battles of a never-ending war whose first cause no one could remember, at others revealing a kind of grotesque and invariably violent farce, a sort of on-going grand guignol, harsh, discordant and obsessive. One of these images, the most enigmatic and fleeting of all, set before his eyes a vast expanse of water where one could see nothing as far as the horizon, not even an island or a sailing boat with its fishermen and their nets. Water, water everywhere, nothing but water covering the earth. Obviously, cain could not have been an eye-witness to all of these stories, and some, whether true or not, came to him via the well-known route of hearing a story from someone who had heard it from someone else who had, in turn, told someone else. One example was the scandalous case of lot and his daughters. When sodom and gomorrah were destroyed, lot was afraid to go on living in the nearby town of zoar and decided to seek shelter in a cave in the mountains. One day, his eldest daughter said to his younger daughter, Our father is old, one day he will die, and there is no man on the earth to marry us, come, let us make our father drink wine and we will lie with him so that he may give us descendants. And so it was, and lot did not notice when she lay down nor when she left his bed, and the same thing happened with his younger daughter on the following night, for he was so old and drunk that, again, he did not notice when she lay down nor when she left his bed. The two sisters duly became pregnant, but when this story was told to cain, that great expert on erections and ejaculations, as lilith, his first and so far only lover, would happily confirm, he said, Any man who was so drunk that he didn't even know what was going on wouldn't even be able to get it up, and if he couldn't get it up, then no penetration could take place and no engendering either. We should not be surprised by the fact that in the ancient societies he had created, the lord should accept incest as an everyday occurrence not deserving of punishment, for nature then lacked any moral code and was concerned only with the propagation of the species, whether driven by natural urges, mere lust or, as people will say later on, simply doing what comes naturally. The lord himself had said, Go forth and multiply, and he put no limits or restrictions on that injunction, nor on who one should or shouldn't go with. It's possible, although this is only a working hypothesis, that the lord's liberality in the matter of making babies had to do with the need to replace the considerable losses suffered, in the way of dead and wounded, by his and other people's armies, as we have already seen and will doubtless continue to see. We need only recall what happened within sight of mount sinai and the column of smoke that was the lord, the erotic zeal with which, that same night, once the survivors had dried their tears, they hurriedly did their best to engender new combatants who would one day wield the ownerless swords and slit the throats of the children of those who had just vanquished them. Look at what happened to the midianites. In the great lottery of war, it chanced that they defeated the israelites, who, in the past, it must be said, despite all the propaganda to the contrary, often faced defeat. This rankled with the lord, like a stone in his shoe, and he said to moses, You should take vengeance for the israelites on the midianites and then, prepare yourself, for afterwards you will be gathered unto your people. Swallowing the unpleasant news about his own imminent demise, moses ordered each of the twelve tribes of israel to provide one thousand men for the war and thus raised an army of twelve thousand soldiers, who destroyed the midianites, not one of whom escaped with his life. Among the dead were the kings of midian, namely evi, rekem, zur, hur and reba, for kings then used to have strange names, rather than being called joao or afonso or manuel, sancho or pedro. As for the women and children, the israelites took them captive, as well as seizing their cattle, sheep, and all their other goods and chattels. They presented this booty to moses and to the priest eleazar and to the congregation of the children of israel, who were encamped on the plains of moab, by the river jordan, near jericho, toponymic details which we give here merely to show that we have invented nothing. On learning the outcome of the battle, moses was angry and he demanded of the soldiers entering the encampment, Why did you not also kill the women who caused the israelites to trespass against the lord and worship instead the god baal, thus causing a plague among the people of the lord, I order you, therefore, to go back and kill every male child and every woman who has lain with a man, and as for the female children and those women who have not yet lain with a man, you may keep them for yourselves. None of this surprised cain. What was new to him was the sharing out of the spoils, which we set down here as an indispensable record of the customs of the day, with apologies to the reader for an excess of detail for which we are not responsible. This is what the lord said to moses, You and the priest eleazar and the chief fathers of the congregation take the sum of