Sinners and the Sea (13 page)

“If You would somehow fill them with awe at Your power, surely then I could lead them to righteousness. Please,
show them a sign.
”

I wondered how the God of Adam might do this. Turn a raven into a dove, a cloud into a star, wind into sunlight?

Though Noah pleaded for a few moons, God did not show the
sinners a sign. Noah began muttering not only to God but also to himself. “The Lord has given up on them. Only I can hold on to His faith in His creation. I can do nothing wrong.
Nothing.
Or He will give up on us all.”

A couple of times he whipped around while he shuffled through the tent, as though looking for someone. “Can I ever talk only to myself, or am I always talking to God?
Who am I speaking to now?”

“Please, husband, will not you squat and have some goat’s milk and barley cakes, or recline and let me rub your feet?”

“They have not listened,” he cried. A vein pulsed in his brow.
“I will plead for them no longer!”

He stopped riding through town yelling at the sinners. He sat beneath the date tree with his donkey, ear cocked to the sky as if listening for something.

One morning he leaned his head all the way back against the rough bark of the tree and tilted his face to the heavens. Tears streamed down his face. “Very well, Lord,” he said. “It is settled. I will prepare.”

• • •

T
hat night I dreamt of him as he was that day, his face tilted to the heavens, tears flowing from his eyes. In my dream, the tears puddled around him, and the puddles grew into a shallow pond. He began to cry harder, and the pond spread beyond the reach of his arms and then rose.

I felt it lapping at my toes from where I stood and watched it rise over his legs.

Now the tears did not so much flow as pour out of his eyes. The pond became a lake. It whipped back up at his chest. I looked to either side of him and could see no end to them; they stretched out over the desert in all directions.

I gazed down and watched my ankles, then my knees, disappear into them.

He must stop crying.

“Husband!” I started toward him, but the sea was heavy and held tightly to my legs.
“Husband!”
The sea rose over his beard to his lips, and still he cried. I called out to him again and again. I begged him to stop crying.

But he did not stop crying, he did not stand up, and he did not float.

CHAPTER 19

DAUGHTERS-IN-LAW

T
he following day Noah told me, “I am going away. I will be back by the next moon.”

“Where will you go?”

“Wherever the God of Adam commands me.”

While I was glad to think of the sleep my sons and I might get with Noah away, I did not like to think of him riding aimlessly, waiting for God’s command. Yet he did not seem aimless. His voice had none of the uncertainty I had grown accustomed to. He was resolute. He did not look around; he looked only where he intended to go.

Still I worried. What if the God of Adam did not keep up His vigil over Noah? Though I did not always like my husband—in fact, I rarely liked him—I could not help but love him. He had taken a marked woman for a wife and given her a home and three sons.

I gathered together provisions for him while he readied the same donkey we had ridden across the delta eighteen years before. The animal was even lazier and more densely covered in flies. He had outlived many people of the town. He was over a hundred years old.

“Perhaps you should seek out a younger animal,” I suggested.

“The Lord will leave the animal here on earth for me to use as long as I live.”

“If that is so, husband, I fear you do not have much longer.”

“Hush.”

One of the vultures circling above screeched.
Is my sight warped by fear, or are they flying lower than usual?
“Don’t go,” I said.

“Be righteous, wife. See to the uprightness of our sons.”

The donkey was on his feet but would not move. He might have guessed at the journey to come by the weight of the saddlebags. He hung his head as if praying.

“Please, husband.”

“The sooner I go, the sooner I return.”

As if the animal understood Noah’s words, he began walking.

• • •

T
hat evening Javan appeared at the tent’s door flap. “Where is he?”

I did not reply at once.

“Where’s Noah?” she asked.

“On a mission from the God of Adam.”

“He has gone to find a wife for Shem, hasn’t he? It is too late for Herai.”

I was afraid that what Javan said was true. I did not wish for my sons to take wives and leave our tent.

“She is more suited to Japheth, anyway,” Javan said. “He is a handsome one, with all those little points of light in his brown eyes. He should have a good woman by his side, and a mother-in-law who makes grown men tremble with fear. Otherwise, some man might think to have your son for himself.”

