Infinity in the Palm of Her Hand: A Novel of Adam and Eve

by Belli, Gioconda

  Adam, who had kept hidden, observing her, moved closer when she circled the great round trunk and disappeared behind it.

  Even when he heard her, he still could not see her. He wondered whom she could be talking with. Until then, they had not come across any other creature that could put into words the sensations of the body. The cat, the dog, and the rest of the animals communicated in elementary melodies. If hearing her intrigued him, seeing the tree reproduced in an identical image with inverted colors left him stunned. Carefully, not making a sound, he followed the murmur of her words. He saw her seated on an enormous root that sank into the earth as if it were one of the extremities of what he imagined might be the reflection of how the Tree of Life thought of itself. Perhaps instead of talking, he told himself, the tree sees what it imagines. He was about to step out into the open, around the broad trunk, when he heard a voice. He thought that the Other had finally allowed himself to be seen; but then he was assailed by doubt. This voice did not sound like the disembodied one whose murmurs he knew, the one that light as the air had the quality of resonating inside his chest. This was like liquid slipping along the earth and dragging stones as it went. He heard its laughter. It laughed like the woman. It said:

  “So! You noticed that we were observing you. How perceptive of you! And you have devoted yourselves to looking for us? Excellent! I suspected that would happen, but I am happy to know it was so. We could not resist the desire to watch you. It has been very entertaining.”

  “You are not alone, then? Do you have a companion too?”

  “Companion? Me? Mmmm I never thought of it in that way.”

  “But there is someone else, besides you?”

  “Elokim. He is the one who created you.”

  “The man says I came out of him.”

  “You were hidden inside him. Elokim placed you on one of his ribs. Not inside his head, so that you would not know pride, and not in his heart, so that you would never feel the desire to possess.”

  Those were its words. Adam kept listening.

  “What is there beyond this Garden; why are we here?”

  “Why do you want to know? You have everything you need.”

  “Why would I not want to know? What does it matter if I know?”

  “Only Elokim knows the reason for everything that exists. If you should eat of the fruit of this tree, then you would know as well. You would be like him. You would understand the reason for all things. That is why I am here, at the foot of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, to warn you not to partake of these fruits, because if you do you will loose your innocence and die.” The creature smiled maliciously.

  Eve wondered what this creature was made of. Her skin was different from theirs, iridescent and flexible, composed of small scales, like the scales of fish. She was tall, and her body, curving and graceful, flowed into long, flexible arms and legs. Two golden, sparkling, almond-shaped eyes protruded from her smooth, almost flat face, and the straight slit of her mouth was fixed in an expression of ironic complacency and composure. Instead of hair, her head was covered with white feathers.

  “Elokim prefers that you remain tranquil and passive, like the cat and the dog. Knowledge causes disquiet, nonconformity. One ceases to be capable of accepting things as they are and tries to change them. Look what he did himself. In seven days he drew from Chaos all that you see here. He conceived the Earth, and created it: the skies, water, plants, animals. And last, he made the two of you: a man and a woman. Today he is resting. Eventually he will be bored. He will not know what to do, and again I will be the one who has to soothe him. That is how it has been through Eternity. Constellation after constellation. He conceives and then forgets his creations.”

  Hidden behind the tree, Adam followed the dialogue between Eve and the creature, filled with curiosity. His chest felt tight and his breathing was rapid. He remembered murmurs from the Other warning him of something about a tree. Do not go near it. Do not touch it. No clear explanation of why he did not want them to do that. Until now the only obligation that made sense to Adam was that he was to accompany the woman, though she could easily care for herself. The same was true of the Garden. The plants grew and adapted in their own way without his intervention. The tone of the creature that was talking with Eve sounded vaguely familiar. It was the tone he had used to question himself about the designs of the Other. It was similar to the sound of his impatience when he tried to understand the reason for being.

  “So you think that it’s that simple,” Eve was saying. “I bite into the fruit from this tree and I will know everything I want to know.”

  “And you will die.”

  “I don’t know what that is. It doesn’t worry me.”

  “You are very young for it to worry you.”

  “And you, why is it that you know all this?”

  “I have existed much longer than you. I told you, I have seen all this created. And not even I know what its meaning is. Elokim creates infinite permutations from nothingness. He gives them great importance.”

  “But not you?”

  “I find it a futile exercise not entirely devoid of arrogance.”

  “Do you think we are a caprice of the one you call Elokim?”

  “In truth, I do not know. Sometimes it seems to me that it is. What meaning does your existence have? Why did he create you? You will eventually be bored in this Garden.”

  “Adam believes that we will work the land, and that we will care for the plants and the animals.”

  “What is there to care for? What labor is there to be done? Everything is done. Everything functions perfectly.” The creature suppressed a yawn. “Adam and you, however, unlike all the other creatures of the universe, have the freedom to choose what you want. You are free to eat or not to eat of the fruit of this tree. Elokim knows that History will begin only when you use your freedom, but you know already that he is afraid you will use it; he fears that his creations might end up being too much like Him. He would rather contemplate the eternal reflection of his innocence. That is why he has forbidden you both to decide to be free and eat from the Tree. It may be that freedom is not what either of you would choose. You see, the very idea paralyzes you.”

