East of Eden

by John Steinbeck

  "You must want to. There's always a reason."

  "A soldier must want to do the things we had to do--or at least be satisfied with them. I couldn't find good enough reasons for killing men and women, nor understand the reasons when they were explained."

  They rode on in silence for a time. Adam went on, "I came out of the army like dragging myself muddy out of a swamp. I wandered for a long time before going home to a remembered place I did not love."

  "Your father?"

  "He died, and home was a place to sit around or work around, waiting for death the way you might wait for a dreadful picnic."

  "Alone?"

  "No, I have a brother."

  "Where is he--waiting for the picnic?"

  "Yes--yes, that's exactly what. Then Cathy came. Maybe I will tell you some time when I can tell and you want to hear."

  "I'll want to hear," Samuel said. "I eat stories like grapes."

  "A kind of light spread out from her. And everything changed color. And the world opened out. And a day was good to awaken to. And there were no limits to anything. And the people of the world were good and handsome. And I was not afraid any more."

  "I recognize it," Samuel said. "That's an old friend of mine. It never dies but sometimes it moves away, or you do. Yes, that's my acquaintance--eyes, nose, mouth, and hair."

  "All this coming out of a little hurt girl."

  "And not out of you?"

  "Oh, no, or it would have come before. No, Cathy brought it, and it lives around her. And now I've told you why I want the wells. I have to repay somehow for value received. I'm going to make a garden so good, so beautiful, that it will be a proper place for her to live and a fitting place for her light to shine on."

  Samuel swallowed several times, and he spoke with a dry voice out of a pinched-up throat. "I can see my duty," he said. "I can see it plainly before me if I am any kind of man, any kind of friend to you."

  "What do you mean?"

  Samuel said satirically, "It's my duty to take this thing of yours and kick it in the face, then raise it up and spread slime on it thick enough to blot out its dangerous light." His voice grew strong with vehemence. "I should hold it up to you muck-covered and show you its dirt and danger. I should warn you to look closer until you can see how ugly it really is. I should ask you to think of inconstancy and give you examples. I should give you Othello's handkerchief. Oh, I know I should. And I should straighten out your tangled thoughts, show you that the impulse is gray as lead and rotten as a dead cow in wet weather. If I did my duty well, I could give you back your bad old life and feel good about it, and welcome you back to the musty membership in the lodge."

  "Are you joking? Maybe I shouldn't have told--"

  "It is the duty of a friend. I had a friend who did the duty once for me. But I'm a false friend. I'll get no credit for it among my peers. It's a lovely thing, preserve it, and glory in it. And I'll dig your wells if I have to drive my rig to the black center of the earth. I'll squeeze water out like juice from an orange."

  They rode under the great oaks and toward the house. Adam said, "There she is, sitting outside." He shouted, "Cathy, he says there's water--lots of it." Aside he said excitedly, "Did you know she's going to have a baby?"

  "Even at this distance she looks beautiful," Samuel said.

  4

  Because the day had been hot, Lee set a table outside under an oak tree, and as the sun neared the western mountains he padded back and forth from the kitchen, carrying the cold meats, pickles, potato salad, coconut cake, and peach pie which were supper. In the center of the table he placed a gigantic stoneware pitcher full of milk.

  Adam and Samuel came from the wash house, their hair and faces shining with water, and Samuel's beard was fluffy after its soaping. They stood at the trestle table and waited until Cathy came out.

  She walked slowly, picking her way as though she were afraid she would fall. Her full skirt and apron concealed to a certain extent her swelling abdomen. Her face was untroubled and childlike, and she clasped her hands in front of her. She had reached the table before she looked up and glanced from Samuel to Adam.

  Adam held her chair for her. "You haven't met Mr. Hamilton, dear," he said.

  She held out her hand. "How do you do," she said.

  Samuel had been inspecting her. "It's a beautiful face," he said, "I'm glad to meet you. You are well, I hope?"

  "Oh, yes. Yes, I'm well."

  The men sat down. "She makes it formal whether she wants to or not. Every meal is a kind of occasion," Adam said.

