In the Shadow of the Ark

by Anne Provoost

  He was sensitive, I could feel that from the way his skin opened itself up to the water. I knew what I had to do. I would press seeds for him. I would rub the furrows in his neck with oil until I could peel off the dirt. I would comb his tangle of dark hair until it was smooth again and shiny. I would teach him how marsh people kept themselves clean and scented. I would clean his fingernails till they shone like a duck’s bill. I would give him aniseed for his breath. Oil and generous acts I would lavish on him, because if there was one thing I had learned, it was that sensitives must be well treated.

  I applied the oil and rubbed it into his arms and legs, until his skin would accept no more and became smooth as chamois leather. I pressed my thumbs deep into the skin along his spine and rubbed his lower back firmly as if I were polishing it. With my thumb I pushed on his tailbone, I found the hollow on the inside of his heel. His body grew warm under my fingers.

  I said, “I will show you my spring if you will carry the water for me.”

  His muscles tightened. He raised his upper body on his arms and looked at me for a few moments. Now I could clearly see those short but thick eyelashes, the beard, still downy, and the slight movement of his nostrils. His eyes were full of dismay.

  “Give me a donkey then. The pens are full of them,” I insisted.

  He shook his head. The tips of his hair dragged over his shoulders. “If I give you a donkey, you will all go away. You still have no idea what we are doing here.”

  “The Builder builds a ship in a place where there is hardly any water?” The fire was warm, I turned my other side toward it. And sitting that way, I could have a better look at him. “Everybody here is working hard, so something wonderful must have been promised.”

  He bent toward me and, in a single movement, took the cloth from under him to cover his body. With his free hand, he grasped my shoulder, pointed at the red tent farther down, and whispered, “My father is in conversation. He is speaking with his god the way I am speaking with you.” His sudden movement was bad, it threw up the dust and made him dirty again.

  “Which god?” I asked.

  “He who is well-disposed toward us, the Nameless One, the Unnameable; forget all others. This god looks after us, the others do not do that. The Unnameable is so angry, so disappointed. My father tries to calm Him, but it is in vain. His mercy is nearing exhaustion. He says He is losing faith in mankind. He wants to destroy all evildoers. Only the noble-minded and the just will escape, with them He will continue.”

  I knew of the fear Rrattika lived with: the fear that their name would be extinguished, the way it happened to the godless and to criminals. Their lives consisted of a constant series of efforts to escape the curse of oblivion.

  Although I had dried him off, his forehead was already covered in droplets again. “I see how you care for your mother, and it touches my heart,” he said. “You do it out of love, as I build the ship out of love. You do not offend the Unnameable. He is astonished at so much goodness, as I am. I know what you people think, you consider us scum, you have named us after vermin. But give us a chance. Bring your father to me and help us placate the Unnameable.” He put on his cloak without letting go of the cloth he was covering himself with.

  I helped him a little, not too much, because I was looking at him more than helping him, looking at his movements and the play of the shadows they caused. When he was dressed, I moved away from him a little, so I suddenly found myself too close to the fire, and it felt as if my head were burning. Anxiously I asked, “You are building the ship to make your name immortal?”

  “The ship must ensure that we will not be wiped out,” he said.

  “An appeal for mercy?” I asked. Again, I could hear the wheeze in his voice.

  He touched my arm with his fingertips. “For mercy, it is too late. The Unnameable has made His decision. We must help each other. It is now a matter of belonging to the elect.”

  The dog started barking, and Ham jumped up. He grabbed me and dragged me away from the glow of the fire. He pushed me between the stacks of timber, where I made myself as small as I could and kept still. Someone came and stood by him, a man with a quick step and a short shadow, an apparition from nowhere, without a lamp in his hand, without a stick, as if the laws of the night did not apply to him.

  “What are you doing?” I heard the man ask.

  Ham remained silent. He began walking away from the pitch vats.

  “This is not the girl you are waiting for,” the stranger said, his face turned toward the shipyard.

