Cain

by José Saramago

There are also those who say that the reason adam didn’t manage to swallow the whole of that fateful fruit was because the lord suddenly turned up, demanding to know what was going on.

that adam could, at last, learn to dig and delve, to sow seed in a furrow, and even to perfect the sublime art of pruning, which no lord and no god had thought to invent.

but that’s something you only know when it’s too late to change and you have no option but to confront it.

if eve hadn’t given adam some of the fruit to eat, if she hadn’t eaten it herself, they would still be in the garden of eden, and we know how boring that was.

lucifer was quite right when he rebelled against god, and those who say he did so out of envy are wrong, he simply recognized god’s evil nature.

it seems likely that satan is just another instrument of the lord, the one who does the dirty work to which god prefers not to put his name.

that I am endowed, let me say this to you now, with a conscience so flexible that it agrees with whatever I do,

Not according to my calculations, said the lord,