Cain by Jose Saramago

I read books because of the insights they give and the flashes of beauty they reveal. God marks Cain as a murderer and condemns him to “walk the earth.” Jose Saramago’s novel takes us on that walk. Having committed the ultimate crime, Cain shuns violence, entering into an extended argument with God, whose exacting vengeance he witnesses in biblical stories we all know so well. Along the way, he meets Lillith, who has to be one of literature’s most self-aware women. Without delusions, they live through a gentle, erotic relationship that could only be called love. “The body’s sublime memory,” Saramago writes. At a moment of doubt, she tells him: “No one is just one person… you, for example, are both cain and abel.”

Cain walks through time continually encountering what he calls “another present.” But these other presents are jumbled, like time in the movie Pulp Fiction. He sees Abraham a second time and asks after his son, Isaac, met previously. But Abraham says he only has a son named Ishmael.

I kept thinking of a quote I now realize I mis-heard. In Pulp Fiction, Vincent (John Travolta) asks Jules (Samuel Jackson) what he plans to do now that his revelation has made him decide to leave the life.

"Basically I'm just gonna walk the earth. You know, like Caine in Kung Fu - walk from place to place.”