Infinity in the Palm of Her Hand: A Novel of Adam and Eve (15 page)

I
SOLATED FROM THE OTHERS, CAIN DEVOTED HIMSELF
to his seeds. He harvested lentils and wheat; he turned the earth for the plants that would come up in the spring. He went back to the cave at inopportune times. He watched Luluwa and Abel. He refused to speak to Aklia.

Adam avoided sinking into the sadness that threatened them all. He had survived till now and would continue to survive. He and Eve would reproduce if it turned out that their children did not. With time, Cain would temper his restlessness. If Cain's mother and father had endured the loss of the Garden, then Cain, too, would have to endure. He would have to wait. Time passes and carries off nonconforming behavior with it; one accepted what one could not change. Eve had circles beneath her eyes. She slept very little.

The routine of the hunt was restored. Winter was coming and they had to prepare for the cold, dark nights, for the chill earth and naked trees. Abel and Adam again went out together.
Aklia, Luluwa, and Eve brought mushrooms, herbs, and fish to the cave. The nights were tense, filled with sounds and footsteps. Eve closed her eyes tight and refused to see who was walking around. She forced Adam to stay quiet. One early morning she thought she heard a band of monkeys at the other end of the footbridge. She sat up and looked for Aklia, but couldn't see her; however, by morning Aklia was there as she always was. It was a dream, Eve told herself.

A day came when Cain emerged from his aloofness. Eve thought that maybe she would be able to sleep as she once had, not the fragile sleep interrupted by sounds that she had no way of knowing were real or imaginary. She saw Cain go to Abel, and saw them talking, and had to leave to hide her tears of relief.

The following morning the brothers left together. Eve watched them go in an air of peace. Bent over the channel he was digging to divert water from the river and shorten the distance they had to go to satisfy their thirst, Adam smiled at his wife.

The day was light and crystalline. Toward dusk, Eve was painting vessels; Aklia was sharpening hooks; Adam was finishing the channel for the water. The sound of rustling leaves, of someone running, made them look up.

Luluwa burst from the bushes, panting.

What was it in Luluwa's eyes that had shaken her so? Eve sprang up anxiously.

“What happened?” she asked.

Luluwa opened her mouth. No sound came out.

“What happened?” her mother repeated.

Adam and Aklia left what they were doing.

“Cain struck Abel. Abel isn't making a sound. He is on the ground, with his eyes open.”

Luluwa began telling them. She said that early in the afternoon, as she was weaving baskets, she saw that it was futile to try to set a rhythm between her hands and her thoughts, and decided it would be better to go look for Cain and Abel. Worried, she left without notifying anyone because she felt whirring insects buzzing in her head, and a flock of disoriented birds flapping their wings in her breast. She ran as fast as her legs would carry her to the wheat plantings. She asked herself where Cain might have taken Abel, because she did not find them there, or up river where the mushrooms grew, or where the squash lifted their orange heads. She wondered about the old cave, the fig trees, the peaches. She ran on, panting. As she went, she startled monkeys in the trees, wild pigs. In her course, thorns scored her skin. When she reached the little grove of peach trees, she picked up the scent of Cain. He had been there, but he had gone on. She sniffed the air, circled the solitary mountain, climbed up on some rocks to see if from there she could catch sight of her brothers. She saw something lying on a small promontory. She ran that way, calling to Cain not to leave, to wait for her. When she got there, she bent over to ease the sharp pain shooting through her ribs from having run so fast.

“I thought that Abel was sleeping stretched out on the ground, and that Cain was by his side watching him sleep. But then I heard Cain's moans. I saw him sitting with his head between his knees. He was rocking back and then forward with his hands laced behind his neck. The instant he saw me, he yelled. He began to sob. What happened to Abel, Cain? And he told me: He is dead, Luluwa. I killed him.

He is dead Luluwa, I killed him. He is dead, Luluwa, I killed him. He is dead, Luluwa, I killed him
. Eve heard the phrase and all the words in the world other than those disappeared. She wanted to think, and only
He is dead Luluwa, I killed him
. She wanted to speak, and only
He is dead Luluwa, I killed him
She kept seeing those words, seeing the image that Luluwa described: Abel on the ground and Cain saying that over and over.

Luluwa continued: You killed him? I asked, unable to understand. I thought, we've never seen anyone die. I thought Cain was mistaken. Then I knelt beside Abel and I began to call to him. I saw the blood beneath his head. A red aureole. I saw that Abel was staring at the sky. I shook him. I begged him to wake up. Abel was cold, icy cold, like the water in the river. He doesn't wake up, Cain told me. He told me he had already tried. He told me that he did not hear any sound inside Abel. He shouted that he had killed him.

