Forty Days: Neima's Ark, Book One

  “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.

  Chapter Two

  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 s
ome 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.”

  All this we have heard before. But now, Noah pauses only to take a sip of wine, and goes on. “In just seven days’ time, God will send rain down for forty days and forty nights, and the great flood will blot out all life upon the earth.”

  A rush of feeling crashes over me all at once, as cold and bracing as the river water was this morning, and for a moment the emotion is too strong to identify. I look instinctively to Father at Noah’s right, and I see his lips part as he lets out a long, heavy sigh. And only when I recognize the same emotion on my father’s face do I understand what I’m feeling: relief. Finally, after years of enduring the villagers’ taunts and snubs, after watching my father and uncles and even Kenaan overwork themselves for Noah’s whims, after watching Arisi forced to choose between her husband and her family, it’s almost over. In seven days, when the flood does not come and the world is not destroyed, Noah will have to give up his madman’s mission. And though the ark will still stand, perhaps the rest of us can return to some semblance of a normal life.

  But Grandfather Noah is still speaking, and Father’s mouth has closed, his lips drawn tightly together.

  “—will bake as much bread as possible and carry it to the ark, along with grain and barley, salted meat and fish, dried figs and raisins. We will fill as many water skins as we can at the river, for when the rain comes we may not be able to step onto the deck and gather rainwater for several days.”

  By we, I realize, Noah means the women. Including me. And including Arisi, who is—

  “This is madness!” Our heads turn as one to the far end of the table, where Japheth has pushed his uneaten food away and is standing, fists clenched. “I will not allow you to put my wife’s health in danger, not when she is with child. I’ve sacrificed for you, all these years, but Arisi will not spend her days hauling food through the village for no reason but—”