Forty Days: Neima's Ark, Book One (3 page)

I turn and follow her gaze, taking it
all in: the mud-brick cottages, the bits of straw embedded in their
walls and roofs gleaming golden in the sun; the fields of wheat and
barley, low and parched now that the harvest has ended; the pens of
grazing goats and cattle and sheep; the forested hills that cup our
valley in their protective hands. It may not be much, in the scheme
of the wide world I’ve heard tales of but never seen, and I may not
always feel welcome here. But this is the only home I’ve ever
known, and no, I cannot imagine it destroyed.

“
Well, you can’t blame
Noah for being a bit confused,” Jorin says. “After all, he
is
six hundred years
old.”

Derya and I both scoff at that. At
sixty, Noah is the oldest man in our village, and many joke that he
might as well be six hundred.

“
Sometimes,” I blurt out,
“I wish he would just
die
already.” The words are out before I’ve realized
what I’m saying, and I clap my hand over my mouth, horrified. “I
mean,” I go on, the words muffled by my fingers, “I wish he would
be cured of his affliction…” But I know the chances of that are
slim, and sometimes, buried deep inside, in a hidden, horrible part
of myself, I
do
wish Noah were dead.

“
You’re not the only one,
Cousin.” My nerves jump as if I’ve been caught in a crime—and
perhaps I have—as I see Kenaan approaching. I want to know how much
he’s heard, but I can’t find out without repeating all I’ve said,
so I return to my laundry. With all these interruptions, I’ll be
here till the sun sets.

I’m not the only one
distracted by Kenaan’s presence: Derya has abandoned her washing
entirely, and the women downriver are looking our way as well,
their whispers turned soft and melodious. They don’t blame
Kenaan
for his
grandfather’s faults, for my cousin is the handsomest young man in
the village, with his head of curls nearly as dark and polished as
the wet pitch coating the ark. But much more pleasing to the eye,
of course.

“
Shouldn’t you be up on
the ark, Kenaan, working with my father and yours?” I snap. I’m
irritated, suddenly, and my cousin’s unexpected laughter doesn’t
help.

“
No, I’m afraid not.” He
glances around before continuing, his voice lower. “Grandfather
Noah has an even stranger task for me.” He laughs again, and I
realize the sound is bitter, even panicked, not a real laugh at
all. “You know how he had me building birdcages?” I look to Jorin
and Derya before nodding. Neither looks surprised, so I guess
Kenaan has told them as well. “Well”—Kenaan’s voice grows even
softer—“a few days ago, he asked me to build smaller square cages,
with wooden bars running both horizontally and vertically, and only
the smallest spaces left open for ventilation. He told me they must
be secure enough to hold snakes”—he slithers a hand up Derya’s bare
forearm—“and spiders”—his fingers skitter up to her shoulder—“and
scorpions”—he pinches her nose, and she laughs and bats his hand
away.

“
You joke,” she
says.

The smile slides off his lips. “No,”
he says, “I couldn’t invent that story if I tried.” The other
two might not believe him, but I know he’s telling the truth.
Invisible spider legs scurry up my own arms, and I have to fight
away a shiver despite the heat. What use could Noah possibly have
for snakes and insects?

“
Anyway,” Kenaan says, his
dark eyes now aimed directly at me, “I just came to tell you Noah
has called a meeting tonight. For the entire family.”

The spider legs—or are they scorpion
claws?—close around my throat, choking off my breath for a
moment.

Kenaan saunters off, with Derya
looking longingly after him, as I tackle another filthy shirt.
Perhaps, I realize now, I’ll learn the answer to my question sooner
than I anticipated. Though I’m not so sure I really want to
know.

I grit my teeth as my
mother tugs the wooden comb once again through my knotted hair.
“You know”—
yank
—“I am perfectly capable”—
yank
—“of combing my own
hair.”

