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46. The floodgates of the heavens are opened

It was the seventeenth day of the second month. All the fountains of the deep broke open. To the sound of howling winds, solid curtains of water came down. There was not only rain, but also hail. The wind raged over the land. Trees bent, chickens were plucked alive on their roosts, tents broke loose, planks and boards were hurled around. The dead floated from the caves where they had been buried.
Our shelter tore apart. The section that was left was just large enough to keep me dry, but my father sat in the rain. From where we were fighting the wind, we could see what was happening to the others. The large group waiting at the base of the ship were taken unawares by the tempest. The gangplank was still out, but guarded by so many warriors with long swords that anyone who set foot on it was immediately beaten back. Many were killed, pushed onto the gangplank by the mass of people and instantly impaled on the spears. Even at that stage, they might appear to be victims of an accident, and most of them still seemed to expect the hatch to be opened soon. There were some who had armed themselves, and practised an assault in the hills. Now they, too, arrived, forming small groups and going around the ship with ladders and ropes to attack it from its unguarded side. But already the chaos was too great. Even armed groups with careful plans were scattered. The hulk they wanted to climb was tall, and the wind against them. Together with hordes of others, they fled up the cliff. They assumed the water could never rise to that height. To be able to overlook the land made them feel certain they would not be taken by surprise. But they were troubled by the wind. They had to lie down to stop themselves being blown into space.
We saw how Zedebab's twin sister was led away from the ship by warriors. And we saw Ham coming up the cliff! We had been waiting for him for a long time. The light was failing and the landscape changing. We had worried about how he would find the path in this storm, and now we thought he was coming for us. But we were wrong, it was the brushwood a long way below us that he was heading for. Groping around he found a tree stump to which he tied the dog. The animal was sodden with rain and hung its head. I jumped up, my father following me quickly to protect me, and shouted, "Come on, Ham, come on! The calamity has arrived! What's keeping you?"
But Ham did not hear me. Without once looking back at the dog tugging at its rope, he returned to the ship.
Here and there, small boats appeared in the landscape. Like ours, they had been hidden under branches. But around each of them, there was a commotion. I recognised the movements of those on board. They were bailing. "They're taking in water, father! Look at what sort of boats you've built them!"
My father leaned against me like a wet, formless sack. He replied, "The boats you see down there: they all leak. For a bit, the people in them will manage to plug the holes. Then they'll start bailing. But in the end, as Shem instructed me, they will sink. I had to do this to save us. Only on that condition was I allowed to keep our truss-boat."
The rattling of the hail and the raging of the wind made thinking about what he said difficult. I felt numbed as if from a blow that takes you beyond pain. I sat bent over beneath the scrap of shelter my father held up, still, as if all I had to do was wait for it all to be over. There was nothing to persuade me that this was really happening, that the world was being inundated, that, through my father's doing, the little boats down there were leaking.
But while I waited, motionless, there was a new commotion in the shipyard.
"They're going on board," I said dully. My father let go of the guy ropes. The wind howled and the shelter flapped away behind us like a bird flying up. He took me by the hand. Together, we ran to our boat and dragged the bundles of branches away from it. It was well-built, our boat, it had an upper deck with a hatch that could be closed against the rain and against people who, when they saw our vessel, would try to get in. In the bilge was a layer of sand for the fire, and stores of victuals and water stood in every available spot.
"The heads of the ark-builders are filled with strange thoughts," said my father as we looked for a spot in the hold. "Their forebears have eaten a fruit which has made them able to distinguish between good and evil. Good means obedience, evil means disobedience. They can think no further. But look at me! I make the boats leak and find delight in thus taking revenge for what they have done to my wife. Yet all I am doing is obeying the order of the elect Shem and Japheth!"
Once again, the sound of horns rang out from the encampment. We heard the clatter of hooves on the gangplank, sometimes followed by plunging sounds from the water below. We heard the crack of a whip. It must have been the last of the animals, the kinds that came from afar and had only just made it. The Builder must have said, "It is time." I later learnt that Ham had to carry the varan, wildly lashing out, on his shoulder, together with other reluctant or slow reptiles.
"Let me have a look," I begged my father.
"We have to close the hatch, Re Jana, don't be so reckless!"
"But there is so much noise. What if Ham comes and we don't hear him?"
Because I insisted, he left the hatch partly open. From its lee, I saw how Camia's mother lost her little daughter. She was blind, and, in a way, that was an advantage for her: she was used to finding her way by touch. She calmly called her child's name, but in her fear, Camia ran the wrong way. That was the last thing I saw. The sky turned black as sackcloth of hair. The darkness made the chaos around the ark complete: people were storming the ship blindly, screams of fury and of pain went up, many were trampled.
Full of fear, we closed the hold. We huddled together and waited. So we sat for a long time, my father's heart beating against my shoulder. He muttered prayers I had never heard. We listened to the tumult outside, the screams of humans and animals, and the pounding of the storm.
