Sinners and the Sea (18 page)

The ark was already being built as quickly as any three humans could build it. Even without perfect vision, surely Noah could see this. Otherwise he would not have said that the God of Adam was the hammer in the boys’ hands and the strength in their hearts. Sweat poured in torrents down their thickening backs. Calluses formed on their fingers, thumbs, and palms. Aches and pains tossed them around at night as if they were many times older than they were.

Only when the sun disappeared, taking every last drop of light, did they put down their saws and hammers. By this time they were empty of all feelings besides hunger and exhaustion. They raised their dinner bowls to their sun-chapped lips with shaking hands. Then hands, bowls, and bodies fell to the ground. My boys slept so deeply, I
worried they would never wake. At least then they would never have to see for themselves what was already clear to me: The ark would take years to build, many more than any of us would live. The flood would carry us away, along with the skeleton of our salvation.

• • •

I
t took two moons for Manosh to return. When the townspeople abruptly picked up their tents and hurried from their positions around the ark, I looked to the north. There were men with him—men who did not ride mules, men who had no sandals and walked barefoot across the burning desert with heavy sacks slung across their backs. Their chests were bare and divided by muscles more rounded than any I’d seen. Some had skin the same desert-dusk color as that of most people I had seen in my life, and some were a color that made me think they had never known the merciful shade of a tree.

As usual, Noah did not journey far to meet his cousin. He walked no more than a few cubits from the lumber pile. He glanced unhappily at the slaves and then up at Manosh.

“They will build our ark,” Manosh said.

Noah pressed his lips together before whatever words had gathered on his tongue could leave his mouth. After a few breaths of silence, he said, “We do not have food for so many mouths.”

“What little they need, I have brought.”

Shem came up beside Noah and began to whoop. “Hallelujah!” he cried. “Japheth, Ham! Put down your hammers—put them down for good!
We are saved.”

Japheth was so tired that when he looked up, he seemed surprised to see the many men standing on either side of Manosh. Ham was tired as well, but it did not weigh down his tongue. “Perhaps one day we will be slaves too, Shem. If so, I hope we will not know the language of our captors. Surely it’s better not to hear people cry ‘hallelujah’ at the thought that you might break your own back doing their work.”

“Better their backs than ours,” Shem said.

“God blesses us,” Japheth said. “May I rest now, Father?”

“Sleep, son,” Manosh said. “Your burden is lifted.”

Japheth did not move from his place beside his father. Everyone waited for Noah to decide whether he would accept the labor of slaves.

I did not like the thought of slaves being forced to build our ark, but neither did I like to think of my sons working themselves to death trying to complete such an impossible task. “Husband,” I said, “there is no other way.”

“Do not tell me what I already know. Make use of yourself. Go look at their rations, then count their heads and tell me if it is enough.”

“No need to weary your feet,
woman,”
Manosh said to me.

I could have almost forgotten that I had no name. I had grown accustomed to Zilpha calling me “Mother,” and the people of the mob would not have called me by a proper name even if I’d had one. They preferred “old hag,” “wife of the madman,” and “sea woman.” I liked all of these more than “woman,” because they did not remind me that I had no name.

I looked to Noah to see his reaction to the insult. I hoped it might convince him that it would be better for me to have a name than to give his cousins a means of disrespecting him. Is not the wife of a great man worthy of a name? Then again, perhaps Noah’s greatness was the reason he thought I needed no name other than “Noah’s wife.”

But his face showed nothing besides his usual disgust with Manosh and perhaps also with himself for accepting Manosh’s help.

Manosh clapped his hands, and overseers brought forth a large flock of goats from the rear flank of his procession, along with three oxen pulling carts full of nuts and dried dates. I looked over the flock and carts and counted as many slaves as the fingers of twenty-one hands.

“Yes,” I told Noah, “there is enough for at least three moons.”

“Three very large moons,” Manosh said, “or several of the usual size.”

