“Yes, I am like them, but it doesn’t matter. It’s what we are now. Did you see how my milk began to flow when I felt their hunger? As if my body knew to obey them. And they are so small. Look at them. Arrogance is useless.”
“Is that what the Serpent told you?”
“Something like that. She doesn’t fully comprehend what’s happened, either. She likes to pretend she knows, but it’s difficult to decipher what she says.”
The girl’s eyes were open. They were gray. She was covered in a whitish, greasy substance; her features astonishingly fine and perfect. The skin and hair of the boy were darker. His eyes were also gray. Without gills or scales, how could they have survived so many months floating in the thick water of her womb? Such mystery! she thought.
After the twins had their fill, Eve asked Adam to wash them. He did so with care, so as not to frighten them. The little female had lighter hair; the boy’s eyes were fixed on him. He washed the tiny hands, the feet, the minute buttocks. He cleaned their faces, examined their diminutive ears, their nostrils. He put a finger into each mouth, felt each tongue.
Eve watched him, curious and amused. She felt filled to the brim with milk; filled were her breasts, her heart.
“We must give them a name,” she said.
What would she and Adam be like if they had been born so small? she wondered. No one had ever washed them, or looked on them with eyes so moist, so gentle.
CHAPTER 20
THE NEXT DAY IT WAS RAINING LIGHTLY. ADAM LEFT the cave, accompanied by his dog, Cain. He could not stop pondering the mystery of the little creatures that had emerged from the dark tunnel in which he had more than once thought he would disappear. Eve trembled when she reached her innermost laughter. For him, to capture that trembling was to breathe again the air of the Garden of Eden. Now he wondered if instead he would remember the pain he had seen in her face, as her body shook and squeezed to expel the fruit of the seed he probably had helped grow, watering it with the liquid that came from his penis. But trees never wept at birth. Plants surged silently from the ground. In contrast, life had burst from her like a cataclysm. He didn’t bleed, his body didn’t change, and nothing about the birth had hurt him physically. Why not? Why only Eve? What did it mean?
He walked down to the river with the intention of throwing out his net to catch some fish.
The wet earth shook its back, scattering water in thin streamers that formed small deltas in the reddish mud. Cain and Adam moved with sure steps, hopping among the puddles, breathing in the intense scents. Suddenly Cain stopped. He pricked his ears and growled. Through the underbrush, Adam glimpsed a small bear, a cub looking at them with curiosity. He scolded Cain. After seeing the animals surround Eve, he had imagined that things would again be like the days in the Garden. He was concerned about the small animals he would still need to hunt, but he had convinced himself that they were there because they were destined to serve as food. He moved toward the cub, paternal, friendly, soothing voice. The cub did not move. Adam was about to reach out and pat its head when he heard the sound of a large animal crashing toward him in an uproar of branches and leaves. The mother bear was racing toward him. Confounded by the sudden return to distrust and aggression, Adam leaped to the nearest tree and began to climb, terrified. Grunting, infuriated, the bear followed. Adam felt its claws rip the soles of his feet. His skin ached and so did his heart. Jumping in to defend him, Cain attacked the bear from the side. The dog was strong, short muzzle, solid, rounded head. Surprised, annoyed by the interruption, the bear slapped the dog into the brush with one paw. Cain attacked again. The bear stopped. From the tree, Adam shouted, “Careful, Cain; leave it, Cain.” The dog was nipping at the bear’s legs and claws, unable now to go against instinct and retire. The enormous animal, enraged, fell upon the dog. The last thing Adam saw was Cain’s neck in the jaws of the bear, as it jerked him from side to side. Cain’s growls turned into sharp yelps of pain; a long, sad, horrifying moan was the final sound Adam heard before the bear dropped the lifeless body of the dog at its feet and lifted its eyes toward the branch where he was crouching.
The man was not sure how he killed the bear. He remembered the beast’s odor, its claws red from Cain’s fresh blood, its monstrous strength, and he also remembered the infinite power of his rage, the rock he had used to crush the bear’s face, eyes, and snout.