“
If that were true,”
Mother says, “then I wouldn’t have to fight a week’s worth of
tangles to…
Unh!
”
She pulls down so hard that stars dance before my eyes, and when my
vision clears I see the huge clump of hair that’s fallen before me,
a shade darker than the packed earth floor of our cottage. Maybe I
should comb my hair more often.

I fidget and squirm, trying to relieve
the pressure on my scalp, and my skin rubs against the coarse,
itchy fabric of my woolen dress. It’s my finest dress—I dyed it a
deep golden yellow myself, using the flowers of the saffron
lily—but it’s much too heavy for this warm weather. Mother
practically ordered me to wear it; she thinks Noah called this
meeting to announce that Kenaan and I will marry, and she could not
be more pleased.

It makes sense, I suppose—no other man
in the village will have me, although I’m sure many girls would put
up with a madman in the family in order to wed Kenaan. I don’t know
how I’ll react if Mother is right. Kenaan is certainly handsome,
and he has always been kind to me—well, as kind as any mischievous
boy who’s known me since we were both babes. He’s respectful toward
his parents and especially sweet to his younger sister, Shai. But I
know how much Derya likes him. And truthfully, though I’m already
sixteen, I don’t feel ready to marry.

Still, I can’t manage to muster much
emotion about any of that right now. I keep thinking about the rush
to cover the ark with pitch, about Noah’s strange assignments for
Kenaan, and I can’t imagine that marriage is my grandfather’s main
concern. No, I suspect this night’s meeting is about something else
entirely, and worry crawls up and down my spine at the
thought.

My mother jerks at another tough
tangle, and I cry out—just as Arisi walks into the cottage. I swear
her belly swells larger with every day that passes, and she still
has three moons left before she gives birth. My youngest aunt is so
small, her bones nearly as delicate as those of a bird, that I fear
if the baby grows much more, she will topple over.

For now, though, Arisi makes her way
gracefully toward us, balancing her excess weight so effortlessly
she seems to skim above the ground. “Here, Sister”—she reaches a
hand toward my mother—“let me.”

“
No, no,” Mother and I
both protest, but Arisi has already grabbed the comb and begun to
work out the last tangles in my hair. She is much gentler than my
mother, and my scalp thanks her even as I hope she’s not overtaxing
herself.

I watch my mother wander
the cottage common room, searching for a new task to occupy
herself, and something clutches tight inside me for a moment. She
looks so
old
next
to Arisi; her black braid is threaded through with strands of
silver, and a spider web of wrinkles has wrapped itself around her
thin neck. Of course, Arisi is only nineteen, more of a sister than
an aunt, so to compare the two isn’t really fair. Still, it doesn’t
help that Mother narrows her eyes, accentuating the lines at their
corners, and purses her lips as though she’s swallowed a sour grape
whenever she catches sight of Arisi’s stomach. I know that my
mother was pregnant several times after my birth, and always the
baby came too early. I know that she desperately wanted a son, and
now, claiming Kenaan as a son-in-law is the closest she can come.
But I still don’t feel ready to marry.

Does that make me a terrible
daughter?

“
No, it doesn’t,” Arisi
whispers so close to my ear that I can feel the soft slap of her
breath against my skin. I jump, and Arisi laughs. Am I incapable of
keeping my thoughts to myself today? “Don’t worry,” she goes on,
“she didn’t hear you.”

In fact, Mother is making her way out
of the room, probably to bank the kitchen fire before we leave for
Grandfather’s. Arisi sighs and collapses onto the wooden bench
against the wall, and I sit beside her. “So,” I say as she leans
her head on my shoulder, “how distraught do you imagine Mother will
be when she learns my marriage is the last thing on Noah’s
mind?”

“
I don’t know,” Arisi
murmurs, “but I wouldn’t switch places with you
tonight.”

“
You wouldn’t switch
places with me
ever
.” I pull back to look at Arisi’s bright cheeks, her warm
brown eyes. She plays with the ends of her silky, tangle-less hair
with one small hand. I feel so large, so unkempt and ungainly in
comparison. I inherited my father’s height, his broad shoulders,
long legs and arms and fingers, and sometimes I wonder if any man
could care for me.

