East of Eden

I don’t know why he smiled at me through the window of the Java coffee shop along De Villebois Mareuil Drive in Moreleta Park, a smile as fleeting as it was deliberate, but he did. The smile that played on his thin and dry lips was kind and speculative, a sort of declaration that he had been watching me for a while. But the intensity in his eyes washed away the goodwill I may have picked up from his smile and gave his face a conflicted look, one that I deduced as sinister.

It wasn’t just his face that bore an incongruity. His entire frame was an incongruity, a pronounced contradiction. He was middle-aged, perhaps forty, maybe forty-five, I thought, but he looked much older. A blue, crumpled shirt that carried a fading Polo emblem hung on him in a way that suggested it once fit him. His blue jeans were crumpled too – either he was in haste to leave his house in the morning, or he didn’t care much for ironed attire. The latter seemed more likely as his black, semi-casual and shiny shoes told of meticulous care. As my eyes retraced their journey to his face, I caught a waft of smoke from a diminishing cigarette stub, and his left hand trembled as if from my gaze.

I looked back at him, half sneering and half quizzical. He looked back on, unfazed. I waved him over. As he stubbed out his cigarette and walked over with wide, self-assured strides that were nonetheless punctuated by a slight limp and a hint of a whiskey belly, I berated myself yet again for my impulsive behavior. I got up and stretched out my hand, which got punished by a strong handshake.

“Hi, my name is Bradford, you can call me Brad,” he grinned, and I immediately wished he hadn’t as I tried to suppress a laugh. His teeth were cigarette-stained.

“Pleased to meet you, Brad, I’m David,” I grinned back, but more at his funny teeth.

“Great!” he bellowed in slight Afrikaans accent. He looked around as he sat down as if I had been waiting for him. His eyes were keen, a note of furtiveness overshadowing them, and I surmised he was checking if he could see someone he knew in the coffee shop. A waitress scurried over, who, over and above Brad’s irresistible exuberance, quickly figured out that he needed a double blended Scotch, neat. “In a damn coffee shop?” I exclaimed to myself.

He turned to my nonplussed face and asked if I needed a double too. My coffee was still half full but hey, no harm having a double or two, I said.

“Great!” he really liked the word. “So, I see you been reading East of Eden. God, I hated that book.”

I glanced at the dog-eared book I had placed aside. I bought it at a second-hand books store at the Centurion mall. Well, it was cheap alright, but what allured me was the sub-text underneath the title: “The book that created Cathy – the most evil woman in fiction.” As a young hot head in Nairobi back in my days, I picked up a melancholic fascination in women, fuelled by Mashifta’s cheeky “Pesa, pombe, siasa na wanawake” urban hit. So I wanted to find out just how evil this Cathy is.

“Oh yes, thoroughly enjoyed it. Deep book…Timshel…really profound book, very epic,” I gushed. I was referring to the Hebrew word whose translation is “thou mayest”, taken from a verse in the Bible’s Genesis – “thou mayest rule over sin”. “Thou mayest” implies free choice as opposed to other translations such as “thou shalt” and “do thou”.

“Bloody Timshel,” Brad muttered in a guttural voice. He was already lighting a cigarette and proceeded to take a long drag on it. “Bloody free will!” he exclaimed this time. The waitress looked back to see if she had walked off too quickly.

“Well,” I ventured. “I’m afraid I think there’s some truth in that. We all have it in us to change our ways, to redeem ourselves if we so wish. I believe the book is fundamentally about redemption – no matter how far gone we might be…”

“Look,” he exhaled a gush of cigarette smoke. “What choice do we have in this damned world? Where is redemption if we are prisoners of circumstances, environments, and even genetic make-up? What if one doesn’t have the strength of will to make the choice between good and evil? Look at Cathy. Was she born evil? Can we say her parents and school caused her resentment? Didn’t she kill her parents while still a young girl?” He paused to catch his breath.

Taken by surprise by his vehemence, I stared at him, trying to digest his obviously strong convictions. I had long given up on debates on religion – circuitous, chicken-and-egg and often pointless – and I certainly was not in a disposition to start one now. Before I could formulate a diversionary response, he grabbed the book and scanned the pages.

“Listen, David, this is what Steinbeck himself describes Cathy,” he was determined to read out the passage.

I believe there are monsters born in the world to human parents. Some you may see, misshapen and horrible, with huge heads or tiny bodies; some born with no arms, no legs, some with three arms, some with tails or mouths in odd places… And just as there are physical monsters, can there not be mental or psychic monsters born? The face and body may be perfect, but if a twisted gene or malformed egg can produce physical monsters, may not the same process produce a malformed soul?

He paused again to gulp down his double the waitress had just brought, and immediately ordered another. He screwed his face as the whiskey took effect, and resumed his reading.

