First, I must tend to the needs of my donkey, Take him over to those oak trees, where you'll find hay and straw and a drinking trough full of fresh water. Cain did as abraham suggested and, tethering the donkey in the shade, he removed the saddle to give the animal some relief from the heat. Then he felt the almost empty saddlebags and wondered what he could do to remedy what was fast becoming an alarming lack of food. Abraham's words had given him new hope, but man cannot live by bread alone, especially one who has grown used to gastronomic delicacies far above his original station and social class. Leaving the donkey to enjoy the most basic of country pleasures, water, shade and plentiful food, cain returned to the tent, called out to announce his presence and then went in. He saw at once that some kind of meeting was going on, to which, of course, he had not been invited. Abraham was in conversation with three men, who had apparently arrived in the meantime. Cain made as if to withdraw discreetly, but abraham said, Don't leave, sit down, you are all my guests, and now, if you'll permit me, I must go and give my orders. He went into a room in the back of the tent and said to sarah, his wife, Quick, knead three measures of the best flour and make a few loaves. Then he went to the area where the cattle were kept and brought in a plump young calf, which he handed over to a servant to be slaughtered and cooked. When all this had been done, he served his guests the veal that had been prepared, saying to cain, Join us under the trees. And as if that were not generosity enough, he served them butter and milk as well. Then the men asked, Where is sarah, and abraham replied,
She is in the tent. That was when one of the three men said, I will return to your house within a year and, at the appointed time, your wife will give birth to a son. That will be isaac, said cain in a low voice, so low that no one seemed to hear. Now abraham and sarah were well on in years, and she was no longer of child-bearing age. That is why she laughed and thought, How could I possibly have that pleasure again now that my husband and I are old and weary. The man asked abraham, Why did sarah laugh, believing that she cannot have a son at her age, when nothing is too hard for the lord. And he repeated what he had said before, I will return to your house within a year and, at the appointed time, your wife will give birth to a son. When she heard this, sarah was afraid and denied that she had laughed, but the man said, Nay, but you did laugh. At that moment, everyone realised that the third man present was the lord god in person. We forgot to mention that, before going into the tent, cain had pulled the edge of his turban low over his forehead to hide the mark from curious eyes, especially from the lord, whom he immediately recognised, and so when the lord asked if his name was cain, he answered, Yes, it is, but I'm not that cain.
Faced by this none too clever evasion, one would have expected the lord to have insisted and for cain to end up confessing that he was indeed the same cain who had murdered his brother abel and therefore been condemned for ever to be a wanderer and a fugitive, but the lord had more urgent and important things to deal with than finding out the true identity of a somewhat suspicious stranger.
For in heaven, whence he had come only moments before, he had heard numerous complaints about the crimes against nature committed in the nearby cities of sodom and gomorrah. As the impartial judge he had always prided himself on being, although it must be said that there have been no shortage of actions on his part to show exactly the opposite, he had come down to earth in order to find out the truth of the matter. This is why he was now travelling to sodom, accompanied by abraham and by cain, who had asked, as a curious tourist, if he could come along too. The men with the lord, who were clearly his angel companions, had gone on ahead. Then abraham asked the lord three questions, Will you destroy the innocent along with the guilty, what if there are fifty innocent people in the city, will you also destroy them and not spare the whole city for the sake of those fifty innocent souls. And he went on, saying, You cannot do such a thing, lord, you cannot slay the innocent along with the guilty, if you do, it will seem, in everyone's eyes, that being innocent and guilty are one and the same, and you, who are the judge of all the earth, must be just in your sentences. To which the lord responded, If I find in the city of sodom fifty innocent people, I will spare the whole city for their sake. Encouraged and full of hope, abraham went on, Since I have taken the liberty of speaking so freely to the lord, I who am nothing but dust and ashes, allow me one more question, what if there are not quite fifty innocent people, but only forty-five, will you destroy the whole city for the lack of five. The lord answered, If I find forty-five innocent people there, I will not destroy the city. Abraham decided to strike again while the iron was hot, What if there are only forty innocent people, to which the lord answered, For the sake of those forty people, I will not destroy the city, And what if there are only thirty, For the sake of those thirty, I will not destroy the city, And what if there are only twenty, For the sake of those twenty, I will not destroy the city. Then abraham went further, Please don't be angry with me if I ask one further thing, Speak, said the lord, What if there are only ten innocent people, and the lord answered, For the sake of those ten, I will not destroy the city. Having thus responded to abraham's questions, the lord withdrew, and abraham, accompanied by cain, returned to the tent. Nothing more was said of isaac, the son yet to be born. When they reached the oaks of mamre, abraham went into his tent and re- emerged shortly afterwards with the promised loaves. Cain stopped saddling up his donkey in