Forty Nights: The Tides Below

Forty Nights

by E. E. Volpi

With love

for Mamamamama,

Daddi-O,

Corey,

and my dear brother

cover photo by Jonathan Hass

Published by Ellie Elizabeth Volpi at Smashwords

Copyright 2012 Ellie Elizabeth Volpi

The door closed behind them and they were left standing in the midst of a silence one-hundred years in the making, waiting for a sound they had never heard before, knowing that soon it would come, knowing, too, that when it did their world would never again be the same.

Anna

If I had the story to tell my way I would tell it as I recall; but there were more than one of us, there were eight, and, for a hidden moment, nine. And all except the baby saw things differently. Some of us never saw things at all…but maybe that is for the best.

When the door had closed we stood for a moment in silence, expecting I’m not sure what; waiting, but nothing came, no sound save the muffled laughter of some of Farah’s inhabitants. But that was nothing new. We had been listening to that sound for over a hundred years – I was grateful that, this time, I could not see their faces.

It took a few moments for my eyes to adjust to the dim interior of the ship. I looked around at all the family I had left in the world, recounting them by their names and their stories, the familiarity of each history a warm embrace around the concern in my heart.

Nearest to me on my left stood Sarah. Young and slim, she seemed even smaller in the vast darkness, almost childlike as she held closely to the arm of her husband Shem, my son, my youngest. As for Shem his eyes shone brightly through the dusky gloom shedding a light of confidence and faith into the silence. His blond hair wild and bright. His smile fresh and glad. I have often wondered if Shem has known something about our God that we have not.

To my right were Japheth and Mahaliel. He held her almost up as she sagged against him. I thought perhaps she might be ill. Odd for one so usually strong. Mahaliel had been Japheth’s love since his youth. He had pursued her with all the might of an eldest son, but her heart had never softened. Noah and I often wondered at the attraction. For all her vitality, Mahaliel had never been lovely. Her masculine features and dusky skin were more in keeping with the pursuits of a workman than the chores of a woman. Given the chance, she would have been a great builder. I remember still how she had helped with the raising of our ship, never once ashamed to grasp a hammer and pound a nail or to lather the sides of our wooden boat with boiling pitch and tar. But Japheth had loved her from the first time they had met; and, though Mahaliel would not yield to the wooing of my son, her father was easily won by the wooing of my husband. It is not every day you can marry an ungainly daughter to the son of a king.

Japheth, my eldest, stood with his powerful arms wrapped around his wife's shoulders, his worry for her welfare like a shadow in his eyes, like a scar across his brow. His chestnut hair brushed her cheek as he leaned in to whisper a word. She remained still. Silent. I could not tell if this was the result of some dark fear she held inside, or if, like so many other things, her answer was simply frozen inside of her. Mahaliel had never warmed to my son. Though his sturdy hands now held her strong when her strength was gone, and though he had only words of kindness for her hardness, she remained as cold as the dew from the heights of the hills of Farah or, colder and higher still, the frost which settled each morning and night in the highlands of Eridu, her home.

Some paces off from the rest of us stood Ham. Serepheth was nowhere in sight. Oh, Ham, how my heart cried out to him even them. Perhaps this coming confinement would heal his heart, so proud and hard. I wondered if my son even knew that I loved him – and, if he knew, I wondered if he cared. He was my second son. Older brother to Shem, younger brother to Japheth. He had laughed with the freedom of a child once, but I seldom saw him even smile now that he was grown. His heart pursued such fine things, never a fabric so soft but that it could not be more thick, not a leather so supple but that it could not be more smooth, nor a wine so rich but that it could not taste more sweet – but all the best of all the world has to offer cannot fill a heart which is empty at its core.

And Serepheth – she was enough to hurt any mother’s heart. If a woman’s pride could rival a man’s, certainly Serepheth’s rivaled Ham’s. A woman so haughty I had never seen before - and few men so either. Her face was as lovely as a late rising moon, filled with a chill and distant strength, glowing with the coolest of fires. She stood nearly equal with Japheth in height, and he was the tallest among us. Yet she looked down from an even greater distance on us all. A motion toward the prow of the boat told me Serepheth had removed herself as much as she could from the entrance near the rear of the ship where most of us still stood, spellbound. Waiting, even now.

