Cain Read Online Free Page A

creations from death, but
that was their secret, vouchsafed to no one else. Then came the day when adam
could buy
a piece of land, call it his own and build, at the foot of a hill, a rough
adobe house, and there his three sons were born, cain, abel and seth, all of
whom, at some point in their lives, crawled between
kitchen and living room. And between the kitchen and the
fields as well, because the two oldest boys, as soon as they were
big enough, and with all the ingenuous guile of their few
years, used every pretext, valid or not, to get their father
to take them with him, mounted on the family mule, to
wherever he was working. It became clear early on that
they had very different vocations. While abel preferred the company of sheep
and lambs, cain's
great joy lay in hoes and pitchforks and scythes, one was clearly
destined to make his way raising livestock, the other to forge a path in
agriculture. It has to be said that the division of labour in the
household could not have been better, given than it covered the
two most important sectors of the economy at the time.
Everyone agreed that it was a family with a future. And so it
would prove, as would shortly be shown, with the invaluable
help of the lord, of course, for that is what he is there for.
Ever since they were but tender infants, cain and abel had
been the best of friends, to the degree that they did not
even seem like brothers, where one went, the other followed,
and they did everything by mutual agreement. Those the
lord loves, he preserves, said jealous mothers in the
village, and so it seemed. Then one day, the future decided that
it was about time it put in an appearance. Abel had his
livestock, cain his fields, and in accordance with tradition and
religious obligation, they offered to the lord the first
fruits of their labours, with abel burning the delicate flesh of a
lamb and cain the products of the earth, a few ears of wheat
and some seeds. Then something happened that has still not been explained. The
smoke from
the meat offered by abel rose straight up and vanished into infinite
space, a sign that the lord accepted the sacrifice and was well
pleased, but the smoke from cain's vegetables, nurtured with just as much love,
hardly rose up at all and dispersed when it was barely a
few feet above the ground, which meant that the lord had
rejected it out of hand. Concerned and perplexed, cain
suggested to abel that they change places, perhaps it was the
wind causing the problem, but when they did change places,
the result was the same. It was clear that the lord held
cain in contempt. It was then that abel revealed his true
nature. Instead of feeling for his brother in his misfortune and
consoling him, he mocked him and, as if that were not
enough, began to put on airs, proclaiming himself, to cain's
astonishment and bafflement, to be the lord's favourite, the
lord's chosen one. Poor cain had no alternative but to swallow
the insult and go back to work. The same scene was repeated
unvaryingly over a whole week, with one plume of smoke
rising up to the heavens and one rising only as high as a
man could reach before it dispersed. And abel always
reacted with the same lack of compassion, the same disdainful remarks,
the same scorn. One
day, cain asked his brother to go with him to a nearby valley where
it was said that a fox had its lair, and there, with his own hands, he slew him
with the jaw-bone of an ass that he had previously
hidden, with treacherous intent, in a bramble patch. At that very
moment, that is, after the event, the voice of the lord rang
out, indeed, he appeared to cain in person. Not a word for
years and suddenly there he was, dressed as he had been
when he drove the two brothers' unfortunate parents
from the garden of eden. He was clothed from head to foot in
a richly woven robe, on his head the triple crown and in
his right hand the sceptre. Where is your brother, he asked,
and cain responded with
another question. Am I my brother's keeper,