East of Eden

“Is it herself trying to come out? When a man says he does not want to speak of something he usually means he can think of nothing else.”

“Maybe it’s that. She’s all mixed up with the dullness, and I can’t remember much except the last picture drawn in fire.”

“She did shoot you, didn’t she, Adam?”

His lips grew thin and his eyes black.

Samuel said, “There’s no need to answer.”

“There’s no reason not to,” Adam replied. “Yes, she did.”

“Did she mean to kill you?”

“I’ve thought of that more than anything else. No, I don’t think she meant to kill me. She didn’t allow me that dignity. There was no hatred in her, no passion at all. I learned about that in the army. If you want to kill a man, you shoot at head or heart or stomach. No, she hit me where she intended. I can see the gun barrel moving over. I guess I wouldn’t have minded so much if she had wanted my death. That would have been a kind of love. But I was an annoyance, not an enemy.”

“You’ve given it a lot of thought,” said Samuel.

“I’ve had lots of time for it. I want to ask you something. I can’t remember behind the last ugly thing. Was she very beautiful, Samuel?”

“To you she was because you built her. I don’t think you ever saw her—only your own creation.”

Adam mused aloud, “I wonder who she was—what she was. I was content not to know.”

“And now you want to?”

Adam dropped his eyes. “It’s not curiosity. But I would like to know what kind of blood is in my boys. When they grow up—won’t I be looking for something in them?”

“Yes, you will. And I will warn you now that not their blood but your suspicion might build evil in them. They will be what you expect of them.”

“But their blood—”

“I don’t very much believe in blood,” said Samuel. “I think when a man finds good or bad in his children he is seeing only what he planted in them after they cleared the womb.”

“You can’t make a race horse of a pig.”

“No,” said Samuel, “but you can make a very fast pig.”

“No one hereabouts would agree with you. I think even Mrs. Hamilton would not.”

“That’s exactly right. She most of all would disagree, and so I would not say it to her and let loose the thunder of her disagreement. She wins all arguments by the use of vehemence and the conviction that a difference of opinion is a personal affront. She’s a fine woman, but you have to learn to feel your way with her. Let’s speak of the boys.”

“Will you have another drink?”

“That I will, thank you. Names are a great mystery. I’ve never known whether the name is molded by the child or the child changed to fit the name. But you can be sure of this—whenever a human has a nickname it is a proof that the name given him was wrong. How do you favor the standard names—John or James or Charles?”

Adam was looking at the twins and suddenly with the mention of the name he saw his brother peering out of the eyes of one of the boys. He leaned forward.

“What is it?” Samuel asked.

“Why,” Adam cried, “these boys are not alike! They don’t look alike.”

“Of course they don’t. They’re not identical twins.”

“That one—that one looks like my brother. I just saw it. I wonder if the other looks like me.”

“Both of them do. A face has everything in it right back to the beginning.”

“It’s not so much now,” said Adam. “But for a moment I thought I was seeing a ghost.”

“Maybe that’s what ghosts are,” Samuel observed.

Lee brought dishes out and put them on the table.

“Do you have Chinese ghosts?” Samuel asked.

“Millions,” said Lee. “We have more ghosts than anything else. I guess nothing in China ever dies. It’s very crowded. Anyway, that’s the feeling I got when I was there.”

Samuel said, “Sit down, Lee. We’re trying to think of names.”

“I’ve got chicken frying. It will be ready pretty soon.”

Adam looked up from the twins and his eyes were warmed and softened. “Will you have a drink, Lee?”

“I’m nipping at the og-ka-py in the kitchen,” said Lee and went back to the house.

Samuel leaned down and gathered up one of the boys and held him on his lap. “Take that one up,” he said to Adam. “We ought to see whether there’s something that draws names to them.”

Adam held the other child awkwardly on his knee. “They look some alike,” he said, “but not when you look close. This one has rounder eyes than that one.”

“Yes, and a rounder head and bigger ears,” Samuel added. “But this one is more like—like a bullet. This one might go farther but not so high. And this one is going to be darker in the hair and skin. This one will be shrewd, I think, and shrewdness is a limitation on the mind. Shrewdness tells you what you must not do because it would not be shrewd. See how this one supports himself! He’s farther along than that one—better developed. Isn’t it strange how different they are when you look close?”

Adam’s face was changing as though he had opened and come out on his surface. He held up his finger, and the child made a lunge for it and missed and nearly fell off his lap. “Whoa!” said Adam. “Take it easy. Do you want to fall?”

“It would be a mistake to name them for qualities we think they have,” Samuel said. “We might be wrong—so wrong. Maybe it would be good to give them a high mark to shoot at—a name to live up to. The man I’m named for had his name called clear by the Lord God, and I’ve been listening all my life. And once or twice I’ve thought I heard my name called—but not clear, not clear.”

Adam, holding the child by his upper arm, leaned over and poured whisky in both glasses. “I thank you for coming, Samuel,” he said. “I even thank you for hitting me. That’s a strange thing to say.”

“It was a strange thing for me to do. Liza will never believe it, and so I’ll never tell her. An unbelieved truth can hurt a man much more than a lie. It takes great courage to back truth unacceptable to our times. There’s a punishment for it, and it’s usually crucifixion. I haven’t the courage for that.”