East of Eden

by John Steinbeck

  "Stop it," Adam shouted at him. "Goddam you, stop it! Stop nosing over my life! You're like a coyote sniffing around a dead cow."

  "The way I know," Samuel said softly, "is that one came to me that selfsame way--night after month after year, right to the very now. And I think I should have double-bolted my mind and sealed off my heart against her, but I did not. All of these years I've cheated Liza. I've given her an untruth, a counterfeit, and I've saved the best for those dark sweet hours. And now I could wish that she may have had some secret caller too. But I'll never know that. I think she would maybe have bolted her heart shut and thrown the key to hell."

  Adam's hands were clenched and the blood was driven out of his white knuckles. "You make me doubt myself," he said fiercely. "You always have. I'm afraid of you. What should I do, Samuel? Tell me! I don't know how you saw the thing so clear. What should I do?"

  "I know the 'shoulds,' although I never do them, Adam. I always know the 'shoulds.' You should try to find a new Cathy. You should let the new Cathy kill the dream Cathy--let the two of them fight it out. And you, sitting by, should marry your mind to the winner. That's the second-best should. The best would be to search out and find some fresh new loveliness to cancel out the old."

  "I'm afraid to try," said Adam.

  "That's what you've said. And now I'm going to put a selfishness on you. I'm going away, Adam. I came to say good-by."

  "What do you mean?"

  "My daughter Olive has asked Liza and me to visit with her in Salinas, and we're going--day after tomorrow."

  "Well, you'll be back."

  Samuel went on, "After we've visited with Olive for maybe a month or two, there will come a letter from George. And his feelings will be hurt if we don't visit him in Paso Robles. And after that Mollie will want us in San Francisco, and then Will, and maybe even Joe in the East, if we should live so long."

  "Well, won't you like that? You've earned it. You've worked hard enough on that dust heap of yours."

  "I love that dust heap," Samuel said. "I love it the way a bitch loves her runty pup. I love every flint, the plow-breaking outcroppings, the thin and barren top-soil, the waterless heart of her. Somewhere in my dust heap there's a richness."

  "You deserve a rest."

  "There, you've said it again," said Samuel. "That's what Ihad to accept," and I have accepted. When you say I deserve a rest, you are saying that my life is over."

  "Do you believe that?"

  "That's what I have accepted."

  Adam said excitedly, "You can't do that. Why, if you accept that you won't live!"

  "I know," said Samuel.

  "But you can't do that."

  "Why not?"

  "I don't want you to."

  "I'm a nosy old man, Adam. And the sad thing to me is that I'm losing my nosiness. That's maybe how I know it's time to visit my children. I'm having to pretend to be nosy a good deal of the time."

  "I'd rather you worked your guts out on your dust heap."

  Samuel smiled at him. "What a nice thing to hear! And I thank you. It's a good thing to be loved, even late."

  Suddenly Adam turned in front of him so that Samuel had to stop. "I know what you've done for me," Adam said. "I can't return anything. But I can ask you for one more thing. If I asked you, would you do me one more kindness, and maybe save my life?"

  "I would if I could."

  Adam swung out his hand and made an arc over the west. "That land out there--would you help me to make the garden we talked of, the windmills and the wells and the flats of alfalfa? We could raise flower-seeds. There's money in that. Think what it would be like, acres of sweet peas and gold squares of calendulas. Maybe ten acres of roses for the gardens of the West. Think how they would smell on the west wind!"

  "You're going to make me cry," Samuel said, "and that would be an unseemly thing in an old man." And indeed his eyes were wet. "I thank you, Adam," he said. "The sweetness of your offer is a good smell on the west wind."

  "Then you'll do it?"

  "No, I will not do it. But I'll see it in my mind when I'm in Salinas, listening to William Jennings Bryan. And maybe I'll get to believe it happened."

  "But I want to do it."

  "Go and see my Tom. He'll help you. He'd plant the world with roses, poor man, if he could."

  "You know what you're doing, Samuel?"

  "Yes, I know what I'm doing, know so well that it's half done."

  "What a stubborn man you are!"

