CHAPTER TWO

 

And Lamech said unto his wives,

Adah and Zillah,

Hear my voice; ye wives of Lamech,

hearken unto my speech:

for I have slain a man to my wounding,

and a young man to my hurt

 

If Cain shall be avenged sevenfold,

truly Lamech seventy and sevenfold.

 

     Adah, having no understanding of space inside forever, and another life, beheld the grieving countenance of Lamech, and cried, “If you killed man who not try kill you, how, husband, Lamech, you be made dead seventy and sevenfold times? Can you enter again and again in women’s belly seventy with sevenfold times? Curse be man’s curse of Gods Enoch back-time spoke. Not husband, Lamech! Not husband.”

 

YEAR 2444 BC

 

—THE, CONTINENT

 

CENTURIES HAD ELAPSED, but a day came finally when sin filled the Earth.

 

The earth also was corrupt before God,

 and the earth was filled with violence

 

And God looked upon the earth,

and, behold, it was corrupt;

for all flesh had corrupted his way

 upon the earth

 

     Commanded of God, Noah and his three sons built an ark, and Noah and his three sons, having complete dominion over them, filled the ark with a grand selection of naive and hitherto un-hunted beasts and fowl and every creeping thing of the land, which yet bejeweled land, trees, and skies harmoniously, for the LORD had not yet confounded all the language of all the Earth.

 

 

THE DAY THE LANDLOCKED SHIP WAS FINISHED, the sky above the whole Earth began separating itself from the dew in the sky: the sky above the whole face of God’s blue and green Earth. The mist above the whole Earth began to gather itself into the skies, strengthening into vast armies of swollen and gigantic clouds of lightning-embellished fury—“Fire of Gods of Noah!”

 

     The Spirit of the Lord moved, and the giant, surging overcast enshrined the yet-to-be-divided land: to drown and to kill and to thoroughly cleanse out the depraved infections that were utterly corrupting the Earth, through the violence, through the sins, and through the vileness, which had filled the Earth aggressively, demeaning the magnificent heavens above the Earth, besides.

 

And in the second month,

the seventeenth day of the month,

the same day were all the fountains

of the great deep broken up,

and the windows of heaven were opened

 

     The Spirit of the Lord turned, the Great Deep, the opened windows of heaven expanded the firmament round about the Earth, transmuting their natures into additional imposing and raging clouds of storm and, by this, the deep skies became stretched and all but boundless.

 

 

THE HARVEST

 

THE SINNERS IN THIS WORLD were submerged: baptized into watery graves, as the ambient shadows spawned in the darkening skies above fled from every torturously drowning soul; and the eagles had nowhere to gather together, but upon the floating, for the feast of the many carcasses.

 

 

NOW, a wearisome year had passed in the new Earth, the beasts of old left wandering the land (often entire herds) had long since floated to where oceanic tides, streams, and currents would carry and deposit them: drowned corpses entrapped here and there in unfathomable depths of chaotic beaches and wave-shaped dunes of mire edging wetlands, and disappearing into far deep-sea horizons yet overwhelming the earth.

 

 

The excess waters had dried from off the Earth, leaving only four weary men and four weary women in the aftermath: Noah, his three sons (and all their wives), who, having encountered only a fraction of the initiate, sprinkling rain, were saved alive by the hand of God, from the rampaging inundation of the world.

 

 

YEAR 2408 BC

 

—THE, CONTINENT

 

NOAH’S THREE SONS had wives: a wife for his firstborn son: Shem (Renown); a wife for his second: Ham (tawny-skinned): the father of Canaan;

 

Unto Shem also,

the father of all the children of Eber,

the brother of Japheth the elder,

even to him were children born;

 

and a wife for his third son: Japheth the Great (Fair): father of Magog, who founded the land of Gog; and the sons of Noah did likewise beget themselves sons.

 

     Noah’s past neighbors had perished, submerged violently into the flood God brought, but he now dwelled in righteousness, and was at peace with his family and with the land; and, for his uninterrupted serenity, Noah thanked the absolute Gods.

 

 

IN THOSE EARLY YEARS OF TIME, the children worked, as children work; and the children played, and they played rough. Occasionally, however, they would turn suddenly from their untiring frolicking and scamper like rabbits-in-the-chase, from the fields and into the camp, screeching with unbounded glee, “Abba...! Abba…Abba!”

 

     Their fathers, Shem, Ham, and Japheth would swiftly exit their tents of interwoven thatch and massive dehydrated hides, run for their sons and swoop them up in dashing pursuit. Tossing the boys high into the sweet and unsullied air of those ancient days, each father would catch his boy as he fell squealing back into powerful, waiting arms.

