East of Eden

by John Steinbeck

  Abra looked away from the setting sun. She had difficulty seeing past the purple spots the light had left on her eyes. "You said a little while ago you could keep secrets."

  "I can."

  "Well, do you have a double-poison-and-cut-my-throat secret?"

  "Sure I have."

  Abra said softly, "Tell me what it is, Aron." She put a caress in his name.

  "Tell you what?"

  "Tell me the deepest down hell-and-goddam secret you know."

  Aron reared back from her in alarm. "Why, I will not," he said. "What right you got to ask me? I wouldn't tell anybody."

  "Come on, my baby--tell Mother," she crooned.

  There were tears crowding up in his eyes again, but this time they were tears of anger. "I don't know as I want to marry you," he said. "I think I'm going home now."

  Abra put her hand on his wrist and hung on. Her voice lost its coquetry. "I wanted to see. I guess you can keep secrets all right."

  "Why did you go for to do it? I'm mad now. I feel sick."

  "I think I'm going to tell you a secret," she said.

  "Ho!" he jeered at her. "Who can't keep a secret now?"

  "I was trying to decide," she said. "I think I'm going to tell you this secret because it might be good for you. It might make you glad."

  "Who told you not to tell?"

  "Nobody," she said. "I only told myself."

  "Well, I guess that's a little different. What's your old secret?"

  The red sun leaned its rim on the rooftree of Tollot's house on the Blanco Road, and Tollot's chimney stuck up like a black thumb against it.

  Abra said softly, "Listen, you remember when we came to your place that time?"

  "Sure!"

  "Well, in the buggy I went to sleep, and when I woke up my father and mother didn't know I was awake. They said your mother wasn't dead. They said she went away. They said something bad must have happened to her, and she went away."

  Aron said hoarsely, "She's dead."

  "Wouldn't it be nice if she wasn't?"

  "My father says she's dead. He's not a liar."

  "Maybe he thinks she's dead.

  He said, "I think he'd know." But there was uncertainty in his tone.

  Abra said, "Wouldn't it be nice if we could find her? 'Spose she lost her memory or something. I've read about that. And we could find her and that would make her remember." The glory of the romance caught her like a rip tide and carried her away.

  Aron said, "I'll ask my father."

  "Aron," she said sternly, "what I told you is a secret."

  "Who says?"

  "I say. Now you just say after me--'I'll take double poison and cut my throat if I tell.' "

  For a moment he hesitated and then he repeated, "I'll take double poison and cut my throat if I tell."

  She said, "Now spit in your palm--like this--that's right. Now you give me your hand--see?--squidge the spit all together. Now rub it dry on your hair." The two followed the formula, and then Abra said solemnly, "Now, I'd just like to see you tell that one. I knew one girl that told a secret after that oath and she burned up in a barn fire."

  The sun was gone behind Toiler's house and the gold light with it. The evening star shimmered over Mount Toro.

  Abra said, "They'll skin me alive. Come on. Hurry! I bet my father's got the dog whistle out for me. I'll get whipped."

  Aron looked at her in disbelief. "Whipped! They don't whip you?"

  "That's what you think!"

  Aron said passionately, "You just let them try. If they go for to whip you, you tell them I'll kill them." His wide-set blue eyes were slitted and glinting. "Nobody's going to whip my wife," he said.

  Abra put her arms around his neck in the dusk under the willow tree. She kissed him on his open mouth. "I love you, husband," she said, and then she turned and bolted, holding up her skirts above her knees, her lace-edged white drawers flashing as she ran toward home.

  3

  Aron went back to the trunk of the willow tree and sat on the ground and leaned back against the bark. His mind was a grayness and there were churnings of pain in his stomach. He tried to sort out the feeling into thoughts and pictures so the pain would go away. It was hard. His slow deliberate mind could not accept so many thoughts and emotions at once. The door was shut against everything except physical pain. After a while the door opened a little and let in one thing to be scrutinized and then another and another, until all had been absorbed, one at a time. Outside his closed mind a huge thing was clamoring to get in. Aron held it back until last.

