In the Shadow of the Ark by Anne Provoost

reason to suspect that, like her, I was a marriageable woman who was ready for a man. Sometimes she hugged him, and I heard her say, “Take me as your wife.”
    Ham glanced at me and shook his head.
    “Aren’t you pleased with what I have brought?” she asked.
    She was older than Ham. And she was tall. In her arms, he looked like a child. What was she doing here? A young lady from a merchant’s family belonged in markets, in stone bathhouses, or at the wells where the travelers gathered.
    I tried to worm out of Ham under what conditions she had come. But he avoided my question by rolling two enormous round nuts, hairy as rats, from a basket. Their bumpy movement, coming straight at him, made Put jump back in fright.
    “Look at what she has brought,” said Ham. He picked up one of the nuts and tossed it from one hand into the other. A sloshing sound came from it. He took a sharp stone and cracked the shell with it. Juice spurted from it. The inside was of a color I had never seen. Inside the tent, it just seemed white, but the next morning, when we were on our way to the shipyard and Ham, after much asking, opened another one for Put and me, I realized that the white was of a purity I would never see again. It was whiter than milk, whiter than the first teeth of a baby, whiter than the shells in my mother’s nets so long ago.
    Ham held the cup-shaped nut to our mouths and asked us to take a sip, Put first. The little boy tasted it and uttered a sigh.
    “What is it?” we asked.
    “Food and drink,” said Ham. “Nuts that stay good forever. We keep them against difficult times.” About the contents of the jars he said not a word.
    Neelata’s proposal of marriage did not make me feel concerned. Whenever I rubbed Ham’s chest with oil, the beating of his heart told me of his affection. He asked me to lower the tent flap. I knew Zedebab, Shem’s wife, was keeping an eye on me, and Taneses, Japheth’s wife, even more so. Their total insensitivity to the scents of a body made me reckless: Even when I was bleeding, I’d walk into the red tent. In her moon face, Taneses had tiny little eyes, which she sometimes turned away so you’d think she was blind; but she wasn’t, she saw more than most of the others. She looked at me suspiciously when I carried my clear water into the men’s tent. I’d make my movements more angular, but no reassurance showed on her face. Did it show? Did she suspect I was leading them up the garden path with my tunic covered in gently clinking shells? Did she notice that there were grooming sessions for which Ham carefully prepared? He let down the tent flap and stretched out on the ground.
    When I’d finished my work, I regularly walked past the decorated tent. I wanted to look at Neelata’s powdered lashes and the ornaments she wore. But very soon, I no longer got to see her face. She was enveloped in an ocher dress with a hood. Occasionally her hands or ankles showed, otherwise all I could see was her outline. Too late, I saw that Neelata and the wives ofShem and Japheth made a threesome, and that a marriage between Ham and Neelata was the logical outcome of their solidarity. And too late, I noticed that Ham was attracted to her. He sat watching her from the bushes, the way he had watched me months ago. I washed him daily. He blinked his left eye and asked to be treated like one paralyzed. He let me rub him until his skin was taut over his bones. Then he entwined his fingers with mine and pulled me down over him. But with Neelata, he did the same. And I did not see it.

19
The Song of the Dwarf
    A s the ship grew taller, the atmosphere in the red tent became more excited. The dwarf composed a long, involved song that he performed with a great show of tricky dance steps for the Builder’s sons one evening during the grooming session. It was a song in which he offered his services, and I listened carefully.
    “You should organize a little hammock for me,” he sang, “from which I can