Cain Page 3

  Chapter 4

  And yet this harried man setting off, pursued by his own footsteps, this wretch, this fratricide, had more principles than most. Just ask his mother, who would often find him sitting on the damp ground in their vegetable patch, staring at a small, newly planted tree, waiting for it to grow. He was four or five years old and he wanted to see trees grow. Then she, apparently even more imaginative than her son, explained to him that trees are very shy and only grow when no one is looking at them, They're embarrassed, you see, she said to him one day. For a few moments, cain said nothing, but after some thought, replied, Then don't look at them, mama, they're not shy with me, they're used to me. Sensing what would happen next, his mother looked away, and immediately her son's voice rang out triumphantly, It grew, it grew, you see, I told you not to look. That night, when adam returned from work, eve, laughing, told him what had happened, and her husband replied, That boy will go far. And perhaps he would have done if the lord had not crossed his path. And yet, he has already gone quite far, although not in the sense that his father had meant. Dragging weary feet, he was now tramping through a desolate landscape without so much as a ruined shack in sight or any other sign of life, a terrifying wilderness made more menacing still by the blank sky and the threat of an imminent downpour. There was no shelter anywhere, apart from under one of the few trees, which, as he walked, were beginning to show their tops above the horizon. The branches, usually only sparsely covered with leaves, did not guarantee any protection worthy of the name. It was then, as the first drops fell, that cain realised that his tunic was stained with blood. He thought perhaps the rain would wash it away, but then thought better of it and tried to disguise the stain with earth, no one would ever suspect what lay beneath, especially since there was no shortage in such places of people with grubby, grimy tunics. It began to rain hard, and his tunic was soon soaked, and not a trace of blood was left, besides, if asked, he could always say it was lamb's blood. Yes, he said out loud, but abel was no lamb, he was my brother, and I killed him. At that precise moment, he forgot what he had said to the lord about them both being guilty of the murder, but his memory soon came to his aid, which is why he added, If it's true what they say, that the lord knows all and can do all, then he could have removed that jaw-bone and then I wouldn't have killed abel and we could be standing together at the door of our house watching the rain, and abel would agree that the lord had been quite wrong not to accept the only things I had to offer in sacrifice, the seeds and the ears of wheat born of my hard work and the sweat of my brow, and he would still be alive and we would be the same firm friends we always were. Crying over spilt milk is not as pointless as people say, it is in a way instructive because it shows the true scale of the frivolity of certain human behaviour, because if milk is spilled, it's spilled and all you can do is clean it up, and if abel died a cruel death that's because someone took his life. Thinking while getting soaked to the skin is not the most comfortable thing in the world and that is perhaps why, from one moment to the next, the rain stopped, so that cain could think at his leisure and freely follow the course of his thoughts until he found out where they would lead him. Neither he nor we will ever know, for the sudden appearance, out of nowhere, of a dilapidated hut distracted him from his ponderings and from his griefs. There were signs that the land behind the house had once been worked, the inhabitants had clearly long ago abandoned it, although perhaps not so very long ago if we bear in mind the intrinsic fragility, the precarious cohesion of the materials used to build such humble dwellings, which require constant repairs if they are not to collapse in a single season. With no careful hand to watch over it, such a house will have little chance of withstanding the corrosive effect of the elements, especially the drenching rain and the rough winds that rasp away at it like sandpaper. Some of the interior walls had crumbled, most of the roof had fallen in, and all that remained was a relatively sheltered corner where the exhausted traveller could collapse. He could barely stand, not just because of the distance he had walked, but also because hunger was beginning to bite. Evening was coming on, soon it would be night. I'm going to stay here, said cain out loud, as was his custom whenever he needed to calm himself, even though he was not under threat from anyone just then, indeed, it was unlikely that even the lord himself knew where he was. It isn't particularly cold, but his wet tunic, clinging to his skin, is making him shiver. He reckons that by taking it off he would kill two birds with one stone, firstly, because then he would stop feeling cold and, secondly, because the tunic, being made of fairly thin fabric, would soon dry. And so he took off the tunic and immediately felt better. True, it didn't seem quite right to be sitting there as naked as the day he was born, but he was alone, there were no witnesses, no one who could touch him. This thought provoked another shiver, although not of the same sort, not of the kind he had felt from contact with his wet tunic, but a kind of tremor in the genital region, a slight stiffening that quickly went away, as if ashamed of itself. Cain knew what this was, but, despite his youth, either paid it little heed or else feared that more evil than good would come of it. He curled up in his corner, knees to chest, and fell asleep. The cold of dawn woke him. He reached out to touch the tunic, noticed that it was still a little damp, but decided to put it on anyway and let it dry on his body. He had had no dreams or nightmares, he had slept as one imagines a stone must sleep, without consciousness, without responsibility, without guilt, however, his first words when he woke were, I killed my brother. In a different age, he might perhaps have wept, he might perhaps have despaired, he might perhaps have beaten his chest or his head, but things being what they are, with the world so recently begun, we still lack many of the words with which we can begin to try and say who we are and cannot always find those that will best explain it, and so he contented himself with repeating what he had said until the words ceased to mean anything and were just a series of incoherent sounds, meaningless babblings. He realised then that he had, in fact, had a dream, well, not a dream exactly, but an image of himself returning home and finding his brother standing in the doorway, waiting for him. That is how he will remember him for the rest of his life, as if he had made peace with his crime and had no further need for his feelings of remorse.

