Cain Read Online Free PDF

spilt milk is not as
pointless as people say, it is in a way instructive because it shows the
true scale of the frivolity of certain human behaviour, because
if milk is spilled, it's spilled and all you can do is clean it
up, and if abel died a cruel death that's because someone took
his life. Thinking while getting soaked to the skin is not
the most comfortable thing in the world and that is perhaps
why, from one moment to the next, the rain stopped, so
that cain could think at his leisure and freely follow the
course of his thoughts until he found out where they would lead
him. Neither he nor we will ever know, for the sudden
appearance, out of nowhere, of a dilapidated hut distracted
him from his ponderings and from his griefs. There were signs
that the land behind the house had once been worked, the
inhabitants had clearly long ago abandoned it, although
perhaps not so very long ago if we bear in mind the
intrinsic fragility, the precarious cohesion of the materials used to
build such humble dwellings,
which require constant repairs if they are not to collapse in a single season. With
no careful hand to watch over it, such a house will have
little chance of withstanding the corrosive effect of the
elements, especially the drenching rain and the rough winds that
rasp away at it like sandpaper. Some of the interior walls had crumbled, most
of the roof
had fallen in, and all that remained was a relatively sheltered corner where
the exhausted traveller could collapse. He could barely stand, not just
because of the distance he had walked, but also because hunger
was beginning to bite. Evening was coming on, soon it
would be night. I'm going to stay here, said cain out loud,
as was his custom whenever he needed to calm himself, even
though he was not under threat from anyone just then,
indeed, it was unlikely that even the lord himself knew where
he was. It isn't particularly cold, but his wet tunic, clinging to his skin,
is making him
shiver. He reckons that by taking it off he would kill two birds with
one stone, firstly, because then he would stop feeling cold
and, secondly, because the tunic, being made of fairly thin
fabric, would soon dry. And so he took off the tunic and
immediately felt better. True, it didn't seem quite right to be
sitting there as naked as the day he was born, but he was
alone, there were no witnesses, no one who could touch him. This
thought provoked another shiver, although not of the same
sort, not of the kind he had felt from contact with his wet
tunic, but a kind of tremor in the genital region, a slight
stiffening that quickly went away, as if ashamed of itself. Cain
knew what this was, but, despite his youth, either paid it little
heed or else feared that more evil than good would come of it.
He curled up in his corner, knees to chest, and fell asleep.
The cold of dawn woke him. He reached out to touch the
tunic, noticed that it was still a little damp, but decided to put
it on anyway and let it dry on his body. He had had no dreams
or nightmares, he had slept as one imagines a stone
must sleep, without consciousness, without responsibility, without guilt,
however, his first words
when he woke were, I killed my brother. In a different age, he might
perhaps have wept, he might perhaps have despaired, he might perhaps have
beaten his chest or his head, but things being what they
are, with the world so recently begun, we still lack
many of the words with which we can begin to try and say who
we are and cannot always find those that will best explain
it, and so he contented himself with repeating what he
had said until the words ceased to mean anything and were
just a series of incoherent sounds, meaningless babblings. He
realised then that he had, in fact, had a dream, well, not a
dream exactly, but an image of himself returning home and
finding his brother standing in the doorway, waiting for him.
That is how he will remember
him for the rest of his life, as if he had made peace with his crime and