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

by Belli, Gioconda

  She got up and started back toward the center of the Garden, toward the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, where the Serpent would be waiting.

  CHAPTER 4

  THE SERPENT’S SMILE WAS SWEET AND IRONIC WHEN she saw Eve emerge from the dense vegetation.

  “You’re back very soon,” she said.

  “Are there other gardens or is this the only one?”

  The Serpent smiled. “May I ask to what a question like that is owed?”

  “In the depths of the river I saw strange images that seemed more real than you or I or all this. I felt that it was my responsibility to make them exist.”

  “And what do you think you must do to make that happen?”

  “I must use my freedom. Eat of the fruit.”

  “You’re not afraid?”

  “Elokim wants me to do it.”

  “That isn’t what he told me.”

  “I know that, and I don’t understand it.”

  “Perhaps he fears your freedom. The culmination of the creator is to create his own challenge, but one never knows what Elokim intends. You can’t say I didn’t warn you. You could die—although I admit that it would be absurd for Elokim to destroy you so soon.”

  “I will not die. I know. He wants me to do it. That is why he made me free.”

  “You can decide not to do it.”

  “No. That would be too easy. That is no longer possible. I must have knowledge.”

  “You have to know.” The Serpent laughed. “He truly did make you in his image and likeness. He is the one who knows everything.”

  “And the one who is afraid of knowing. But I am not afraid. I have seen too many things. Why would he have me see them if not to understand them and dare them to exist?”

  “Maybe so you would accept that it isn’t possible for you to understand everything.”

  Eve pondered that. She had crossed the meadow under the attentive gaze of the buffalo and the elephant that had begun to follow her. When she reached the center of the Garden and stood at the foot of the Tree, she saw that many animals had followed her, at once alarmed and fascinated. She looked all around. She wasn’t even sure that she would have the courage to do what her conscience dictated, but she had no alternative. The entire Garden was waiting.

  “First I will touch the tree. We will see if it’s true that it will cause my death.”

  “Look at me. I am leaning against it, and nothing has happened to me. It is not so easy to die.”

  “I saw death and I did not like it. What will I feel if I die?”

  “You will feel nothing. That is precisely the problem. You will never feel anything again. Death has a terrible simplicity.” The Serpent smiled.

  Eve hurried. Her hands were sweating. It seemed that the air had stopped moving. There was barely enough to fill her chest. She held out her right hand. She felt the vegetal skin of the Tree against her right palm. She wiggled her fingers. She heard the throbbing of her body, ready to burst. She closed her eyes. She opened them. She was still standing in the same place. She was alive. Nothing had changed. She was not going to die, she thought. She would eat and she would not die. Emboldened, she walked to a low branch and took one of the dark fruits in her hand. It was soft to the touch. She put it to her lips. She felt the sweetness of the fig along the length of her tongue; the smooth flesh spilled honey among her teeth. The ephemeral white petals that fell, light as foam, from the sky seemed no more than insubstantial matter compared with the penetrating juice and aroma of the forbidden fruit. She bit down. She felt the fragrance spread inside her. Pleasure from her taste buds reverberated through her body like an echo. She opened her eyes and saw the Serpent, still in the same position. The animals. Everything just the same. Greedy for more, she took another fruit. The nectar dribbled down her chin. She yielded to euphoria. She threw one fruit, then another and another, to the animals, defiant and content. The animals merged together. One by one they came toward her and drank the figs’ juice from her hand. She wanted them all to eat; she wanted to share the new flavor, the sensation of for the first time doing what her body asked her to do. Not only had she not died; she felt more alive than ever. She heard the Phoenix swooping above her head. She called to it. She held out a fig. The bird did not descend. It flew away. In the distance she heard its sorrowful call.

  Leaning against the trunk of the Tree, the Serpent stared at her without altering her usual ironic, composed expression, keeping her distance from the frenzy that had seized Eve and the animals.

