Eden River (7 page)

And now, every day, Cain visited the tomb of his brother; and every day he found his brother silent and the food untasted. And when the voice of his nightmare was justified, and the flesh fell into corruption, he gathered his wives and children about him and said: I am accurst of all living things because my brother will not wake. Therefore I shall cross the river in the boat that he made, and find another world beyond reach of the voice of his blood that mocks me, and in that other world there will perhaps be sleep even for me that struck him
down. If you go, said Zildah, we will come with you. Cain answered: I am curst, and you will be curst if you come with me. Earth and sky are my accusers, and the pleasures of love are an abomination. I don't want you, Zildah. I don't want you, Lanan. All I want is sleep, such sleep as Abel my brother has. But Larian took him by the hand, saying: We will come with you, Cain, and be curst with you. We will come with you, and comfort you, till death find us, all three.

The preparations for departure were quickly made. A supply of food was stowed into the boat, and this was taken across and unpacked on the other side. Then Cain came back for the women and their babies. Abel's boat was small; to entrust oneself to it was a hazardous adventure. One woman and one child was all that Cain dared to carry at a time; and it was with a curious pang of fear that Larian watched her sister go, leaving herself, Larian, on the lonely shore. What if Cain changed his mind, and, having got Zildah, decided that he would not trouble to come back to fetch Larian? In the old days such a thought could never have occurred to her, but Cain was now a different man from the man who had made her a woman twelve moons or more ago: different, incalculable, and in his changes of mood almost terrifying. There was nothing that he might not take it into his head to do. It was true she could swim across the river easily enough, but she could not swim with her baby, and the thought of leaving her baby behind gave her a pang even
sharper than the pang she suffered on her own account. Even while these thoughts chased through her mind, however, she saw Cain re-embark and begin paddling his boat back to her. She chid herself for having indulged such fears and for doing such an injustice to Cain, but her self-chiding was something less than sincere. Cain was anything but a comfortable companion nowadays; for no reason at all he would fly into a strange loud rage or shut himself up in a silence that was stranger still. But, in her pleasure and relief in seeing him cross the river to fetch her, Larian put such thoughts aside; and soon they were all five gathered in a group on the further side: the man, the two women, and the children. We have left the land of our father Adam, said Cain, and we shall never return. They set their faces towards Nod, which was a great forest; and after many days they settled in that forest, and made a clearing, and built a house. And this house that they built was the beginning of the city afterwards called the city of Enoch, after Zildah's firstborn.

Though on the surface much remained unchanged, the new life was profoundly different from the old. Cain had made the women fashion garments for themselves and for him, and no
sooner was he settled in his new home than he began to control their speech and behaviour in ways that seemed to them meaningless. Of certain things they must not speak; certain words must not be uttered; prayers were ordained, and ritual observances of a kind difficult to understand. He held it evil in a woman to raise both hands above the head or to stand with head uncovered in moonlight. Also he had bound the women to himself with vows. Zildah and Larian, he said, you must swear to me by the holy blood of Abel that these garments shall never be put off for any man but me. You are mine, and the children that you bring forth shall be mine. Larian did not believe that Abel cared whether or not they clothed themselves, and she hinted as much; but Cain shouted her down with dreadful words, and for fear and love of him she promised all he demanded. It had not escaped her notice that now, when he was moved with desire towards her, he eyed her with a kind of anger as though he were ashamed. This she put down to a sickness in him, and was distressed; but as time went on, and the sickness did not diminish, she became accustomed to his new demeanour and paid little attention to it. The Holy Blood of Abel was a phrase for ever on Cain's lips, and in Larian's
mind, side by side with her memory of the Abel she had known and loved with a love both comradely and passionate, there grew an image that was the reflection of Cain's idea of him: a stalking brooding sulky fury, now here, now there, but always vigilant, vindictive, and powerful. To appease the Holy Blood became Cain's chief preoccupation. He spent much time on his knees, pleading, making promises, telling lies; and his wives and children soon learnt the value of his prayers. The Holy Blood was mysterious and invisible; its temper was highly erratic; and there was no end to what it might demand, through its servant Cain, in the way of sacrifice. That Cain was in constant and intimate communication with this divine power was a piece of good fortune for the whole tribe. It visited him by day and night, in dreams and waking: not, as at first, to strike terror to his heart, but merely to make known its will. This Holy Blood was the agent of all those magical interventions in the natural order which, since Eden days, had become so frequent. It controlled sunshine and rain. It had views on diet, visiting transgressors with the botch or the belly-ache. If a cloud floated unseasonably across the face of the sun, if the windy spaces of the night became filled
with voices, if a ring of mist encircled the moon, that was a sign that sin had been committed and must be expiated in suffering. The habit of straight-looking, with the eye of the mind as with the eye of the body, was beginning to give place to a squinting trick, a self-accusing shame. Cain was setting the pattern of a future in which the face of candour would be clouded, and men bent on pleasure would run to it with eyes averted, hoping to elude the vigilance of the jealous gods.

