Ark (2 page)

“Read the Old Testament,” said Gene as he donned his coat and checkered hunting cap.

#

Jim was still in pain the next morning. His headache never really went away. The pot just gave his brain something else to think about. He rolled over and put his arm around Kas and his hand came to rest inside the top of her nightgown. His fingertips brushed the tip of her nipple and she moaned a slight protest. He opened his eyes and peered blankly at the room. They came to rest on his family Bible, given to him by his father in hopes that it would save his son from the corrupting influence of art school. Now, instead of being a symbol of salvation, it was a reminder that he might win a $50 bet if he read it. Minutes later he’d taken two aspirins, had the book in his lap, and was thumbing through it to find the part that described the building of the ark.

Kas woke to find Jim sitting up next to her, naked and reading the Bible. She looked at him and blinked.

“There’s an interesting picture,” she said. “Talk about sending me mixed signals.”

Jim laughed. “Eat your heart out, babe.” He looked down at his groin. “Elvis has left the building.”

Kas looked at the Bible. “Joining a monastery?” she quipped.

“Maybe. You never know. If I do my homework I’ll have the $50 entrance fee.” He told her that he’d already found the description for building the ark and the entire temple in Exodus. “In fact, it’s in here twice.”

“Why’s that?” asked Kas, rubbing sleep from her eyes.

“First there’s the instructions from God to Moses. Then there’s an account of the building of it, as if it was written by a stenographer. Not at all what I expected.”

“So you think you can make the drawings?”

“I need some research,” he answered. “I need to know how big a cubit is, for starters.”

“Shouldn’t be too much of a problem,” she said demurely as she wrapped herself around him, kissing his neck.

“Corrupter!” said Jim, as he pulled her close. “I’ll never get to Heaven with you around.”

As they began to make love Jim realized that his headache was almost gone. An hour later, over breakfast at Benny’s Grill, Jim found himself unable to stop thinking about the Ark. Kas was talking and Jim pretended to be listening. She finally realized that her banter was being ignored.

“All right, Jimmy,” she sighed. “What’s wrong?”

Jim didn’t answer. He stared at his eggs and wondered about life and times four thousand years ago. What were the Hebrews doing out there in the desert? Was it a desert then? Had they come from Egypt as Egyptian craftsmen? Did the Hebrews have their own ways of doing things, skills that made them desirable as slaves? Or were they simply tradesmen like himself? These were factors that determined how things got built.

Foremost of the questions was the unit of measure that the builders of the ark might have used. His dictionary had said that a cubit was a unit of measure based on the length of a person’s forearm from elbow to the tip of the middle finger, maybe seventeen or eighteen inches. But if the man building the ark used tools, what unit were these tools sized to? Was there a standard? Jim was beginning to absorb the depth of his ignorance.

Fingers snapped in front of his eyes. “Jim,” Kas said. “The waitress wants to know if you want more coffee.”

Embarrassed, Jim looked up to see a black woman in an apron holding a pot of coffee.

“Still asleep, hun?” said the woman. “A little more joe might help.”

“Sure,” said Jim, apologizing as the woman poured his free second cup. He eyed Kas. “I think this ark thing is going to be harder than I expected. Just because there’s a description in the Bible doesn’t mean that I’ve got all the data I need. I mean, what’s a cubit?”

Kas had a good head for remembering numbers. “I seem to remember hearing once that a Babylonian cubit is eighteen inches,” she offered.

Jim raised an appreciative eyebrow. “That makes the ark twenty-seven by forty-five inches. But would they use the Babylonian cubit?”

Kas sighed. “I hate it when you get a bee in your brain like this,” she said. “We’re going to be talking that ark for the rest of the day.”

Jim took a sip of coffee. “Well, just sitting down and reading the Bible isn’t going to be enough to give me a working diagram of the ark.”

“Then Lou wins the bet?” she laughed.

“No way! I could do the drawings today but I want them to be accurate. I want numbers.”

Kas smiled broadly. “Lou’s going to demand his money if you can’t make those drawings.”

Jim grumbled as his attention returned to his plate.

When they returned to the apartment Jim wasted no time. He spent the rest of the morning at his drawing table with the Book of Exodus opened next to him.

