Forgiving the Angel by Jay Cantor Read Free Book Online Page B

for reassurance—God, perhaps, would (in time!) keep faith with him again.
    Fire made. Child bound to the rocks. Then, at the last instant, as his knife was poised over his son’s throat, God had relented. Had it all been a test whose right answer was that if Abraham so trusted God that he would kill his own son, then he didn’t have to kill his son, but could—as God now commanded—kill the goat that the Lord had made conveniently available, tangled in a thicket nearby?
    Of course, since Adam was cast from the Garden, there was never a time when the animals could talk; but in Abraham’s time, one closer to Eden, they were far more expressive, and could make their feelings, and even their thoughts, known to men. The goat used its eyes—so haunting and lovely, with an air of sad bewilderment, however goatish his actions had been in the past—to plead for its life. He offered promises—but what can a goat promise compared to God? and he flattered Abraham, who was, he said, a good man, one who never ate meat—cleverly adding (to show his sincerity) that that goodness persisted even if Abraham followed that diet only because he thought it was healthier. Surely, here, as always, Abraham had done (the goat conveyed) what God wanted all men to do. Hadn’t God once, in the time before Noah, already drowned the world because men weren’t satisfied with the bountiful fruits and cereals He’d offered them for their food, and had fallen ravenously on the animals? Which
must
mean that God wanted us to spare His creatures, and by simple logic, must want Abraham to spare him.
    All this the animal spoke with its eyes, and with the panting panic of his heaving chest, the quiver in his legs, the slight turns of his body (though he could hardly move,Abraham’s knife was pressed so close to the veins in his neck).
    Abraham remembered that he, too, had heard of that first flood, God discarding the grand labor of the six days because men had eaten meat. But had God destroyed the world because men killed animals (in which case, he should spare the expressive goat), or because they had disobeyed Him (in which case he should do as God had ordered him and kill the wily goat)? Abraham couldn’t decide. This, too, might be another test, just like the command to kill his son. But what was the right answer? The goat’s pleading was driving him mad, and trembling with fury with the goat (or was it with God?) for putting him in this quandary, his arm moved ever so slightly, almost haphazardly, and sliced the thick but delicate vein in the goat’s neck, a shallow cut that nonetheless could not ever be taken back, one that was so small that it caused the animal’s blood to drain slowly, though inevitably and irretrievably, onto the desert floor. But worse than the blood, if such a thing’s possible, was the last look of disappointment, of bewilderment made infinite, that the kid gave him as its life trickled away.
    Abraham was certain he’d made a mistake. He stood still, head bowed, and waited for the divine knife that would cut his throat. But God did not punish him. If there had been a test, perhaps he’d passed.
    Abraham, as the goat had said, had never eaten meat, but not out of goodness, or even, truly, for health. He simply didn’t care for its taste, which smelt rotten in his nose. Now it all the more reminded him of death and, worse, his own murderous impulses; the odor made him sick to hisstomach. But he knew he must not betray that he’d ever had doubts, that he’d nearly not fulfilled God’s command to him. So he ate meat at every meal to show God that the blood of animals meant nothing to him. Chewed it thoroughly to show that this horrifying thing didn’t horrify him (or perhaps the repeated motion leached some of the horror out of the flesh for him, made it possible to swallow and digest this carrion thing). Alas, each bite, each working of jaw and mandible, reminded him of the goat’s eyes, the goat’s blood, his own