Читать книгу Fallen - David Maine - Страница 16

33 the years previous

Thereupon follow Cain’s long years of exile.

In a way, the entire rest of his life is an exile, but these first years are the most difficult. Later he will meet Zoru and beget Henoch and plan the city that will bear his son’s name. And although those years will not be without trial, they will not lack joy as well. Fleeting as a firefly’s burst in the night, but real all the same.

These first years, though, there is no joy at all. Why should there be?

That might be the worst part of all: that he himself cannot argue with his fate. He is a murderer, a fratricide. The blood is still wet and warm on his flesh. He trembles when he thinks of the moment, the stone in his hand, his brother half turning to him, mouth open as if about to speak.

Cain carries that picture before him always. He sees his brother’s face in stone outcroppings, in the dust of the trail, in a cloud. Always the living image, the bland joyous righteous infuriating face. Never the dead face, half-collapsed, unrecognizable, attracting ants and crows where it lies jumbled and broken at the bottom of a ravine.

Cain’s own face burns with the mark. He avoids pools of standing water, troughs and rain barrels and still ponds. There is nothing he wants to behold less than the sign of God upon him.

•

He walks east, encountering few people at first. In this still-new world there are few enough people to encounter. The world is raw and freshly scrubbed, barely adolescent and very nearly empty. As he wanders, his meetings with strangers are rare and pass without incident. The odd solitary shepherd, a pair of young girls bathing in a stream. The occasional caravan or goatherd. On two occasions he spies people having sex. Everyone he meets is young. This is something he will remember, later, when he himself is aged and aching: in his youth, there were no old people. Nobody is older than his parents, themselves barely into middle age.

For some months he wanders through rolling grassland that gives way to low mountains, then more grassland. The weather cools. He is reduced to hunting small rodents and scavenging their burrows for hoarded nuts. He has never been fat, but now weight melts off him and he becomes lean and stringy. Despite his trials, his eyesight grows acute and his arm steady: one morning he fells a gazelle with his spear and feasts on roasted flesh for five days. He is thankful for the cold then for preventing the carrion from turning foul.

After this, Cain becomes more confident in his ability to survive. He raids beehives at night, while the furry mass of insects is sluggish, and enjoys comb and honey for his efforts. He surprises nightjars roosting on the ground and snaps their necks, gobbles their eggs raw. He collects locusts and fries them in fat. Their legs snap as he chews, pieces dribbling from his lips as if still trying to leap free.

Once he encounters a boy leading a string of goats along a river.—Hello, he says.

The boy sees the mark upon him and bolts. Reluctantly, Cain takes the string of animals and continues on. The goats treat him like their trusted uncle and keep him alive through the winter.

By spring he has reached the edge of an enormous inland sea. He tastes the water: salt. Turning southeast, he follows the shoreline. Surviving is easier now that he can dig mussels and clams along the beach, pull crabs from tidepools and net fish in the shallows.

The summer sun bleaches his hair into spun gold. Salt and wind abrade his flesh to a freckled pink-brown. Still he sees no one. The sun burns in the sky like a fever. He walks on.

After a time the sea falls behind.

One day he realizes with a jolt that he is following a trail, a thread of worn earth winding among grassy hills. Has he inadvertently returned home? But no, he quickly decides this cannot be. It is impossible to determine whether the trail is worn by human feet or by animals, but he turns his steps to follow it. Late in the day he tops a rise and looks down upon a village.

His shock is considerable: Who are all these people? Who begot them?

There are a dozen huts in a straggling line, hand-formed bricks piled into uneven walls. Stone fences and animals pens and a dusty lane running through the middle of it all. Cain squints at the silent, scared faces peering at him from doorways and shutterless windows. By all rights they should be his family—nephews and nieces, if not brothers and sisters—but he sees no kinship here. They are small people, pale with black eyes, and though there is recognition in their faces, it is not the recognition of fellowship and welcome. It is the pinch-lipped recognition that says: Plague begone from our houses. Leave us be or we’ll chase you out. Keep walking if you know what’s good for you.

Cain ignores these unspoken commands. He is curious about these people, and it has been a long time since his last conversation. How long exactly? A year, two? Five? He cannot remember.

He says, Hello.

They do not answer. Some of the men hold staffs or rocks, but Cain knows he is safe with the mark upon him.

—What do you call this place? he asks.

