Cain

by José Saramago

  Don't think you're going to lie your way out of this, shouted the man and advanced, sword at the ready. At that same moment, the weapon was transformed into a cobra which the man, horrified, shook from his hand, There, said cain, what you took for a snake was a sword. He bent down and picked the sword up by the hilt, I could kill you now, and no one would come to your aid, he said, your companions have fled, as will the traitor who brought me here, Forgive me, begged the man, kneeling down, Only the lord can forgive you, if he so chooses, I can't, now go, you will find the reward for your villainy at home. The man left, head down, weeping, tearing his hair, regretting a thousand times over ever having chosen the profession of murderous bandit. Repeating the steps he took when he first arrived, cain walked back into the city. Just as on that occasion, he turned a corner and found himself face to face with the old man leading the two sheep by a rope. Goodness, you've changed, said the old man, you don't look anything like the vagabond who came from the west or the treader of mud, No, I'm a guard now, said cain, and made as if to go on his way, Guarding which door, asked the old man in a tone that was intended to be mocking, but which sounded rather resentful, If you know already, why waste time asking, Because I don't know the details, and the savour of any story is always in the details, Well, go hang yourself on them then, you have a rope after all, retorted cain, and that way I wouldn't have to see you again. The old man shouted, You will go on seeing me until the end of your days, My days will have no end, answered cain, moving off, and watch that those sheep of yours don't eat the rope, That's what I'm here for, but it's all they think of doing.

  Lilith was not in her room, nor on the roof terrace, where she often sunbathed naked. Sitting on his bench, cain considered the situation, trying to weigh up what had happened. It was clear that the slave had taken him down that path on purpose in order to meet the waiting bandits, so someone must have plotted against his life. It wasn't difficult to guess the name of what we would now call the mastermind behind that failed murder attempt. Noah, said cain, that's who it was, no one else in the palace or in the city would gain anything by my disappearance. At that moment, lilith came into the antechamber, That was a short walk, she said. A thin veil of sweat made the skin on her shoulders gleam, she was as succulent as a ripe pomegranate or as a split fig from which oozes the first honeyed drop. Cain considered carrying her off to bed, then abandoned the idea, perhaps later on, there were serious matters to deal with first. Someone tried to kill me, he said, Kill you, asked lilith, startled, who, The slave you sent with me and some hired bandits, What happened, tell me, The slave led me down a path out of the city, that's where the attack took place, Did they hurt you, wound you, No, How did you escape, asked lilith, No one can kill me, said cain calmly, You're the only person in the world who believes that, Yes, I am. There was a silence, which cain broke, My name isn't abel, he said, it's cain, Oh, I like that better than the other one, said lilith, trying to keep the tone of the conversation light, an endeavour that cain laid low with his next words, Abel was the name of my brother, whom I killed because the lord had chosen to favour him at my expense, and I took his name to conceal my own identity, We don't care if you're cain or abel, news of your crime never reached us here, Yes, I see that now, Tell me what happened, Aren't you afraid of me, don't I disgust you, asked cain, You are the man I chose for my bed and with whom, in a little while, I will again lie down. Then cain opened the ark of secrets and described the dramatic event in detail, including the flies on abel's eyes and mouth, as well as the words spoken by the lord, and the enigmatic promise he had made to protect him from a violent death, Don't ask me why he made that promise, said cain, he didn't tell me and I'm not sure there is an explanation, It's enough for me that you're alive and in my arms, said lilith, Don't you see in me a criminal who can never be pardoned, asked cain, No, she said, I see in you a man against whom the lord offended, and now that I know your real name, let's go to bed, I'll burn up with desire right here if you don't hurry, I knew you as abel, and now I need to know you as cain. When the delirium of repeated and various penetrations finally gave way to lassitude, to complete physical exhaustion, lilith said, It was noah, wasn't it, Yes, I believe it must have been, agreed cain, I can't think of any other person in the palace or the city who would want to see me dead as much as he would, When we get up, said lilith, I will send for