He was bleeding. He was clawed, bitten, but alive. Nothing that wouldn’t heal. On the other hand, Cain lay on the ground, the loyal, alert gaze now gone from his staring eyes. Adam came to himself. He did not know what beast he had turned into. A beast capable of killing a bear with his bare hands. His body shook as if lashed by a gale. He knelt. He touched the dog’s forehead, his ears. He was cold, limp, his head swinging from his trunk. Adam picked him up and clasped him to his breast. He had seen the remains of other animals, what the tigers and lions left. When he saw them, he thought of nothing but eating them. He never gave a thought to how they had died, or what kind of lives they had lived. There, with his dead dog, he thought of all those things. Death was always the same, but his dog was different. He knew Adam. He knew what Adam was thinking. He protected him. He licked his hands, curled up beside him and warmed him at night. He was distinct. Adam slipped to the ground with his dog. He remembered him playing. He wept. He covered his face with his hands and let loose his grief.
He buried Cain. He skinned the bear. He went to the river and washed off the blood. He went back to the cave.
“I know what we will name the boy,” he told Eve. “We will call him Cain.”
Eve did not like what she saw in the man’s face. She had loved the dog, too. She cried over him. She would miss him, but she didn’t like the sound of the name Cain when Adam said it would be the boy’s.
“I think we should give the boy a different name.”
“No, it’s a good name.”
“But that one will always make you sad.”
“I will get over it.”
“You killed the bear,” said Eve. “You brought back its skin. It frightens me. Such a huge animal. I didn’t think it was possible.”
“Nor I. And I can’t explain how I did it. I could have done anything.”
“It enraged you and you punished it.”
“Yes.”
“Elokim also condemned us to die.”
Death. His lifeless dog. The dry snout. The opaque eyes. The lolling head. When Adam buried him, he was cold, stiff. In one instant, everything that had been Cain had disappeared. What remained of the dog now existed only in him, in Eve, and in the drawings on the walls of the cave. They were dust and unto dust they would return. Would others someday know where on Earth Eve and he had been laid to rest, where their recently born children? Who would remember them? How would anyone remember them? He recalled his dream about the trees with human heads, how they broke away and fell. It made little difference that more and more men and women would be born to life. They would all die. One after the other. The dry snout and opaque eyes. Cold. Stiff. Like Cain. And yet every day they would feel the hunger, the anxiety to survive. He was amazed to see how avid the twins were at Eve’s breast. Such desire to live in every animal, every plant, as if death didn’t matter, as if it were not real.
His rage developed into a fever that lodged in his groin. Eve’s body radiated the brightness of the milk that flowed from her breasts. In the darkness of the cave, asleep with the children on the black bearskin, her skin glowed, reflecting the golds and oranges of the fire and revealing a new, inviting roundness. She held back his impulse until she no longer feared he could hurt her inside. Then she celebrated with him the novelty of her waist, recovered from the sea. At night, when their bodies came together, Adam often remembered the strength that had destroyed the bear, and he feared his hands on the woman’s delicate bones. In addition to setting the lines of her body more firmly, maternity had brought her the awareness of a power in her that was beyond physical strength. She knew that Adam perceived it, and tha
t this was why he never tired of searching her inner being, and seeking refuge in her dark, moist shelter.
So it was that not very much time went by between the birth of the twins and Eve’s premonition that she was hosting new creatures. The waves of another sea were swishing within her. She remembered that the Serpent had told her the experience would be repeated. Although it was not her will, she thought that the body must have its reasons. This time, unlike the first time, she was not afraid. The pain had soon been forgotten. It had been erased by the amazement of seeing those frail beings beginning to become themselves, and by the enigma of how they could be so unpredictable and yet so strangely a part of her. Their wailing, their hunger, and their cold were a part of her. And yet no part of her had been lost. Lying with the children as they nursed, she often found peace. Sky, river, Nature folding and unfolding before her eyes, the night and its myriad lights, the mysteriously enclosed sea, the sun, moon, trees, animals, all contained a happiness that because it was so tenuous and threatened was not abundant. To see her young ones react to her counsel and caresses and recognize her, to see the jubilation in their eyes and their little hands when she came near, made it increasingly difficult to think of herself as the victim of an arbitrary and disproportionate punishment.
