Havah

by Tosca Lee

  Now I raised my face and uncovered it. Already Adam had been cursed to toil with the earth. Now Kayin was to be cursed from even that, exiled from the land of our exile? What could there ever be for him? Adam had toiled for every abundance from the earth, and now Kayin would toil and receive nothing—he who had raised up in pride the best fruits of his efforts, only hoping that they would be good enough! I had had the dream of this event and had kept him to the fields! How great then was my guilt in this?

  I drew him into my arms, and he burrowed against me. He clung to me, and I clasped him as hard as I could, knowing, perhaps in the way of my dreams, that I was soon to lose him.

  He could not remain here.

  After what seemed a long time, when my back was sore and my legs numb and my face bloated from weeping—when did I not weep?—he raised his head. For the first time I saw a strange thing there, on his forehead.

  “What is this?” I brushed his hair aside.

  He caught at my hand. “Don’t.”

  “But what is it? It almost looks like—” And there, indeed, was the circle and the line—the mark Hevel had used with his flocks!

  He covered it again. “I know I am going away. I know I cannot stay here. The One has said that I will wander now, ceaselessly. And so I will go to the Land of Wandering.”

  “What land is that? And what will you do?” Was I to lose everything?

  “It means only that everywhere I go, that shall be my land.”

  At his bitter smile I remembered how lovely he had been only days before. Now I barely recognized this haggard stranger before me.

  “As for what I will do, I was a shepherd before I tilled the earth. Do you remember, I once roamed these hills with Hevel and our little flock?”

  “Then take the best sheep and of the—”

  “No,” he said, gently, “no, Mother. There are sheep in the hills, and the land to the east of here is fertile. Hevel and I have seen the beginning of it on the long treks we once took together. I will go there.”

  “Alone?”

  He lowered his head. “I do not think Lila will want to go with me. I came to her at the river when she was bathing, and she looked past me as though I were a shape in the mist and would not see me.”

  I mourned for them both.

  “But Mother, there is more.”

  “What more can there be? It is already too much!”

  Bitterness crossed his face. “I said so to the One. ‘I can’t bear it,’ I said. To be gone from this place and from the presence of the One—it is with you, I see that now—and to be gone from you, it is too much. And what is more, what is to stop any one of my siblings—and some day there will be a great many, spread out from this plain to mountain—from visiting upon me the same fate I handed to Hevel?”

  “No! None would dare!”

  “None will. Because the One set the mark upon me that you have seen and—” his voice wavered—“I have looked within a still pond and know what it is. Ah, Mother, it is too terrible!”

  He did not stop me this time when I moved his hair aside. Indeed, it was Hevel’s mark, the one all of his flock bore. A mark known, as Hevel himself had said, to everyone, though there were so few of us then. But now as I gazed at it, something strange happened—it seemed to waver before me on his forehead, like a ripple of water passing over skin.

  Suddenly I saw not the face of my son but a hand I recognized as my own, reaching toward a fruit. How lovely, how beautiful were both! But in the next instant I was filled with shame and drew back as one burnt.

  His mournful words pierced me. “I do not know what you see, but when I looked in the pond at the reflection of it, I saw my hand raised to my brother, and I turned away from my own image as you have now. This is my bitter mercy. This is my bitter protection: the shame of others. I wish, I hope that someday I might lose it. Perhaps then another hand will put an end to it all, as I so deserve.”

  “Do not say such things!”

  He drew his hair down over his forehead again. Silently I handed him the linen head cloth from my hair. He took it in a rough hand.

  Even then I loved him. Even then I wished I could undo every memory of hurt for him. That I could give birth to Hevel again, knowing that in his second chance, Kayin would never resent him. Perhaps even then the One would still reject him, but at least we could let be, knowing that the One did as he pleased, whether or not we knew the reasons.

  “When will you leave?”

  “Soon. This very night.”

  Too soon! Too soon! But if not today, then tomorrow, and it, too, would be too soon for me.

  I made him come back with me. He trembled as I held on to his arm, clutching the head cloth in his hand, and I knew it was not for the cloth itself but for its maker.

  Lahat, sitting outside, making a new pot—he had become skilled, of late, as a potter—fell still. Sufa, playing nearby, exclaimed aloud, “Kayin! Kayin!” and went flying into his arms. He lifted her, bowing his head to her shoulder, and carried her the last of the way to the house.

  From another direction came Adam.

  “Kayin!” The sound of that name was terrible.

  My son stopped, and I let go of him as he turned to face his father.

  Adam’s face was bleak, stark with the furrows of grief. Grief and love.

  I thought the adam might turn on his heel. I thought he might walk away. And I felt, prematurely, Kayin’s hurt and acceptance for both. But when Adam did not, Kayin rushed forward to fall down before him.

  “Father!”

  Adam stood rigid before his hand came to rest, trembling, upon that dark head. And I saw the face of my brother, my husband, my father, contorted toward heaven, as though he might see there some answer, twisting until I thought he would call out for the One, as I had on so many times. I covered my mouth.

