East of Eden

by John Steinbeck

  "Better not," said Adam. "You know how slow I am. It might be some time. I might never get around to it."

  "I'll go tomorrow then."

  "It will tear the boys to pieces," Adam said. "I don't know what they'll do. Maybe you'd better sneak off and let me tell them afterward."

  "It's my observation that children always surprise us," said Lee.

  And so it was. At breakfast the next morning Adam said, "Boys, Lee is going away."

  "Is he?" said Cal. "There's a basketball game tonight, costs ten cents. Can we go?"

  "Yes. But did you hear what I said?"

  "Sure," Aron said. "You said Lee's going away."

  "But he's not coming back."

  Cal asked, "Where's he going?"

  "To San Francisco to live."

  "Oh!" said Aron. "There's a man on Main Street, right on the street, and he's got a little stove and he cooks sausages and puts them in buns. They cost a nickel. And you can take all the mustard you want."

  Lee stood in the kitchen door, smiling at Adam.

  When the twins got their books together Lee said, "Good-by, boys."

  They shouted, "Good-by!" and tumbled out of the house.

  Adam stared into his coffee cup and said in apology, "What little brutes! I guess that's your reward for over ten years of service."

  "I like it better that way," Lee said. "If they pretended sorrow they'd be liars. It doesn't mean anything to them. Maybe they'll think of me sometimes--privately. I don't want them to be sad. I hope I'm not so small-souled as to take satisfaction in being missed." He laid fifty cents on the table in front of Adam. "When they start for the basketball game tonight, give them this from me and tell them to buy the sausage buns. My farewell gift may be ptomaine, for all I know."

  Adam looked at the telescope basket Lee brought into the dining room. "Is that all your stuff, Lee?"

  "Everything but my books. They're in boxes in the cellar. If you don't mind I'll send for them or come for them after I get settled."

  "Why, sure. I'm going to miss you, Lee, whether you want me to or not. Are you really going to get your bookstore?"

  "That is my intention."

  "You'll let us hear from you?"

  "I don't know. I'll have to think about it. They say a clean cut heals soonest. There's nothing sadder to me than associations held together by nothing but the glue of postage stamps. If you can't see or hear or touch a man, it's best to let him go."

  Adam stood up from the table. "I'll walk to the depot with you."

  "No!" Lee said sharply. "No. I don't want that. Good-by, Mr. Trask. Good-by, Adam." He went out of the house so fast that Adam's "Good-by" reached him at the bottom of the front steps and Adam's "Don't forget to write" sounded over the click of the front gate.

  2

  That night after the basketball game Cal and Aron each had five sausages on buns, and it was just as well, for Adam had forgotten to provide any supper. Walking home, the twins discussed Lee for the first time.

  "I wonder why he went away?" Cal asked.

  "He's talked about going before."

  "What do you suppose he'll do without us?"

  "I don't know. I bet he comes back," Aron said.

  "How do you mean? Father said he was going to start a bookstore. That's funny. A Chinese bookstore."

  "He'll come back," said Aron. "He'll get lonesome for us. You'll see."

  "Bet you ten cents he don't."

  "Before when?"

  "Before forever."

  "That's a bet," said Aron.

  Aron was not able to collect his winnings for nearly a month, but he won six days later.

  Lee came in on the ten-forty and let himself in with his own key. There was a light in the dining room but Lee found Adam in the kitchen, scraping at a thick black crust in the frying pan with the point of a can opener.

  Lee put down his basket. "If you soak it overnight it will come right out."

  "Will it? I've burned everything I've cooked. There's a saucepan of beets out in the yard. Smelled so bad I couldn't have them in the house. Burned beets are awful--"Lee!" he cried, and then. "Is anything the matter?"

  Lee took the black iron pan from him and put it in the sink and ran water in it. "If we had a new gas stove we could make a cup of coffee in a few minutes," he said. "I might as well build up the fire."

  "Stove won't burn," said Adam.

  Lee lifted a lid. "Have you ever taken the ashes out?"

  "Ashes?"

