Queen moves closer to The Male. She picks something from his coat and holds it in front of her eyes. Then she gnashes it between her teeth. Now she’s parting the long hair on The Male’s back, searching for more crawly things. She does this a lot. She can pass hours at it. He does it to her, too.
“She’s just keeping him clean,” says the woman. “Grooming him.”
I’m sure she’s right, and I wonder how she knows. I never saw animals like Queen and The Male before. Did she?
“They were doing things a moment ago,” says Ham. “I swear. Sex things.”
“I told you,” says Shem. “They mate all the time. You didn’t believe me.”
“I figured your own abstinence was making you imagine things, you frustrated ass.”
The silent woman drops her head and moves a little behind Shem, clutching the sides of her tunic with both hands. She doesn’t look afraid; rather, she seems alert. A loop of black braid peeks out from under her striped kerchief.
“I’m no more frustrated than you are.” Shem pushes forth his chest. “The bonobos mate. A lot.”
“Exactly,” says Ham. “I know now. Father will go berserk.”
“No,” says the talking woman. “Don’t tell Noah. Please, Ham. What’s the point? Look at the two of them, the way they nestle together. They care about each other. If Noah separates them, they’ll both suffer. There’s too much suffering on this ark already.”
I like her.
“I agree,” says Shem.
“And what if she gets with child?” says Ham.
“She could already be with child,” says the talking woman. “There’s nothing we can do about that. But . . .” She walks closer and looks Queen up and down. “I bet she isn’t. And I bet she won’t.”
Shem leans toward her. “How on earth can you predict that?” The silent woman behind him leans too. It’s as though they’re tied together with a string.
The talking woman blinks and stands tall. “The Mighty Creator put her in your father’s path when he was gathering the animals. And the Mighty Creator wouldn’t allow an error so grave as picking a male that . . .” She looks over at The Male. He is aroused, as usual. The woman takes a breath so deep her chest heaves. “. . . that was easily stimulated . . . unless there was something special about the female.”
“What could be special about her?” Ham shakes his head.
“I wouldn’t know,” says the woman primly.
Shem nods.
The woman behind him nods too. She wrings her hands and looks intensely at Queen. Her face seems to plead.
The talking woman takes another few steps closer to Queen. Queen ignores her and licks The Male’s nose. The woman turns to the others. “I’ll fill Ham’s bucket with fish and start feeding the animals, while the rest of you go up the ladder for food sacks. We can all help feed the animals today.”
“My wife shouldn’t help with the buckets,” says Shem. “She can only carry sacks.”
The silent woman flushes.
“You shouldn’t either,” says Ham, looking at the talking woman.
“I’m strong. Anyway, I can drag it. Go on. We all need to hurry. We started late today. If we don’t get back to work, we’ll be toiling straight through till night.”
The other three go up the ladder.
Ham’s wife—for that’s got to be who she is—walks right up to the poles of our cage and holds on with both hands. She doesn’t say anything, she just looks. I can see her face clearly now. She doesn’t resemble Hurriya much, really—only in her lips. And the quickness of her eyes.
Queen licks The Male’s chest. She doesn’t glance at the woman, not even quickly. She moves her head lower down The Male’s torso, licking, licking. The Male makes a loud moan.
Ham’s wife gasps and covers her mouth. She runs to the bottom of the ladder and gets that bucket and goes off to fill it at a side hole. Then she comes back to our cage. But she doesn’t look in. She pauses and adjusts her kerchief, then keeps her head down as she walks along, tossing fish into cages.
Ham and Shem come down the ladder.
“What are you doing?” calls Ham. “That’s the brown bear cage. They don’t get food. They’re hibernating.”
“Bears don’t hibernate this early in the year.”
“Nothing’s normal this year. They’re hibernating, I tell you.”
“But you fed them. There are figs near the front of that cage.”
Ham shakes his head. “Japheth must have done that. He helped us yesterday, and he doesn’t know the animals on this deck. What a cockroach.”
“Don’t call me a cockroach. You’ve been unkind to me ever since we got on this ark. It’s not my fault we can’t . . . live like we used to. I’m hurting just as much as you are.”
