Strange Pulp 6: The Flood

Welcome to the sixth issue of Strange Pulp! If you’ve missed any of the prior weirdness, find our archives here.

Today I’m proud to introduce a story by Yardenne Greenspan, an author and Hebrew translator whose fiction is, quite simply, enchanting. You can follow her on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, and I strongly recommend that you read her latest essay on LitHub, about when translation work becomes triggering. And if you enjoy this story, well, why not tell your pals?

Read Issue 6 In PDF / ePub

Content Warning

Approximate Reading Time: 12 Minutes

Winter came early to the Judean desert, cold and dry, coloring the sky a waterlogged purple. The color stirred something in Abe, and he dug his fingers deeper into Naya’s coat, the coarse brown fuzz giving way under its film of dust and inviting him to touch the velvety skin beneath it. Naya groaned from deep in her throat, one perpetually sad eye wandering to find his face, the lashes as thick as blades of grass during a good weather year.

Behind him, Abe heard a rumble. He dropped his hand from the animal’s back and turned. All around the village of Naomi and for miles, mountains stabbed through the ground and into the sky, purple wounds bleeding into heaven. All day long, a cold sun had shone, and Abe had been expecting the frozen wind to come in at night, blowing through the village and sending children scurrying indoors. But now he thought he saw a heavy, dark cloud creeping on the horizon; moving heavy, almost human shaped.

That stirring in his abdomen again–Abe had seen this before. His breath caught in his throat and sent him whipping his head back to face Naya. He needed the sensation of her long, pointy ears on his hands to bring him back to earth. But Naya was gone.

Abe looked around. Where could she have possibly disappeared to? They were standing in the clearing among the mountains, having just returned from a stroll to the water. He never even heard the sweet shuffle of her hoofs against the dirt. Before he could begin to decipher the situation, his eyes were already filled with tears, his shoulders trembling, his fingers itching with the need for the impossibly soft inside of her ears.

A week later, Sol, who was named for a man he’d only ever heard of at suppers around a fire, walked his father’s sheep home through the low brush. His herd had just stepped onto the long road leading to his family’s hut, and he felt the beginnings of the frozen night wind raise the hairs on his arms. He was wondering, not for the first time, how the wind broke through the shield of eviscerating mountains to invade Naomi, resting on a small flatland of clay among them, thirty families, all Menashe tribe, residing in mud huts lining three long dirt roads that ended in nothing.

Sol walked with his eyes closed, letting the clopping of sheep hoofs lead the way. But his eyes tore open when the cry came from Song Pond. The voice rang clear over the plains, struck the mountains and came back, superimposing itself, multiplying to become the call of an entire tribe.

“My jennies! Gone!”

By the time Sol arrived home, he was shivering. He’d had to walk old man Mose home, half-carrying the man as he sobbed like a child over the loss of his female donkeys, the birdlike bones of his shoulder blades quivering under Sol’s hand, no wings.

Sol’s mother, Rachel, who had heard the cries, was pacing the hut, pausing at the hearth to stir a spicy goat stew, then resuming her fretting.

“What was it this time?” she asked, hands wringing the fabric of her dress, when Sol stepped inside.

Sol hurried to shut the door against the angry wind and plopped down by the hearth, letting his nostrils fill with smoke. “Old man Mose was taking a little rest by Song Pond while his jennies drank,” he said, losing his breath by the end of the sentence. He paused, rubbed the scar on his eyebrow, and took an inhale. “When he awoke his entire herd was gone. His dog just sat there, staring at him.”

Losing one donkey, as had happened to Abe, was simple enough, but Mose’s herd had twelve of them, and they were fiercely loyal. Usually, when things were stolen, fingers were pointed in the direction of the Binyamin tribe, residing in the nearby village of Rivka. But this time, as she screwed a trembling fist into the mud wall, Sol’s mother muttered the dirtiest word a woman might say in the Land of Israel.

“Sinners,” she said.

The word had it all. Sinners were more than criminals, they were cold-hearted and deranged, they spawned wrath wherever they left their mark, and they quickened the dreaded floods.

“Who is, Mama?” Sol asked, getting up to stir the stew.

“We are,” she huffed. “We must be. Why else would this be happening?” She wiped her brow.

“You don’t think they were stolen?”

His mother’s mouth sliced into a broken smile. “Even the stealthiest thief can’t make things simply vanish.” She tried to stitch up the smile, but it refused to mend. “Don’t say anything to your father when he gets home, I imagine he’s already livid.”

Sol plopped down on the rug. He rested his head in the palm of one hand and his elbow on his knee, the forefinger of the other hand doodling invisible symbols on the rug, the position he so often assumed as a child when there was nothing to do but wait. He felt his mother’s eyes burning holes through him, and he knew just what she was thinking. Any reference to his childhood always conjured up for her the memory of the village’s last sinful transgression, when she’d almost lost him.

