In the Shadow of the Ark

by Anne Provoost

  “I don’t mean to,” I shouted back. “There is nothing I can do for you. I’m sitting on a stack of bones. If I move, you’ll get buried by them.” My voice was so much lighter than hers. The air was so damp that my thirst had vanished without my drinking anything.

  “I can’t stand up,” she said. “It hurts terribly. Don’t throw anything. Don’t throw anything, please.” As if for an echo that does not come, she waited for me to suggest something. I threw no more skulls or stones, but neither did I help; to my own dismay I was not prepared to.

  “Good,” she said after a while, sounding bleak and shivery. “Leave me here. Take my place. Ham loves you, you love him, you two deserve each other.” Her voice shook with fury, pain, or cold. I could no longer hear her stumbling about. Probably she found a way to keep her balance. And she didn’t pant anymore, although she spoke rapidly and insistently; it seemed like her way of keeping up her courage.

  This was the second time, she said, that she had stood among the elect but was not chosen. Not long ago, her mother had done the same thing to her.

  Her story began incoherently. I thought a knock to the head might have confused her mind, but soon I understood what she was doing: She was pleading her case, she was explaining why she was being allowed onto the ark, she was making it clear why she had to become Ham’s wife even though her heart did not go out to him.

  32

  Neelata’s Story

  In the city where she lived, her family had incited the people against the ruler. The ruler burned with anger and imprisoned her father, her brothers, her uncle and nephews, her whole rebellious family, in order to kill them. The only exception was Neelata’s mother, who was allowed to remain free so she could provide for the condemned. Every evening, when she brought the bowls of millet, she stood at the ruler’s door to beg for mercy. She banged her head against the wood, pulled out her hair, tore her clothes, and loudly begged for her husband, her children, her brother, her brother’s children.

  One day the ruler felt compassion. He admired the endurance of the woman at his door, and her love too. Because of that, he stood up and went to meet her. He said, “One loved one you may choose, one prisoner I will release, the others will die.”

  After brief reflection, Neelata’s mother said, “Let my brother go.”

  The ruler was amazed and said, “But I have your sons too, and your daughter. I have your husband. Why do you choose your brother?”

  “I am still young and can find a new husband. If I have a new husband, I can have new sons and a new daughter with him. But I cannot have a new brother, because both my parents have died.” Thus Neelata’s uncle was set free, a wealthy man with snow-white hair and chests full of gold. And because the woman amused the ruler, he set her daughter free too.

  Neelata’s mother was not pleased at her daughter’s release. She feared her vengeance. She asked her wealthy brother to take her away, to marry her off to a man who would take her on a long journey. That was why Neelata’s uncle had brought her to the Builder, to the man who would undertake the longest journey ever made. That is why he had brought the most beautiful and valuable presents; Neelata’s mother and uncle came from a rich and powerful family.

  Her story did not overwhelm me, I was not speechless. This was a story about people of ill will, those the Unnameable wished to destroy with his water. Yet I was silent. She said, “I know you are there. You are waiting for me to climb up so you can throw those horrible bones at me and bury me forever.” I still said nothing. The cold air had affected my voice.

  Her strength lasted a good long time; we were all well fed because of the abundance that prevailed despite everything. She said, “This is yet another way for you to prove your love to Ham. He will worship you even more. Do you know what he admires most in your people? That you are capable of killing. Your father killed Gentan. Ham could not do that. Nor can any Rrattika. Not because they are cowardly, but because they are obedient. Their obedience is completely straightforward, there are no exceptions for them.” She was silent again for a long while. Her silence was full of pained anger, but it was drowned out by the question that echoed inside my head: Did I not have a heart? Did I not know compassion? After a time, she said, “Perhaps that is what disappoints the Unnameable most of all. Not people’s wickedness, but their lack of understanding of what is wicked and what is good. People like you are needed to cut through knots.”

