question, but his wife answered angrily, Evil is satan's business, it would never have occurred to me that god would appear to us now in the guise of satan's rival, God cannot have put me in this state, only satan, Yes, but with the lord's agreement, she said, adding, According to the ancients, the devil's wiles would never prevail over the will of god, but I'm not sure now that things are that simple, it seems likely that satan is just another instrument of the lord, the one who does the dirty work to which god prefers not to put his name. Then job, at the height of his suffering, and perhaps, although without admitting as much, encouraged by his wife, broke the dyke of the fear of god sealing his lips and cried, Let the day perish wherein I was born, and the night in which it was said, There is a man-child conceived, let that day be darkness, let not god regard it from above, neither let the light shine upon it, let darkness and the shadow of death stain it, let a cloud dwell upon it, let the blackness of the day terrify it, let it not be joined to the other days of the year, let it not be counted among the months, let that night be solitary, let no joyful voice come therein, let the stars of the twilight be dark, let it look for light, but have none, neither let it see the dawning of the day, because it shut not up the doors of my mother's womb nor hid sorrow from me, thus job bemoaned his fate, pages and pages of imprecations and lamentations, while three friends of his, eliphaz the temanite, bildad the shuhite and zophar the naamathite lectured him on the need for resignation and on the duty of all believers to bow their head to the will of god whatever that will might be. Cain had managed to find employment, the fairly lowly task of looking after the donkeys of a small landowner, to whom he had to repeat over and over, to him and his relatives, the story of the attack by the sabeans and their theft of the she-asses. He reckoned that the angels must still be around, collecting information about job's misfortunes in order to carry the news back to the lord, who would be impatient to hear them, but, to his surprise, they were the ones who sought him out, to congratulate him on having escaped the cruelty of the sabean nomads, A miracle, they said. Cain, of course, thanked them, but that prerogative did not make him forget his grievances with god, which were growing steadily, The lord must be very happy, he said to the angels, he won his bet against satan, and despite all job's sufferings, he has still not denied god, We knew he wouldn't, And god knew too, I imagine, Oh yes, the lord most of all, Which means that he made the wager because he knew he would win, In a way, yes, So nothing has changed, then, the lord knows no more about job than he did before, True, In that case, can you explain to me why job should have been transformed into a leper, covered in suppurating wounds, having lost all his children and all his wealth, The lord will find some way of compensating him, Will he resuscitate his ten children, raise the walls of his house and bring back the animals that were killed, asked cain, That we don't know, And what will the lord do to satan, who would seem to have abused the authority given to him, Probably nothing, Nothing, asked cain, scandalised, slaves may not count in the statistics, but a lot of other people died too, and you're telling me that the lord will probably do nothing, It's not our fault, that's how it's always been in heaven, The fact that satan should be present at a gathering of celestial beings is, in itself, incomprehensible to any mere mortal. The conversation ended there, the angels left, and cain began to think that he really should find a more dignified path in life, I'm not going to stay here for ever, looking after donkeys, he thought. This praiseworthy notion was deserving of consideration, but, unfortunately, his options were nil, apart from going back to the land of nod and taking his place at the palace and in lilith's bed. He would grow fat there and give her two or three more children, but now another idea occurred to him, that of going to see how his parents were, to find out if they were still alive and if they were all right. He would wear a disguise so as to go unrecognised, but no one would deprive him of that joy. Joy, he asked himself, for cain there can never be any joy, cain is the man who killed his brother, cain is the man born to witness the unspeakable, cain is the man who hates god.
