Cain by José Saramago Read Free Book Online Page B

their blades for a duel to the death. Lilith was no longer there, she
had gone into her bedroom and closed the door, cain looked
around him and his only refuge was the bench reserved for
him. He sat down, suddenly frightened by what the next few
days might hold. He felt like a prisoner, and she herself
had said, You will be here day and night, although she had
not added, You will, when I so decide, be my bull to cover
me, a term that would seem not just vulgar but
inappropriate, since covering is something that quadrupeds do, not human
beings, but in a way it's very apt, because we human
beings were quadrupeds once, and we know that what we
now call arms and legs were, for a long time, only legs,
until someone thought to say to those men-to-be, It's time
you stood up. Cain is wondering if he shouldn't run
away before it's too late, but what's the point, he knows
perfectly well that he won't run away, inside that room is a woman
who appears to enjoy giving him the brush-off, but who
will one day say to him, Enter, and he will and in doing
so, he will pass from one prison to another. I wasn't born
for this, thinks cain. He wasn't born to kill his own
brother, and yet he had left abel's corpse in the middle of the field
with his eyes and mouth covered in flies, a fate for
which abel had not been born either. Cain considers life and
can find no explanation for it, there is that woman, who
although clearly sick with desire, is enjoying postponing the moment
of surrender, which is not at all the right word,
because lilith, when she does finally open her legs to allow herself to
be penetrated, will not be surrendering, but trying to
devour the man to whom she said, Enter.

Chapter 5
     
    Cain
has now done as ordered and slept in lilith's bed and, incredible
though it may seem, it was precisely his lack of sexual experience that saved him
from drowning in the vortex of lust that gripped the
woman and, in an instant, made her explode into screams
like one possessed. She ground her teeth, bit the pillow
and then his shoulder, even drinking his blood. Cain laboured
determinedly away on top of her, bewildered by her
wild, brazen movements and cries, but, at the same time,
another cain who was not him was observing the scene
curiously, almost coldly, the flailing limbs, the bodily contortions,
the postures that copulation itself demanded or imposed until
the acme of orgasm was reached. The two lovers did not
sleep much on that first night. Nor on the second or third
or all the other nights that followed. Lilith was as
insatiable as cain was inexhaustible, the interval between two
erections and their respective ejaculations insignificant,
almost non-existent, you might even say that they had both
reached the future paradise of allah. On one such night, noah,
the lord of the city and lilith's husband, entered the
antechamber, having been informed by a trusted slave that
something extraordinary was going on. This was not the first time he had done
so. Noah
was the most indulgent of husbands, and during all their
so-called life in common, he had been incapable of getting his
wife with child, and it was his awareness of this continual failure, and perhaps
also the hope that lilith might end up becoming pregnant by one
of her occasional lovers and finally give him a son he
could call his heir, that had led him to adopt, almost without
realising it, the attitude of conjugal permissiveness,
which, over time, had become a comfortable modus vivendi,
disturbed only by the very rare occasions on which lilith,
moved by what we imagine must be that much-vaunted thing
female compassion, decided
to go to her husband's bedroom for a brief, unsatisfactory encounter that
compromised neither of them, for he then felt under no obligation
to demand more than he was given and she could not be
accused of denying him his rights. Lilith, however, never
allowed noah into her own bedroom. At that precise moment,
and even though the door
was closed, the vehemence of