  This was the man who had named the animals and cried out over me, who tilled the earth without complaint, in faith and weariness, a man without his own mother’s or father’s knee to lay his head upon or from whom to seek counsel or keen out his grief.

  At last Adam said, “You have struck the image of the One.”

  I knew that I had done, on other occasions, the same though it had never amounted to such grave outcome.

  Movement near the house: Renana came running but stopped cold at the sight of her father and brother in the yard. Lila, I knew, must still be inside. But if she was, she did not come out. Only Ashira stood in the doorway, pale, her face like stone.

  At last Kayin raised his head. “I am going, Father. I do not ask your blessing. I do not ask for your love.”

  Adam did not speak. I do not think he could have. As Kayin rose, his hair fell back so that now Adam stared at Kayin’s face. His eyes widened slightly. After a moment he turned away with a hoarse cry as though from a flash of lightning.

  “I go,” Kayin repeated in a whisper. He lifted the linen cloth then and tied it over his head, covering his forehead and the mark upon it.

  “You must take with you provisions. Food. Tools,” Adam said, more solidly, not looking directly at him.

  Kayin shook his head. “I will not take from your stores. The One has said I will wander, and so I expect that I will find a way to eat, if indeed, I am to live.” He turned slowly, walking woodenly toward the house. Lahat embraced him, fiercely, worriedly, and asked him some question I could not hear. My eyes were fastened on Ashira, who stared at him as one would at a hyena. When he came toward her, she spat on him.

  “Do not think to take anything with you. Take nothing! Go, go and see if God will have mercy on you—go!” She doubled over, and when he would have bent to her, she struck out at him with a screech, nails flashing. He reeled back.

  Kanit, inside the house, tried to come out, but Ashira held her back.

  He backed another step, staring at the house, and then, nodding slightly, turned to go. Just then Renana came running into the yard, a basket on her back, her sturdy sandals on her feet.

&
nbsp; “Renana, what are you doing?”

  Ashira cried the same words as my heart. Adam strode quickly toward her, but she backed a step toward Kayin.

  “I will go with my brother. Lila will not see him, let alone follow him. Let me go in her stead, and I will bear children in her name, for she will have no other man all the days of her life. She has said so to me; I swear it.”

  She came to clasp and kiss my hands, and there was on her face such earnestness and ravaged hope as I had never seen in her. Toward Adam she only nodded before she returned to Kayin’s side. Bewildered, Kayin looked from her to the rest of us.

  They walked away together, leaving our settlement forever.

  I watched them go, my feet leaden, my heart dull in my chest. My arms hung as limply by my sides as my unwashed hair down my back. We had forged of our foibles our destiny and were all at the mercy of the One.

  I called out after them: “Blessings on your feet! On the ground beneath it! On your eyes and hands as you forge your lives!” They did not turn back.

  I am the pod that loses its seeds, borne aloft on the breeze, not knowing where they go.

  GENERATIONS

  26

  One spring evening Besek came into the house, saying that several of the ewes were near to dropping and that he would stay out through the night.

  At my request we had expanded our home in the year after Hevel’s death. I wanted my children near. So Besek and Zeeva had come back to live with us, though Ashira stayed staunchly away. Besek scrupulously kept Hevel’s flock and marked each lamb and kid accordingly, as though one day he might give account for how well they had prospered. I never knew why he did that. We did not ask. Neither did we speak of Hevel’s symbol upon Kayin’s forehead; I do not think we could bear to speak of the things we had seen lest we learn we were the only ones to see ourselves at our worst. So we said nothing, explaining to the young children that it was only a sign of our family and that it must always be honored.

  Lila began to teach her craft to Kanit, showing her first how to break the flax and twist thread. Her own techniques were so advanced that it took Kanit years to gain even half of her skill, though it seemed Lila pursued her craft with less vigor than before. More often I saw her gazing into the fire as though it were a pond-mirror or staring at the threads of her pegs as though the future were written there. Sometimes I fancied that she studied Adam, though that was common enough with my older children. His face and Hevel’s had been so similar, it was easy to look at him and wonder how Hevel might look were he living. Sometimes I still expected my son to come in from the high pastures with the sheep, saying he was starving and good-naturedly teasing his sisters for food.

  Adam was increasingly quiet. When he did speak, it was about the garden or the animals or the house. He had begun to dig small ditches to carry water from the river, and this turned into a great experiment for him and Lahat.

  He should have a son closer to his own age, I thought, seeing them together. Lahat is barely a man and has only one good eye. But the boy had a mind for design and for engineering the making of things and for patterns—whether they were in water or soil or earth or on the pottery he had grown to love.

  Ashira, once so bright and animated, never shed the dullness of grief. Nor did she once, since Kayin’s leaving, mention Hevel’s name. She came to life only when she was delivering children. I watched the way she scanned each face at a birth, as though looking for signs of recognition there. I wondered if she waited for Hevel to somehow return to her and know her on sight.

  I never thought it would work that way; we had never been intended to die. I did not think we would be brought back to die and die again. But I did not say anything. The hope on her face was the only joy I ever saw in her after that terrible day.

