But although the difference in the brothers’ physiognomy is great, that in their characters is even greater. Abel is someone you want to be near, Cain is someone you’d rather leave alone. Just what this attractiveness in his brother consists of and where this desire to be near him, which is felt by everyone around him, actually has its fount, Cain has never managed to work out. There is a sort of light surrounding Abel, something pure and strong radiates from him no matter where he is or what he’s doing. Sometimes Cain thinks he possesses a soul without shadows. That’s what people want to be close to. But if so, it’s not like a child’s, for a child’s soul is delicate, its flickering flame needs no more than the opening of a door onto the world to blow it out. Nothing can destroy Abel’s light. In his presence one never feels wicked, only foolish. That darkness which in solitude can seem so powerful, occasionally even intoxicating, seems risible in his company.
When they were younger this caused a lot of problems for Cain. That the younger brother outshone the elder wasn’t how things were supposed to be, a kind of natural order had been broken and the knowledge of it plagued Cain throughout the whole of his childhood. For many years he attempted to use his physical superiority to reestablish the balance without success, that wasn’t really what mattered. When he flew at his brother and pushed him up against a wall or pressed his face into the ground and his brother didn’t fight back but just took it, his body meek and accepting, it was Cain who looked inferior.
How furious this could make him sometimes! But the greater his fury, the more blows that rained, the more his standing fell.
He realized this eventually. Abel really was better than him. But what actually constituted the good in him? He was happy, wild, inquisitive, zealous, he talked unceasingly, he laughed often, he never sat still. When he did stupid things — and he did them quite often — it never mattered, he seemed to be set above himself in some way, he could say and do the most idiotic things without it signifying anything at all, it never really affected him.
Abel was like that.
And what prevented Cain from being similar?
Only himself.
He understood this the spring he began to mature. His voice became deeper, his skin coarser, his muscles bigger, and when he awoke at night with pains in his joints, he would often lie awake until dawn thinking about all sorts of things. Who he was, for example.
Why was he so taciturn? After all, his head was full of thoughts, they swirled around constantly in there and what was the real difference between thoughts and words? All he had to do was to speak his thoughts out loud. Because that was the difference between them: Cain only thought, Abel said what he thought.
And why was he so cautious? So slow and heavy?
One night, he edged his way to the end of the bed, where he could see over to Abel who was sleeping at the other end of the room, strangely pale from the weak glimmer of the moon outside.
Besides their chins, the shape of their eyes was different, Abel’s eyelids were more slanted, as if the bone above the eye socket were pressing the lid down at the outer edge and preventing it from opening right up, something that imbued his otherwise open face with a hint of something. . well, of what? Cryptic? Alien? Enigmatic? But now the eyes were closed, the enigmatic gone, and Cain saw how like his brother he really was. Apart, that was, from his chin.
His chin, his chin, his chin!
The thought of it sent a wave of despondency through him. But all the time he kept his glance fixed on his brother, and just as a word becomes meaningless if you repeat it often enough, the meaning of what he was looking at began to slip, the eyes were just eyes, the nose just a nose, the cheeks just cheeks, the hair just hair.
He was just a small boy! Could he be worse than him!
Cain got back into bed filled with a feeling reminiscent of joy. Tomorrow morning he would start talking more. He would start laughing more, he would start inquiring about everything. He would begin to run across the field when they asked him to fetch something, not just plod off as he had done up to now. He would run like the wind, he would be like the wind, light and happy and boisterous.
And he was genuinely happy when he awoke the next morning. He jumped out of bed, clambered quickly down the ladder, greeted his parents with a bright good morning, snatched up the bucket, and ran across the farmyard to the well. The sun was shining, the birds were singing, and Cain dropped the bucket into the well as he whistled to himself. When he had hauled it up brimful of water, he drank a little and rinsed his face before carrying it back into the kitchen. His mother was there with her back to him, occupied with some task or other, his father was sitting at the table eating with Jared, the shepherd, and the four men who worked for them.
Cain set down the bucket on the floor. Nobody looked at him. Hadn’t they noticed that he was behaving differently today? The joviality in his voice when he’d wished them good morning? His speed across the farmyard?
It was now he’d have to start speaking. The longer he waited the harder it would be.
But what could he say?
Abel simply prattled away about anything that came into his head.
What came into Cain’s head?
Nothing. The only thing he was thinking about was that he must say something soon, and he couldn’t talk about that.
It looks as if it could turn out fine.
Could he say that?
If he normally said such things, perhaps. But now it would merely cause surprise. They would look at him and their looks would demand an explanation. If he didn’t follow it up, but simply sat down, it would form the subject of the ensuing silence. And if he did follow it up? Look how the sun’s shining! Listen to the birds!
No, it wouldn’t do.
One of the men at the table turned and glanced at him. That made his father turn, too.
“What are you standing there for?” he said. “Go and fetch your brother instead.”
He couldn’t manage to speak. But he could smile.
He caught his father’s eye and smiled as broadly as he could. Then he turned and went out of the kitchen up the ladder to the bedroom where Abel was sitting on his bed rubbing the sleep from his eyes.
“I dreamed of the cherubim!” he said when he caught sight of Cain.
“Uh-huh,” said Cain. “But now you’ve got to get up.”
“No, wait!” said Abel. “I was in a forest, there was snow everywhere and it was dark, I think, yes, dark, and then I saw the light from them, it was as if the whole forest was on fire! And then I walked in deeper and then I saw them between the trees.”
“They’re waiting for you downstairs,” said Cain, and he turned as if to go.
“Wait till the end!” said Abel. “When they saw me, one of them came toward me and lifted me up. We rose up between the trees very slowly, do you understand? I thought that it was just a dream, but then I stretched out my hand and touched one of the branches, and the snow was cold! And then we rose above the trees and then above the mountains and just then, just as I could see out over the whole world, I woke up.”
He smiled.
Cain could no longer conceal his interest.
“What did they look like, then?” he asked.
“I can’t remember,” said Abel. “I can remember everything else but not that, just that they were burning.”
“We knew that already,” said Cain, and went down into the kitchen again. When he saw that it was empty he was relieved. He liked nothing better than being by himself. In order to avoid Abel as well, he took his food with him and went out and sat down against a tree out of sight of the house but from where he could see the meadow they were to reap that day. With his back against the trunk and his legs stretched out in front of him, he sat eating in the morning sunshine. Before him the five men walked in single file across to the field, each with a scythe over his shoulder. Once there they immediately formed a line and began to reap. Side by side they waddled their way forward as ever more semicircles of grass fell to the ground before them.