However, he needed a donkey to take him there. At first, he even considered forgetting about donkeys altogether and travelling on foot, but if it took a long time before he was sent to another present, he would have no option but to wander those deserts, guiding himself by the stars at night and, by day, waiting for them to come out. Besides, he would have no one to talk to. Contrary to what most people think, the donkey is a great conversationalist, one need think only of its many ways of braying and snorting and the sheer variety of its ear movements, however, not everyone who rides a donkey knows that language, which is why seemingly inexplicable situations arise, like when the creature stops in the middle of the road, motionless, and refuses to budge even if beaten. People say then that the donkey is as stubborn as a mule, when, in fact, it's simply a communication problem, as happens so often between human beings. The idea of travelling on foot did not, therefore, last long in cain's mind. He needed a donkey, even if he had to steal one, but we, who are gradually getting to know him better, also know that he will not do this. Cain may be a murderer, but he's an essentially honest man, and even the dissolute days he spent in concubinal bliss with lilith, however reprehensible in bourgeois eyes, were not enough to alter his innate moral sense, one has only to think of the way he bravely stands up to god, although, truth be told, the lord has not as yet noticed, unless one recalls the discussion they had over abel's still-warm body. In this toing and froing of thoughts, cain had the providential idea of buying one of the donkeys in his care, by taking only half his salary and leaving the other half in the hands of the landowner as payment on account. It would take a long time to pay off this debt, but cain was in no hurry, no one in the world was expecting him, not even lilith, however nervously and impatiently her body might toss and turn in bed. The owner of the donkeys, who was a decent man, drew up the accounts in his own fashion and to cain's benefit, not that cain noticed, mathematics never having been his strong point. It did not take many weeks before cain found himself, at last, in possession of his own donkey. He could leave when he wished. On the eve of his departure, he decided to go and see how his previous employer was doing, to see if the sores left by the boils had now healed, but was horrified to find him still sitting on the ground at the door of his house, scraping at the wounds on his leg with a potsherd, just as he had been on the day when the curse fell upon him, for god's surrender of him into satan's hands had proved to be the very worst of curses. Much coin, much care, people say, and job's story demonstrates that to the full. Discreet as any fugitive has to be, cain did not approach job to wish him some improvement in his health, after all, employer and employee had never met, that's the problem with social divisions, with each of us stuck in our own place, preferably the place we were born, how then will we ever make friendships with people from different worlds. Mounted on the donkey that now belongs to him by right, cain returned to his place of work to prepare what he needed for the journey. In comparison with the donkey he had left behind in lilith's stables at the palace, the magnificent beast that had prompted the envy of the farrier at jericho, this new mount is more of a retired rocinante than an animal to be led proudly out on parades. However, even the least demanding of independent minds will acknowledge that the beast has good strong legs, albeit somewhat skinny and inelegant. All in all, cain is not ill served, thought the donkey's former owner, who came to the door to say goodbye when cain, early the following morning, finally set off.
Chapter 12
He didn't have to travel very far to leave behind him the sad present of the land of uz and find himself, instead, surrounded by green mountains and lush valleys flowing with streams of such pure, crystalline water as eye had never seen nor mouth tasted. It could have been the garden of eden of now fond memory, for the passing years had taken with them many a painful recollection. And yet, there was something false and artificial about that dazzling landscape, as if it were a backdrop specially prepared for some purpose quite indecipherable to someone riding a very ordinary donkey and without a michelin guide to hand. Cain rode past a large outcrop of rock that concealed a broad section of the panorama and emerged on the other side at the entrance to another valley, less verdant perhaps, but no less attractive than those seen earlier, and there he saw a wooden construction, which, given the shape of its component parts and the colour of the materials it was made from, looked very like a boat, or, to be more exact, a huge ark whose presence there was all the more intriguing, because a boat, if it was a boat, is usually built near water, and an ark, certainly one of that size, isn't something one would leavein a valley, waiting for who knows what. Curious, cain decided to seek out a reliable source of information, in this case, the people building that enigmatic boat or no less enigmatic ark, either for their own use or under orders from someone else. He made his way with the donkey down to the shipyard, where he greeted those present and tried to strike up a conversation, Beautiful place this, he said, but the reply, as well as being a long time in coming, was given as succinctly as possible, a merely confirmatory, indifferent, impartial, non-committal yes. Cain went on, A grand construction like this is the very last thing any traveller, myself, for example, would expect to come across, but this intentionally flattering hint went unheeded. It was clear that the eight workers, four men and four women, had no desire to fraternise with the intruder and made no attempt to disguise the wall of hostility with which they
