  “How many days are in two ewe cycles?” Noah asks.

  “Thirty-four.”

  Ham looks at Shem, who quickly looks down. Japheth continues to listen intently to Noah, unconcerned with Herai’s moon cycle.

  Noah says, “Then we are near the end of the storm.”

  “Praise the Lord,” Japheth cries, “for bringing us safely into the new world.”

  I guard myself against hope. There is nothing that breaks a heart harder.

  “Does this mean that He has killed everybody else?” Japheth asks.

  “I do not know,” Noah says. This is the second time I have heard him say these words and, I hope, the last.

  “Manosh is alive, and perhaps others too,” Zilpha says. “I will tell my sisters the good news that the rains are almost over.” She turns to go without waiting for Noah to excuse her. As usual, Ona has not gathered with us. Noah told her to stay on her sleeping blankets, and he ordered Herai to stay with her.

  “I will tell them too,” Shem says.

  “You will stay where you are,” Noah says.

  All of us except Japheth stare at Shem. “Is there something of interest on the floor, brother?” Ham asks.

  Noah takes his eyes from Shem’s face to gaze at Japheth. “Have you lain with your wife?”

  Now Japheth stares at the floor. “I am sorry, Father, I have not.” Suddenly, his head jerks up, and he turns to Shem. “Snake!” He unsheaths a sword from his belt and takes a step toward Shem.

  “Get back to your post on deck,” Noah commands. Japheth stops advancing, but he does not retreat. Noah bangs his staff against the floor. “Go.”

  Japheth spits in Shem’s face. There is blood mixed with his saliva—he lost two teeth, falling upon the bars of the great lizards’ cage when they tried to escape. Shem moves to wipe it away. But before his fingers reach his face, Japheth says, “Raise your hand any higher, and you will lose it.”

  “Son,” Noah says. None one moves until Shem lowers his hand. Japheth holds his brother’s gaze for a heartbeat before turning and walking away.

  When we can no longer hear Japheth’s footfalls, Noah raises his staff and points it at Shem. It shakes in his hand. “You,” he says. “You . . .” His eyes are narrowed, and his brows arch above them. His lips tremble so violently that perhaps he cannot speak.

  Abruptly, as though the staff has just grown unbearably heavy, his arm drops. I step out of his way as he shuffles in the direction of our sleeping blankets. Before he gets there, I hear him fall to the floor.

  “This is what I have always feared,” he says as I approach. “And why I could not bring myself to watch our sons too closely.”

  I kneel beside him. “Perhaps there is no sin, husband. Maybe Herai did not bleed because the moon is not visible through the clouds.”

  From the corners of his eyes, two thin wet lines have cleared the grime down the length of his face, revealing the sand color of his skin. His beard hangs in damp knotted ropes along the length of his chest and rests in his lap. His hands tremble; his eyes are fixed upon the wooden planks of the ark above us.

  “You are just overtired. The rains have almost ended, and then all will be well.”

  “God has not spoken to me since the flood began, but it did not worry me until now. I think He has been watching to see if we are worthy. I have thought about it more often than I have wanted to, and I know now that if He is merciful, He will kill us instead of deserting us.”

  Now my hands begin to tremble as well. I want to shake him, to slap him, to squeeze his head in my hands, to make him take it back. “God cannot kill us or abandon us for this one sin. Our sons are not thieves or murderers.”

  “I do not blame only our sons. It is the girl who has compelled them to evil. See what has come of allowing her on the ark.”

  “God told you to take your sons and their wives on the ark, and that is what you have done.”

  Noah ignores me. “He has closed His ears to me. My prayers are as good as rafts that have sunk to the bottom of the sea.”

  I know how you feel, I thin
k. I say only, “Surely He is very busy and cannot attend just to us.”

  “He has always been busy, and now there are fewer people to be busy with. If He returns to us, it will likely be to wipe away the last remnants of His mistake.”

  “Husband, you must try to call Him back to us.”

  He does not scold me for telling him that he must do something, which is not a comfort to me. “The only way to regain His favor is to right the evil on the ark. Shem must be beaten, and Herai will be kept separate.”

  “Please, husband, I am sure there is another way.”