him, and you will hear what I have to say. They slept a little to rest their weary limbs and woke almost at the same moment. Lilith, already out of bed, said, Stay here, he won't come in. She summoned a slave-woman to help her dress and then asked the same slave to send a message to noah, requesting an interview. She sat in the antechamber waiting, and when her husband arrived, she said point-blank, You will order the execution of the slave whom you gave to me as a companion for cain on his walks, Who's cain, asked noah, taken by surprise, Cain was abel and now he's cain, you will have the men who ambushed him killed as well, Where is cain, since that is now his name, He's safe in my bedroom. The silence became palpable. Then noah said, I had nothing to do with what you say happened, Be careful, noah, lying is the worst of all cowardices, But I'm not lying, You're a coward and you're lying, you're the one who told the slave what to do and where and how, the same slave, I suspect, whom you have used to spy on my activities, hardly necessary since whatever I do, I do openly, As your husband, you should respect me, Yes, you may be right, I really should, So what are you waiting for, asked noah, feigning an irritation which he was far from feeling, for he was still trembling from her accusation, Oh, I'm not waiting for anything, I simply don't respect you, Is it because I'm not a good lover and haven't given you the child you wanted, he asked, Even if you were a brilliant lover and had given me not one child but ten, I still wouldn't respect you, Why, Let me think about it, and as soon as I've discovered the reasons why I feel not the slightest respect for you, I'll tell you, you'll be the first to know, I promise, but now, please leave me, I'm tired and need to rest. Noah was about to go, when she added, One other thing, when you have tracked down that wretched traitor, and I hope you will not be long about it, be sure to tell me so that I can witness his death, the others don't interest me, All right, said noah, and as he crossed the threshold, he heard his wife's last words, And if you torture him, I want to be there too. Back in her room, lilith asked cain, Did you hear, Yes, What did you think, He was clearly the person who ordered me to be killed, he couldn't even act the innocent. Lilith got into bed, but instead of snuggling up to cain, she lay on her back, eyes wide open, staring at the ceiling, then suddenly she said, I have an idea, What, We should kill noah, That's madness, complete nonsense, protested cain, please, don't even think such an absurd thing, Why is it absurd, we would be free of him then, we could get married, you would be the new lord of the city and I would be your queen and your favourite slave, the one who would kiss the ground you walk on, the one who, if necessary, would receive your faeces in her hands, But who would kill him, You would, No, lilith, please don't ask me that, don't order me to do that, I've had my fill of murders, You mean you wouldn't kill him for me, don't you love me, she asked, I who gave you my body so that you could enjoy it endlessly, freely, extravagantly, so that you could enjoy it without rules or prohibitions, I opened to you the doors of my mind, which I had always kept bolted shut, and yet you refuse to do the one thing I ask of you and that would bring us total freedom, Freedom, yes, but remorse too, You're forgetting that I am lilith, I'm not the kind of woman to feel remorse, that's for the weak and feeble, And I am merely a man called cain who came from far away, a man who killed his own brother, who worked as a treader of mud, and who, having done nothing whatever to deserve it, has had the extraordinary good fortune to sleep in the bed of the most beautiful, passionate woman in the world, whom he loves, wants and desires with every pore of his body, So we won't kill noah, then, asked lilith, If you really want to, have a slave do it, No, I don't despise noah so much that I would send a slave to kill him, But I'm a slave and you wanted me to kill him, That's diffe
rent, a man who lies in my bed is not a slave, or perhaps he is, but only to me and my body, So why don't you kill him yourself, asked cain, Because, despite everything, I don't think I would be capable, Men kill women every day, who knows, perhaps by killing him you would start a new trend, Let other women do that, I am lilith, wild, crazy lilith, but that is as far as my errors and crimes go, So we'll let him live then, it will be punishment enough for him to know that we know he wanted to kill me, Put your arms around me, trample me beneath your feet, o treader of mud. Cain put his arms around her, but he entered her very gently, without violence, with an unexpected tenderness that brought her almost to the verge of tears. Two weeks later, lilith announced that she was pregnant.