Safe, but not welcome. They do not speak, except with their pinched mouths and frowning eyes.

—I have wandered a long time. A cup of water would be appreciated.

No, not welcome at all.

A stone hits the back of his head. He whirls about and sees empty huts. Another strikes him from behind and he whirls again. The stones are not large enough to do damage, nor are they hurled with any great force; but they are unpleasant. They are intended to harry, not kill him.

Suddenly he is engulfed in a hailstorm of fist-size stones. The villagers no longer bother to conceal themselves: perhaps their numbers give them courage. Children and women join in the attack. Cain holds up his hands but it is useless: a sharp-edged missile slices his brow, another momentarily stuns him and the world turns black. When his vision clears he finds himself running, staggering in uneven steps across stony ground. He continues long after he has left the village and its cold welcome behind.

•

It happens again at the next village he approaches, some months later, and the next. After that he treads warily around human habitations, like a wild dog or a serpent. Flinching at every chance encounter, and holding himself ready to flee.

This goes on for years.

•

It is during this time that a singular thing occurs.

Cain is in the mountains, where he has fled to escape the hatred of people he does not know. He lives on cactus fruit and less water than he is used to, with the effect that his bowels are compacted and uncomfortable. One morning he is squatting between two rocks, trying to void himself as best he can, when behind him a voice says, Do not turn around, brother. It is I.

Cain’s guts clench. He knows the voice but says anyway, Who?

—Your brother.

He begins to straighten up but the voice arrests him.—If you try to look I’ll go.

Cain halts, his back to the voice.—I thought you died. I thought I—killed you.

—You did.

A pause then, silence filled only with the chatter of jackdaws and the wind’s sibilant hiss. Cain forces himself to speak with a jauntiness he does not feel.—So then? You’ve come back to haunt me?

—I’ve come back to ask you a question.

—Then you must let me ask one of you.

—Maybe, murmurs Abel.

Cain snorts.—I suppose you’ll ask why I did it?

—I don’t care about that, Abel tells him in a dismissive tone.—Some things are bound to happen sooner or later, and I guess that was one of them. This is more important: What do you know about our brother Seth?

—I know of no brother Seth.

—He’s just recently born.

—There you go then. I have not been home for years. There is little chance that I shall go in the future, so I’ll continue to know nothing of this Seth or any other new fledglings in Father’s brood.

—Too bad. I’d hoped . . . I’ve heard that Mother bore him . . .

—Yes?

Abel’s hesitant voice is filled with wonder.—That she bore him to replace me.

Cain laughs aloud: it is the sweetest joke he has heard in some time.—Is that such a surprise? Lose a hut to fire, build another one. Lose a goat to the fox, breed another one. Lose a child to some horrible crime, conceive another one.

He wonders if Abel is thinking the same as he: And if you lose a brother?

But instead Abel admits, I hadn’t thought I’d be so easily replaced.

A kind of grim satisfaction fills Cain at this.—I imagine it would be a shock. Precious little you can do about it now though.

Abel’s voice grows breathy, as if the breeze is filling it up.—I suppose not.

—Unless you go and, and—haunt them. Like you’re doing to me.

—I think I’ll spare them that.

A thought occurs to Cain then.—What about that girl you were so keen on?

—Girl?

—The one you were planning to marry. Have you ever gone to see her? Aren’t you curious?

—Ah . . . no. I’ll leave her in peace, I think. It was just a misunderstanding between us. Farewell, brother.

—Wait! I get to ask a question of you!

—You just did . . .

Cain jolts around but there is nothing besides gravel and mountains and spindly scrub bushes. Nonetheless he cries out, Do you forgive me? Abel! Do you forgive me?

The echoes come back to him: Forgive me? Give me? Give me!

•

The vision or visitation or whatever it is preoccupies him for many days. He descends from the mountains where he has sought isolation, and for a time he pays no heed to the stones and curses hurled at him by the farmers and villagers on his path. But it is only a matter of time before his brother’s presence fades from his memory, and the immediate reality of bearing all humanity’s loathing becomes once more his daily preoccupation.

Despite this, he can’t help wishing he’d called out a bit sooner: Do you forgive me? Any answer at all—yes no it doesn’t matter—would have been better than silence. Would have helped Cain come to terms with where he finds himself. Which is, he is beginning to realize, nowhere at all. Regardless of where he wanders he is still, always, nowhere.