Authors: José Saramago
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, the 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