Cain

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, 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 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