  "Oh, go in the other room," said Lee. "I'll make some coffee."

  Adam waited impatiently in the dining room but he obeyed his orders. At last Lee brought in two cups of coffee and set them on the table. "Made it in a skillet," he said. "Much faster." He leaned over his telescope basket and untied the rope that held it shut. He brought out the stone bottle. "Chinese absinthe," he said. "Ng-ka-py maybe last ten more years. I forgot to ask whether you had replaced me."

  "You're beating around the bush," said Adam.

  "I know it. And I also know the best way would be just to tell it and get it over with."

  "You lost your money in a fan-tan game."

  "No. I wish that was it. No, I have my money. This damn cork's broken--I'll have to shove it in the bottle." He poured the black liquor into his coffee. "I never drank it this way," he said. "Say, it's good."

  "Tastes like rotten apples," said Adam.

  "Yes, but remember Sam Hamilton said like good rotten apples."

  Adam said, "When do you think you'll get around to telling me what happened to you?"

  "Nothing happened to me," said Lee. "I got lonesome. That's all. Isn't that enough?"

  "How about your bookstore?"

  "I don't want a bookstore. I think I knew it before I got on the train, but I took all this time to make sure."

  "Then there's your last dream gone."

  "Good riddance." Lee seemed on the verge of hysteria. "Missy Tlask, Chinee boy sink gung get dlunk."

  Adam was alarmed. "What's the matter with you anyway?"

  Lee lifted the bottle to his lips and took a deep hot drink and panted the fumes out of his burning throat. "Adam," he said, "I am incomparably, incredibly, overwhelmingly glad to be home. I've never been so goddam lonesome in my life."

  Chapter 36

  1

  Salinas had two grammar schools, big yellow structures with tall windows, and the windows were baleful and the doors did not smile. These schools were called the East End and the West End. Since the East End School was way to hell and gone across town and the children who lived east of Main Street attended there, I will not bother with it.

  The West End, a huge building of two stories, fronted with gnarled poplars, divided the play yards called girlside and boyside. Behind the school a high board fence separated girlside from boyside, and the back of the play yard was bounded by a slough of standing water in which tall tules and even cattails grew. The West End had grades from third to eighth. The first-and second-graders went to Baby School some distance away.

  In the West End there was a room for each grade--third, four, and fifth on the ground floor, six, seventh, and eighth on the second floor. Each room had the usual desks of battered oak, a platform and square teacher's desk, one Seth Thomas clock and one picture. The pictures identified the rooms, and the pre-Raphaelite influence was overwhelming. Galahad standing in full armor pointed the way for third-graders; Atalanta's race urged on the fourth, the Pot of Basil confused the fifth grade, and so on until the denunciation of Cataline sent the eighth-graders on to high school with a sense of high civic virtue.

  Cal and Aron were assigned to the seventh grade because of their age, and they learned every shadow of its picture--Laocoon completely wrapped in snakes.

  The boys were stunned by the size and grandeur of the West End after their background in a one-room country school. The opulence of having a teacher for each grade made a deep impression on them. It seemed wasteful. But as is true of all humans, they were stunned for
one day, admiring on the second, and on the third day could not remember very clearly ever having gone to any other school.

  The teacher was dark and pretty, and by a judicious raising or withholding of hands the twins had no worries. Cal worked it out quickly and explained it to Aron. "You take most kids," he said, "if they know the answer, why, they hold up their hands, and if they don't know they just crawl under the desk. Know what we're going to do?"

  "No. What?"

  "Well, you notice the teacher don't always call on somebody with his hand up. She lets drive at the others and, sure enough, they don't know."

  "That's right," said Aron.

  "Now, first week we're going to work like bedamned but we won't stick up our hands. So she'll call on us and we'll know. That'll throw her. So the second week we won't work and we'll stick up our hands and she won't call on us. Third week we'll just sit quiet, and she won't ever know whether we got the answer or not. Pretty soon she'll let us alone. She isn't going to waste her time calling on somebody that knows."