 

     Often, Shem would kneel to the Earth, and study the spirited eyes of his sons, “Hear my voice, you children of Shem: Day see your face, you no call me Abba; you call me Father. That day, be you men.”

 

     Immediately, the three children would elate, “Father,” and press innocently, “Now, Abba, we men…?”

 

 

BREAKING FORTH into the freshly produced and now second generation of the world, a day at last came in which fertile vines were filled with the fattest of tender grapes, and Noah made wine. The wine was pure and pleasing to the taste; and, in the heat of a long summer’s day, Noah drank of the wine until drunk, fell naked to the hairy mats upon the broad, earthen floor of his tent; and Noah slept hard.

 

     Spying this awkward yet indelicate convenience, Ham, Noah’s tawny-skinned son (a gentle breeze beginning to rise and shuffle fallen leaves and fine dust) took foolish opportunity, allowing himself stealthily into Noah’s tent and espied Noah’s nakedness. A span of moments ensued, and Ham withdrew quietly from his father’s lodgings, beat an impulsive but resolute path directly to his  brothers, Shem and Japheth, and quipped about the underhanded affair. Now, a forceful wind began to scowl itself forebodingly within the perimeter of the small encampment.

 

     Startled by Ham’s very candid disclosure, Shem and Japheth sprinted to their father’s shelter, entered backwards, covered Noah’s nakedness with the skin of a hind (their faces were backward, and they saw not their father’s nakedness), and exited discreetly into the midst of the camp. A tainted and fearful confusion began to grow; and, for dread of the wrath of Noah, the women gasped and hid themselves flat on the earth, between and behind the foot of bordering grasses breezing next to a grouping of small trees by an edge of the surrounding field. The children were left running in a forsaken frenzy.

 

     Outside the great tent— “Father!” Shem cried. “Come you here! Quick…come you!”

 

     Noah arose with a vigorous start. Blinking the vague and the swirling from his sobering eyes, he flung the skin of the hind sullenly and suspiciously to a wall of the dwelling; and, wrapping himself agilely into a shaggy garment, hastened barefoot through the wind-sweeping flaps of his tent—peering in every direction, straining to detect the noisome matter.

 

     When Shem and Japheth told Noah the callous evil Ham had done unto him, a living shame began spreading itself as a huge, dirty rag over the entire encampment. His sons froze in fear at the outrage in the perplexing expressions surfacing fatefully upon the visage of Noah!

 

     Ham, feeling a sudden-though-slight pang of guilt, started to back furtively toward a field. Noah, crushing the grass beneath his oncoming feet, from his tent and through the light of the day, ever into the center of the camp, absorbed Ham’s sly move, and fastened a piercing gaze upon him. “Ham!” he yelled. “Get you back…! Get you me your four seed… Now! —Here!”

 

     Ham, his tawny-skinned son, hurried and gathered his four dark-complexioned boys—the oldest among them black as coal—and stood them before their Grandfather, Noah.

 

     The children’s teeth were clicking uncontrollably. In their fear, soiled knees were melting the tallness of their riders short, and hearts were pounding into tightening throats, as the boys beheld this latest terror unfold. They had not ever weathered a storm like this.

 

     Noah, very gradually receding from his fierce anger, walked before his terrified grandsons and in the order of their age placed his right hand on top of their head. As this apprehensive ritual commenced, peering judiciously into their scared, uneasy faces, Noah called each boy by his name:

 

     “Cush—Black…Ethiopia…”

 

     One step.

 

     “Mizraim—Nice…Egypt…”

 

     A sidestep.

 

     “Phut—Hunter…Bow…”

 

     Another step.

 

     “Canaan—Wanderer…Canaan….”

 

     Noah turned slowly, half disorientated, laboriously and, step by step, with his head bowed low, the whirling winds howling the hairs at the tops of his shoulders straight upward and over the top of his agonizing skull, began a deliberate pace back to the entrance of his wide, leathern tent.

 

     The women in their ever-growing uneasiness crawled forward the space of twelve full-grown sheep and were now half crouched, swaying silently with and peeking nervously through the thick, windswept grasses at the edge of the field. Noah’s sons and his grandsons stood spellbound as if gripped fast by the dry land beneath their naked feet. Following their father, with their eyes, in their fear flinched in shock at the sight of good Noah—turning—without warning—facing them with uncompromising eyes of ice—set into the sockets of a blood-fueled face!

 

     Spying a grin of contempt beginning to free itself in the corner of the mouth of Canaan—Ham’s youngest walnut-skinned son—Noah riveted a flinty glare into the unsure eyes staring out from the lad. “Cursed be Canaan...!” Noah shouted the distance. “A servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren. Blessed be the Lord God of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant. God shall enlarge Japheth, and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant.”