  “If you knew Him as I do, you would know that there is not.”

  CHAPTER 39

  THE BEATING

  Before Shem’s beating, Noah allows him to see Ona one last time. He does not want her to know Herai is pregnant. “Tell her Herai has plague,” Noah instructs. He does not think this is a lie. He says she has the same plague Javan had: wantonness.

  “Did she believe you?” Ham asks when Shem returns to the gathering place. “Or is she smarter than a piece of timber?”

  Shem flinches as though he has never been insulted by Ham before. “I do my best.”

  “Do not speak so cruelly of yourself, brother,” Ham replies. “Your best could not possibly be so pitiful.”

  “Silence,” Noah says. “There is important work to be done.” He holds a leather strap in each hand. “I will call middle son.”

  “No,” Shem says. “Anyone besides Japheth.”

  Though Ham is angry at Shem for lying with Herai, he comes to his brother’s aid. “I will do it, Father.” He reaches for the leather straps.

  Noah moves his arms behind him. “I must summon middle son; go get my ram’s horn,” he tells Ham. “It is on my sleeping blanket.”

  I know Noah is right. If he does not allow Japheth to give Shem the beating, Japheth will beat Shem later, when no one is around to make sure that he leaves a little life inside the flesh of his brother.

  Shem pushes past Ham and flees deeper into the ark.

  “Bring him back,” Noah commands me, then glares at Ham. “I will see if middle son is on deck.”

  Since Herai missed her moon, Noah has forbidden her to be in the common areas. If Noah comes across her on the second level or on the deck, he prods her to the ramp and then swings his staff in front of him to make sure she is gone. “Stay!” he calls down to her.

  Because Herai lives in the bowels of the ark, Shem is no longer allowed there. But that is where I find him. I do not see Herai; I see only my oldest son, crouched low, holding his head in his hands.

  “Mother,” he says when I approach, “you must help me.”

  My heart aches. For all his flaws, he is still my firstborn. His birth was the beginning of my happiness. Though it now seems his birth will lead to great sorrow.

  I squat beside him. “Son, it is best to have done with it.”

  “Japheth is a madman. He is worse than Father. He will kill me.”

  “Your father thinks that God will kill all of us if we do not appear righteous. He will not let Japheth kill you. He wants only to show the God of Adam a few drops of your blood.”

  “Japheth will not be as easily satisfied as God.”

  “But he listens to your father, and your father will tell him to stop long before your spirit flees your body.”

  “Just because Japheth has listened to Father up till now does not mean he will listen to him forever. I will not return to the gathering place.”

  “It will go better for you if you do not fight.”

  “Mother, please,” he says, and leans his head against my breast. I lose my balance and fall back onto my hindquarters. He stretches out along the floor to keep his head pressed against me. I am reminded of how, as a child, he always wanted to be held. I wrap my arms around his head, and we stay like that until I hear Noah yelling for us.

  “Let us return,” I say. “Japheth’s fury will soon be spent, and you will be acquitted of your crimes against the Lord.” I move my hands to either side of his face so he is forced to look at me. “Try to cry right away.”

  “That will not be difficult.” He stands up. “Wait for me a moment. I must get something.”

  I do not like to think of what it is he might want to get. “No,” I say, rising as quickly to my feet as the dampness in my joints will allow, “let us go. They will not wait much longer before coming for you.”

  “I just need a sip from my waterskin.” He runs off behind the cages. When he returns, I am relieved to see him wiping water from his lips. “Now I am ready.”

  Noah and Japheth are waiting. Japheth is holding the leather straps, and Noah has brought the rope down from the deck. “We do not need the rope,” I say.

  “Do not bind him,” Japheth agrees. “I will enjoy seeing him try to escape on broken legs.”

  I cannot think of anything to say that will not deepen Japheth’s thirst for blood. I do not allow myself to hug Shem, or even to squeeze his hand, before I walk away.

  I find Ham shoveling dung from the lighter beasts’ cages. I take the shovel from him. “Go make sure you do not become my second-oldest son. And come get me when it is over.”

  He hesitates.

  “Go.”

  I shovel with great fervor while I wait for Ham to return.

  Half a pail full of dung later, screaming erupts from the gathering place. The screams belong not to Shem but to Japheth.