“
How did you know,” I ask
Arisi, “that Japheth was the man you should marry?”

I realize before the words are out
that my question is a foolish one. The entire village knew Arisi
and Japheth would marry, probably before the couple themselves
recognized it. They were always together, Japheth always gazing at
Arisi as if she were some jewel unearthed miraculously from the
soil, and she looking at him in much the same way.

Arisi is silent now, thoughtful, and
I’ve given up on her answer when she finally says, “I couldn’t
imagine sharing my home and my bed with any other man. It was as
simple as that.” And, I think, she was willing to sacrifice her
ties to her own family as well. Arisi’s parents haven’t spoken to
her since she married a madman’s son, but if she’s not going to
bring that up, I won’t either.

Mother invades our quiet, her steps
slap-slapping across the earthen floor: she has put on her one pair
of leather sandals, and she holds my pair out as well. When I take
the shoes from her, she leans forward to examine a lock of my hair,
then arranges it so a few sections hang over my shoulders, framing
my face. She steps back to survey her handiwork, her lips playing
between a scowl and a smile, and for a second I hope she’ll say I
look beautiful. Instead, her mouth settles into a flat, neutral
line. “That will have to do.” Her tone is curt but resigned. “Come
along, both of you—Father Noah will be waiting.”

***

My grandfather Noah is known for the
stark white shade of his long hair and beard, as befits a man of
his age. But Noah’s hair turned white all at once, overnight, when
he was a much younger man. Or so they say—I was not born yet, of
course, and neither was my youngest uncle, Japheth, Arisi’s
husband.

I’ve heard so many versions of the
story, whispered in warning from mothers to daughters, passed
around by bored women as they weave and spin, exaggerated into
laughs and shouts by men giddy from too much wine. But in its
simplest and, I think, truest form, the story goes that Noah and
his wife, my grandmother Nemzar, were set upon by bandits in the
night. My father and Uncle Ham had already married and started
their own homes, so my grandparents lived alone in the largest
cottage in the village, as they still do now. Their closest
neighbors must have known what was going on, but no one came to
help Noah, or even ran to fetch my father or uncle. Instead, as
Noah is fond of repeating, they all stayed hidden within their own
dwellings, protecting themselves and their possessions. To tell the
truth, I’m not sure I blame them, or if I would have had the
courage to do any different.

In any case, the bandits clubbed Noah
over the head and stole his greatest treasures: the gold pendant
he’d given Grandmother as a wedding gift, the obsidian and lapis
lazuli he’d traded his best bronze work for. Worst of all—and this
part isn’t spoken of in the village, only whispered by my mother
and Aunt Zeda when they think no one’s listening—Noah awoke to find
his wife on the floor, moaning in pain, her clothes torn and
spotted with blood. Noah’s hair had turned white by the next
morning, and he began to hear a voice within his head soon after, a
voice that called itself the Lord God. The voice that told him to
build the ark.

Less than a year later, my uncle
Japheth was born.

Knowing the whole story, you’d think
my grandmother would be the one most affected by all that took
place. You’d think if anyone would carry the mark of that night on
her body and in her mind, it would be her. But watching Grandmother
Nemzar now, as she balances plates of bread and goat cheese and a
bowl of the last fresh figs of the season, I’d never guess anything
awful had happened to her. She weaves agilely between the rest of
my gathered family, smiling and refusing help as she places the
food on the low wooden table. Her hair is still a bright, deep
reddish brown, like the wood of the cedar tree, with only a few
hints of gray. Sometimes I think I see the same red tint in my own
hair, but it’s probably just wishful thinking, or a trick of the
light—after all, my parents share the same dull brown-black locks,
so why should I be any different?

