Fratricide Aftermath
The light of the full moon streams through a broad window into the empty upstairs room, where she is a pale ghost wearing a diaphanous nightgown, twisting a rope of her long fair hair — in succeeding generations it will grow darker and darker, until the dominant genetic factor equals the chestnut or black shade of her sorrow — tighter and tighter. Her downcast face, glistening with tears, might have been painted by Edvard Munch; she sobs, “Abel? Abel?” and her misery resonates from the bare walls and floor.
Ish says quietly, “Abel is dead, my love. Come downstairs and back to bed.”
She searches for him in the room, and finding nothing, asks, “Is it God?”
“No, love. Not God,” Ish’s voice is calm and still. He plays poker and wins with that voice. “I am Ish. Your husband. Abel’s father.”
Her eyes find him and her sorrow turns to bitterness: “And the other one. You fathered the other one.”
“Yes.” He is weary in his bones and wants nothing more than to fall at her feet, bathing them with his own tears. Instead, he addresses the wraith as though he is someone else, someone who has not lost paradise for all time and then two sons in the space of a day. “I fathered Cain.”
Isha spits on the floor and curses. “Never, never speak his name again,” she commands. “I abhor the day he opened my womb.”
“He’s your son too,” Ish says.
“Not my son! Not!” she insists. “Your son! I hate him. I hate you.”
Her invective catches him off guard and feels less like words and more like a kick to the groin. He gasps for breath. “Our son,” he says, finally. “Ours, Isha. We were both at fault.”
“It’s the fire,” she whispers. “I want you even now. What will I do?”
He nears her and takes her hand. “We should go back to bed,” he says.
“Don’t touch me,” Isha says, but she takes his hand and, like a willful child, allows him to lead her downstairs and into their bedroom where, after long restless minutes of him quietly soothing her with his hands and his words, she finally falls asleep.
Once she is still and breathing deeply, Ish crosses to the window and stares out along the back pasture at the herd of sleeping sheep. For a moment he thinks he sees a bloodstain on the grass, but it proves to be a shadow cast by a tree branch in the tricky moonlight. He considers his other son and wonders where he camps tonight, under the full moon, fleeing the wrath of humans and God.
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