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JOHN STEINBECK – EAST OF EDEN

Gradually they ran out of escape talk. Every acquaintance was covered and every local
event. The talk lagged and the time went on.

“Feel like turning in?” Adam asked.
“In a little while.”
They were silent, and the night moved restlessly about the house, nudging them and
urging them.
“I sure would like to’ve seen that funeral,” said Charles.
“Must have been pretty fancy.”
“Would you care to see the clippings from the papers? I’ve got them all in my room.”
“No. Not tonight.”
Charles squared his chair around and put his elbows on the table. “We’ll have to figure
it out,” he said nervously. “We can put it off all we want, but we goddam well got to
figure what we’re going to do.”
“I know that,” said Adam. “I guess I just wanted some time to think about it.”
“Would that do any good? I’ve had time, lots of time, and I just went in circles. I tried
not to think about it, and I still went in circles. You think time is going to help?”
“I guess not. I guess not. What do you want to talk about first? I guess we might as
well get into it. We’re not thinking about anything else.”
“There’s the money,” said Charles. “Over a hundred thousand dollars—a fortune.”
“What about the money?”
“Well, where did it come from?”
“How do I know? I told you he might have speculated. Somebody might have put him
onto a good thing there in Washington.”
“Do you believe that?”
“I don’t believe anything,” Adam said. “I don’t know, so what can I believe?”
“It’s a lot of money,” said Charles. “It’s a fortune left to us. We can live the rest of our
lives on it, or we can buy a hell of a lot of land and make it pay. Maybe you didn’t think
about it, but we’re rich. We’re richer than anybody hereabouts.”
Adam laughed. “You say it like it was a jail sentence.”
“Where did it come from?”
“What do you care?” Adam asked. “Maybe we should just settle back and enjoy it.”
“He wasn’t at Gettysburg. He wasn’t at any goddam battle in the whole war. He was
hit in a skirmish. Everything he told was lies.”
“What are you getting at?” said Adam.
“I think he stole the money,” Charles said miserably. “You asked me and that’s what I
think.”
“Do you know where he stole it?”
“No.”
“Then why do you think he stole it?”
“He told lies about the war.”
“What?”
“I mean, if he lied about the war—why, he could steal.”
“How?”
“He held jobs in the G.A.R.—big jobs. He maybe could have got into the treasury,
rigged the books.”
Adam sighed. “Well, if that’s what you think, why don’t you write to them and tell

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them? Have them go over the books. If it’s true we could give back the money.”
Charles’ face was twisted and the scar on his forehead showed dark. “The Vice-

President came to his funeral. The President sent a wreath. There was a line of carriages
half a mile long and hundreds of people on foot. And do you know who the pall bearers
were?”

“What are you digging at?”
“ ’Spose we found out he’s a thief. Then it would come out how he never was at
Gettysburg or anyplace else. Then everybody would know he was a liar too, and his
whole life was a goddam lie. Then even if sometimes he did tell the truth, nobody would
believe it was the truth.”
Adam sat very still. His eyes were untroubled but he was watchful. “I thought you
loved him,” he said calmly. He felt released and free.
“I did. I do. That’s why I hate this—his whole life gone—all gone. And his grave—
they might even dig him up and throw him out.” His words were ragged with emotion.
“Didn’t you love him at all?” he cried.
“I wasn’t sure until now,” said Adam. “I was all mixed up with how I was supposed to
feel. No. I did not love him.”
“Then you don’t care if his life is spoiled and his poor body rooted up and—oh, my
God almighty!”
Adam’s brain raced, trying to find words for his feeling. “I don’t have to care.”
“No, you don’t,” Charles said bitterly. “Not if you didn’t love him, you don’t. You can
help kick him in the face.”
Adam knew that his brother was no longer dangerous. There was no jealousy to drive
him. The whole weight of his father was on him, but it was his father and no one could
take his father away from him.
“How will you feel, walking in town, after everyone knows?” Charles demanded.
“How will you face anybody?”
“I told you I don’t care. I don’t have to care because I don’t believe it.”
“You don’t believe what?”
“I don’t believe he stole any money. I believe in the war he did just what he said he did
and was just where he said he was.”
“But the proof—how about the discharge?”
“You haven’t any proof that he stole. You just made that up because you don’t know
where the money came from.”
“His army papers—”
“They could be wrong,” Adam said. “I believe they are wrong. I believe in my father.”
“I don’t see how you can.”
Adam said, “Let me tell you. The proofs that God does not exist are very strong, but in
lots of people they are not as strong as the feeling that He does.”
“But you said you did not love our father. How can you have faith in him if you didn’t
love him?”
“Maybe that’s the reason,” Adam said slowly, feeling his way. “Maybe if I had loved
him I would have been jealous of him. You were. Maybe—maybe love makes you
suspicious and doubting. Is it true that when you love a woman you are never sure—
never sure of her because you aren’t sure of yourself? I can see it pretty clearly. I can see
how you loved him and what it did to you. I did not love him. Maybe he loved me. He

