East of Eden

Back in the big sala the twins faced their guest. “Do you like it?” Aron asked softly because of the echo.

“Yee-es,” she admitted hesitantly.

“Sometimes we play here,” Cal said boldly. “You can come here and play with us if you like.”

“I live in Salinas,” Abra said in such a tone that they knew they were dealing with a superior being who hadn’t time for bumpkin pleasures.

Abra saw that she had crushed their highest treasure, and while she knew the weaknesses of men she still liked them, and, besides, she was a lady. “Sometimes, when we are driving by, I’ll come and play with you—a little,” she said kindly, and both boys felt grateful to her.

“I’ll give you my rabbit,” said Cal suddenly. “I was going to give it to my father, but you can have it.”

“What rabbit?”

“The one we shot today—right through the heart with an arrow. He hardly even kicked.”

Aron looked at him in outrage. “It was my—”

Cal interrupted, “We will let you have it to take home. It’s a pretty big one.”

Abra said, “What would I want with a dirty old rabbit all covered with blood?”

Aron said, “I’ll wash him off and put him in a box and tie him with string, and if you don’t want to eat him, you can have a funeral when you get time—in Salinas.”

“I go to real funerals,” said Abra. “Went to one yesterday. There was flowers high as this roof.”

“Don’t you want our rabbit?” Aron asked.

Abra looked at his sunny hair, tight-curled now, and at his eyes that seemed near to tears, and she felt the longing and the itching burn in her chest that is the beginning of love. Also, she wanted to touch Aron, and she did. She put her hand on his arm and felt him shiver under her fingers. “If you put it in a box,” she said.

Now that she had got herself in charge, Abra looked around and inspected her conquests. She was well above vanity now that no male principle threatened her. She felt kindly toward these boys. She noticed their thin washed-out clothes patched here and there by Lee. She drew on her fairy tales. “You poor children,” she said, “does your father beat you?”

They shook their heads. They were interested but bewildered.

“Are you very poor?”

“How do you mean?” Cal asked. “Do you sit in the ashes and have to fetch water and faggots?”

“What’s faggots?” Aron asked. She avoided that by continuing. “Poor darlings,” she began, and she seemed to herself to have a little wand in her hand tipped by a twinkling star. “Does your wicked stepmother hate you and want to kill you?”

“We don’t have a stepmother,” said Cal. “We don’t have any kind,” said Aron. “Our mother’s dead.”

His words destroyed the story she was writing but almost immediately supplied her with another. The wand was gone but she wore a big hat with an ostrich plume and she carried an enormous basket from which a turkey’s feet protruded.

“Little motherless orphans,” she said sweetly. “I’ll be your mother. I’ll hold you and rock you and tell you stories.”

“We’re too big,” said Cal. “We’d overset you.”

Abra looked away from his brutality. Aron, she saw, was caught up in her story. His eyes were smiling and he seemed almost to be rocking in her arms, and she felt again the tug of love for him. She said pleasantly, “Tell me, did your mother have a nice funeral?”

“We don’t remember,” said Aron. “We were too little.”

“Well, where is she buried? You could put flowers on her grave. We always do that for Grandma and Uncle Albert.”

“We don’t know,” said Aron.

Cal’s eyes had a new interest, a gleaming interest that was close to triumph. He said naively, “I’ll ask our father where it is so we can take flowers.”

“I’ll go with you,” said Abra. “I can make a wreath. I’ll show you how.” She noticed that Aron had not spoken. “Don’t you want to make a wreath?”

“Yes,” he said.

She had to touch him again. She patted his shoulder and then touched his cheek. “Your mama will like that,” she said. “Even in Heaven they look down and notice. My father says they do. He knows a poem about it.”

Aron said, “I’ll go wrap up the rabbit. I’ve got the box my pants came in.” He ran out of the old house. Cal watched him go. He was smiling.

“What are you laughing at?” Abra asked.

“Oh, nothing,” he said. Cal’s eyes stayed on her.

She tried to stare him down. She was an expert at staring down, but Cal did not look away. At the very first he had felt a shyness, but that was gone now, and the sense of triumph at destroying Abra’s control made him laugh. He knew she preferred his brother, but that was nothing new to him. Nearly everyone preferred Aron with his golden hair and the openness that allowed his affection to plunge like a puppy. Cal’s emotions hid deep in him and peered out, ready to retreat or attack. He was starting to punish Abra for liking his brother, and this was nothing new either. He had done it since he first discovered he could. And secret punishment had grown to be almost a creative thing with him.

Maybe the difference between the two boys can best be described in this way. If Aron should come upon an anthill in a little clearing in the brush, he would lie on his stomach and watch the complications of ant life—he would see some of them bringing food in the ant roads and others carrying the white eggs. He would see how two members of the hill on meeting put their antennas together and talked. For hours he would lie absorbed in the economy of the ground.

If, on the other hand, Cal came upon the same anthill, he would kick it to pieces and watch while the frantic ants took care of their disaster. Aron was content to be a part of his world, but Cal must change it.

Cal did not question the fact that people liked his brother better, but he had developed a means for making it all right with himself. He planned and waited until one time that admiring person exposed himself, and then something happened and the victim never knew how or why. Out of revenge Cal extracted a fluid of power, and out of power, joy. It was the strongest, purest emotion he knew. Far from disliking Aron, he loved him because he was usually the cause for Cal’s feelings of triumph. He had forgotten—if he had ever known—that he punished because he wished he could be loved as Aron was loved. It had gone so far that he preferred what he had to what Aron had.