Ham puts down his bucket and walks up behind her. He puts his hands on her shoulders. “Japheth’s the cockroach, not you. We can always get more fish, but we can’t get more figs.”
Ham’s wife is facing this way. I see her whole self soften. She closes her eyes and her mouth twitches. He’ll kiss her now.
“Let’s act sensible,” says Ham, in a quiet, stern voice.
“Sensible?” Ham’s wife’s eyes fly open. “I’m always sensible.” She jerks her shoulders free. “I’m going back up.” She empties the rest of her bucket into another cage and drops it at the foot of the ladder before climbing up.
Almost immediately, Queen goes back to chasing The Male around our cage, holding his testicles in one hand. They both make those squeaky screams.
“Shem! Come quick! Look! She’s chasing him again, doing just what I told you.”
The brothers stand in front of our cage. Ham’s mouth hangs open. Shem’s mouth hangs open. For the moment, the brothers look alike. Finally they turn and finish feeding the animals, and then they clean out the waste and shovel it out a side hole.
As soon as they leave, The Male collapses into a heap. I think he’s asleep before his eyes close. Queen squats in front of me. I come out from the straw and stretch and gnaw on a piece of fish. Queen stretches. She picks up a piece of fish and gnaws beside me. I smile at her and she grins back. Queen doesn’t do simple smiles, only grins. The one time I saw what looked like a little smile was when she had gone down the rope out our side hole to investigate something in the water at the bottom. A gale-level wind came up as she was halfway there. She climbed back with a grim smile. It was fear, for sure. But her grins are from pleasure.
I go to the side hole and stick out my hands to wash them, careful to stand far enough inside that I don’t have any weird sensation of maybe falling out. Now I hold my arms out straight. The cold rain pelts the scratches Screamer gave me. It beats away the pain till I’m numb. Queen pushes me aside. She sticks her arms out the side hole. I step back, then walk the perimeter of our cage. Queen walks behind me. Then she scoots ahead of me. But she keeps looking back at me, as if to check. Oh, she wants to make sure she knows what I’m doing!
And I finally get it. This is a game. She plays it with The Male all the time: mimic. And what she did with The Male, that chasing him around, that was another game. He loved it. She loved it. That squeak they made was a laugh. What else could it be?
And pleasuring The Male in front of the talking woman . . . that embarrassed the woman. Somehow Queen knew it would. She did it on purpose for just that reason. I’m sure of it.
Queen doesn’t like the people. None of the animals here do. How could they? But Queen knows how to disturb them. She pokes fun at them. She senses their frustration and she flaunts her sexuality in front of them.
And she plays. For her own pleasure, and for The Male’s, and now for mine.
I knew Queen was smart, but she’s far smarter than I thought.
I stop. Queen stops. I hold my arms out to both sides. She does the same. I walk into the circle of her arms and hug. She hugs me back. Mimicking is a good game.
I have a friend.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Da
y 32
Smoke. I sniff harder. That’s smoke, for sure. I push myself to sitting up and then back into the corner of our cage, pulling the straw around me so I look like nothing more than a messy pile. It’s risky to sit like this, but it makes me feel more ready, more able. I could jump to my feet in an instant—though what good that would do me I cannot say. Smoke comes every evening on this ark—just little whiffs—clearly from cooking over a dung fire; the sweet smell is unmistakable. But this is different. This is pervasive. Lightning has struck the ark. Of course. It was inevitable. I quake.
Sounds of restlessness come from every cage. Will the animals panic?
Queen and The Male are worried, for sure. They mate nonstop. Well, that’s not entirely true. They interrupt themselves now and then to simply wrap their arms around each other. Queen makes little whoops toward me. I think she would have me join in the hug. My heart breaks in gratitude. But I stay hidden. People can be more dangerous than fire. These people would throw me overboard for sure—but a fire kills only randomly.