  He left the hut and took a deep breath of cold air. The sun had not yet risen, but the sky was lit with delicate colours, enough for the arid, monotonous landscape before him to appear transfigured in that early morning light, a kind of garden of eden with no prohibitions. Cain had no reason to set off in any particular direction, but he instinctively sought the footsteps he had left behind him before he had departed from his route to investigate the hut where he had spent the night. It was simple enough, he just had to walk towards the sun, which would soon be appearing above the horizon. Apparently soothed by those hours of sleep, his stomach had moderated its pangs and would, with luck, remain in the same quiet mood because there was no hope of finding any food soon, and although it's true that he did come across the occasional fig tree, there was never any fruit, it not being the season. With a remnant of energy he didn't even know he had, he set off once more. The sun came up, it won't rain today, and it might even be hot. It wasn't long before he began to feel tired again. He had to find something to eat, if not, he would die in that desert and, within a matter of days, be nothing but a skeleton, because the carnivorous birds or the occasional pack of wild dogs that had not as yet appeared would make short work of him. It was written, however, that cain's life would not end there, mainly because it would not have been worth the lord's while to have spent so much time cursing him only to leave him to die in that wasteland. The news came from below, from his weary feet, which had taken a while to realise that the ground they were walking on had changed, there was now no vegetation, no scrub or thistles to hinder his steps, in short, cain, without knowing how or when, had found a path. The poor wanderer was thrilled because it is a well- known fact that a road, path or track will lead sooner or later, nearer or farther, to an
inhabited place where it might be possible to find work, a roof and a crust of bread to assuage his hunger. Encouraged by this sudden discovery, and, as they say, putting a good face on a bad business, he dredged up some energy from nowhere and quickened his pace, expecting at any moment to see a house, signs of life, a man mounted on a donkey or a woman carrying a pitcher on her head. He still had to walk a long way though. The old man who finally appeared was on foot and leading two sheep along on a rope. Cain greeted him as warmly as his vocabulary allowed, but the man did not reciprocate. What's that mark on your forehead, he asked. Taken by surprise, cain asked in turn, What mark, That one, said the man, raising his hand to his own head, It's a birthmark, replied cain, You're obviously not a good man, Who told you, how do you know, answered cain unwisely, As the old saying goes, the devil marks those he finds fault with, Oh, I'm no better or worse than anyone else, I'm just looking for work, said cain, trying to lead the conversation in the direction that best suited him, There's no shortage of work around here, what can you do, asked the old man, I'm a farmer, We've got enough farmers, you won't find any of that kind of work, besides, you're on your own, no family, No, I lost mine, How, I just lost them, that's all, In that case, I'll leave you, I don't like the look of you or that mark on your forehead. He was about to move off when cain stopped him, Don't go, at least tell me the name of this place, They call it the land of nod, And what does nod mean, It means the land of fugitives or wanderers, and seeing as how you're here, tell me, what are you fleeing from and why are you a wanderer, Look, I'm not going to tell my life story to someone I happen to meet on the road, a man leading two sheep along by a rope, besides, I don't know you, I owe you no particular respect and am under no obligation to answer your questions, We'll meet again, Who knows, I might not find work here and have to move on, If you can make adobe bricks and build a wall, this is the place for you, Where should I go, then, asked cain, Take the next road on the right, at the bottom is a square, and there you'll find your answer, Goodbye, old man, Goodbye, and may you never be old yourself, What do you mean by that, That the mark on your forehead is no birthmark, that you didn't put it there yourself, and that nothing you have told me is true,

  Perhaps my truth is your lie, Perhaps, but doubt is the privilege of those who have lived a long time, that's why you couldn't persuade me to accept as truths what seemed to me more like falsehoods, Who are you, asked cain, Careful, lad, if you ask me who I am, you'll be acknowledging my right to ask you who you are, Nothing will force me to tell you that, You're about to enter this city, you're going to stay here, sooner or later everything will be known, Only if there's no other way and certainly not from my lips, At least tell me your name, My name is abel, said cain.