  “But look at the water she brings,” I heard Ham plead.

  “There are other women with good water. She is not the one. I will give you a sign when she arrives.”

  “She is good, she is beautiful,” Ham continued.

  They disappeared amongst the stacks of timber. I could just see that the man who walked beside the son of the Builder was of very small stature. He was not wearing clothes like the Rrattika, but was naked. His arms and legs were thin, his hips narrow like a boy’s. He had to take large steps to keep up with Ham. It may have been the poor light, but his skin seemed even darker than mine.

  “We have to get away from here,” I said to my mother, whom I only washed near our tent now, after that one time by the pond. “These people are expecting a great calamity. Their god is preparing an overwhelming punishment. He is going to destroy all who are not chosen.” We quickly agreed: This cleansing we did not want to experience. We did not want to witness the suffering that would come with it. The gods of the Rrattika were not familiar to us, and this one did not seem the most benign. The Rrattika had chosen a god of whom they lived in fear. That was remarkable: We were in the habit of choosing gods who would leave us in peace instead of provoking us.

  And so I stored up water in order to be ready when my father returned. Going to the spring, I followed a different path every time to confuse anyone who wanted to follow me. It would seem there were different levels of water quality. I saw women who had access to reasonably good water: They sold it at high prices, and if they were unmarried, well-to-do young men hung around them. I did not make a show of how good my water was. I could have acquired clothes, jugs, and blankets for it, but what use would that sort of baggage be if we had to flee the disaster? I led a donkey from one of the enclosures and hid it in the bushes. Stealing a pack animal seemed harmless: There were so many of them inside the little stone walls, at least a pair of every form and kind, and as many as seven of certain kinds. Having to be out for hours cutting grass counted for nothing compared to the security of knowing the animal was there ready. At that time, we no longer believed my father would bring Alem and the donkey back with him.

  Three nights in a row, the young son of the Builder came to get me. Each time he took me to the warmth of the pitch vats. I was restrained when I washed him. As Alem had taught me, I did not touch his face or his stomach. Yet afterward I walked back to our tent with my hands tingling as if they had been exposed to the sun for too long, and into my deepest sleep I could hear him repeat to the small, naked man in the dark, “She is beautiful. She is good. Look at the water she brings.”

  10

  Alem’s End

  On the eighth day after his departure, my father returned carrying little Put on his back. He also carried the carefully woven bit of our donkey and Alem-the-ragged’s gray cloak. Put had an empty look in his eyes. It was ages before they were in a fit state to tell their story.

  Alem was a hero, said my father. He had found him from directions given by reed carriers on the way. Alem had not gotten very far, because the donkey had been ill. My father had asked him to come back to the quarry to get my mother and me, and Alem had happily agreed. Of course he wanted to be of service again, he understood without explanation that the boat builder would not prosper in this shipyard. But because of the donkey, the return journey was slow. The animal became bloated. They had spent quite some effort trying to save it, but it was hopeless. First the carrion eaters had come
, small dogs who were after the intestines, but the scent of blood had attracted larger animals. Alem had warned of the danger, he had said they should go on that very evening, but my father had laughed off his fear and said he was glad to have found him, that there was no rush now and they should save their strength.

  The monster had appeared from nowhere, none of them had sensed its approach. They had only heard the silence and wondered why the lizards disappeared into chinks and cracks. Then the shadow fell on them. It was a striped animal, its eyes glistening, slaver dripping from its jaws. It wrapped its paws around Alem like an embrace. They heard the cracking of bone. They saw how Alem was knocked to the ground and immediately thrown up in the air again. The incisors closed around the back of his head right through his hood. Probably the animal had observed Alem from behind the bushes and seen how he moved; it knew exactly where, under all the clothes he had on, his vertebrae were.

  The tiger dragged Alem into the bushes. Alem grabbed at the grass. Again the incisors closed over his skull. Something tore. For a moment, the animal let go. Alem tried to scramble up, but the tiger clawed at his legs the way it does with fleeing prey.

