ADAM. Yes: that is splendid: that will bind the future.
EVE [displeased, turning away from the serpent] But it will destroy hope.
ADAM [angrily] Be silent, woman. Hope is wicked. Happiness is wicked. Certainty is blessed.
THE SERPENT. What is wicked? You have invented a word.
ADAM. Whatever I fear to do is wicked. Listen to me, Eve; and you, snake, listen too, that your memory may hold my vow. I will live a thousand sets of the four seasons—
THE SERPENT. Years. Years.
ADAM. I will live a thousand years; and then I will endure no more: I will die and take my rest. And I will love Eve all that time and no other woman.
EVE. And if Adam keeps his vow I will love no other man until he dies.
THE SERPENT. You have both invented marriage. And what he will be to you and not to any other woman is husband; and what you will be to him and not to any other man is wife.
ADAM [instinctively moving his hand towards her] Husband and wife.
EVE [slipping her hand into his] Wife and husband.
THE SERPENT [laughs]!!!
EVE [snatching herself loose from Adam] Do not make that odious noise, I tell you.
ADAM. Do not listen to her: the noise is good: it lightens my heart. You are a jolly snake. But you have not made a vow yet. What vow do you make?
THE SERPENT. I make no vows. I take my chance.
ADAM. Chance? What does that mean?
THE SERPENT. It means that I fear certainty as you fear uncertainty. It means that nothing is certain but uncertainty. If I bind the future I bind my will. If I bind my will I strangle creation.
EVE. Creation must not be strangled. I tell you I will create, though I tear myself to pieces in the act.
ADAM. Be silent, both of you. I will bind the future. I will be delivered from fear. [To Eve] We have made our vows; and if you must create, you shall create within the bounds of those vows. You shall not listen to that snake any more. Come [he seizes her by the hair to drag her away].
EVE. Let me go, you fool. It has not yet told me the secret.
ADAM [releasing her] That is true. What is a fool?
EVE. I do not know: the word came to me. It is what you are when you forget and brood and are filled with fear. Let us listen to the snake.
ADAM. No: I am afraid of it. I feel as if the ground were giving way under my feet when it speaks. Do you stay and listen to it.
THE SERPENT [laughs]!!!
ADAM [brightening] That noise takes away fear. Funny. The snake and the woman are going to whisper secrets. [He chuckles and goes away slowly, laughing his first laugh].
EVE. Now the secret. The secret. [She sits on the rock and throws her arms round the serpent, who begins whispering to her].
Eve's face lights up with intense interest, which increases until an expression of overwhelming repugnance takes its place. She buries her face in her hands.
ACT II
A few centuries later. Morning. An oasis in Mesopotamia. Close at hand the end of a log house abuts on a kitchen garden. Adam is digging in the middle of the garden. On his right, Eve sits on a stool in the shadow of a tree by the doorway, spinning flax. Her wheel, which she turns by hand, is a large disc of heavy wood, practically a flywheel. At the opposite side of the garden is a thorn brake with a passage through it barred by a hurdle.
The two are scantily and carelessly dressed in rough linen and leaves. They have lost their youth and grace; and Adam has an unkempt beard and jaggedly cut hair; but they are strong and in the prime of life. Adam looks worried, like a farmer. Eve, better humored (having given up worrying), sits and spins and thinks.
A MAN'S VOICE. Hallo, mother!
EVE [looking across the garden towards the hurdle] Here is Cain.
ADAM [uttering a grunt of disgust]!!! [He goes on digging without raising his head].
Cain kicks the hurdle out of his way, and strides into the garden. In pose, voice, and dress he is insistently warlike. He is equipped with huge spear and broad brass-bound leather shield; his casque is a tiger's head with bull's horns; he wears a scarlet cloak with gold brooch over a lion's skin with the claws dangling; his feet are in sandals with brass ornaments; his shins are in brass greaves; and his bristling military moustache glistens with oil. To his parents he has the self-assertive, not-quite-at-ease manner of a revolted son who knows that he is not forgiven nor approved of.
CAIN [to Adam] Still digging? Always dig, dig, dig. Sticking in the old furrow. No progress! no advanced ideas! no adventures! What should I be if I had stuck to the digging you taught me?
ADAM. What are you now, with your shield and spear, and your brother's blood crying from the ground against you?
CAIN. I am the first murderer: you are only the first man. Anybody could be the first man: it is as easy as to be the first cabbage. To be the first murderer one must be a man of spirit.
ADAM. Begone. Leave us in peace. The world is wide enough to keep us apart.
EVE. Why do you want to drive him away? He is mine. I made him out of my own body. I want to see my work sometimes.
ADAM. You made Abel also. He killed Abel. Can you bear to look at him after that?
CAIN. Whose fault was it that I killed Abel? Who invented killing? Did I? No: he invented it himself. I followed your teaching. I dug and dug and dug. I cleared away the thistles and briars. I ate the fruits of the earth. I lived in the sweat of my brow, as you do. I was a fool. But Abel was a discoverer, a man of ideas, of spirit: a true Progressive. He was the discoverer of blood. He was the inventor of killing. He found out that the fire of the sun could be brought down by a dewdrop. He invented the altar to keep the fire alive. He changed the beasts he killed into meat by the fire on the altar. He kept himself alive by eating meat. His meal cost him a day's glorious health-giving sport and an hour's amusing play with the fire. You learnt nothing from him: you drudged and drudged and drudged, and dug and dug and dug, and made me do the same. I envied his happiness, his freedom. I despised myself for not doing as he did instead of what you did. He became so happy that he shared his meal with the Voice that had whispered all his inventions to him. He said that the Voice was the voice of the fire that cooked his food, and that the fire that could cook could also eat. It was true: I saw the fire consume the food on his altar. Then I, too, made an altar, and offered my food on it, my grains, my roots, my fruit. Useless: nothing happened. He laughed at me; and then came my great idea: why not kill him as he killed the beasts? I struck; and he died, just as they did. Then I gave up your old silly drudging ways, and lived as he had lived, by the chase, by the killing, and by the fire. Am I not better than you? stronger, happier, freer?
ADAM. You are not stronger: you are shorter in the wind: you cannot endure. You have made the beasts afraid of us; and the snake has invented poison to protect herself against you. I fear you myself. If you take a step towards your mother with that spear of yours I will strike you with my spade as you struck Abel.
EVE. He will not strike me. He loves me.
ADAM. He loved his brother. But he killed him.
CAIN. I do not want to kill women. I do not want to kill my mother. And for her sake I will not kill you, though I could send this spear through you without coming within reach of your spade. But for her, I could not resist the sport of trying to kill you, in spite of my fear that you would kill me. I have