Part 2
GO FORTH AND MULTIPLY
CHAPTER 21
ADAM LOOKED AT THE CUTS ON THE TREES. THERE were many now. The bark on nearly all the trees along the path from the cave to the river was scarred with slashes. He did not know how to count, but it was enough to look at all those wounded trees to know that this land they were living in was consuming his life with every cut. As if that were not enough, time’s passing was marked on the bodies of their children. That was how Eve counted the days: watching them grow.
And now they were grown, although they were not yet mature. Abel and Aklia were newer than Cain and Luluwa, but the difference was imperceptible. The time it took for the four to walk, talk, and fend for themselves seemed interminable while it lasted, but now Adam missed it. It had not been easy to teach them the ways of life. None of them had been able to walk without first crawling on his or her knees. Attempting to stand, they fell and bruised themselves. None of them seemed aware of what could happen to them in rocky places, or near the cliffs. He and Eve had to lead them by the hand. He remembered how their backs used to hurt after bending over all day to prop them up as they took their first steps. They could not take their eyes off the children for a minute. What the children lacked in dexterity they more than made up for in curiosity. They were like their mother. They wanted to touch everything, but they didn’t know that fire burned and that it was easy to harm themselves. Eve said that this was because they had no knowledge of Good and Evil. She gave them figs to eat, but these had no great effect. Adam could not understand why the children were so ignorant. He tended to believe that since Eve and he shared characteristics with animals, it was possible that their children resembled animals even more than they did. The cat, however, never dirtied the cave with its excrement, but the little ones urinated or defecated wherever they felt like it. Only after a tenacious struggle did they learn that that they were supposed to go outside, and always cover their excrement with dirt. They had begun to seem more alert only when they started to talk. At first it was difficult to understand them. Before their brothers, Aklia and Luluwa were able to say what they wanted. It was a time of laughter for Eve and Adam. They split their sides as they listened to their children’s words for water, cat, breast. But later, when all four were spilling over with talk, they realized how different each was from the others. They learned that they could teach the children how to live but could not domesticate them.
Eve’s fear of winter, and her fear that her milk would not be enough to feed the four, was the goad that transformed her intuition concerning the Earth and its fruits into sound knowledge. Around the cave were growing almond and pear trees, grapevines, wheat, oats, and edible roots. Cain and Luluwa had inherited their mother’s skill at identifying vegetables and herbs. It was they who tended the garden, while Abel, who from the time he was small had demonstrated a knowledge of animals, had domesticated nanny goats for milk, and sheep whose wool Aklia wove so that they could clothe themselves without having to kill.
Eve did not feel nostalgic about the twins’ early years. She did not, like Adam, lament how swiftly they had grown. He said that it seemed he could still see them when they had just dared to stand on their own, how they used to stumble and plop down, how he had looked at them half amused, half frightened. Eve treasured those tender images but she was happier now that they looked after themselves. She had not forgotten the consuming fatigue of the time when the children had not let them draw a breath, always clinging to them possessively. While she and Adam were learning to cultivate the land and to provide themselves with shelter and food—so that Adam did not have to go out and leave her alone with the impossible task of looking after four tiny, defenseless beings—they had lived the lives of herd animals, moving from place to place with the children straddling their hips. The first winters they’d had to shelter in the cave, for days and nights living in a world of babbling in which words resolved nothing and instinct was their only sure guide. Adam tolerated the change of routine better than she, but he abandoned his long explorations and hunts because the thought that something might have happened to them always made him race back. He came to the conclusion that it was better to be hungry together than to take the risk that the dangers of the world might keep them apart. For Eve it was difficult to adapt to seeing her body converted into a source of food for four pairs of eyes that required her to lie down and offer her breasts. Ashamed of her own emotions, she never confessed to Adam that she had often wanted to escape, to run away from them. Ever since he had witnessed the birth and learned that her body was capable not only of creating children but also of feeding them, he had considered her a marvel. Elokim had given her so much power, Adam said, that by making her suffer blood and pain he probably thought he would prevent her from defying him. Eve did not contradict Adam‘s interpretation. She admired Adam’s gentle tenacity, the dedication with which he applied himself to the tasks he was constantly creating for himself, the satisfaction he received from controlling and understanding the world about him. He was willful, however, and persisted in doing what he wanted without regard for the effect his action might eventually have. It was difficult for him to be patient, to observe the natural course of events, to let them develop according to their inclination or wisdom. He was always in a hurry. For that reason, although he understood the cycle of the fruits of the earth, he preferred hunting, the immediate, the things that brought the swiftest rewards for his efforts.