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tested me and hurt me and punished me and finally he sent me out like a sacrifice, maybe
to make up for something. But he did not love you, and so he had faith in you. Maybe—
why, maybe it’s a kind of reverse.”

Charles stared at him. “I don’t understand,” he said.
“I’m trying to,” said Adam. “It’s a new thought to me. I feel good. I feel better maybe
than I have ever felt in my whole life. I’ve got rid of something. Maybe sometime I’ll get
what you have, but I haven’t got it now.”
“I don’t understand,” Charles said again.
“Can you see that I don’t think our father was a thief? I don’t believe he was a liar.”
“But the papers—”
“I won’t look at the papers. Papers are no match at all for my faith in my father.”
Charles was breathing heavily. “Then you would take the money?”
“Of course.”
“Even if he stole it?”
“He did not steal it. He couldn’t have stolen it.”
“I don’t understand,” said Charles.
“You don’t? Well, it does seem that maybe this might be the secret of the whole thing.
Look, I’ve never mentioned this—do you remember when you beat me up just before I
went away?”
“Yes.”
“Do you remember later? You came back with a hatchet to kill me.”
“I don’t remember very well. I must have been crazy.”
“I didn’t know then, but I know now—you were fighting for your love.”
“Love?”
“Yes,” said Adam. “We’ll use the money well. Maybe we’ll stay here. Maybe we’ll go
away—maybe to California. We’ll have to see what we’ll do. And of course we must set
up a monument to our father—a big one.”
“I couldn’t ever go away from here,” said Charles.
“Well, let’s see how it goes, There’s no hurry. We’ll feel it out.”

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Chapter 8

1

I believe there are monsters born in the world to human parents. Some you can see,
misshapen and horrible, with huge heads or tiny bodies; some are born with no arms, no
legs, some with three arms, some with tails or mouths in odd places. They are accidents
and no one’s fault, as used to be thought. Once they were considered the visible
punishment for concealed sins.

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 a malformed egg can
produce physical monsters, may not the same process produce a malformed soul?

Monsters are variations from the accepted normal to a greater or a less degree. 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. Sometimes when we are little we
imagine how it would be to have wings, but there is no reason to suppose it is the same
feeling birds have. No, to a monster the norm must seem monstrous, since everyone is
normal to himself. To the inner monster it must be even more obscure, since he has no
visible thing to compare with others. To a man born without conscience, a soul-stricken
man must seem ridiculous. To a criminal, honesty is foolish. You must not forget that a
monster is only a variation, and that to a monster the norm is monstrous.

It is my belief that Cathy Ames was born with the tendencies, or lack of them, which
drove and forced her all of her life. Some balance wheel was misweighted, some gear out
of ratio. She was not like other people, never was from birth. And just as a cripple may
learn to utilize his lack so that he becomes more effective in a limited field than the
uncrippled, so did Cathy, using her difference, make a painful and bewildering stir in her
world.

There was a time when a girl like Cathy would have been called possessed by the devil.
She would have been exorcised to cast out the evil spirit, and if after many trials that did
not work, she would have been burned as a witch for the good of the community. The one
thing that may not be forgiven a witch is her ability to distress people, to make them
restless and uneasy and even envious.

As though nature concealed a trap, Cathy had from the first a face of innocence. Her
hair was gold and lovely; wide-set hazel eyes with upper lids that drooped made her look
mysteriously sleepy. Her nose was delicate and thin, and her cheekbones high and wide,
sweeping down to a small chin so that her face was heart-shaped. Her mouth was well
shaped and well lipped but abnormally small—what used to be called a rosebud. Her ears
were very little, without lobes, and they pressed so close to her head that even with her
hair combed up they made no silhouette. They were thin flaps sealed against her head.