  "Don't talk like that," she said. "It isn't true."

  "Doesn't it feel like a party to you, Samuel?" he asked.

  "It does so, and I can tell you there's never been such a candidate for a party as I am. And my children--they're worse. My boy Tom wanted to come today. He's spoiling to get off the ranch."

  Samuel suddenly realized that he was making his speech last to prevent silence from falling on the table. He paused, and the silence dropped. Cathy looked down at her plate while she ate a sliver of roast lamb. She looked up as she put it between her small sharp teeth. Her wide-set eyes communicated nothing. Samuel shivered.

  "It isn't cold, is it?" Adam asked.

  "Cold? No. A goose walked over my grave, I guess."

  "Oh, yes, I know that feeling."

  The silence fell again. Samuel waited for some speech to start up, knowing in advance that it would not.

  "Do you like our valley, Mrs. Trask?"

  "What? Oh, yes."

  "If it isn't impertinent to ask, when is your baby due?"

  "In about six weeks," Adam said. "My wife is one of those paragons--a woman who does not talk very much."

  "Sometimes a silence tells the most," said Samuel, and he saw Cathy's eyes leap up and down again, and it seemed to him that the scar on her forehead grew darker. Something had flicked her the way you'd flick a horse with the braided string popper on a buggy whip. Samuel couldn't recall what he had said that had made her give a small inward start. He felt a tenseness coming over him that was somewhat like the feeling he had just before the water wand pulled down, an awareness of something strange and strained. He glanced at Adam and saw that he was looking raptly at his wife. Whatever was strange was not strange to Adam. His face had happiness on it.

  Cathy was chewing a piece of meat, chewing with her front teeth. Samuel had never seen anyone chew that way before. And when she had swallowed, her little tongue flicked around her lips. Samuel's mind repeated, "Something--something--can't find what it is. Something wrong," and the silence hung on the table.

  There was a shuffle behind him. He turned. Lee set a teapot on the table and shuffled away.

  Samuel began to talk to push the silence away. He told how he had first come to the valley fresh from Ireland, but within a few words neither Cathy nor Adam was listening to him. To prove it, he used a trick he had devised to discover whether his children were listening when they begged him to read to them and would not let him stop. He threw in two sentences of nonsense. There was no response from either Adam or Cathy. He gave up.

  He bolted his supper, drank his tea scalding hot, and folded his napkin. "Ma'am, if you'll excuse me, I'll ride off home. And I thank you for your hospitality."

  "Good night," she said.

  Adam jumped to his feet, He seemed torn out of a reverie. "Don't go now. I hoped to persuade you to stay the night."

  "No, thank you, but that I can't. And it's not a long ride. I think--of course, I know--there'll be a moon."

  "When will you start the wells?"

  "I'll have to get my rig together, do a piece of sharpening, and put my house in order. In a few days I'll send the equipment with Tom."

  The life was flowing back into Adam. "Make it soon," he said. "I want it soon. Cathy, we're going to make the most beautiful place in the world. There'll be nothing like it anywhere."

  Samuel switched his gaze to Cathy's face. It did not change. The eyes were flat and the
mouth with its small up-curve at the corners was carven.

  "That will be nice," she said.

  For just a moment Samuel had an impulse to do or say something to shock her out of her distance. He shivered again.

  "Another goose?" Adam asked.

  "Another goose." The dusk was falling and already the tree forms were dark against the sky. "Good night, then."

  "I'll walk down with you."

  "No, stay with your wife. You haven't finished your supper."

  "But I--"

  "Sit down, man. I can find my own horse, and if I can't I'll steal one of yours." Samuel pushed Adam gently down in his chair. "Good night. Good night. Good night, ma'am." He walked quickly toward the shed.

  Old platter-foot Doxology was daintily nibbling hay from the manger with lips like two flounders. The halter chain clinked against wood. Samuel lifted down his saddle from the big nail where it hung by one wooden stirrup and swung it over the broad back. He was lacing the latigo through the cinch rings when there was a small stir behind him. He turned and saw the silhouette of Lee against the last light from the open shadows.