  Some might say that social and domestic peace finally reigned in the palace, enfolding everyone in the same fraternal embrace. This, however, was not the case, for after a few days had passed, cain came to the conclusion that with lilith expecting a child, his time there had ended. When the child came into the world, everyone would consider it to be noah's child, and although, at first, there would be no shortage of more than justified suspicions and murmurings, time, the great leveller, would soon smooth them away, and future historians would take care to eliminate from the city's chronicle any reference to a certain treader of mud called abel, or cain, or whatever the devil his name was, a doubt which would, in itself, be deemed reason enough to condemn him to oblivion, to permanent quarantine, to the limbo of those events which, for the peace of mind of dynasties, it is best not to talk about. Our story may not be historical, but it shows how wrong or perhaps malicious those historians were, because cain did exist, he gave noah's wife a child, and now he has a problem, how to tell lilith that he wants to leave. He hoped that the lord's curse, You will be a fugitive and a vagabond upon the earth, would persuade her to accept his decision. In the end, though, it proved less problematic than he had thought, perhaps also because the child, that handful of hesitant cells, was already expressing a will and a desire, the first effect of which was to reduce its parents' mad passion for each other to the status of a vulgar sexual fling to which, as we know, the official history will not devote a single line. Cain asked lilith for a donkey and she gave orders for him to be given the very best, the most docile and the sturdiest in the palace stables. At that point, news came that the treacherous slave and his partners in crime had been discovered and arrested. Fortunately for sensitive souls, who always look away from unpleasantnesses of any kind, there were no interrogations and no torture, perhaps because of lilith's pregnancy, for in the opinion of notable local female authorities, this would augur ill for the future of the gestating child, not just the blood that would inevitably be spilled, but also the terrible screams of the torture victims. These authorities, mainly midwives of long experience, believed that a baby in its mother's womb can hear everything going on outside. The result was a sober death by hanging before the entire populace of the city, as a warning, Be careful, this is the very least that could happen to you. The execution was watched from a palace balcony by noah, lilith and cain, the latter because he had been the target of the failed attack. It was noted that, contrary to protocol, noah did not stand in the middle of that small group, lilith did, thus keeping husband and lover apart, as if she were saying that, although she did not love her official spouse, she would remain joined to him, because that is what public opinion seemed to want and what the interests of the dynasty appeared to need, and that although she was being forced by cruel destiny, by the lord's curse, You will be a fugitive and a vagabond upon the earth, to allow cain to leave, she would remain bound to him by the body's sublime memory, by the inextinguishable recollection of the dazzling hours she had spent with him, something a woman never forgets, not like men, to whom such things are like water off a duck's back. The corpses of the malefactors will remain hanging where they are until all that remains of them are bones, for their flesh is accursed, and the earth, if they were buried in it, would erupt and vomit them up, over and over. That night, lilith and cain slept together for the last time. She wept, he clung to her and wept too, but their tears did not last long, they were soon overcome by erotic passion, in whose grip they once more lost all control and fell into delirium, absolute and utter, as if the world were nothing more than that, two lovers interminably devouring each other, so much so that lilith said at last, Kill me. Yes, perhaps that would be the logical end to this story of the love between cain and lilith, but he didn't kill her. He placed a long, lingering kiss on her lips, looked at her for the last time and then went and spent the rest of the night in the bed reserved for him in the antechamber.

