I let him go and he fell easily, almost comfortably, crumpling from the middle, his ankles crossed. I turned to my unleavened cakes but they were black and fuming, like the droppings of those three-eyed amphisbaenae that used to groan and vomit themselves into being in the days when the Lord had even less control over Creation than He did on this wild flaming yellow evening, painted to harmonise us with Grandeur.
A bad odour came from the altar too.
I looked back to Abel. I wanted to say, I hope you are pleased with yourself. But was so ashamed of him for lying there without weight or pigment, without fight, only a grimace of absurd concentration on his face, as though he were taking advantage of this quiet time to make his devotions, to give thanks where all his senses should have told him no thanks were owing; I was so angry with him for his compliancy, and so humiliated by his exposure, that I began to shovel debris on him, just dust at first, just grit and pebbles that I could kick, but then shale and flakes of slate, flint, chippings from the clumsy slabs of stone quarried by my father in slavish obedience to Saraqael’s instructions for a sacrarium and slaughter table.
A great dust rose from where he lay, as desolate as his altar. I could not penetrate it to see what damage I had done until the sun dropped like a stone itself into the earth, and a wind, smelling of salt desert, of drifting sand, of distance, blew the air from red to purple. I knelt by him and wiped the gravel from his eyes. His body had taken the main force of my attack; the only disfigurement to his face was a small cut running across his cheek like a broken vein. The idea that I had punctured his skin upset me more than any thought of what I had done to his bones. I couldn’t see his bones.
I cleaned the cut and then sat him up, putting my head to his chest as I had done for nights without number, crouched over his sleeping form, listening to the evenness of his breathing, keeping him from harm — but on this night there was no breathing to be heard.
Not from him, not from anything.
16. A High-Minded Offer
A short interval.
When they are greatly amused, or sorely distressed — and they are not always certain of the difference — audiences in Babel find that it settles their nerves to break, briefly, for refreshment and perambulation. A glass of iced water or sherbet, a turn beneath the steadying Babel moon, a quick exchange of pleasantries with friends, and they are once again ready to be entertained.
For those who prefer to stay in their seats and mop their foreheads with their sleeves, a divertissement is normally provided, not necessarily balletic, but always musical, light in spirits, and ironical if only by virtue of its incongruity to the main event.
Just like Naaman himself.
‘Going well,’ he says to Cain, off-stage.
Cain nods.
‘Oatcakes!’ Naaman shakes his head, has difficulty containing all the mirth that is in him. ‘Oatcakes! Wicked!’
Cain stares ahead.
‘So,’ says Naaman, as though Cain’s determination to make merry cannot be allowed to hinder the discussion of more serious matters indefinitely, ‘So, you are almost finished. You must be relieved.’
‘Were it not that the end is always a prelude to another beginning, I would be. As it is —’
‘Of course, of course,’ says Naaman. ‘Goes without saying.
But presumably you’ll be taking a rest. A deserved rest, if I may say.’
‘I have no specific plans,’ says Cain. ‘Naturally, I mean to discuss further engagements and other locations with you.’
Naaman puts his hand on Cain’s shoulder. A gesture implying willingness, concurrence, expansiveness beyond the scope of words. What he next says is so by-the-by, so much in the nature of an afterthought, that were he and Cain not such good friends he would probably not even bother to mention it. ‘This tower of yours —’
‘What tower of mine?’
‘This temple or whatever that you have a mind to rent or build or ruminate a while in…’
Cain risks continuing with not knowing what Naaman is talking about.
‘My daughter,’ says Naaman, not hiding that this is difficult for him, and not hiding that he is not grateful to Cain for making it so, ‘my daughter assures me that possession of an edifice enjoying elevation and solitude has long been an ambition of yours. I may have something that will answer.’
‘It has never been my intention,’ Cain says, ‘to climb on another man’s shoulders. If your daughter has told you I seek altitude for its own sake — to secure a view or to proclaim my eminence — she has either misled you or misunderstood me. I am not looking for a pedestal to perch on. I do, however, frequently think of a monument to my brother which will also serve as a resting place for myself.’
Naaman thinks Cain is too touchy for his own or for anybody else’s good, and wonders how his daughter…
‘I understand,’ he says, ‘I understand. A man cannot be too prudent or too premature in the arrangements he makes for his retirement. And as I say, I may have something that will answer.’
‘My expectation has been to build my own.’
‘I never knew,’ says Naaman, ‘that you were an engineer.’
‘I am not, though of course my father —’
‘Or a mason.’
‘I am not.’
‘Or an architect.’
‘I am not. But expertise of these kinds can be bought.’
‘Why bother? Why pay their prices? There is a ziggurat at the southern end of the city, on the road to Larsa, on which work has been languishing for a while — don’t ask me why — priestly wranglings, I suppose. I can’t recall which god it is consecrated to, if any, but there would be no objections to you making it over to your own, or to yourself if you prefer. We are easygoing about such things here, as you know. I can’t vouch for what state it’s in, but I’m told the foundations have been dug, and if I’m not mistaken there is even a storey or two completed. You do the rest. Build as high as your fancy or your ambition takes you.’
‘I am not an engineer,’ Cain reminds him.
‘You don’t need to be. The city’s full of them. And one’s bound to be on the site anyway. Asleep, but on site. All you’d have to do is see he stays awake.’
‘I am to be a sort of foreman?’
‘Nnnn…’ Naaman squeezes his womanly lips together. Foreman is not the word he would use.
‘Caretaker, then?’
Naaman still isn’t happy. He likes to be precise about these things. Clear from the beginning. He lays a finger along the bridge of his nose, drops an eye, pops his cheeks. At last the imp of acuity can be seen dancing again across his face. ‘I have it,’ he says. ‘Presiding genius.’
Cain decides against asking the reason for Naaman’s liberality. Or his mirth. But he does have one question: ‘May I take time to consider this?’
Naaman appears nonplussed. Is he not offering Cain the painless realisation of the foremost of his desires? Naturally, he is too gracious even to think of pointing this out. ‘Heavens, yes,’ he says instead, after a pause. ‘Tell me later this evening — after you have finished burying your brother.’
The briefest silence between them. Nothing threatening to good relations.
‘By time,’ Cain says, ‘I did mean something more like weeks.’
Naaman’s long, lovely hands, smelling of camphor and camomile, appear once more, as though they have flown there, on Cain’s shoulder. Cain knows he must not inhale, must think of the smell of sea or snow, if he is not to swoon.