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

by Belli, Gioconda

  They did not have to consult each other to know that they would wait there until the Garden disappeared completely. Awed by the spectacle, they found a place among some rocks, fluctuating between amazement and consternation. Ribbons of color fluttered in the wind, breaking into vertical lines of changing hues; from the tops of the trees, flocks of birds rose into the sky, scattering in all directions; the male and female Phoenix left, flying toward the sun. Their magnificent iridescent red and gold wings caught fire in the distance and filled the air with flames. Eve had the clear sensation that time had stopped. She did not know if it was because everything was happening at a dizzying pace, while they and everything around them held their breath. Even the insects the dead rabbit had attracted seeming to be floating in the air, immobile. Adam’s movements, as he fanned them away with a handful of wheat, seemed to her exasperatingly slow.

  “Eve, do you think we could go in one last time? The precipice has closed over.”

  “There’s nothing left of the Tree of Life but the roots. Elokim will know that we can no longer eat from it and live forever,” she replied.

  “I don’t want to die.”

  “What did the rabbits do when you killed them?”

  “They struggled, but afterward they were quiet.”

  “Maybe that is all there is: struggle and then quiet.”

  “And afterward, will there be another Garden?”

  “And what would we do there with the knowledge of Good and Evil we have acquired?”

  “I don’t know, Eve. I don’t know. Do we try now to go in once more? I would like to go in.”

  They approached with caution. They were afraid they would be harassed by the whip of fire. Only a few solid traces of the Garden remained. Nothing hindered them. They walked among silhouettes of trees and plants. In the reverberation of the air there were still traces of certain aromas, even the song of birds. Color, like foam, clung briefly to their skin. The Garden was saying good-bye, licking them like a dog.

  In the spot where Adam remembered waking with Eve at his side, they found three small plants whose roots were still locked in the soil. Carefully, they took them up to carry back and plant, thinking that beneath their shade they could again have the illusion of being in the Garden of Eden.

  They went to the center of the Garden, to the site of the Tree of Life and Tree of Knowledge. The bands of color were now above their heads, forming a dense string of intense bright green lights. Beautiful, said Eve. Beauty. That is how it is called. She was happy at having found the right word. She had looked for it more than once in the world of her exile that little by little was capturing her with its violent dusks, its plains, its rivers. Beauty appeared if the eye knew to recognize it. Perhaps it existed even in death. Perhaps death was not so bad. She shook her head, looked at her hands. Her hair and her fingernails had grown. How long would their lives last outside the eternal time of the Garden?

  CHAPTER 14

  THE WALK BACK TO THE CAVE WAS SLOW, SPIRITLESS. It was true that for a long time the Garden had been inaccessible to them. But they had known where it was. They could see it, even if from afar. That knowing was a strange consolation. It marked a point of departure, their origin. As the Garden disappeared, they were left to the mercy of remembered images, memories that over time they would confuse with dreams. Adam walked ahead. Eve hung back, sunk in her meditations. Once more she recalled the Serpent’s words: “He grows bored. He creates planets, constellations, and then forgets them.”

  She had just been thinking of that when she heard the hissing voice calling her. She looked toward where a faint cloud of dust was rising. The Serpent was hurriedly dragging herself along to catch up.

  “He didn’t take you with him? Did he abandon you, too?” Eve asked.

  “He wants to be alone. I think he’s sad. But he is the one responsible for that. He creates his own mirages. Look how he made you in his own image and likeness but did not dare give you more freedom than that of knowing your limits. Although I must say that—except for me—there are very few I have seen him share so much power with. The Earth belongs to you and Adam now. You can re-create it, define Good and Evil as you please.”

  “As we please?”

  “He won’t be around. He will not live day by day the way you live; he will not be able to whisper into your ears all the time.”

  Eve was pensive.

  “We will have to learn to recognize Good and Evil. We ate of the fruit of the Tree.”

  “Aha.”

  “Eating animals, killing them, is that good or evil?”

  “That Adam is hungry, is that good or evil?” the Serpent asked with irony.

