Chapter 11 - The Ship
It was a mean cold night. I was on one of the snow and ice-covered peaks of Mount Hermon. The moon was absent, but the stars shone madly from above and around me as if the top of the mountain had detached itself from it, flown up, and hung unimaginably high in the sky. I was wearing a linen tunic and a woolen robe with a girdle. Still, these hardly helped keep me warm, while my feet immediately began to freeze, tucked as they were in my old, worn sandals, and a great chill drew up from the ground on which I stood. 'Good thing there's no wind,' I thought, looking around me.
The sky was a familiar but seemingly shifted location, showing on the right a previously invisible group of constellations whose names I did not know. Trying to understand how I had ended up here, I noticed that the stars above me were just slightly brighter than those below me. Suddenly, I understood that all I saw around me was the reflection of stars in pitch-black water.
There was no bank to be seen, no light in the distance where water merged into the sky. But how had it come to pass that the entire mountain had been flooded solidly? Suspicion flashed, and I shuddered at the thought that I was witnessing another deluge. But how had I ended up on this mountaintop? Had Cherubim perhaps carried me to the top while sleeping? What would happen next? Where were my disciples? Would they have perished...? Sure, their school had some comfort in that they had perished like all kings and great thinkers, but I found it especially sad for Judas, who was better than us. If this was a flood, why did the water lie there motionless, like a smooth polished stone? After all, after the flood, everything would boil; there would be trees floating around, bodies of dead men and animals, and above that filthy universal hodgepodge would be God's voice: "The end of all creatures before I have come since the earth is filled with their evil deeds, and so I sweep them away from the face of the world, I bring in a great deluge of water to destroy all flesh in which is the spirit of life under the heavens. So, if everything has come to rest, much time must have passed after the flood... But then, why am I alive?
It was so quiet that I could only hear my breathing. After a while, I noticed that the stars reflected in the water began to move minimally.
I couldn't do anything. Not jump into the water. What good was that when the whole earth was flooded? I was witnessing an event so menacing and irresistible that the thrill of its solemnity and inscrutability dispelled the specter of fear.
Among the ice floes on the mountaintop, I could only hold my ground on an uneven surface two paces large. In front of me and to my left, the solid ground sloped perpendicularly toward the water for up to 50 cubits. I wrapped myself more tightly in my clothes and waited graciously.
It was as if time had solidified, as had the water all around. At the same time, the sun did not show itself because I could not think of it properly. I imagined in all its radiant fullness that the three Latin letters SOL instead of the familiar Jewish signs came to mind. I
wanted to decide what to do with them and how to strike the first spark from the letters. I felt it could be done, but it was also evident that the process would take an incredible amount of time; I had no desire to spend a few thousand years in this freezing darkness when I would see nothing but the handwriting of comets in the black sky. I had to find another way to get warm.
After all, when the sun appeared, I understood, the day would promptly separate from the night, as said in the Torah, after which the springs of the abysses would be covered, the waters would recede, the creeping vermin and fish would appear, according to their nature, and all kinds of animals in the greenery would grow up according to their nature...
But I had no other letters, and over the abyss all around hung darkness as before.
Hard to tell how long I waited, but suddenly, a yellow light appeared on the far left, which had changed into a group of lights fifteen minutes later. Soon, I understood jubilantly that a ship was approaching, lit with a great crowd of lights, the ark itself, on which the 600-year-old patriarch had gathered a few more specimens of everything that lived to preserve it. Now, all he had to do was save me.
As the ship sailed closer, I was increasingly struck by its enormous dimensions, much larger than all the most extensive measurements known from Scripture. I concluded that one of the copyists of the Torah had made a mistake and had given an incorrect number of cells for length and height. It was a genuinely gigantic ship, many times larger than the dimensions of a multi-deck naval vessel, as I had once seen in the port of Alexandria. And it was of a different, perfect, streamlined shape. It was only unclear how it sailed, so without windows or sails.
As it approached, a soft buzzing sound swelled and resembled the distant beat of the surf.
This ship was the epitome of life amidst the cold waters. It shone with hundreds of lights, while inside, it was, in all likelihood, nice and warm. They always held all kinds of wild animals and birds, along with Noah's large family, who could take me into his paternal arms at any moment.
When less than three stadia remained between the ship and my shabby island, agitation suddenly seized me. The ship sailed straight at me, and it was uncertain how I could get the beast to stop. I understood that Noah may not have seen the mountaintop, nor me thereon, because the Most High, preoccupied with other matters, had not announced obstacles in his path.
Trembling with cold and fear, I prepared myself for the end, knowing that upon her collision with me, the ship might go down and with it everything that lived. The boat approached faster and faster, and when its black, pointed nose was very close, I dropped to my knees and wrapped my hands around my head.
There was a groan and barely noticeable rocking of the mountain beneath me. A moment later, I realized I was alive and not drowning in the sea, and I opened my eyes. I was in my old place, but right in front of me, seven Latin letters were speeding forward, from left to right:
CINATIT
Then I saw that some pieces of ice had been repelled from the mountain and flew down with great clamor into the ship's interior onto the incomprehensible structure thereon. I understood that the boat had managed to make a turn and hit only the top of the mountain. In front of me, a great crowd of small, round, luminous windows flashed up, but I saw no animals, no people; I heard only a regular reverberation as if someone were striking a brass plate. Like a ghostly apparition, the shining ship sailed before me and quickly moved away.
On its back dock, which hung high above the water, were also small round windows with lines reflected in the dark waves.
Above the ship, clouds of smoke rose from tall round towers that contrasted the screen against the sky.
'Noah! Noah! Lamma savachtani? Why didn't you pick me up here? Damn you! Best you could all just cremate!' Exclaimed me in despair, understanding that it was useless to shout and not understand what was happening. Why had the top of the mountain rocked beneath me but had not collapsed beneath me? Why had no one seen me?
I check the ship. It left me with only seven letters, joining the three that made up the Latin word "sun.
The ship sailed some 10 to 15 stadia away and then stopped. It had turned, just like a brilliantly lit fortress from which smoke billowed up towers at a certain angle, and there were four of them. The ship had sailed too far away; I couldn't see what was happening on it, but I did feel joy at that moment, concluding that the wise Noah did think to return to the top of the lonely mountain in the middle of the sea and see if there wasn't someone on it. But another hour passed, and the ship was in place as before. I noticed that it was listing and that most of its lights had been extinguished. With its prow in the water, it went down even more and ... extinguished the last lights.
Confused, I understood that the ship had been damaged by contact with the mountain and had, therefore, gone to the bottom with all the animals and people. I even heard the cries of despair that resounded from there, reminiscent of the chirping of locusts.
A moment later, the stars extinguished from above and below, and it was again as if the ice floe that domiciled me was in the air. Still, now I had a whole dozen Latin letters. After some thought, I came up with the word SCINTILLA, which flashed momentarily and immediately fell apart again into its constituent parts.
I understood that the ship had sunk, that everyone was dead, and nothing was left of it. The full heaviness of the world rested on me, the only witness to this catastrophe. Shivering with cold, I gathered all my courage. I concluded that I would not perish because, after all, a new era was dawning, and I was the one who would have to create everything anew. No one else would. There were few means to that end, but they sufficed: solitude, cold, the solid ground of ice, darkness, and Latin letters.