  "When you come back?" the Chinese asked softly.

  "I don't know. In a few days or a week. Lee, what is it?"

  "What is what?"

  "By God, I got creepy! Is there something wrong here?"

  "What do you mean?"

  "You know damn well what I mean."

  "Chinee boy jus' workee--not hear, not talkee."

  ''Yes. I guess you're right. Sure, you're right. Sorry I asked you. It wasn't very good manners." He turned back, slipped the bit in Dox's mouth, and laced the big flop ears into the headstall. He slipped the halter and dropped it in the manger. "Good night, Lee," he said.

  "Mr. Hamilton--"

  "Yes?"

  "Do you need a cook?"

  "On my place I can't afford a cook?"

  "I'd work cheap."

  "Liza would kill you. Why--you want to quit?"

  "Just thought I'd ask," said Lee. "Good night."

  5

  Adam and Cathy sat in the gathering dark under the tree.

  "He's a good man," Adam said. "I like him. I wish I could persuade him to take over here and run this place--kind of superintendent."

  Cathy said, "He's got his own place and his own family."

  "Yes, I know. And it's the poorest land you ever saw. He could make more at wages from me. I'll ask him. It does take a time to get used to a new country. It's like being born again and having to learn all over. I used to know from what quarter the rains came. It's different here. And once I knew in my skin whether wind would blow, when it would be cold. But I'll learn. It just takes a little time. Are you comfortable, Cathy?"

  "Yes."

  "One day, and not too far away, you'll see the whole valley green with alfalfa--see it from the fine big windows of the finished house. I'll plant rows of gum trees, and I'm going to send away for seeds and plants--put in a kind of experimental farm. I might try lichee nuts from China. I wonder if they would grow here. Well, I can try. Maybe Lee could tell me. And once the baby's born you can ride over the whole place with me. You haven't really seen it. Did I tell you? Mr. Hamilton is going to put up windmills, and we'll be able to see them turning from here." He stretched his legs out comfortably under the table. "Lee should bring candles," he said. "I wonder what's keeping him."

  Cathy spoke very quietly. "Adam, I didn't want to come here. I am not going to stay here. As soon as I can I will go away."

  "Oh, nonsense." He laughed. "You're like a child away from home for the first time. You'll love it once you get used to it and the baby is born. You know, when I first went away to the army I thought I was going to die of homesickness. But I got over it. We all get over it. So don't say silly things like that."

  "It's not a silly thing."

  "Don't talk about it, dear. Everything will change after the baby is born. You'll see. You'll see."

  He clasped his hands behind his head and looked up at the faint stars through the tree branches.

  Chapter 16

  1

  Samuel Hamilton rode back home in a night so flooded with moonlight that the hills took on the quality of the white and dusty moon. The trees and earth were moon-dry, silent and airless and dead. The shadows were black without shading and the open places white without color. Here and there Samuel could see secret movement, for the moon-feeders were at work--the deer which browse all night when the moon is clear and sleep under thickets in the day. Rabbits and field mice and all other small hunted that feel safer in the concealing light crept and hopped and crawled and froze to resemble stones or small bushes when ear or nose suspected danger. The predators were working too--the long weasels like waves of brown light; the cobby wildcats crouching near to the ground, almost invisible except when their yellow eyes caught light and flashed for a second; the foxes, sniffling with pointed up-raised noses for a warm-blooded supper; the raccoons padding near still water, talking frogs. The coyotes nuzzled along the slopes and, torn with sorrow-joy, raised their heads and shouted their feeling, half keen, half laughter, at their goddess moon. And over all the shadowy screech owls sailed, drawing a smudge of shadowy fear below them on the ground. The wind of the afternoon was gone and only a little breeze like a sigh was stirred by the restless thermals of the warm, dry hills.

  Doxology's loud off-beat hoofsteps silenced the night people until after he had passed. Samuel's beard glinted white, and his graying hair stood up high on his head. He had hung his black hat on his saddle horn. An ache was on the top of his stomach, an apprehension that was like a sick thought. It was a Weltschmerz--which we used to call "Welshrats"--the world sadness that rises into the soul like a gas and spreads despair so that you probe for the offending event and can find none.