  First he let Abra in and went over her dress, her face, the feel of her hand on his cheek, the odor that came from her, like milk a little and like cut grass a little. He saw and felt and heard and smelled her all over again. He thought how clean she was, her hands and fingernails, and how straightforward and unlike the gigglers in the schoolyard.

  Then, in order, he thought of her holding his head and his baby crying, crying with longing, wanting something and in a way feeling that he was getting it. Perhaps the getting it was what had made him cry.

  Next he thought of her trick--her testing of him. He wondered what she would have done if he had told her a secret. What secret could he have told her if he had wished? Right now-he didn't recall any secret except the one that was beating on the door to get into his mind.

  The sharpest question she had asked, "How does it feel not to have a mother?" slipped into his mind. And how did it feel? It didn't feel like anything. Ah, but in the schoolroom, at Christmas and graduation, when the mothers of other children came to the parties--then was the silent cry and the wordless longing. That's what it was like.

  Salinas was surrounded and penetrated with swamps, with tule-filled ponds, and every pond spawned thousands of frogs. With the evening the air was so full of their song that it was a kind of roaring silence. It was a veil, a background, and its sudden disappearance, as after a clap of thunder, was a shocking thing. It is possible that if in the night the frog sound should have stopped, everyone in Salinas would have awakened, feeling that there was a great noise. In their millions the frog songs seemed to have a beat and a cadence, and perhaps it is the ears' function to do this just as it is the eyes' business to make stars twinkle.

  It was quite dark under the willow tree now. Aron wondered whether he was ready for the big thing, and while he wondered it slipped through and was in.

  His mother was alive. Often he had pictured her lying underground, still and cool and unrotted. But this was not so. Somewhere she moved about and spoke, and her hands moved and her eyes were open. And in the midst of his flood of pleasure a sorrow came down on him and a sense of loss, of dreadful loss. Aron was puzzled. He inspected the cloud of sadness. If his mother was alive, his father was a liar. If one was alive, the other was dead. Aron said aloud under the tree, "My mother is dead. She's buried some place in the East."

  In the darkness he saw Lee's face and heard Lee's soft speech. Lee had built very well. Having a respect that amounted to reverence for the truth, he had also its natural opposite, a loathing of a lie. He had made it very clear to the boys exactly what he meant. If something was untrue and you didn't know it, that was error. But if you knew a true thing and changed it to a false thing, both you and it were loathsome.

  Lee's voice said, "I know that sometimes a lie is used in kindness. I don't believe it ever works kindly. The quick pain of truth can pass away, but the slow, eating agony of a lie is never lost. That's a running sore." And Lee had worked patiently and slowly and he had succeeded in building Adam as the center, the foundation, the essence of truth.

  Aron shook his head in the dark, shook it hard in disbelief. "If my father is a liar, Lee is a liar too." He was lost. He had no one to ask. Cal was a liar, but Lee's conviction had made Cal a clever liar. Aron felt that something had to die--his mother or his world.

  His solution lay suddenly before him. Abra had not lied. She had told him only what she had heard, and her parents had onl
y heard it too. He got to his feet and pushed his mother back into death and closed his mind against her.

  He was late for supper. "I was with Abra," he explained. After supper, when Adam sat in his new comfortable chair, reading the Salinas Index, he felt a stroking touch on his shoulder and looked up. "What is it, Aron?" he asked.

  "Good night, Father," Aron said.

  Chapter 37

  1

  February in Salinas is likely to be damp and cold and full of miseries. The heaviest rains fall then, and if the river is going to rise, it rises then. February of 1915 was a year heavy with water.

  The Trasks were well established in Salinas. Lee, once he had given up his brackish bookish dream, made a new kind of place for himself in the house beside Reynaud's Bakery. On the ranch his possessions had never really been unpacked, for Lee had lived poised to go someplace else. Here, for the first time in his life, he built a home for himself, feathered with comfort and permanence.