order to thank abraham for this generous gift, and asked, How do you think the lord is going to count the ten innocent people, who, assuming they exist, will prevent the destruction of sodom, do you think he will go from door to door, asking fathers and their male descendants about their sexual proclivities and appetites, The lord doesn't need to do that, he only has to look down on the city from above to know what is going on, answered abraham, Do you mean that the lord made that agreement with you for no reason other than to please you, cain asked again, The lord gave his word, Well, as sure as my name is cain, although admittedly I have also been known as abel, I'm not convinced, I reckon that, regardless of whether there are innocent people living there or not, sodom will still be destroyed, possibly tonight, Yes, that's possible, and not only sodom either, but gomorrah and two or three other cities of the plain, where sexual customs have become equally lax, with men going with men and women being left to one side, Aren't you worried about what might happen to those two men who came with the lord, They weren't men, they were angels, for I know them well, Angels without wings, They won't need wings if they need to escape, Well, if the men of sodom lay hands or indeed anything else on them, I don't think they'll care a jot whether they're angels or not, and the lord will be most displeased, if I were you, I would go to the city to see what's happened, they won't harm you, Yes, you're right, I'll go, but I would feel safer if you came with me, one and a half men are better than one, But we're two, not one and a half, Oh, I'm only half a man now, cain, In that case, let's go, and if they attack us, I could probably despatch two or three of them with the knife I have under my tunic, otherwise, we'll just have to hope that the lord will provide. Then abraham summoned a servant and ordered him to take cain's donkey to the stables. And he said to cain, If you have no plans that require you to leave today, I will offer you my hospitality for the night as a small recompense for being kind enough to accompany me, If it is in my power, I hope to be able to do you more favours in the future, said cain, but abraham could not grasp the meaning that lay behind those mysterious words. They set off to the city, and abraham said, Let us go first to the house of my nephew lot, son of my brother haran, he will tell us what has been going on. The sun had already set when they reached sodom, but it was still light. They saw a huge rowdy crowd gathered outside lot's house, We want to see the men you took into your house, bring them out to us, that we may know them, and they pounded on the door, threatening to break it down. Abraham said, Come with me, there's another entrance at the back. They entered just as lot, barricaded in behind his front door, was saying, Please, my friends, do not
commit such a crime, I have two unmarried daughters, you can do what you like with them, but do not harm these men who sought shelter in my house. The crowd outside continued shouting furiously, but suddenly their cries became lamentations and tears, I'm blind, I'm blind, they were all saying and asking, Where is the door, there was a door here and now it's gone. To save his angels from being brutally raped, a fate worse than death according to those who know, the lord blinded all the men of sodom without exception, which proves that there could not have been even ten innocent men in the whole city. In the house, the visitors were saying to lot, Leave this place along with all the members of your family, your sons, daughters, sons-in-law, and everything else you have in the city, because we have come here to destroy it. Lot went out and warned his future sons-in-law, but they did not believe him and laughed at what they judged to be a joke. It was dawn when the messengers of the lord said again to lot, Take your wife and your two remaining daughters and leave the city if you do not wish to be punished as well, for while that is not the lord's will, it is exactly what will happen if you do not obey. Then, without waiting for an answer, they took him, his wife and his daughters by the hand and led them out of the city. Abraham and cain went with them, although not into the mountains which is where lot and his family would have gone had they followed the angel's advice, for lot asked instead to be allowed to stay in a small town, almost a village, called zoar. Go, said the messengers, but do not look back. Lot entered the town when the sun was coming up. Then the lord rained down fire and brimstone upon sodom and upon gomorrah and razed both to the ground, destroying all the inhabitants and everything that grew there. Wherever you looked, you could see only ruins, ashes and charred bodies. As for lot's wife, she disobeyed the order not to look back and was transformed into a pillar of salt. No one has ever been able to understand why she was punished in that way, for it is only natural to want to know what is going on behind you. It's possible that the lord wanted to punish curiosity as if it were a mortal sin, but that doesn't say much for his intelligence either, just look at what happened with the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, if eve hadn't given adam some of the fruit to eat, if she hadn't eaten it herself, they would still be in the garden of eden, and we know how boring that was. On the way back, they happened to stop for a moment on the road where abraham had spoken to the lord, and cain said, There's an idea I can't get out of my head, What's that, asked abraham, There must have been innocent people in sodom and in the other cities that were burned, If so, the lord would have kept the promise he made to me to save their lives, What about the children, said cain, surely the children were innocent, Oh my god, murmured abraham and his voice was like a groan, Yes, your god perhaps, but not theirs.
