Cain (13 page)

Cain has no idea
where he is, he can't tell if the donkey is
taking him along one of the many roads of the past or along
some narrow track in the future, or if, quite simply, he is
trotting through some new present that has not, as yet,
revealed itself. He looks at the parched earth, the thistles,
the sparse scrub scorched by the sun, but parched earth,
thistles and scrub are what one mainly sees in such barren
places. There's not a road in sight, from here you could go
anywhere or nowhere, as if the destinations were constantly
shifting or had decided to wait for a better occasion to show
themselves. The donkey is jogging steadily along, he seems
to know where he's going, as if he were following a trail,
or,
rather, a confusing coming and
going of tracks left by sandals,
hooves
or bare feet, that you have to study attentively if you
want to avoid finding yourself going backwards when you
thought you were heading straight for the north star. In the
past, cain has been a would-be farmer, as well as a treader
of clay, but he is now a diligent tracker, who, even at
moments
of uncertainty, tries not to lose
the thread of those who have
preceded
him, regardless of whether or not they ever found
a place where they could stop and say to themselves, I've
arrived. Cain
doubtless has very sharp eyes, but not so sharp
that he can recognise his own marks among the many other
tracks, the hollow left by his heel or the slightly scuffed
print
of his weary feet. Cain has passed
this way before. He will
realise
this when he suddenly spots the remains of the
ruined house where he once sheltered from the rain and
where he will not be able to shelter today because what
was left of the roof has fallen in, all one can see now are
fragments of crumbling wall, which, after another two or
three winters, will merge for ever with the earth from which
they rose, earth to earth, dust to dust. From now on, the
donkey will only go where he is told to, the days when he
was the sole guide on this journey are over, or perhaps not,
for left to his own devices, the memory of his former stable
might be strong enough to lead him to the city that he left,
who knows how many years before, carrying this man on
his back. As for cain, he, naturally, has not forgotten the
road
to the palace. When he enters the
palace, it will be in his
power
to change direction, to abandon the other presents
awaiting him, both previous and future, and return to that
familiar past for a day or two, possibly more, but not for
all
the remaining days of his life, for
he has not yet met his
fate,
as we will see. Cain lightly touches the donkey's flanks
with his heels, ahead lies the road that will lead him into
the city, and there he will have no option but to drink whatever
wine has been poured for him. Seen from close to, the
city appears not to have grown, the same squat houses
seemingly oppressed by their own weight, the same adobe
bricks, only the palace rises above the dark mass of the
older buildings, and, inevitably, in accordance with the
rules
of this story, just around the
corner stands the same old
man
at the entrance to the square, leading the same sheep
tethered by the same rope. Where have you been, have you
come back to stay, he asked cain, And what about you,
retorted cain, you're still here, are you, still not dead, As
long
as these sheep are alive, I will be
too, I must have been born
to
tend them and stop them eating the rope that tethers
them, There are worse fates, You mean your own, Maybe
I'll tell you about that on another occasion, right now, I'm
in a hurry, Is someone expecting you, asked the old man,
That I don't know, Well, I'll just wait here to see if you
leave
or stay, Wish me luck, To do that I
would need to know
what
is best for you, Even I don't know that, You're aware
that lilith had a child, aren't you, asked the old man, Of
course, she was pregnant when I left, Yes, well, she has a
son, Goodbye, Goodbye. With no need to be told, the donkey
headed for the palace gate, where he stopped. Cain slid down
from the saddle, handed the reins to a slave who came to
greet him and asked, Is anyone in the palace, Yes, my
mistress
is here, Go and tell her she has a
visitor, Abel, your name
is
abel, murmured the slave, I remember you well, Off you
go, then. The slave went up the steps and returned shortly
afterwards, accompanied by a boy of about nine or ten,
My son, thought cain. The slave beckoned cain to follow.
At the top of the steps stood lilith, as beautiful and voluptuous
as ever, I thought you would come today, that's why
I put on this dress, to please you, Who is the boy, His name
is enoch and he's your son. Cain went up the few steps that
separated him from lilith, grasped the hands she held out
to him and, in an instant, was holding her in his arms.
He heard her sigh, felt her whole body tremble, and when
lilith said, You came back, he could say only, Yes, I came
back. At a signal from her, the slave led the boy away,
leaving
them alone. Come with me, she said.
They went into the
antechamber,
and cain noticed that the guard's bed and
bench
that had been assigned to him ten years before were
still there, How did you know I would come back today
when I arrived here quite by chance, Never ask me how I
know what I say I know because I won't be able to answer,
but this morning, when I woke up, I said out loud, He will
come back today, I said it so that you would hear, and it
was true, here you are, but I won't ask you for how long,
No, after all, I've only just arrived, it's hardly the time
to
speak of leaving, Why did you come
back, That's a long
story,
too long to be told here, between rooms, Come and
tell it to me in bed, then. They went into the bedroom,
where nothing appeared to have changed, as if, during that
long absence, cain's memory had been carefully modifying
his recollections, one by one, so as not to feel surprised
now.