Suddenly, something battered against the hull. It sounded like splintering wood. Broken branches, we thought, or something else floating around. Briefly, we hoped it might be Ham, but we did not see his face appear at the hatch. We had heard so many noises, this seemed no worse or more ominous than the others.
Not long after, we finally heard Ham, his voice hoarse and distorted. We unfastened the bolt to let him in. But he did not come into the hold. He grabbled through the opening and gripped my hand, shouting again. I tried to understand him, but it was impossible with all the clamour around us. "What?" I shouted, but already he was silent. His fingers round my wrist like claws, he hauled me out of the hold. He threw my arm round his neck and lifted me up. I heard the sucking noise of his feet in the mud. I did not understand what he wanted, I wriggled loose, but he gripped me even more firmly and threw me over his shoulder.
"Look! Just look!" he yelled, pointing at the hull of the truss-boat, in which there was a wide, gaping hole. Next to it lay a tool, only its handle visible in the mud, but I could see it was an axe. "Shem did that! To stop me going separately. Now I have to go on my father's ark!"
The pelting rain, the seething winds and the deafening roar, the thundering of rocks rolling down the hills was everywhere around us. Through all this violence, he carried me to the ship. It rained stones, they scraped my shoulders and calves. The earth rumbled. But it was as nothing compared to what was going on further away. There were moments when everything was lit up, more brightly than by lightning: the stars were falling from the sky. Under the onslaught of the heavenly bodies, Ham threw himself on the ground. Craters opened and were immediately wiped out by the impact of yet more celestial objects. Before Ham could even get up again, blood poured down. Its drops burnt our skin like scorpion bites. But he did not let go of me. Despite all my extra weight of mud and water, he heaved me even more firmly over his shoulder.
I saw how my father jumped from his boat into the ooze to go and inspect the hole in the hull. I shouted, but he neither saw nor heard me. Around us, groups of dromedaries, camels, donkeys and deer raged in a frenzy. They swung their heads wildly trying to make progress in the mud. During one flash, I saw their wide nostrils and their moist eyes, gleaming dark green. The ark was the only place left now that the end of the world had come, now that the fury of the Builder's god seemed irreversible. Large chunks of earth broke off the hillsides, boulders tumbled, columns erected by human hands fell down their full length, bushes were washed away. When we arrived at the gangplank, Ham let go of me, ripped off his cloak and threw it over my head and face. The warriors were still defending the entrance. If one of the Rrattika managed to hoist himself out of the mud and find the gangplank, he would immediately be forced back by whips and spears. The warriors administered the kinds of blows you can only deal if you feel yourself superior to everyone. But they did not stop Ham. I was so limp in his arms that I must have looked like some dead animal, or a bale of cloth.
The entrance to the ark was a gaping hole lit by neither lamps nor torches. There was a penetrating smell of excrement, the fear-scent of the skunk stronger than all the rest. Here, you no longer felt the stinging rain, but the noises were fearsome and in their own way painful. I heard the stamping of hooves, and shrieks like children's that must have come from cats, apes or birds. I heard the sputtering of lizards, the snorting of pelicans, the whining of foxes and dingoes. And I heard Shem's voice in the distance: he was trying to calm down the animals, but could not control his own desperation. Ham moved fast, someone called out his name but he did not turn around. Deep in the gallery he uncovered my face, but it was so dark in the ship that I still could see nothing. He climbed some stairs or a ladder: I could feel him lift his legs up high, groaning with the effort. He moved through long corridors. He could have put me down and made me walk, but he did not, he held me firmly like a precious object.
As soon as it was possible to raise my voice above the sounds around me, I cried, "What about my father?"
"Wait. I'm going to get him," he shouted back. He went into a side passage and when we came to the third or fourth pen he put me down on my feet so he could open it. The bamboo-barred door swung away from us and I realised I had to bend over. There were animals in the pen I entered, although I could not see what they were; I made out their dark shapes against the wall. They seemed fearful and tired. I could hear them making clucking, cough-like noises in their throats, as if they were reassuring each other. Ham came into the pen after me. He forced them out of his way with a ksss-sound. In the middle stood a hutch which seemed intended for animals to sleep in. He put his hand on the side panel. There was a click of wood on wood. He tugged at me and I understood what he wanted. Feet first, I slid into the sleeping-hutch. I fitted exactly, as if in a coffin. Then I heard his footsteps receding in the gallery.
The cage had been built by an amateur. There were plenty of gaps for me to look through. The animals alongside me went back to their places. They made gobbling sounds like turkeys. Their fear of the tempest helped them forget I was there, so close to them. A cushion lay beside me; I reached for it and could feel that it was Neelata's, there were roses embroidered on it. The uproar in the ship continued. I could hear how places were allotted, how animals were chased out of one pen and into another. Outside, there was shouting from the workmen who had helped with the dragging of timber, the lashing of scaffolding and the stirring of the pitch. They realised what the Builder had intended all along, what he needed his ark for, and why there had been such demands for speed towards the end. All this time, the warriors were busy repelling the people trying to storm the gangplank. They did it with skill and efficiency, determination showing on their faces. When my father handled his moths for the first time, he did not know one had to hold them by their lower wings. Instead he had pressed on their bodies and killed them, but did that mean he was bad? The warriors were just as ignorant about the workmen they beat off the railings. They knew no better than that they were doing what was expected of them.