…As a child may be born without an arm, so one may be born without kindness or the potential of conscience. A man who loses his arms in an accident has a great struggle to adjust himself to the lack, but one born without arms suffers only from people who find him strange. Having never had arms, he cannot miss them… It is my belief that Cathy Ames was born with tendencies, or lack of them, which drove and forced her all her life. Some balance wheel was misweighted, some gear out of ratio. She was not like other people, never was from birth…

Brad smacked his lips in satisfaction, his face a mask of contentment similar to that of the old absent-minded man at my local complex selling biltong to keep himself busy in retirement.

“So, as you can see, David, Steinbeck undercuts his own theory. He acknowledges that Cathy most likely was born evil, and therefore good doesn’t make sense to her. In other words, she doesn't have a choice,” he said, lighting up another cigarette, his huge, hairy arms rising up to a confluence, one with a lighter and the other with the cigarette. A Rolex watch gleamed on his left arm.

I was compelled to say something now. “Yes, I get your point. One can even point to the brothers – Adam and Charles. Adam is the good son; Charles becomes the bad son, driven by resentment at what he perceives to be their father’s favoritism towards Adam.” I paused to regard him, and he nodded in agreement. His eyes now carried a strange light; they shone brighter at my words as if what I had said was just what he needed to hear. Not getting the hint fast enough, I went on.

“But Steinbeck also makes the point that those who choose not to change their evil ways or lack the capacity to see good usually suffer some bad thing or another. Think about Charles, for instance, doesn’t he live a lonely life at his farm? Doesn’t Cathy become sick and miserable? Doesn’t the law catch up with her, so that she eventually decides to take her own life?”

I glanced at Brad and was startled by the expression on his face. His thin and dry lips were white and even drier, and had contorted into an ugly, rueful smile. His eyes shone again with an intensity that discomfited me, and his face was once again conflicted.

“Are you OK?” I found myself asking without thinking.

“Oh yes! Sorry man, I just drifted a little bit,” he muttered, appearing uncomfortable. He had slumped deep in his chair, as if in resignation. We proceeded to analyze the book further, discussing how the contest between good and evil progressed in it, from the rivalry between Adam and his brother Charles; how Adam fell in love with Cathy who was nonetheless attracted to Charles who was as “evil” as her and who impregnated her; how Cathy abandoned her twins Cal and Aaron who were Charles’ but who Adams thought were his own; and how the rivalry seemed to be reignited in the twins. We agreed that even though reference to the Biblical Cain and Abel story diminishes Steinbeck’s story’s originality somewhat, he presents an epic and artistically appealing account of good versus evil.

“Tell you what, I might hate the book, but it is a modern classic,” he said in slurred speech as he contemplated finishing the seventh double before him. I agreed with a slight grunt, and we both observed a moment of silence in reverence to John Steinbeck’s genius. It was a great discussion, I thought as I motioned to the waitress to bring us the bill. It isn’t everyday that you encounter such a fulfilling discussion with a stranger about a great book. At his rate, I said to myself, I must be reading more books at public cafes and restaurants….

“I killed a man, David.”

“Say what?”

“I love her,” he declared, ready for a defensive confrontation. My hand reached out for my glass, an action that was as involuntary as it was a cover for the shock from that declaration. Not only a cover, but also I genuinely needed a punishing but steadying gulp of that Scotch. As the glass reached my lips, I realized to my dismay that it was empty. I cursed, and reached for his packet of cigarettes.

“I kicked him in the head, over and over again,” he said, and raised his right leg to observe his shiny shoe. Satisfied that it had no bloodstain, he raised his eyes again at me, and their intensity burned my eyes again. I lowered my eyes to his lips, as I couldn’t look away. “I did it out of love, David!” came his anguished whisper. The note of desperation as he spoke forced me back to his eyes, burning deep blue as they were. They implored for understanding from me.

I nodded. That was all I could do. He seemed gratified. I dragged deep on the cigarette, and felt dizzy. I was confused. I thought of Cathy in the book, and thought of the woman Brad loved, the one he could do anything for, but couldn’t have. Perhaps Brad was as “good” as Adam, but now, ensnared by an evil Cathy, was just as evil, but caught in an inner turmoil. I reached out to hold his hand, but he was already hoisting his incongruous frame up.

“See you around, David,” he mumbled. He steadied himself, looked again at his shoes, and walked off, slow and deliberate, never looking back. His limp was greatly pronounced now. My eyes followed him as he got into his E-class Mercedes and drove off.

I reached for East of Eden, flipped about some pages, and found Lee’s words to Samuel Hamilton:

“Maybe everyone is too rich. I have noticed that there is no dissatisfaction like that of the rich. Feed a man, clothe him, put him in a good house, and he will die of despair.”

Picture credit: Goodreads