The following day, adam went with his wife to the garden of eden. At her suggestion, they had washed themselves as best they could in the stream, although their best was very little, almost nothing really, because without the aid of soap, water can give only an illusion of cleanliness. They sat down on the ground and discovered that the angel azael wasn't one to beat about the bush, You are not the only human beings on earth, he began, Not the only ones, exclaimed adam, astonished, Please, don't make me repeat myself, Who created those other beings, where are they, They're everywhere, Did the lord create them as he created us, asked eve, That I can't say, and if you ask the same question again, our conversation will end right here, and we will each go our separate ways, I to my job of guarding the garden of eden and you to your cave and your hunger, In that case, we'll be dead in no time, said adam, no one has ever taught me how to do anything, I can't dig or work the land because I have no hoe and no plough, and if I had, I would have to learn how to use them and there's no one in this desert to teach me, we would be better off as the dust we came from, with no will and no desire, You speak like a book, said the angel, and adam felt pleased to have spoken like a book, he who had never studied. Then eve asked, If other human beings already exist, why did the lord make us, As you know, the ways of the lord are mysterious, but, as far as I can make out, you were an experiment, Us, an experiment, exclaimed adam, an experiment to prove what, Since I do not know for certain, I cannot tell you, but the lord must have his reasons for keeping silent on the matter, We aren't a matter, we are two people who don't know how we're going to survive, said eve, Wait, I haven't yet finished, said the angel, Speak then, and please give us some scrap of good news, however insignificant, Not far from here is a road occasionally frequented by caravans of traders travelling back and forth to the markets, and my idea is that you should light a fire that produces a lot of smoke, enough to be seen from a distance, We haven't anything to light it with, said eve, You don't, but I do, What, This burning sword, which will finally be of some use, I just need to apply the tip to some dry thistles and some straw and you'll have a bonfire that can be seen not just by a passing caravan, but even from the moon itself, although you must take care not to let the fire spread, because a bonfire is one thing and a whole desert in flames quite another, it might reach the garden of eden, and then I'd be out of a job, And what if no one comes, asked eve, Oh, they will, they will, don't you worry about that, replied azael, human beings are naturally curious, they'll want to know who lit that fire and why, And then, asked adam, Then it's up to you, I can't do anything more, you simply have to find a way of joining the caravan, just tell them that you'll work for your keep, I'm sure that two pairs of hands in exchange for a dish of lentils would be a good deal for all concerned, both for employer and employee, but when that happens, don't forget to put out the fire, that way I'll know you've gone, and that, adam, will be your chance to learn all the things you don't know. It was an excellent plan, some cherubim are a real boon, and whereas the lord, at least as regards this experiment, cared nothing about the future of his two creations, azael, the angelic guard charged with keeping them out of the garden of eden, welcomed them in christian fashion, gave them food and, above all, equipped them for life with a few precious practical ideas, a true road to salvation for the body and, therefore, the soul. The couple could not thank him enough, eve even shed a few tears when she embraced azael, a display of affection that greatly displeased her husband, and later on, he couldn't help but ask the question that was bursting to be asked, Did you give him something in exchange, What and to whom, asked eve, knowing full well what her husband meant, Who do you think, to him, azael, said adam, carefully omitting the first part of the question, He's an angel, one of the cherubim, replied eve, and felt it unnecessary to say anything more. Some say that this was the day on which the battle of the sexes really began. The first caravan of traders did not appear for three weeks. Rather than them all trudging up to the cave where adam and eve were living, they sent an advance guard of three men who had the authority to negotiate any work contracts, they, however, took pity on the luckless pair and made room for them on the donkeys they were riding. The leader of the caravan would decide what to do with them. Despite this uncertainty, adam, like someone closing a door as he says goodbye, put out the fire. When the last wisp of smoke had disappeared into the atmosphere, the angel said, Ah, they've gone, safe journey.
