East of Eden by John Steinbeck
Adam sighed deeply. "It's not a comforting story, is it?"
Lee poured a tumbler full of dark liquor from his round stone bottle and sipped it and opened his mouth to get the double taste on the back of his tongue. "No story has power, nor will it last, unless we feel in ourselves that it is true and true of us. What a great burden of guilt men have!"
Samuel said to Adam, "And you have tried to take it all."
Lee said, "So do I, so does everyone. We gather our arms full of guilt as though it were precious stuff. It must be that we want it that way."
Aron broke in, "It makes me feel better, not worse."
"How do you mean?" Samuel asked.
"Well, every little boy thinks he invented sin. Virtue we think we learn, because we are told about it. But sin is our own designing."
"Yes, I see. But how does this story make it better?"
"Because," Adam said excitedly, "we are descended from this. This is our father. Some of our guilt is absorbed in our ancestry. What chance did we have? We are the children of our father. It means we aren't the first. It's an excuse, and there aren't enough excuses in the world."
"Not convincing ones anyway," said Lee. "Else we would long ago have wiped out guilt, and the world would not be filled with sad, punished people."
Samuel said, "But do you think of another frame to this picture? Excuse or not, we are snapped back to our ancestry. We have guilt."
Adam said, "I remember being a little outraged at God. Both Cain and Abel gave what they had, and God accepted Abel and rejected Cain. I never thought that was a just thing. I never understood it. Do you?"
"Maybe we think out of a different background," said Lee. "I remember that this story was written by and for a shepherd people. They were not farmers. Wouldn't the god of shepherds find a fat lamb more valuable than a sheaf of barley? A sacrifice must be the best and most valuable."
"Yes, I can see that," said Samuel. "And Lee, let me caution you about bringing your Oriental reasoning to Liza's attention."
Adam was excited. "Yes, but why did God condemn Cain? That's an injustice."
Samuel said, "There's an advantage to listening to the words. God did not condemn Cain at all. Even God can have a preference, can't he? Let's suppose God liked lamb better than vegetables. I think I do myself. Cain brought him a bunch of carrots maybe. And God said, 'I don't like this. Try again. Bring me something I like and I'll set you up alongside your brother.' But Cain got mad. His feelings were hurt. And when a man's feelings are hurt he wants to strike at something, and Abel was in the way of his anger."
Lee said, "St. Paul says to the Hebrews that Abel had faith."
"There's no reference to it in Genesis," Samuel said. "No faith or lack of faith. Only a hint of Cain's temper."
Lee asked, "How does Mrs. Hamilton feel about the paradoxes of the Bible?"
"Why, she does not feel anything because she does not admit they are there."
"But--"
"Hush, man. Ask her. And you'll come out of it older but not less confused."
Adam said, "You two have studied this. I only got it through my skin and not much of it stuck. Then Cain was driven out for murder?"
"That's right--for murder."
"And God branded him?"
"Did you listen? Cain bore the mark not to destroy him but to save him. And there's a curse called down on any man who shall kill him. It was a preserving mark."
Adam said, "I can't get over a feeling that Cain got the dirty end of the stick."
"Maybe he did," said Samuel. "But Cain lived and had children, and Abel lives only in the story. We are Cain's children. And isn't it strange that three grown men, here in a century so many thousands of years away, discuss this crime as though it happened in King City yesterday and hadn't come up for trial?"
One of the twins awakened and yawned and looked at Lee and went to sleep again.
Lee said, "Remember, Mr. Hamilton, I told you I was trying to translate some old Chinese poetry into English? No, don't worry. I won't read it. Doing it, I found some of the old things as fresh and clear as this morning. And I wondered why. And, of course, people are interested only in themselves. If a story is not about the hearer he will not listen. And I here make a rule--a great and lasting story is about everyone or it will not last. The strange and foreign is not interesting--only the deeply personal and familiar."
Samuel said, "Apply that to the Cain-Abel story."
And Adam said, "I didn't kill my brother--" Suddenly he stopped and his mind went reeling back in time.