Larian, while still a young woman, began to have vague premonitions of that future. She did not question what Cain told her, nor hesitate to teach his doctrines to her children. When Cain said that only by favour of Abel could they hope to escape dire torment after death, she listened without understanding and repeated his words mechanically. When he told her that the Holy Blood demanded, by way of tribute, the eyes of a pigeon, the claws of a tiger-cub, and the entrails of a young she-goat, she obediently forced herself to perform the prescribed ritual, for to a mind innocent of scepticism everything put into words has validity. A thing said is a thought made, and between thought and fact who could distinguish? Not Larian. And certainly not Zildah, who would
never have dreamed of troubling her head with such matters. But Larian, though she listened and believed, suffered no fundamental change in nature. Zildah waxed gross as time went on, gross and idle and quarrelsome, with no interest beyond her appetites. But Larian, despite the strange and ugly doctrines that were filtered through her to the younger generation, remained at bottom wise, simple, and loving. She looked on Cain with a deep maternal kindness, and asked nothing better than to do his bidding in everything. With satisfaction, if also with pricklings of unaccountable anxiety, she watched his sons and daughters growing up around him.

The river that flowed through Eden was now but a shining memory in Larian's mind; but in this new country, too, there was a river, flanked by a broad stretch of land that was flooded twice in every ten moons and yielded two generous crops of barley. It was this circumstance, as much as anything, that put an end to the tribe's wandering. The time was long past when they had been content to live on the fruits and roots of the earth: the slaughtering of bird and beast to the glory of the Holy Blood made it inevitable that sooner or later they should taste of flesh and find it good. But
though at first the simple beasts would come at a call and suffer death with innocent surprise, with stupid patience, in time they learned enough of the changed nature of man to avoid his haunts; and the sons of Cain, forced not seldom to return empty-handed from a day's distant hunting, soon learned the wisdom of gathering and hoarding barley against times of dearth. They hoarded, indeed, more of this precious grain than could be easily used, and far more than could be kept dry through the seasons of rains: a momentous accident, for passing one day near a barn in which a flood-ruined store of barley had been abandoned, Seelim, a son of Zildah, was attracted by a smell that was new and very pleasant to him, and following his sensitive nose he broke into the barn. His investigations took time, and he was in a state of hilarious excitement when at last he emerged into daylight again and staggered round the camp spreading the news of his discovery. Not till after he had slept, however, could his brothers get any sense out of him. Then, taking him with them, they went to see and taste the marvel for themselves. It was not long before they had devised a way of treading the grain and collecting the powerful water into drinking vessels: Seelim
had filled his belly with the grain itself, but now the virtue was found to live rather in the rain-water in which the grain lay soaking. The young men made good use of their discovery, and presently Cain and the women came along, to see what they would be at. Cain at first was inclined to anger, thinking that this merriment must be displeasing to the Holy Blood; but Zildah persuaded him to taste for himself, and very soon he needed no persuasion, for it seemed to him that his vision suddenly cleared and his whole body became filled with the light of heaven. He laughed and said: I am very beautiful. I am a river of great power. I made the earth and all that is in it. The morning stars sing at my word. The sun is my servant: I say to him, Go up, and he goes up, Go down, and he goes down. I could eat him if I wanted to; I could squeeze him between finger and thumb. But why should I trouble? asked Cain truculently. He swayed uncertainly on his feet. As for you, my little minnikins, I could blow you all away if I wanted to. All away with one little breath. But I like you. I like you all. There's Larian making faces at me. What are you making faces for, eh? These foolish words, at which everyone laughed except Larian (the
men and Zildah uproariously, the other women with nervous apprehension), were grotesquely inadequate as an expression of Cain's mood. He was exalted, his spirit released of the load that his ingenious and tortured mind had laid upon it. Happiness ran in his veins; a vast benevolence towards himself and all the world struggled for expression in his clumsy speech. The nonsense that he uttered was no more than a kind of delirium in which his heart's gaiety sketched a crude parody of itself. He did not listen to his words and was hardly conscious of them, being absorbed in the strange delight of this new experience. He was living two lives: while one part of him knew that he was here in exile, another part was breathing again the air of Eden, walking in a world upon which no shadow of sin or death had fallen. Pretty little children, he said, smiling rosily at the company. I walk with my brother in Eden. He opened his arms wide as if to embrace them all, and then sat down suddenly. The women ran forward to help him. Hullo, Larian! said Cain, looking up at her. Why did you push me? The young men, genial as their father and from the same cause, thought his collapse the funniest thing that had ever happened. But Larian, who loved him, was mystified and
frightened. Ah, she said, no good will come of this night. Resentful of her ministrations Cain pushed her away and struggled to his feet. The youngsters laughed again and clapped their hands, and when with large gestures of invitation he turned his back on the camp and walked into the dark forest they followed him gleefully, hoping that he would fall again.