Chapter 3
Life treated them fairly well. They were accepted into the caravan despite their evident lack of labouring skills and were not required to give too many explanations about who they were and where they came from. They had got lost, they said, and that, after all, was the truth of the matter. Apart from the fact that they were the children of the lord, the work of his own divine hands, something which no one there could possibly know, there were no obvious physio-gnomic differences between them and their providential hosts, you would even think they belonged to the same race, black hair, olive skin, dark eyes, striking eyebrows. When cain is born, all the neighbours will be surprised by the pale rosy complexion with which he comes into the world, as if he were the son of an angel, or an archangel, or even, perish the thought, the son of one of the cherubim. They never lacked for a dish of lentils, and it was not long before adam and eve began to earn a wage, nothing much, a purely symbolic amount really, but it nevertheless represented a start in life. Not only adam, but eve as well, who had not been born to be a duchess, were gradually being initiated into the mysteries of manual labour, into operations as simple as making a slip knot in a rope or as complex as handling a needle without pricking your fingers too often. When the caravan arrived at the settlement from which it had set out some weeks before, adam and eve were given a tent and some mats to sleep on and it was thanks to that and to other periods of stability in their lives that adam could, at last, learn to dig and delve, to sow seed in a furrow, and even to perfect the sublime art of pruning, which no lord and no god had thought to invent. He began to work with the tools that others lent him, then slowly acquired his own and, after only a few years, was considered by his neighbours to be a good farmer. The days spent in the garden of eden and in the cave in the desert, the days of thorns and thistles and muddy streams, faded from his memory until sometimes they seemed like gratuitous inventions that had never actually been experienced or even dreamed, but, rather, intuited as if they came from a life, a self, a destiny that might have been. Eve, it is true, kept a special place in her memory for azael, the angel who had disobeyed the lord's instructions in order to save his creations from death, but that was their secret, vouchsafed to no one else. Then came the day when adam could buy a piece of land, call it his own and build, at the foot of a hill, a rough adobe house, and there his three sons were born, cain, abel and seth, all of whom, at some point in their lives, crawled between kitchen and living room. And between the kitchen and the fields as well, because the two oldest boys, as soon as they were big enough, and with all the ingenuous guile of their few years, used every pretext, valid or not, to get their father to take them with him, mounted on the family mule, to wherever he was working. It became clear early on that they had very different vocations. While abel preferred the company of sheep and lambs, cain's great joy lay in hoes and pitchforks and scythes, one was clearly destined to make his way raising livestock, the other to forge a path in agriculture. It has to be said that the division of labour in the household could not have been better, given than it covered the two most important sectors of the economy at the time. Everyone agreed that it was a family with a future. And so it would prove, as would shortly be shown, with the invaluable help of the lord, of course, for that is what he is there for. Ever since they were but tender infants, cain and abel had been the best of friends, to the degree that they did not even seem like brothers, where one went, the other followed, and they did everything by mutual agreement. Those the lord loves, he preserves, said jealous mothers in the village, and so it seemed. Then one day, the future decided that it was about time it put in an appearance. Abel had his livestock, cain his fields, and in accordance with tradition and religious obligation, they offered to the lord the first fruits of their labours, with abel burning the delicate flesh of a lamb and cain the products of the earth, a few ears of wheat and some seeds. Then something happened that has still not been explained. The smoke from the meat offered by abel rose straight up and vanished into infinite space, a sign that the lord accepted the sacrifice and was well pleased, but the smoke from cain's vegetables, nurtured with just as much love, hardly rose up at all and dispersed when it was barely a few feet above the ground, which meant that the lord had rejected it out of hand. Concerned and perplexed, cain suggested to abel that they change places, perhaps it was the wind causing the problem, but when they did change places, the result was the same. It was clear that the lord held cain in contempt. It was then that abel revealed his true nature. Instead of feeling for his brother in his misfortune and consoling him, he mocked him and, as if that were not enough, began to put on airs, proclaiming himself, to cain's astonishment and bafflement, to be the lord's favourite, the lord's chosen one. Poor cain had no alternative but to swallow the insult and go back to work. The same scene was repeated unvaryingly over a whole week, with one plume of smoke rising up to the heavens and one rising only as high as a man could reach before it dispersed. And abel always reacted with the same lack of compassion, the same disdainful remarks, the same