The air was still clear and cool, and perhaps because of that Cain suddenly longed to be out there smelling the scent of newly mown grass and feeling the heat of the sun on his shoulders, because in reality he knew just how unpleasant working in the fields with a blocked nose, watering eyes, and shoulders painful from sunburn really was. Nevertheless he got up, threw the remainder of his food into the bushes behind a tree, and hurried out. Perhaps this sudden haste was also linked to the thought that Abel wasn’t there. They would surely notice that he was working and Abel wasn’t. Just as they would surely notice his speed and keenness!
Like the wind he ran across the field. The damp grass around him was greener than he’d ever seen it before. And the sky! Its blue was as deep as the sea. And the sun! How it shone today!
Although his throat was constricting and his lungs began to get all knotted after only a few yards, he continued to run. He had the idea that his breathing difficulties were something he could force his way through, that there was a barrier, something on the other side of the inflammation, clear and pure and cold, which he could reach if only he forced himself hard enough. But after barely a hundred yards he couldn’t go on. It felt as if he were breathing through a straw. At the same time everything inside him was screaming for air. His heart wanted air, his blood wanted air, his lungs wanted air. He fell to his knees and rested his hands on the ground as he attempted to draw breath. But instead of the rush he required all that came was a thin trickle bubbling down into his chest. Already there was a tingling at the tips of his fingers and toes. His stomach retched as if attempting to bring up the last remains of air in it. He forced his knees together to try not to wet himself, clawed his fingers through the earth. He felt a sudden need to stand up and run like a wild man, and roar with all his might, but instead collapsed completely and lay on his belly squirming in the grass. It felt as if his heart were bursting. He pounded his legs on the ground in despair, grasping as he did so how like a fish he must look with his protruding chin, his gaping mouth, and his flailing body. He looked like a fish on land, and like a fish on land he would die, everything inside him was squirming, all his body wanted was a little air, but that it was denied.
Now I’m going to die, he thought.
But he didn’t die. When in his despair he raised his head to look for help it was as if it found its way into a pocket: suddenly air flooded into his chest again. He breathed in with a great wheeze, sat for several seconds just panting. It was a fantastic sensation feeling how air streamed into his lungs, filling all the small cavities, thinking that the pain was over. At the same time he had the notion that it was only there, in that invisible pocket, that he could breathe, and so he was careful to hold his head still for a long time. After the first, almost ecstatic, delight had subsided, he began to think of what would happen if this really was the only place he could breathe. Perhaps he’d have to stay here for the rest of his life? Or might there be several pockets that he could live in by turns? Spend a week under the bushes by the stream, a week in the thicket by the barn bridge, a week here, a week in the grove of trees behind the house, a week up in the farmyard oak. Then take some deep breaths at the end of the week, and run as fast as he could from the one pocket to the next, dive into it almost mad with hunger for air, while everyone stood in a circle around him and looked on. And then, one day, not make it, but collapse halfway and lie there dead in the dust.
Carefully he raised his head and breathed. Yes, there was air there. Then he stretched first to one side and then to the other. As there seemed to be plenty of air in both places, he stood up and took a few tentative steps.
There was air everywhere!
He realized how foolish he’d been and smiled to himself. Of course there was air everywhere! Of course it was him there was something wrong with, not the rest of the world!
But it seemed different nonetheless. The clarity in the landscape had somehow vanished or become obscured, it seemed to him that all the greenness was no longer so brilliantly sharp, but softer and fuzzier. And he could see now that the light was also a kind of shadow. It laid its veil over everything he looked at, the grass, the trees, the river, the mountain, the five stooping men in the meadow.
He thought it appeared this way because the attack had made him sink into himself, into a place sheltered from the tumult of outward impressions — that was why they seemed so diffuse and blurred, the distance between him and them had increased, this was nothing novel to him, that sudden aversion to the heat, the decay, the manure they spread over the fields, all the greenery that, greedy and unseeing, burgeoned everywhere, was something he’d experienced before.
Yes, he knew how it worked. The heat brought everything together, the cold pulled them apart. And he knew which he preferred.
With slow movements he dusted the earth from his clothes. At the top of one thigh there was a wet patch about the size of an oak leaf. It would certainly have dried out by the time he arrived, he thought, and began to walk again. Within him all speed and all joy had ceased. When he arrived in the meadow, he picked up a rake without a word and began to rake the grass together in a pile. No one took any notice of him, which was just as well, he thought, and lifted up the grass when the pile had grown big enough, carried it over to the drying rack, and had begun to hang it up on the lines when his father paused in his work, leaned on his scythe, and looked at him.
“Where’s Abel?” he asked.
Cain was just bending down and answered without looking up.
“Am I his keeper or something?”
“WHAT did you say?” demanded his father.
Cain said nothing but tipped the armful of grass over the top string, and when he became aware of a movement in the corner of his eye and knew that it was his father coming toward him, he bent down as if nothing special had happened and picked up the grass straws that had slid off.
By the time his father stopped in front of him, he had all the grass in his hands and could no longer stay bent, but had to straighten up.
“What did you say?” asked his father again.
Without meeting his eyes he repeated that he wasn’t his brother’s keeper even as he prepared himself for the blow that was certain to follow.
But there was no blow. Instead his father’s hand grasped his chin and forced his head up.
“Look at me when I’m talking to you.”
“Yes,” said Cain, and met his glance.
“You’re not to go anywhere without Abel,” said his father. “Is that understood?”
“Yes,” said Cain.
“Well, go and fetch him,” said his father.
He dropped the grass on the ground where he stood and turned his back on his father and began to walk toward the houses. They lay on a slope fringed by trees, mainly pines and birches, and at that distance with their rough timber walls and grass-covered roofs, they were difficult to discern from the surrounding landscape. Paths crisscrossed the ground between the buildings and behind them lay the arc of a cart track leading to the barn bridge. As he approached he saw his mother coming up from the stream. She set down a tubful of washing and began to hang it on the line between the two pines. It was as if the white garments sucked the light into them, they hung there motionless, shining white in the midst of all the green.