East of Eden

“There’s a capacity for appetite,” Samuel said, “that a whole heaven and earth of cake can’t satisfy.”

Adam Trask nosed some of his happiness into futures but there was present contentment in him too. He felt his heart smack up against his throat when he saw Cathy sitting in the sun, quiet, her baby growing, and a transparency to her skin that made him think of the angels on Sunday School cards. Then a breeze would move her bright hair, or she would raise her eyes, and Adam would swell out in his stomach with a pressure of ecstasy that was close kin to grief.

If Adam rested like a sleek fed cat on his land, Cathy was catlike too. She had the inhuman attribute of abandoning what she could not get and of waiting for what she could get. These two gifts gave her great advantages. Her pregnancy had been an accident. When her attempt to abort herself failed and the doctor threatened her, she gave up that method. This does not mean that she reconciled herself to pregnancy. She sat it out as she would have weathered an illness. Her marriage to Adam had been the same. She was trapped and she took the best possible way out. She had not wanted to go to California either, but other plans were denied her for the time being. As a very young child she had learned to win by using the momentum of her opponent. It was easy to guide a man’s strength where it was impossible to resist him. Very few people in the world could have known that Cathy did not want to be where she was and in the condition she was. She relaxed and waited for the change she knew must come some time. Cathy had the one quality required of a great and successful criminal: she trusted no one, confided in no one. Her self was an island. It is probable that she did not even look at Adam’s new land or building house, or turn his towering plans to reality in her mind, because she did not intend to live here after her sickness was over, after her trap opened. But to his questions she gave proper answers; to do otherwise would be waste motion, and dissipated energy, and foreign to a good cat.

“See, my darling, how the house lies—windows looking down the valley?”

“It’s beautiful.”

“You know, it may sound foolish, but I find myself trying to think the way old Sanchez did a hundred years ago. How was the valley then? He must have planned so carefully. You know, he had pipes? He did—made out of redwood with a hole bored or burned through to carry the water down from the spring. We dug up some pieces of it.”

“That’s remarkable,” she said. “He must have been clever.”

“I’d like to know more about him. From the way the house sets, the trees he left, the shape and proportion of the house, he must have been a kind of an artist.”

“He was a Spaniard, wasn’t he? They’re artistic people, I’ve heard. I remember in school about a painter—no, he was a Greek.”

“I wonder where I could find out about old Sanchez.”

“Well, somebody must know.”

“All of his work and planning, and Bordoni kept cows in the house. You know what I wonder about most?”

“What, Adam?”

“I wonder if he had a Cathy and who she was.”

She smiled and looked down and away from him. “The things you say.”

“He must have had! He must have had. I never had energy or direction or—well, even a very great desire to live before I had you.”

“Adam, you embarrass me. Adam, be careful. Don’t joggle me, it hurts.”

“I’m sorry. I’m so clumsy.”

“No, you’re not. You just don’t think. Should I be knitting or sewing, do you suppose? I’m so comfortable just sitting.”

“We’ll buy everything we need. You just sit and be comfortable. I guess in a way you’re working harder than anyone here. But the pay—the pay is wonderful.”

“Adam, the scar on my forehead isn’t going to go away, I’m afraid.”

“The doctor said it would fade in time.”

“Well, sometimes it seems to be getting fainter, and then it comes back. Don’t you think it’s darker today?”

“No, I don’t.”

But it was. It looked like a huge thumbprint, even to whorls of wrinkled skin. He put his finger near, and she drew her head away.

“Don’t,” she said. “It’s tender to the touch. It turns red if you touch it.”

“It will go away. Just takes a little time, that’s all.”

She smiled as he turned, but when he walked away her eyes were flat and directionless. She shifted her body restlessly. The baby was kicking. She relaxed and all her muscles loosened. She waited.

Lee came near where her chair was set under the biggest oak tree. “Missy likee tea?”

“No—yes, I would too.”

Her eyes inspected him and her inspection could not penetrate the dark brown of his eyes. He made her uneasy. Cathy had always been able to shovel into the mind of any man and dig up his impulses and his desires. But Lee’s brain gave and repelled like rubber. His face was lean and pleasant, his forehead broad, firm, and sensitive, and his lips curled in a perpetual smile. His long black glossy braided queue, tied at the bottom with a narrow piece of black silk, hung over his shoulder and moved rhythmically against his chest. When he did violent work he curled his queue on top of his head. He wore narrow cotton trousers, black heelless slippers, and a frogged Chinese smock. Whenever he could he hid his hands in his sleeves as though he were afraid for them, as most Chinese did in that day.

“I bling litta table,” he said, bowed slightly, and shuffled away.

Cathy looked after him, and her eyebrows drew down in a scowl. She was not afraid of Lee, yet she was not comfortable with him either. But he was a good and respectful servant—the best. And what harm could he do her?

2

The summer progressed and the Salinas River retired underground or stood in green pools under high banks. The cattle lay drowsing all day long under the willows and only moved out at night to feed. An umber tone came to the grass. And the afternoon winds blowing inevitably down the valley started a dust that was like fog and raised it into the sky almost as high as the mountaintops. The wild oat roots stood up like nigger-heads where the winds blew the earth away. Along a polished earth, pieces of straw and twigs scampered until they were stopped by some rooted thing; and little stones rolled crookedly before the wind.

It became more apparent than ever why old Sanchez had built his house in the little draw, for the wind and the dust did not penetrate, and the spring, while it diminished, still gushed a head of cold clear water. But Adam, looking out over his dry dust-obscured land, felt the panic the Eastern man always does at first in California. In a Connecticut summer two weeks without rain is a dry spell and four a drought. If the countryside is not green it is dying. But in California it does not ordinarily rain at all between the end of May and the first of November. The Eastern man, though he has been told, feels the earth is sick in the rainless months.