“On the day you woke up beside me, this is how you were lying.” His gaze rested upon the figure at my throat.
That day I sat before one of the quiet pools. I studied my wreathed and adorned reflection, my face framed by a fall of dark hair. I touched my cheek in the way the adam liked to do. I traced the line of my nose to its curved tip and round nostrils.
I was a sleeker creature than the adam, if not more beautiful. My jaw was softer, my forehead less broad. We bore little resemblance to each other, which struck me as strange. I suppose I expected more of his unmistakable features upon my face, the curve of his lip upon my mouth.
The watery mirror rippled. The serpent glided into the middle of it, his magnificent wings folded upon his back.
How beautiful you are, daughter of God and man.
You are more beautiful yet.
Do you not believe the One has made you the most lovely and gifted of creatures? His was the most beautiful of unspoken voices, soft and melodious.
I am gifted with every good thing. . . .
Every good thing?
Surely the One withholds nothing from me.
And neither do I. Go and look up upon the precipice, in that tall tuft of grass there. You will see a delight. Soon I will show you another.
He spread wide his wings and took to flight. For a moment he eclipsed the sun.
Within a cup-shaped nest in the grass lay five spotted eggs. I gasped—one of them had begun to hatch. I watched over them for an hour, even after the mother returned fresh from dinner. I stroked her feathers as together we watched the slow progress of the hatchlings. But my mind was on the serpent.
I DREAMED I STOOD on the edge of the earth. I was a giant, towering into the heavens. My heels rested upon the craggy shore, my toes stretched to the sea. A tapestry lay at my feet: jade of glaciers, the desert dunes, the glow of lava . . . trees covered by blankets of moss, mists crawling from valley to valley, the lettuced edges of waves fringing the shore.
But now I realized the ocean was not the only surface rippling with movement. A motion caught my eye upon the savannah. There! A pride of lions. There! The tarpan mob, running like a river upon the steppe! I saw the elk in the wood and every other animal in strange and foreign terrain: the elephant, the tiger, the ostrich, the bear, the crocodile and wild auroch, the boar, and even from this great height the badger, the rabbit, the minx, the mole.
Finally, in the valley so familiar to me, I saw the serpent gliding among the reeds and staring up at me.
THE NEXT NIGHT I dreamed I rushed upon the plain, grasses bowed in my wake.
The roar of the lion and whooping hyena sounded from the distance. The voices of a thousand frogs screamed in chorus, and the wolf howled at midday: songs of homage sung not for me but the One before me, borne on a current greater than the air itself, than the world or any element within it—and more alive.
Behind me came the osprey, the falcon, and the hawk. We crested the mount as dawn spread across the valley. We plunged from its height—down, over pine and cedar, like water running to the sea.
Near the marshy delta, I was restless. I circled to the bank, in the mud, into the water and back, like the wild dog before sleep, like the dervish eddying in the corner of a canyon.
But no, it was not I but another who circled in that pregnant manner, pacing in the mud until the earth began to churn. Water rolled against the bank and a great cloud passed over the face of the rising sun. There, in the shadow of the day, came a queer unrest in the earth. The mud began to bubble up. Steam rose from the simmering earth as from the surface of a hot spring upon the valley floor. It did not drift away with the wind but rose like a phantom into the air.
The river receded from the bank, pulling back her watery skirt to lay bare the fecund clay. Water bugs and frogs fled the naked bed.
Now the clay began to gather up upon itself in great misshapen clods. Once, twice, it sank back upon itself only to rise up, taller, larger—and fall back again as sand beneath a wave.
Silence from the throat of every beast. The air stood still. The earth launched up onto the grassy bank. But this time the mud was no longer formless.
A mist crept into the valley—how could this be, by the light of the climbing sun? It drifted over the form in the grass, nearly obscuring it, seeming to draw all sound into itself. I thought I might burst from the strain of that silence . . . until a single sound shattered it:
The gasp of an indrawn breath.
5
Late the next morning I sat near the marsh peeling fibers from stalks of soaked hemp. I liked to be alone the day after such dreams, so the adam had gone to see the gazelle, several of which were swelling with young.
No, it wasn’t that I wanted to be alone. I wanted to be alone with the One. The One who scaled then careened from the heights of the mount. The One who raised up the man from the mud. The One who fashioned me from a part of the man and knew me more intimately than even the adam.
Fish leapt in the current, jubilant at the sun snared on iridescent scales. Levia’s mate, Ari, lay upon the bank, bemused by the fish, feline brows lifting over great, limpid eyes.
Normally I would have stayed with him, but the restlessness of the churning earth of my dreams had suffused my morning, and I was unable to sit still.
I left my work and jogged upstream in the direction of the terraced vineyard. I climbed upward, the sun on my shoulders like two warm hands.
As I picked my way among vines that already seemed ancient, I almost called for the adam. He was too far away to hear me shout his name but would have heard me with that other sense. But I did not call him.