  I let go of the shovel and rush to find Japheth on the floor, clutching his head. Blood streams between his fingers. “You are a demon woman,” he yells at me. “You have cost me my ear.”

  Noah raises his staff slightly and points it at Japheth’s head. “Silence, boy!”

  My mark is the thing of which we never speak. None of us has ever wanted to draw attention to it, and I hoped that there was no one left in the world who would call me a demon. But I forgive Japheth, though he continues to gaze up at me with hatred. He is maimed, and I am not without guilt.

  The staff shakes violently in Noah’s hand. Does it shakes because of the strength with which he has to restrain himself to keep from striking Japheth?

  I am beginning to worry that his heart will give out when, finally, he lowers his staff. He waves it in front of his feet to clear a path, and he leaves. Perhaps now he feels the same way about our sons as God felt about the sinners before He wiped them from the face of the earth. The sinners besides us, that is.

  Ham stands as far back as possible against the outer wall of the gathering place. As Noah walks past him, our eyes meet, and I see that Ham is sorry. I am sorry too, for the responsibility I yoked him with and the guilt he will always have with him now.

  “I brought Mother’s knife myself, little brother,” Shem says, “and I would not have used it if you had not brought your own knife and tried to unman me.” He holds my meat knife out to me. “Sorry, Mother.” It is cruel to give it back to me with another son’s blood upon it, but I take it anyway. I do not want him to have it anymore. Beneath his foot is another knife, this one made of copper, a knife Japheth did not tell anybody about.

  Now Japheth looks back at Shem. “You have turned my wife into a whore. You can keep your cock and her too. At least for as long as you live.”

  Shem’s eyes dart to something over my shoulder. Slow, unsteady footfalls approach. Ona stumbles against my arm and falls into the center of the gathering place. She does not acknowledge Japheth or his blood on the floor in front of her. Instead, she gasps loudly for breath. Perhaps she is choked with rage, or perhaps she is exhausted by the weight that the God of Adam will not let her put down.

  She places one hand on her belly and the other upon her lower back. She straightens as tall as she can with the unruly burden inside her. I cannot see her eyes, but I can see Shem’s. There is no remorse in them.

  “I let you lie with me even when my hands and knees bled and I could hardly get up afterward because of the heaviness of your child in my belly,” Ona says quietly. “Yet
you could not wait even half a moon after Noah forbade you to have me.”

  “If you would not have stopped taking Javan’s herbs, you would not be pregnant, and I would not have had to lie with Herai.”

  “I did not stop taking them. Though your heart is weak, your seed is strong.”

  “Then where are all my other children?”

  “They bled to death after being cut by knives long enough to reach a woman’s womb.”

  “Well, what am I to do? I am not limp, like my brothers.”

  Japheth throws something at Shem. It is covered in blood. It slaps Shem wetly in the face and then falls to the floor. Shem cringes, but besides this, neither he nor Ona seem to notice.

  “You are nothing more than a child,” Ona says. I know she speaks true. A man wants sons, but Shem wants only pleasure. “And that is as much as you will ever be.” She turns to leave, and I look into her huge almond-colored eyes. Any man would have been happy to have her for a wife. Any besides the one she chose.

  As she brushes past me, I see what has hit Shem in the face and fallen to the floor: Japheth’s ear.

  Japheth’s ear.

  I want to hold Japheth’s head in my lap and bandage the place where Shem cut him, but when I go to him, he strikes my shins and I fall down beside him. I am little more than bones; he easily pushes me aside and rises from the floor, jaw clenched against the pain.

  “Son,” I call up to him, “we must wash it and make a covering—”

  “Quiet, woman,” he says. “I will take care of myself, as I have always done, and leave you to your favorites. A bloodless knife of flame will seal my wound better than you can.”

  He steps over me and disappears into the rows of caged beasts.

  CHAPTER 40

  MEAT

  Nothing but rain guards the ark. The only footsteps on deck are those of the clouds.

  Japheth and Shem are lost in a darkness even greater than this. Noah has stopped sounding the one blast for Shem and the two for Japheth. A few times I blew the ram’s horn myself, but it made no sound. I fear my sons feel forgotten.