"I think I can," Lee answered Samuel. "I think this is the best-known story in the world because it is everybody's story. I think it is the symbol story of the human soul. I'm feeling my way now--don't jump on me if I'm not clear. The greatest terror a child can have is that he is not loved, and rejection is the hell he fears. I think everyone in the world to a large or small extent has felt rejection. And with rejection comes anger, and with anger some kind of crime in revenge for the rejection, and with the crime guilt--and there is the story of mankind. I think that if rejection could be amputated, the human would not be what he is. Maybe there would be fewer crazy people. I am sure in myself there would not be many jails. It is all there--the start, the beginning. One child, refused the love he craves, kicks the cat and hides his secret guilt; and another steals so that money will make him loved; and a third conquers the world--and always the guilt and revenge and more guilt. The human is the only guilty animal. Now wait! Therefore I think this old and terrible story is important because it is a chart of the soul--the secret, rejected, guilty soul. Mr. Trask, you said you did not kill your brother and then you remembered something. I don't want to know what it was, but was it very far apart from Cain and Abel? And what do you think of my Oriental patter, Mr. Hamilton? You know I am no more Oriental than you are."
Samuel had leaned his elbows on the table and his hands covered his eyes and his forehead. "I want to think," he said. "Damn you, I want to think. I'll want to take this off alone where I can pick it apart and see. Maybe you've tumbled a world for me. And I don't know what I can build in my world's place."
Lee said softly, "Couldn't a world be built around accepted truth? Couldn't some pains and insanities be rooted out if the causes were known?"
"I don't know, damn you. You've disturbed my pretty universe. You've taken a contentious game and made an answer of it. Let me alone--let me think! Your damned bitch is having pups in my brain already. Oh, I wonder what my Tom will think of this! He'll cradle it in the palm of his mind. He'll turn it slow in his brain like a roast of pork before the fire. Adam, come out now. You've been long enough in whatever memory it was."
Adam started. He sighed deeply. "Isn't it too simple?" he asked. "I'm always afraid of simple things."
"It isn't simple at all," said Lee. "It's desperately complicated. But at the end there's light."
"There's not going to be light long," Samuel said. "We've sat and let the evening come. I drove over to help name the twins and they're not named. We've swung ourselves on a pole. Lee, you better keep your complications out of the machinery of the set-up churches or there might be a Chinese with nails in his hands and feet. They like complications but they like their own. I'll have to be driving home."
Adam said desperately, "Name me some names."
"From the Bible?"
"From anyplace."
"Well, let's see. Of all the people who started out of Egypt only two came to the Promised Land. Would you like them for a symbol?"
"Who?"
"Caleb and Joshua."
"Joshua was a soldier--a general. I don't like soldiering."
"Well, Caleb was a captain."
"But not a general. I kind of like Caleb--Caleb Trask."
One of the twins woke up and without interval began to wail.
"You called his name," said Samuel. "You don't like Joshua, and Caleb's named. He's the smart one--the dark one. See, the other one is awake too. Well, Aaron I've
The second boy almost joyfully began to cry.
"That's good enough," said Adam.
Suddenly Samuel laughed. "In two minutes," he said, "and after a waterfall of words. Caleb and Aaron--now you are people and you have joined the fraternity and you have the right to be damned."
Lee took the boys up under his arms. "Have you got them straight?" he asked.
"Of course," said Adam. "That one is Caleb and you are Aaron."
Lee lugged the yelling twins toward the house in the dusk.
"Yesterday I couldn't tell them apart," said Adam. "Aaron and Caleb."
"Thank the good Lord we had produce from our patient thought," Samuel said. "Liza would have preferred Joshua. She loves the crashing walls of Jericho. But she likes Aaron too, so I guess it's all right. I'll go and hitch up my rig."
Adam walked to the shed with him. "I'm glad you came," he said. "There's a weight off me."
Samuel slipped the bit in Doxology's reluctant mouth, set the brow band, and buckled the throatlatch. "Maybe you'll now be thinking of the garden in the flat land," he said. "I can see it there the way you planned it."