Then, too, all they had to do was look to the jennies to know what was coming. Five years of the most intense drought Naomi had seen in generations had led the despairing tribe to take on a leader, a man claiming to be the messiah. He was a man of Binyamin who went by the name of Kodesh, and Sol could still recall the way his thick eyebrows danced madly over his eyes when he spotted Sol, then only a four-year-old boy, in the crowd. The man’s black eyes bugged and blazed at him, leading Sol to clutch his heart the way he’d seen his grandfather do moments before his death.

“This boy,” Kodesh told his new followers, then let his eyes wander to the darkening horizon, his thought lost to the clouds.

The people of Naomi turned to face Sol, who buried his face in his mother’s dress. From the safety of the dusty fabric, he envisioned their eyes attempting to penetrate him the way Kodesh’s had. He crushed the dress in his palms, moistening it with his panic.

A mournful cry sliced through the air, causing the crowd to turn away from Sol and Sol to detach from his makeshift womb. Behind them, the jennies had begun to bray with the terror of the hunted.

Abe rushed through the crowd to take hold of Naya, his jenny, then still young and agile, who was stomping the ground and thrashing her head, raising clouds of red dust.

“Go help him,” Rachel whispered to Sol.

Sol dutifully ran to the man under the safety of the crowd’s distraction and got a hold of Naya from the other side. But the jenny kept bucking and braying, turning her back on her owner and staring Sol down. He didn’t like the way she was watching him, that soft brown gaze that usually felt warm, maternal.

“Pull her to you,” Abe groaned, fighting to control the jenny. “Take her by the shoulders and pull.”

But Sol couldn’t bear to be face-to-face with Naya. He took a step to the right and she turned her head after him. He stepped to the left and she adjusted her angle accordingly, growing more and more agitated. Finally, Abe held her by the sides of her body and tried to move her away from the other jennies, in the direction of home. Naya squealed as she was being pulled away from Sol, and rose on her hind legs with a mournful bray, her front hooves kicking the air.

Sol stood below her, mesmerized.

“Move, son!” Abe cried.

But before Sol could so much as twitch, Naya came down, her hoof grazing him right above the right eyebrow on her way to the ground.

The next day, the flood came. A false messiah, the villagers lamented. They’d allowed themselves to be led astray, and now they were made to pay. It lasted a week, and when it left it took with it their homes, their blankets, and their place of worship. With the waters receded and the damage assessed, the people of Naomi set about atoning to god. It took several years for the village to become a bleak reflection of its past comfort. None of the villagers ever smiled as warmly or worked as proudly after that. Kodesh was nowhere to be found.

The memory made the scar itch, and Sol quickly straightened his back so as not to bring his mother any painful recollections, and began to rub the too-smooth patch of skin, agitating it rash-red.

The stew sizzled on the fire, the sheep settled down in their pen, and a low rumble sounded from the far edge of the road.

“Papa,” Sol whispered.

Sam, Sol’s father, cried his way through the village, beating his chest and pulling on his thinning white hair. “War!” he cried. “Famine! This is what we are bringing onto ourselves. Flood!” His wails floated on the cold air. “Flood!”

When he finally stepped into the hut he was a sick man. His family wrapped him in warm, rough blankets and sat him gently down by the fire. Sol spoon-fed him the stew.

“I never thought I’d live to see this again,” Sam groaned through an aching throat. “Such transgressions. Not since Eden.”

“But Papa, why the jennies?” Sol asked. “We’ve been good, haven’t we? We’ve been working so hard.”

Sam looked at him with empty eyes. “It’s not about the animals, son. It’s about the people. It’s about estrangement. It’s what happens when you cannot recognize your own face.” The old man turned to the window, where dark clouds gathered on the horizon like a dome over the Dead Sea. “Sodom is right out there,” Sam said, pointing weakly toward the water. “And now we have brought it in here.”

There was nothing to do but wait. Sam sat very still in his spot by the fire, but whenever Sol thought he’d dozed off, the man sighed. His wife put all the food and spices away in a burlap sack, wincing with the futile attempt at preservation. Sol stood at the window, picking at the scar that ran across his eyebrow.

As the sky darkened, the rain began falling. Sol turned to his mother and nodded. He went to the chest in the corner of the room and pulled out every rag he could find and used them to stuff the cracks between floor beams and in the walls. The chest itself would be used to block the window, eventually. When he ran out of rags he began using his own clothes, stripping down to his undergarments. Finally, he pulled out his Sabbath dress and used it to seal the smoke hatch. At this, his father shook his head mournfully. He closed his eyes. “It’s coming,” he mumbled. “Maim rabim.”

The waters began rolling down the mountains in a thunderous heap of gray. Outside, the sheep bleated. Jackals howled with grief from their burrows.