For an improbably long time, the walking back and forth went on. I waited, full of tension. Then the time came: I heard Ham enter a pen not far from me and talk to someone. Another pen with a sleeping-hutch, I thought, noticing that, for the first time in a long while, I was breathing steadily.
And what had to happen happened. With a few slashes at the ropes, the gangplank was cast off. It scraped along the bow, I heard it fall and the screaming of the warriors shook me out of the stupor I had been in throughout the embarkation. With a strength I had not suspected was in me, I kicked the front panel of my cage loose. In his hurry, Ham had not shut the barred door of the pen properly and it swung open as soon as I pushed against it. I searched for a way up. I climbed stairs and ramps. I got to the deck via one of the trapdoors, probably not the normal way, but the ship was shaking too much to look for anything else. I could barely stay upright out there, the wind tugged at my body and I had to use both hands to hang on to the edge of barrels full of rain water.
Under the gangplank lay warriors. Many had been killed by the fall. Of those that had stood below, some died because the storm hurled rocks against their heads or drove sharp pieces of wood through their bodies. They were the lucky ones: they perished quickly and from a cause they could, in their final moments, comprehend. Those who were still alive now were gripped by despair. The notable, the distinguished, the warriors, the tradesmen, they all rushed the ship. They hit its sides with their fists, they shouted curses which could be heard deep inside the ship, they pressed against the bow like dogs. And the children, all those boys and girls who used to hang around the ship hoping to be given a pitch doll, they screeched like animals.
When the ship was lifted off the ground, the hold resounded, even more than before, with the screams of creatures in terror of death. Never before had they felt the ground move under their legs. They were not used to their bleating, bellowing, barking and twittering reverberating against the inner wall of the ship. And the thunderclaps now followed each other so rapidly they were like their own echoes. The wake of the ark caused small boats to break their moorings and drift. They either took in water or capsized. All around floated rafts with people hanging on.
The Builder shouted at them, "The Unnameable, who knows no regret, has been driven to regret. He regrets that it had to come to this." And the hatch closed.

Then the god of the Builder opened the floodgates of the heavens. The land which he had divided from the water when he created the world, was now joined to it once more. The water came from the east and the west, from the south and the north. Whirlpools and eddies formed, there were clouds of spume, masses of silt and foam rolled towards us. The air became briny. Far away, tempestuously rising rivers broke their banks. The water smashed stones and rocks. The sea came rolling inland. The ark yawed and listed. The people were washed off the cliff. Everything that was outside the ship disappeared.
I could not see anything any more because I was enclosed by spume. I knew that another tidal wave would wash me off the deck. I had to go back. I did not have time to go down the ladder, and plunged into the depths through the well-hole. Crawling on my belly, I reached the pen. I wanted to get back inside the hutch, it was, all things considered, the best place. But the ark was pitching and yawing so hard that I found it impossible to get through the small opening. As soon as I attempted to, I rolled against my fellow inmates, who screeched and beat their wings tumultuously and wounded me with their beaks and claws. If only I had the cushion, I thought, but I could not reach it. My head and shoulders hit the wall, now to starboard, now to port.
The tempest went on endlessly. Whenever the roar subsided momentarily, there was still a continuous dull rumbling. Then you could hear people shouting, "Here! Over here!" They all drowned, those people who thought they would fare differently, who did not realise that exceptions are not always possible. No matter how talented, how skilled, how determined in their thinking, they drowned. I managed to get a firm hold by hooking my hands and arms in the bars. The water smashed against the hull, shaking the planks of its outer skin. With my feet braced against a rafter I experienced the way the water gathered its force, exhausted it, gathered it again and exhausted it again, in a rhythm of effortless patience.

The rumbling and the lightning ceased. A shaken silence remained, together with the sour smell of vomit. I heard nothing but the raging of the wind and the thundering of the waves against the bow. My first sorrow was not for my father or Put. I was convinced they were in the ark. My first sorrow was for Camia, the little, dancing girl who now floated somewhere in the water. With much pain and effort, I got up and went back to the deck. It was night, but because burning particles were still falling out of the sky, I was able to see. There were animals that could swim and followed the ship for a long time: dogs, beavers, geese, hippopotamuses, crocodiles. Of people able to swim there were none, there were only those who had got a hold on the small boats that floated here and there. The rich had the best boats. They were made out of sound timber and had partitions to stop the water streaming in. They were leaking all the same, and sink they did in the end. The parents jumped overboard to save the children. But even that weight was too much for the boats. And so the last ones to float on the surface of the water were mainly children, wearing well-made woollen clothes and pearl ornaments round their wrists.