  While the false abel is walking towards the square where, according to the old man, his destiny awaits him, let us attend to the extremely pertinent observation made by a few of our more vigilant and attentive readers, who consider that the dialogue we have just set down would be historically and culturally impossible, that a farmer with little and now no land and an old man with no apparent means of support would never think or speak like that. They are quite right, of course, however, it's not so much a question of them having or not having the ideas and the necessary vocabulary to express those ideas, but of our own capacity to accept, even if only out of simple human empathy and intellectual generosity, that a peasant from the very earliest times and an old man leading two sheep along by a piece of rope, with only a limited knowledge and a language that is still only taking its first tentative steps, were driven by the need to try out ways of expressing premonitions and intuitions apparently beyond their reach. Obviously, they didn't say those actual words, but the doubts, suspicions, perplexities, argumentative advances and retreats were nevertheless there. All we did was put into a modern idiom the twofold and, for us, insoluble mystery of the language and thought of the time. If the result is coherent now, it would have been then, given that we're all of us muleteers travelling down the same road. All of us, both the learned and the ignorant.

  There is the square. Calling this place a city was something of an exaggeration. A few higgledy-piggledly earth-built houses, a few children playing some game or other, a few adults moving about like sleepwalkers, a few donkeys that seem to go wherever they wish and not where they're supposed to, no city worthy of the name would recognise itself in the primitive scene before us now, there are no cars or buses, no road signs, no traffic lights, no underpasses, no billboards on the frontages or the roofs of houses, in a word, no modernity, no modern life. They'll get there though, progress, as it will come to be known later on, is inevitable, as inevitable as death. And as life. At the far end of the square, a building is under construction, a kind of rustic two-storey palace, although nothing to compare with the likes of mafra or versailles or buckingham palace, on which dozens of bricklayers and their assistants are labouring, the latter carrying adobe bricks on their backs, the former laying them out in regular lines. Cain knows nothing about building work, advanced or otherwise, but his destiny is waiting for him here, however bitter it may turn out to be, but that's something you only know when it's too late to change and you have no option but to confront it. Like a man. Doing his best to disguise his nervousness and the hunger that was making his legs tremble, he went over to the building site. At first, the workmen, who didn't know him, assumed he was one of those idle individuals who, throughout the ages, have enjoyed watching other people work, but they were quick to realise that he was simply another victim of the crisis, a poor man in search of work and salvation. Almost without cain having to say why he was there, they directed him to the overseer in charge, Talk to him, they said. Cain did as they advised, climbed up to the observer's perch and, after exchanging the usual greetings, explained that he was looking for work. The overseer asked, What can you do, and cain answered, I'm a farmer by trade, but I imagine you could always use an extra pair of hands, Not a pair of hands, no, given that you know nothing about laying bricks, but a pair of feet perhaps, Feet, asked cain, uncomprehending, Yes, a pair of feet to tread the mud, Ah, Wait here, I'll talk to the clerk of works. He was already walking away when he turned his head to ask, What's your name, Abel, answered cain. The overseer was not gone long, You can start work right away, I'll take you to the treading pit, How much will I earn, asked cain, The treaders all earn the same, Yes, but how much, That's not my business, besides, if you want my advice, don't ask, they don't like it, first you have to show what you're worth, in fact, don't ask anything, just wait until they pay you, Well, if you think that's wisest, I'll do as you say, but it doesn't seem fair, It's best not to be impatient here, Who does the city belong to, what's their name, asked cain, What, the name of the city or its owner, Both, The city doesn't yet have a name, some call it one thing and others another, but this area is known as the land of nod, Yes, an old man I met when I arrived told me, Was he an old man leading two sheep by a piece of rope, asked the overseer, Yes, He turns