The Book of Lies - Brad Meltzer [83]
Through the phone, I hear Roosevelt turning pages. “I know this’ll sound a little hoo-ha, but . . . I think it’s a murder weapon.”
“The book is?” I laugh as my frozen breath fills the air. “Must’ve been a hell of a paper cut.”
“I’m serious, Cal. Scholars have spent centuries theorizing that Cain killed Abel with a rock or a club or even the jawbone of an ass. But one of the oldest theories is that Cain used, of all things, a book.”
“And I suppose no one cares about the fact that Cain’s tirade supposedly took place thousands of years before the Chinese or the Egyptians got their hands on a single piece of papyrus?” I ask as I peer over my shoulder. A local bus hisses to a stop at the bus bench, carting all the people away. Even the Plymouth is gone. Good sign. I cut as fast as I can into the Burger King parking lot.
“Sure, today, when we hear the word book, we think bound paper between two covers. But let your brain stretch a little, Cal. If someone carved a message on the blade of a sword . . . or along the length of an ancient wooden staff . . . or on a sacred tablet . . . Couldn’t those be books?”
I stop just outside the Burger King, stealing a peek through the glass. It’s cold out here. And colder every minute. “Just tell me what the book theory says.”
“According to the story, knowing that the great flood is coming, God instructs Adam to create a book—in Jewish legend, they’re said to be carved pillars; in Babylonia, they use the word tablets—but God tells Adam to fill it with all earthly knowledge, and that Adam should give this birthright to his most favored son. When Adam chooses Abel, well . . . Cain grabs it in a fit of jealousy and turns it into the world’s first murder weapon. But as I’ve always said, the real story is what happens next. As penance for the crime, even the Bible says that God gave Cain a Mark—and from what I can tell here—I think this Mark and the Book are actually the same thing.”
“Says who?” I ask as I watch two teenagers placing their order at the counter. There’s a man with a red scarf standing behind them. I can’t see his face.
“Again, it’s all translation. The word Mark in Mark of Cain comes from the Hebrew word Ot. And when I was looking at some of these other theories, Ot can just as easily be translated as an omen. A sign. A remembrance.”
“So God gave Cain a remembrance—the actual murder weapon—to remind him of what he’d done.”
“That’s the idea. And when you trace the word Ot in the Bible, the next time it’s used is to refer to Moses’s rod that turns into a snake in front of Pharaoh—an everyday item that suddenly becomes a deadly weapon.”
“I don’t know,” I say, still studying the man with the red scarf. “Old tablets . . . weapons of Cain . . . I’m really supposed to believe this all happened, much less somehow survived to modern days?”
“You can roll your eyes all you want, but nearly all we know of ancient Greece comes from the clay and stone artifacts that survived.”
“But if this tablet or book or animal skin or whatever it is—assuming it was filled with all the world’s earthly knowledge—why would having it be such a punishment?”
“See, that’s where Ellis was finally helpful,” Roosevelt says as the man with the red scarf turns my way. He’s no older than the teenagers. Just a kid. Nothing to worry about. “When Cain grew jealous of Abel and killed him for it, God gave Cain a very different book to carry.”
“A Book of Lies.”
“That’s what Ellis called it. Penance, punishment . . . a remembrance for Cain,” Roosevelt says as I cross around to the side of the Burger King and check the seating area. “Look at it this way, Cal—whether this book is filled with lies or all the world’s knowledge—don’t underestimate the power that people attribute to a sacred object.”
In the seating area of the Burger King, an employee wipes