“Where’s Abel?” he asked.
“He’s sitting in the kitchen,” she answered, and picked up a new item of clothing, shook it several times in front of her, and hung it on the line.
When he reached the door, he stopped and turned. The heat and the stillness of the air made everything so peaceful. The trees raised their crowns pensively to the sky. The white-painted window moldings stood out against the red of the walls, a bumblebee flew buzzing past over the grass and rose so steeply into the air that a second later it was no more than a black prick against the blue expanse of the sky.
He looked toward the barn, where the shadow from the long wall lay like a rug that someone had unfolded on the grassy bank, the small grove of lemon trees that stood by the south-facing end wall, its fruits visible as small yellow flecks among the green.
A door slammed on the other side of the house. He turned to the line where the clothes now hung closely spaced and realized that his mother had gone down to the cellar with the tub and the extra clothespins.
Well, he couldn’t dawdle about here, he thought, and opened the door. After the outside brightness the passage seemed pitch-black. He stood quite still for a while to accustom his eyes. When he went into the kitchen, Abel looked up at him, smiling.
“Get ready now,” said Cain, “we’ve got work to do.”
He didn’t say “you” as he might have done and had at first intended. It would have sounded like an admonition and what had he to admonish Abel for? It wasn’t his fault he was the favorite.
They worked side by side all morning. Cain said nothing, but Abel, who was used to his brother’s silences, at first paid no attention to it and gabbled away as usual. After a while, however, he came to the conclusion that Cain wasn’t listening, and the last hour or two before lunch passed without a word being exchanged between them. The five men didn’t talk either, but it wasn’t quiet. The grasshoppers creaked constantly, an incessant humming from wasps and bumblebees rose and fell in the air around them, the scythes swished through the grass, the birds sang in the forests above them. Although there was lots to put up with — apart from his streaming eyes and blocked nose, horseflies were biting and they were surrounded the whole time by a buzzing swarm of fat, iridescent green flies — Cain found it easy to endure, there was a satisfaction in watching the racks of grass getting fatter yard by yard, and when his father called that it was lunchtime, it was only with difficulty that he managed to tear himself away from his work. The desire to complete things — it was already his great strength — meant that he never gave up but went on until he was finished, cost what it might. Something finished, what was more alluring than that? An overflowing corn bin, a new-mown meadow, a shed of perfectly split wood from floor to ceiling?
“You too, Cain!” shouted his father.
He put down his rake and followed the others down to the river, where the women awaited them with food. They sat on the grassy bank in the shade of the great leafy trees and ate. Small dapples of light opened and closed around them each time the breeze rustled the trees. Now and then a puff of wind would move the boughs and all the small patches of light would shift all together, you would think they were like fish in a shoal and the movement that flashes through them just in the moment they become aware of the shadow of a predatory fish.
Somewhere in the distance there was rumble.
“Did you hear that?” said Abel. “It’s thunder.”
Cain peered out and looked up at the sky, the clouds had stacked themselves into a tower above the mountains in the east. Heavy and bluish gray it came rolling up the valley.
“Hopefully it’ll only be a shower,” said his father.
“It doesn’t look like it,” said Abel, getting up and looking at Cain.
“Are you coming?”
While the others lay down on the bank to rest after the meal, Abel would always bathe. Although, unlike Abel, Cain couldn’t swim, his brother always asked him the same question. Each time he said no. But today he felt a strong need to wash, apart from sweat, he also smelled of urine, and to everyone’s surprise he nodded and got up.
“Good!” said Abel. He pulled off his shirt and trousers, climbed up into a tree that grew on the bank, balanced along one of its branches, and dived in as he always did. Cain saw how the white body cut straight through the water and turned only a few fingers’ breadth from the bottom, the unfamiliar movements of his limbs as he glided over the sand, his hair billowing about his head, his eyes open.
Before, Abel had sometimes swum in the deep pool nearby, there was a tree on the bottom of it that he could hold on to and he’d stayed down as long as he could in the hope that those on the bank would think he’d drowned. It worked the first time, and the second, but the third time no one took the bait. That was a long time ago, but Cain suspected that Abel was just waiting for sufficient time to elapse so that he could fool them again. Now, panting, he broke the surface and looked at him.
“Come on, then!” he shouted.
Cain walked down to the bank, undressed, and waded out. The water flowed dark green, almost black, beneath the trees, when it reached his waist he halted. He felt how the current was pressing against his body and he didn’t like it.
Abel came floating toward him.
“I can teach you to swim if you want,” he said.
“You’re not teaching me anything,” said Cain. “I’ll just have a wash.”
Abel shrugged and swam to the bank. When he began to walk toward the tree and Cain realized that he was going to dive again, he took a few more steps into the stream until the water was deep enough to cover him entirely when he crouched down. He didn’t want to immerse himself with Abel close by, because he kept his eyes shut under water and the mere thought that someone was near, someone who might suddenly bump into him, or for that matter push him over so that, in his panic, he would start swallowing water, frightened him.
He satisfied himself one last time that Abel really was on land, took a breath, clamped his nostrils with his fingers, shut his eyes, and lowered himself in.
It felt like being shut up in a confined space. He couldn’t hear anything, he couldn’t see anything, everything was cold and dark. But his hair was the worst thing, it was the way it floated above his head and gently waved in the current, a feeling that for some reason he associated with death.
After only a few seconds he stood up again. He felt that everyone on the bank was looking at him and kept his eyes carefully averted from them, brushing his streaming hair away from his face with his hand and looking instead toward the tree where Abel had almost reached his branch again.
He had time for another little duck.
This time he decided to try to open his eyes underwater. Abel swam with them open so what he’d heard about eyes leaking and water finding its way into the brain through the little gaps at the corners couldn’t be true. But even if it was, surely a little glimpse couldn’t hurt?
Once more he clamped his fingers over his nose, shut his eyes, and let the water cover him. As soon as he felt his foothold was firm, he opened his eyes carefully, he saw the smooth, algae-covered rock rise gently from the white sandy bed in front of him, it was out of focus and unclear, to be sure, but he saw it. The cold water pressed against his eyeballs but it didn’t seem to be penetrating or running into his head, he would have noticed that, he thought, and took some tiny steps forward, he wanted to feel that algae-covered rock against the soles of his feet. To lessen the pressure he pushed the water aside with his hands. This movement was small as well. His elbows were pressed to his sides, it was only his forearms that waved. But it was a movement nevertheless. He was moving forward underwater! And wasn’t that the same as swimming? He was swimming! he exulted to himself as, crouched on the bottom, he took small steps forward with his hands flapping back and forth in the water.