  Adam knew what it was the moment he heard the sound of revelry in the distance. His body stiffened. He walked faster. He feared he would find himself alone again, without a companion. He feared he would get there and find Eve struck down by Elokim’s fury. He began to run. As he ran, a cold emptiness bored into his side. Without the woman, he would not be the same, he thought. If she, who was bone of his bones, flesh of his flesh, disappeared, he would wander incomplete and desolate. He had almost no past, and what he did have was filled with her.

  Eve saw him coming. She trembled when she saw he was running toward her. His skin was covered with gleaming sweat. She noticed his strong legs, the thrust of his feet, his look of alarm. She crossed her hands over her breast. She faced him.

  “I did it,” she said. “I did it and I did not die. I gave the fruit to the animals and they did not die. Now, you must eat.”

  She held out a ripe fig. The man thought that she had never before looked at him like that. She implored him to eat it. He did not want to think. She was his flesh and his bones. It was not in him to leave her alone. He did not want to be left alone.

  He bit into the fruit. He felt the sweet juice moisten his tongue, the soft flesh catch in his teeth. He closed his eyes and was struck dumb by the pleasure of the sensation.

  He turned to look at her. Her back was to him. The arching curve of her waist lifted her handsomely round buttocks. He wondered whether if he bit them, they would taste as sweet as the fig. He reached out to feel that perfect roundness, amazed that he had never before noticed the exquisite softness of her skin. He pulled his hand back but the sensation lingered on his fingers, so strong and clear that it made him shiver. Eve turned, and he reached out again and touched the curve of her breast. The woman stared at him, long and hard. Her eyes were opened wide.

  They heard the thudding hooves of the animals. They saw the herd of elephants milling about, the buffalo, the tigers, the lions. The air was filled with endless guttural sounds, howls, incomprehensible laments.

  Adam looked at Eve. He experienced his first confusion.

  Eve was staring at him. She wanted him to stop looking at her as if now that he had bitten the fruit he was thinking of biting her, eating her. She put her hands over her breasts.

  “Stop looking at me,” she said. “Don’t look at me like that.”

  “I can’t help it,” he said. “My eyes do not obey my will.”

  “I will cover myself,” she said, tearing leaves from the fig tree.

  “I as well,” he said, aware that, like him, she was not able to take her eyes from his legs, his hands, as if they were new to her.

  Eve looked for the creature of the Tree of Knowledge. She did not see her anywhere. She began to call her, until she saw her overhead, near the top of the tree.

  “What are you doing there?”

  “I’m hiding.”

  “Why?”

  “Soon you will know. Soon you will know everything you have wanted to know.”

  CHAPTER 5

  THE MAN WAS WALKING WITH LONG STRIDES. EVE hurried along behind him. He said that they should hide and wait for whatever was going to happen. He was frightened. She, on the other hand, was waiting for knowledge to be manifest. She tried to convince him that they should go look instead for the Other and tell him what they had done, ask him to tell them what more they had to do. How would they know Good and Evil? Was merely having eaten the fruit enough for them to tell one from the other? And if they did
not recognize them? Look, I have only done my part, she argued. Now Elokim will have to do his, teach them all that they could be. But Adam did not want to listen to her. He had followed her to eat the fruit, he told her. Now she had to follow him. As they walked on, branches snapped and birds flew up from the trees. The earth smelled like rain. The Garden was still vibrant and unharmed. Light from the trees shed gold among the vines and trunks and foliage. No sound came from the animals. The man was barely speaking. Eve looked at his back. From his waist hung the fig leaves he had tied together with a vine. Eating the fruit had awakened a strange hunger in her. Hunger for sweet juices, for running her lips over Adam’s skin. Her senses were keenly aware of the air, the leaves, and she wanted to touch everything with her hands. Adam said nothing, but she watched how he was examining the details of the path and stopping to sniff the air. He had looked at her as if he needed to brush against her, know her with the awareness of a newly discovered body.