I wandered farther up the slope, the scent of grapes cloying in my nostrils, practically salivating at the thought of tart, tannin-laden skins. But I had not come for food.
I found a narrow terrace and lay down upon it in the very posture in which I had entered this world. I tilted back my head. My legs sank into the earth. And then I flung wide my arms, palms opened to the sky, as though laying bare every bit of my skin to the air.
It came upon me: the thing that inhabited sun and air, the elements beyond them both, the heavens, and time and life.
Ah! I was filled with joy. I was slain with pleasure! It brimmed through me, galvanized my spirit. I recalled the primal excitement of the animals as the One had blazed across the earth. I lifted my voice in wordless jubilation.
I was more alive than the first day I drew breath. Than the first time I lay in the adam’s arms. I was alive as one can only be in the presence of the One.
Was there air? Was there earth? Was there animal or mountain or river? I was all of these things. I was the ripple of wind through the tail feathers of bird, the soft pad of cat. I was the soul that knows the secret name of the One who fashioned it. In the distance I heard the chatter of the stream, the dance of the needle dropping from the stem, the song of the sun through glaciers a world away, throwing off an orchestra of light.
I am the trickle from the dark abyss, the running of the stream to the river . . . the drop of water that falls from the stem and becomes a mighty roar.
Leaves rustled upon the vine, as loud as a blast of wind in my ear, raising the hair on my arms.
Daughter!
Again, as softly as the light of the moon: Daughter.
Here I am.
Partaker of life. Knower of mystery.
Mystery? I have so many questions.
You will learn answers.
Do not leave me! Stay with me!
I could hardly have stood it had it continued. I could not bear for it to stop. Faintly, and, I thought, with a longing I did not yet recognize as sadness, it came: Until the end of days.
I would see your face!
But I opened my eyes only upon the azure sky. Rolling to my stomach, I covered my face and wept.
I SLEPT BENEATH THE drooping sun, depleted but filled as I often was with the adam, if in a wholly different manner.
After a while
I ate sweet grapes from the vine, spitting out the seeds upon the ground. The adam, I knew, waited on the southern hill for me. I plucked several clusters to take to him. But when my hands were full, I sat abruptly back down in the place where I had lain, not wanting to leave.
I closed my eyes and laid down again, clutching the clusters of grapes, aware of the fish in the river below, the kite circling above, of every insect crawling politely over my ankle. Eventually, I realized I was no longer alone.
How lovely you are.
And you.
I did not need to open my eyes.
And how loved by the One you are.
I heard the unspoken voice like the silk of spiders’ webs, saw without looking the sun upon those scales.
Yes.
Are you sated?
Never.
Ah. That is how it is with the One. He made us to crave him, don’t you know?
I lifted my head and blinked at him in the lengthening sun. Indeed?
Of course. By design, all of creation longs for him.
I reminded myself that the serpent had been made prior to both the adam and me. Perhaps that explained the strange sense of his tenure here, as though he had lived a vast lifetime before this.
He preened beneath a wing.
Then it is well for us that he should satisfy.
As always, your logic is impeccable. He stopped, tilted his head. I see glimpses of the One in you.
“Truly?” I said aloud, surprised.
You are like the One, beautiful and wise.
But so are you.
Ah, but I am not so privileged as you, for you were made in the image of the One. So you see, you are more like God than I.
I thought about what he had said long after the adam came to find me, Adah at his heels. The serpent stayed with us, speaking of ordinary things, and I realized how remarkable our discussions were and how singular. I had them with no other creature save the adam, and the serpent had them only with me.
We stayed there after the serpent left, watching the stars emerge from the depths of the darkening sky.
THAT NIGHT, BENEATH THE adoring light of the full moon, the sight of my adam struck me as a thing of immeasurable beauty. I thought of my dream of him, of that first gasp and the inflation of those lungs crafted to exhale words, rumbling laughter, sighs of pleasure. In light as luminescent, nearly, as twilight, I ran my fingers from his shoulder to his thighs. I kissed the mouth that first devoured divine breath. I savored that neck as though it were nectar. Let me shun food forever. There would be only him—the salt of his sweat and pleasure would fill me.
That night, beneath a diaphanous curtain of stars, we strove as though we would meld into the single being we had been, until we were no longer male and female but one creature. There was no grass beneath us, no valley below us, and no earth—no other life upon it but ours, enrapt, alone with the mind of God.
When it was over and we lay exhausted, it was deep night. I curled over, almost onto my knees in the low grass of the terrace, and the adam curled around me. Sometime before morning, he carried my leaden limbs toward our bower in the hills, but then, changing his mind, took me to the river to lie with me beneath the fig tree.
How I wish now that I had fought to stay awake. That I had gazed at the stars, counting the gems of my stellar crown, the brightest of which bore the ineffable name of God.
How I wish I had done that.
Or that I had gone to sleep and never wakened.