  Chapter 6

  Despite the grey gloom of pre-dawn, you could see that the birds, not the charming winged creatures that will soon be singing their songs to the sun, but the brutish birds of prey, those carnivores who travel from scaffold to scaffold, had begun their work of public cleansing on the exposed parts of the hanged men, their faces, eyes, hands, feet, the half of a leg left uncovered by a tunic. Two owls, startled by the sound of the ass's hooves, flew up from the dead slave's shoulders with a silken murmur perceptible only to experienced ears. They swooped very low down a narrow alleyway next to the palace and disappeared. Cain dug his heels into the donkey's sides and crossed the square, wondering if he would again meet the old man with the two sheep, and, for the first time, he asked himself who that impertinent person might be, Perhaps it was the lord, he murmured, he'd be quite capable of such a thing, given his liking for turning up when and where he's least expected. He preferred not to think about lilith. When he woke in his lonely guard's bed after a broken, constantly interrupted night's sleep, he had felt a sudden impulse to go into the bedroom for one last word of farewell, one last kiss, and who knows what else. There was still time. Everyone was asleep in the palace, only lilith was sure to be awake, no one would notice his brief incursion, or perhaps only the two slave-women who had half-opened the gates of paradise to him when he first arrived, and they would simply say with a smile, How well we understood you, abel. Once he turns the next corner, the palace will disappear from view. The old man with the sheep wasn't there, the lord, if it was him, was clearly giving cain carte blanche, but no road map or passport or recommendations for hotels and restaurants, it was how journeys used to be made, leaving things to chance or, as they used to say even then, in the lap of the gods. Cain again spurred his donkey on and soon found himself in open countryside. The city had become a dull grey-brown stain, which, gradually, with increasing distance, and even though the donkey was moving at only a moderate pace, seemed to merge with the earth. The landscape was dry, arid, with not so much as a thread of water in sight. Faced by such desolation, it was inevitable that cain would remember the hard journey on foot he had made after the lord drove him out of the fateful valley where poor abel would remain for ever. With nothing to eat and no water to drink, apart from that which miraculously fell from the sky just when his soul had lost all strength and his legs were threatening to give way beneath him. At least this time he would not lack for food, the saddlebags are crammed full, a loving thought on the part of lilith, who, it would seem, was not such a bad housewife as her dissolute ways might lead one to believe. The problem is that there is not a scrap of shade to be had anywhere. By mid-morning, the sun is already pure fire and the air a shimmering mass that makes us doubt what our eyes can see. Cain said, At least I won't have to go to the trouble of dismounting in order to eat. The road rose and rose, and the donkey, who was clearly no ass, was following a zigzag path, now to the right, now to the left, and one imagines that he must have learned this trick from mules, who know all there is to know about mountain-climbing. A few more steps and they had reached the summit. And to cain's surprise, astonishment and stupefaction, the landscape that lay before him was completely different, full of every imaginable shade of green, with leafy trees and cultivated fields, glittering water, a mild temperature, and white clouds drifting across the sky. He looked back and saw that nothin
g had changed, the same parched, arid scene lay behind him. It was as if there were a frontier, a line separating the two countries, Or two different times, said cain, unaware that he had said anything, as if someone else were thinking for him. He looked up at the sky and saw that the clouds moving in the direction from which we have come stopped precisely at that point and then, by some unknown art, vanished. We must bear in mind the fact that cain is ill-informed about cartographical matters, one might even say that this, in a way, is his first trip abroad, and so it is only natural that he should feel surprise at seeing other lands, other people, other skies and other customs. That's all very well, but what no one can explain to me is why the clouds cannot pass from here to there. Unless, says the voice issuing from cain's mouth, this is a different time, and this land cared-for and cultivated by the hand of man was once, in ages past, as sterile and desolate as the land of nod. So are we in the future, then, we ask, having seen a few films and read a few books on the subject. Yes, that is the usual formula used to explain what appears to have happened here, the future, we say, and we breathe more easily, now that we have placed a label on it, a docket, but, in our opinion, it would be clearer to call it another present, because the land is the same, but has various presents, some are past presents, others are future presents, and that, surely, is simple enough for anyone to understand. The creature who appears to feel the greatest joy at this change is the donkey. Born and bred in drought- stricken lands, fed on straw and thistles, with water often rationed, or almost, the vision before him verged on the sublime. It's a shame there was no one there capable