  Still I did nothing to help her. She repeated that she was in pain, but I paid no heed. Colder than the dampness around me I felt, but also strong and determined.

  Her voice seemed to change. It lost its echo. It sounded so flat that the rocks no longer reflected it. She sounded hoarse when she said, “See that Put gets a place on the ark, do that much for me. I have sewn a camel-hair sack he fits into exactly. It is at the bottom of one of my chests, the large one with the olive pattern. The child will need help to get into it. The dromedary will have to be trained, the beast will have to get used to the weight and shape of his burden. It will take patience.” Her words made me get up abruptly from my throne. I scrabbled upright and stood at the edge of the well.

  “Why are you saving Put?” I asked, but the only reply I got was a weak “What?” that sounded far away. I repeated my question, but she did not reply. I knelt at the edge. I lay down, my body stretched out on the cold, wet ground. A few bones started rolling, some of them must have hit her, but she no longer screamed. I had resisted helping her for so long that her own body had provided deliverance.

  The well was deep. I took all the skulls I could find and let them slip down the side. All the human parts within reach I threw down carefully. They hit the bottom with a splash. Stones I left alone, they were too sharp and heavy. When I could not find any more near the well, I looked for bones and skulls farther away. For a long time, I went back and forth. I kept fetching pieces until the bottom of the well had been raised enough for me to reach it with my legs. I stood on top of the skulls, some of which broke under my weight. I knelt and groped around amongst the bones until I found her warmth. First I found her hair, then her hand. I got her away from the bones I had buried her under with my own hands. It took all my strength to haul her body, she hung slack in my arms and did not react. And she was wet and slippery. I was damaging that beautiful, long body, but I could not avoid it: I could not possibly lift her, so I had to drag her. On my shoulder I pushed her up along the wall. A few times her head flopped down, but eventually I managed to push her over the edge. By her shoulders and arms I dragged her through the darkness, along the rough floor of the cave. I screamed with the exertion.

  The daylight was merciless; it showed up contusions and abrasions as if they were adornments. Her ribs were bruised all around. I had nothing but sand and dust to dry her with. But my delight when she opened her eyes, her amazement at the clear light and dry air, dispelled the discomfort.

  She said, “It was a burial place. You shouldn’t go into a burial place.” She wanted to get away from the opening in the rock wall, farther than we were, farther than where the horse waited.

  “I can’t go on walking,” she said.

  “I can’t either,” I replied. Numb with cold, we lay there, back to back, without moving, for every movement hurt.

  When I felt a little better, I went to fetch water. The skulls I could reach I stacked up again; caring for the dead had been drummed into me.

  I gave her water and we drank. I took the horse to a raised rock from where it could be mounted with the least discomfort. Then we let the animal carry us at a walking pace to my mother. She was no longer alone. Next to her sat Put who had found her even before my father woke up; he had fed her and changed her position.

  After Neelata, her eye-glitter smeared over her cheeks, had fallen asleep next to my mother, and the three of us sat watching her, I said, “Her bones would not have been conspicuous amongst all those other ones. Did I do wrong not leaving her behind?” My mother looked at me quietly. And Put, the little dar
ling, threw his arms around my legs and kissed my shins until I pushed him away.

  Ham barely left a footprint in the dust when he came to get my father. We watched him climbing up the steep cliff to our field. He carried some milk cakes, baked black on the edges, the way he knew we liked them. He gave them to me without looking me in the eyes. He said, “You have saved my wife. I will thank you,” and took my hand in his. His touch stung like a nettle. He had changed. His voice had become deeper and his movements firmer. He addressed my father, who was self-conscious with embarrassment at what he had done to himself: He had moved into a ramshackle house unworthy of a woodworker and still felt like a scarecrow in his Rrattika clothes. “I have a job for you,” said Ham. “A task that can save your life.”

  I knew how much my father longed for the real work, for the big ship. So he did not resist. He threw off the stolen cloak, fitted his girdle with the loincloth around his hips, and went back to the shipyard. He greeted neither me nor my mother, he was still stunned by the fact that we had betrayed our spring without him having a say. He worked hard that day, he did not stop.