At noon Kas announced that she was going to visit her mother in West Chester. Hearing her plans, Jim put away his sketchbook, saying he didn’t want to spend the weekend at the drawing table.

“I need to get out of here, too.” He yawned and stretched. “Jeez, I feel like I’ve been to work and to church at the same time.”

“Not the best way to spend a Saturday,” said Kas as she headed for the stairs.

Jim followed and locked the apartment door.

“I don’t know, babe,” he said. “Saturday is the Sabbath, to the Hebrews. Reading the Bible isn’t such a bad thing I guess.”

“But you’re not supposed to work,” she argued. “You’re mixing the two. Seems like that’s a special kind of sin.”

#

Jim didn’t return to the drawings that weekend. He did read the entire text of Exodus and realized that there was no way that the ark could be separated from the Tabernacle. Nor could the building of the ark be separated from the story of the Hebrews and their exodus from Egypt. Everything was tied together.

Kas’s mother was astonished and pleased to see her son-in-law sitting on her sofa reading their family Bible, but when Kas told her what Jim was doing she changed her mind.

“Just as weird as he ever was,” she grumbled. “Here I thought he found Jesus and you tell me he’s reading only about the Jews?”

Sensing her mother’s anti-Semitism, Kas abandoned the conversation, but no sooner had she turned the dialogue toward cooking when Jim entered the kitchen asking for the family encyclopedia.

Kas’s mom cast a baleful eye on him. “What do you think God would make of your drawing the ark to win a bet?”

Jim stared at Viola for a moment.

“Ummmm ... I don’t know how to answer that, Mrs. Collins,” he said politely. “I’d just like to see your encyclopedia, if I may.”

“The whole set is in our bedroom highboy,” she said sternly. “Mel used to read it all the time. He never went to college but was very well read, you know.”

“He was a brilliant man,” offered Jim. “I liked him a lot.”

Jim’s comment seemed to go a long way toward putting Kas’s mom in a better mood. It had only been two years since she lost her husband to a stroke and she still hadn’t recovered from the loss.

“Thanks for letting me use the encyclopedia, Vi,” said Jim politely as he left the kitchen.

Kas and her mother elected to go shopping while Jim studied every resource he could find that even touched on the subject of the Old Testament. Finally he fell asleep with the Britannica, Volume “A” open in his lap. He woke up when the front door opened and his mother-in-law and wife dumped packages on the sofa next to him.

“Learn anything useful?” asked Vi, casting a doubtful eye on her sleepy son-in-law.

“I guess so,” said Jim with a yawn.

#

When Lou got to his drawing table at nine Monday morning, the sketches Jim had made were spread out on his drawing table.

“Pretty eager for the fifty, Jim?” he said as Jim came from the kitchenette with two cups of steaming coffee.

Jim handed Lou a cup and nodded. “Pay up.”

“Just a second, professor,” said Lou. “How do I know that these drawings are correct?”

“I made them from just reading the text,” argued Jim. “That was the bet. Pay up.”

“Nope. I want Gene to verify them.”

Jim didn’t feel like arguing. “Fine,” he said. “That’ll be your job.”

“Hell, no,” said Lou as he contemplated seeing Fostia. “Let’s get him over here.”

“Afraid of the mole?” Jim laughed.

“Bingo,” growled Lou.

The business of the day grew intense for a Monday, and Jim and Lou found themselves running most of the day. Around noon they contacted Gene and asked him to stop by on the way home. He arrived at five-thirty just as Werner returned from a day trip to New York.

Soon the four of them were examining Jim’s drawings.

Werner was exhausted. He listened for a moment, then excused himself and headed for the loft.

Gene put on glasses to inspect the drawings. After a minute he shook his head. “Well, the box is about the right proportions, but what are these?”

Gene pointed to the one part of the drawing that had worried Jim the most, the disposition and shape of the ‘cherubs’ that sat on top of the ark. The text said that they were attached to the ends of the “Mercy Seat” or lid.

Jim had envisioned a flat rectangle of solid gold that had two large flat cookie-cutouts of angels attached to its ends. From the description he envisioned the lid extended at both ends and fashioned into outspread wings. The two pieces were folded up and curved so that they arched over the lid in a half circle.

“I’ve seen renditions of the ark,” said Gene. “The angels are sculptures of cherubs with their wings aimed toward one another. You know, kneeling on the lid.”