Ham and Shem bring us food just like normal. They don’t talk to each other. They don’t seem in any particular hurry. Sometime after midday Noah makes his daily rounds—his patrol, as he calls it. He walks along looking vaguely everywhere, beating his chest rhythmically, as though each step is like the slap of a sea wave. And it’s all exactly the same as every other day. I should take comfort from the ordinariness of the men’s behavior. Maybe the fire’s been put out.
It hasn’t. By evening the whole place smells like smoke. The straw reeks of it. It’s penetrated even my hair. The lions roar now, the wolves howl. The bears come out of their ever-so-light hibernation and do a kind of breathy growl. Every now and then there’s a pause in the din, a moment when somehow all the animals stop their yapping, but it still isn’t quiet. From every cage comes the sound of pacing. Woodpeckers peck-peck-peck from the aft.
I think of my funny little shrike. I haven’t seen him since the encounter with the sea serpent. In fact, I haven’t seen any birds at all. They must be on another level of the ark. That shrike somehow wandered here by accident. Just as the woodpeckers have done now. Peck, peck, peck, peck, peck, peck, peck.
I concentrate on the sound. I try to keep track of the number of pecks. I play a little game with myself, predicting how many pecks I’ll be able to hear before a fox yips or a hyena barks. Whenever I’m right, I get a bite of squid. But when I’m wrong, there’s no cost—smelling the smoke is punishment enough. I could laugh at the irony of burning to death in the middle of the sea under incessant rain. But I don’t, of course.
I wake from my nap late in the day with the taste of dread in my mouth. And a heavy pressure behind my eyeballs. Grief. My dreams come back to me in a flood—like the river that day—a flash flood. Aban. Aban, catching fish and telling me stories that make us both laugh and nibbling at my ear. And dying.
My eyeballs want to burst.
I breathe deep. The smoke smell is dead. Oh, not vanished. It lingers. But it’s stale. The fire, wherever it was, is out.
The brothers Ham and Shem deliver our food. I listen to the sound of eating. I hear crunches from Queen and The Male. Cud chewing, ripping, slurping. But I’m not hungry. I’m still enveloped in my own personal world. An Aban-tinged world.
And I hurt. My breasts ache. My head is a huge weight on my neck. The straw seems scratchier than usual.
The brothers clack up and down the ladder several times, usually only one of them on the deck at once. Like now: A single set of footsteps moves slowly along the corridor. Clack. Clack. It annoys me that they move so slowly. Everything annoys me.
I hear a second set of sandals now.
“Father? What are you doing here?”
“You’re walking slowly, Shem.”
“It’s late. We’ve finished the feeding.” Shem stops somewhere close by.
“And what, you have no other chores?”
“A man needs a moment of contemplation, Father. You go off alone often. Don’t begrudge me.”
“I pray.”
“We all pray.” Shem sighs loudly. “Father, do you ever think it might have been easier just to die with all the others?”
“Easier, yes. But it wouldn’t have been better, Shem. Easier is not the same as better.”
“How do you know?”
“I have faith.”
“You never doubt?”
Noah makes a hissing noise like steam escaping a closed pot. “Trust in the Mighty Creator with all your heart. We can’t expect to understand. But if we do our part, he will hold us up.”
Shem doesn’t answer.
“I count on you,” says Noah.
“Of course, Father. You can always count on me. You can lean on me too. You can give me more duties. You’re wearing yourself out.”
“I’m doing what the Mighty Creator asks of me, nothing more.”
Shem doesn’t answer.
“Fight the rebellious, Shem. Within or without. There is only one path of righteousness.”
“You don’t have to preach to me. I’ve done nothing to deserve that.”
“It’s a reminder. Reminders help.”
Footsteps clack up the ladder. But only one set.
A moment later footsteps come back down again, but clumping slowly.
“Mother? What is this? A procession? Father just came down to talk with me.”
“I know.”
I peek through the straw. A woman leans against the bottom of the ladder. She is older, rounder than the two young women. A plain white cloth covers the top of her head and ties at the back. Her long gray tresses are wound together in a swirl that hangs over one shoulder.
“You don’t have to remind me of my duties too. No one has to.”