up now and then, but he doesn't live around here, And the owner, who's that, The owner is a woman, and her name is lilith, Doesn't she have a husband, asked cain, Well, I've heard tell his name is noah, but she's in charge of the flock, said the overseer, and then announced, Here's the treading pit. A group of men with their tunics tied in a knot above their knees were trudging round and round on a thick layer of mud, straw and sand, determinedly trampling it down, in the absence of any machine, to make it as homogeneous as possible. It wasn't a job that required much knowledge, just a pair of good, solid legs, and, if possible, a full stomach, which, as we know, was not the case with cain. The overseer said, In you go and just do what the others do, Look, I haven't eaten for three days, and I'm afraid my strength might give out and I'd end up in the mud, said cain, Come with me, But I haven't any money, You can pay later, come with me. They went over to a kind of kiosk on one side of the square, where they sold food. Not wishing to overload the story with unnecessary historical detail, we will not describe the modest menu, whose i
ngredients, at least in some cases, we would be unable to identify. The food seemed tasty enough, though, and cain tucked into it with a will. Then the overseer asked, What's that mark on your forehead, it doesn't look natural, It may not look natural, but it is, I was born with it, It's as if someone had put it there, That's what the old man with the two sheep said as well, but he was wrong, as are you, If you say so, Yes, I do and I'll repeat it as often as I have to, but I would prefer to be left in peace, after all, if, instead of this mark, I was lame, you wouldn't keep pointing it out to me, You're right, I won't bother you again, You're not bothering me, indeed, I should thank you for all your help, for the job, for this food, which is rapidly setting body and soul to rights, and perhaps for one thing more, What's that, Somewhere to sleep, Oh, that's easy enough, I can get you a mat and there's an inn over there, I'll talk to the owner, You really are a good samaritan, said cain, A samaritan, asked the overseer, intrigued, what's that, You know, I'm not sure, the word just came out, I don't know what it means either, You obviously have more things in your head than one would think to look at you, You mean this filthy tunic, Don't worry, I'll give you a clean one of mine, you can use the one you're wearing to work in, From what I know of the world, there can't be many good men in it and yet I've been lucky enough to meet one of them, Have you finished, asked the overseer somewhat abruptly, as if he disliked compliments, Yes, I can't eat another mouthful, I don't remember ever having eaten so much, Now, to work. They returned to the palace, this time walking past the section that had been built before the wing that was currently under construction, and there, on a balcony, they saw a woman dressed in what must have been the height of fashion at the time, and that woman, who, even from a distance, seemed very beautiful, was staring at them, as if she were looking straight through them, Who's that, asked cain, That's lilith, the owner of the palace and the city, just pray she doesn't take a fancy to you, Why, asked cain, There are stories going around, What stories, People say she's a witch and that she can drive a man crazy with her spells, What spells, asked cain, Don't ask, but I've seen a few men after they've had carnal commerce with her, And, They looked terrible, the poor wretches, like spectres, like ghosts of the men they were, You must be mad imagining a treader of mud ending up in bed with the queen of the city, You mean owner, Queen or owner, it's all the same, You obviously don't know much about women, they're capable of anything, of the best and the worst, they're as likely to scorn a crown and go down to the river to wash their lover's tunic as they are to trample on everything and everyone in order to get to sit on a throne, Are you speaking from experience, asked cain, From observation, that's all, that's why I'm the overseer, But you must have some experience, Yes, some, but I'm a bird with a very short wingspan, the sort that flies low, Well, I've never even flown once, You've never known a woman, asked the overseer, No, You've plenty of time, you're still young. Ahead of them lay the treading pit. The men were more or less lined up from the centre to the edge and now and then changed places, those on the inside moving to the outside and those on the outside moving to the inside. The overseer and cain waited for them to turn round and draw alongside them. Then the overseer tapped cain on the shoulder and said, Enter.