In the Shadow of the Ark

by Anne Provoost

  “It is not going to happen to us a second time,” I told Put. “Now it’s you who is our little boy; we will not leave you behind by the water’s edge.”

  I asked Ham, “Whom is the niche for that you’ve made my father build?”

  He replied, “For you.”

  “I will not come if that is the way it is.”

  “There is room for your father too.”

  “And my mother?”

  He looked away. We were sitting under the caterpillar cage. He had a strange expression around his mouth, he seemed to be full of pride because he was disregarding his father’s will. I knew what he was going to say next.

  “Your mother is lame. My sin against the will of the Unnameable is already twofold. If I take her, it would be threefold. I’m doing my best, Re Jana. I’m trying everything I can think of.”

  “And Put?” I asked. Not that I had any voice. Something in my throat had shifted, and it sounded as if I were whispering.

  “There is a separate solution for him. He will be taken care of.”

  I stood up and turned my back to him. I went inside our house. Put was there. He sat between my father and my mother, his legs pulled up, his hand touching my mother and his back leaning against my father. I did not tell any of them what I had learned.

  34

  Put’s Blunder

  Every morning the tents were wetter than before. Every jug, every bowl that had been left outside had water in it. The story of how I had saved Neelata spread. I was allowed to return to work in the red tent. I no longer wore a cloak, but neither did I wear the shell tunic in which I had disguised myself. Put was with me to carry the jugs. Shem, Japheth, and Ham admitted us without a word, were startled by my nakedness, and hurriedly closed the tent curtain. I took care of them the way I used to. Put helped me. He was in high spirits. He was enthusiastically rubbing oil into Japheth’s buttocks and thighs, spilling an unnecessary amount. I pointed it out to him, but that did not help, he was nervous and excited, unable to control the flow.

  When the dwarf came out of the Builder’s quarters, Put and I tried to carry on as unobtrusively as possible. A smell of fermenting fruit hung about him, and for a moment it looked as if the wine had clouded his vision so much he would walk past us. But he recognized me. As he went by, he whispered with a sweaty smirk, “Hey, you! What’s happened to your disguise? Have you had your beating yet?”

  Put stood between us and could not restrain himself. The first secret, the spring in the cave, he had been able to keep. The second, our hiding place on the side of the cliff, he had given away out of friendship for Neelata. This secret was altogether too big. He was confused, not able to order his thoughts and see the larger picture. He turned to the dwarf and said in the same whispery tone, “We are not going to drown. There is a hidey-hole, that’s where we’re going to be!”

  At his words, I felt the same relief he must have felt: At last a response the hairy dwarf could not counter, at last he was reduced to silence. That triumphant feeling did not last long; everything around us had suddenly become immobilized. Not a canvas, not a tent pole moved.

  “What did you say?” asked Japheth.

  “A hidey-hole,” Put answered weakly. He had twisted the cloth in his hand so tightly around his finger that its tip turned white.

  “And who has built that hidey-hole?” Put could not utter a word. Japheth had to repeat his question, and then once more, his teeth clenched.

  “The man who knows how to build boats,” said Put. The dwarf fled outside, leaving a smell of wine behind him, his head down between his shoulders. Ham sat there, rigid as stone. Japheth got up. “Is that so?” he asked me. I bent my head. He started dressing, laughing, he seemed strangely excited. It took a long time to get his clothes right.

  Shem too got up and dressed. His clothes were more elaborate than his brother’s. His girdle consisted of a number of thin strands linked together with pearls. As if he wanted to demonstrate how it is done, he was ready in a flash. He went out without waiting for his brother. Japheth went after him, his skirts undone.

  Ham stayed behind in the tent, a gray, gleaming shadow. The curtain had barely stopped moving when he burst into a coughing fit. Spit flew about in flakes. Put and I sat near him, thinking of my father and his sketches. We knew exactly what would happen. They would find him in his hammock. Seeing the sawdust in his eyelashes, they would blow insolently in his face and order him to get up. He would inform them, this man who had exhausted himself, who had done exactly what was expected of him and who knew that now he would pay the price for it.