Grandmother sets a plate at the head
of the table, and I have to look carefully to make out the wrinkles
on her brown hands and arms. To tell the truth, Grandmother barely
seems older than my own mother, and she certainly looks nothing
like Noah, who stands now at the head of the table, his own hands
trembling like two ancient pieces of tree bark. It’s as if Noah,
with his white hair and leathered skin and the heavy robe he wears
over his tunic even on the hottest summer day, has absorbed all the
trauma of that long-ago night for himself. It’s as if he’s taken
hold of all the pain and anger in this house and left none for
Nemzar, or for the rest of us, and I’m not sure whether what he’s
done is a kindness or a curse.

Grandfather Noah is still tall,
though, like my father, with Father’s broad shoulders and broad
back, and it’s not too hard to believe he was once the most
powerful man in our village. After all, Noah was the bronze smith,
like Father after him, and the village couldn’t survive without the
tools he provided. My father should have already begun teaching
Kenaan the trade, as well—but the ark has kept them both too
busy.

At times like this, when Noah stands
only a few paces from me and I remember that he’s just one old man,
no longer so powerful, I wonder why my father and uncles don’t
simply refuse his commands. Yes, the village custom demands we obey
and respect our elders, but surely in a case like this….

Then Grandfather speaks—and I begin to
understand.

“
Sit, please,” he says,
and at once the room falls silent. “We have much to discuss.”
Though his words come out soft and low, his voice fills every bit
of empty space, a thick rumble that seems to hold density and
weight. It’s a knowing voice, almost otherworldly, and hearing it
almost makes you want to believe what he says.

Almost.

Once my father sits on Noah’s right
side, my uncle Ham on his left, and the rest of us have gathered at
the long wooden benches around the table, Noah goes on. “Let us
thank the Lord God for our food,” he says, and the uneasy glances
pass from one of us to the next like a series of muffled coughs.
Even my ten-year-old cousin Shai, who sits directly across from me
between her mother and brother, knows enough to appear ashamed of
Noah’s strange practice. My grandfather, however, doesn’t see us:
his head is bowed in prayer, his eyes closed. And Ham, I now
notice, mirrors his position. Is this just another of my uncle’s
many attempts to gain favor with his father? Or—hard as it is to
fathom—has Ham actually begun to believe in this God Noah speaks
of?

Noah says that the Lord God who speaks
to him is the only god, that this one, sole God created the earth
and everything upon it. He created the soil and the grass and trees
and other plants that grow upon the earth; he created the river
that waters our village; he makes the rain fall and the sun shine,
and he even made the great sea that traders have described to us,
though I’m not sure I believe it exists, a body of water so long
and wide it goes on farther than the eye can see, mirroring the sky
above it. This one God, Grandfather says, made every living thing
on the earth, from the smallest, most bothersome gnat to the
fearsome creatures I’ve caught sight of when they prowl too near
our village, the great cats with claws sharp enough to tear a man
in two, or so Father has warned me. This Lord God, Noah says, also
created man, and we must thank him every day for our
existence.

All this runs through my mind in the
space of one breath, as Noah keeps his eyes closed and murmurs into
his clasped hands. At last he raises his head and clears his
throat, but Ham keeps his head down a moment longer. So he is
trying to please his father. The curse of the second son, my own
father calls it, though I suspect Ham would act the same whether he
was the second son or the seventeenth.

We begin to pass food between us,
though I think most of us are more anxious to hear Noah’s words
than to fill our stomachs. Kenaan keeps glancing at me across the
table, a smirk pulling at the corners of his mouth, and I wonder if
his mother made the same assumption mine did about the purpose of
tonight’s meeting. He takes his attention from me to place some
meat on Shai’s plate, and it’s then that Noah speaks.

“
The Lord God tells me,”
he begins, his voice as calm and composed as if he’s recounting a
day’s work in the fields, “that men have grown wicked upon the
earth, and the Lord is sorry He has made them. The Lord will send a
great flood to cover the earth and destroy all men. But the Lord
has seen that I and my family are righteous, and He has told me to
build a great ark, to preserve us when the waters come.”