“I know.” She plays with the tips of her hair now.
“Then what? What do you want?”
“Can I see your face as we talk?”
“You see my face at every evening meal. We talk at every evening meal.”
“All right, Shem. Do what you will. Take your moment alone. But don’t dwell on whatever Noah said to you. Know this one thing, always remember it: I’m proud of you.” She takes something out of the pouch that hangs at her waist and sets it on a step of the ladder. “I made you a treat. Your favorite. Eat it in private.” She goes heavily up the ladder.
Slow clacks come along the corridor. “Bonobos . . .” Shem’s voice is very close now. I retreat, letting my peephole in the straw fall shut. “They call you dumb animals, but I know better: You’re rebellious. Father wasn’t talking about you, though.” I hear a slap, and inside my head I can see him hitting that fist against that palm. “He was talking rubbish.” Shem moves quickly now, away and up the ladder.
All this has taken so much time, my hunger has returned. I’m famished. I go to search for what’s left and find a pile right outside my nest of straw, just near my feet. Queen looks out for me.
Dried fruits and nuts. I cry, though I don’t know whether it’s from relief that the ark wasn’t damaged by fire or from the realization of how stupid I was or from gratitude toward Queen. Maybe all three. Yesterday the fear of fire was like some monster hulking in a corner. And now there are dried fruits. Of course, of course, of course. They must have kept a fire going all day long to dry out the remaining fruits before they rotted.
It’s dawning on them what a problem the herbivores pose. The rest of us can have fish thrown at us. But the herbivores . . .
I reach out and pet the female duiker. She accepts my touch now. Both duikers do. The male accepts it only because moving out of my reach that fast would hurt his injured leg. But the female seems to like it. She even pushes her hard little forehead against my hand, asking for a scratch, which I willingly give. I don’t want them to die. But even more, I don’t want them to suffer through a slow starvation.
I look at the ladder. There’s nothing there. Whatever treat Shem’s mother made for him is gone. He must have gobbled it up. Too
bad.
Whoop. Whoop, whoop, whoop.
These are sounds The Male makes often, but there’s something different in them now. They’re unhappy. What an idiot. The fire danger is past—he should be celebrating.
I turn to look at him. He stands at the side hole with his hands on the lip of it and hops from foot to foot, lifting his knees high. I’ve never seen him do that before. He turns in a circle, then grabs hold of the side hole lip and pumps his legs up and down again.
Queen stands beside him. She throws her head side to side and lopes to the front of our cage. She grabs on to two of the poles with hands and feet and climbs to the top. She smacks her head against the ceiling beams, then slides down, rubbing her torso against the poles in the middle, between her hands, as she goes. When she hits the floor, she climbs up again. She emits a string of noises, over and over, in the same order—whistles and whoops and little screeches. I’ve never seen her do this before either. And I’ve never heard that particular string of noises.
I squat near the poles, and the next time Queen slides down, I whisper, “What’s the matter?”
She shakes her head again as though she’s trying to get free of something and climbs the poles and slides back down.
I look over at The Male. I usually avoid being beside him; I feel safest when Queen is between us. But whatever is going on feels bad to me. I approach him slowly, standing very straight to remind him how much taller I am than he is. “What’s wrong?”
The Male moves aside. This is startling. He seems to be inviting me to look out the side hole. So I do.
The rain has slowed to a drizzle. I don’t get elated, though. The rain slows sometimes, but it always starts up again, blustery and wild. Still, I have to appreciate this thinnest of drizzles, for it’s lovely to be able to see the stars. They glitter almost as sweetly as sunlight. The air is cold, though. It stings my nose.
I look down. My whole self goes slack. Debris. Debris everywhere. We often pass floating remnants of the world that used to be. That’s how we got the serpent, after all. But this is a vast mass of waste that goes on and on, as far as I can see in any direction. It’s as though a town wound up adrift right here, caught in some kind of monstrous gyre, some evil current. An entire town and all the forests that flanked it. And not just any town—an enormous town. Maybe the town everyone talks of—or used to talk of—the town they call fragrant, Reah.
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