  Adam did not want to tell the woman what he was feeling. He hadn’t as yet found a way to explain it to himself. Ever since he’d bitten into the fruit, nothing he did had coherence. His bizarre vitality was a wall between him and tranquillity. He was conscious of the weight of his bones, the flexibility of his muscles, the revealed design of his movements; he perceived the earth, the dust, the moisture on the soles of his feet. He could not decide whether he preferred this new sentience over his habitual serenity, whether he preferred the slow pace of his existence over the determination and clarity of purpose that now were leading him to the slit in the rock he had discovered during one of his explorations. As never before, he knew what he wanted, but fear restrained his exuberance. He was sure of one thing. He and Eve had not died. Could it be true what Eve thought? Could Elokim be relieved?

  He guided Eve through the purple passion flowers that fell in clusters over the partially hidden entrance. She slipped nimbly through and emitted an admiring exclamation when she stepped inside the cave and saw its walls of quartz. The rose and crystal of the minerals glowed, lit by the sun filtering through an opening high in the wall of rock. From the depths of the cave came the sound of running water. It was a beautiful place, she said, walking toward the back as far as the limits of the light. It would be more difficult for the Other to find them there, he said. If he knows everything he will find us, she said. At least we are at some distance from the Trees and the Serpent. But I can assure you that he will not kill us. Since he put us here, he has to have known what would happen. If the consequences were irreversible, he would not have created us. How could she be so sure, he asked, that the Other would not return them to nothingness once he realized they had acted against his wishes? The only thing Eve was sure of was that the Other was not that simple. It was enough to see his work. Everything that surrounded them was continually changing. The plants, the animals. As if each creature were but the beginning of other, different, more complex ones. I asked you, Adam, if we would have a reflection. And I saw it. In the river. Many like us will people the Earth, love, produce their own creations; they will be complicated and handsome. Adam smiled faintly. I hope so, he said. He dropped down on the fine gray sand of the cave floor and held out his hand to take hers and help her sit beside him. He put his arm around her shoulders. Eve snuggled close to his chest. They had sat that way many times, gazing at the river, the meadow, the rain in the lush jungle, but this time the need to be together, to have their skin touching, had a peculiar intensity. Eve buried her nose in his chest. She breathed in his scent. He put his hands in her hair and sniffed her in turn.

  “It’s strange,” she said. “I am wishing I could get back inside your body, go back to the rib you say I came from. I am wishing for the skin that separates us to disappear.” He smiled and pressed her closer to him. He wanted that, too, he said, touching his lips to her shoulder. He would like to eat her the way he had eaten the forbidden fruit. Eve smiled. She took Adam’s hand and one by one guided his fingers to her mouth, pushing them inside, sucking them. His salty skin still held the flavor of the forbidden fig. He watched what she was doing with fascination, registering on his fingers the warm, juicy heat of her mouth, like an ocean mollusk. Could Eve have the ocean inside her? And did he as well? If not, what was that tide he felt suddenly rising in his groin, that spread from his legs and burst in his chest, making him moan? He withdrew his hand from that unbearable sensation and laid his head in the curve of Eve’s neck. She lifted her head and sighed, and as she did her neck arched. He saw her closed eyes, and gently ran his hands over her breasts, awed by the smoothness, the color, the feel of the small rosy aureoles that abruptly grew hard beneath his fingertips, just like the taut skin of his penis that suddenly, as if moved by a will of its own, had lost it habitual lassitude to rise up like a disproportionate finger and unequivocally point to Eve’s belly. She, her body tense, gave in to her desire to lick Adam all over. Soon, on the floor of the grotto, they were a sphere of legs and arms and hands and mouths among moans and muffled laugher, pursuing, stroking, exploring each other, slowly, marveling at what their bodies suddenly unfolded, the hidden moistness and unexpected erections, the magnetic effect of their mouths, lips, and tongues joining together like secret passages through which the sea of one exploded on the shore of the other. However much they touched, they could not sate their desire for more. They were sweating profusely, burning in their ardor, when Adam was struck by an uncontainable impulse to release the torrent rising from his center into Eve’s body, and she, at last gifted with knowledge, knew that she must open an inner path for him, that it was toward there the surprising extremity that had suddenly appeared between Adam’s legs was pointing. Finally, one inside the other, they experienced the rapture of once again being a single body. They knew that as long as they stayed that way, they would never again know loneliness. Even if words were to desert them and silence fill their minds, they would be able to lie together and say things to each other without speaking. They thought that this was undoubtedly the knowledge the Serpent had told them they would possess when they ate of the fruit of the Tree. Rocking together, arms around each other, they returned to nothingness, and their bodies, unbounded, were created anew to mark the beginning of the world and of History.