  Alem had pushed himself off with all his strength. He had thrown himself on top of the tiger, as if after due consideration, he responded to the embrace. Very deliberately, he put his hand into the beast’s mouth, first the fingers, then the wrist. “Get away, get away!” he shouted. “I’ll hold it here.” He pushed his fist into the wide throat. The tiger slammed its jaws shut. The hand cracked.

  My father grabbed hold of Put and fled. He did not hear screams. All through the night they waited. Only the next morning did they dare go back. When they got there, all they found was the cloak and some splintered bones.

  My father grieved deeply for the man for whom he had shown nothing but disdain during our journey. My grief was even deeper. Alem had taught me about love and shown me the world. Ham had predicted a disaster, he had read the signs, but why did it have to strike Alem? I tried to explain to my father that a donkey was ready waiting, that I had water and food, that, even without a pathfinder, we had to get out of this place as fast as we could.

  But he was not to be swayed. “Return that donkey this instant,” he said. “It will attract the wild animals. We cannot go back, the hills are full of untamed beasts lusting after our flesh.” He sat down with his silkworms and fed them the mulberry leaves I had picked on the slopes earlier in the day. My mother rolled and rolled her eye, she was full of horror at Alem’s death. And Put, the little man, rolled around in the gravel until he bled.

  Because I did not have a place where I could hide with my horror, I went to the carpentry workshop. I had to go past the fire below the trusses. I had the feeling that it was about to leave its pit and come at me, leaping from one tinder-dry little patch of grass to another, to pour its heat all over me. The donkey, which I was leading by its halter, felt it too. It shied at every crackle in the wood. My stoical character, my willingness to take things as they come, had always reconciled me to my mother’s ailment and the restrictions it imposed. I did not feel condemned to live with her, rather the opposite: I was sorry for her because she had to put up with my crude help, with my lack of reliability and skill, and my inability to protect her from the sores that develop from having to lie down. But now everything became less self-evident. With her endless, nerve-racking blinking, she had taken us away from our home, our boats, our waterways. It had cost Alem his life. We were stuck in a place where soon people were to be punished, and the only one of them I knew was a young man with a skin so fair it made me lose the feeling in my fingertips.

  Ham saw me from his workbench. He hurried across. Because he looked at me without speaking, my grief burst forth. I had felt it growing in me, but when it reached my head it still took me by surprise, like a belch: It rose up in me and I overflowed. Water streamed from my eyes, my nose, my mouth, thick tears that fell from my cheeks onto my breasts.

  “Does the Unnameable look like a great cat with stripes?” I stammered. “Is he a murderous, slavering monster?” I kept seeing Alem before me, his body, with its unusual scent, and which I had rubbed with oil, his cautious way of walking, intent on clues in the landscape. He taught me the gentlest possible hand contact, the touch that leaves no trace on the skin or in the sand. He taught me to move like a fish in a shoal, swerving fast without touching any other. He trained my skin, my fingertips, and the tip of my tongue.

  “A man I loved has perished.”

  “Your father?” he asked quickly.

  “Not my father. Another man I loved.”

  “Is your father back? Is he unharmed?”

  “He has a wound in his heart, like me.” I could not stop sobbing. Was this the stone coming loose, the beginning of a landslide that would overwhelm us? “Help us get away from here,” I said. “See that we can leave this place safely, we have nothing to do with the punishment that will be imposed on you and your people.”

  He raised his hand, his sleeve fell back onto his elbow, making his white forearm visible. He wheezed as he said, “Don’t be afraid. I will take care of you. But bring that donkey back. I can do nothing, absolutely nothing for you if you touch the animals.”

  The timber around us creaked. I wanted to grab the hand he held out, if only for balance, but he withdrew it. He looked around quickly at the workmen who came and went, their eyes downcast. Because he did not offer me the hem of his cloak, I wiped my face dry with my hand.