  “He will not betray you,” I said to Ham. I put my hands flat on his skin to rub his shoulders. That seemed to be all I was capable of doing: to let his skin slide under my hands to make sure he stayed there.

  “I know,” he whispered. He moved with me. If I pressed, he yielded, but I was not sure that he knew it was me touching him.

  Shem and Japheth did not stay away long. They were talking loudly and excitedly when they came back. “Cleverly done, what an economical way to use a double wall,” they said. “But what did you have in mind, brother?” My father was not with them. Possibly, he was already lying bent double at the foot of my mother’s stretcher. Possibly, he had destroyed his sketches and broken his measuring stick.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Exactly, yes, that’s what that boat builder said too. He insists you know nothing about this, that he acted on his own. He claims he sneaked into the ship at night. Do we believe that? Can we believe that, brother?” Japheth laughed with a snort at Shem and then looked fixedly at Ham again. “And all that against Father’s will. Against the Unnameable’s command.” Shem’s manner was full of false indignation. A thin smile played around his mouth. He did not speak loudly when he said, “You are game, true enough.”

  Japheth hooked his fingers in the braids of his beard. His manner too was agitated. Keeping an eye on the curtain of the Builder’s quarters, he leaned toward Ham and asked, “Tell us, Ham. That man is covering for you, you can be pleased with him. But we just want to know the truth. Who was that hiding place for? Who were you going to take?”

  Ham saw that his brothers were not at all angry. They were curious. The idea of the niche appealed to them. He sat on the edge of his chair and looked them in the face. He fiddled with the cloth I had used to dry him, running the seam carefully between his thumb and forefinger. He was not aware of doing it, his thoughts were concentrated on his words. “What will we have for diversion? What will our entertainment be? We will not be allowed to go where our wives sleep. We will be bored to death.”

  “That is so,” said Shem. “The days will be long.”

  “It would be good to have someone with us who can make us forget the time.”

  “What are you getting at, brother?”

  “An ox would be able to guess who I had in mind,” said Ham.

  I am sure they all looked at me. I lowered my eyes. That did not prevent me seeing how Japheth involuntarily stroked his hair. He dug around in his thatch with his fingers. Shem took a long, loud breath. I bent over Ham’s feet as if they were the only thing I was concerned about.

  “The dwarf,” said Ham.

  I went through my knees. The ground felt like mud or water. It was the way it used to be when we were crossing the marshes. If a heavily loaded boat struck rough water, we jumped overboard. We swam until the wind dropped. It was a cold, scary action we learned at an early age. That was how it seemed when Ham named the dwarf: as if a wind had sprung up that could sink our cargo.

  “The dwarf,” Shem repeated thoughtfully. His gaze still rested on me and moved away when I looked back. I rubbed oil into Ham’s legs.

  Ham let me go on and continued, “Father can’t do without him, even though he claims the opposite. Once we have properly taken off, we produce him. If it then turns out this does not please the Unnameable and He commands us to throw the dwarf overboard, we can still do th
at. The presence of a stowaway on board won’t be Father’s fault, but ours, and that will calm the Unnameable. We are only young, we make mistakes.”

  Shem and Japheth nodded. I hung on to Ham’s leg. His skin and muscles were taut.

  “Let’s go and get him,” said Ham. He looked at his brothers.

  Japheth slipped his cloak off his shoulder, as if the heat in the tent had become too much for him. He laboriously wiped his neck. “But the child said …” he said, indicating Put.

  “The child said what I’d made him believe,” Ham said dryly.

  I saw Put look at me as if for him too the ground was shifting under his feet.

