With only one son, one would probably have had no choice but to put up with his flaws. But if one had a second, who fulfilled all the hopes a father could possibly have, and more besides, was it surprising he pushed the first somewhat aside? That one wanted to live on through the second, and not through the first, whom one had gradually begun to suspect: wasn’t he trying to maneuver himself into a position from which he could grab everything as soon as we’re dead?
Their father was both a farmer and a shepherd, but his heart belonged to the soil, and thus Abel placed him in an impossible position: on the one hand he wanted so much to humor his younger son’s whims, on the other he wanted to see him become a farmer like himself. Cain realized that his father had regretted the choice he’d made. Not only had it cut the ties between Abel and the parental farm, but it also meant that Cain had got his hands on a corner of it. His father viewed his piece of land as a kind of bridgehead, and despaired at his own shortsightedness. As soon as they became debilitated, by age or infirmity, Cain would take over. Not immediately and openly, the way a forthright person would, but by degrees and stealth. Hadn’t the process already begun? Cold as the fish he resembled, Cain had begun to work on the weak point, his mother, her indulgence: constantly performing small services for her, always paying her attention, and not without it bearing fruit, for weren’t her visits to him getting longer? Didn’t she defend him each time his name was mentioned?
Yes, she did, thought Cain as he turned his glass round and round on the table in front of him.
The sorrow she would experience if Abel died. And so would he! Their whole world would fall apart.
But even so, he’d tried to drown himself.
Cain rose and made a circuit of the room, straightened the runner on the table, put a log that had fallen onto the floor back into the wood box, swept under the stove. Still feeling a bit cold, he went up to the half-loft and fetched a sweater. He had to talk to Abel about it when he came. Speak of the chasm he’d open if he went out of their lives. He certainly knew it already, but it couldn’t hurt to remind him.
What was the point of talking?
Cain put his hands to his head in exasperation.
Were words all he had to offer?
He went into the living room and sat in the chair by the stove, but couldn’t settle, got up again, put on his shoes and jacket, but halted at the door, fetched the full dustpan from the living room, and shook the ash out over the muddy ground in front of the steps: now he’d be able to see if anyone came while he was out. Then he began to walk the edge of his field. Although he felt sure his brother would sleep a few more hours yet, he increased his speed. All the time he conversed with him in his thoughts. He spoke of the ditches he’d dug, how heavy the work had been, but how satisfying now that the soil would soon be drained and could even be cultivated next spring. He explained that their father had lent him what he needed in exchange for part of the crop, but that he was determined, for his pride’s sake, that it would never be necessary again. From now on he could barter for the things he needed. A horse — that was absolutely essential — and then perhaps some hens, and then, in time, cows and sheep as well. When he arrived at the strip of corn, which stretched perhaps a hundred yards up to the edge of the forest, he flung his arms wide, no words were necessary here.
He walked by the riverbank on the way home. It was a kind of test: if he managed to avoid thinking about what had happened the night before when he was actually there, he would always be able to. He looked at the water quivering around the rocks it passed in the gentle rapids, he looked at the foam that formed by the bank in the eddy below, the rushes that grew farther in. He saw the sandy bottom that gradually rose and broke the surface, forming a small island in the middle of the current, the black shadows on the other side, which occasionally gathered speed and darted away, and thought of how they’d sometimes tried to spear the fish here with spears they’d made especially for that purpose, without ever succeeding.
A bird of prey hung in the sky above him, and he stared at it until he could say with certainty that it was an eagle. When he walked on, he made the mistake of looking across to the far side. There was the tree leaning over the water that Abel had climbed up the night before. In a flash he saw his brother’s body as it stood in the dark water. He saw its arms slowly moving in the current, under there, thrusting themselves blindly forward in his mind, whose train of thought must have spun out from the tree Abel had tied himself to, because the next thing he imagined was the pines on the heath, how the light shone like pillars in among their trunks in the middle of the day. But the image was too weak, after only a few moments he felt how the enormity of the night’s events was beginning to tug at him through it, and without raising his eyes from the ground, he pushed himself deeper into his enormous store of images and notions about trees, ending up finally before the oak tree in his parents’ farmyard. That he could think about. Ever since he was little, he had talked to it, fortunately even then wise enough to make sure no one overheard him. The tree was so old, and stood there so alone, that his childish heart had been filled with compassion; if no one else on the farm gave it a thought, he would at least do his best to, even though he suspected that his child’s words and child’s deeds didn’t make much difference. It had stood there before he was born, and would be standing there after he was dead, but perhaps, even so, it was pleased that he stroked its bark every time he passed, and sometimes, when he was sure he wasn’t observed, even pressed his cheek against it.
When he looked up again, the wooden bridge lay before him, and from there he followed the path the last stretch home. No footprints were visible in the ashes. Abel must be totally exhausted, and would probably sleep for another few hours yet, he thought as he went in.
After he’d eaten, he had an hour’s nap on the bench in the living room. Then he dressed, stopped a moment by the steps to make sure no one had been there while he slept, crossed the farmyard to the toolshed, the place where he most enjoyed passing the time. He would often work away at the back of the house, and only a few weeks before he’d had the idea of building himself a boat, which he expected to finish any evening now. Well, a boat was one word for it, perhaps it was more like a punt, flat-bottomed and square as it was shaping up to be. But even a punt would be a remarkable sight in the district, where no boats at all were to be found, and the thought that one day in the not-so-distant future he’d come sailing downstream in his own boat caused him to light up inside. At the same time he wasn’t ignorant of the fact that the venture might seem rather comic. With his tall, thin frame, he would tower up out of the flat-bottomed boat like some sort of mast, even when he was seated.