When the floods reached Naomi, there began an incessant knocking on the hut’s door. The first was a neighbor, Ye’ela, whose roof was leaking, and whose fear had pushed her through the soaking streets and to the door of her neighbors. “Sol!” she called as she entered, though it was Rachel who had opened the door. She huddled under the covers with the rest of the family, trying to ignore the bleating of the sheep that had to be let in for safety and were now crowding the kitchen.

Then Mose, who floated on the water all the way down the dirt road, knocked softly, pleadingly, to be let in.

“Was your hut not secure?” Sol’s mother asked as she wiped the man’s wrinkled cheeks dry. “Why did you come all the way down here? You could have died.”

Mose widened his eyes, baffled, and gestured with his chin toward Sol. “I—” he began, then fell silent. He waited like a punished child, and when Sol beckoned him to come huddle where it was warm, he almost galloped over. He ran an imploring finger over Sol’s scar, his eyes welling up. Sol smiled reassuringly, wishing for the man to avert his gaze, which, finally, he did.

Others followed, coming from all over Naomi, risking their lives to sit together in the cold hut, the fire quenched for lack of ventilation, a bit of water letting in each time the door opened to welcome one more refugee, one more believer. When asked why they had come, all they could do was gawk. They reported the situation on the street: at first it was only cold puddles, then quagmires hip-deep. By the time the last of the tribe entered the small hut, there were twigs tangled in her hair. Outside, they heard the panicked bellowing and crowing of abandoned livestock, ones that had not been secured inside before their owners began their pilgrimage to Sam and Rachel’s hut, others that had been late to return from pasture that day, and were left behind. Now they wailed and howled until there was nothing but the rush of water. All discussion of the cause of the flood—what possible sins were lurking amongst their tribe, inspiring the ire of God—came to a hush.

Inside, an odd pattern was emerging: at first a circle of people had been formed—for people, when left to their own devices, will more often than not form a circle. But the circle kept moving, pulled by a private gravity northward, to where Sol was sitting with his knees folded to his chest. The hut was filled to capacity, and there was little room for maneuvering. Nobody stood up to change places, nobody scooted along the floor, but somehow the seating arrangement kept shifting, until finally Sol was the center of the circle, and everyone else was vying for a spot by his side. They touched him, trying to get at least one part of themselves—an elbow, a toe, a strand of hair—to push against him. He was like a pillar of fire for their fears, a cure-all of warm blood in the chill.

Sol sat quietly, sensing the growing heat around him, the attention ganging up; even the sheep stared his way, their eyes a question. The need to bury his face in his mother’s dress once more was almost too much to bear. But he was grown now, a young man. All he could do was try to evade their eyes. It wasn’t love. It wasn’t what they were giving, it was what they were asking for, what they were trying to take, another piece of him to chew on, to last them the night. He’d never been wanted so much, demanded so much. The image of Kodesh seeing through him flashed in his mind whenever he closed his eyes. His scar throbbed. The hut thumped with thunder; his head grew blurry. He needed air, but could not leave his circle of followers. He needed water, and there was so much of it, so close. He closed his eyes and listened to it roaring, trying to forget the bodies around him.

The breathing mass became one being, alternately dozing off and stirring, limbs twitching. Sam sighed through the night, and Rachel, who sent her hand through the crowd to touch his forehead, whispered to no one in particular that he had a fever. At dawn their collective heat subsided and the people began shivering. The chattering of teeth caught a beat and glided on it, rushing to its crescendo, coming to a halt only when a muffled sound came at the door.

They hushed, listening for it. The sound came again. Not a knock—and who was left to knock?—not a voice—who still had one?—but a presence nonetheless, someone or something asking to be let in. From her perch within the circle, Rachel stood up with effort, her knees creaking from the night of sitting. She made her careful way through the crowd on tiptoe, trying not to step on hands and feet, trying to remind her body how to walk. At the door, she paused. The rush of water had abated, but it was likely still very wet out there. She looked to her husband, who nodded, mesmerized.

Rachel opened the door. The streets were quiet, the water gone. All the missing jennies were there. Thirteen in all. They stood in formation outside the door, braying softly, their moist eyes widening at the sight of humans. Rachel stepped back, and Naya, who had been standing in front, advanced into the house. She paused in the doorway, trembling with cold. She fixed her eyes on Sol and brayed mournfully.

Breaths were held. All eyes were on him. The scar began to bleed. Sol put his head in his hands.

About Yardenne Greenspan

Yardenne Greenspan is a writer and Hebrew translator born in Tel Aviv and based in New York. Her translations have been published by Restless Books, St. Martin’s Press, Akashic, Syracuse University, New Vessel Press, Amazon Crossing, and Farrar, Straus & Giroux. Her translation of The Memory Monster by Yishai Sarid was a 2020 New York Times Notable Book. Yardenne’s writing and translations have appeared in The New Yorker, Haaretz, Guernica, Literary Hub, Blunderbuss, Apogee, The Massachusetts Review, Asymptote, and Words Without Borders, among other publications. She has an MFA from Columbia University and is a regular contributor to Ploughshares.