 

     The patriarch stood with an unwavering, intimidating stare, veered abruptly, and departed into his tent.

 

     Ham’s black son Cush, with Mizraim and Phut, making no sound whatsoever, slipped back and away from young Canaan, leaving him standing alone—confused and angry. Seizing the obvious accommodation from that explosive day forth, the children would chase after young Canaan relentlessly, demanding he do this for them and he do that for them, until they had wearied their new servant to grief.

 

 

OVER THE FOLLOWING YEARS, from the foothills of the Mountains of Ararat, the children of Shem: the firstborn of Noah, mingled throughout the West and the South. Ham and his son Mizraim settled the land of Egypt; and, from Egypt, Cush, the black son of Ham, migrated east and south and founded the land of Ethiopia: the seedbed of all Black Africa. Far west of the land of his father, Ham, Phut moved and settled his people. Ham’s son Canaan—who Noah had cursed long ago—ventured his growing caravan through the passing of seasons, finally establishing the plentiful land of Canaan, eventually called Palestine. Finding the land rich and bountiful of fruit meats, and honey of the bees of the Earth of blessing, Canaan’s seed prospered and multiplied mightily in their region. Finally, Japheth’s sons traveled, but not too distant, and settled throughout the isles of the gentiles—Gog: today called Turkey and Russia; and Magog was their chief prince.

 

These are the families of the sons of Noah,

after their generations, in their nations:

and by these were the nations divided

in the earth after the flood

 

———

 

And unto Eber were born two sons:

the name of one was Peleg;

for in his days was the earth divided

 

     And there were great earthquakes and great tribulation, the Earth reeling wildly through the heavens. And there were great tidal waves and great tribulation. And there were great tornadoes and great tribulation. And there were great landslides and great crevices opening in the Earth, many gnashing their teeth while tribes plummeted into the inner darkness, and there were great mourning and great gnashing of teeth, and more tribulation. And there were great divisions, breakaways of continents, and there were great tsunamis and great tribulation, in Peleg’s days, when the Earth was divided.

———

 

THE FIRST GENERATIONS OF MANKIND

 

        ADAM:   Man of the ground, in his low degree

        CAIN:    Possession

        ABEL:   Breath

        SETH:   Compensation

        ENOS:   Mortal

        CAINAN:   Obtained

        MAHALEEL:   God is splendor

        JARED:   Descending

        ENOCH:   Teacher

        METHUSELAH:   Man of the Missile

        LAMECH:   Wild man, overthrown

        NOAH:   Rest

 

THEIR PROPHECY

 

     Man of the ground, in his low degree, with his possession of breath, was compensated by a mortal who was obtained for the splendor of God.

 

     There shall descend a teacher in the day of The Man of the Missile: a wild man to be overthrown; and, thereafter, there shall be rest.

 

Then said he unto them,

Therefore every scribe

which is instructed unto the kingdom of heaven

Is like unto a man that is an householder,

which bringeth forth out of his treasure

things new and old

 

Matthew 13:52

 

———

 

 

CONTEMPORARY ERA

 

ONE OF THE CONTINENTS

 

JERUSALEM, ISRAEL

SEASON OF GIVING

 

TELEVISION PROGRAM INTERRUPTION

 

“AN ULTRA-DEVIATE, bisexual sex offender has escaped from the Levant Sanatorium in Jerusalem, where physicians were treating him for the neoteric virus LIDS, pending his forthcoming trial for murder.

 

     “Gala Olam, a Palestinian, was last reported seen near the Independence Garden area by Mamilla. His photograph will appear this evening on Channel Ten and in tomorrow’s newspapers.

 

     “This man is considered exceptionally dangerous and could be possessing a deadly weapon. Do not approach him. If you see him, report him to the nearest authorities.”

 

 

AT POLICE HEADQUARTERS, a young but burly officer came striding long-legged at a hurried gait down a hallway and into the ready-room. “Benjamin!” he exclaimed loudly. “You hear Olam’s escaped again? We better get him off the streets before he kills more. Olam could take the next Pervert of the Year Award—easily! Long as he’s unconfined, nobody’s safe.”

 

     The young officer’s patient and plainclothes superior turned good-naturedly from the ready-room bulletin board and hesitated a compassionate glance in a targeted direction.

 

     “Ah, you new men,” he humored with a grin. “If Olam were the only criminal in the world, nobody’d be safe. Millions of criminals wander the bricks, and nearly everybody feels safe. Strange, huh? On top of that, I guarantee if Olam thought he was the only criminal in the world, he wouldn’t feel too safe himself, and that’s what he’s thinking now, and that’s what’s going to get him into trouble.