  Samuel went back in his mind over the fine ranch and the indications of water--no Welshrats could come out of that unless he sheltered a submerged envy. He looked in himself for envy and could find none. He went on to Adam's dream of a garden like Eden and to Adam's adoration of Cathy. Nothing there unless--unless his secret mind brooded over his own healed loss. But that was so long ago he had forgotten the pain. The memory was mellow and warm and comfortable, now that it was all over. His loins and his thighs had forgotten hunger.

  As he rode through the light and dark of tree-shade and open his mind moved on. When had the Welshrats started crawling in his chest? He found it then--and it was Cathy, pretty, tiny, delicate Cathy. But what about her? She was silent, but many women were silent. What was it? Where had it come from? He remembered that he had felt an imminence akin to the one that came to him when he held the water wand. And he remembered the shivers when the goose walked over his grave. Now he had pinned it down in time and place and person. It had come at dinner and it had come from Cathy.

  He built her face in front of him and studied her wide-set eyes, delicate nostrils, mouth smaller than he liked but sweet, small firm chin, and back to her eyes. Were they cold? Was it her eyes? He was circling to the point. The eyes of Cathy had no message, no communication of any kind. There was nothing recognizable behind them. They were not human eyes. They reminded him of something--what was it?--some memory, some picture. He strove to find it and then it came of itself.

  It rose out of the years complete with all its colors and its cries, its crowded feelings. He saw himself, a very little boy, so small that he had to reach high for his father's hand. He felt the cobbles of Londonderry under his feet and the crush and gaiety of the one big city he had seen. A fair, it was, with puppet shows and stalls of produce and horses and sheep penned right in the street for sale or trade or auction, and other stalls of bright-colored knickknackery, desirable, and because his father was gay, almost possessable.

  And then the people turned like a strong river, and they were carried along a narrow street as though they were chips on a flood tide, pressure at chest and back and the feet keeping up. The narrow street opened out to a square, and against the
gray wall of a building there was a high structure of timbers and a noosed rope hanging down.

  Samuel and his father were pushed and bunted by the water of people, pushed closer and closer. He could hear in his memory ear his father saying, "It's no thing for a child. It's no thing for anybody, but less for a child." His father struggled to turn, to force his way back against the flood wave of people. "Let us out. Please let us out. I've a child here."

  The wave was faceless and it pushed without passion. Samuel raised his head to look at the structure. A group of dark-clothed, dark-hatted men had climbed up on the high platform. And in their midst was a man with golden hair, dressed in dark trousers and a light blue shirt open at the throat. Samuel and his father were so close that the boy had to raise his head high to see.

  The golden man seemed to have no arms. He looked out over the crowd and then looked down, looked right at Samuel. The picture was clear, lighted and perfect. The man's eyes had no depth--they were not like other eyes, not like the eyes of a man.

  Suddenly there was quick movement on the platform, and Samuel's father put both his hands on the boy's head so that his palms cupped over the ears and his fingers met behind. The hands forced Samuel's head down and forced his face tight in against his father's black best coat. Struggle as he would, he could not move his head. He could see only a band of light around the edges of his eyes and only a muffled roar of sound came to his ears through his father's hands. He heard heartbeats in his hears. Then he felt his father's hands and arms grow rigid with set muscles, and against his face he could feel his father's deep-caught breathing and then deep intake and held breath, and his father's hands, trembling.

  A little more there was to it, and he dug it up and set it before his eyes in the air ahead of the horse's head--a worn and battered table at a pub, loud talk and laughter. A pewter mug was in front of his father, and a cup of hot milk, sweet and aromatic with sugar and cinnamon, before himself. His father's lips were curiously blue and there were tears in his father's eyes.

  "I'd never have brought you if I'd known. It's not fit for any man to see, and sure not for a small boy."

  "I didn't see any," Samuel piped. "You held my head down."

  "I'm glad of that."