“And he killed him,” moaned Luluwa, herself sobbing. “He killed him. It's true. I saw him. He's dead. He doesn't move. He doesn't speak. He stares straight before him. And he is cold. Cain killed him. Cain killed him! He didn't mean to, but he killed him. Poor Cain. What will become of us now? Where is Abel? Where is death? What will we do to make him come back?”

None of them had died yet, Eve thought. They couldn't die, Adam thought. Eve remembered the Serpent. It was not easy to die, she'd said. Elokim will not let that happen, Adam told himself. Eve and he a long time ago had jumped from the peak of the mountain, thinking they would die, only to fall in the river without a scratch.

“Come, Luluwa. Take us to your brothers.”

T
HE FOUR OF THEM RAN WITHOUT STOPPING. THEY
ran through the autumn countryside. It was growing dark. In the sky the clouds were blazing in the red light of sunset; the dark and hostile earth returned the sound of their feet pounding rhythmically on the ground. A pack. A terrified pack. As they passed, birds flew up from the trees. Animals caught the scent of their anguish. None came near them.

He is dead, Luluwa, I killed him
. Eve wanted to erase the words, but they were as loud as the sound of heels thudding one after the other on the path. And if it was true? And if Cain had killed Abel? They all knew how to kill. Even she did. Fish died in her baskets. Their tails flailed against its sides when they were out of the water. But kill another like themselves? How could Cain not have known his strength? Luluwa told them that Cain had struck his brother with a rock. That was how Adam killed rabbits. And that was how he told her he had killed the bear that mangled his dog. What had Adam done, what had she done, when they killed their first creature? What
cruel forces had they unleashed in order to survive? In order to eat? And why had Elokim so disposed? Had he known what he was doing? And had it been done with the abandon he displayed in painting the sky, in conceiving flowers and the wings of the birds? Was he thinking at all? Since he did not live the way they did, how could he decide their lives, decide what could or could not be?

Luluwa pointed to the promontory. They climbed. Aklia moaned and stumbled along. Eve saw her putting her weight on her hands to push forward, to move more rapidly.

“Don't hurt your hands, Aklia.”

Aklia looked at her with gentle eyes. She said nothing. She made only a sad, high sound.

Adam saw the figure of Abel lying flat on the ground. He had killed too many animals not to recognize the signs. But he ran to Abel to touch him. He was the first to rest his head on Abel's chest. His weeping was hoarse, immense. The air absorbed his wailing. It was a call, an admission of defeat.

Eve approached Abel slowly. Her legs were trembling. She recalled the feeling of having Abel in her womb. The slippery wax and blood on his little body. Her eyes stopped at the boy's feet. They were stained, flat, large. The toes. Her children's little toes. When they were born nothing else had so filled her with wonder. The feet and the tiny ears, the lobes curved like shells. She went closer. She saw his staring eyes. She bent down and touched his eyelids to close them. She did it without thinking. Knowledge of Good and Evil.

Beautiful Abel. Sleeping. She stroked his forehead. His skin so cold. Sadness spread slowly through her body; it was as if water were filling her body until she couldn't breathe.
She dropped down beside Abel's head. She caressed him. She wanted to put her arms around him, to hold him to her bosom, to hug him tightly, console him. How lonely he would be now, she thought. More lonely than they, who were themselves so lonely. Adam was weeping. His lament issued from a place that seemed to be not in him but in the earth itself. She took Abel's head and laid it in her lap.

“Help me, Adam, help me hold him. Put him in my arms.”

Adam helped her. She cradled her son. She rocked him. There was no way to weep for this pain, she thought, tears running down her cheeks, spilling onto her breasts. She clasped Abel to her. “Where is your life, Abel? Why aren't you moving?”

He was so heavy, so forlorn. She touched his head. The wound in his skull. It was not bleeding any longer. She felt the void in her womb. She felt the absence of her son like a emptying out of herself. Only water flooding through her. Water, choking her until she was able to emit a deep moan, to let go in the pain of knowing that she would never again see Abel alive. Never.

She saw Aklia leaping about, Luluwa moaning.

“Where is Cain?” Eve asked. “Where is my son Cain?”

“I don't know,” Luluwa answered. “I don't know.”

“Look for him, Luluwa. Look for him so he can help us carry Abel to the cave. We can't leave him here.”

It was deep into the night. Adam lit fires. One on each side of Abel, Adam and Eve sat by their son beneath a dark, starry sky.

Aklia had fallen asleep.

“I remember when I became aware that I was,” said Adam.
“I remember, and I think it would have been better never to exist.”

“I remember when I ate of the fruit of the Tree. I should not have done that.”