  “He could eat other things.”

  “He believes that it isn’t good to eat nothing but fruits and nuts. It doesn’t satisfy his hunger.”

  “Other animals kill, too. The cat and the dog.”

  “And they know nothing. Good and Evil are extremes. There are many stages between them.”

  “You’re confusing me.”

  “It’s a confusing matter. It’s the search that you wanted to undertake.”

  “To me, killing to eat is not good.”

  “Don’t do it. Convince Adam.”

  “I’ve tried, but he insists.”

  “Insist more.”

  “It would be pointless. Hunger is anguishing, and punctual, like the sun and the moon.”

  “Stop, then. Don’t judge him.”

  “But it will have consequences.”

  “You decided to eat from the Tree. That, too, had consequences. Now go. You’ve lagged behind. Adam is looking for you. He worries when he doesn’t see you.”

  Back in the cave, Eve curled up into a heavy sleep that stayed with her for many days. In her world without a past, and almost without memories, her dreams were repeated without ever being the same. Elokim, the Serpent, the Phoenix, the rabbits, oranges, berries, the sea, death; eating and being naked, one inside the other. Adam did not want her sad drowsiness to stick to his skin. He left her dreaming and busied himself. He went to the bank of the river to look for the fine plants with thin, flexible stems. With the thorns from a shrub, he made holes in the dry rabbit skins and passed the plant fiber in and out until he made a covering that would protect him from the intense pain that resulted when his genitals were banged around. To soften the skins, he soaked them in mud for several days. He had noticed that the dirtier the mud, the softer they became. Using the softest skins, he stitched something for Eve that would cover her shoulders, breasts, and genitals. He hunted more rabbits, and he hunted timid pheasants. He jumped into the river to catch fish, but they slipped from his hands. He gathered eggs from the nests of birds. He followed the river downstream, crossed to the island, and explored the place where Eve had found the oranges and berries. The woman was eating almost nothing. She talked aloud in her dreams and her stomach returned almost everything he urged her to eat.

  The fire and the odor of meat attracted other animals. The dog barked at night, and Adam heard threatening roars and growls. Eve did not want to see it, but now there were many animals that satisfied their hunger by eating one another. Adam searched for stones, chipped them, and with them dug the ground and at the entrance to the cave placed several rows of shafts to keep out unwelcome visitors. It astonished him to find within himself answers to the puzzles necessity confronted him with. He bound sharpened stones to long wood poles to increase his power. He tried to catch a pair of deer. He and Cain chased them, but they quickly outran the man and the dog.

  The full moon again appeared in the night sky, but Eve did not bleed.

  “My body is changing, Adam. Look at my breasts, how large and heavy they’ve become. And I am sleepy all the time, and everything I eat turns to poison inside me.”

  Adam refused to talk about those things with her. He pretended not to see any of the things she pointed out to him. What he was seeing frightened him, and he found no way to explain it.

  “You feel worn down
because you sleep so much. Come with me tomorrow morning. It will do you good to get into the river. We will try to catch a fish, or we will go back to the sea to look for oysters.”

  He showed her the garment he had stitched. She got up. She was dirty. She smelled. Her hair was tangled. She thought of the watery meat of the oysters and felt hungry. He had kept the fire burning. He was changing, too, she thought. He had stopped complaining; he had stopped having any hope. Without the alternative of the Garden, he had turned to the skill of his hands and to his own intuition.

  “You have been very busy.” She smiled.

  “I went to the other side of the river. We can go there together if you want.”

  “I want to get into the water of the river, but I would like to go to the sea.”

  He fed the fire. He put the stones he had been sharpening into a kind of pouch he’d made from another of the skins. Certain stones were very good for cutting, he told her. They started out walking. Adam did not know how to tell her how long she’d been sleeping. When the fig tree burned he had stopped making the notches he used to count the days, but he told her he had spent many nights waiting for her to come back from where she was wandering. In that time the air had grown cold and the leaves of the trees were falling to the ground, yellow and dry. Perhaps soon everything they’d seen would diffuse and dissolve like the Garden. The land certainly looked desolate. The greens were growing pale, and the light of the sun fell on them soft and mild.

