Sinners and the Sea (14 page)

“Let us retire before the sun does,” Noah said. “First wife and I are tired from our travels.”

Seeing that I was not going to be alone with Noah, I asked him, “Husband, where will Leah sleep?”

“On Shem’s sleeping blanket.”

“Where will Shem sleep?”

“He will sleep on his blankets as well.”

“Father,” Shem said, “I must speak to you.”

“Tomorrow.”

“I do not think it can wait.”

“Son, cannot you see that I am tired?”

• • •

I
left the cookfire burning bright and tied the window’s goatskin covering off to the side; I didn’t want to leave Shem and Leah in the dark together. On my sleeping blanket, I did not shut my eyes. I kept raising myself upon my elbow to peer over Ham and Japheth at Shem.

Shem was on his side facing me, with Leah behind him. Her withered hand was draped, unmoving, over Shem’s neck. Shem stared back at me with horror-filled eyes.

“Mother,” Ham said, “I cannot sleep with your goat’s breath hanging over my head like a stink cloud.”

Japheth slammed his palm on the ground and sat up. “Father! Father,
wake up
! Shem has impregnated a whore and now lies next to another woman!”

Noah stirred and opened one eye.

“I am sorry, Father!” Shem said. “I do not know how it happened.”

Ham laughed.

Noah opened his other eye. Both were wide with fear as he sat up. “Be quiet, or God will hear you!” He seemed more scared than angry. I would have thought I’d be happy to know that he was capable of feeling something besides anger and righteousness, but the fear in his voice rushed into my heart. He glanced around as if someone might be sneaking up on us. “Middle son will marry Leah. We will not speak of any of this again.”

“Husband,” I said quietly, “there is much to discuss.”

I looked back at Leah. She was sitting up behind Shem, but at
Noah’s words, she rose and stepped over Shem. I held Shem’s gaze so that he would not glance upward as she crossed over him.

“Husband,” Leah said in greeting as she lowered herself down behind Japheth, bracing her hand against his shoulder. He didn’t respond. Perhaps he was thinking that five mules would not have been such a horrible dowry.

Noah laid his head down again, said, “Sleep well,” and closed his eyes.

I stared at him until he opened one eye. “Good night, husband,” I said. “We will speak tomorrow.”

• • •

I
n the morning we were all more exhausted than we had been the night before. This was when Noah announced that the world was ending.

“The people have not heeded my words,” he said. “They have neither changed their ways nor repented of their sins.”

We were crouched around the cookfire, eating millet porridge and barley cakes. As his words were no great revelation to us, we continued to slurp and chew. Noah must have realized he needed to speak more plainly. “The Lord has seen man’s wickedness on earth and has decided to destroy him.”

Was this what Noah had been speaking of the night before he went to find a wife for Shem, when he had leaned his head back against the date tree, raised his face to the heavens, and said, “Then it is settled”? Perhaps he truly had gone mad.

“
Which
man?” Shem asked anxiously.

“All men, my son. The sky will rain down on us with all God’s fury for forty days and forty nights. We must make an ark of gopher wood, covered inside and out with pitch, so that we alone may be spared.”

“You need some rest, my good husband,” I said. “You have had a long journey and are overtired.”

“We cannot rest. There is not time.”

No one moved except Leah, who set down her bowl.

“Where will we go?” Japheth finally asked.

“Wherever the Lord chooses for us to go.”

“How big is this ark?”

“Three hundred cubits long, fifty across, and thirty high.”

Ham laughed. No one else joined in.

“How will we carry it to the sea?” Japheth asked.

“God will gather up all of the seas into His arms and rain them down over the whole Earth.”

In the silence that followed, I aged many years. Finally, Ham said, “I think I will take my chances here on land, Father.”

“There will be no land other than that below the great depths of the sea.”

“Husband, what of
our
land and our herd?”

“After the sea washes away everyone else, we will have all the land in the world.”

All the land in the world.

“How big is the world?” Japheth asked.

I had never wondered before, though now that Japheth asked, I needed to know. I felt I could not breathe until I did.