Chapter 8
In an instant, the same cain who had just left sodom, travelling along proper roads, was suddenly transported to the sinai desert where, to his great surprise, he found himself in the midst of a multitude of thousands all encamped at the foot of a mountain. He had no idea who they were, nor where they had come from, nor where they were going. If he were to ask any of the people next to him, he would immediately betray the fact that he was a stranger, and that might bring him all kinds of embarrassments and problems. Keeping prudently on the back foot, therefore, he decided to call himself neither cain nor abel this time, just in case the devil should decide to stir things up and introduce someone who had heard tell of that tale of two brothers and who might then start asking awkward questions. It would be best to keep eyes and ears open and to draw his own conclusions. One thing was certain, the name of moses was on everyone's lips, some uttered it in a tone of ancient veneration, but most did so with a rather more contemporary note of impatience. They were the ones who kept asking, Where is moses, he went up to the mountain to speak to the lord forty days and forty nights ago, and we have received neither word nor command from him since, the lord has obviously abandoned his people and wants nothing more to do with us. The road to self-deception is narrow to begin with, but there's always someone ready to broaden it out, for as the proverb says, self-deception is like eating or scratching, it's all a matter of beginning. Along with those waiting for moses' return from mount sinai was a brother of his called aaron, who had been appointed high priest during the time of the israelites' captivity in egypt. The more impatient among them addressed themselves to him, saying, Since we do not know what has happened to moses, why don't you make us some gods to guide us, and aaron, who was, it would seem, neither a model of steadfastness nor very brave, instead of refusing point-blank, said, If that's what you want, take the gold earrings from your wives and sons and daughters and bring them here. They did as he asked, and he then melted the gold, poured it into a mould, cast it and made of it a golden calf. Apparently pleased with his work and oblivious to the serious confusion he was about to create around that future object of worship, namely, was it the lord himself or a calf replacing him, he announced, Tomorrow we will hold a feast in honour of the lord. Cain heard all this and, piecing together odd words, scraps of dialogue, snatches of opinion, he began to form an idea, not just about what was happening at that moment, but about what had gone on before. He was greatly helped in this by conversations overheard in a tent used as a dormitory for soldiers, those without families of their own. Unable to think of anything better, Cain had told them that his name was noah, and he was made welcome and invited to join in their conversations, for jews have always been a talkative people. The following morning, a rumour spread that moses was finally coming down from mount sinai and that joshua, his aide and the israelites' military commander, had gone to meet him. When joshua heard the shouts of the people, he said to moses, There is a noise of war in the camp, What you hear, said moses, are not the happy songs of victory or the sad songs of defeat, it is merely the sound of people singing. Little did he know what awaited him. When he entered the camp, the first thing he saw was the golden calf and the people dancing round it. He seized the calf, smashed it into pieces and ground it to powder, then, turning to aaron, he asked, What did this people do to you that you allowed them to commit so great a sin, and aaron, who, for all his faults, knew the world in which he lived, replied, Do not be angry with me, for you know that these people are set on mischief, it was their idea, they wanted other gods because they no longer believed that you would return, and they would probably have killed me if I had refused to do as they asked. Then moses stood at the gate of the camp and cried, Whoever is on the lord's side let him come to me. All the tribe of levi gathered around him, and moses proclaimed, Thus says the lord god of israel, take up your swords, return to the camp and go from door to door killing your brother, your friend, your neighbour. And in this way nearly three thousand men died. And the blood ran between the tents like a flood that had sprung up from the earth, as if the earth itself were bleeding, everywhere lay bodies cleaved in two, with throats slit or guts hanging out, and so loud were the screams of the women and children that they must have reached the top of mount sinai where the lord would be rejoicing in his revenge. Cain could barely believe what he was seeing. Burning sodom and gomorrah to the ground had evidently not been enough for the lord, for here, at the foot of mount sinai, was clear, irrefutable proof of his wickedness, three thousand men killed simply because he was angered by the creation of a supposed rival in the form of a golden calf. I killed one brother and the lord punished me, who, I would like to know, is going to punish the lord for all these deaths, thought cain, lucifer was quite right when he rebelled against god, and those who say he did so out of envy are wrong, he simply recognised god's evil nature. Some of the gold dust blown by the wind stained cain's hands. He washed them in a puddle as if ritually shaking from his feet the dust of a place where he had been ill received, then he climbed on to his donkey and left. A dark cloud hung over mount sinai, where the lord sat.