  The large bedroom nearest the street door fell to him. Lee dipped into his savings. He had never before spent a needless penny, since all money had been earmarked for his bookstore. But now he bought a little hard bed and a desk. He built bookshelves and unpacked his books, invested in a soft rug and tacked prints on the walls. He placed a deep and comfortable "Morris chair under the best reading lamp he could find. And last he bought a typewriter and set about learning to use it.

  Having broken out of his own Spartanism, he remade the Trask household, and Adam gave him no opposition. A gas stove came into the house and electric wires and a telephone. He spent Adam's money remorselessly--new furniture, new carpets, a gas water-heater, and a large icebox. In a short time there was hardly a house in Salinas so well equipped. Lee defended himself to Adam, saying, "You have plenty of money. It would be a shame not to enjoy it."

  "I'm not complaining," Adam protested. "Only I'd like to buy something too. What shall I buy?"

  "Why don't you go to Logan's music store and listen to one of the new phonographs?"

  "I think I'll do that," said Adam. And he bought a Victor victrola, a tall Gothic instrument, and he went regularly to see what new records had come in.

  The growing century was shucking Adam out of his shell. He subscribed to the Atlantic Monthly and the National Geographic. He joined the Masons and seriously considered the Elks. The new icebox fascinated him. He bought a textbook on refrigeration and began to study it.

  The truth was that Adam needed work. He came out of his long sleep needing to do something.

  "I think I'll go into business," he said to Lee.

  "You don't need to. You have enough to live on."

  "But I'd like to be doing something."

  "That's different," said Lee. "Know what you want to do? I don't think you'd be very good at business."

  "Why not?"

  "Just a thought," said Lee.

  "Say, Lee, I want you to read an article. It says they've dug up a mastodon in Siberia. Been in the ice thousands of years. And the meat's still good."

  Lee smiled at him. "You've got a bug in your bonnet somewhere," he said. "What have you got in all of those little cups in the icebox?"

  "Different things."

  "Is that the business? Some of the cups smell bad."

  "It's an idea," Adam said. "I can't seem to stay away from it. I just can't seem to get over the idea that you can keep things if you get them cold enough."

  "Let's not have any mastodon meat in our icebox," said Lee.

  If Adam had conceived thousands of ideas, the way Sam Hamilton had, they might all have drifted away, but he had only the one. The frozen mastodon stayed in his mind. His little cups of fruit, of pudding, of bits of meat, both cooked and raw, continued in the icebox. He bought every available book on bacteria and began sending for magazines that printed articles of a mildly scientific nature. And as is usually true of a man of one idea, he became obsessed.

  Salinas had a small ice company, not large but enough to supply the few houses with iceboxes and to service the ice-cream parlors. The horse-drawn ice wagon went its route every day.

  Adam began to visit the ice plant, and pretty soon he was taking his little cups to the freezing chambers. He wished with all his heart that Sam Hamilton were alive to discuss cold with him. Sam would have covered the field very quickly, he thought.

  Adam was walking back from the ice plant one rainy afternoon, thinking about Sam Hamilton, when he saw Will Hamilton go into the Abbot House Bar. He followed him and leaned against the bar beside him. "Why don't you come up and have some supper with us?"

  "I'd like to," Will said. "I'll tell you what--I've got a deal I'm trying to put through. If I get finished in time I'll walk by. Is there something important?"

  "Well, I don't know. I've been doing some thinking and I'd like to ask your advice."

  Nearly every business proposition in the county came sooner or later to Will Hamilton's attention. He might have excused himself if he had not remembered that Adam was a rich man. An idea was one thing, but backed up with cash it was quite another. "You wouldn't entertain a reasonable offer for your ranch, would you?" he asked.

  "Well, the boys, particularly Cal, they like the place. I think I'll hang on to it."

  "I think I can turn it over for you."

  "No, it's rented, paying its own taxes. I'll hold on to it."

  "If I can't get in for supper I might be able to come in afterward," said Will.

  Will Hamilton was a very substantial businessman. No one knew exactly how many pies his thumb had explored, but it was known that he was a clever and comparatively rich man. His business deal had been non-existent. It was a part of his policy always to be busy and occupied.