Noah would neither lie nor admit that he did not know. We sat in silence until he said, “First son, bring your wife to me.” He turned to Ham. “In my travels, I have found a wife for you as well. She will arrive within a few days.”

Leah had looked shocked about the end of the world, but as Noah spoke, her thin lips pulled taut around a toothless grin. I feared who Noah had chosen for Ham.

“She needn’t,” Ham told Noah. “I will find my own wife.”

“It is already done,” Noah said.

• • •

S
hem wasted no time in setting off for town. I doubted he would hasten back. Even Japheth did not hurry to help his father. Out of the corners of my eyes, I watched Noah squatting in the dirt, drawing with a stick. He was drawing the ark that we did not have tools or timber to build. Leah lay nearby. She had fallen asleep on the patch of ground where she’d eaten.

“I need a better wife,” Japheth said quietly.

“We will speak to your father after he has gotten some rest,” I said.

I went in to clean the tent. As I swept around the sleeping blankets, Ham came to stand beside me. “Mother,” he said, gesturing toward where Noah squatted outside the tent, “I think we have lost him.”

I hoped it was only Noah we had lost. I could withstand losing a husband but not a son.

That night Shem did not return. After Noah, Japheth, Leah,
Ham, and I laid our heads down on our sleeping blankets, I felt a hand upon my shoulder. I recognized the inadvertent roughness of the touch. “Yes, husband?”

“First son.”

“He must be having trouble finding his wife.”

“He must repent, or we cannot take him with us.”

“He said he was sorry.”

“Yet where is he now?”

“Finding—”

“He must repent.”

Noah rolled away. My heart started to race, and I could not force my eyes to close.

In the middle of the night, I heard shuffling, and I rejoiced that Shem had returned.
Thank you, God of Adam and all other gods!
But the shuffling moved off the sleeping blankets, and I knew it was not Shem that I heard. Pot covers were lifted and set down upon the ground. A couple of nuts were dropped, and dried fruit was sifted through. I did not move or speak.

Not long after the shuffling began, it disappeared out the tent’s door flap.

When the sun rose, I went out to the cookfire. Shem was sitting there, alone. “Javan will not let me see Ona.”

Then where did you spend the night?
I said only, “Maybe you will need to take another. Perhaps even one who is not a whore.”

“You said we cannot afford two, and Javan has already told me I must bring goat meat and fruit for the child in Ona’s belly. She says he is an insatiable beast.”

“What have you done, Shem?”

“All will be well, Mother, if only Japheth marries Herai. You know Leah will not bear sons. I have never seen a woman so ancient. She must be eighty years old.”

“And many years wiser. She has left.”

Shem looked to see if I was serious. When he saw that I was, he said, “Then it is settled: Japheth will marry Herai.”

“Tell this to your father.”

“Cannot you?”

“No, but I will try anyway.”

• • •

“W
here is first wife?” Noah asked me when he woke.

“She is gone, husband,” I said. I did not mention that much of our dried fruit and nuts was also gone.

“Gone where?”

“Away from us.” I did not want to give him time to come up with a different plan. I hurried on, “Japheth is in need of a wife. Unless—”

“At what position of the sun did she leave?” he interrupted.

“She was gone before first light. It is too late to catch her now. The girl you have gotten for Ham can be given to Japheth.”

His eyes seemed to draw deeper into his skull. I was afraid he was considering going after Leah. Finally, he said, “Then who will Ham take for a wife?”

“Herai.”

He banged his staff against the ground. “Speak no more of Javan’s daughter. I will find Japheth another wife.”

“There are few righteous and pure girls in the world, and here is one within reach. We must be practical. Javan has gotten five mules for a dowry.”

He came close and squinted into my eyes. “Wife,” he said quietly, “Be careful.
We are watched.
”

• • •

J
avan returned five days after bringing the mules. I had tried to sway Noah, then to scare him, then to wear him down. Each time I had spoken to him, he’d seemed more certain of Herai’s unworthiness.