“Abel would never have died. It all started with you, Eve.” He looked up. He looked at her with grieving rancor.

“Without me, Abel would never have existed,” she returned. “We wouldn't have loved. The life that had to be began with me. All I did was fulfill my destiny.”

“And death began.”

“I gave life, Adam. The one who began to kill was you.”

“So we could survive.”

“I'm not blaming you, but once we accepted that it was necessary to kill in order to survive, we allowed necessity to rule our conscience, and we let cruelty in. And now look how cruelty has come to roost in our lives.”

“It was inevitable. As inevitable as your eating the fruit.”

“If Elokim hadn't forced us to cross the twins between the pairs, maybe this wouldn't have happened.”

“Why did he create us, Eve? I don't believe that I can suffer more than I am suffering now.”

“The Serpent said that Elokim made us to see whether we would be able to return to the beginning and regain Paradise.”

“So perhaps we are not the beginning?”

“From what she told me, in the Garden we were the image of what Elokim wanted to see at the end of his creation. When we ate the fig, he altered the direction of time. Now to go back to that point of departure, our children and the children of their children, the generations that will come after us, will have to begin all over, to regress. That was what she said.”

“And what will we have to regress to?”

“I don't know, Adam. I think that we will end up living in a pack. Maybe the future lies in Aklia. Maybe that is why you find her strange. Maybe she is the past that we never knew.”

“Aklia, so innocent.”

“And essential.”

“But she would still have to kill.”

“Cain killed.”

Eve said nothing.

Finally she said, “I mourn that son as much as this one.”

“Don't you believe that we must punish him?”

“Punish him? I assure you that no punishment we impose will be as harsh as what he will suffer on his own. He will go away with Luluwa. I foresee it. I believe that, like you and me, they have already disobeyed.”

I
T WAS NEARLY DAWN WHEN CAIN RETURNED WITH
Luluwa. He prostrated himself before Adam and Eve.

“I never meant to kill Abel,” he moaned. “I didn't know the weight of my hand.”

“Get up,” said Eve.

Cain stood. Eve saw the deep circle on his brow. Crimson. Raw flesh. A burn.

“Who marked you?” Adam asked.

“Elokim.”

“How?” Eve asked. “Tell us.”

“Abel said that he would be a good father for Luluwa's children, that I would be happy with Aklia,” he sobbed. “I told him that Luluwa and I were a single being and that neither of us could exist without the other. But he said that it was the will of Elokim that he should procreate with Luluwa. I struck him. I didn't know that my blows would kill him. I hid. Then I heard Elokim's voice. He asked me about Abel. He asked me about Abel! He who knows everything. I was enraged,” he
wept. “‘Am I my brother's keeper?' I replied. He said that my brother's blood had cried out to him. And he cursed me! The earth would never yield its fruit to me, he decreed. He would make me a fugitive who would wander through the world. I begged him, I prostrated myself. I told him that my punishment was greater than I could bear. The animals will slay me; those who come later will slay me. Then he made this mark on my forehead. They would see the mark and they would not slay me, he said. If they did, his vengeance would fall upon them sevenfold.”

Cain started to throw himself into Adam's arms. He was sobbing, trembling. Adam pushed him away. Eve took him in her arms, but she could not make her heart embrace him. Cain left them.

Luluwa threw herself down. She beat her head upon the ground. She thought about Abel, about the body of Cain, which only days before she had felt so deep inside her. She thought about how she loved him, about the solitude that would accompany them and the loneliness they would have to live in. She wept with a weeping that ululated like the wind, as if a storm had taken possession of her and its lightning and thunder were destroying her.

Among them, they carried Abel's body to the old cave, where he had been born. Eve cleaned the blood from his head. She remembered the first time she had washed him in the stream. How soft and pliable and warm he was when he had just emerged from her womb; how stiff and cold he was now. She let the air out of her lungs. She heard herself howling like a wolf. Her pain was untouched, like a new wound that nothing could heal.

Adam burned aromatic resins at his son's side. They thought of burning the body on the bonfire so the smoke of the sacrifice would rise up to Elokim. Where were you, Elokim, when my children were killing each other? Adam cried out in silence. Luluwa begged them to put Abel in the ground. Since Abel had not had children, his body could at least become a tree and would sweeten the fruit. Adam imagined his son's smile appearing among the leaves of a tree. Dust you are and unto dust shall you return. Fertile dust.

They had to bury Abel three times. The earth that had never known the death of a human, once, twice, returned his remains. They closed the hole and it reopened. It was not until the third time, until Adam and Eve prostrated themselves and asked the earth to receive their son, that it closed over Abel's body and held him forever.