Cain

Chapter 7

It was written on the tablets of fate that cain would meet abraham again. One day, on yet another of those sudden time-travelling shifts from present to present, now forwards, now backwards, cain found himself at the hottest hour of the day outside a tent near the oaks of mamre. He thought he had caught sight of an old man who vaguely reminded him of someone he knew. In order to be sure, he called at the door of the tent and abraham appeared. Are you looking for someone, he asked, Well, yes and no, I was just passing through, when it seemed to me that I recognised you, and I was right, I'm cain, how is your son isaac, You're mistaken, the only son I have is called ishmael, not isaac, and ishmael is the child I had by my slave hagar. Cain's sharp wits, accustomed to such situations, immediately came into play, this game of alternative presents had once again manipulated time and shown him what would happen at a later date before it actually did, which, put in simpler, more explicit terms means that isaac had not yet been born. I don't recall ever having seen you before, said abraham, but come in, make yourself at home, I'll get a servant to bring you water to wash your feet and give you some bread for the journey,

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.