Читать книгу Fallen - David Maine - Страница 14

35 the proposal

The woman is neither young nor old, neither tall nor short, pretty nor plain. She is, however, slim. And brown, from both the sun and God’s design. Her unruly black curls, threaded with silver, fight to escape the kerchief that struggles to restrain them. Her hands are as shiny as wood and probably just as hard.

Cain sees her fetching water from a well some distance outside a small village. He does not know the name of the village or whether it has a name. Years of wandering have curbed his curiosity about human habitations; he cares only whether they can provide him with basic commodities like food and whether they will treat him with open hostility or with sullen, subdued fear.

There are no other responses. Except one, which he struggles to forget: a narrow boy’s wolflike features, hunkered eagerly over the fire, eyes glittering into Cain’s.—If it wasn’t for you, he’d still be alive right now.

Cain pushes the memory away, hard. Forces himself to focus on the woman.

She is bent over the low stone wall ringing the well, showing her hindquarters off to good effect. Her hips are ample and circular and Cain likes this. Cain has never had much experience with women but when he sets eyes on her generous backside he is filled with un-apologetic lust.

He approaches her and asks for water. She looks at him, sees the mark upon him and looks again. Then she gives him the urn.

He drinks while she watches him. He wipes his mouth and says, You know who I am.

—I know your reputation.

—Then you know I am a dangerous man.

—I know you were said to be such once.

The reply gives him pause, and to conceal this he drinks again although he is no longer thirsty. By the time he finishes he has decided what to say next.

—So you know I am shunned by man and God alike.

With a wry smile she takes the urn from his hands.—Be thankful then that I am neither.

He is quite speechless. As she makes her way along the footpath back to the village, he stands and stares after her. It is possible that his mouth actually hangs open. It has been many years since any woman has chosen to have a civil conversation with him. Perhaps it is this, more than the curling black hair (with a few silver threads) or the generous haunches (round like cushions) that smites him. Or perhaps it is all of these things together, like a circle of palms rising out of the desert heat, wavering on the horizon: a promise of what could be.

•

He follows the woman into the village. People see him and conversations limp away like cripples. Men stand in the fields, sticks and scythes in their hands, and follow him with their eyes. Children cease their games. Women clutch sucklings a little closer. Crows and vultures seem unconcerned, but then, crows and vultures always do.

The woman ducks into a hut at the far edge of the village. Even by local standards it is modest. Walls sag like old ideas, holes gape in the roofing. The bricks are no more than cast-offs, broken pieces that would be discarded by anyone with a choice.

Cain waylays a scared-looking youngster and demands, Who lives there?

Snot dribbles from the urchin’s nose. He wipes it reflexively, recasting the dribble as a shiny smear.—Zoru and her father. He’s blind.

—And the mother?

—Dead.

Cain considers. The boy looks ready to bolt but is perhaps too afraid. Cain asks, This Zoru is unmarried?

—She’s a charity case, the boy answers promptly.—People give her food out of sympathy. No man would have her.

Cain spits at the boy’s feet and growls, What exactly would you know about having women?

The boy, scared again, backs away.

—You can go, Cain tells him, and he runs off.

Outside the hut he clears his throat but nothing happens. He does so again. Behind him he hears a rustle. Cain has the impression that if he looked over his shoulder he’d spot a dozen pairs of eyes boring into him.

Instead he says, Hello?

A voice floats out to him. Her voice.—Who’s there?

—The man you’re not afraid of.

There are shuffling sounds, sounds of things being set aside, bodies realigned.—What do you want?

This brings Cain up short. What does he want? The answer to that is both simple and very complicated. To sit down somewhere without worrying that he will soon have to run off again. To talk to people who do not shun him. To smell the air exhaled by a woman. To eat the food she hands him and see the flutter of her hands as she talks. To go home.

These are difficult things to explain. Cain turns away.—I should not have disturbed you.

He has taken three slow steps when she appears before him, more disheveled than ever. Brick dust limns her hair like a holy image.—That’s the second time today you’ve presumed to know my thoughts and been wrong about it.

He has no words.

She rests hands on hips and drills her eyes into his. Several teeth are gone and the rest are yellow; something small is groping through her hair. He finds her unspeakably lovely. She says, I wasn’t afraid of you by the well and I’m not disturbed by you now.

He casts about.—I am glad to hear it.

—You seem to think you have great power over me, she teases.

At this he nearly weeps.—It’s not a power that I want, but—some sort of influence causes men to react. Perhaps it is this mark I carry.

She frowns.—The mark doesn’t help.

Then she smiles and reaches for his hair with a thin, veined hand.—Or maybe it’s this. Where on earth did you get such a color?

From inside the hut, a ragged voice:—Zoru, who are you chattering on with?

—A stranger, Father. A man from far away.

—Well then, invite him to eat with us.

Cain can scarcely credit the words, but the woman is already gesturing to the hut.—Come.

—But this—Cain indicates the mark.

—He is blind, the woman laughs. Then suddenly, whispering in his ear.—He can’t fear what he doesn’t see.

•

The hovel is wretched, managing to be stifling and drafty at the same time. The hard ground batters his backside like a wrestler, and the food Zoru stirs over the cookfire smells distinctly burnt. Cain settles contentedly, savoring the sensation of belonging somewhere.

The old man lies huddled on a mat. Thin as a leaf, wiry white hair pooling greasily around his neck. He makes up for his blindness with a quick wit and a mocking smile, along with preternaturally sharp senses of hearing, smell, and touch. Fondling Cain’s garment he declares, Linen from the west if I’m not mistaken.