  Cal's method worked. In a short time the twins were not only let alone but got themselves a certain reputation for smartness. As a matter of fact, Cal's method was a waste of time. Both boys learned easily enough.

  Cal was able to develop his marble game and set about gathering in all the chalkies and immies, glassies and agates, in the schoolyard. He traded them for tops just as marble season ended. At one time he had and used as legal tender at least forty-five tops of various sizes and colors, from the thick clumsy baby tops to the lean and dangerous splitters with their needle points.

  Everyone who saw the twins remarked on their difference one from the other and seemed puzzled that this should be so. Cal was growing up dark-skinned, dark-haired. He was quick and sure and secret. Even though he may have tried, he could not conceal his cleverness. Adults were impressed with what seemed to them a precocious maturity, and they were a little frightened at it too. No one liked Cal very much and yet everyone was touched with fear of him and through fear with respect. Although he had no friends he was welcomed by his obsequious classmates and took up a natural and cold position of leadership in the schoolyard.

  If he concealed his ingenuity, he concealed his hurts too. He was regarded as thick-skinned and insensitive--even cruel.

  Aron drew love from every side. He seemed shy and delicate. His pink-and-white skin, golden hair, and wide-set blue eyes caught attention. In the schoolyard his very prettiness caused some difficulty until it was discovered by his testers that Aron was a dogged, steady, and completely fearless fighter, particularly when he was crying. Word got around, and the natural punishers of new boys learned to let him alone. Aron did not attempt to hide his disposition. It was concealed by being the opposite of his appearance. He was unchanging once a course was set. He had few facets and very little versatility. His body was as insensitive to pain as was his mind to subtleties.

  Cal knew his brother and could handle him by keeping him off balance, but this only worked up to a certain point. Cal had learned when to sidestep, when to run away. Change of direction confused Aron, but that was the only thing that confused him. He set his path and followed it and he did not see nor was he interested in anything beside his path. His emotions were few and heavy. All of him was hidden by his angelic face, and for this he had no more concern or responsibility than has a fawn for the dappling spots on its young hide.

  2

  On Aron's first day in school he waited eagerly for the recess. He went over to the girlside to talk to Abra. A mob of squealing girls could not drive him out. It took a full-grown teacher to force him back to the boyside.

  At noon he missed her, for her father came by in his high-wheeled buggy and drove her home for her lunch. He waited outside the schoolyard gate for her after school.

  She came out surrounded by girls. Her face was composed and gave no sign that she expected him. She was far the prettiest girl in the school, but it is doubtful whether Aron had noticed that.

  The cloud of girls hung on and hung on. Aron marched along three paces behind them, patient and unembarrassed even when the girls tossed their squealing barbs of insult over their shoulders at him. Gradually some drifted away to their own homes, and only three girls were with Abra when she came to the white gate of her yard and turned in. Her friends stared at him a moment, giggled, and went on their way.

  Aron sat down on the edge of the sidewalk. After a moment the latch lifted, the white gate opened, and Abra emerged. She walked across the walk and stood over him. "What do you want?"

  Aron's wide eyes looked up at her. "You aren't engaged to anybody?"

  "Silly," she said.

  He struggled up to his feet. "I guess it will be a long time before we can get married," he said.

  "Who wants to get married?"

  Aron didn't answer. Perhaps he didn't hear. He walked along beside her.

  Abra moved with firm and deliberate steps and she faced straight ahead. There was wisdom and sweetness in her expression. She seemed deep in thought. And Aron, walking beside her, never took his eyes from her face. His attention seemed tied to her face by a taut string.

  They walked silently past the Baby School, and there the pavement ended. Abra turned right and led the way through the stubble of the summer's hayfield. The black 'dobe clods crushed under their feet.

  On the edge of the field stood a little pump house, and a willow tree flourished beside it, fed by the overspill of water. The long skirts of the willow hung down nearly to the ground.

  Abra parted the switches like a curtain and went into the house of leaves made against the willow trunk by the sweeping branches. You could see out through the leaves, but inside it was sweetly protected and warm and safe. The afternoon sunlight came yellow through the aging leaves.