  I walked to the vessel to see what kept him. All the workers were already having their meals in front of their tents, and there was no movement near the entrance. The greyhound dragged itself along the ground trying to get rid of an itch, and the matting across the gangplank was tied up. But inside the ark, the lonely sound of a hammer tapping could be heard.

  33

  The Niche

  At night, I would go to the silkworms’ cage, where the wind rarely penetrated. Their cage stood on tall posts and was surrounded by a fence. If you sat down there, no one could see you apart from the caterpillars, but they were very much turned in on themselves. Ham waited there for me. I started by washing him and rubbing oil onto his skin. In the hollow amongst the bamboo, the caterpillars slowly chewing mulberry leaves above us, he asked me to sit astride him. His muscles had changed and his chest was covered in short hairs. We kissed, each in our own way: I with only a little hope, knowing the Builder had counted his passengers carefully and that, by exerting all my strength to rescue a woman twice my weight from a well, I had given my only chance back to the person it belonged to. But he kissed like a man who intends to kiss again tomorrow, and the day after tomorrow too. We lay looking up and gave names to the caterpillars above us. Some were spinning a cocoon and we encouraged them in their unceasing labor.

  It got to the point where we became concerned about the silkworms’ fate. We knew my father planned to boil the cocoons before they had a chance to leave them; under no circumstances could they be allowed to bite through the thread they had enveloped themselves in. A few would be chosen to stay alive, but only to lay their eggs and then die. We considered ways of escape for the moths. We contemplated removing the netting and setting them in the wind to speed up the drying of their wings. But of course we suspected that our interference would kill them anyway. They were vulnerable. My father handled the cocoons with a soft-bristled brush. Not long now, and he would start heating the water. Thus it was with most of us too; we would be destroyed to prevent us destroying ourselves. Our fate seemed linked with theirs: That was why we lived in fear that something would go wrong with them, and that one day they would all lie on the ground, shriveled up, because that would have to be an omen.

  One day Ham and I would have to separate, I kept on reminding him of this. He insisted he was looking for a solution, but I could see his mind was on other things. I knew of his great longing for that new land, where everything would grow so fast you would be punished if you did not weed around your home in time. At the same time, he was concerned that knowledge would be lost: He wanted to relearn all the tunes he had learned as a child, he went to observe how people made clothes, how they constructed instruments. Whenever possible, he took examples to his tent to study them by the light of an oil lamp to make sure he understood everything and would remember in the new world. He wanted to learn which herbs were beneficial and which not; he knew about dried leaves you could smoke, but could he distinguish the real ones from the ones that would only stink? There were people who baked ceramics in colors, who made objects in copper, silver, and gold — where could he find those metals and which particular blends were most malleable? And the positions of the stars, reading the time, understanding the omens, predicting the weather, counting the days and years, there was so much he had to master before he could leave. Although his god had made no mention of insects, he wanted to obtain seven silkworms from my father, and the knowledge needed to keep them alive.

  One morning, when we got up, the tents were shiny. Everything seemed to have changed color. The sand looked darker than usual and the dust was not flying about. No one had seen rain, yet it was clear to all that during the night a haze of moisture had come down on the shipyard. Put went outside and looked at all the pots and jugs he could find. None contained water, but everything felt wet.

  Neelata proudly left her tent. She was still covered in bruises and walked stiffly because, under her clothes, she was in splints, but she no longer hid behind the embroidered panels. She ran her hand over the canvas of the tents and gauged the depth of the pond. Since her fall, she had sent me a basket full of eggs every day. As soon as the moistness was in the air, she came herself. She said, “I’ve been looking for the water too far afield. It is close by.” She kissed me and gave me bread. “We are working at a solution. You saved my life. I shall save yours.” Supported by her maids, she returned to the shipyard.

