Already his chest was bursting from lack of air. The cold water was numbing his skin. But his head was clear. He moved his hands methodically to and fro over the mud beneath him. If he could just manage a few seconds more, he thought, he would soon come across the tree that lay there, and then he could pull himself right down to the bottom of the pool.
Then it was as if the ground were pulled from under him. He felt the current taking him, and began waving his arms about, to no effect, he could no longer move down, only away.
He had to breathe before he could go on. He raised his head and was stretching his arms upward, when one hand suddenly struck something. It was the tree. A branch of the tree. He clasped it as far down as he could reach, and pulled his body down after, took a new hold, and pulled himself after it again. Then he felt the trunk against his palm. Blood thumped heavily in his head, and he had to use all his willpower not to succumb to the temptation of opening his mouth and filling his lungs with water.
Foot by foot he worked his way across. But he felt nothing other than the slimy wood.
At last he couldn’t hold out any longer, kicked up from the tree trunk, and started to strike up to the surface.
It was then that he saw it. Something white in the water in front of him. He surfaced, took in deep gasps as he flailed with arms and legs to prevent himself drifting away, dived again, and saw his brother as a faint glimmer in the darkness a few yards away. He fought his way over, and when he saw the head, the open eyes, the hair billowing in the water, he realized that he must have tied one foot to the tree. He got hold of the leg and pulled himself down the body, felt his way to the cord, felt the knot for a second, pulled one end, it held firm and he pulled at the other, which gave. When he’d loosened the cord, he put one arm around his brother’s waist, raised him to the surface and onto dry land. He turned him onto his front, positioned himself over him with a leg on each side, clasped his hands under his stomach, and raised him by his middle, laid him down, raised him up, laid him down, raised him up.
A shudder coursed through Abel as his stomach retched. Then all the water he’d swallowed came pouring out of his mouth.
After the vomiting he lay there quite still. Cain knelt down and felt his pulse. His heart was beating, he was alive, but certainly exhausted, he thought, and went off to fetch his clothes. Provided he wasn’t cold, he could lie here until he came to himself again.
As Cain bent over his clothes, he began to cry. He tried to stifle it, but it was impossible. His heart opened. His eyes full of tears, he leaned against a tree. His upper lip quivered, the muscles under his eyes contracted, the tears ran down his cheeks, he began to make small, animal-like whimpers.
The whole of him longed to give way to it. But his will proved stronger. He bit his lip and attempted to inhale as regularly and calmly as possible, and after some initial unevenness, when each new sob set off more cramplike contractions in his face, and made a stream of tears pour out, he finally succeeded: his mind clear and his body placid, he straightened up, dried his eyes on the arm of his shirt, and turned to see how Abel was getting along.
He was standing in the pale moonlight staring at him.
“Abel!” shouted Cain, grabbing the bundle of clothes and hurrying over to him. “Look, put these on,” he said. “You mustn’t get cold, you know.”
No spark of recognition brightened his eyes. His gaze was as empty as a corpse’s. Cain held out the clothes. Abel looked at them for a while, then raised his eyes to Cain once more.
“Cain,” he said.
He smiled and backed away a few paces without taking his eyes off him. Then he did a few tentative dance steps where he stood.
“One and two and three and four,” he said. “And one and two and three and four.”
Slowly he lifted one heel up behind him, put it down again, raised the other. He moved his hands to and fro in front of him. All the time he kept his gaze fixed on Cain, all the time he smiled.
“And one and two and three and four and round we go,” he said, and turned, first once, and then again.
He danced up and down before Cain in the moonlight, using big, overstated movements, always with his attention directed toward his brother, who didn’t know what was happening, other than that he was being mocked.
He put the clothes down on the ground and began to walk home. When he’d gotten out of the trees, he turned and saw that Abel was getting dressed. He hurried on because he wanted nothing more to do with his brother, but even so Abel caught up with him a little before the bridge across the river. He said nothing and Cain said nothing. They walked silently side by side. Above them only the moon, of all the night’s celestial bodies, held sway against the light from the sun that was rising behind the mountains in the east. It hung just above the hills in front of them, so close that the blue surfaces of its seas were clearly visible in the otherwise sand-colored lunar landscape, and the rivers that cut their way down the mountain massifs, and the areas of forest, were visible as narrow, black-black shadows on the yellow.
Cain heard Abel’s breath by his side, but resisted the temptation to turn to him. When they arrived at the bridge, he swung off the path without a word, but halted and turned toward him when Abel laid a hand on his shoulder.
Their eyes met.
“Are you crying?” said Abel.
Cain didn’t answer.
“I owe you my life,” said Abel. “Don’t forget that.”
Then he turned and began to walk homeward.
“Abel,” shouted Cain. He hadn’t really meant to speak to him, but the sight of his back, and their parents’ house, which he could just make out between the trees in the background far away, made him repent.
Abel turned and looked at him inquiringly.
What was it about him, Cain thought, how could he suddenly behave as if nothing had happened?
“Come over tomorrow,” he said “Will you?”
Abel nodded. When he walked on, Cain stood in the middle of the bridge, where he could best see his parents’ homestead, and stood there until Abel had closed the door behind him. He prepared to lie awake that dawn, too much had happened for him to be able to sleep, he assumed, and anyway the first rays of the sun were flooding over the tops of the mountains by the time he got home, and his bedroom was filled with light. But he had hardly laid his head on the pillow before the tide of sleep washed over the shallows of consciousness and he was lost to himself.
He awoke late in the morning. A thick layer of cloud muted the light that fell through the window. The wind was blowing. It swept across the fields, the trees were rocked back and forth in the gusts, and a few raindrops pattered against the windowpane.
If it hadn’t been for his clothes hanging soaking on the bedside chair, he would have thought he’d dreamed the whole thing.
Had Abel tried to drown himself?
He must have drunk himself to madness, he thought, sitting up and looking out into the small farmyard, the cart standing there with its shafts on the ground, the heaving birch tree. And then woken up in a state of shock of some kind, at the very extremities of himself, where dancing naked in front of his brother was the most natural thing to do.
His own actions seemed equally alien. Had he really dived down into the pool? Swum round in that ice-cold water without being able to see an inch in front of his face? Found Abel tied up, released him, and dragged him out onto dry land?
He suddenly imagined it once more, and a shiver went down his spine. He had seemed to be standing in the water. .
Best not to think about it. Best to forget it entirely. Unless, of course, Abel wanted to talk about it, he thought, and pushed his feet into slippers, went downstairs and to the stove in the back room. It was a little cold and he felt chilled to his very soul after what had happened, so he could well spare a stick or two even though it was summer. He placed some splinters under them, lit them, opened the damper, took out some food from the cupboard, and seated himself at the table by the window, from where he could see everyone who came up the road from the bridge. Not that he’d been rushed off his feet by visitors, exactly. In fact, he hadn’t had any, unless one counted his mother, who brought him some food occasionally, and one of his father’s men who, on two occasions, had come to collect the horse he’d borrowed, even though both times he’d told his father that he’d return it before sundown. The sun hadn’t gone down either time! It was irritating perhaps, but he knew the sort of man his father was, and the way he thought, and the kind of son he assumed Cain to be. Not only had he been remarkably ugly even as a toddler, but worse, he assumed, was the fact he’d always been so wary of people that he withdrew as soon as he got the chance to, that he never said anything on his own initiative and little more when he was spoken to, that he seldom smiled and almost never laughed. He treated everyone as a stranger, and was therefore a stranger himself, even to his nearest and dearest. And what can you do if you have a son you don’t like? A son in whom you can’t see anything of yourself? A son who isn’t just repellent, but also alien?