• • •

T
hat evening, while Zilpha lay in the tent with her slave holding a parasol over her, Noah called his sons and me around him. “Manosh’s slaves will help us build the ark, but they will not finish their work. Before the hull is complete, we will send them away. Do not think to put down your hammers while they are here.”

“Father,” Shem said, “why wear down our own strength when we have theirs?”

Noah continued, “Do not allow a day to pass in which you build less than the strongest slave.”

“Father,” Shem implored,
“please.”

“Do not recline while the sun is in the sky.”

“It will take years—”

“And do not question my decisions.”

• • •

B
esides the overseers, only one of the men was able to keep any meat on his bones, and this was the cook. The rest toiled for no more reward than the smallest amount of goat and nuts it took to keep a man alive. They did not speak much, but when they did, it was in a language I had never heard.

“Do you understand any of their language?” I asked Ham.

“Enough to know that there are at least three. Some greet each other by touching their own chests, others by mouthing something they never say aloud.”

I watched more carefully. Only some of the dark men had rings in their ears. These and the men who were the same color we were squatted while they wielded their hammers, while the others labored on hands and knees. They all starved and sweated beneath the pounding sun.

Once they discovered Noah did not hear well, the men with rings in their ears sang together in low voices. Every time Japheth told his father of this and Noah came to listen, the men went silent.

“Mother,” Japheth insisted, “
tell
him.”

“I am sorry, son, but I heard nothing of the noise you speak of.”

When Noah turned away, Japheth spat at the ground near my
feet. It was so hot and dry that I feared the ark would catch fire, yet Japheth had brought forth what little moisture was left behind his parched lips to show his scorn for me.

• • •

I
was carrying a pot of lentils to the cookfire one day when the desert seemed to wave in the distance. The wave came closer, as if a pack of animals was rushing toward me beneath the sand. I tried to move from its path, but the sun had taken my strength.

The wave hit me, sending the hidden fire in the sand burning up the length of my legs, through my body and all the way to my head. I started to fall. Before I landed upon the ground I was lifted off my feet and carried to the new patch of shade the ark had given us. First my backside, then my back, and last my legs and head were gently laid upon the ground. Sweat that was not my own tingled on my cheek and arm.

Suddenly there was a great commotion. Japheth was yelling and I heard the smack of a stick against flesh. “Leave him be,” I tried to say. But when I opened my mouth my throat seemed to crack in half.

“Enough, Japheth,” Ham cried. “Mother has sun sickness. The slave has done yet more of our work for us and brought her to the shade. Now we must bring her water.
Put down the stick.
”

“Shut up and draw her scarf down over her forehead,” Japheth commanded.

I felt the scarf being pulled lower over my brow. I opened my
eyes and there was Ham’s face before me. Not more than ten cubits from us Japheth beat the slave, who did not make a sound; it was not the first time he had been beaten. Japheth’s stick broke, and he hurried to the pile of lumber to get another. Noah followed him back. “What goes on here beneath the eyes of the Lord?” he demanded.

“Mother fell beneath the sun’s strength, and this slave rushed her to the shade. I will fetch Mother some water.”

“This slave saw Mother’s brow, and cannot be left to spread word of it,” Japheth said.

I knew from trying to rescue the three boys born at the same time that once you help someone you do not want any harm to come to him. “No,” I whispered. “He will tell no one of my mark.”

Noah held his hand out for the branch Japheth had brought back.

Japheth kept hold of it. “It must be done, Father.”

“This slave does not speak our language and Manosh would not heed his words even if he did,” Noah said. “He is no threat to the God of Adam or His plan for us. When the hull is complete Manosh’s slaves will leave this land and never return.” He took the branch from Japheth’s hand and threw it into the desert. Then he walked away.

The stick lay more than thirty cubits from where Noah had thrown it. I was glad to see that though my husband’s eyes and ears were worn down by his many years, his strength remained.

I was about to close my eyes again when I caught a glimpse of the slave’s back. I wish I had not. My son had raised welts high up from the man’s flesh.