Ham came up behind Javan and hit her lightly on the backside. Without looking, she grabbed his wrist, then turned around to twist his arm so that he fell to his knees.

“Hello, beautiful,” Ham said. “Good to see you.”

She released his wrist. “You will never know how good it is to see me,” she said, “because I am too old to show you.”

“What is the rough spot that nearly cut my hand on your rump, if not a ground sore from all the time spent on your back?”

He was flattering her. I doubted any man had wanted to climb on top of her since she fought for the three boys who were born all at once. She was too scarred.

“Take a closer look,” she said, grabbing Ham’s head and pressing it toward her flank. “See how old it is.”

“Please!” I rushed forward, thinking of Noah’s command to take care of the uprightness of our sons—a cruel task to have given me. It would have taken at least three of me to keep our boys out of trouble.

Javan let go of Ham. As she often did, she went from jesting to serious in less than a breath. “I have come to tell you I’m gathering a dowry,” she told me. “Our families will make a lucky match.”

“If Herai’s luck gets her Shem or Japheth for a husband,” Ham
said, “I cannot think of anyone luckier. Except perhaps all those who have died of plague.”

“Dip your tongue in dung,” Javan said. “Herai and I
are
lucky—her to be a virgin and me to be alive. If we merge my families’ luck with yours, the offspring will be more powerful than any who have come before.”

“Herai is too good for either of my brothers.” He said it without his usual playfulness.

“For Shem, perhaps,” Javan said. “She will marry Japheth.”

“Japheth?” Ham said. “She would be better off marrying my father’s donkey. He is less haughty and attracts fewer flies.”

“Japheth has the musk of a man,” Javan said. “It is fortunate that so far it has attracted only flies and not other men.”

“The only man Japheth cares for is Father,” Ham said. “In fact, the only person he cares for at all is Father.”

“Do not worry, son. Herai is not going to marry Japheth.”

“You will change your mind when you see the dowry,” Javan said.

“I am just a woman, and a nameless one at that,” I said, unable to keep the anger from my voice. “It is not my mind that matters.”

Javan came to stand so close to me that the pink gash running the length of her face was not more than a hand’s width from my nose. “You can wait for a name,” she said, “or make one for yourself.”

Make one for myself?
This had never occurred to me. I wanted a name almost as badly as I wanted the mark to disappear from my brow. And there was no one I would rather have as a daughter-in-law
than Herai. But could I marry a son off without Noah’s blessing?

“Perhaps you do not have the courage,” Javan said. She spat on the ground near my feet. “I will need some sustenance for my journey back into town.”

I hurried to get Javan some dried goat meat—something she could take with her. I wished for her to leave before she filled me with any more silly ideas.

“Good-bye,” I said as I placed the meat into her greedy hands.

Half a moon later, I awakened to sounds of stamping and snorting. I got up and lifted the door flap. No fewer than five donkeys stood roped together in the road. My boys came up behind me. I stepped out of the tent, and they followed.

Now I could see that they were not donkeys but mules. Herai was stroking the muzzle of the first one.

“Herai’s dowry,” Javan announced.

“Mother?” Shem said. I turned around to look at him. He was staring steadily at the ground, and I knew he was going to say something I did not want to hear. “I cannot marry Herai. I am already married.”

“No,” I said as if I could keep it from being true. “No, you are not.”

“A mistake, but it cannot be undone,” he said. Then he buried his head in his hands.

This angered me as much as the fact that he had done something so stupid in the first place. I grabbed his hands and tore them from his face. It was trouble of his own making, and he would have to face it.

“It was a mistake, indeed,” Javan said. “You have ruined Ona and must buy her from me now. She says she is with child.”

Upon hearing this news, I did something I had never done before: I smacked my son hard across the face. “Your father has gone to fetch you a wife. How will you afford more than one?”

“These mules . . .” Shem said. He started to cry.

“Has she any family?” I asked Javan.