of interpreting the twitchings of his ears, that form of semaphore with which nature had endowed him, never thinking that the fortunate beast would one day have to express the ineffable, and the ineffable, as we know, is precisely that which cannot be expressed. Cain is happy too, dreaming of eating his lunch in a countryside full of greenery, babbling brooks and a symphony of little birds warbling away in the branches. Indeed, to the right-hand side of the road, he can see a line of large trees, promising the best of shades and siestas. Cain and the donkey trotted off in that direction. The place would seem to have been created on purpose to provide cool shade for weary travellers and their respective beasts of burden. Running parallel to the trees was a line of bushes that concealed a narrow path going up to the top of the steep hill. Relieved of the weight of the saddlebags, the donkey had surrendered to the delights of lush grass and the occasional rustic flower, neither of which he had ever tasted before. Cain took his time choosing his lunch menu and ate it right there, seated on the ground, surrounded by innocent birds pecking up the crumbs, while memories of blissful moments spent in lilith's arms once more heated his blood. His eyelids were just beginning to droop when he was startled into wakefulness by the voice of a young boy calling, Father, this was followed by a much older male voice asking, What is it, isaac, We have the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for the burnt offering, and the father replied, The lord will provide a lamb as the burnt offering. And they continued on up the hill. While they are doing so, it would be as well to know how all this began, as further proof that the lord is not a person to be trusted. About three days ago, at most, he had said to abraham, the father of the young boy carrying the firewood on his back, Take your only son, isaac, whom you love, and go into the land of moriah and offer him up for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains, later I will tell you which one. Yes, you read correctly, the lord ordered abraham to sacrifice his own son, and he did so as naturally as if he were asking for a glass of water to slake his thirst, which means it was a deep-seated habit of his. The logical, natural and simply human response would have been for abraham to tell the lord to piss off, but that isn't what happened. The following morning, that unnatural father rose early to saddle up the donkey, prepared wood for the sacrificial fire and set off to the place the lord had indicated, taking with him two servants and his son isaac. On the third day of the journey, abraham saw the aforementioned mountain from afar. He then told his servants, Stay here with the donkey, the lad and I will go over yonder to worship the lord and then come again to you. In short, as well as being as big a bastard as the lord, abraham was a consummate liar, ready to deceive anyone with his forked tongue, which in this case, according to the personal dictionary belonging to the narrator of this story, means treacherous, perfidious, false, disloyal and other similarly fine qualities. When he reached the place of which the lord had spoken, abraham built an altar and placed the wood on it. He then tied up his son and lifted him on to the altar, on top of the wood. Without pausing, he took up his knife in order to sacrifice the poor boy and was just about to slit his throat when he felt a hand grip his arm and heard a voice in his ear shouting, What are you doing, you wretch, killing your own son, burning him, it's the same old story, it starts with a lamb and ends with the murder of the very person you should love most, But the lord told me to do it, said abraham, struggling, Keep still, or I'll be the one who does the killing, untie that boy at once, then kneel down and beg his forgiveness, Who are you, My name is cain, I'm the angel who saved isaac's life. This isn't true, cain is no angel, that title belongs to the being who has just landed with a great flapping of wings and who is now declaiming like an actor who has finally heard his cue, Lay not thy hand upon the lad, nor do anything to him, for now I know that thou fearest the lord, being prepared, for love of him, to sacrifice even your only son, You're late, said cain, the only reason isaac isn't dead is because I stepped in to prevent it. The angel looked suitably contrite, I'm terribly sorry to be late, but it really wasn't my fault, I was on my way here when I developed a mechanical problem in my right wing, it was out of synch with the left one, and the result was that I got completely turned around, in fact I wasn't even sure I would get here, and given that no one had told me which of these mountains had been chosen as the place of sacrifice, it's a miracle I arrived at all, You're late, said cain again, Better late than never, replied the angel smugly, as if he had uttered a great truth, That's where you're wrong, never is not the opposite of late, the opposite of late is too late, retorted cain. The angel muttered, Oh, no, a rationalist, and since he had not yet completed the mission with which he had been charged, he rattled off the rest of his message, This is what the lord commanded me to say: since you were capable of doing this and did not withhold your own son, I swear by my good name that I will bless you and multiply your seed as the stars of the heavens and as the sand upon the seashore and they will possess the gates of his enemies, and