Havah (6 page)

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 lovely 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.”

The adam and I had pondered the death many times since the day he brought me here. But despite our musing about an end of life and our search for evidence of death among fallen and decomposing fruit and the compost of leaves and the refuse of our industry, which we gathered together to enrich the soil, I understood the death less well than the explosion that had filled the universe at its incarnation. In fact, every evidence of degrading life seemed only to point back to the sustenance of the living so that I grasped the idea of the death less and less the more I meditated upon it.

I sensed the remote stirring of the adam, rousing from sleep. I had meant to have food waiting for him by now—had planned, in fact, to feed him and rouse him once more to pleasure. Yet here I loitered near the forbidden tree. I turned to go.

You will not die the death.
The serpent clucked—an odd sound coming from him.
The One knows that on the day you eat it, your eyes will be opened.

I hesitated. The river seemed more lively from this vantage. In fact, everything seemed more vibrant and beautiful here. “They are open now,” I said aloud.

Not as a god’s, knowing good and evil.

I stood very still.

God knows very well that the day you eat it, your eyes will be opened.

To know as God. Was it possible? Good I knew. I knew it as well as the earth was gorgeous, as I had known the adam in all the ways that are both good and mighty. But evil—

—
Is a thing known to God. Well, and to me, of course
.

I squinted at him.

Death. Evil. To know as a god, the serpent said. Had I not craved all things of God, all knowledge?

I lifted my eye again to that tree. This time, instead of seeing the fruit bursting with juice upon it, I saw the answer to every unknown thing, the satisfaction of a craving deeper than hunger.

I couldn’t remember anything so beautiful.

The adam was coming. He was coming, drawn to this place because I stood upon it, knowing every thing that transpired here with me.

Perhaps he would stop me.

How have you known all of this?
I said to the serpent.

You might say that I ate this very fruit a long while ago.

And there he stood, very much alive. Indeed, he was more cunning than any other animal.

The adam alone had received the statute concerning this tree, in a time before me. It was the adam who had told me not to eat it, the adam who had said I should not even touch it. The remnant—always the remnant—of a conversation held between the adam and the One in the quiet tones of lovers, without me.

I thought back to the vineyard, to the rapture of those moments with my head flung back and my arms wide, the sun and God bright upon my face. Surely all things on earth had been made for our pleasure. I was filled with the assurance of the beloved to whom every good thing is entrusted.

The serpent disappeared within the bush and emerged on the trunk of the tree, bright claws clinging to the smooth bark. He leapt to a low-hanging bough and, without preamble, sunk his teeth into one of the fruits. Crimson oozed from the wound. I could smell it, the scent more intoxicating than pomegranates or plums. How delicious it must be! And how staunch and beautiful the tree with its emerald leaves, its branches curved out to invoke the sun!

Now I knew what I would not allow myself to think before: that the beauty of every other tree in the garden paled in contrast to this one. Every wild and generous provision of our valley seemed a pittance against the lavishness of this one and what I might gain from it. I, who had been told not even to touch it!

The adam was near. He did not call out, he did not need to. I felt his eyes upon me as keenly as the newly risen sun and knew that he could hear and sense and smell it all, that he hungered as surely as I, possibility having opened to him again like the throat of an exotic flower.

Yes, I say “again” because I knew then with a remnant of some sense beyond my own that he once stood in this very place in a time before my creation.

He emerged from the river to stand dripping upon the bank, as still as one in a trance.

“I know now,” I said. Inexplicably, tears fell from my eyes. “How it was before. I know.”

“Can you?” His eyes were wild.

“Are we so different, you and I?”

“No,” he said, closing the distance between us, pulling me roughly against him. “No.” His hands were in my hair, his mouth twisting against my cheek, the words torn from his heart:
Flesh of my flesh.

It came in a torrent the moment he touched me: the moment he had stood in this very place a day, a month, a lifetime before me. How he had held the fruit in his hand until the scent nearly maddened him. The way he had fled across the river to fall upon the bank and shrouded the memory of it in shadow ever since.

“Waking beside you, realizing what you were—ah, how grateful I was!” He held me tight against him, as though he would press me back into himself. “In creating you, the One gave me back a part of myself—a way by which to learn anew every joy, independent of this tree, so fixed in my consciousness as though it had sent its roots through my mind every night as I slept! Even after I brought you here, there was relief. Now I had another with whom to contemplate the meaning of this thing, this death. Another possessed of the same cravings, longing as I for the thing that was not to be taken: to see through the very eye of God!”

I clasped him, loving him more in that moment than ever in my life. “The serpent has said we will not die,” I said. The look in his eyes was like fever.

“We are one flesh. We will live or die the death together.”

“Then let us know all things,” I said, very softly. Around his head the refracted light of the sun seemed suddenly everywhere.

The fruit was warm. It fit perfectly in my palm, its skin so taut that a tooth or nail might split it all the way round. I plucked it with a soft snick of the stem.

I turned to the adam with wonder. What did he see in me now? I had touched it. Was I now like God? Had I died the death? His breath quickened, and I felt his excitement like arousal, the possibility of the unthinkable like adrenaline. I was heady with the idea of this act more singular and exquisite than that which we had performed through the night.

The fruit seemed inordinately heavy, a growing weight, in my hand, nearly unbearable, and I knew I must lift it to my lips and eat or drop it to the ground forever.

Our eyes met as I raised it to my lips.

“Wake,” I whispered, so softly that I knew he heard it only in my thoughts. He might have stopped me.

He didn’t.

I ate.

I, who had come second, went first. I, who had followed in the steps of every living thing before me, walked ahead.

Perhaps my hand trembled as I held it out. Perhaps I already knew. Either way, I ate and then gave it to him.

He ate.

That is it.

We fell upon the tree like hungry locusts, never knowing when the serpent left.

We shared them between us, throwing one away before we finished it, plucking another if only to take a single bite, licking lips and fingers—our own and each other’s. I had wanted him earlier. I claimed him now. We fell together, the night renewed between us by day, twining in the sunlight the way we had in the darkness.