Without warning into the stillness broke a sound as of a small thunder, the floorboards trembled and a pile of wooden casks shaken loose from their straps tumbled to the ground and rolled. Dust rose like clouds of retribution while echoes of the beginning of the end resounded through the cavernous spaces above. I believe all of us jumped. Mahaliel lost her hold on Japheth and slid to the floor, hands over her head, limp and still. We looked to the roof waiting, gasped and strained to listen, but nothing further happened. A few casks rolled heavily away, coming to slow stops all around the room. We held our breath. Then, out of the stillness, rose a white-robed form, the dust settling like newborn clouds around his feet. The severe face, tanned and hardened from years of living, a beard as white as freshly carded wool, bright blue eyes flashing fire everywhere he looked – that face turned toward us all and, with an apologetic shrug, smiled at himself and then laughed. I couldn’t resist joining in. I have never been able to resist the laughter of my husband.

Mahaliel

I rose from the floor, with the help of Japheth.

Mahaliel, love, are you all right?

I twisted my shoulder away from his grasp and, shaking my head, answered him not. Sometimes there are no words to say, even, or it may be especially, to the man you live with. I hated myself for my weakness, I hated myself for being here, I hated participating against my will with this family and their journey. My father had been a king, was a king still, and here I stood like a helpless child thrust against my will into the hollow cavern of this wooden tomb. My life is ending and there stood Noah laughing.

He turned toward me, a bright twinkle gleaming in his eyes like the glimmering of sunlight on clear waters, Daughter, come help me repair what I have done. You are as good to me as ten sons, and twice as strong as any of the three I have! Anna, would you please keep watch for a badger keeping watch for a hare?

I could not help but accept his outstretched hand. With a friendly apology shining in his eyes, he told us as we reset the casks that the wily badger had freed himself from his low pen on the second deck and had frightened a sleeping hare. The hare had bounded from his high fenced cage and the two were off. Following them with all the caution of a trained hunter he had watched them gambol from one room to the next. Ascending the stairs to the upper deck with surprising ease, they had hidden at rest behind the first of the casks near the rear of the ship. Noah stood still, waiting, and then had sprung. It was in mid-pounce that he remembered the casks had not yet been tied down – and so sent the whole pyramid crashing to the floor all around him, startling us into expectancy of cataclysms.

I reached for the nearest cask and began to rebuild the stack my father-in-law had sent rolling with his hasty lunge. Thanks be to Yahweh for activity, for work. The strain of the weight against my arms was like rest to me. The feel of the solid, unyielding wood against my chest was an embrace. These things I knew and could believe. The memory of the echoes of the death dirge which had sounded at the slamming of the outer door subsided from a ringing torment in my ears into a low pulse inside of me as I worked. The ringing had felled me; the pulse I could survive. I am accustomed, after all, to the sounding of sorrowful places in my soul.

I had, with these, my young strong hands, helped to build my own tomb. Had driven nail after nail into the boards of this, my coffin. Had laughed and sung while I did so, for the sheer joy of effort in swinging the hammer, in sinking the nail in three blows. One to set, two to sink. Day by day I worked alongside Noah, this man I had learned to love and respect, watching his faith carry him through the creation of an impossibility. At the rising of the sun we would meet, the bread in our hands spread with the sweet meats; and, tasting the pleasure of fruit on our tongues, we would watch the day begin as the new sun climbed above the horizon. Every morning, another burning torch would flame and rise to keep us from the darkness. Together we rejoiced in the golden birth. When was it I realized this work, which gave me joy each morning, would carry me, in the end, to my grave? This man laboring beside me, the first to love me beyond myself, was teaching me only how to die.

As the day of completion drew near, I began to understand; but the dawning was a dark one. The golden torch hung low and gray against the inner horizons of my soul. I would be entering my doom. Buried in a hollow wooden tomb built by my own strong hands. Sealed with the sweat of my own flesh. How often do we willingly enter our grave, stepping slowly toward a death we do not welcome but accept?

How often do we believe we live, only to find we have been bounded in a catacomb?

Serepheth

It is a wonder you were not wounded, love. That was Anna speaking, her characteristic smile rounding the words into the tenderness she always affected toward her children, her husband, even the servants in her home.

Father, next time be more ware of your pounce than your prey. That was Sarah – sweeter than a cane of new cut sugar. Everyone smiling at the joke; Shem, unashamed, laughing out loud at his little wife’s meager attempt at humor. Meager – oh, yes. All of them, everything about all of them was meager. Except perhaps Japheth – he at least had a little sense. Not enough to keep him from wedding that man of a woman Mahaliel. But then, everyone must have their faults. But did these seven need to have so many? From my vantage at the front of the boat I watched Mahaliel and Noah tying up the casks – for the first time since getting into this boat she didn’t look like a dead fish. That, at least, was an improvement. It’s one thing to have your fears, Mahaliel. It’s another to let yourself be ruled by them.