  “It seems that you want me to eat this fruit.”

  “No. I merely envy the fact that you have the option of choosing. If you eat of the fruit, you and Adam will be free like Elokim.”

  “Which would you choose? Knowledge or eternity?”

  “I am a serpent. The Serpent. I told you that I do not have the option to choose.”

  Eve looked at the tree. What would change if she bit into one of those fruits? Why believe what the Serpent told her? And yet, she did not dare take the step to test it. She looked at her hands, moved her long fingers one by one.

  “I will be back,” she said.

  CHAPTER 2

  LYING IN THE SUN AFTER A SWIM, THE MAN AND THE woman both withdrew into themselves. What can Adam be thinking? Eve asked herself. What can Eve be thinking? Adam wondered.

  But neither of them was able to penetrate the thoughts of the other. Resting on the grass, they watched ants constructing an underground nest, carrying small leaves on their backs and marching in an orderly file toward the hole in the ground that would be their refuge. All around them the greenery was dazzling, interrupted here and there by bursts of color from flower-laden branches and bushes. The two rivers that cut across the Garden divided into four tributaries. They were lying on the bank of the quietest of these, one that flowed from a higher elevation. The slopes along its course were studded with enormous, polished, gray-green boulders that forced the current to slow, grow calm, and sing as it ran among verdant conifers and a blanket of ferns with large toothed leaves. Eve breathed in the scent of growing things and felt the warm breeze blow over her delicately and pleasurably, drying her body. Adam, too, had abandoned himself to the sensation of the wind, the Garden’s smell of vegetation, the sounds from the huge black bear playing on the opposite
shore. Overhead, the trees were murmuring in their leafy tongue. On one low branch, a canary was cleaning its feathers with its beak. From time to time there burst from its throat a high, brilliant melody that seemed to contain the essence of every living sound.

  What had the Serpent meant when she stated that history would begin only when they used their freedom? Why did she say that she was envious that they could choose? Why would she say they should not eat from the Tree of Knowledge if at the same time she was urging them to do it? What was her connection with the Other? What was the Other afraid for them to know? Eve could not answer that riddle. Above all else, she did not understand why this Elokim had decided to entice her as he had. Why lead her to the tree, imprint in her bones the way to find it, reveal its presence in the center of the Garden? If it had not been for her, Adam would never have gone there. He would never have seen those trees. He himself had told her so when he admired her curiosity and the intuition that had guided her to them.

  She looked at Adam, stretched out on the grass with his arm folded over his eyes, his chest rhythmically rising and falling. He was a large man, tall, and the lines of his body were simple, straight, devoid of curvature; only the swell of his muscles had any resemblance to the roundness that predominated in hers. She wondered whether Elokim had carved him from some slab taken from the mountain, and whether he had made her smaller and softer in order not to cause the man pain when he took her out of him. Had he modeled her thinking of the shape of a fruit? A hill? She would have liked to know.

  Adam thought it was almost possible for him to hear what she was mulling over. What could he do to keep her away from the Tree? Docility was not in her nature. The best thing about her was her inability to stay still, the vivacity with which she examined and questioned everything from the start.

  It rained. Along with the rain came the white petals that fell from the sky to nourish them. He taught her how to pull a leaf from the banana tree and hold it open until it was spilling over with petals. After the shower a rainbow appeared. It looked like a bridge between heaven and Earth, he said, though he had never seen anyone cross it.

  “Why is it that the creature at the tree, the one called Serpent, has seen Elokim and we haven’t?” Eve wanted to know.

  “Strange that she named herself,” Adam said thoughtfully

  “You don’t think that she is Elokim?”

  Adam looked at her, astonished that she could think such a thing.

  “But why couldn’t she be? She seems to know everything the Other thinks,” Eve insisted.

  “Maybe she is his reflection.”

  “You said that we are his reflection.”

  “You mean, the way that the Tree of Knowledge is the reflection of the Tree of Life?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “But if we are his reflection then the Serpent can’t be. She doesn’t look like us.”

  “So we will have our very own reflection?”

  “I don’t know, Eve. You ask a lot of questions I cannot answer. I will continue to look for the Other. You stay here. Do not talk with the Serpent anymore. Try to calm down. You seem agitated.”