 

     “These things’ll grow on you, Stanley. Have patience. Nuts like Olam couldn’t hide better if they had just made their second escape from hell. Besides, to my knowledge, he only terrorizes his own.” Benjamin aimed his attention back to the board. “Don’t let Gala bug you, Stan. Whenever he escapes, he goes and does his dirty deeds and, after a good drunken fling, staggers himself back to the Palestinian authorities. Give him a day or so, and I guarantee you, somebody’ll find him sneaking around in the Old City. Why waste the taxpayer’s money?”

 

     “Why waste the taxpayer’s money?” Stanley quizzed, a curtain of surprise now plunging down reddening cheeks. “You serious? This time he’s facing a murder charge. And if he did hide in the Old City, wrecking his own, as you say, Palestinians are people, too. They need protection. And from Scuttle, I’ve heard he’ll mess with his victims for days, or until they’re deader than a doornail. I mean give him a potato peeler, and throw him into a nursery—And hey, Benjamin, your own child! She, she could be anywhe—Oh…God,” big and repentant swallow, “I’m sorry, sir. I’m sorry I ever spoke those words. Please forgive me for ever opening my idiot, schmucky mouth.”

 

     Benjamin turned stoically, noiselessly crossed the room, opened a file cabinet, rustled through a group of tattered manila folders, and, in the midst of his scanning, without looking up— “My frail little buttercup, Tsaba? I know I haven’t spoken of her since her last heart operation, six months ago. She’s with her recovering friend, that Danish child, the Christian, Lucinda—Tsaba likes to call her her baby. If I didn’t happen to tell you, she was next to Tsaba in the cardiovascular ward. Lucinda is a very special person, to be sure. But don’t worry about them,” a wave of a carefree hand, a manila folder floated to a desk, reading glasses raised, a peek at the young officer, “I guarantee they’re with my wife. You’ll learn, Stanley. Olam will turn himself in after he’s finished doing his cousins. Hey, partner, you want to be an ace here?” Benjamin loosed a straight-lipped grin, “Quit your worrying, and start flowing with the time-tried tide.”

 

 

THREE LONG HOURS had become history, but only to humankind, since the television early news alert had spot-flashed Gala Olam. There was a shofar of ram’s horn, which had sounded timely and religiously and, in a classic business district in Old Jerusalem, where shops had just closed for Sabbath, there were two very young girls in pretty pink dresses, mere children almost the height of a field post, who began scampering themselves eagerly but delicately back to their home.

 

     They had treated a fleet of mesmerizing stages in the theater of their mind to a host of unusual curiosities harmonizing stylishly behind ornamented and beckoning windows veneering numerous boutiques of the area, and had ventured far past the prescribed limit set by their prudential parents and had not at all regarded the public clocks or the public sun teasing the Mediterranean and casting rooftop shadows portentously onto the streets below.

 

     “Tsaba!” Lucinda shrieked, and before taking their next breath, they found themselves snatched nearly out of their little shoes and dragged speedily into the cavernous recesses of a dark, narrow alley. Mangy rats scurried feverishly to avoid the oncoming scuffling.

 

     The children kicked and attempted to scream for help through mouths covered tightly by two fat, sweaty hands. Elfin-like eyes bulged with immeasurable horror, as the man, a hospital nametag yet pinned to the pocket of his hospital shirt, towed the children hurriedly, deep into a dead-end, doorless, and windowless stone corridor.

 

     “Utter a sound, I will kill you both,” the fat, hairy man oathed with a bloodcurdling sneer, throwing them hard toward the back wall. A cloak of darkness and a blur of bat wings were now descending ominously from the skies above the alley. Both little girls began shivering violently from extreme fear, trying desperately to restrain their trembling knees, and their trembling lips from their crying, their face fully petrified.

 

     The perspiring wild-man, neck-hairs bristling, his head and his upper-joints arched low and forward, glared nose-to-nose into their ashen and open-mouthed face. “Shut up, and do not be afraid,” from one nose to the other, “Do you know who I am? I am Gala Olam the Great. Not word or squeak, or I will smash you both against these walls until your blood has painted them all with your lives.”

 

     The children’s shoulders snapped upward, and their tiny hands sprang to their mouths in fear, as if showing the man compliance. Lucinda twisted her little torso forcibly, as if to explode a vomit, and unconsciously wet her pants.

 

     Aroused to a point far past the boundary of exaggerated lust, unshaven Gala stepped backwards, bloated his chest, and laughed sadistically; but after another evil glare, again navigated his hulking body slowly toward them. “Are your ugly Jew feet brave enough to run now?” he muttered in a hysterical growl, giggling through his putrid breath and split front teeth. “Plan to stay awhile….”

 

†