  My father no longer worked on the truss-boat. He radiated a quiet that confused me. He told my mother in detail about his little boat, saying he would stop building it if that was what she wanted, but she showed little interest in this. What she did want to know was why he worked in the ark at the end of the day when all the workers returned home. He said, “For as long as we have been together, I have kept things from you. It was never out of malice. Now do not bear malice yourself and do not ask me questions.” She kept blinking her eye, and he sat with his back turned to her until she stopped. All this time he continued weeding his seedlings. He watered them from the pond as if he had no idea what was about to happen. And he still dug the stones out of the ground.

  My father’s calm had an unexpected effect on Put. He begged him to continue work on the truss-boat in the field, but could not sway the man who stayed away all night and spent the day in his hammock, dead tired. Put tried to do it by himself, hammering nails into the wrong spots and hurting himself. He hurled stones around, he ripped just about every leaf from the tree that was supposed to give us shade. He behaved like a cornered animal, he barely slept anymore, he kept walking around us as if he could avert disaster by staying close to us. Our presence would stop the rolling rocks that were going to squash him, our weight would keep him on the ground when the whirlwind came.

  Once, toward midday, he vomited up his food, small, thoroughly chewed pieces of fruit he had consumed that morning, frugally because they were the first of the season, from a remote bush. I terrified him by dragging him into the shrubs and saying, “Shall I tell my father how you gave away our secret?”

  He pulled hair out of his head and used it to build nests like a bird. He slept underneath our hammocks, in the spot where, at home in the marshes, the dogs would lie. In his sleep, he scratched shreds of wood from the boards.

  Because he was a child, his despair was unbearable. His small talent for wordlessly asking questions, his ability to make an undeserved sorrow visible on his face, drove my father to say, “Child, stop screaming like that. Do not make it hard for me. Do not force me to tell what I must keep secret.”

  Put sat up on his mat, I moved closer. “What is it?” we asked. “What is it you can’t tell us?” My mother was in the corner of the room, she could hear his every word.

  “Ham has made me carry out a job on the ship. I have made something I have never made before. Something I have never before thought about. He made me build a niche in the wall of th
e ship, a space with an invisible entry, a hiding place. It is a big secret, he does not inform his brothers. He is sinning against his father’s will.”

  “What is the purpose of this hiding place?”

  “The space is large enough to hide a person. Possibly enough for a couple of people.”

  “For us?” I asked softly.

  “Who knows?” my father said and fell silent.

  The color drained from Put’s face at this revelation. He left his sleeping place, the spot pervaded by the scent of his body, the sweat from his overwhelming impotence, and ran from the house, screaming that he was not my parents’ child, that we would leave him behind and forget him, and that he could not swim. I went after him. He ran along the field, farther up the cliffside. He ran so fast and so heedlessly that stones he dislodged hit my head, forcing me to shout to make him stop and wait for me. He was still panting when I reached him. I pushed him onto the ground, he sat down with the slope at his back. The child who was always the first to notice if I needed something no longer wanted to be with me; it made me very sad, it was as if he was hurling stones at me.

  “I don’t want to go in Neelata’s camel sack, I want to stay with all of you,” he sobbed. As I could not see any other solution, I told him the story of my little brother. I told him that, when my mother fell over into her boat never to get up again, I had not been the only one by the side of the water. Next to me lay my brother, a baby in a basket. After I heard her fall and saw her disappear into the boat, I had gone to her, even though I could not swim. I had struggled through the water, head under, no bottom under my feet, till I felt the edge of the boat. I had climbed into the boat where she lay motionless amongst the fish, whose thrashing about had got themselves hopelessly tangled in her hair. My mother had not offered me her breast. She did not sit up straight to make it easier for me. I had done it all by myself. When I had drunk my fill of her milk, we listened together to the steadily weakening crying of my little brother. I told her she should go and get him, that the sun was climbing and the water rising, but she only blinked her eye.