in your seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed because you have obeyed my voice, the word of the lord, That, for those who don't know it or pretend to ignore it, is the lord's double accounting system, said cain, whereby one man can win and the other not lose, apart from that, I don't see why all the people of the earth will be blessed just because abraham obeyed a stupid order, That is what we in heaven call due obedience, said the angel. Dragging his right wing, and with a bad taste in his mouth after the failure of his mission, the celestial creature departed, and abraham and his son are also walking back to where their servants are waiting for them, and now, while cain is once again loading the saddlebags on to his donkey, let us imagine a dialogue between the would-be executioner and his victim saved at the last moment. Isaac asked, Father, whatever did I do to you that would make you want to kill me, your only son, You did nothing wrong, isaac, So why did you want to cut my throat as if I were a lamb, asked the boy, if that man, may the lord's blessings be upon him, hadn't come and grabbed your arm, you would now be carrying home a corpse, It was the lord's idea, he meant it as a test, A test of what, Of my faith and my obedience, What kind of lord would order a father to kill his own son, He's the only lord we have, the lord of our ancestors, the lord who was here when we were born, And if that lord had a son, would he order him to be killed as well, asked isaac, Time will tell, So the lord is capable of anything, of good, bad and worse, Yes, he is, What would have happened if you had disobeyed the order, asked isaac, Well, t
he lord usually sends down ruin or disease upon anyone who fails him, So the lord is vengeful, Yes, I think he is, said abraham quietly, as if he were afraid of being heard, nothing is impossible for the lord, Not even error and crime, asked isaac, Especially error and crime, Father, I don't understand this religion, But you have to, my son, you have no option, and now I must make a request, a humble request, What is it, Let us forget what happened here, Well, I'm not sure I can, father, I can still see myself lying, bound, on top of the pyre, and your arm raised, the blade of the knife glinting, That wasn't me, I would never do such a thing when in my right mind, Do you mean that the lord makes people mad, asked isaac, Yes, he often does, almost always, replied abraham, Even if that were true, you were still the one with the knife in your hand, The lord had everything organised, he would have intervened at the last moment, after all, you saw the angel, The angel arrived late, Yes, but the lord would have found some other way of saving you, he probably even knew that the angel was going to be late and that's why he had that man appear, Cain his name was, don't forget the debt you owe him, Cain, repeated abraham obediently, I knew him before you were born, The man who saved your own son from having his throat slit and being burned on the very firewood he had carried on his back, But neither of those things happened, my son, Father, it isn't so much a matter of whether or not I died, although obviously that matters to me a great deal, but the fact that we are ruled by such a lord, as cruel as baal, who devours his own children, Where did you hear the name baal, In dreams, father. I'm dreaming, said cain when he opened his eyes. He had fallen asleep while he rode and had suddenly woken up. He was in the middle of a very different landscape, with earth as parched as in the land of nod, although the ground was sandy rather than covered in thistles, and with only a few scrawny trees for vegetation. Another present, he said. It seemed to him that this must be an older present than the previous one, the one in which he had saved the life of the boy called isaac, and this indicated that he could go forwards as well as backwards in time, although not at his own bidding, for, to be frank, he felt like someone who, more or less, but only more or less, knows where he is, but not where he is heading. Just to give an example of the difficulties cain faces in orienting himself, this place looks to be a present that happened a long time ago, as if the world were in the last phase of being built and everything still had a rather temporary feel about it. For example, in the distance, on the far horizon, he can make out a very tall tower, like a truncated cone, that is, a conical form, the top of which had been sliced off or not yet put in place. It was a long way away, but it seemed to cain, who had excellent eyesight, that there were people moving around the building. Curiosity made him spur the donkey on, but then prudence caused him to rein him in again. He couldn't be sure that those were peace-loving people, and even if they were, who knows what might happen to a donkey laden with two saddlebags of the finest quality food when confronted by a multitude of people who, by necessity or tradition, were ready to devour anything and everything set before them. He didn't know them, had no idea who they were, but it wasn't hard to imagine. Anyway, he clearly couldn't leave the donkey there, tied to one of those trees like some worthless object, for he risked finding neither donkey nor food when he returned. Caution told him to take another route and to cease his adventuring and warned him, in short, not to defy blind fate. Curiosity, however, proved stronger than caution. He stuffed the tops of the saddlebags with twigs to