The man did not look at me, and he did not rise. When Ham came back, he handed me a waterskin, and then handed one to the man. The man would not take it. This seemed to be at least some consolation to Japheth who snorted and stomped away. The man had a pink scar above his right eye. Besides the scar, his skin was so dark and wet it was like someone smeared olive oil across the night sky.

When I had drunk enough water to find my voice, I told the man, “I am sorry for my son’s foolish temper.” I hoped my tone would convey the meaning of my words. But the man’s face did not change, just as it had not changed while Japheth beat him. He rose slowly, backed away a few cubits, and went to pick up his hammer.

“Bring him the waterskin, Ham. Then he will know he did nothing wrong, and we will not appear unjust to the rest of the men.”

“If we appeared just,” Ham replied while he did as I instructed, “they would get up and leave.”

• • •

W
hen the hull was almost complete, Noah told Manosh to take the slaves away. “We will finish the ark ourselves,” he said.

Manosh’s eyes widened. “Have you other slaves?”

“God requires only my sons’ hammers to complete His ark.”

“Six hands cannot complete this task in only one lifetime.”

“I can see why it is me He chose,” Noah said as if he were speaking to himself but loudly enough for Manosh to hear. “Those who do not know His might will learn soon enough.”

He beckoned to our sons and turned back to the ark.

• • •

I
t did not take long for the overseers to start yelling commands. The slaves quickly set down their hammers and gathered together what was left of the rations.
Do they never think to turn upon their masters with those hammers they so easily set down?
Perhaps the mammoths scared them. Or perhaps their spirits had been broken.

“Have them bundle the timber too,” Manosh told his men.

“No!” I cried. No one paid any attention to me.

I hastened from the cookfire and ran ahead of the slaves to where Noah stood directing our sons, who by this point needed no direction in what length to cut each piece of gopher wood. “Husband,” I said, afraid that he had not heard.

But Manosh had spoken loud enough for even Noah to hear. Noah slowly turned to face him. “You have already given us this gopher wood.”

“And
this
gift you do not wish to return?”

Slaves surrounded the pile of wood Japheth was measuring. Japheth glared up at them.

“It is owed me, for taking Zilpha on board the ark.”

“The ark is made by my slaves and of my lands—the lands I have lived on for six-hundred years. It will not forget me now. I will leave the lumber with you, for the girl, daughter of the prophet Kesh. But I do not leave it for good. Do not think to board the ark without us.”

One of Manosh’s men shouted at the slaves. They lined up on either side of Manosh, facing the ark. It was time for Manosh to receive our thanks. He looked patiently down at Noah from where
he sat upon his mammoth. I wished my husband would be quick about it so Manosh would take his eyes and his anger and his half-naked slaves away, and I could return to preparing the evening meal.

“My sons have appreciated the help of your slaves,” Noah said stiffly.

Manosh continued to stare down at him.

“If we said ‘thank you’ a hundred times it would not be enough,” Shem said from where he stood beside Noah. “You have saved us many moons.”

Manosh looked hard at Noah. “I know you would do the same for me. We are family, bonded by blood and the Lord’s blessing. We will journey together into the new world.” He walked his caravan in a tight half circle and turned back toward his home.

If there truly was to be a flood, then the men who had built the ark had saved our lives. I wanted to thank them, but they did not know my language, and I did not know theirs.

CHAPTER 27

A SIGN

W
ith construction of the hull almost complete, we could have spread out our sleeping blankets. Yet we never did. Zilpha and her slave slept next to each other on one end of the hull, while Noah, my boys, and I slept not more than a few cubits from one another on the other end. But I did not sleep much.

After Manosh’s caravan left, people gathered around us once again. They seemed to sleep neither day nor night. The jeering had a new intensity. They called us mad, but they said it with such desperation that I began to think maybe we were not mad. I knew their secret; I could hear it in their voices. They were afraid.