—You are not.

Fingers probe Cain’s timeworn sandals, rubbing grit between fingertips.—Come from across the desert, have you?

—Some months ago, yes.

—From your accent, you’ve traveled a great distance, further than either the desert or the linen. Or so I would guess.

—You guess correctly. I’ve wandered for many years, Cain acknowledges. Then he blurts: —So much so that I’m unsure where home even lies.

The old man nods, furrows creasing his brow like dry riverbeds. Leaning close he commands, Say something.

For no reason Cain can fathom he states, I have done terrible things.

The old man sniffs Cain’s breath, then sits back.—It’s been some time since you’ve eaten your fill.

Cain laughs aloud.—That’s true for most anyone I can think of.

—As is your remark about terrible things.

He leans back against the bony brick wall.—Oh, I don’t know about that.

The woman Zoru has been watching throughout, stirring a stewlike mash that bubbles over a smoky fire.—Shall we eat?

•

He stays. He tries to reclaim the stony patch of ground in back of the hut that has lain fallow since plague carried off Zoru’s brothers, but he has not been much of a farmer for years now, and he knows that any attempt to plant crops is doomed beforetime. He has been told this after all. So he turns his attention to straightening the kinks in the hut’s walls, filling the holes and constructing a new roof. He has a gift for this type of work—it reminds him of his previous exile, before this current one—and it comes easily to him. When he is done the hut feels twice as large as before, snug without being stuffy, airy without being cold.

Not that he spends much time there. Zoru is an unmarried woman, and the old man, blind or not, is her father. Cain takes his meals outside except in the most merciless of storms, and sleeps under a lean-to of gazelle hides. After years of wandering, even this feels like luxury.

The other men in the village get used to him. They still keep their distance, but they don’t stare so much. They remark his work on the hut and nod thoughtfully. When he helps with the harvest he gets a portion, and when Oldag’s barn collapses, it is Cain who directs the reconstruction. For this he is gifted a half dozen hens and a rooster. One evening lightning torches an absent neighbor’s field and Zoru and Cain single-handedly contain the blaze, saving the man’s crop. The next morning a pair of goats stand tethered by the hut’s entry-way, bleating like damned souls.

After the harvest Zoru’s father grows suddenly weak. Day by day he wastes away, thinning like a forest in autumn: where once grew leaves, now only branches show. The real wonder is that the old man is not dead long since.

One night he calls Cain inside the hut.

—I must speak to you both, he says.

Cain squats and hears Zoru shuffle closer. A low cover of haze has clotted out the sky, so they speak in darkness.

—Are you there?

—We’re here, Zoru says.

—Attend me you two, the old man murmurs.—You both are suited to each other. The girl is past her youth and doesn’t have much childbearing left. But you, boy. Are you there?

—Yes, says Cain.

—You have some great sadness about you. I don’t know where it comes from or what form it takes but you must pass through it and leave it behind.

—Some things are simpler to say than to do.

—True. But do it you must, or you’ll be eaten away like a corpse.

—It won’t be easy.

—Do it anyway. For my daughter’s sake. For your wife.

No one says anything. Outside, cicadas and frogs throw a chorus up at the sky, as if begging the moon to show her face.

—So then, murmurs the old man.—Will you accept her?

Cain clears his throat. He has often thought of this moment and is ready for it.—So I will, if she’ll have me.

—And you, daughter?

Cicadas and frogs. Frogs and cicadas.

—Zoru? Daughter?

Her voice is calm, a filament in the darkness like a spider depending from the ceiling.—Yes, Father, so I will.

—So it’s settled. Splendid. Now I can die peacefully.

—You’re going nowhere, Father.

—You’ve never spoken truer. Son, bring your sleeping mat in alongside your wife’s. Starting tomorrow you’ll have this home to yourselves.

The old man was right. In the morning he lay deflated and still on the ground, as cold and gray and dead as a fish.

•

Cain will wonder about that hesitation for a long time. When the old man had asked And you, daughter? and there sang that prolonged chorus of cicadas and frogs in lieu of her quick, breathy agreement.

•

The village grows. Families trickle in from the west, light-skinned and dark, large-familied and small. They bring with them strange accents or headgear, new tools, unfamiliar crops, startling ideas. Some, it is rumored, come from across the sea or south of the desert. Cain cannot imagine what all these people are doing here. When he was a child, he and his brother and his parents had been everybody in the world.

One thing all the new arrivals share: an aversion to Cain. When they see the mark upon him they point, they stare, their jaws flap soundlessly, like mute senseless creatures. Season after season, it grates on him.

Worse than that, it makes him restless. He says to Zoru, I need to leave soon.

She nods. She’s seen the signs.—Where will we go?

—East.

The expression on her face suggests that she is struggling to align this idea with the expectations she had been holding for her future, and is finding the fit less than perfect.—How far?

His hand flutters.—Far enough to get away from them. Till we come to a place where I am unknown and can live in peace.

She nods as if this is reasonable. Cain suspects she thinks otherwise. Zoru is no child, and her husband’s fame has spread far past the horizon. They both know that searching for a place where Cain is unknown is likely to prove a fool’s errand.

—Maybe we can delay our departure till spring, she says.

His eyes cloud over.—But it’s only late summer now. Why delay? We’ll go right after the harvest, while we still have plenty of supplies to take with us.

—The journey will be far more difficult for me in a few months’ time, she says.

—And why is that?

She smiles coyly and pats her belly.—Guess.