make it look as if the bags contained only animal feed, and then, alea jacta est, set off towards the tower. As he approached, the sound of voices, faint at first, began growing and growing until it became a hubbub. They seem like madmen, like complete maniacs, thought cain. Yes, they were mad, but with desperation because they spoke but could not understand each other, as if they were deaf and had to keep speaking louder and louder, but in vain. They were all speaking different languages and some of them even laughed and made fun of the others as if their own language was more musical and more beautiful than anyone else's. The odd thing is, as cain did not yet know, none of those languages had existed in the world before, all the people there had once spoken only one language and had understood each other without the slightest difficulty. Cain was fortunate enough to meet a man who spoke hebrew, the language that had fallen to him to speak in the midst of all that deliberately created confusion, the scale of which cain was just beginning to grasp, with people talking, without the aid of dictionaries or interpreters, in english, german, french, spanish, italian, basque, some in latin and greek and even, who would have thought it, in portuguese. Why all this discord, asked cain, and the man replied, When we came from the east to settle here, we all spoke the same language, And what was that language called, asked cain, Since it was the only one, it didn't need a name, it was just language, So what happened, Someone had the idea of making bricks and firing them in a kiln, And how did you make them, asked the former treader of mud, feeling that he was among his own people, Just as we had always done, with clay, sand and grit, and for mortar we used mud, And then, Then we decided to build a city with a large tower, that one over there, a tower that would reach up to the sky, What for, asked cain, So that we would be famous, And what happened, why did you stop building, Because the lord came to see it and was displeased, Reaching heaven is what all good men desire, surely the lord should have given you a helping hand, If only he had, but that isn't what happened, So what did he do, He said that once we had built the tower, we would be capable of doing whatever we wanted, which is why he mixed up all the languages and why, from then on, as you see, we could no longer understand each other, And now, asked cain, Now there will be no city, the tower will never be finished and we, each with our own language, will be unable to live together as we once did, It would be best to leave the tower as a reminder, there will come a time when people will travel from all over to visit the ruins, There probably won't be any ruins left, because there are those who say that once we've left, the lord will send a great wind to destroy it, and what the lord says, he does, His great fault is jealousy, instead of being proud of his children, he succumbed to envy, and he obviously can't bear to see anyone happy, All that toil and sweat for nothing, What a shame, said cain, it would have been a fine tower, Yes, said the man, fixing greedy eyes on cain's donkey. And it would have been easy enough for him to make off with it had he asked for the help of his companions, but selfishness won out over intelligence. When he made a move to grab the halter, the donkey, who had always had a reputation for docility in noah's stables, performed a kind of dance step with his front feet, then turned his back on the man and unleashed a kick that sent the poor devil flying. Although he had acted in legitimate self-defence, the donkey was immediately aware that this eminently good reason would be unacceptable to the advancing mob who, crying out in all the languages under the sun, were poised to steal the saddlebags and make mincemeat of him. He didn't need his rider to dig in his heels, but set off at a lively trot which, given his asinine nature, became an even more unexpected gallop, for donkeys may be reliable beasts, but they are not noted for their speed. The assailants had to resign themselves to seeing him disappear in a cloud of dust, which would have another important consequence, that of transporting cain and his mount into another future present in that same place, free of any of the lord's bold rivals, who were about to be scattered throughout the world because they no longer had a common language to bind them together. Imposing, majestic, the tower was still visible on the far horizon, and although unfinished, it nonetheless looked set to defy the centuries and the millennia, then, suddenly, one moment it was there and the next it wasn't. The lord was carrying out his threat, which was to send a great wind that would not leave stone on stone or brick on brick. Cain was too far away to feel the violence of the hurricane blown from the mouth of the lord or the roar of the walls toppling one after the other, the pillars, the arcades, the vaults, the buttresses, and so the tower appeared to collapse in silence, like a house of cards, until all that remained was a vast
cloud of dust that rose up to the sky and obscured the sun. Many years later, people would say that a meteorite had fallen there, a celestial body, of the many that wander about in space, but that isn't true, it was the tower of babel, which the lord, out of pride, would not allow to be completed. The history of mankind is the history of our misunderstandings with god, for he doesn't understand us, and we don't understand him.