scorn. One day, cain asked his brother to go with him to a nearby valley where it was said that a fox had its lair, and there, with his own hands, he slew him with the jaw-bone of an ass that he had previously hidden, with treacherous intent, in a bramble patch. At that very moment, that is, after the event, the voice of the lord rang out, indeed, he appeared to cain in person. Not a word for years and suddenly there he was, dressed as he had been when he drove the two brothers' unfortunate parents from the garden of eden. He was clothed from head to foot in a richly woven robe, on his head the triple crown and in his right hand the sceptre. Where is your brother, he asked, and cain responded with another question. Am I my brother's keeper, You killed him, Yes, I did, but you are the one who is really to blame, I would have given my life for him if you had not destroyed mine, It was a question of putting you to the test, But why put to the test the very thing you yourself created, Because I am the sovereign lord of all things, And of all beings you will say, but not of me and my freedom, What, the freedom to kill, Just as you had the freedom to stop me killing abel, which was perfectly within your capabilities, all you had to do, just for a moment, was to abandon that pride in your infallibility that you share with all the other gods, and, again just for a moment, to be truly merciful and accept my offering with humility, because you shouldn't have refused it, you gods, you and all the others, have a duty to those you claim to have created, This is seditious talk, Yes, possibly, but I can guarantee you that if I were god, I would repeat every day Blessed are those who choose sedition because theirs is the kingdom of the earth, That's sacrilege, Maybe, but no more sacrilegious than you allowing abel to die, You were the one who killed him, True, but you were the one who pronounced sentence, whereas I merely carried out the execution, That blood over there wasn't spilled by me, you could have chosen between good and evil, but you chose evil and must pay for it, The person who stays to keep watch over the guard is just as much a thief as the one who actually goes into the vineyard, said cain, That blood is crying out for vengeance, insisted god, In that case, you will have your revenge both for a real death and for another that did not take place, Explain yourself, You won't like what you hear, Don't worry about that, speak, It's simple enough, I killed abel because I couldn't kill you, so, in intent, you are dead too, Yes, I see what you mean, but death is forbidden for the gods, Oh, I know, but you gods should still take the blame for all the crimes committed in your name or because of you, God is innocent, it would be just the same if I didn't exist, But because I killed someone, I could now be slain by anyone who meets me, No, I'll make an agreement with you, God make an agreement with a reprobate, asked cain, unable to believe what he was hearing, Let's say it's an agreement based on our shared responsibility for abel's death, So you recognise your share in the blame, Yes, I do, but don't tell anyone, it will be a secret between god and cain, This can't be true, I must be dreaming, That often happens with gods, Is that because your ways are, as they say, mysterious, asked cain, No god I know ever said such a thing, it would never even occur to us that our ways are mysterious, no, that was something invented by men who presume to know god intimately, So I won't be punished for my crime then, asked cain, My portion of the blame does not absolve yours, you will have your punishment, Which is, You will be a fugitive and a vagabond upon the earth, In that case, anyone will have the right to kill me, No, because I will put a mark upon your forehead, and no one will harm you, but to repay me for my benevolence, you must try to do no harm to anyone else, said the lord, and with the tip of his index finger he touched cain's forehead on which there appeared a small black mark, That is the mark of your condemnation, added the lord, but it is also a sign that for the whole of your life you will be subject to my protection and to my censure too, I will be watching you wherever you are, All right, I accept, said cain, You have no option, When does my punishment begin, Now, May I say goodbye to my parents, asked cain, That's up to you, I don't involve myself in family matters, but they will certainly want to know where abel is and I don't imagine you're going to tell them you killed him, No, No what, No, I won't say goodbye to my parents, Off you go, then. There was nothing more to be said. The lord disappeared before cain had even taken his first step. Abel's face was covered in flies, there were flies on his open eyes, flies in the corners of his mouth, flies on the wounds on his hands which he had held up to protect himself from the blows. Poor abel, deceived by god. The lord had made some very bad choices when it came to inaugurating the garden of eden, in this particular game of roulette everyone had lost, in this target practice for the blind no one had scored. Of course, eve and adam could always have another child to make up for the loss of their murdered son, but how sad to be someone with no other goal in life than to keep making children without knowing why or for what purpose. In order to propagate the species, say those who believe in a final objective, in an ultimate reason, although they have no idea what those might be and have never bothered to ask themselves why the species should keep being propagated as if it were the universe