Adam was long in answering. At last he said, "I think that kind of energy is gone out of me. I can't feel the pull of it. I have money enough to live. I never wanted it for myself. I have no one to show a garden to."
Samuel wheeled on him and his eyes were filled with tears. "Don't think it will ever die," he cried. "Don't expect it. Are you better than other men? I tell you it won't ever die until you do." He stood panting for a moment and then he climbed into the rig and whipped Doxology and he drove away, his shoulders hunched, without saying good-by.
PART THREE
Chapter 23
1
The Hamiltons were strange, high-strung people, and some of them were tuned too high and they snapped. This happens often in the world.
Of all his daughters Una was Samuel's greatest joy. Even as a little girl she hungered for learning as a child does for cookies in the late afternoon. Una and her father had a conspiracy about learning--secret books were borrowed and read and their secrets communicated privately.
Of all the children Una had the least humor. She met and married an intense dark man--a man whose fingers were stained with chemicals, mostly silver nitrate. He was one of those men who live in poverty so that their lines of questioning may continue. His question was about photography. He believed that the exterior world could be transferred to paper--not in the ghost shadings of black and white but in the colors the human eye perceives.
His name was Anderson and he had little gift for communication. Like most technicians, he had a terror and a contempt for speculation. The inductive leap was not for him. He dug a step and pulled himself up one single step, the way a man climbs the last shoulder of a mountain. He had great contempt, born of fear, for the Hamiltons, for they all half believed they had wings--and they got some bad falls that way.
Anderson never fell, never slipped back, never flew. His steps moved slowly, slowly upward, and in the end, it is said, he found what he wanted--color film. He married Una, perhaps, because she had little humor, and this reassured him. And because her family frightened and embarrassed him, he took her away to the north, and it was black and lost where he went--somewhere on the borders of Oregon. He must have lived a very primitive life with his bottles and papers.
Una wrote bleak letters without joy but also without self-pity. She was well and she hoped her family was well. Her husband was near to his discovery.
And then she died and her body was shipped home.
I never knew Una. She was dead before I remember, but George Hamilton told me about it many years later and his eyes filled with tears and his voice croaked in the telling.
"Una was not a beautiful girl like Mollie," he said. "But she had the loveliest hands and feet. Her ankles were as slender as grass and she moved like grass. Her fingers were long and the nails narrow and shaped like almonds. And Una had lovely skin too, translucent, even glowing.
"She didn't laugh and play like the rest of us. There was something set apart about her. She seemed always to be listening. When she was reading, her face would be like the face of one listening to music. And when we asked her any question, why, she gave the answer, if she knew it--not pointed up and full of color and 'maybes' and 'it-might-bes' the way the rest of us would. We were always full of bull. There was some pure simple thing in Una," George said.
"And then they brought her home. Her nails were broken to the quick and her fingers cracked and all worn out. And her poor, dear feet--" George could not go on for a while, and then he said with the fierceness of a man trying to control himself, "Her feet were broken and gravel-cut and briar-cut. Her dear feet had not worn shoes for a long time. And her skin was rough as rawhide.
"We think it was an accident," he said. "So many chemicals around. We think it was."
But Samuel thought and mourned in the thought that the accident was pain and despair.
Una's death struck Samuel like a silent earthquake. He said no brave and reassuring words, he simply sat alone and rocked himself. He felt that it was his neglect had done it.
And now his tissue, which had fought joyously against time, gave up a little. His young skin turned old, his clear eyes dulled, and a little stoop came to his great shoulders. Liza with her acceptance could take care of tragedy; she had no real hope this side of Heaven. But Samuel had put up a laughing wall against natural laws, and Una's death breached his battlements. He became an old man.
His other children were doing well. George was in the insurance business. Will was getting rich. Joe had gone east and was helping to invent a new profession called advertising. Joe's very faults were virtues in this field. He found that he could communicate his material daydreaming--and, properly applied, that is all advertising is. Joe was a big man in a new field.