  "Contentious," said Samuel. "Liza says I am contentious, but now I'm caught in a web of my children--and I think I like it."

  2

  The dinner table was set in the house. Lee said, "I'd have liked to serve it under the tree like the other times, but the air is chilly."

  "So it is, Lee," said Samuel.

  The twins came in silently and stood shyly staring at their guest.

  "It's a long time since I've seen you, boys. But we named you well. You're Caleb, aren't you?"

  "I'm Cal."

  "Well, Cal then." And he turned to the other. "Have you found a way to rip the backbone out of your name?"

  "Sir?"

  "Are you called Aaron?"

  "Yes, sir."

  Lee chuckled. "He spells it with one a. The two a's seem a little fancy to his friends."

  "I've got thirty-five Belgian hares, sir," Aron said. "Would you like to see them, sir? The hutch is up by the spring. I've got eight newborns--just born yesterday."

  "I'd like to see them, Aron." His mouth twitched. "Cal, don't tell me you're a gardener?"

  Lee's head snapped around and he inspected Samuel. "Don't do that," Lee said nervously.

  Cal said, "Next year my father is going to let me have an acre in the flat."

  Aron said, "I've got a buck rabbit weighs fifteen pounds. I'm going to give it to my father for his birthday."

  They heard Adam's bedroom door opening. "Don't tell him," Aron said quickly. "It's a secret."

  Lee sawed at the pot roast. "Always you bring trouble for my mind, Mr. Hamilton," he said. "Sit down, boys."

  Adam came in, turning down his sleeves, and took his seat at the head of the table. "Good evening, boys," he said, and they replied in unison, "Good evening, Father."

  And, "Don't you tell," said Aron.

  "I won't," Samuel assured him. "Don't tell what?" Adam asked. Samuel said, "Can't there be a privacy? I have a secret with your son."

  Cal broke in, "I'll tell you a secret too, right after dinner."

  "I'll like to hear it," said Samuel. "And I do hope I don't know already what it is."

  Lee looked up from his carving and glared at Samuel. He began piling meat on the plates.

  The boys ate quickly and quietly, wolfed their food. Aron said, "Will you excuse us, Father?"

  Adam nodded, and the two boys went quickly out. Samuel looked after them. "They seem older than eleven," he said. "I seem to remember that at eleven my brood were howlers and screamers and runners in circles. These seem like grown men."

  "Do they?" Adam asked.

  Lee said, "I think I see why that is. There is no woman in the house to put a value on babies. I don't think men care much for babies, and so it was never an advantage to these boys to be babies. There was nothing to gain by it. I don't know whether that is good or bad."

  Samuel wiped up the remains of gravy in his plate with a slice of bread. "Adam, I wonder whether you know what you have in Lee. A philosopher who can cook, or a cook who can think? He has taught me a great deal. You must have learned from him, Adam."

  Adam said, "I'm afraid I didn't listen enough--or maybe he didn't talk."

  "Why didn't you want the boys to learn Chinese, Adam?"

  Adam thought for a moment. "It seems a time for honesty," he said at last. "I guess it was plain jealousy. I gave it another name, but maybe I didn't want them to be able so easily to go away from me in a direction I couldn't follow."

  "That's reasonable, enough and almost too human," said Samuel
. "But knowing it--that's a great jump. I wonder whether I have ever gone so far."

  Lee brought the gray enameled coffeepot to the table and filled the cups and sat down. He warmed the palm of his hand against the rounded side of his cup. And then Lee laughed. "You've given me great trouble, Mr. Hamilton, and you've disturbed the tranquillity of China."

  "How do you mean, Lee?"

  "It almost seems that I have told you this," said Lee. "Maybe I only composed it in my mind, meaning to tell you. It's an amusing story anyway."

  "I want to hear," said Samuel, and he looked at Adam. "Don't you want to hear, Adam? Or are you slipping into your cloud bath?"

  "I was thinking of that," said Adam. "It's funny--a kind of excitement is coming over me."

  "That's good," said Samuel. "Maybe that's the best of all good things that can happen to a human. Let's hear your story, Lee."

