Some might say that social and domestic peace finally reigned in the palace, enfolding everyone in the same fraternal embrace. This, however, was not the case, for after a few days had passed, cain came to the conclusion that with lilith expecting a child, his time there had ended. When the child came into the world, everyone would consider it to be noah's child, and although, at first, there would be no shortage of more than justified suspicions and murmurings, time, the great leveller, would soon smooth them away, and future historians would take care to eliminate from the city's chronicle any reference to a certain treader of mud called abel, or cain, or whatever the devil his name was, a doubt which would, in itself, be deemed reason enough to condemn him to oblivion, to permanent quarantine, to the limbo of those events which, for the peace of mind of dynasties, it is best not to talk about. Our story may not be historical, but it shows how wrong or perhaps malicious those historians were, because cain did exist, he gave noah's wife a child, and now he has a problem, how to tell lilith that he wants to leave. He hoped that the lord's curse, You will be a fugitive and a vagabond upon the earth, would persuade her to accept his decision. In the end, though, it proved less problematic than he had thought, perhaps also because the child, that handful of hesitant cells, was already expressing a will and a desire, the first effect of which was to reduce its parents' mad passion for each other to the status of a vulgar sexual fling to which, as we know, the official history will not devote a single line. Cain asked lilith for a donkey and she gave orders for him to be given the very best, the most docile and the sturdiest in the palace stables. At that point, news came that the treacherous slave and his partners in crime had been discovered and arrested. Fortunately for sensitive souls, who always look away from unpleasantnesses of any kind, there were no interrogations and no torture, perhaps because of lilith's pregnancy, for in the opinion of notable local female authorities, this would augur ill for the future of the gestating child, not just the blood that would inevitably be spilled, but also the terrible screams of the torture victims. These authorities, mainly midwives of long experience, believed that a baby in its mother's womb can hear everything going on outside. The result was a sober death by hanging before the entire populace of the city, as a warning, Be careful, this is the very least that could happen to you. The execution was watched from a palace balcony by noah, lilith and cain, the latter because he had been the target of the failed attack. It was noted that, contrary to protocol, noah did not stand in the middle of that small group, lilith did, thus keeping husband and lover apart, as if she were saying that, although she did not love her official spouse, she would remain joined to him, because that is what public opinion seemed to want and what the interests of the dynasty appeared to need, and that although she was being forced by cruel destiny, by the lord's curse, You will be a fugitive and a vagabond upon the earth, to allow cain to leave, she would remain bound to him by the body's sublime memory, by the inextinguishable recollection of the dazzling hours she had spent with him, something a woman never forgets, not like men, to whom such things are like water off a duck's back. The corpses of the malefactors will remain hanging where they are until all that remains of them are bones, for their flesh is accursed, and the earth, if they were buried in it, would erupt and vomit them up, over and over. That night, lilith and cain slept together for the last time. She wept, he clung to her and wept too, but their tears did not last long, they were soon overcome by erotic passion, in whose grip they once more lost all control and fell into delirium, absolute and utter, as if the world were nothing more than that, two lovers interminably devouring each other, so much so that lilith said at last, Kill me. Yes, perhaps that would be the logical end to this story of the love between cain and lilith, but he didn't kill her. He placed a long, lingering kiss on her lips, looked at her for the last time and then went and spent the rest of the night in the bed reserved for him in the antechamber.