Adam said, “I’ve wondered why a man of your knowledge would work a desert hill place.”
“It’s because I haven’t courage,” said Samuel. “I could never quite take the responsibility. When the Lord God did not call my name, I might have called His name—but I did not. There you have the difference between greatness and mediocrity. It’s not an uncommon disease. But it’s nice for a mediocre man to know that greatness must be the loneliest state in the world.”
“I’d think there are degrees of greatness,” Adam said.
“I don’t think so,” said Samuel. “That would be like saying there is a little bigness. No. I believe when you come to that responsibility the hugeness and you are alone to make your choice. On one side you have warmth and companionship and sweet understanding, and on the other—cold, lonely greatness. There you make your choice. I’m glad I chose mediocrity, but how am I to say what reward might have come with the other? None of my children will be great either, except perhaps Tom. He’s suffering over the choosing right now. It’s a painful thing to watch. And somewhere in me I want him to say yes. Isn’t that strange? A father to want his son condemned to greatness! What selfishness that must be.”
Adam chuckled. “This naming is no simple business, I see.”
“Did you think it would be?”
“I didn’t know it could be so pleasant,” said Adam.
Lee came out with a platter of fried chicken, a bowl of smoking boiled potatoes, and a deep dish of pickled beets, all carried on a pastry board. “I don’t know how good it will be,” he said. “The hens are a little old. We don’t have any pullets. The weasels got the baby chicks this year.”
“Pull up,” said Samuel.
“Wait until I get my ng-ka-py,” said Lee.
While he was gone Adam said, “It’s strange to me—he used to speak differently.”
“He trusts you now,” Samuel said. “He has a gift of resigned loyalty without -hope of reward. He’s maybe a much better man than either of us could dream of being.”
Lee came back and took his seat at the end of the table. “Just put the boys on the ground,” he said.
The twins protested when they were set down. Lee spoke to them sharply in Cantonese and they were silent.
The men ate quietly as nearly all country people do. Suddenly Lee got up and hurried into the house. He came back with a jug of red wine. “I forgot it,” he said. “I found it in the house.”
Adam laughed. “I remember drinking wine here before I bought the place. Maybe I bought the place because of the wine. The chicken’s good, Lee. I don’t think I’ve been aware of the taste of food for a long time.”
“You’re getting well,” Samuel said. “Some people think it’s an insult to the glory of their sickness to get well. But the time poultice is no respecter of glories. Everyone gets well if he waits around.”
4
Lee cleared the table and gave each of the boys a clean drumstick. They sat solemnly holding their greasy batons and alternately inspecting and sucking them. The wine and the glasses stayed on the table.
“We’d best get on with the naming,” Samuel said. “I can feel a little tightening on my halter from Liza.”
“I can’t think what to name them,” Adam said.
“You have no family name you want—no inviting trap for a rich relative, no proud name to re-create?”
“No, I’d like them to start fresh, insofar as that is possible.”
Samuel knocked his forehead with his knuckles. “What a shame,” he said. “What a shame it is that the proper names for them they cannot have.”
“What do you mean?” Adam asked.
“Freshness, you said. I thought last night—” He paused. “Have you thought of your own name?”
“Mine?”
“Of course. Your first-born—Cain and Abel.”
Adam said, “Oh, no. No, we can’t do that.”
“I know we can’t. That would be tempting whatever fate there is. But isn’t it odd that Cain is maybe the best-known name in the whole world and as far as I know only one man has ever borne it?”
Lee said, “Maybe that’s why the name has never changed its emphasis.”
Adam looked into the ink-red wine in his glass. “I got a shiver when you mentioned it,” he said.
“Two stories have haunted us and followed us from our beginning,” Samuel said. “We carry them along with us like invisible tails—the story of original sin and the story of Cain and Abel. And I don’t understand either of them. I don’t understand them at all but I feel them. Liza gets angry with me. She says I should not try to understand them. She says why should we try to explain a verity. Maybe she’s right—maybe she’s right. Lee, Liza says you’re a Presbyterian—do you understand the Garden of Eden and Cain and Abel?”
“She thought I should be something, and I went to Sunday School long ago in San Francisco. People like you to be something, preferably what they are.”
Adam said, “He asked you if you understood.”
“I think I understand the Fall. I could perhaps feel that in myself. But the brother murder—no. Well, maybe I don’t remember the details very well.”
Samuel said, “Most people don’t read the details. It’s the details that astonish me. And Abel had no children.” He looked up at the sky. “Lord, how the day passes! It’s like a life—so quickly when we don’t watch it and so slowly when we do. No,” he said, “I’m having enjoyment. And I made a promise to myself that I would not consider enjoyment a sin. I take a pleasure in inquiring into things. I’ve never been content to pass a stone without looking under it. And it is a black disappointment to me that I can never see the far side of the moon.”
“I don’t have a Bible,” Adam said. “I left the family one in Connecticut.”
“I have,” said Lee. “I’ll get it.”
“No need,” said Samuel. “Liza let me take her mother’s. It’s here in my pocket.” He took out the package and unwrapped the battered book. “This one has been scraped and gnawed at,” he said. “I wonder what agonies have settled here. Give me a used Bible and I will, I think, be able to tell you about a man by the places that are edged with the dirt of seeking fingers. Liza wears a Bible down evenly. Here we are—this oldest story. If it troubles us it must be that we find the trouble in ourselves.”