Tubal-Cain and the Machine
“Zillah also had a son, Tubal-Cain, who forged all kinds of tools out of bronze and iron.” Genesis 4:22
It was in the heat that the machine came to Tubal-Cain, the season when the water in the river eats itself and becomes alive in the sun, and runs away from God’s children, so that Tubal-Cain’s shepherds have to walk farther for water; it is the season when lips ripple with dryness like the flap of a tent.
It was not long after a young man waged war against the body of Lamech that the machine came to Tubal-Cain, and not long after Tubal-Cain’s daughter ate first and wept for the death of her husband, and not long after Tubal-Cain's grandfather Methuselah was in his 700th year.
Tubal-Cain, the son of Lamech and the grandson of Methuselah, the fifth generation down from Adam and Eve, is given the machine when he is nearing his hundredth year, when he is the best craftsman on the Earth, when he goes out in the mornings with a pocketful of dates and sees an invention in everything, especially the clay. He walks and eats his dates as the sun sits on the horizon, and it’s the rising sun that tells Tubal-Cain the machine is there, by catching and holding its smooth metal back.
It is on the old bank of the river, where the ground looks pale and uncomfortable about being in the sun. Tubal-Cain is on the hill above the bank, squinting at it in the sun. He calls to it, he calls for it to be at peace. He asks the machine who its father is. He asks if it is thirsty, he offers it wine. The machine is silent.
Tubal-Cain will never know this, but the machine is a manual, stand-up mill without CNC, used in modern times to create tools and repair machines. Somehow, it is working, though it is on the banks of a river on the old Earth and not in a machine shop in 2021, where it belongs.
Tubal-Cain believes it to be an angel. He approaches it backwards, praying loudly, his robe pulled over his head. Eventually, he realizes it will not move. He brushes his fingers gently across its strange metal arms, the cutter head, cleanly oiled joints of the thing. He talks to it quietly as he does this, offering it wine from his wine-skin over and over. He asks quietly if it has a daughter.
Tubal-Cain is missed at his workshop, and so his apprentices make the easiest parts of the tools and then hang around nervously, squinting and picking at their nails. They will sit this way until the women call them for the evening meal. Tubal-Cain spends all day with the machine. He comes home finally, when the moonlight becomes too dim to see by. Tubal-Cain walks like a young man, and murmurs to himself as he walks among the tents.
He walks like a young man, with the disposition of an old one, and so he is not afraid when his fourth daughter appears out of the darkness, walking slowly, wearing her finest bangles. She walks with a rhythm, snaps her fingers and sings to the stars with words that aren’t real. She does not see her father. She does not see anything but the face of a man who is dead.
Tubal-Cain does not sleep that night, but listens to his daughter's fingers snap and thinks about the machine. He is a smart man. He wonders about the angel in the old river. He wonders until the sun rises again.
Tubal-Cain spends all his days and nights with the machine.
His wives forget him gently, let his bony, straight figure disappear into the warm hills. His apprentices slowly learn how to make tools on their own, but they are not as good as Tubal-Cain’s, so that the Earth is full of alright craftsmen. He is almost forgotten, too, by his father Lamech, who wages war seven by seven times against the young man who harmed him. His fourth daughter is the only one who knows when he returns, and knows when he leaves. But she speaks now in words no one else knows.
Tubal-Cain learns how the rotating cutter works. Sometimes, as he is working, the metal arms cast shadows over his head and he winces with memory of harsher arms than metal, and he feels himself as a young boy, running from his father to hide in the mud. He lets Lamech eat himself alive, and sees his fathers tent only from a dark distance in the night. Sometimes, the machine tells him to slip into the tent and cut his fathers throat like a little lamb, and feel warm again. Tubal-Cain tells himself the machine tells him this. He tells himself it is the machine.
At night, he dreams of a machine that can put the soul back into his daughter with its rotating brushes and programmed decisions. He dreams of a machine that is a father and a daughter at the same time, and both of them have arms spread like the horizon and eyes that are alive, the way everything is alive to Tubal-Cain - he dreams they are alive to the point of forgiveness.
Lamech dies when the rain comes, his whole body fizzling out violently. His teeth fall out, he goes blind, and he cannot eat or drink for seven days before it all ends. The young man who waged war against him has forgotten his anger, and is beating his own children now, and the tribe of Lamech is at peace, and the peace kills Lamech. Tubal-Cain cries with his mother Zillah, but he is not sad. The rain falls on the machine, and he drapes his arms around the machine and tells it quietly not to cry.
It is the next hot season when Tubal-Cain’s fourth daughter begins to wail, and begins to eat the dirt once again. Two years is a long time to live without a soul, Tubal-Cain thinks to himself. He walks with her at night, now, talking to her so quietly that his words nearly dissolve completely.
He matches his long, strolling steps to her stumbling ones, so that their walking, and her snapping and crying, make a strange song.
He says to her, quietly, “Let your other sisters be your new soul, little bird. Let the sun and the stars be your new soul. Look, you have love. Let your father make you a new soul, it will be done soon, soon.” And these were the verses of the song, Tubal-Cain’s appeal for life to his daughter, who was mostly dead.
It is not too much longer before Tubal-Cain’s daughter steals his hammer from his tent and walks out into the hot rocks, and she does not come back.
Tubal-Cain cries with Zillah and works on the machine.
Tubal-Cain, in fact, learns to use the machine. He is a smart man, who has herds so large they turn the hills to the color of fleece, and his daughters dance with golden coins weaved in their hair. He is a smart man, whose hands shake with age only when they are not working. He learns how each gear works, and learns to direct the lasers that kiss his freckled skin like angels. He has learned to use the machine, but his fourth daughter is dead, and the night is silent. The night is silent for a long, long time.
Tubal-Cain gets up in the morning, and for the first time in years, gathers dates and walks. He walks until he finally sees invention again. He walks until he cries. He walks until he wails. He walks until the day is nearly done. He finds himself on the banks of the old river, where the water is lapping at the feet of the machine.
He sinks his hands into the warm clay and moves his fingers slowly. He murmurs to himself, the words all blending together. He pushes his hands into the clay four times, so that there is perhaps, briefly, the impression of a human face in the ground before it is swept away again. He squats, his knees like chiseled wood, his arms limp between them, his head turned up to the sky, lips moving quietly.
Tubal-Cain looks suddenly at the machine, trying to catch it in the act of life. Tubal-Cain shakes his head. He pulls up a heavy handful of clay, crawls to the machine, rubs it across the smooth chrome face.
“Look,” he says, “your sister kisses you.”
He cackles loudly, a sound like breaking pottery. The moon is rising, and the sky to the west is a deep red. He stands up easily, smooth as the river water, still laughing, shaking his hands out.
Tubal-Cain leaves the machine in the sand by the river, and walks home, leaning mostly on his cane. He can hear, from over the dark hills, the women singing as they grind wheat to flour, their pestles knocking rhythmically, their feet tapping in the dust.