A movement in the shadows near my feet told me my father-in-law’s forgotten prey was near. One quick and silent step brought me within a cubit and one sweep downward with both my arms brought my hands up full – one of badger one of bunny. Must I always be made ridiculous for this crew of clowns and sailors?

I who have lived with lords, who have been fathered by angels, who have stood above my peers even when standing among royalty, diminished now by my own prowess into seeming only a little better than that man I now call father-in-law.

Well, if someone must keep this fool’s venture from running to complete ruin, I supposed it would fall to me to do so. How such innocents had survived thus far I would never understand. That fool of a man had ruled one of the earth’s most prosperous cities for more than twice my lifetime. And during that time he increased trade, brought near peace to lands stricken with warring and the desperate mongering of power-drunk despots. He developed centers of knowledge and artistry, temples to his God and to the great gifts he credited his God with giving: people carved from soft stone by skillful hands, pottery jars with walls so thin you could see the glow of fire from an oiled wick which burned within, hollow pipes with tones so sweet that the sound would melt into tears on my cheeks as I listened. I would almost have thought he must be wise. But then, there was this enormous boat in his backyard. As a child I remember running with my playmates to see the monstrosity. Even then I understood this would be the ruin of his kingdom.

For now, more practical matters ruled. Master builder, I believe these belong to you.

Noah

The sound of hard, swift footsteps caught my ear and I looked up to see Serepheth sweeping toward me. She dropped my missing miscreants at my feet, and with an imperious look silenced all of our laughter.

My thanks to you, daughter. You are a better hunter than I. May all your children be so blessed to find what it is they seek with similar ease.

You would do well to recall my heritage is hardly one which would make me acknowledge the title you use so freely.

Yes, Serepheth, indeed. To be the child of an angel is no small thing. May Yahweh give you the grace to bear the burden with peace and understanding. And now, as we have all been reminded of the One who has brought us here, let us not neglect to take the moment and speak to Him of our distress. For still I do not hear the sound of flooding waters.

With that I led my family into prayer. The first of many we would share together. And in my heart beat a silent petition – not that Yahweh would bring us safely through His raging floods, but that He would keep us safe from the floods which raged in the hearts of these my children.

Father of all that lives. We kneel, the last children of a race grown weary with its own sinning. We acknowledge our sinfulness and our participation, through our actions or our silence, in all that has brought our earth and our hearts to decay. We bow before you in prayer to ask Your hand, which has sealed us into safety, carry us through into the future You have planned. Keep us, we beg, looking to You. Let us not be blinded by our love or our hate. Help us to see clearly, to work well, and to speak the truth in kindness. In the name of the One Who Seals and Saves, so be it.

My name is Noah, and these are my children: Japheth, the eldest, with his wife Mahaliel; Ham, my second son and his wife Serepheth; and Shem, my youngest, with his young wife Sarah. My wife is Anna and she loves the Lord our God – it was her righteousness in a time when there was little enough of it to be found which first drew me to her centuries ago. I have been a king in the land of Farah for many years. I raised temples to our God and tried to stem the tide of the wickedness which was growing in the hearts of my people; but there are some tides which cannot be stopped – we can only hope to ride upon them and keep ourselves from being consumed. So I rode the crest and watched the world turn rancid beneath me – in so short a time, the span of three or four generations, we had come so far from our perfection. As numbered by the passings of the seasons our father Adam had been with our God for not even two hundred before I was born. He who had lived sinless, who had seen the world new made, who had tasted the sweetness of that bitter fruit which has killed us all – he was gone for scarce a lifetime and the world had begun to rot.

In the first moon of my five-hundredth year Anna gave birth to our first child – a boy. We named him Japheth, meaning enlargement. I saw in the eyes of that newborn baby a world made fresh and cleansed of its sin. In his cry I heard the voice of God speaking to us again as if we still walked together in the garden at eventide. And in his tears I saw a washing as if with a great water which would renew the world and create one afresh – sweeping away the residue of the ages leaving only the recollection of healing behind. How close I had come to seeing the truth of the future as I mused on the peaceful face of my sleeping son.

