“Did you know there’d be a storm?” Japheth inquired, looking at his father.
“Of course not,” said Noah. “Why do you ask?”
Japheth turned and nodded toward the steep mountainside that sheltered the ark.
“If we’d built it anywhere else, it would have blown down,” he said. “At least if the storm worsens overnight, as I expect.”
“No, I chose the place quite at random,” Noah said.
But his sons weren’t so sure. Their respect for Noah had increased over the autumn. His many eccentric notions and peculiarities, which they’d previously regarded as weaknesses, and either got annoyed about or smiled at, were now seen as signs that he truly was chosen.
Beneath them the wind came blasting up the valley with increasing violence. In what had at first sounded like the rush of a far-off river, or breakers washing on a beach, there was gradually introduced a kind of roar, not unlike the noise that comes when whole forests are on fire, and when darkness began to fall, the wind speed was so high and its gusts so wild that the measured fall of night seemed almost unnatural to those inhabitants in the valley who as yet hadn’t taken shelter in their cellars, but were still to be found outdoors, either tying down their roofs, fetching supplies, or saving valuables that were outside. They had half expected that dusk would come rushing in on them. That the infinite particles of darkness would be hurled through the air like dust or sand, and lie on the ground only for brief moments, only to be whirled up again and carried off to the ends of the wind and the earth. But darkness and wind belong to discrete parts of reality; even though they operate side by side, they never react to one another: even on this stormy night, twilight came as normal. Gradually its small black particles were distributed across the landscape. A pale, almost invisible shadow fell over all things, like a thin film or a fine veil, which they at first shone through without difficulty, but then, as the density of the particles gradually increased, the surfaces that were already dark turned black, the white ones gray, until the processes of dusk were complete and every color was layered in the night’s blanket of darkness, which is impenetrable to the eye. By that time the wind was so strong that it was no longer possible to stand erect in it, and even the most desperate and possessive of the valley’s inhabitants had been forced down to their cellars, where there was little else they could do but sit with their hands in their laps and wait until the storm was over. For it would end, wouldn’t it? The wind wouldn’t be like the rain and just go on and on, day after day?
All night they sat in their cellars, surrounded by the bric-a-brac that always collects in such places — discarded rainwear and work clothes on hooks by the door, boots, clogs, and gloves on the floor beneath, perhaps a few rusty scythes and rakes in one corner, along the far wall shelves of jam jars and bottles, under them barrels of beer, bins of potatoes, some boxes of fruit — and perhaps it was good for them to let their eyes settle on these familiar, if dim, objects in order to get a little respite from what was happening up above.
Only the youngest children slept. People sat huddled close together, and every time the deep, thundery booms from between the mountainsides reached the cellar, a nervousness spread through them: a hand was lifted to a face here, a foot shifted to the side there, some coughed, some sighed, some bent their necks as they rested their heads on the wall behind them. The reason no one spoke was not due solely to weariness or fear, but also because by being silent they minimized themselves, made themselves less exposed, more like the forces that presently ravaged their world. The cellar was one hiding place, silence another. If one of them had broken it, the act of speaking, no matter whether it was nervous, despairing, or encouraging, would have been demoralizing, for there was demonstrated their vulnerability and helplessness in all its horror: the only thing they had that was their own, that was human, were words. Words made them what they were, and what are words when it comes to the crunch? What help are words when things really get tough?
None at all.
And so they sat dumb like animals, in the warmth of the flock like animals, with large and frightened eyes like animals. For the first few hours the various noises conjured up images in them — the faint but high-pitched zing that only sounded once became a corrugated iron sheet, perhaps from the woodshed, which, after spiraling through the air, had hit the stone wall at the back of the house, or perhaps the jutting rock in the horse pasture on this side of it; the dry, ripping kind of noise became a tree that the wind had pushed over, the root that had lost its centuries-old grip in the ground; the brief crash became the barn roof falling to the ground — but gradually they ceased imagining the destruction like this, sounds were merely sounds, and finally they reacted only if the noises were sudden or new and unfamiliar. Whereas in the storm’s introductory phase they had cringed each time a windowpane went or an object thudded against the wall above them, they were sunk in listlessness and apathy by the time the wind reached hurricane force in the middle of the night, whistling and howling, whining and wailing, crashing and thundering everywhere outside. So steeped were they in this lethargy that they remained sitting in their cellars for a time even after the storm had abated. The light that began to filter down between the planks in the ceiling above them gradually raised their faces from the darkness, wan from lack of sunshine, thin from lack of food, expressionless from lack of hope. But then a baby woke with a cry, and the stillness that followed after its mother had laid it to her breast was of a different order, as if it demanded something of them, and one after another they got to their feet, stiff from a long night’s inactivity, laid aside the woolen blankets they had been swaddled in on the bench, proffered the most aged a supporting arm, and went up to the new day.
Nothing could have prepared them for the sight that lay in store there. On the mounds all the trees had been blown down and lay with their great roots in the air. The same with the trees along the river, and broad inroads had been made into the forest. The barn roof had blown off and lay in several sections out in the field; two of its walls had fallen in. Several of the smaller outbuildings, including the woodshed, toolshed, and storehouse, must have been lifted bodily by the wind and then smashed to the ground, for they now lay strewn in several more or less unrecognizable piles of planks all over the field. The ancient oak in the farmyard had toppled onto the house and smashed in the roof and one wall; the whole first floor was a welter of fallen roof tiles, smashed planks, pieces of furniture, and strips of wallpaper.
It was a catastrophe. But like all catastrophes it was limited and in the long term reversible: the houses could be rebuilt, new trees would soon grow where the old ones had fallen. And so it was not the sight of the ravages of the wind that made them despair. It was the rain. The hurricane was over, its damage finite, but the rain that fell, the water that rose, seemed to have no limits. It just kept on and on.
The water was now a mere few feet from the top of the embankment they’d been working on constantly over the past few weeks, and the question they had to address was whether there was any point in raising it farther. If the water kept on rising, the pressure would sooner or later cause the dam to burst. Preferably sooner, one of them mumbled. And if that happened it would be pointless to repair the houses now.
They decided to wait and see. If the water continued to rise during the day and the following night, they would leave the valley and head up into the mountains the next morning. If the water remained as it was, they would see how things went for a few days more.