Naturally Antinous Bellori knew nothing of the existence of this narrative, which once must have constituted a deeper understanding of the circumstances that led to the fratricide, but even if he had, it is unlikely that it would have occasioned any substantial changes in On the Nature of Angels. The fact is that the fragment only strengthens Bellori’s representation both of the actual geographically traceable existence of paradise and of the cherubim’s physical presence in the world in the time after the creation. The Lord’s ordering them to keep watch over the way that led to the tree of life indicates that mankind hadn’t moved far away but had presumably settled down in the vicinity. So they were able to have a foot in two worlds, the lost one, which they saw all the time but could never reenter, and the one they had, in which they lived and worked every day. For the first generation, paradise must have represented the real life, something they always harked back to, whereas life in the valley where they tilled the soil must have had something second rate about it. For the next generation, on the other hand, the opposite would have been true. For them, life in the valley was the real one. If they looked with longing at the forests bordering the Garden of Eden, it was a longing for the unknown that filled them.
ABEL HAD seen the glow from the cherubim in the sky above the hills in the west all through his childhood, an almost imperceptible quivering of the air during the day, which at dusk began to glow brighter and brighter as darkness fell, until the reddish gleam of the flames rolled back and forth beneath the sky during the night. He might have imagined that the black hills were actually coals, which the evening breezes blew into life, and must have on more than one occasion stood staring at this enticing light, which his father would never talk about, with aching muscles after a long day’s work, leaning on a pick or a hoe while the voices of the others, going in to eat, died away behind him and soon were completely absent. He no longer thinks about what causes the light, just as he doesn’t consider what makes the trees grow on the hillsides, it’s part of his surroundings and when, evening after evening, he stares at it, it’s because he finds it beautiful. Just as he finds the starry sky, the bottom of the river, the fish that flash there, beautiful.
He turns and glances over toward the houses lying beneath a hill on the other side of the field, and he sees that the figures, at this distance little bigger than beetles, will soon be home. All day their voices have echoed across the field. All day their bodies have moved to and fro over the ground, bending down, picking up stones, placing them in baskets, carrying the baskets over to the forest’s edge, emptying them, or stood swinging a sledgehammer at one of the great rocks, or dug out earth from around one of the tree stumps, or lain stretched out on the grass beneath the trees at noon, eating or sleeping. And it’s as if they’ve held him captive, for only now, now that they’re no longer there, does the landscape he’s been in all day long reveal itself to him.
The undulating cornfield with its grayish, dusty surface glimmers almost golden in the sunshine. The lush crowns of the trees that grow between the field and the encircling mountains on the opposite side of the valley form one single band of green, on the slope close to him one could pick out individual species: aspen, alder, oak, willow, pine, spruce. The small, unique habitats they each support. The jutting ledge beneath the pine covered in places with dry, green moss, in others bare and bluegray, everywhere carpeted in yellow pine needles. The blooming rose-hip thicket that nestles close, the air above it heady with bumble-bees and wasps. Its roots reaching serpentinely across the mountain only to disappear into the earth nearby. The straight pine trunk blushing in the glow of the evening sun, the shadow it throws across undergrowth and bushes, up across the hillside. The grassy bank below still flecked with wintry yellow, the barely year-old saplings that grow there, delicate and seemingly uncertain, as if they’ve ventured onto an ice that is so thin that they don’t dare to go on, or have the courage to turn and retreat to the safety of the forest, but must simply stand there motionless and wait until someone comes to rescue them.
He hadn’t noticed any of this while they worked there. The landscape was like a thought that, at regular intervals, came back, something he suddenly remembered and just as suddenly forgot again. Now he sees it. But just as the landscape reveals itself to him, it’s as if it also recedes. As if, in one and the same motion, it draws closer and draws away. For just as he sees everything, it all slowly turns its back on the intimacy with which he endows it and suddenly seems alien and terrifying. The field lies there mute. The trees stand there mute. The sky, in its deep blue and with its slowly moving clouds, is mute. And the tools lying in a pile a few yards away from him are mute. And the baskets. And the stones. And the torn-up, matted tree stumps in the grass by the forest’s edge.
He lays his hoe on the pile of tools and takes a sledgehammer over to one of the large boulders at the end of the field. The first blow echoes off the mountainsides, a short cack! is hurled across the valley and the next instant strikes the mountain there. Cack-cah. He lifts the sledgehammer above his head and strikes again. Cackcah. After a few blows he finds the rhythm and, filled with the pleasure of repetition, begins to shout each time the sledgehammer strikes. Ahoy! he shouts, lifts the sledgehammer above his shoulder, swings it in an arc toward the stone, loosens the grip of his lower hand and lets it slide up the shaft just before it strikes, feels the blow transmit itself to his arm all the same, shouts his Ahoy!, hears the blow, cack! around the mountainsides, moves his hand down again, grips hard, lifts the sledgehammer above his shoulder, swings it in an arc toward the stone, shouts. Ahoy. Cack-cah. Ahoy. Cack-cah.
At last the stone splits and he pries the pieces apart and carries them one by one to the edge of the field. When this is done, he wipes the sweat from his brow with the sleeve of his shirt, turns toward the houses, and sees that a figure is coming across the field.
It must be Cain coming to fetch him, he thinks. Even though he knows how much Cain dislikes this task, he doesn’t go to meet him but stays where he is.
In a while the darkness will begin to ooze up from its great subterranean pools and spread itself across the valley. He’d liked to have stood there and watched it happen. How the darkness, without a sound, thickens about the trees on the forest brow, the stone wall, and the unharnessed plow that lies close to it, the three hummocks lying like small islands in the field, the bushes bordering the stream, the promontory on the mountainside, which high above hangs over him. How it slowly would fill up the valley like a bowl and leave him at the bottom, dark as the night around him.