Читать книгу Fallen - David Maine - Страница 13

36 the mistake

When they wake the goats are gone.

It is Zoru who finds the tethers bundled at the boy’s feet. The child, barely five years old, sleeps the sleep of the innocent, but his mother stares at the boy in a haze of uncertainty, as if knowing that she must act swiftly, or these may be the last innocent moments of his life.

Cain watches as she twists the rawhide in her fingers. Her breathing is quick and nervous and she gazes about her like a fluttery squirrel, but Cain has gone to piss behind a screen of hemlocks. As the urine streams out, fury floods in to take its place. Cain voids himself and watches his wife and can almost hear her think: What to do?

Before she can decide, he is there like a vision. Like a swarm, like rage.—Where are they? he hisses.

Zoru glances as if baffled.—Where are what?

The palm of his hand spins her to the ground. Long moments pass before her face rearranges itself into pain. Black spots drip into the brown earth, spreading like spilt wine. There is something satisfying in this. A tormenting voice in his mind keens, More! More!

Had his father heard such howling?

—Vex me not, growls Cain. His hands tremble. Part of him wants to vomit in rage and fear. He has not felt this way for a long time.

Zoru blinks away saltwater and raises her head to see her husband looming over her child. The look on her face suggests that Cain has ceased to be human. In his hand he hefts a gray stone. Zoru screams.

•

Cain stands with the stone in his hand. It is a good stone, smoothened by wind and rain till its warm soft curves fit his palm like the skull of a small animal. It feels like a friend. It feels like the stiffest erection in history and something perfectly suited for the job at hand: to pulp the head of a child lying helpless on the ground. It has no sharp edges or brittle corners, nothing to cut flesh, draw blood, make a mess. It will simply stave in the skull of the five-year-old and crush the brain beneath to a useless tangle of sponge. Cain knows perfectly well what the stone will do and how to use it for maximum effect. After all, he has done this before.

Zoru screams.

It is a scream to wake the dead: in this case it wakes Henoch, who responds not by screaming in answer or jumping up to flee or diving into his mother’s arms. His response is to lie as still as a lizard on a rock and stare up at his father with almond-shaped eyes the size of hen’s eggs. Moss green those eyes are, like his uncle’s. His dead Uncle Abel whom he’s never met.

Perhaps his reaction saves his life. Run from the hunter and the hunter will chase. But lie still—

Cain stares down at the child, his son. Not his brother: his son. The boy gazes up like some small furry creature. Cain feels the battle swirling within his arms and heart and mind. The battle between the desire for blood and the desire for calm. Calm would make him feel better later. Blood would make him feel better now. He can almost hear voices beside him whispering, screeching, debating in measured tones. The boy needs to be punished, says one.

It was a simple mistake, says another. Have you never made one?

This mistake stands to kill us all.

He’s just a boy.

He’ll not get much older if we all starve to death.

Don’t be dramatic. There’s plenty to hunt, and fruit besides.

Nonetheless he needs to learn.

Exactly! To learn, not to die.

Cain’s arms tremble. Something is burrowing through his bicep, some worm or centipede, that causes it to twitch. He flexes his arm, raising the stone alongside his chin, and Zoru shrieks: Don’t!

—Oh hush, woman.

—Father, whispers the boy.

—It’s all right, Cain mutters.

—Father, the boy repeats.—You’re not going to kill me, are you?

—Of course not.

Shame crashes across him then like surf, like a cataract or waterfall, but not cleansing. Just the opposite—dirtying, like a bath of sputum. He wonders, What is wrong with me? What do I lack? What normal family feeling, what sympathetic connection to others has been left out of my frame? First my brother. Is it someday to be my son as well?

From the past his father roars You are an abomination . . .

Memories of the wolf-faced boy flicker beside him as well:—So in a way it’s as if you killed him too.

Cain shudders back to the present and forces a smile—never his best skill—that leaves his face looking sepulchral. Through exposed teeth he grits, I could never hurt you. How could you suggest such a thing?

—You have a rock.

He looks down. He does not even remember picking it up. The stone rests in his hand with undeniable ease, a slightly embarrassing friend: an acquaintance from younger, more impetuous days, one who has witnessed such things as would cause scandal if unearthed now.

—This? It’s . . . nothing.

The stone thuds into the earth a few paces behind him. For a moment the tableau remains, the three of them watching each other. Cain feels rinsed out and empty, like the skin of an animal that has had all its entrails removed.

He wonders how the hell he has gotten to such a pass.

From far off echoes the inquisitive bleating of a goat.

•

They spend the morning fruitlessly tracking the animals. It’s no use: they have gotten too much of a head start. At midday the family finishes the last of the flatbread and Cain says, No point wasting more time.

—You intend on journeying further? asks Zoru.

—I do.

—Where?

—East.

She sighs thinly.

The boy wanders off to the woods to relieve himself. Cain takes the opportunity to say quietly but urgently, Listen. I know I lost my temper this morning. Maybe I was wrong, but you need to understand—those goats may prove vital.

—Or they may not, she says.

He nods at the possibility.—The point is, I was upset and I may have scared the boy. Perhaps I even scared you. But there was never any danger of anything happening.

She listens without comment.

—Do you understand what I’m saying?

A long silence then as she mulls his words. There are often such pauses between them. Always Cain is reminded of the first such: a silence filled with the creaking of cicadas and frogs from the nighttime darkness.

At length she looks at him and shrugs.

He says thickly, I want to be sure you understand.

Instead of answering him she says, You say we’re moving on. Why? We’ve seen neither habitations nor caravans for months. Haven’t we traveled far enough?

—No, he answers.

He says nothing more, wondering if she’ll pursue this, or if she’ll address his earlier point. Sometimes she does; sometimes not. The boy returns from the woods and regards them both with the expression of a cat that has woken up suddenly.

Zoru asks, What exactly are we looking for?

It is a habit of hers, this saying we instead of you. Cain considers for a time before admitting, I don’t understand your question.

—How will we know when we’ve gone far enough? That we can stop?

Now it is Cain’s turn to gaze around him.—I will know when I get there.

—That’s not much of an answer.

There is a challenge in her voice. Perhaps she thinks it is safe to provoke him while he is still shamed from this morning’s violence. And perhaps she is right. Zoru is an observant woman, Cain knows. She rarely pushes him to display his anger: this morning, when he struck her, was a rare exception. At such moments he is his father’s son all over again—his brother’s brother—and none too proud of it.

—It’s all the answer I’ve got, he mutters, and stands to load up the donkey once again.