The girls were married, all except Dessie, and she had a successful dressmaking business in Salinas. Only Tom had never got started.
Samuel told Adam Trask that Tom was arguing with greatness. And the father watched his son and could feel the drive and the fear, the advance and the retreat, because he could feel it in himself.
Tom did not have his father's lyric softness or his gay good looks. But you could feel Tom when you came near to him--you could feel strength and warmth and an iron integrity. And under all of this was a shrinking--a shy shrinking. He could be as gay as his father, and suddenly in the middle it would be cut the way you would cut a violin string, and you could watch Tom go whirling into darkness.
He was a dark-faced man; his skin, perhaps from sun, was a black red, as though some Norse or perhaps Vandal blood was perpetuated in him. His hair and beard and mustache were dark red too, and his eyes gleamed startlingly blue against his coloring. He was powerful, heavy of shoulders and arm, but his hips were slim. He could lift and run and hike and ride with anyone, but he had no sense of competition whatever. Will and George were gamblers and often tried to entice their brother into the joys and sorrows of venture.
Tom said, "I've tried and it just seems tiresome. I've thought why this must be. I get no great triumph when I win and no tragedy when I lose. Without these it is meaningless. It is not a way to make money, that we know, and unless it can simulate birth and death, joy and sorrow, it seems, at least to me--it feels--it doesn't feel at all. I would do it if I felt anything--good or bad."
Will did not understand this. His whole life was competitive and he lived by one kind of gambling or another. He loved Tom and he tried to give him the things he himself found pleasant. He took him into business and tried to inoculate him with the joys of buying and selling, of outwitting other men, of judging them for a bluff, of living by maneuver.
Always Tom came back to the ranch, puzzled, not critical, but feeling that somewhere he had lost track. He felt that he should take joy in the man-pleasures of contest, but he could not pretend to hi
Samuel had said that Tom always took too much on his plate, whether it was beans or women. And Samuel was wise, but I think he knew only one side of Tom. Maybe Tom opened up a little more for children. What I set down about him will be the result of memory plus what I know to be true plus conjecture built on the combination. Who knows whether it will be correct?
We lived in Salinas and we knew when Tom had arrived--I think he always arrived at night--because under our pillows, Mary's and mine, there would be packages of gum. And gum was valuable in those days just as a nickel was valuable. There were months when he did not come, but every morning as soon as we awakened we put our hands under our pillows to see. And I still do it, and it has been many years since there has been gum there.
My sister Mary did not want to be a girl. It was a misfortune she could not get used to. She was an athlete, a marble player, a pitcher of one-o'-cat, and the trappings of a girl inhibited her. Of course this was long before the compensations for being a girl were apparent to her.
Just as we knew that somewhere on our bodies, probably under the arm, there was a button which if pressed just right would permit us to fly, so Mary had worked out a magic for herself to change her over into the tough little boy she wanted to be. If she went to sleep in a magical position, knees crooked just right, head at a magical angle, fingers all crossed one over the other, in the morning she would be a boy. Every night she tried to find exactly the right combination, but she never could. I used to help her cross her fingers like shiplap.
She was despairing of ever getting it right when one morning there was gum under the pillow. We each peeled a stick and solemnly chewed it; it was Beeman's peppermint, and nothing so delicious has been made since.
Mary was pulling on her long black ribbed stockings when she said with great relief, "Of course."
"Of course what?" I asked.
"Uncle Tom," she said and chewed her gum with great snapping sounds.
"Uncle Tom what?" I demanded.
"He'll know how to get to be a boy."
There it was--just as simple as that. I wondered why I hadn't thought of it myself.
Mother was in the kitchen overseeing a new little Danish girl who worked for us. We had a series of girls. New-come Danish farm families put their daughters out to service with American families, and they learned not only English but American cooking and table setting and manners and all the little niceties of high life in Salinas. At the end of a couple of years of this, at twelve dollars a month, the girls were highly desirable wives for American boys. Not only did they have American manners but they could still work like horses in the fields. Some of the most elegant families in Salinas today are descended from these girls.