Forty Days and Forty Nights

It’s years since a friend dragged me along to his Bible class. I didn’t want to go; we were in the middle of a tough game of marbles and I was winning. My family had no connection to religion of any sort. But his family was deeply immersed in every aspect of God, the Bible, the church and all its teachings. The lecture that day was about a character called Noah, a flood, and the upending of the world. I was terrified. The teacher laid it on thick. “Behave yourselves or else God will open the taps again and you know what will happen then!” I quivered in my boots. This is the stuff that ten year olds are made of. This is the stuff you tell a ten year old if you want to haunt him for life.

And haunt me it did. From that day on, every time it rained for more than a few hours, I was convinced that the end was near. And sometimes when I saw our garden after the rain I was sure we were survivors, like Noah.

Who was this guy Noah, anyway? How come he escaped the awful sentence? These questions flew into my mind at odd times. And they grew stronger and more disturbing as the years passed. Finally, with the onset of old age, I decided to look into the story. But this dramatic headline-maker is different from all others: at the time of the flood there were no newspapers; no television; no radio; no weather reports; no tsunamis or earthquakes. In short; nothing. The word ‘flood’ probably hadn’t been invented yet. But my imagination was in top gear and running away with me.

***

My name is Jacob, called Jake. I woke up when the rays of the rising sun penetrated to the back of the cave where I was sleeping. I made my way to the entrance and stepped outside to breathe the fresh morning air. I look up at the sky to see what kind of day we’re going to have. Wow! Take a look at that dark grey sky rolling in. Look at that lightning flashing away! Has heaven gone mad? Then the thunder arrives and bounces off my eardrums. The world is all wind and flying debris. Boy, are we in for a storm or what? Couldn’t be a bad flood, could it? Nah!

My woman, Jessica, is already busy in the cooking corner. The fire is going and there is bread on the table. We kiss as we do first thing every morning.

“Jake, can you go out and pull a couple of carrots out of the ground? They’ll go well in this salad I made for breakfast.”

 I open the door and peer outside. It’s not raining yet. My next door neighbor is busy in our joint veggie patch.

“Hi Jake,” he says. “Where did we plant the onions last season?”

“Morning, Noah,” I answer. “Towards the back, I think. We’re in for a storm, huh?”

“Yeah, looks like it. Big one too!” I grab a handful of carrots by the hair and rush back inside.

It rained all day. We’ve decided to make a baby, so Jessica and I spend the day working at multiplying. Great fun on the floor, in the sleeping corner, on the eating table. The rain saw to that. It was helped by a goatskin of wine that Jessica had pressed a few weeks ago. I had dragged the hollowed-out tree stump around to the back of the cave where the neighbors couldn’t see, filled it with those fat, black grapes and challenged Jessica to stamp them not only barefoot but bare all over. We’re still drinking that wine on ‘indoor’ days and it still works its magic.

A week later I see my friend and neighbor Noah joining rough timber planks together with ropes and pitch.

“What you making, Noah?” I yell.

‘Um.., a boat thing. I’m not supposed to tell you, Jake… Keep it quiet, will you?”

“Sure! What’s it for?”

“It’s gonna be a boat.”

“Fishing?”

“Maybe. But it’s mainly for survival.”

“What’s that?”

“There’s a bad flood coming, Jake. I have to fill the boat with my family and animals and we’ll survive.”

“I see. I mean I see but I don’t understand. What about us, your neighbors and best friends?”

“I have to go inside, Jake. Sorry!”

Inside I tell Jessica Noah’s news. “Sounds pretty dumb to me. It can rain that much?”

“I don’t know. Never has before. Two days, three days max.”

At that moment Noah walks in. “Look Jake, I’m sorry. I wasn’t supposed to tell you, but we’re good buddies and all. Please don’t repeat this. Okay?”

“I promise, Noah. How long will it rain for?”

“I heard something about forty days and forty nights, but I don’t believe that stuff.”

I never slept that night. And I thought I wouldn’t sleep for the next forty nights as well. To make matters worse, the rain started. Small drops at first and then bigger and bigger. Inside the cave it wasn’t loud but the air became moist. I wondered how long it would be before the leaks started.

My mind was racing: Jessica and I aren’t going to die with the rest of them, I vowed. But where to go? When to go? What to take? Should I build a small boat? I scratched a few sketches in the floor of the cave but they all involved lots of work at which I was useless, unlike Noah, who was the village do-it-yourself man. I need something that will float on water. How about a tree, I thought. One with lots of branches that could serve as sleeping places. One with a smooth bark that won’t dig us in tender places when we lay down.

In the end the tree became problematic and I settled on a raft of sorts. With much moaning and groaning I felled three trees of equal girth and length and bound them together with liana vines. We needed a sail. We had a pile of animal skins that would make great mattresses, blankets and sails but no masts. I chopped down a couple of palm trees. Then I chopped holes in the middle of the raft trees to house the masts. We were ready to launch. My hands were raw.

“Bring as many of those animal skins as you can,” I said to Jessica.

“Okay! What about food?” she answered.

“We’re going on a fish and seaweed diet, love.”

***

We stood in the entrance to the cave and watched the rain beating down relentlessly. That went on for a few days. We saw the water rising over the low ground. Then we watched the water spreading into the cave and it was time to set sail.

The boat was a disaster, as I had foreseen. We fell off the boat. We fell over each other. We couldn’t get the fire going to warm up the small amounts of food we had brought. We couldn’t get comfortable and we managed only short naps of sleep. Bad tempers, headaches, hunger pains, dry mouths and short growls at each other were the order of the day.

Soon the bodies came. First small animals. Then larger. Then huge. All dead. They were followed by the humans. Fat, thin, long, short, pink, brown, black and yellow. Then came the sea predators, alive and happy to be in their own element and lining up for free meals. Until we couldn’t look. We lay face down on the raft, and drifted wherever the waves took us. Every bump meant we’d hit another body. We stopped eating. Who could eat fish that came out of that polluted water? We lost count of the days. The nights were slightly better because we couldn’t see the faces of the dead. 

One night there was a major bump. Inspection by feeling around in the dark water, revealed a rock. Then we were being carried along by breakers, a change from the swells of the ocean. Finally, we ground along on sand until we stopped. A beach!

Forty days and forty nights had passed and we had survived.

***

Jessica and I are both old now. We’ve been together for many, many years. We never talk about the time of the flood, but we never forget how lucky we were to have survived. We set up a new cave on a new land and proceeded to raise a family. They’ve all left now and we are alone again.

I never watch the rainstorms for signs of danger; I know that a flood like ours could never happen twice.

Noah? Never seen him since...