  “Shall we?” Ham asked when he got no reply. He waited, giving his brothers a last chance to object. But Japheth seemed unable to move. Shem blinked like someone who sees things around him go up in flames. He did come out with a brief “Yes, yes, yes,” not expressing agreement, only a request for more time to think. Then he raised his hand. “Can’t someone else …?” he muttered almost inaudibly. “The dwarf is difficult company, why not someone nice and quiet rather than that show-off? Someone who is of use to the three of us, who takes care of us for instance, who bathes and grooms us?”

  But Ham was striding through the tent. “Do you mean Re Jana, the girl who bathes us? That is impossible. The dwarf knows about the niche, the child has given its existence away. Now we have no choice.” He pulled the curtain aside and called the dwarf who was sitting on the ground a short distance away. When he heard Ham calling him, he wrenched himself around as if he had been hit in the back by a stone. He jumped up and entered the tent with a theatrical bow. “You can come,” said Ham. “The niche is for you, of course you can come.”

  The short, dark man straightened. His flamboyance left him, and he looked unsure of himself. His arms were long in proportion to his legs. He was bony and unattractive. He looked from one to the other. “Has not the god of the Builder said ‘Only his’?” he asked carefully.

  “That is correct,” Ham continued. “But you know the other conditions. The animals can come. One pair of each kind, seven of the clean ones. We’re not quite sure yet how this works with the different kinds of apes, there are so many of them, but we think your kind is admitted.”

  The dwarf seemed to shrink, his shoulders dropped, his pelvis tilted, making him look even shorter. His face too seemed to wither, his skin to shrivel up. Was he sighing with relief, or did something else make him gasp? He went out and disappeared into the sunlight.

  No one in the red tent really laughed, the laughter died in their throats before it could reach their faces. All three sat down, crestfallen. Shem rested his elbows on his knees, Japheth leaned back as if thoroughly exhausted by what had happened. “Why are you doing this?” he asked.

  Ham sat on the edge of his seat with a grimace the like of which I had never witnessed before. It was a smile frozen on his face, but his eyes trembled in their sockets.

  “I don’t know, I couldn’t think of anything better. All I could think was: How can I stop him going into Father’s quarters and telling what the child has said? I thought this was a way…. But this is not good. This will end badly. Let’s go to the crevice.”

  I was wringing my sponge so hard it tore. I could not believe that because of a couple of thoughtless words from the wanderers’ child, our death warrants had been signed. I could not believe that a joke on Ham’s part had made Put’s indiscretion irreparable. I should have run to the field on the slope to urge my father to work very hard and very fast to complete our truss-boat. But I did not. I continued the grooming until the brothers felt clean enough to go to the oracle in the crevice and, unsteady with nervousness, preceded us outside.

  35

  The Builder’s Curse

  We were requested to accompany them to the crevice where the oracle lived. Behind the request was an order, of course, they did not need to spell that out for us. The men were clean, their hair was shiny, and they brought the wholesome scent of Klamath into the crevice, but the path was dusty and so steep you needed to use your hands to manage it. Put and I carried flagons and poured water for them whenever necessary. My thoughts were with my father, I peered around hoping I might see his shape. I splashed water on their clothes and on my legs. They dried their hands on the cloak they had thrown over my shoulders for the trip. I carried a comb and a set of brushes.

  Put stumbled. “We’ve lost our niche. We’re going to die,” he whispered. “But will we reach the realm of the dead? If that unnameable god wipes us out, will he not do it totally? Does he not wipe out even our spirit and our thoughts?”

  “He will not wipe you out. He will let your spirit wander about for all eternity as punishment for your careless talk.”

  “Do you think so? Will I wander about forever?” His thin face looked scared.

  “Of course not,” I said quickly. “You’re not bad. You’re just dumb, that will save you.”

  “If I must wander about, I want to be with you. How will I find you in the realm? Will you look the same as you do now?”

  I turned my back on him. His ignorance made me see red. Small as he was, his despair was no less than mine.