Jim shook his head. “The text says that they were fashioned from beaten gold and were ‘one with the mercy seat.’ Also, wasn’t there a law against making graven images?”

“Interesting,” said Gene. “Okay. Can I copy these?”

“So I guess this means I’m out fifty dollars?” asked Lou.

Gene continued to stare at the drawings. “I’d say you won the bet, Jim.”

Jim held out his hand triumphantly.

“Okay, I’ll pay you tomorrow,” said Lou.

“You better!” The bet had lost its importance, and curiosity had taken its place. “You should read the text of Exodus, Lou,” he said. “It’ll change your mind about the Bible.”

“Sure it will,” said Lou as he walked back to his drawing table. “If you’ll excuse me, gentlemen,” he added, “I have to recover some of my losses with some honest work.”

Gene smiled at Jim. “So it grabbed you too?”

“I want to know more,” answered Jim. “How big is a cubit, for instance?”

“As much as twenty-one inches, by my reckoning,” answered Gene. “The measure of Pharaoh’s forearm. It had to be bigger than everyone else’s, of course.” He gave a cynical smile.

“But wasn’t the Babylonian cubit the standard?”

“To everyone but the Egyptians,” said Gene. “I wondered the same thing, so I’ve done some research. It seems that Biblical experts are sold on the idea of the Babylonian cubit and the sculptural angels, but I think these are both mistakes. Both concepts are relatively modern, based on thirteenth century ideas.”

“What did Von Daniken make of the description?”

“Well, that’s what got me going in the first place,” replied Gene. “In
Chariots of the Gods
he simply says that the ark was a radio for talking to God, suggesting that the God of Israel may have been a space alien.”

“That’s bound to piss off a few folks,” said Jim. “How does he back up that claim?”

Gene raised his eyebrows. “That’s just it,” he said. “He DOESN’T back it up at all. Like he was getting his info from somewhere else.”

“You think he’s right?”

Gene shrugged and looked back at the drawings. “I didn’t until I read the thing myself and did some research,” he said. “Now I’m not so sure.”

Jim was confused. He couldn’t imagine that Gene, an expert at electronics, would end up agreeing with the fantasies of Von Daniken, and he said as much.

Gene appreciated Jim’s frankness.

“It’s probably a coincidence that the ark is a resonator,” he said. “After all it’s a simple configuration, a box of wood covered inside and outside with gold. But ...”

“But what?”

“The box, the wood that the ark was built from. It’s acacia, used to make tone arms for record players because it’s non-resonating.”

“So?”

“That’s two coincidences,” replied Gene. “The more I learn, the more I find.”

“More?”

“Well, like the fact that the Tabernacle is made of the same wood and covered with a layer of gold. That means that the resonator is sitting in a microwave reflector, like a wave guide. If I look at the ark in total I see similarities to electronic components.”

“That could just be a coincidence,” argued Jim.

“Yes,” said Gene. “What bothers me is there are a lot of them. It made me wonder if the ark could be rebuilt using modern materials.”

“What would that accomplish?” asked Jim. “You want a radio to talk to God?”

Lou heard this as he came in from the back room. “Hey, if you want to talk to God why not go outside and jump in front of a trolley?” He laughed facetiously, appreciating his own humor.

Gene smiled weakly.

“Sorry about your fifty, Lou,” he said, “but Jim won it fair and square.”

“I’ll have to trust you on that one,” said Lou, “though as far as I know Jim might split the fifty with you for backing him up.”

“Sorry, Lou, but you made the bet. Like I said originally, anyone who could do a mechanical drawing could make a fairly decent drawing from the text.”

“On the other hand,” added Jim, “nobody knows what the ark really looked like.”

“I thought you said that it was just a box,” said Lou. “That isn’t a box.” He pointed to Jim’s drawings, still strewn on the drawing table.

“Well, there are two really big questions about the ark itself. While the description is there, there are still some uncertainties. How the cherubim were configured, that’s a big one. And where the rings were put that held the poles that were used to carry it, is another.” Gene took a deep breath. “Then there’s the part where God says; ‘in the manner that I showed you on the mountain.’ I suppose that means that during the forty days and nights on the mountain, God gave Moses some details and instructions that didn’t get written in the Bible.”