  The Chinese reached to the side of his neck and he smiled. "I wonder whether I'll ever get used to the lack of a queue," he said. "I guess I used it more than I knew. Yes, the story. I told you, Mr. Hamilton, that I was growing more Chinese. Do you ever grow more Irish?"

  "It comes and goes," said Samuel.

  "Do you remember when you read us the sixteen verses of the fourth chapter of Genesis and we argued about them?"

  "I do indeed. And that's a long time ago."

  "Ten years nearly," said Lee. "Well, the story bit deeply into me and I went into it word for word. The more I thought about the story, the more profound it became to me. Then I compared the translations we have--and they were fairly close. There was only one place that bothered me. The King James version says this--it is when Jehovah has asked Cain why he is angry. Jehovah says, 'If thou doest well, shall thou not be accepted? and if thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door. And unto thee shall be his desire, and thou shalt rule over him.' It was the 'thou shalt' that struck me, because it was a promise that Cain would conquer sin."

  Samuel nodded. "And his children didn't do it entirely," he said.

  Lee sipped his coffee. "Then I got a copy of the American Standard Bible. It was very new then. And it was different in this passage. It says, 'Do thou rule over him.' Now this is very different. This is not a promise, it is an order. And I began to stew about it. I wondered what the original word of the original writer had been that these very different translations could be made."

  Samuel put his palms down on the table and leaned forward and the old young light came into his eyes. "Lee," he said, "don't tell me you studied Hebrew!"

  Lee said, "I'm going to tell you. And it's a fairly long story. Will you have a touch of ng-ka-py?"

  "You mean the drink that tastes of good rotten apples?"

  "Yes. I can talk better with it."

  "Maybe I can listen better," said Samuel.

  While Lee went to the kitchen Samuel asked, "Adam, did you know about this?"

  "No," said Adam. "He didn't tell me. Maybe I wasn't listening."

  Lee came back with his stone bottle and three little porcelain cups so thin and delicate that the light shone through them. "Dlinkee Chinee, fashion," he said and poured the almost black liquor. "There's a lot of wormwood in this. It's quite a drink," he said. "Has about the same effect as absinthe if you drink enough of it."

  Samuel sipped the drink. "I want to know why you were so interested," he said.

  "Well, it seemed to me that the man who could conceive this great story would know exactly what he wanted to say and there would be no confusion in his statement."

  "You say 'the man.' Do you then not think this is a divine book written by the inky finger of God?"

  "I think the mind that could think this story was a curiously divine mind. We have had a few such minds in China too."

  "I just wanted to know," said Samuel. "You're not a Presbyterian after all."

  "I told you I was getting more Chinese. Well, to go on, I went to San Francisco to the headquarters of our family association. Do you know about them? Our great families have centers where any member can get help or give it. The Lee family is very large. It takes care of its own."

  "I have heard of them," said Samuel.

  "You mean Chinee hatchet man fightee Tong war over slave girl?"

  "I guess so."

  "It's a little different from that, really," said Lee. "I went there because in our family there are a number of ancient reverend gentlemen who are great scholars. They are thinkers in exactness. A man may spend many years pondering a sentence of the scholar you call Confucius. I thought there might be experts in meaning who could advise me.

  "They are fine old men. They smoke their two pipes of opium in the afternoon and it rests and sharpens them, and they sit through the night and their minds are wonderful. I guess no other people have been able to use opium well."

  Lee dampened his tongue in the black brew. "I respectfully submitted my problem to one of these sages, read him the story, and told him what I understood from it. The next night four of them met and called me in. We discussed the story all night long."

  Lee laughed. "I guess it's funny," he said. "I know I wouldn't dare tell it to many people. Can you imagine four old gentlemen, the youngest is over ninety now, taking on the study of Hebrew? They engaged a learned rabbi. They took to the study as though they were children. Exercise books, grammar, vocabulary, simple sentences. You should see Hebrew written in Chinese ink with a brush! The right to left didn't bother them as much as it would you, since we write up to down. Oh, they were perfectionists! They went to the root of the matter."

  "And you?" said Samuel.