  “What are the animals doing? Have you seen them?”

  “From a distance. They come near, but only during the night. Then I hear their formidable breathing outside the cave. I hear them but I don’t understand them.”

  “And does that make you afraid?”

  “I’m afraid they’re thinking of eating me, the same I’m thinking of them. If I could lay a hand on a larger animal, I wouldn’t have to go hunt rabbits or pheasants every day. It’s more difficult every time because I think they are on to the tricks I use to catch them.”

  “I don’t know how you do it. Does it please you to think you are stronger and cleverer?”

  “Yes, I know what I have to do, and that amazes me. I confront a difficulty and after thinking about it for a while, I suddenly know how to solve it. I see possibilities, I test them, and one of them always works.”

  “Then something more than killing moves you.”

  “Killing! That isn’t what it’s about. It’s about surviving. I am smaller than many animals, but I have an advantage because I can predict their movements. They, on the other hand, have no imagination. More than words, I think that is what makes us different from them. That and sadness, Eve. It pains me when I remember the animals walking with me in the Garden and I realize that now all I think about is eating them. It’s wrong of you to believe that it isn’t difficult for me.”

  “It’s cold outside the cave, Adam. Do you think the sun is going out?”

  “I think that when the Garden disappeared the world turned sad. I hope the sun doesn’t fade, Eve. We will have to make more offerings to Elokim so that he will take pity on us.”

  They came to the river. The vegetation on the banks was still intensely green. The water was darker and very cold. Eve sat on the grass and began to chew it. Chew, eat—soon she, too, would succumb to necessity, and to hunger. She would no longer judge Adam, as the Serpent had counseled. Which was worse, hunger or death? Her bones were floating in her body, and now they were visible beneath her skin. She could see the arc of her ribs, her protruding hip bones, her knees. Only her belly had swelled. There was nothing left to do but resign herself to existing the way all the animals did that ate one another. Even so, there were many that simply grazed. She, however, could not eat grass all day they way they did. Her stomach wouldn’t tolerate it. Green vomit was bitter, and inevitable after she ate the stems and flowers Adam brought to her because it was what he saw the deer and gazelles and sheep eat. She got up and went over to the water. Slowly, she slipped down into the current. With her arms crossed over her chest, holding her breath, she sank down into the icy water. The sensation was sharply painful but at the same time pleasurable. Her body folded into itself, but it also awakened; her blood flowed more swiftly. She gave a push with her feet and hands; she swam a little. Her long hair floated around her. A silvery fish approached and began to feed among the dark strands. It swam in and out as if these were the branches of a submarine plant. Other fish followed. Eve was suddenly surrounded by a mulititude of brilliant fish that darted around her without fear, brushing against her. Without thinking, she lifted a hand and ran her fingers along the back of one of the largest fish. The creature permitted it, and after swimming in a circle returned for more caresses. She tried taking one in her hand, and the fish lay quiet in her fingers. It was offering itself to her. It wanted her to catch it. She looked up and saw Adam on the bank, gesticulating, urging her to take the fish and throw them in his direction.

  She clasped the largest one firmly, holding it in the middle. With a swift move, she threw it in Adam’s direction, avoiding thinking, feeling the creature’s vital palpitations. Fish kept brushing against her, as if they wanted her to do the same with them. She took another. She threw it to Adam. She did that four, five times. She was shivering, numb with cold, moved by the mute, gentle ritual of the fish delivering themselves to her as if they knew she needed them.

  Adam had learned the secret of fire. He put dry twigs together and then struck two stones for a long time until a tiny spark leaped out and lit the wood. Eve looked at the five dead fish. She saw their open eyes. She held one in her hand and spoke to it, asking forgiveness. Then, mechanically, her eyes lost, she began to tear off scales with her fingernails, which had grown long and sharp, then handed the fish to Adam.