  The Builder’s sons had brought gifts. They were offerings to the gods their father neglected. For the priestess, they had a basket of fruit, picked, as usual, far too early. It was not their first visit to her, that was obvious from the practiced way they sat on the floor in the right posture. The priestess spread a handful of stones on the ground and said, “The water has not changed its course. It still comes this way. As ever, your father will prove to have been right.” From the bowl that stood by her side, she took some bones, the vertebrae and ribs of a small animal, and threw them down in front of her. “I see the proof of his wisdom and understanding: I see a blessing and a curse,” she said, bending forward. In her sanctum, she sat out of the wind, but our clothes flapped in a draft. “Your father will not treat you equally,” she continued. She raised her eyes. She looked at each of the brothers in turn. “He will pronounce a curse.”

  I saw Ham’s face turning ashen. Drops of sweat appeared on his neck and his temples.

  With a slow gesture, the oracle gathered up the bones. She dropped them one by one into the bowl. She erased the traces in the sand and rearranged her sleeves. “That is all. I can tell you no more,” she said.

  Shem was shivering in his clothes. “I have let a woman wash me,” he said haltingly. “He will surely curse me.”

  “No,” said Japheth, his mouth twisted. “It will be me. I had thought of hiding Re Jana in Ham’s niche. He will surely curse me.”

  Ham knew, of course, that he was the one who had committed the real sin. He had given my father the tools, the timber, and the order. His shoulders drooped. The sky was full of seagulls, we did not know where they had come from. They screamed like children and skimmed over our heads as if they expected the bones in the bowl to change into bread crusts.

  My father was nowhere to be seen. We scanned the horizon and searched for him behind the bushes and around the small ponds. I asked Put to go south and went north myself. I had barely got as far as the almond trees when loud screams resounded from the hills. It sounded like the wailing of a shepherd who sees his whole herd disappear into a ravine. I was not the only one to hear it. In the distance, I saw dozens of people going up the slope toward the sound. I saw Shem, Ham, and Japheth not far from the sheds with the sacks and baskets. They ran like boys, the skirts of their cloaks flapping around their legs.

  I hurried up the slope. It took some time before I could see what they were looking at so curiously, or what they were uttering their horror about. But as I got closer, it became clear that they were looking at a tree, a low olive tree in which hung a body.

  My feet caught on the stones. I was stumbling rather than making headway. Inside me raged the ugliest premonition since the mallard ducks had risen above my mother’s limp body. But I kept walking, and as I came closer, I was reassured. The
body in the tree was small and dark. It was the dwarf. He had hanged himself, that grubby old joker who pretended he knew no distress.

  Shem was shouting at Ham, “Did you have to humiliate him like that? Was that necessary?”

  They took down the body and lifted it onto their shoulders after removing the rope. It was not heavy. Shem insisted on carrying it by himself. He made the descent carefully as if he were afraid of hurting it.

  They took the dead dwarf to their father. The Builder was in the front part of the tent, bent over the spots my oil had left on one of the carpets. When his sons came in he looked up, rubbed the oil spot some more with his fingernail, and said, “He has freed himself of his earthly body. It does not surprise me at all. He was a messenger.” Then he withdrew into his private quarters.

  I made a mixture that would remove the oil stains from the carpet, but when I was about to enter his quarters, I was touched by what I saw: His wife, Zaza, was with him, and the Builder lay limp across her legs, breathing heavily. Zaza had her white hand on his back, tapping it with a gentle rhythm. His whole fragile body shook. I feared for the porous ribs and the thin skin around them. “Shem,” he sobbed. “Japheth. Ham.” Then it became clear to me. The dwarf had not gone without taking revenge. He had told the Builder about his sons’ blasphemous plan. I left, because I could not bear seeing an old man lying with his head almost touching the ground.

  When I passed Neelata’s embroidered tent, one of her maids beckoned me. I bent under the curtain and went in. The tent was so low you could not stand up in it. Neelata was sitting on a cushion on the floor and the maids sat with their backs against the side of the tent. Put sat in a corner, looking like a prince in a beautiful woolen mantle, made to his size.