In a later time, when her fear was fulfilled and she saw that her only daughter Kelimuth was with child, Larian's thoughts glanced back in speculation to that wild night. But she repressed her curiosity and asked no questions. Kelimuth was now in her fourteenth year, the eldest of Cain's daughters. Unlike her brown-haired mother she was very dark; but, like her mother, she was slim, almond-eyed, and gentle of speech. To Larian she was half the world, and Cain was the greater part of the other half. There is a baby coming to you, said Larian. If there's anything you would like me to know you will tell me in your own time, child. But first tell me this: have you counted the moons? No, mother, answered Kelimuth with downcast eyes. You're not afraid, are you? asked Larian. No, mother, said the girl again. Of course not, agreed Larian, and her lips shut in a grim curve, for though relieved by Kelimuth's answer she was vexed with herself for having betrayed her own fear by asking the question. Catching a doubtful
glance from her daughter she gave her a quick forced smile and said: Will it be a man, I wonder? Or another little Kelimuth? But that you can't say any more than I can. It would be nice to have another like you. You were a pretty baby, Kelimuth, the prettiest I ever had, and the smallest by a long way. You were never red like your brothers, even the first day. Zildah helped me that time, and very good she was. But there wasn't much help needed with you, for you were an easy child to have. And you've been a precious lamb ever since, haven't you? My mother Eve would have liked to see you. She was fond of babies, and she was the first to have one, if what they say is true. Your father Cain was her first, and until he came there had never been a baby in the world. I wasn't there to know, but that's the story they tell. Adam, you see, was the first man of all men. But he was lonely in Eden, and so he thought of Eve, and Eve came. The Holy Blood heard the prayer of Adam, and put him into a deep sleep, and took a rib from his body, and made Eve to be a companion for him. That's how it was.

Larian rambled on, anxious to keep Kelimuth's thoughts away from the dangers of her situation. What those dangers were she refused to define even
to herself, though she could hardly avoid knowing that they were somehow connected with Cain. She fell now into brooding thought, wondering who among the others were aware of Kelimuth's pregnancy. But that's foolish, she chided herself: for if one knows, all must know. Unless, she added, the one that knows is Cain. He may have seen, and he's not the one that would tell. And in her pursuit of these speculations Larian paid no heed to Kelimuth's question about Abel, until it was repeated three times. Mother, who is this Abel they speak of? Abel? Abel? repeated Larian. What do you know of Abel, my dear? And who speaks of him? Oh mother! cried Kelimuth, impatient of her obtuseness, we have heard it together many times, and spoken it too, in the words of the sacrifice to the Holy Blood of Abel. Hush, child! Larian bowed her head swiftly to propitiate the invisible powers. It is forbidden to speak idly of the Holy Blood. But what then of Abel? persisted Kelimuth. Ah, Abel, answered her mother. Now that's quite another story. And when Kelimuth pressed her question, asking why the name of Abel was invoked in the moment of sacrifice, she shook her head in honest bewilderment and answered: It's a mystery, my
dear: that's what it is. There are some things we were never meant to know. But doesn't even my father Cain know? asked Kelimuth. You leave your father alone, said Larian sharply. And don't ask so many questions, my lamb. You've a baby to be thinking of now, remember.