the fire to gutting the animals. She is a dark-skinned woman designed with little excess flesh, but a great deal of energy. Masses of black hair fling themselves from her head in all directions.
—I think we could prosper here, Cain says.
—It’s a good sign that we caught these fish so easily.
He smiles at that—we caught?—but nods.—Plenty of fertile land. And the spring of course.
The spring bubbles up from the ground a few hundred cubits to the east, and runs in a tinkling brook to the sea.
Zoru uses a forearm to wipe a strand of hair from her eye.—I’m glad we’re stopping, she says in a low voice.—The boy’s tired. And so am I.
—I know.
—We can’t keep on forever.
—I know.
It is a conversation they have held many times over the years. Given the circumstances, it seems now to have run its course, like the spring emptying onto the beach.
Henoch returns, dragging a small lightning-struck sapling. It is too green to burn well: it will smoke and sputter and provide little heat. Cain sighs through his nose. Doubtless the boy grew tired of looking for something appropriate, and simply dragged back the first fallen tree that came to hand. He’s old enough to know good wood from bad.
Or is he? Perhaps not. Perhaps Cain has not taught him, or not in a way that the child can understand.
Cain wonders, not for the first time, whether a child is born with the man already inside him waiting to emerge; or if there is only a blankness, a void inside ready to be filled with whatever might be placed there. It is a question that has nagged for much of his life, and he has never yet found a satisfying answer.
Henoch wrestles the resilient gray branches off the sapling and feeds them to the fire. His father watches and his mother burns the fish in a flat copper pan. As expected, the new wood is smoky. Parents and child engage in an elaborate dance to avoid choking, by bobbing and weaving their heads whenever the wispy gray fingers clutch at them.
Cain wonders what his father had made of him at this age. The idea is startling, that he and his father might have such things in common as the pleasures and annoyances of parenthood. Seldom has he let himself consider the world through his father’s eyes.
What had he been like, at age fourteen? Surly and sullen, no question. Silent much of the time. A child much given to brooding and calculation and tallying up the day’s unfairnesses. Admittedly, there had been unfairnesses to tally. And whose fault, ultimately, was that?
The picture comes back to his mind then: his father standing over him, quaking in fury, his brown face even darker than usual. Black eyes glittering like comets. White threads coursing through the kinky mass of his beard. Never have I beheld such an abomination. . . .
Cain on the ground, mortified, the image of his mother’s naked backside still fresh in his mind.
His blood still sang at the memory. And at his brother’s voice, later that night, in his ear.—You’ve nobody to blame but yourself, you know.
The words settled around his heart like an infection.
That might have been the turning point, Cain thinks now. As he has thought many times over the years. That might have been the moment when he decided, at age fourteen, that one day he was going to have to kill his brother. Not for humiliating him, no. His father had done that. But for saying he deserved it.
•
He hadn’t always hated his brother. What child did? The feeling had grown up like a weed, sprouting on soil too harsh to support any more useful fruit. In time it thickened, its stems growing woody and tough. When at last it flowered, its blooms were brilliant red and its perfume carried an acrid tang.
His father, a fair enough man by most standards, had tried his best with the youngster. But as the years passed and the family accumulated children one after another, even Adam had proved unequal to the task of adequately loving his firstborn.
As for Cain’s mother, well. Cain can barely remember her face.
So then: maybe he is the original misanthrope. The thought does not exactly warm him, but it doesn’t scare him either. He has many reasons to scorn the bulk of humanity, and feels no shame for it. But what about his son? Will he scorn Henoch as much as he has scorned nearly everyone else? Does he want to?
The thought pains his stomach. It’s not true . . . he doesn’t think.
The boy adds another handful of green twigs to the fire. He catches Cain watching him and demands, What?
Cain blinks.—Sorry?
—You’re staring at me again.
—Just thinking.
—Think someplace else then.
—That’s enough! snaps Zoru.
Such cheek! And it can’t all be blamed on the boy’s illness. Had Cain ever dared to speak so disrespectfully to his own father?
Well, yes. Often in fact.
Cain looks away, grinning in spite of himself. Better that the boy has spirit than be a toadying foot-licker, like some he could mention.
He sets aside his worries. How could he ever scorn Henoch? It’s normal enough to grow a bit impatient with the boy from time to time. Or so he hopes. But to banish Henoch from his sight, the way his own father banished him—the very idea causes his insides to clench up. He could never do such a thing.
But an insistent voice nags: Had Adam felt the same? Cain remembers their conversation on the night Adam revealed his origins.—I would never send you away, he had said. And Cain had urged, But just suppose.
—Never, repeated Adam.
Now another gust of smoke tightens Cain’s throat. Liar, he thinks bitterly. Lying son of a bitch.
Never have I beheld such an abomination. . . .
Zoru slides a fat-bellied fish onto each of their plates.—Your father says we’ll stay here and wander no longer.
The boy turns moss-green eyes on him.—It’s true?
Cain nods.
They eat for a time in silence. Cain steals glances at his son, who appears distracted and flushed. Small pink spots prickle his arms and cheeks and Cain has a sudden vision of his boy as one of those thin, bandy-legged men who never grow into any vitality. Something like Cain’s own father in fact. He fervently hopes this isn’t true.
Picking at his food without interest, Henoch gazes about in a constant review of his surroundings. He so resembles a sparrow guarding its nest that Cain smiles again.
The boy overlooks nothing: he remarks this too.—What?
—You seem most interested in your new home, Cain tells him.
His face is grave.—It’s