  He had supper alone in the Abbot House. After a considered time he walked around the corner on Central Avenue and rang the bell of Adam Trask's house.

  The boys had gone to bed. Lee sat with a darning basket, mending the long black stockings the twins wore to school. Adam had been reading the Scientific American. He let Will in and placed a chair for him. Lee brought a pot of coffee and went back to his mending.

  Will settled himself into a chair, took out a fat black cigar, and lighted up. He waited for Adam to open the game.

  "Nice weather for a change. And how's your mother?" Adam said.

  "Just fine. Seems younger every day. The boys must be growing up."

  "Oh, they are. Cal's going to be in his school play. He's quite an actor. Aron's a real good student. Cal wants to go to farming."

  "Nothing wrong with that if you go about it right. Country could use some forward-looking farmers." Will waited uneasily. He wondered if it could be that Adam's money was exaggerated. Could Adam be getting ready to borrow money? Will quickly worked out how much he would lend on the Trask ranch and how much he could borrow on it. The figures were not the same, nor was the interest rate. And still Adam did not come up with his proposition. Will grew restless. "I can't stay very long," he said. "Told a fellow I'd meet him later tonight."

  "Have another cup of coffee," Adam suggested.

  "No, thanks. Keeps me awake. Did you have something you wanted to see me about?"

  Adam said, "I was thinking about your father and I thought I'd like to talk to a Hamilton."

  Will relaxed a little in his chair. "He was a great old talker."

  "Somehow he made a man better than he was," said Adam.

  Lee looked up from his darning egg. "Perhaps the best conversationalist in the world is the man who helps others to talk."

  Will said, "You know, it sounds funny to hear you use all those two-bit words. I'd swear to God you used to talk pidgin."

  "I used to," said Lee. "It was vanity, I guess." He smiled at Adam and said to Will, "Did you hear that somewhere up in Siberia they dug a mastodon out of the ice? It had been there a hundred thousand years and the meat was still fresh."

  "Mastodon?"

  "Yes, a kind of elephant that hasn't lived on the earth for a long time."

&nb
sp; "Meat was still fresh?"

  "Sweet as a pork chop," said Lee. He shoved the wooden egg into the shattered-knee of a black stocking.

  "That's very interesting," said Will.

  Adam laughed. "Lee hasn't wiped my nose yet, but that will come," he said. "I guess I'm pretty roundabout. The whole thing comes up because I'm tired of just sitting around. I want to get something to take up my time."

  "Why don't you farm your place?"

  "No. That doesn't interest me. You see, Will, I'm not like a man looking for a job. I'm looking for work. I don't need a job."

  Will came out of his cautiousness. "Well, what can I do for you?"

  "I thought I'd tell you an idea I had, and you might give me an opinion. You're a businessman."

  "Of course," said Will. "Anything I can do."

  "I've been looking into refrigeration," said Adam. "I got an idea and I can't get rid of it. I go to sleep and it comes right back at me. Never had anything give me so much trouble. It's a kind of a big idea. Maybe it's full of holes."

  Will uncrossed his legs and pulled at his pants where they were binding him. "Go ahead--shoot," he said. "Like a cigar?"

  Adam didn't hear the offer, nor did he know the implication. "The whole country's changing," Adam said. "People aren't going to live the way they used to. Do you know where the biggest market for oranges in the winter is?"

  "No. Where?"

  "New York City. I read that. Now in the cold parts of the country, don't you think people get to wanting perishable things in the winter--like peas and lettuce and cauliflower? In a big part of the country they don't have those things for months and months. And right here in the Salinas Valley we can raise them all the year around."

  "Right here isn't right there," said Will. "What's your idea?"

  "Well, Lee made me get a big icebox, and I got kind of interested. I put different kinds of vegetables in there. And I got to arranging them different ways. You know, Will, if you chop ice fine and lay a head of lettuce in it and wrap it in waxed paper, it will keep three weeks and come out fresh and good."

  "Go on," said Will cautiously.

  "Well, you know the railroads built those fruit cars. I went down and had a look at them. They're pretty good. Do you know we could ship lettuce right to the east coast in the middle of winter?"