It was in the fourth month of that year my Lord God came to me. He spoke to me with a voice I had never heard but that I knew as if I had been listening for it all my life. I was alone in the hills below our home on a cleft overlooking the city of Farah. I was lost in regret and, though no tears shone on my face, my heart was weeping still. I have been mocked as a king for my uprightness. I have been ridiculed as a simple man because my indulgences do not tend toward lechery or worse.

As I sat thus with my soul embraced within me, my memory drove back in upon itself to places I would not choose to go: recollections, not forgotten, but feared for their hatefulness and their horror. I have seen a child murdered before my eyes as I walked the streets of my town unannounced. It was crying - too loud. And its mother was weary with her working. One slap from the back of a hard hand and the new life fled into the air and was gone. I have seen children beaten at the hands of their parents; I have seen old women raped and wounded, left for dead, but living still. I have seen young women sell their souls for pennies but more for the fun. I have seen men, esteemed and respected in the counsels during the day, at night in the streets with animals beneath them. Great Heaven, forbid! The things I have seen. And I have only seen some. I shudder to think of what I have heard: the whispers of the children missing from their homes on nights of great feasting and play; the voices muffled behind greedy fingers speaking of sacrifice, of blood; rumors of fires burning on high hills with dark smoke rising into midnight skies. God forbid those rumors; forbid, dear God, the truth.

The day God spoke was as clear as it was bright, the mists had risen and the world looked as if it had only that moment begun. How false the shadows our eyes reflect – the truth lies elsewhere in the mind of God. A gentle wind blew, stirring the low bushes. The high tops of trees swaying seemed like kelp on the floor of an endless blue water. In the moving of that wind I felt I was not alone. I dropped my head onto my knees as I sat upon the hilltop. My arms wrapped around my legs as if I could, by holding myself close enough, hold back the waves of violence and corruption which threatened to destroy the world.

And then I heard the voice, whispering into the darkness of my blood-red reverie like a feathered stream of light. It came to me first like a breath of sadness borne upon the wind. Then like the sigh of an eternal heart breaking. Then a whisper saying, from somewhere outside my mind, that It had looked upon the earth and beheld that it was corrupt ... an echo of my own thoughts outside of myself. That all flesh has corrupted his way upon the earth ... and the voice, with the sound of a dream dying in every word, said the end of all flesh is come before Me. The earth is filled with violence through men; and, behold ... it stopped and I heard the tears of a sorrowful God, I will destroy man with the earth. Somewhere on the hilltop or above it I heard a sound as of an eternal heart breaking.

I raised my head and looked – no one was there but me. The wind still rustled the bushes nearby, the tops of the trees still swayed with all the silence of any shore. The greens were bright and fresh, the light was clear and cool. I shook my head from side to side to clear the whispers away, but my recollection served me too well. I could not loose the words which had come to me on the wind.

Lord, I prayed aloud, believing God still hears us, believing the promise He had given to our father Adam and to Eve our mother, that His spirit would not strive with man forever, that there would be a healing, a reparation. Lord, I prayed, I’m hearing things and I don’t know if they’re from You. Father of us all, my heart is broken for my city and for Your world. I am praying here alone on a hillside and I am hearing things. Lord, what am I supposed to do? Help me, Father, help us all.

Make an ark of gopher wood ... An ark? ... make an ark of gopher wood. You will make rooms in the ark and you will pitch it within and without with pitch ... the voice fell and rose with the breezes ... And this is the fashion in which you shall make it: The length of the ark shall be three hundred cubits, the breadth of it fifty cubits ... but this is too big, this boat will never sail upon the mighty river ... and the height of it thirty cubits ... this boat is too big; it could house a small world ... You will make a window for the ark, and finished it will be a cubit high; and the door of the ark you will set in the side; with lower, second, and third stories you will make it ... I fell backwards to the ground – the world was spinning around me and I couldn’t catch my breath. The wind kept blowing, blowing through my hair, through the grass, through my clothes; the trees kept drifting from side to side across the screen of my vision. The vast empty blue of the sky receded like lightning before me and I saw through the vacancy the voice of Yahweh speaking; and He said, Behold, I, even I, do bring a flood of waters upon the earth, to destroy all flesh, wherein is the breath of life, from under heaven; and every thing that is in the earth shall die.