I was crouched by the cookfire and did not stand up to greet Javan. Just the sight of her wearied me. Before she had come within ten cubits, I said, “No.”

“
No?
So where is Japheth’s wife?”

“You know she has left.”

“The will of the gods,” she said.

I was too tired to think of any reply.

“Shem told me Noah believes the world will end and only his family will be spared. And you are at the mercy of such a man?” She spoke with so much scorn that for the blink of an eye, I hoped Noah’s prophecy would come true. Then, without warning, and as
quickly as always, she became serious. “You have more sway than you know. My girls can teach you things—”

“No. I have done all I can. Leave me alone.”

Every time she started to speak, I said, “No,” until finally, she kicked the ground near me and left.

CHAPTER 20

THE CARAVAN

T
he next morning, Japheth stepped in a pool of blood outside the tent’s door flap. He looked back into the tent at Noah. “Father,” he cried. “A sign!”

Noah got up from his blanket, put on his tunic, and went to crouch in the doorway.

“Most people sacrifice animals for God, but Father, God has sacrificed one for us!”

“Keep talking,” Ham said, “and one day you are bound to say something that is not foolish.”

“God does not sacrifice goats,” Noah said. Japheth’s zeal did not please him. Quite the opposite.

All of us besides Japheth knew that the blood was a threat. Javan was not going to take no for an answer, and Noah was not going to say yes.

“Attend to this,” he told me. To Japheth, he said, “You will help
your mother. It will be good practice for the cleaning to come. Our ark will be full of two of every unclean creature and fourteen of every clean one.”

“
Every
creature?” I asked.

“Every creature.”

“Biting flies?”

“The Lord has commanded me to take clean animals, animals that are not clean, birds, and things that creep on the ground,” he said.

What about the Nephilim?
I wondered. They would not fit in an ark. Was their great height enough to keep their heads above water?

Without further explanation, Noah wandered out to the road and stood absolutely still, listening. For what, I did not know. Clean animals, unclean animals, birds, and bugs? Or perhaps he was listening, as he usually was, for the voice of God.

I gathered a bowl of clay, a waterskin, and a small shovel, which we would use as carefully as possible so as not to create a ditch, and took them to our doorway.

“Did you think three hundred cubits were only for us?” Japheth asked scornfully. He crouched over the blood, his expression a mix of insolence and awe. He was the strongest of my sons and, though he did not seem to know it, the most handsome. Men and women alike turned to look at him when he ventured away from Noah’s land to catch a loose goat or yell at a sinner about God’s wrath.

Suddenly, Ham stood up from his sleeping blanket and ran from the tent, splashing Japheth and the tent with blood.

“Curse you,” Japheth cried.

Noah broke from his stillness. “Hush, boy!” He made his way toward Japheth, his staff hitting wildly from side to side upon the ground. It hit the little pool of blood, and he stopped. “Do you so quickly forget the things I tell you? How will you grow into a man if you cannot contain the recklessness of a boy? You will not speak again today.”

Japheth glared at Ham, who had turned around to enjoy his brother’s chastisement. Since Noah had started using a staff to make his way around, the boys had gotten bold with their looks and gestures. Sometimes, when Ham wanted to goad Japheth, he even grabbed his tunic where it covered his loins.

• • •

J
apheth was still crouched in front of the tent when Noah called, “Ham! Your wife approaches.”

I looked to find a man riding upon a beast larger than any I had ever seen. It was taller than one man standing upon another and weighed enough to shake the earth as it came closer. Huge tusks protruded alongside a trunk that could have wrapped itself ten times around me. A cloud of dust hovered around its knees but did not rise up high enough to obscure the man on its back—a man who rode so upright that I imagined his flanks were riddled with calluses or open sores. Behind this beast were others. They advanced from the north in a single line, one animal following the one before it so precisely that head-on, you might not have known there was any more than one man upon one great beast.

Ham was impressed by neither man nor beast. He looked hatefully at the caravan.

“Ham, go help Japheth clean,” I said.

“But my beloved approaches.”