  Abra sat down on the ground, or rather she seemed to drift down, and her full skirts settled in a billow around her. She folded her hands in her lap almost as though she were praying.

  Aron sat down beside her. "I guess it will be a long time before we can get married," he said again. "Not so long," Abra said. "I wish it was now."

  "It won't be so long," said Abra. Aron asked, "Do you think your father will let you?"

  It was a new thought to her, and she turned and looked at him. "Maybe I won't ask him."

  "But your mother?"

  "Let's not disturb them," she said. "They'd think it was funny or bad. Can't you keep a secret?"

  "Oh, yes. I can keep secrets better than anybody. And I've got some too."

  Abra said, "Well, you just put this one with the others."

  Aron picked up a twig and drew a line on the dark earth. "Abra, do you know how you get babies?"

  "Yes," she said. "Who told you?"

  "Lee told me. He explained the whole thing. I guess we can't have any babies for a long time."

  Abra's mouth turned up at the corners with a condescending wisdom. "Not so long," she said.

  "We'll have a house together some time," Aron said, bemused. "We'll go in and close the door and it will be nice. But that will be a long time."

  Abra put out her hand and touched him on the arm. "Don't you worry about long times," she said. "This is a kind of a house. We can play like we live here while we're waiting. And you will be my husband and you can call me wife."

  He tried it over under his breath and then aloud. "Wife," he said. "It'll be like practicing," said Abra.

  Aron's arm shook under her hand, and she put it, palm up, in her lap.

  Aron said suddenly, "While we're practicing, maybe we could do something else."

  "What?"

  "Maybe you wouldn't like it."

  "What is it?"

  "Maybe we could pretend like you're my mother."

  "That's easy," she said.

  "Would you mind?"

  "No, I'd like it. Do you want to start now?"

  "Sure," Aron said. "How do you want to go about it?"

  "Oh, I can tell you that," said Abra. She put
a cooing tone in her voice and said, "Come, my baby, put your head in Mother's lap. Come, my little son. Mother will hold you." She drew his head down, and without warning Aron began to cry and could not stop. He wept quietly, and Abra stroked his cheek and wiped the flowing tears away with the edge of her skirt.

  The sun crept down toward its setting place behind the Salinas River, and a bird began to sing wonderfully from the golden stubble of the field. It was as beautiful under the branches of the willow tree as anything in the world can be.

  Very slowly Aron's weeping stopped, and he felt good and he felt warm.

  "My good little baby," Abra said. "Here, let Mother brush your hair back."

  Aron sat up and said almost angrily, "I don't hardly ever cry unless I'm mad. I don't know why I cried."

  Abra asked, "Do you remember your mother?"

  "No. She died when I was a little bit of a baby."

  "Don't you know what she looked like?"

  "No."

  "Maybe you saw a picture."

  "No, I tell you. We don't have any pictures. I asked Lee and he said no pictures--no, I guess it was Cal asked Lee."

  "When did she die?"

  "Right after Cal and I were born."

  "What was her name?"

  "Lee says it was Cathy. Say, what you asking so much for?"

  Abra went on calmly, "How was she complected?"

  "What?"

  "Light or dark hair?"

  "I don't know."

  "Didn't your father tell you?"

  "We never asked him."

  Abra was silent, and after a while Aron asked, "What's the matter--cat got your tongue?"

  Abra inspected the setting sun.

  Aron asked uneasily, "You mad with me"--and he added tentatively--"wife?"

  "No, I'm not mad. I'm just wondering."

  "What about?"

  "About something." Abra's firm face was tight against a seething inner argument. She asked, "What's it like not to have any mother?"

  "I don't know. It's like anything else."

  "I guess you wouldn't even know the difference."

  "I would too. I wish you would talk out. You're like riddles in the Bulletin."

  Abra continued in her concentrated imperturbability, "Do you want to have a mother?"

  "That's crazy," said Aron. " 'Course I do. Everybody does. You aren't trying to hurt my feelings, are you? Cal tries that sometimes and then he laughs."