  CHAPTER 6

  FOR THE SECOND TIME IN HIS LIFE, ADAM SLEPT. IN his sleep he saw an immense sphere bristling with spikes. The spikes were straight, upright trees. From each tree emerged the waist, torso, and head of a half-formed man or a half-formed woman. Each of these half-tree, half-human beings had clinging to its outstretched arms other men and other women, who formed the tops of that vast humanoid forest. One by one they were breaking off. They cracked and split and fell to the ground, expelling long laments. Adam flew above the throng of staring faces impotently contemplating him; their voices rang out in his heart, disconcerted by the terror of an end they could not comprehend. Adam flew on. He could not stop that circling flight; he could not stop the crashing of the dying trees.

  He awoke trembling. He sat up beside Eve. He woke her. Outside he heard the vengeful, antagonistic roar of the wind. The Earth was convulsing. He thought that it must be the faint throbbing with which it sometimes declared itself alive, but he was troubled by the hostile energy with which they were being shaken; it was as if the Earth were attempting to rid itself of them. Eve looked at him with alarm. The cave where only recently they had lain in such happy reveling was being pummeled by a gigantic fist. Pieces of crystals and rosy quartz were breaking loose, shattering into bits when they fell. They were assaulted by hostile rocks and dust. The world of cataclysms and strayed comets whose noise had from time to time filtered into their evenings suddenly erupted beneath their feet. Adam, Adam! Could it be because we ate the fruit? I too saw our descendants, he yelled; they will live but because of our guilt they will die. One by one they will be broken off and they will fall, he moaned. He tried to get to his feet, to walk, but he was unable to find his balance. He fell again and again. Pieces of rocks kept raining down;
the walls of the cave were bursting open. A dark cloud of dust enveloped them, forcing them to close their eyes. Eve buried her head in her arms. Like Adam, she tried to walk, and also like him, she fell with each attempt. Now they would die, she thought. Everything the Serpent had foretold would come to pass. Crawling, Adam succeeded in moving forward a short distance. He told her to do the same and follow him. Like an animal, she thought. On all fours like an animal, she followed. The Earth did not stop roaring, stop rocking and swaying. A large rock fell on Adam’s leg. He yelled with pain, and she went to him and was able to free him from it. His leg was bleeding. They had never seen blood. They examined the wound. Fiery red was running in a small stream across his skin. We must get out of here, said Adam. They had to get out before the walls of the cave collapsed. My eyes, thought Eve, are so wide open they’re burning. I’m afraid. Crawling, dragging themselves, they left the cave. Outside, the sky was dark; gray dust fell over the Earth, a solid rain that hurt the skin. They could barely see the chaos, the disorder in the Garden, the animals racing about, bawling and bleating. They heard the crash of uprooted trees, the terrible din of disaster that suddenly transformed them into small, vulnerable creatures, fragile and terrorized. A few meters away the earth opened along an invisible crack. Eve closed her eyes and yelled as loud as she could, thinking that the sound of her voice might calm the furor of the irate spirit intent on destroying everything. Adam squeezed his fists and told her to be quiet. It was Eve, he thought. Eve and her curiosity. He dragged her along the ground, as far as possible from the precipice that, with a deafening roar, was forming along the fissure. Pushing and crashing, the ground tore apart, split as if an invisible, all-powerful ray had cut through it, carving out a wide chasm. Eve did not want to see what she was seeing: the Garden moving off beyond their reach, rejecting them. When the ground stopped shaking, she saw the Garden of Eden recompose itself on the other side of the broad, deep abyss. She saw it return to its placidity and its golden light, like a strange island in the Earth. The Garden, she exclaimed to herself; she had never thought they would lose it, never thought that they would be left outside, separated, excluded.