  Eve went to the edge of the water. Her feet led her downstream. The water in the river was clear and among the rocks glittered the scales of multicolored fish. One large red fish with black and white spots around its mouth was swimming with determination toward a bend in the river where the water looked very quiet. Eve followed it. She climbed up on a black stone that jutted above the pool and sat there to watch the fish as it moved swiftly in the depths of the river without disturbing its calm. A bubble rose from the bottom of the pool, and from out of nowhere came an enormous eye that opened its eyelashes and looked at her, and as it did allowed her to see through its crystalline iris a succession of dizzying and fascinating images. She watched herself biting into the fig, and then, evolving from that seemingly irrelevant incident, came a gigantic spiral of ephemeral and transparent men and women who multiplied and spread across magnificent landscapes, their faces alight with a myriad of expressions, their skins reflecting shades from the gleam of wet tree trunks to the pale petals of the rhododendron. Around them swirled shapes and forms, unnamed objects among which they moved with aplomb and without haste, inquisitive and curious, as they unveiled a multiplicity of visions that in turn split into bottomless depths, strata of incomprehensible symbols whose meaning they debated in an onslaught of confused sounds and harmonies whose echoes nevertheless resonated inside Eve, as if by not knowing them she knew them. In the accelerating spin of these succeeding cycles, she saw them, hidden and confused, burn and twist, light and extinguish terrible conflagrations from which they emerged again and again. Their faces were tirelessly renewed, repeated in the incessant motion of that animated and cacophonous multitude spilling across never-seen lands, unknown places, gesticulating, displaying emotions that rippled or floated on the water that reflected them, emotions in which she perceived the same thirst for knowledge that consumed her, as well as profound currents and perplexities she would have liked to be able to name. To peer into that energetic and unrelenting tumult, to glimpse the unknown spaces, to hear the murmur of her blood respond to a vulnerable and shared destiny, inspired in her a tenderness and a desire deeper than anything she had known until then. Curiously, the last image that emerged before the water stilled was so placid and clear that she wondered whether it was she herself realizing she was still in the Garden, or whether the mystery at the end of it all was the possibility of going back to the beginning.

  History, Eve said to herself. She had seen it. That was what would begin if she ate of the fruit. Elokim wanted her to decide whether or not it existed. He did not want to be responsible for it. He wanted her to be the one to bear that onus.

  CHAPTER 3

  EVE RAN TO LOOK FOR ADAM. SHE DID NOT FIND him in the meadow, where he liked to teach the dog to obey and to intuit his thoughts. She did not find him in the lush jungle, or back on the bank of the river. Weary, she stopped and sat down on the grass. She looked around with nostalgia, as if she were seeing a memory. She saw greenness, water, and blue mountains.

  What was the difference between the images she had seen in the water and others that often were revealed to her as she strolled through isolated areas of the Garden, alone, without Adam’s presence at her side to stand between her and her imagination? Adam said that the fabulous creatures that appeared to her where the golden light barely filtered through the dense vegetation were visions: women of water playing with butterflies with tiny human faces and long manes, birds discussing the world with animals that had human torsos, enormous leaves on which hieroglyphics appeared and disappeared, gigantic creatures that fed on the dense clouds they tore from the sky, the lizard that spat fire as it followed a body so long that, even though its own, it attacked as if it belonged to another.

  Unlike those iridescent, evanescent visions, the ones she saw in the river were strong, clear, their reality more forceful than that of the Garden itself. She had been allowed to see them, she thought, not merely to share in the all-enveloping gaze that came from within Elokim, but to experience the abundance of life that filled him in such profusion that it overflowed and was transformed, perhaps mocking his will, into creation bursting from a wish before he had time to repent. However much this life might defy him, he must be fascinated to witness the destiny of beings that, perhaps moved by what the Serpent called freedom, contrived to go against and live outside his creative will. This could be the reason why he was inciting her to bring that other world into existence. His curiosity to see those beings creating and destroying themselves and each other might be as irresistible to him as it was to her.

  The man would think that she had seen visions induced by the Serpent to motivate her to disobey the command not to eat of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. He would not believe her when she told him that unless she dared disturb the tranquillity of the Garden, uncounted creatures would not otherwise exist. They themselves wou
ld end up simply as the dream of an ingenious dreamer who imagined free creatures and then confined them to live as flowers or birds.

  Her nature refused to accept that the only purpose for Adam’s and her existence was to be lulled in the contemplation of that eternity in which tranquillity had of late been changed into tense expectation, with the alert gaze of the Other constantly on her. The Serpent was mistaken in believing that when they bit into the fruit of the Tree they would be like Elokim. Just the opposite. They would cease to be like him. They would separate themselves from him. They would initiate history, do what they had been created to do: they would found a species, they would people a planet, they would explore the limits of consciousness and reason. Only she, using that freedom, could provide Elokim with the experience of Good and Evil he so desired. It was so they would take creation in their own hands that he had made Adam and her in his image and likeness.

  But since Adam had not seen what she had been allowed to observe, he would not understand either the Other’s games or her determination. Asked to choose, perhaps he would opt for the immutable eternity of the Garden. She would have to do it alone, she told herself. She sat in a quiet place beside the pool to listen to the bubbling of her ideas. Doubt and determination were opposing currents rising and falling in her body. When she closed her eyes she could see the river’s images. Why should she be the one to discover what was hidden behind the Other’s prohibition? Why was she the one chosen to shatter the mirage of the Garden? Who are you, Elokim? Where are you? When will you show us your face?