  “What can you do?” I asked with a sob. “You do not even control your own fate! There is a dwarf who makes the decisions for you.”

  He hunched his back and put his hand over his mouth. The dust he worked in made him cough. Wood shavings from his hair fluttered down onto my arm. He stood away from me; his lack of breath made his face bulge and his eyes go red. He had barely any voice when he said, “The dwarf is an idiot, he’s scum. He is a seer who does not know what to do with his gift. Leave him be. Leave him be with what he imagines to be his knowledge. Go away now. But come back to me tonight. You will belong to me like my shadow. If our god does not choose you, I will.”

  11

  Washergirl Becomes a Boy

  I waited till it was completely dark. Finally, after much tossing and turning, Put had fallen asleep, and I walked to the pitch vats. Ham was waiting for me, a knife, needles, and some small bags in his hand. He carefully put them down on a piece of timber that lay across the stones like a shelf. He pulled me down and asked me to move as close to the glow of the fires as I could. He bent over me to do to me what was done to Rrattika boys when they became adults. First he thinned out my hair, cutting some of my curls close to the skull and pulling the longer hair across to cover it. Then he spread beside him the needles and the little bags, from which he shook black dyes. He asked me to close my eyes. With the needles, he made small cuts in my forehead, forming the emblem of the male.

  I did not slap his hand away when drops of blood trickled to my temples. I did not kick his needles into the fire, nor did I blow his dyes into a heap. I did not open my eyes, but I could hear him sigh with the effort. He no longer smelled of cattle, but of cassia and sweet Klamath. His breath brushed over my face. The glow of the charcoal made my limbs feel weak. He applied the dyes to the cuts, dabbing the blood with the edge of his shirt.

  When he had finished, he said, “Bathe your mother by the pond tomorrow. Cover your body with a cloak. Wipe out your memories of Canaan. Become one of us. Earn planks and nails and build your mother a shelter that is more durable than a tent. You will be highly esteemed because you have the best water.”

  I nodded in confusion. The shallow cuts on my forehead burned as if salt had been mixed into the dyes.

  “Don’t let anyone know where you obtain your water,” he continued. “Not me, not my brothers, not my father the day he is going to ask.”

  I still did not reply, I was still unable to talk after this morning’s news. I had to get used to the way events closed
in on me, as if I were lost in a cave that, like a snail shell, became narrower and narrower.

  The next day, a boy bathed his crippled mother by the water. He did not scoop water from the pond, he had brought his own water, which was clearer and didn’t smell. The boy did not wear a cloak — that would have been too impractical when using that oil and that water — but a sleeveless tunic, irregular in shape so you could not see that a pair of small breasts hid under it. All attention was focused on the garment that was decorated with shells. No one here wore anything like that, not just because sleeveless garments gave poor protection against the dust and the sun, but because, so far inland, shells were too precious to be sewn onto clothes. The meticulous way the boy worked was astonishing. His fingers moved so carefully and incessantly they seemed like ants, like steadily moving workers who would go over an obstacle rather than walk around it. Amazement could be seen on all faces, first of all the servants’. They looked furtively at the water in my bowl, nudged one another and whispered. They stood at the edge of the pond and gaped at every one of my movements. I was using my old sponge, even though it was falling apart from frequent use. And, of course, they paid attention to my mother, her face, and the adornment, which emphasized her beauty. They only withdrew when there were calls from a distance.

  Shem, Japheth, and Ham approached, the sons of the Builder, and the bystanders made room for them, whispering. I did not have time to get up and watch them coming. Before I realized, they had walked past me and my mother. All three wore cloaks that nearly touched the ground. Dust fell out of them when they took them off. It was obvious they were brothers, they resembled one another, though the differences between them were not small. Shem had more of a paunch than his brothers, but had a narrower face. Japheth’s appearance was coarser, his lower jaw protruding as if it had been pushed out by a brutal blow. He had large hands and black furrows in his neck. Ham was much smaller and thinner than his brothers, still almost a child compared to them.