Lilith began to get undressed, and
time seemed not to have
passed
for her at all. It was then that cain asked, What about
noah, He died, she said, and her voice did not tremble nor
did she look away, Did you kill him, asked cain, No,
responded lilith, I promised you that I wouldn't, he died a
natural death, Better so, said cain, The city is called enoch
too, lilith remarked, Like my son, Yes, And who chose the
name, Which name, The city's, Noah, And why did he name
the city after a son that was not his, He never told me and
I never asked, answered lilith, lying down. And when did noah
die, asked cain, Three years ago, So for seven years, in the
eyes of everyone, he was enoch's father, People pretended
that was the case, but everyone here knew that you were the
real father, although it's true that, over time, only the
older
people remembered, but be that as
it may, noah could not
have
treated him better if he had been his own son, That
doesn't sound like the man I knew, it's as if he were two
people, No one is just one person, you, for example, are
both cain and abel, And you, Oh, I am all women, and all
their names are mine, said lilith, and now, be quick, come
and give me news of your body, In ten years, I have known
no other woman, said cain, as he lay down, And I have
known no other man, said lilith, smiling mischievously, Is
that true, No, there have been a few other men in this bed,
but not many because, frankly, I couldn't stand them, I felt
like slitting their throats when they ejaculated, Thank you
for your honesty, To you I will never lie, said lilith and
put
her arms around him.

With their
spirits soothed and their bodies amply
compensated
for that long separation, the moment arrived
to put the past in order. Lilith had asked, Why did you come
back, but he had already said that he didn't know how he
had got there, and so she modified the question, What have
you been doing all these years, and cain replied, I saw
things
that haven't yet happened, Do you
mean you saw into the
future,
No, I was there, No one can be in the future, Then
don't let's call it the future, let's call it another present
or
other presents, You've lost me,
Yes, I found it hard to understand at first too, but then I realised that if I
was there, and
I
really was, I must be in the present, a present, and what
had been the future had ceased to be the future, tomorrow
was now, No one's going to believe that, And I have no
intention of telling anyone else, Your problem is that you
have no proof, some object brought back from that other
present, It wasn't just one present, but several, Give me an
example. Then cain told lilith about the man called abraham
whom the lord had commanded to sacrifice his own son,
then about a great tower built by men who hoped to reach
the sky and how the lord had razed it to the ground with
a hurricane, then about the city where the men preferred
to go to bed with other men and about the punishment of
fire and brimstone that the lord caused to fall on them, with
no thought for the children, who didn't even know what
they might wish for in the future, and then about the vast
throng of people at the foot of a mountain called sinai and
the making of a golden calf, which those people worshipped
and were slain for doing so, about the city that dared to
kill
thirty-six soldiers belonging to an
army known as the
israelites
and whose population was wiped out down to the
last child, and about another city, called jericho, whose
walls
were demolished by the blast from
some trumpets made of
rams'
horns and then how everything inside it was destroyed,
men and women, young and old, even oxen, sheep and asses.
That is what I saw, concluded cain, and many more things
for which I have no words, Do you really think that what
you saw will happen in the future, asked lilith, Contrary to
popular belief, the future is already written, it's just that
we
don't know how to read the page
it's written on, said cain,
wondering
to himself where he had found such a revolutionary idea, And why do you think
you were chosen to
have
that experience, Well, I'm not sure I was chosen, but I
have learned one thing, What's that, That our god, the
creator
of heaven and earth, is completely
mad, Do you dare to call
the
lord god mad, Only a madman unaware of what he was
doing would admit to being directly responsible for the
deaths of hundreds of thousands of people and then behave
as if nothing had happened, unless, of course, it's not a
case
of real, authentic madness, but
evil pure and simple, God
could
never be evil, if he was, he wouldn't be god, evil is
what the devil is for, It can't be right for a god to order a
father to kill his own son and burn him on a pyre simply
as a test of faith, not even the wickedest of devils would
order someone to do that, You've changed, you're not the
same man who slept in this bed before, said lilith, You would
not be the same woman if you had seen what I saw, the
children of sodom burned to a cinder by the fires of heaven,
Where's sodom, That's the city where the men preferred
men to women, And was that why everyone was killed,
Everyone, not a soul escaped, there were no survivors, Even
the women whom those men spurned, lilith asked again,
Even them, That's how it is with women, if the rain doesn't
get you, the wind will, Anyway, the innocent are now accustomed
to paying for the sinners, The lord seems to have a
very strange idea of justice, Yes, the idea of someone who
hasn't the slightest notion of what human justice might be,