  "I went along with them, marveling at the beauty of their proud clean brains. I began to love my race, and for the first time I wanted to be Chinese. Every two weeks I went to a meeting with them, and in my room here I covered pages with writing. I bought every known Hebrew dictionary. But the old gentlemen were always ahead of me. It wasn't long before they were ahead of our rabbi; he brought a colleague in. Mr. Hamilton, you should have sat through some of those nights of argument and discussion. The questions, the inspection, oh, the lovely thinking--the beautiful thinking.

  "After two years we felt that we could approach your sixteen verses of the fourth chapter of Genesis. My old gentlemen felt that these words were very important too--'Thou shalt' and 'Do thou.' And this was the gold from our mining: 'Thou mayest.' 'Thou mayest rule over sin.' The old gentlemen smiled and nodded and felt the years were well spent. It brought them out of their Chinese shells too, and right now they are studying Greek."

  Samuel said, "It's a fantastic story. And I've tried to follow and maybe I've missed somewhere. Why is this word so important?"

  Lee's hand shook as he filled the delicate cups. He drank his down in one gulp. "Don't you see?" he cried. "The American Standard translation orders men to triumph over sin, and you can call sin ignorance. The King James translation makes a promise in 'Thou shalt,' meaning that men will surely triumph over sin. But the Hebrew word, the word timshel--'Thou mayest'--that gives a choice. It might be the most important word in the world. That says the way is open. That throws it right back on a man. For if 'Thou mayest'--it is also true that 'Thou mayest not.' Don't you see?"

  "Yes, I see. I do see. But you do not believe this is divine law. Why do you feel its importance?"

  "Ah!" said Lee. "I've wanted to tell you this for a long time. I even anticipated your questions and I am well prepared. Any writing which has influenced the thinking and the lives of innumerable people is important. Now, there are many millions in their sects and churches who feel the order, 'Do thou,' and throw their weight into obedience. And there are millions more who feel predestination in 'Thou shalt.' Nothing they may do can interfere with what will be. But "Thou mayest'! Why, that makes a man great, that gives him stature with the gods, for in his weakness and his filth and his murder of his brother he has still the great choice. He can choose his course and fight it through and win." Lee's voice was a chant of triumph.

  Adam said, "Do you
believe that, Lee?"

  "Yes, I do. Yes, I do. It is easy out of laziness, out of weakness, to throw oneself into the lap of deity, saying, 'I couldn't help it; the way was set.' But think of the glory of the choice! That makes a man a man. A cat has no choice, a bee must make honey. There's no godliness there. And do you know, those old gentlemen who were sliding gently down to death are too interested to die now?"

  Adam said, "Do you mean these Chinese men believe the Old Testament?"

  Lee said, "These old men believe a true story, and they know a true story when they hear it. They are critics of truth. They know that these sixteen verses are a history of humankind in any age or culture or race. They do not believe a man writes fifteen and three-quarter verses of truth and tells a lie with one verb. Confucius tells men how they should live to have good and successful lives. But this--this is a ladder to climb to the stars." Lee's eyes shone. "You can never lose that. It cuts the feet from under weakness and cowardliness and laziness."

  Adam said, "I don't see how you could cook and raise the boys and take care of me and still do all this."

  "Neither do I," said Lee. "But I take my two pipes in the afternoon, no more and no less, like the elders. And I feel that I am a man. And I feel that a man is a very important thing--maybe more important than a star. This is not theology. I have no bent toward gods. But I have a new love for that glittering instrument, the human soul. It is a lovely and unique thing in the universe. It is always attacked and never destroyed--because 'Thou mayest.' "

  3

  Lee and Adam walked out to the shed with Samuel to see him off. Lee carried a tin lantern to light the way, for it was one of those clear early winter nights when the sky riots with stars and the earth seems doubly dark because of them. A silence lay on the hills. No animal moved about, neither grass-eater nor predator, and the air was so still that the dark limbs and leaves of the live oaks stood unmoving against the Milky Way. The three men were silent. The bail of the tin lantern squeaked a little as the light swung in Lee's hand.