the spoils that were taken, both of men and of beasts, and divide them into two parts, half for the soldiers who fought in the battle and the other half for the congregation. From the soldiers' half you will take as a tribute to the lord one soul of every five hundred, both of people and of beasts, oxen, asses or sheep. Of the children of israel's half you will take one portion of every fifty, both of people and of beasts, oxen, asses or sheep, and give them to the levites, who guard the tabernacle of the lord. Moses did as the lord commanded. And the booty that the israelite soldiers took was six hundred and seventy- five thousand sheep, seventy-two thousand oxen, sixty-one thousand asses and thirty-two thousand women who had not lain with men. And the half corresponding to the soldiers who had gone into battle was, therefore, three hundred and thirty-seven thousand five hundred sheep, of which the lord's tribute was six hundred and seventy-five, thirty-six thousand oxen, of which the lord's tribute was seventy-two, thirty thousand five hundred asses, of which the lord's tribute was sixty-one, and sixteen thousand people, of which the lord's tribute was thirty-two. The other half, which moses gave to the israelites, consisted also of three hundred and thirty- seven thousand five hundred sheep, thirty-six thousand oxen, thirty thousand five hundred asses and sixteen thousand women who had not lain with men. Of that half, moses took one portion of every fifty, both of people and of beasts, and just as the lord commanded, he gave them to the levites, who guard the tabernacle of the lord. But this was not all. In gratitude to the lord for having saved their lives, for none of them had died in the battle, the soldiers, through the intermediary of their commanding officers, offered up to the lord the gold they had found during the sack of the town. Those bracelets, bangles, rings, earrings and necklaces weighed in at some three hundred and seventy pounds. As has been amply demonstrated, as well as being naturally gifted with the brain of a book-keeper and being very quick at mental arithmetic too, the lord is also what one can only describe as very rich. Still astonished by the abundance of cattle, slave-women and gold, the fruits of the battle against the midianites, cain thought, War is obviously very good business indeed, perhaps the best of all, to judge by the ease with which, in an instant, one can acquire thousands and thousands of oxen, sheep, asses and women, this lord will one day be known as the god of war, I can see no other use for him, thought cain, and he was right. It is quite possible that the pact that some say exists between god and men contains only two articles, namely, you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours. One thing is sure, things have changed a lot. Once, the lord would appear to us in person, in the flesh so to speak, and even took a certain satisfaction in showing himself to the world, just ask adam and eve, who benefitted from his presence, or ask cain, although that was in less fortunate circumstances, we refer, of course, to the murder of abel, when there was little cause for contentment. Now, though, the lord conceals himself in columns of smoke, as if he preferred not to be seen. As mere observers of events, we are of the view that he feels ashamed of some of his less palatable actions, for example, those innocent children in sodom devoured by his divine fire.
Chapter 9
The place is the same, but the present has changed. Cain sees before him the city of jericho, which, for reasons of military security, he has not been allowed to enter. The attack by joshua's army is expected at any moment, and, however vehemently cain assured them that he was not an israelite, they continued to deny him access, especially since he could give no satisfactory answer to the question, What are you then, if you're not an israelite. When cain was born, there was no such thing as the israelites, and when, much later, they came into existence, with the sometimes disastrous consequences with which we are familiar, the censuses carried out omitted the family of adam. Cain was not an israelite, but neither was he a hittite, an amorite, a perizzite, a hivite or a jebusite. He was saved from this lack of definition by a farrier from joshua's army, who fell in love with cain's donkey, That's a fine animal you've got there, He's been with me since I left the land of nod and he's never let me down yet, Well, in that case, if you agree, I'll take you on as my assistant on a bed and board basis, on condition that you let me ride your donkey now and then. Cain thought this a reasonable proposal, but asked, And afterwards, After what, asked the other man, After jericho falls, Oh, jericho is just the beginning, afterwards there'll be a long war of conquest during which farriers will be as necessary as soldiers, In that case, I accept, said cain. He had heard tell, from those who had known her, of a famous prostitute who lived in jericho, a certain rahab, whom he longed to meet so as to refresh his blood, for he hadn't had a woman under him since the last night he spent with lilith. And despite not being allowed into jericho, he still did not give up all hope of sleeping