For reasons it is not in our power to explain, mere repeaters as we are of ancient stories, constantly wavering between the most ingenuous credulity and the mos
t resolute scepticism, cain found himself plunged into what we can, without exaggeration, call a tempest, a calendric cyclone, a temporal hurricane. During the few days following the episode of the golden calf and its brief existence, his ever- changing presents followed one upon another with incredible rapidity, emerging from the void and hurling themselves back into the void in the form of random, disparate images, with no continuity or connection between them, at times showing what appeared to be the battles of a never-ending war whose first cause no one could remember, at others revealing a kind of grotesque and invariably violent farce, a sort of on-going grand guignol, harsh, discordant and obsessive. One of these images, the most enigmatic and fleeting of all, set before his eyes a vast expanse of water where one could see nothing as far as the horizon, not even an island or a sailing boat with its fishermen and their nets. Water, water everywhere, nothing but water covering the earth. Obviously, cain could not have been an eye-witness to all of these stories, and some, whether true or not, came to him via the well-known route of hearing a story from someone who had heard it from someone else who had, in turn, told someone else. One example was the scandalous case of lot and his daughters. When sodom and gomorrah were destroyed, lot was afraid to go on living in the nearby town of zoar and decided to seek shelter in a cave in the mountains. One day, his eldest daughter said to his younger daughter, Our father is old, one day he will die, and there is no man on the earth to marry us, come, let us make our father drink wine and we will lie with him so that he may give us descendants. And so it was, and lot did not notice when she lay down nor when she left his bed, and the same thing happened with his younger daughter on the following night, for he was so old and drunk that, again, he did not notice when she lay down nor when she left his bed. The two sisters duly became pregnant, but when this story was told to cain, that great expert on erections and ejaculations, as lilith, his first and so far only lover, would happily confirm, he said, Any man who was so drunk that he didn't even know what was going on wouldn't even be able to get it up, and if he couldn't get it up, then no penetration could take place and no engendering either. We should not be surprised by the fact that in the ancient societies he had created, the lord should accept incest as an everyday occurrence not deserving of punishment, for nature then lacked any moral code and was concerned only with the propagation of the species, whether driven by natural urges, mere lust or, as people will say later on, simply doing what comes naturally. The lord himself had said, Go forth and multiply, and he put no limits or restrictions on that injunction, nor on who one should or shouldn't go with. It's possible, although this is only a working hypothesis, that the lord's liberality in the matter of making babies had to do with the need to replace the considerable losses suffered, in the way of dead and wounded, by his and other people's armies, as we have already seen and will doubtless continue to see. We need only recall what happened within sight of mount sinai and the column of smoke that was the lord, the erotic zeal with which, that same night, once the survivors had dried their tears, they hurriedly did their best to engender new combatants who would one day wield the ownerless swords and slit the throats of the children of those who had just vanquished them. Look at what happened to the midianites. In the great lottery of war, it chanced that they defeated the israelites, who, in the past, it must be said, despite all the propaganda to the contrary, often faced defeat. This rankled with the lord, like a stone in his shoe, and he said to moses, You should take vengeance for the israelites on the midianites and then, prepare yourself, for afterwards you will be gathered unto your people. Swallowing the unpleasant news about his own imminent demise, moses ordered each of the twelve tribes of israel to provide one thousand men for the war and thus raised an army of twelve thousand soldiers, who destroyed the midianites, not one of whom escaped with his life. Among the dead were the kings of midian, namely evi, rekem, zur, hur and reba, for kings then used to have strange names, rather than being called joao or afonso or manuel, sancho or pedro. As for the women and children, the israelites took them