When they’d got to within six feet of the top, something happened. A man dressed in white appeared at the gunwale. As he bent over to look at the two men hanging there beneath him, a shudder passed through Anna.
It was Barak.
It was Barak who was up there.
The men pressed on beneath his gaze. Little by little they clawed their way closer. When there was only eighteen inches left, the figure disappeared from view for a moment. When he returned, he was holding a cudgel in his hands.
Barak, Barak, Barak.
They shouted to the men to come down. But either they didn’t hear, or they wouldn’t hear. They climbed on, and just as the first man pushed his body over the gunwale, the figure brought the cudgel down with all his might on the man’s head.
His skull split instantaneously. In a matter of seconds his face was covered in blood. The figure put his foot to the man’s shoulder and shoved him overboard. Like a heavy sack, he fell through the air down to the mountain beneath.
The figure bent over the gunwale again and looked down at the second man. He loosened his grip and slid down so fast that his skin was red from friction burns by the time he reached the ground.
Having satisfied himself on this point, the figure above moved away and disappeared.
All this had occurred within the space of a minute or two. Not a single thought passed through Anna’s mind while it was going on, she just stood watching, rooted to the spot.
When the crowd gathered around the corpse on the mountain beneath her, Anna raised her eyes and looked up at the ship. It couldn’t have been Barak standing there, she thought. It was impossible. But if it wasn’t Barak, who was it?
One of Noah’s children.
Noah, she thought, and her heart broke.
As if in a dream, she saw the dead man being carried past her and laid on the top of the mountain. The crowd’s anger was now as great as its fear. They decided to make another attempt. This time there would be plenty of them. If the first one got killed, the next man would quickly try to get past, if he too was killed, the one after that would try. They would perhaps lose two or three men, but if they once got aboard, their lives would be saved and that was worth sacrificing oneself for.
They drew lots to decide the order. And then, without further ado, they began to climb up.
The same thing repeated itself. The white-clad figure came up to the railing, waited until the first man had got half over, smashed his skull with the cudgel, tipped him overboard, and took a step backward.
Fear was in the eyes of the man following. But even though he knew what lay in store, he put his hands over the edge and heaved himself up.
The figure aimed the cudgel with full force at his head, and the next instant his body, every bit as dead as those of the other two, hit the water.
“Don’t do it, Lotan,” they shouted from below as the third man neared the edge. But his mind was made up. While the figure with the cudgel was waiting a couple of paces away, he put his forearms over, tried to twist his head to one side to avoid the coming blow, and partially succeeded, the cudgel caught him across the cheekbone and jaw, smashing them, so that he was still alive when he was kicked overboard, and only died the instant his body hit the surface of the water fifty feet below.
The last five gave up, and the figure in white vanished once again. Some of them tried to break holes in the ship’s side with large stones, several more joined them: If we’re going to die, they’re going to die, seemed to be their only thought. Their fury was great and they battered like madmen with their stones, but when the ship’s hull didn’t show so much as a scratch, even this eventually subsided.
Anna’s thoughts were fixed on Noah. He knew they were here, she was sure of that. Just as sure as she was that he would never allow them to go aboard.
She could do nothing about it.
And yet she shouted to him.
“Noah!” she yelled.
Everyone turned to look at her. Noah was someone they’d heard of, he still occupied a place in their consciousness, but only as a name, nobody but Anna had set eyes on him.
She wanted him to see what he was doing.
“Noah!” she shouted again.
Noah, who had stayed below deck ever since the ship had glided out of the forest, certainly did know she was there. Or rather, he suspected it, but for him it had become two sides of the same coin. He hadn’t wanted it to be like this. He would have preferred it if the ship hadn’t drifted into the mountain, and that Anna weren’t there. If he’d been able to help her, he would have done so. But he couldn’t.
When he heard her shout, he rose to go up. He didn’t want to, it was perhaps the very last thing he wanted to do, but he had to: he owed it to her.
He’d taken a couple of steps before he halted.
In a few hours the mountain would vanish. Soon the sea would cover the entire earth. Then he could go up. That was the way he’d planned it, and that was still the way it was going to happen.
He went back and sat down again.
When Anna called for a second time, he put his head in his hands.
But he did not go out.
As soon as she realized that he wouldn’t come, she went with the others to the top of the mountain. They sat down in the hollow. Anna got food out of her bag, and they began to eat. No one spoke. Everyone took longer over the meal than normal. The sea was a mere five yards below them now. What had been a long, continuous mountain ridge an hour ago was now a string of small islands. On the nearest one they could see people sitting just like them, huddled on the island’s highest point, while the waves beat against the land just below them.
That was all. The rest was sea.
Vast and gray the sea lay all around them. Its glinting surface stretched away on all sides, gently curving toward the horizon, beneath the sky’s thick, dark cloud layer.
The changes had been so many and so great, and had come in such a short space of time, that it was only now Anna fully realized where they were. That sense of location that always tells us where we are, even when we’re not thinking about it, that seldom allows us to be surprised even when, sunk deep in thought, we get up toward the end of the day and go over and look out the window, had become disrupted in Anna over the past few days. If she looked down for a moment and thought about something else, she would get the same surprise each time she lifted her head again: is this where we are? It wasn’t that she’d thought she was somewhere else, just that she’d assumed it quite unconsciously. When she glanced up, it was the valley she’d expected to see. Or the summer farm. Or the waterfall. Or even the mountain from the day before.
But not this.
All of them sitting out at sea, eating.
The baby had gone to sleep, and Rachel put him on the blanket between them.
Everyone sat there looking at him.
Rachel smiled.
“Isn’t he lovely?” she said.
She leaned forward and kissed him gently on the cheek.
Around them dusk was falling. In the western horizon the clouds glimmered weakly in the light of the setting sun. They had moved right into the middle and made a ring of luggage around them. The sea was six feet below them now. It was totally calm, they saw no movement in it, not even a wave. Yet it rose. It rose quite noiselessly.
“Yes, he is lovely,” Anna said. “I’ve never been so proud of anyone as I was when you gave birth to him.”
“Haven’t you?” said Rachel, smiling again.
She placed her hand on Jerak’s knee.
“I think I screamed the most dreadful things at Mom. Luckily I can’t remember what they were.”
She looked at her mother.