Cathy always had a child’s figure even after she was grown, slender, delicate arms and

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hands—tiny hands. Her breasts never developed very much. Before her puberty the
nipples turned inward. Her mother had to manipulate them out when they became painful
in Cathy’s tenth year. Her body was a boy’s body, narrow-hipped, straight-legged, but
her ankles were thin and straight without being slender. Her feet were small and round
and stubby, with fat insteps almost like little hoofs. She was a pretty child and she
became a pretty woman. Her voice was huskily soft, and it could be so sweet as to be
irresistible. But there must have been some steel cord in her throat, for Cathy’s voice
could cut like a file when she wished.

Even as a child she had some quality that made people look at her, then look away,
then look back at her, troubled at something foreign. Something looked out of her eyes,
and was never there when one looked again. She moved quietly and talked little, but she
could enter no room without causing everyone to turn toward her.

She made people uneasy but not so that they wanted to go away from her. Men and
women wanted to inspect her, to be close to her, to try to find what caused the
disturbance she distributed so subtly. And since this had always been so, Cathy did not
find it strange.

Cathy was different from other children in many ways, but one thing in particular set
her apart. Most children abhor difference. They want to look, talk, dress, and act exactly
like all of the others. If the style of dress is an absurdity, it is pain and sorrow to a child
not to wear that absurdity. If necklaces of pork chops were accepted, it would be a sad
child who could not wear pork chops. And this slavishness to the group normally extends
into every game, every practice, social or otherwise. It is a protective coloration children
utilize for their safety.

Cathy had none of this. She never conformed in dress or conduct. She “wore whatever
she wanted to. The result was that quite often other children imitated her.

As she grew older the group, the herd, which is any collection of children, began to
sense what adults felt, that there was something foreign about Cathy. After a while only
one person at a time associated with her. Groups of boys and girls avoided her as though
she carried a nameless danger.

Cathy was a liar, but she did not lie the way most children do. Hers was no daydream
lying, when the thing imagined is told and, to make it seem more real, told as real. That is
just ordinary deviation from external reality. I think the difference between a lie and a
story is that a story utilizes the trappings and appearance of truth for the interest of the
listener as well as of the teller. A story has in it neither gain nor loss. But a lie is a device
for profit or escape. I suppose if that definition is strictly held to, then a writer of stories
is a liar—if he is financially fortunate.

Cathy’s lies were never innocent. Their purpose was to escape punishment, or work, or
responsibility, and they were used for profit. Most liars are tripped up either because they
forget what they have told or because the lie is suddenly faced with an incontrovertible
truth. But Cathy did not forget her lies, and she developed the most effective method of
lying. She stayed close enough to the truth so that one could never be sure. She knew two
other methods also—either to interlard her lies with truth or to tell a truth as though it
were a lie. If one is accused of a lie and it turns out to be the truth, there is a backlog that
will last a long time and protect a number of untruths.

Since Cathy was an only child her mother had no close contrast in the family. She
thought all children were like her own. And since all parents are worriers she was

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convinced that all her friends had the same problems.
Cathy’s father was not so sure. He operated a small tannery in a town in Massachusetts,

which made a comfortable, careful living if he worked very hard. Mr. Ames came in
contact with other children away from his home and he felt that Cathy was not like other
children. It was a matter more felt than known. He was uneasy about his daughter but he
could not have said why.

Nearly everyone in the world has appetites and impulses, trigger emotions, islands of
selfishness, lusts just beneath the surface. And most people either hold such things in
check or indulge them secretly. Cathy knew not only these impulses in others but how to
use them for her own gain. It is quite possible that she did not believe in any other
tendencies in humans, for while she was preternaturally alert in some directions she was
completely blind in others.

Cathy learned when she was very young that sexuality with all its attendant yearnings
and pains, jealousies and taboos, is the most disturbing impulse humans have. And in that
day it was even more disturbing than it is now, because the subject was unmentionable
and unmentioned. Everyone concealed that little hell in himself, while publicly
pretending it did not exist—and when he was caught up in it he was completely helpless.
Cathy learned that by the manipulation and use of this one part of people she could gain
and keep power over nearly everyone. It was at once a weapon and a threat. It was
irresistible. And since the blind helplessness seems never to have fallen on Cathy, it is
probable that she had very little of the impulse herself and indeed felt a contempt for
those who did. And when you think of it in one way, she was right.

What freedom men and women could have, were they not constantly tricked and
trapped and enslaved and tortured by their sexuality! The only drawback in that freedom
is that without it one would not be a human. One would be a monster.