captive, as well as seizing their cattle, sheep, and all their other goods and chattels. They presented this booty to moses and to the priest eleazar and to the congregation of the children of israel, who were encamped on the plains of moab, by the river jordan, near jericho, toponymic details which we give here merely to show that we have invented nothing. On learning the outcome of the battle, moses was angry and he demanded of the soldiers entering the encampment, Why did you not also kill the women who caused the israelites to trespass against the lord and worship instead the god baal, thus causing a plague among the people of the lord, I order you, therefore, to go back and kill every male child and every woman who has lain with a man, and as for the female children and those women who have not yet lain with a man, you may keep them for yourselves. None of this surprised cain. What was new to him was the sharing out of the spoils, which we set down here as an indispensable record of the customs of the day, with apologies to the reader for an excess of detail for which we are not responsible. This is what the lord said to moses, You and the priest eleazar and the chief fathers of the congregation take the sum of the spoils that were taken, both of men and of beasts, and divide them into two parts, half for the soldiers who fought in the battle and the other half for the congregation. From the soldiers' half you will take as a tribute to the lord one soul of every five hundred, both of people and of beasts, oxen, asses or sheep. Of the children of israel's half you will take one portion of every fifty, both of people and of beasts, oxen, asses or sheep, and give them to the levites, who guard the tabernacle of the lord. Moses did as the lord commanded. And the booty that the israelite soldiers took was six hundred and seventy- five thousand sheep, seventy-two thousand oxen, sixty-one thousand asses and thirty-two thousand women who had not lain with men. And the half corresponding to the soldiers who had gone into battle was, therefore, three hundred and thirty-seven thousand five hundred sheep, of which the lord's tribute was six hundred and seventy-five, thirty-six thousand oxen, of which the lord's tribute was seventy-two, thirty thousand five hundred asses, of which the lord's tribute was sixty-one, and sixteen thousand people, of which the lord's tribute was thirty-two. The other half, which moses gave to the israelites, consisted also of three hundred and thirty- seven thousand five hundred sheep, thirty-six thousand oxen, thirty thousand five hundred asses and sixteen thousand women who had not lain with men. Of that half, moses took one portion of every fifty, both of people and of beasts, and just as the lord commanded, he gave them to the levites, who guard the tabernacle of the lord. But this was not all. In gratitude to the lord for having saved their lives, for none of them had died in the battle, the soldiers, through the intermediary of their commanding officers, offered up to the lord the gold they had found during the sack of the town. Those bracelets, bangles, rings, earrings and necklaces weighed in at some three hundred and seventy pounds. As has been amply demonstrated, as well as being naturally gifted with the brain of a book-keeper and being very quick at mental arithmetic too, the lord is also what one can only describe as very rich. Still astonished by the abundance of cattle, slave-women and gold, the fruits of the battle against the midianites, cain thought, War is obviously very good business indeed, perhaps the best of all, to judge by the ease with which, in an instant, one can acquire thousands and thousands of oxen, sheep, asses and women, this lord will one day be known as the god of war, I can see no other use for him, thought cain, and he was right. It is quite possible that the pact that some say exists between god and men contains only two articles, namely, you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours. One thing is sure, things have changed a lot. Once, the lord would appear to us in person, in the flesh so to speak, and even took a certain satisfaction in showing himself to the world, just ask adam and eve, who benefitted from his presence, or ask cain, although that was in less fortunate circumstances, we refer, of course, to the murder of abel, when there was little cause for contentment. Now, though, the lord conceals himself
in columns of smoke, as if he preferred not to be seen. As mere observers of events, we are of the view that he feels ashamed of some of his less palatable actions, for example, those innocent children in sodom devoured by his divine fire.
Cain Page 7