THE FRUIT
6
A day does not go by that I do not think of that moment—that handful of moments, that hour—that I lay upon the terrace in the vineyard, my arms open as though to the sun itself, the voice of the One reverberating with that sound that is both roar and whisper at once. A day does not go by without remembering that night with Adam or how I thought to myself, This is how the stars felt upon their creation.
We woke once before the dawn. Sticky as overripe fruit, we slipped into the river, our arms always about one another, entwined as our toes skimmed the river bottom, our hungry mouths finding no food but each other. We washed up onto the grassy bank downriver, not caring where we were, only that the ground was soft beneath us. There we dozed, sodden with pleasure. At some point before dawn, the adam called Levia to warm us.
Let me remember that morning as it was: the crisp air as night stole silently away, the creatures once frenzied by darkness meandering toward bed, the silence broken by birdsong when even the insects had gone to their bower.
I woke with Levia’s heavy head against my shoulder, the adam’s breath rumbling deep in his chest beside me. I stroked back the hair from his face, traced his mouth with a finger, thinking of the murmurs that had escaped those lips so much like two halves of a fruit just ripening.
He stirred, and I pressed him back. “I will bring you food,” I whispered against his cheek. It was taut as the skin of an apple beneath my lips.
This is where I would end my story. Where I would say that we ate and then lay like that forever . . . where I would return in my mind as one does to a birthplace to dwell before dying.
I am the water suspended upon the fall, the unceasing sun upon the grass. I am . . . I am . . .
It is no use. The waterfall cannot halt upon the cliff. The sun cannot deny the night.
I planned to go to the grove but wanted to wash first. I plunged into the river. It was lovely in first light, near silent before the day. I floated, water flooding my ears with the strange language of every animal that dwelt within it. I closed my eyes and gave myself over to the current, drifting in a world that seemed to say, Be at peace; know that I Am. And again and again, I Am.
By the time I opened my eyes, the sky had paled. Overhead the fading stars were captured in the leafy net of a tree. A sugary scent more tart than the apricot and more cloying than honey wafted out over the water. I stiffened.
I knew that scent. I knew that tree.
I stood up in the shallows, startled to find myself at the edge of the island, the smell of that fruit filling my nostrils with sweet nectar and dew.
I loosed leafy flotsam from my hair, dwelling between two worlds: the one inhabited by the sleeping adam and contentment and the other inhabited by that tree.
How I wanted to inspect it more closely! Perhaps, as long as I did not touch it . . .
No. I turned away just as a glimmer of strange sun glinted through the thicket of that modest shrub growing near the base of her more spectacular sister.
The serpent.
He preened, his head craned over his back as he rustled beneath a feathery scale. I felt a rush of pleasure at seeing him, as memories of the One—and yesterday—returned to me.
He straightened and cocked his head at me. Daughter of the One and of man. Even unspoken, it was as smooth as a cat’s purr.
How lovely you are. I meant it with all my heart; he seemed more stunning than the sun. And I was more in love with the world than I had ever been, from the strong current of the river to the fading stars, to the lark’s eggs newly hatched upon the hill. If the serpent was pleased, surely it was because he mirrored every pleasure of my own, my joy in every aspect of this life.
I climbed up onto the bank, hair dripping down my back, and, seized with sudden joy and intoxicated by the bouquet of that fruit, twirled, my arms lifted to the sky.
He said nothing as I staggered on the grass, clasping myself with a sigh, and I realized I could not ascertain at all what he was thinking; it was as though he stood behind a veil. What—I had dreamed the explosion of the cosmos yet could know nothing of his thoughts? How clever he is, I thought, wanting to know how he did the trick.
I can do it because I have learned a new way of things, he said at last.
I want to know it.
He paced before the splendid tree so that I found myself measuring the beauty of them both . . . and then of the tree itself. How fine were its leaves, shaped like the laurel’s, tapered to their fine point. How lov
ely that fruit, the color of persimmon and saffron, so like fire and the setting sun. Every one of them was ripe, not a one was green on the stem or fallen to the ground anywhere I could see. They were near to bursting with juice—I could smell it—and at the peak of sweetness. They were exactly as before: pristine, unchanged. . . .
Waiting.
My stomach lurched and gurgled. I considered the smaller shrub and its dark berries—so plain! Still, I could gather some of those. But if I picked enough to satisfy the adam and me both, I might brush up against that tree—the very one he had bid me not even touch. Even if I managed not to touch it, I had no basket, no way to carry the berries across the river.
I was reluctant to leave, but there was nothing for me to take back from here.
Why do you go when you are clearly famished? He quirked his head at me, his brilliant comb standing straighter.
Surely you know I cannot eat from this tree.
The black eye blinked. God has really said that you must not eat from any tree in the garden?
I cut him off with a short gesture. We may eat from any tree but this one. The One has said, “You will not eat of it, nor even touch it, or you will die.”