My breathing had stopped and tears were falling, running as torrents down my cheeks wetting the earth around my face flowing like rivers of pain out of my soul. My whole body ached with the enormity of a great sorrow. I shook and trembled in every limb and prayed I was insane. I prayed to the God who was speaking that I would be wrong; that this was all wrong; that this was all a crack in my mind; that there were no boats, no windows, no flood; and that this was just a dream from which I would wake to live the rest of my days as a quiet lunatic roaming peacefully the streets of a city which had long since forgotten my name.

But the voice went on, quiet and sure, like the rising of the sun or the setting of the moon – knowing its own rightness and certain of its own meaning. But with you will I establish my covenant; and you shall come into the ark, you, and your sons, and your wife, and your sons' wives with you. And of every living thing of all flesh, two of every sort shall you bring into the ark, to keep them alive with you; they shall be male and female. Of fowls after their kind, and of cattle after their kind, of every creeping thing of the earth after his kind, two of every sort shall come unto you, to keep them alive. And take of all food that is eaten, and you shall gather it to you; and it shall be for food for you, and for them.

The voice ceased. The wind blew a moment more then stilled, like a leaf settling to the ground. I lay in the grass on my back and listened to my breath returning, listened to my heart beating and felt the gentle pounding of life in my body. I prayed that God would let me die.

One hundred years later I stood inside the belly of a cavernous ship watching the faces of my wife, my sons, and their wives as we waited for a sound I knew would come.

Ham

I was conceived in the month of my father's revelation and raised in the shadow of the ship. The child of a lunatic and his bride. I would not say to any that I believe thus, but thus I believe nonetheless.

When I was young it seemed as nothing, the building of this very big boat. Did we not, after all, live on the mighty, life-giving river? Did we not trade with Ur, with Kish, and with Erech? Was my father not the ruler of the mighty Farah - most powerful city, most lovely, most rich? Was he not the great king of the ten kings, the great ruler of great rulers? Was it not right he should have the largest vessel of them all?

Thus my child mind reasoned, until, as I grew, I learned otherwise. I learned it first when a small girl with golden hair and skin that shone like newly fired bronze raced onto the worksite to steal a nail; she ran laughing with her prize held, like a butterfly or a prism of topaz, primly between her fingers. I chased her, catching up with her as she reached her friends, gathered giggling beyond the bounds of the site.

Did you get it? A wide-eyed girl with jet black hair and a body as plump and pale as a freshly plucked pheasant’s leaned in toward the golden girl's fingertips.

The golden child's look of delight changed to one of scorn, Of course I got it! And she cuffed her friend's cheek with the back of her hand. What do you think I am, a halfwit, that I couldn't get a nail?

Her young friend rubbed her cheek, her head tilting toward her own comforting touch, her brow furrowed with the effort of holding back the tears.

I got it and I'm going to bring it back to Jemdt Nasr with me when I go. I will prove to my mother there is a crazy man building a boat too big to sail! Whoever heard of such a fool's task?

It is no fool's task! I stepped toward the startled group of girls who retreated a pace from my approaching figure. It is no fool's task! I repeated, my boy’s hands clenched into tight fists held close against my sides. I leaned in toward them, my voice cracking with my anger, We live on the mightiest river known, and my father is the king of the ten cities, the ruler of the mightiest city among them, and we are building for him the mightiest boat! You are the fool if you do not know, if you can not see such simple truths as these! I shook my closed hand toward the girl who held the nail, the apparent leader of the group. You give me back what you have stolen or you will find the fool of whom you spoke will have a certain task for you! I took a threatening step toward her.

Her slight form stood motionless, undisturbed by my gesture or by my threats. Her eyebrows raised slightly. No smile showed on her face. Her nostrils flared like a stalking cat's. Take your nail, she dropped it in the trampled dirt at her feet. Take your boat, too, and ride it straight back to your fool of a father and tell him there is no river big enough to float it. Ask your wise father, then, what he will do with his big, big boat, where he will sail it to. Ask your father if he proposes to build a river to fit it in. She turned to go and her friends turned with her. She paused briefly to speak again, casting the words over her shoulder without looking back, Ask your father if perhaps you could have his kingdom when his people realize their ruler is a fool.

With that she stepped away. Leaving the nail and her words behind her.

She was the first, but she would surely not be the last. As my father built his boat, so he also built his reputation. The foolish follower of a foolish vision sent by a foolish God. It grew with every nail sunk into the solid gopher wood, it darkened with each pass of pitch over the ship’s boards. It deepened with every new cell added