“Ona’s mother is a whore with almond-colored eyes that she no longer bothers to ring with kohl. She is the one whose beauty stilled my sword when I traveled through town avenging the three boys born all at once. I could not waste the girl’s value on death. Yet her value was as fleeting as a shadow at dusk. There is not a drop of sweetness on her tongue, and she does not fear my fists. No man will suffer her insults more than once. Her daughter is even more beautiful and now even more worthless.”

I turned again to Shem, and he stumbled back. “Your father will punish us both for this. Get the girl and bring her here for me to look at. We will bathe her and make sure she holds her tongue tighter than”—I was thinking of Javan and Ham—“some.”

Javan turned her attention to Japheth and pointed toward Herai. “This girl is already clean, and she comes with five mules.”

“What will we do with five mules?” Japheth asked. “And what will I do with a slow girl too old to bear me many sons?”

“You will figure out what to do with a girl as quickly as any man does,” Javan said. “Though perhaps not as quickly as your brother.”

“I do not want her,” Japheth said. “Even if her father were a
good man—which he is not, for he laid with
you—
she would still be half evil.”

“Then what is your brother? Is he not also evil for impregnating one of my hardest-working whores? I admire the strength of his seed in overcoming the herbs the girl was given, but he has cost me enough goods to supply a small army.”

“She is not your whore,” Shem said. But he did not say it with much conviction.

“Then whose is she?” Javan asked.

“If she is so hardworking, then how do you know the child is Shem’s?” I demanded.

“Ona
used
to be hardworking. But for the past few moons, Shem has come to her almost every day, and she threatens to cut her face when I bring another man to her. Her face is even more valuable to me than her body. Men come from many leagues in all directions to see it.”

Japheth sneered, and I feared Ham would say something cruel. But no one said anything; to the east, a spot on the horizon was slowly coming closer. So slowly that I knew it must be Noah on his donkey.

“I will sell these mules in five days,” Javan threatened.

No one responded. My boys and I were straining to see if Noah had anyone with him. I did not take my eyes off of him, even when I heard Javan hitting the mules’ flanks, followed by the heavy
clomp-clomp-clomp
of their hooves against the ground.

“You see how well trained they are,” she called. I glanced around to look for Herai and was sorry to see her leaving with her mother.
Though perhaps it was best that she did not stay to witness Noah’s fury when I told him of Shem’s new wife. If I were going to insist that Noah allow one of our sons to marry Herai, this was not a good way to begin.

Shem alternated putting his head in his hands with looking up in despair. Perhaps that made it seem to him as if Noah were approaching at a decent pace. I no longer had the heart to deny him this indulgence. I secured my head scarf and started walking out to meet Noah. Japheth and Ham followed.

From the slight angle at which I approached, I could see a little leg behind Noah’s. “The good Lord has provided,” Noah said. His voice contained the same certainty as when he had set out on his journey.

“Provided what?” Ham asked him.

“First son’s wife.”

The little leg belonged to a little girl. She was short, or perhaps she looked that way because she was hunched over. And unless her dowry were small enough to fit in a saddlebag, there wasn’t one.

“How old?” Ham asked.

The girl did not wait for Noah to answer. “Twelve!” she said. Her voice was not that of a girl. As they got closer, I could see that her face wasn’t either. She was perhaps the oldest woman I had ever seen.

“Husband,” I said. “I must speak with you.”

“Speak.”

“
Alone,
please, husband.”

“When we are home,” he said.

What felt like a whole moon later, yet before the donkey came to a stop, the little woman started to struggle down from the animal’s back. She did not look like she had enjoyed many meals lately. Her skin was slack not only from age but also from the lack of flesh inside it. “Let me help you, Father,” she said to Noah.

But for him, it was no great distance to the ground, and he stepped off easily. He was tired and hungry and seemed to have forgotten that I wanted to talk to him.

After I prepared a stew, we squatted around the cookfire to eat it. My sons and I stared at the little woman crouched next to Shem. Her name was Leah. She ate large amounts and somehow managed to smile as she did so.