Eve, on the other hand, perceived what happened around her as if she were able to see through more eyes than her own. It was no effort for her to hear inside herself what others might be thinking. In the time it took her children to reach adolescence, it seemed to her that her skin had grown ears and that her eyes had developed a tactile sense that allowed her to perceive the narrowness or intensity of her children’s feelings. She read their attitudes and gestures with a skill that often surprised her. To have come out of herself, to have multiplied, had mysteriously opened for her the secret languages of life. She intuited even the humor of plants and trees and sky. Even so, she could not figure out whether, like her, her children possessed the knowledge of Good and Evil; whether they would lose their innocence without eating the forbidden fruit; or whether, innocents that they were, they would learn to exist in the world of unanswered questions in which in order to eat and survive, it was necessary to kill.
In the life they’d settled into, Abel and Adam were inseparable. The same was true of Cain and Luluwa. Eve spent most of her time with little Aklia. When Aklia was born, Adam had wept when he saw her. The births had been quick and without event or portent. She and Adam were alone, confident in what they knew. It seemed less painful to Eve. That may have been because she
knew what to expect and was prepared to suffer. Abel was the first to appear. Darker than Cain, larger. Strong lungs, open eyes. After a long pause the pain returned. Eve expelled Aklia, a tiny little creature, eyes tightly closed, face covered with dark fuzz, round forehead, lips too large. Adam cut both cords. He wrapped the creatures in soft foxtails. Adam walked Aklia around the cave. He took her over to the fire. He looked at her and said that she looked like a monkey, not a human being. Aklia shed the facial hair shortly after birth, but the small face; the features grouped together in its center, below heavy eyebrows; the broad, prominent mouth; the sparse, limp hair, black as wet wood, remained. Her eyes were beautiful, however, small but shining. Aklia also had the most perfect hands and feet of all their children. She was clever and skillful. She knew intuitively what use things could have. She made needles from bone, she stitched skins, she wove the sheep’s wool. Her agility and small size were an advantage. No one could equal her in climbing trees, bringing dates from the tops of the palms. Eve protected her and spoiled her to compensate to some degree for the inequality of the gifts she had been allotted at birth. Although her siblings were larger and more handsome, to Eve Aklia seemed stronger, and closer to the essence of all things around them.
For some time she and Adam had been asking themselves what Elokim’s reasons were for having Eve give birth to two pairs of twins. Go forth and multiply, he had said, and there was no one besides them in the world. Cain would pair with Aklia and Abel with Luluwa, said Adam. In that way the blood of the two births would be mingled. It was not good that blood shared in one womb should mix. Elokim had told him that in a dream in which Adam had seen himself again in the Garden. A confusing dream, he said. The Garden looked old and ruined. He could barely walk around because of the mud and all the tree trunks lying on the ground. A moist, whitish vapor floated among the branches of the gigantic trees from which pale ferns streamed like tousled hair. Climbing vines with enormous toothed leaves were choking out the big cedars, and light barely filtered through the patches of open sky in the middle of that vegetal, swampy chaos in which species were crowded together and entangled in what seemed a mortal struggle. In the middle of his aimless walk, Adam saw Aklia crossing from branch to branch, followed by a gorilla with painfully sad eyes. He saw Cain following her, trying to topple tree after tree as she escaped the club he was using to hack at the limbs and trunks. He saw Abel sleeping, and Luluwa sitting beside him with her hands over her face. He spoke to his children; he ordered them to go home, but they did not hear him. They were very close, but it was if they were far away. Then, to his terror, the gorilla had spoken with the voice of Elokim: “Abel with Luluwa, Cain with Aklia. Bloods must not be mixed,” he had thundered. Adam had awakened with the sound of those words echoing through the morning light.
Infinity in the Palm of Her Hand: A Novel of Adam and Eve Page 12