At ten Cathy knew something of the power of the sex impulse and began coldly to
experiment with it. She planned everything coldly, foreseeing difficulties and preparing
for them.

The sex play of children has always gone on. Everyone, I guess, who is not abnormal
has foregathered with little girls in some dim leafy place, in the bottom of a manger,
under a willow, in a culvert under a road—or at least has dreamed of doing so. Nearly all
parents are faced with the problem sooner or later, and then the child is lucky if the parent
remembers his own childhood. In the time of Cathy’s childhood, however, it was harder.
The parents, denying it in themselves, were horrified to find it in their children.

2

On a spring morning when with late-surviving dew the young grass bristled under the
sun, when the warmth crept into the ground and pushed the yellow dandelions up,
Cathy’s mother finished hanging the washed clothes on the line. The Ameses lived on the
edge of town, and behind their house were barn and carriage house, vegetable garden and
fenced paddock for two horses.

Mrs. Ames remembered having seen Cathy stroll away toward the barn. She called for
her, and when there was no answer she thought she might have been mistaken. She was
about to go into the house when she heard a giggle from the carriage house. “Cathy!” she
called. There was no answer. An uneasiness came over her. She reached back in her mind
for the sound of the giggle. It had not been Cathy’s voice. Cathy was not a giggler.

There is no knowing how or why dread comes on a parent. Of course many times

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apprehension arises when there is no reason for it at all. And it comes most often to the
parents of only children, parents who have indulged in black dreams of loss.

Mrs. Ames stood still, listening. She heard soft secret voices and moved quietly toward
the carriage house. The double doors were closed. The murmur of voices came from
inside, but she could not make out Cathy’s voice. She made a quick stride and pulled the
doors open and the bright sun crashed inside. She froze, mouth open, at what she saw.
Cathy lay on the floor, her skirts pulled up. She was naked to the waist, and beside her
two boys about fourteen were kneeling. The shock of the sudden light froze them too.
Cathy’s eyes were blank with terror. Mrs. Ames knew the boys, knew their parents.

Suddenly one of the boys leaped up, darted past Mrs. Ames, and ran around the corner
of the house. The other boy helplessly edged away from the woman and with a cry rushed
through the doorway. Mrs. Ames clutched at him, but her fingers slipped from his jacket
and he was gone. She could hear his running-footsteps outside.

Mrs. Ames tried to speak and her voice was a croaking whisper. “Get up!”
Cathy stared blankly up at her and made no move. Mrs. Ames saw that Cathy’s wrists
were tied with a heavy rope. She screamed and flung herself down and fumbled at the
knots. She carried Cathy into the house and put her to bed.
The family doctor, after he had examined Cathy, could find no evidence that she had
been mistreated. “You can just thank God you got there in time,” he said over and over to
Mrs. Ames.
Cathy did not speak for a long time. Shock, the doctor called it. And when she did
come out of the shock Cathy refused to talk. When she was questioned her eyes widened
until the whites showed all around the pupils and her breathing stopped and her body
grew rigid and her cheeks reddened from holding her breath.
The conference with the parents of the boys was attended by Dr. Williams. Mr. Ames
was silent most of the time. He carried the rope which had been around Cathy’s wrists.
His eyes were puzzled. There were things he did not understand, but he did not bring
them up.
Mrs. Ames settled down to a steady hysteria. She had been there. She had seen. She
was the final authority. And out of her hysteria a sadistic devil peered. She wanted blood.
There was a kind of pleasure in her demands for punishment. The town, the country, must
be protected. She put it on that basis. She had arrived in time, thank God. But maybe the
next time she would not; and how would other mothers feel? And Cathy was only ten
years old.
Punishments were more savage then than they are now. A man truly believed that the
whip was an instrument of virtue. First singly and then together the boys were whipped,
whipped-to raw cuts.
Their crime was bad enough, but the lies proved an evil that not even the whip could
remove. And their defense was from the beginning ridiculous. Cathy, they said, had
started the whole thing, and they had each given her five cents. They had not tied her
hands. They said they remembered that she was playing with a rope.
Mrs. Ames said it first and the whole town echoed it. “Do they mean to say she tied her
own hands? A ten-year-old child?”
If the boys had owned up to the crime they might have escaped some of the
punishment. Their refusal brought a torturing rage not only to their fathers, who did the
whipping, but to the whole community. Both boys were sent to a house of correction with

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