  She ate the white meat with her eyes closed. It was soft, sweet, like the petals of Paradise.

  CHAPTER 15

  SLOWLY, EVE RECOVERED HER STRENGTH. FROM THE mushrooms with intricate skirts that grew in the dense vegetation along the banks of the river, she drew the idea of knotting the fibrous plants to make a net for catching fish. When she ate them, she tried not to picture their agile fins moving in the current. In order not to feel guilty, she convinced herself that water creatures didn’t suffer the same death as land animals. She imagined that they traveled from one state to another with the same calm in which they passed their lives floating and swimming in silence. She dreamed that the fish she ate swam in her stomach, in the round refuge growing day by day in her belly.

  She wanted to go back to the sea. The memory of the oysters, the thought of finding the woman glimpsed in her dreams, the quiet lowing of the waves, the wish to walk alone and avoid the man’s insistence on going everywhere with her, possessed her mind. She waited till Adam went off one morning, and then she started walking.

  She liked the sensation of having nothing with her but her thoughts. She descended from the cave and looked at the mountain rising above it, rocky and steep to the peak, with bushes whose thorns she still remembered raking her skin. As she climbed down, she could see on the plain a flock of small long-necked animals with small horns. Goats, she thought. The creatures from the garden had scattered. Adam had told her that he’d seen elephants, giraffes, and zebras disappear beyond the horizon, moving as if, at last, someone had told them where to go. Some animals disappeared, and others returned from the stampede of the first days. Some did not mind being seen; others prowled in a crouch, like Adam, hunting creatures smaller or less ferocious. She thought of the hyenas but put them out of her mind in order not to become frightened.

  Across the plain, the mountains stood out in the calm, warm day. The green along the riverbanks was beautiful. To reach the sea, she would have to cross a wooded valley to the other side of the mountain, climb some hills, and then walk across a flat, desolate expanse where groups of palm trees grew. With luck, she would be back at the cave by dusk.

  She walked toward the open space on a slope of the mountain,
until she entered the woods. The land descended abruptly. She tried not to lose sight of the hill she would have to climb in order to see the sea on the other side, but soon she found herself among tree trunks and dense foliage. Unlike the forever-glowing light of the Garden, intervals of sunlight in the depths of the forest sometimes faded to dark shadow. The air smelled faintly of dampness, and her footsteps crunched on the leaves and stirred insects and small creatures that scurried away as she passed. Taking her time, enjoying herself, she stopped to look at centipedes, a lizard, a turtle with an orange shell.

  She wondered how much of eternity Elokim had needed to create all that, whether he had paid attention to the details or if the creatures he imagined, once conceived, had taken charge of inventing for themselves the best way to live in such different places. She was shocked that she hadn’t asked about such things in the Garden. She was aware of the placidity with which she had accepted everything that existed: she, too, part of a beauty that never questioned itself.

  She thought she had walked long enough to reach the hill, but she continued to go from dark to light, from light to dark. She attempted to locate the spot from which she had descended, calculating that she must be at least halfway across the valley. She looked around her. She thought she recognized certain trees by the climbing vines that grew on their trunks but realized that the perception was illusory, and that the trees reflected one another like one of those repeated dreams incessantly circling around the same thing. She started retracing her steps, thinking she would follow her tracks out, but after a short distance they vanished. She was not dispirited. She told herself that all she had to do was decide to walk in one direction and not deviate and she would get out of there. The valley was not very broad, and at some moment she would have to emerge. She walked on without stopping. Several times she thought she was approaching the end of the forest, but no. She was lost, she thought, furious with herself. Her fury turned into fear and despair when, after repeated attempts to retrace her steps or to try a different route, she noticed that the daylight was fading. She was hungry and thirsty. She saw a large, tall tree covered with small fruit. She pulled off a few. She studied them in the palm of her hand, and she recognized them. They were figs. Smaller and yellower than the ones from the fig tree by the cave, or the one in the Garden, but nevertheless figs. She sat down at the foot of the tree. She would rest, she thought. She would rest and eat.