  Sufa I never felt I understood, my temperamental child who tore me at her birth. Though I loved all my children well, I know I understood and therefore fancied that I loved my oldest daughters better. In that way I told myself that surely the One had loved Kayin, but only differently.

  But in my heart I also knew that some children were easier to love.

  “Why did the One allow Kayin to kill him?” Asa asked me once, when we told him the truth of his brother’s death and his other brother’s exile.

  I did not know what to say to that. I had never entertained the idea of the One interfering in our actions. Always we had done what we would, always we had chosen for ourselves.

  “Because, my love, if I make it so that you can only do one thing, then do I ever know that you are obedient because you choose to be?” How should I explain what it had taken me a lifetime to understand: that there is no morality without choice?

  “No, you might never know. But was there a time before the first bad thing was done?”

  “All people do wrong. But we are at our most noble when we do right. Now here comes your father. Fetch some water and help him wash his feet.”

  I left that conversation shaken. None of my children had ever asked this question or hit upon the truth so closely. And we had never told them of the tree or of any of the events that had happened before or because of it. Perhaps Hevel had some notion. Perhaps Kayin, most of all. But we had never spoken of it, even to them.

  How, after all, does one tell one’s children that their hearts are defective because of their parents’ failing?

  Meanwhile I mourned the dream of the seed. I had borne two children in the last nine years. My daughters were grown women, their hair long down their backs, their children at their breasts and fires. Ashira’s eldest might soon take a man. One day I would hold my first great-grandchild.

  Thinking of it made my back ache. It was, by then, more than four decades past the time of the garden. In all that time I had reaped only questions and no answers.

  That summer I went out to Adam in the field. “I had a dream last night, husband.” When his eyes met mine, I did not miss the wariness within them. “Never worry, I call for no sacrifice!” My tone was sharper than I intended. He had seen to it that every sacrifice since had been only an animal from the flock, done, I knew, in honor of Hevel though he said it was only because the One obviously preferred the lambs. I was not consulted in these matters, only informed of them afterward. Yet I longed for peace between us, though it happened only in silence. The fewer words we spoke, the better. So I learned to say nothing, hoping we might recover in silence what we could not with words.

  “What is this dream?”

  “I saw Kayin and Renana.” He stiffened at the mention of their names.

  “Indeed?”

  “I saw them in a tent of hides, surrounded by three children.”

  He nodded stiffly and I left him alone. He did not know that I watched him from the edge of the field as he set down his hoe and gazed up at the sky. It was the first time I had seen him look to the heavens since the day Kayin had left. He did not tell stories of the One except to answer his children’s questions. He did not speak of the garden to me. He spoke less and less of the One—until he spoke of God not at all.

  As I watched, his shoulders fell forward. His chin lowered to regard the earth. And then he laid down the hoe and walked away, a hand over his eyes.

  I tried to wash that image from my mind, as one might scrub out a cooking pot, but I was never able to scour it completely away.

  That night I plied him with the best of Zeeva’s cakes. When we lay down, I wound my arm around him. There was much that neither one of us would speak in the interest of peace. The adam had been to me as sturdy—if as stubborn—as the onager; he did what must be done and did it with constancy and reliability. But seeing him as I had earlier had put a new fear in my heart.

  “You said to me once,” I whispered near his ear, “do not leave me.” He lay unmoving, silent but awake. “I say to you now: please, never leave me. One day we will return. One day, let us never forget. And I promise you, as promised to me, that you will not die the death without seeing that place again. As you at
e from my hand, so you will see it by my hand, I swear to you.”

  Though I had recoiled at the times he had laid the blame for his actions at my feet, a part of me could not forget the sight of my own hand holding out that fruit, as I had seen it in the mark of Kayin.

  When he did not respond, I squeezed him gently. “Husband, have you nothing to say?”

  “The children can hear you. Go to sleep.”

  THAT YEAR, FAT COATED my bones for the first time in my life. “How lovely you look, Mother,” Ashira said one day. “The earth has fed us well.”

  “The One has fed us well,” I gently corrected.

  She smiled politely. “As you say, Mother.”

  We spoke too soon. Drought came the following year. Lahat and Adam scratched out their lines in the dirt, and we dug for days upon end to bring water in meager little furrows into the field where we could. We carried it in pots from the river, we were so desperate. But then the river dried nearly to nothing. Only a late rain saved any of the garden or the orchards, but even so the harvest was so meager that we searched the hills for every edible thing. Eventually, out of sheer hunger, we took to eating fish from the river. By the end of the year, there were two lambs missing from the flock. No one asked what became of them.

  The next spring, as Zeeva carried her fifth child, the river flooded its banks. It was a spring to make up for the lean season before, raining in the afternoon, the dew heavy in the dawn. The trees and shrubs grew more lush than I had ever seen them. We looked to the heavens and gave our thanks that the One had not forgotten us.

  One day, as the plums were heavy on the stem, Mazor, my youngest son, came running to the house.

  “Mother! There is a strange shadow over the sun!”