“And what will we have to regress to?”
“I don’t know, Adam. I think that we will end up living in a pack. Maybe the future lies in Aklia. Maybe that is why you find her strange. Maybe she is the past that we never knew.”
“Aklia, so innocent.”
“And essential.”
“But she would still have to kill.”
“Cain killed.”
Eve said nothing.
Finally she said, “I mourn that son as much as this one.”
“Don’t you believe that we must punish him?”
“Punish him? I assure you that no punishment we impose will be as harsh as what he will suffer on his own. He will go away with Luluwa. I foresee it. I believe that, like you and me, they have already disobeyed.”
CHAPTER 30
IT WAS NEARLY DAWN WHEN CAIN RETURNED WITH Luluwa. He prostrated himself before Adam and Eve.
“I never meant to kill Abel,” he moaned. “I didn’t know the weight of my hand.”
“Get up,” said Eve.
Cain stood. Eve saw the deep circle on his brow. Crimson. Raw flesh. A burn.
“Who marked you?” Adam asked.
“Elokim.”
“How?” Eve asked. “Tell us.”
“Abel said that he would be a good father for Luluwa’s children, that I would be happy with Aklia,” he sobbed. “I told him that Luluwa and I were a single being and that neither of us could exist without the other. But he said that it was the will of Elokim that he should procreate with Luluwa. I struck him. I didn’t know that my blows would kill him. I hid. Then I heard Elokim’s voice. He asked me about Abel. He asked me about Abel! He who knows everything. I was enraged,” he wept. “‘Am I my brother’s keeper?’ I replied. He said that my brother’s blood had cried out to him. And he cursed me! The earth would never yield its fruit to me, he decreed. He would make me a fugitive who would wander through the world. I begged him, I prostrated myself. I told him that my punishment was greater than I could bear. The animals will slay me; those who come later will slay me. Then he made this mark on my forehead. They would see the mark and they would not slay me, he said. If they did, his vengeance would fall upon them sevenfold.”
Cain started to throw himself into Adam’s arms. He was sobbing, trembling. Adam pushed him away. Eve took him in her arms, but she could not make her heart embrace him. Cain left them.
Luluwa threw herself down. She beat her head upon the ground. She thought about Abel, about the body of Cain, which only days before she had felt so deep inside her. She thought about how she loved him, about the solitude that would accompany them and the loneliness they would have to live in. She wept with a weeping that ululated like the wind, as if a storm had taken possession of her and its lightning and thunder were destroying her.
Among them, they carried Abel’s body to the old cave, where he had been born. Eve cleaned the blood from his head. She remembered the first time she had washed him in the stream. How soft and pliable and warm he was when he had just emerged from her womb; how stiff and cold he was now. She let the air out of her lungs. She heard herself howling like a wolf. Her pain was untouched, like a new wound that nothing could heal.
Adam burned aromatic resins at his son’s side. They thought of burning the body on the bonfire so the smoke of the sacrifice would rise up to Elokim. Where were you, Elokim, when my children were killing each other? Adam cried out in silence. Luluwa begged them to put Abel in the ground. Since Abel had not had children, his body could at least become a tree and would sweeten the fruit. Adam imagined his son’s smile appearing among the leaves of a tree. Dust you are and unto dust shall you return. Fertile dust.
They had to bury Abel three times. The earth that had never known the death of a human, once, twice, returned his remains. They closed the hole and it reopened. It was not until the third time, until Adam and Eve prostrated themselves and asked the earth to receive their son, that it closed over Abel’s body and held him forever.
CHAPTER 31
CAIN HAD TO LEAVE FOR THE LAND OF NOD.
He said that was what Elokim had ordered him to do.
Adam refused to wait to see him leave. He returned alone to the cave without memories. He had only daughters left, he said. His two sons were dead.
Eve reproached his harshness. With his own hands, to avenge the death of his dog, he had killed a bear that was defending her cub. He knew the irrational rage of losing what he loved.
“May the time you dream of, Eve, the time without cruelty, come to pass.”
“Forgive Cain.”
Adam did not yield. She remembered having once wondered if Elokim had formed him of a slab from a mountain.
Eve stayed with her children in the cave of the drawings.
Cain and Luluwa barely exchanged a word. They prepared the tools and seeds and coverings they would take with them to the east of the Garden of Eden. Cain had discovered those lands in one of his wanderings. It was green, he said. Even if nothing sown by his hands gave fruit, Luluwa would not be hungry or thirsty.
Aklia had not spoken since the death of Abel. Curled up in the hollow of a rock, in the dark depths of the cave, she did not answer Eve’s calls. When Eve went near her, she saw Aklia’s sweet, terrified eyes. Her speech forgotten, Aklia also seemed to have lost reason and conscience in order to surrender herself with no misgivings to live as a simian. Eve watched Aklia closely. She barely slept, afraid that her daughter would go off with the troop of monkeys that prowled around the cave at night.
One morning, Eve observed Cain and Luluwa washing in the stream, preparing to set off for the uncertainty of their vagabond lives. She saw Cain’s hands and felt as if she were again touching the deep wound in Abel’s head. Without ceasing to love him, she wanted difficulties for him that would force him to humility and shame. She possessed the terrible knowledge of her son’s being; she knew the precise instant in which his branches twisted and his roots thirsted, never to be watered. She understood the origins but did not come to an understanding of the violence. That violence, especially. The violence that made him capable of killing his brother.
Luluwa sobbed when she bid Aklia good-bye, but her younger sister merely looked at her. Aklia lifted her arms, not to embrace Luluwa, but to touch her own head; her brilliant, tearless eyes fixed on her sibling with curiosity. Luluwa did not weep when she said good-bye to Eve. She was proud, reluctant to admit fragility. She protected herself behind her beauty, but, more than anything, she loved Cain and did not want to show any fissure between them in front of her mother.
Eve watched the blurred figures of her children growing smaller as they crossed the plain, and she missed Adam. She had hoped he would come.
Pain left her immobilized. Gradually her staring eyes focused on the cave with the walls covered with paintings. She thought of the trail those figures had imprinted on her heart before they existed on stone. Every rough or graceful symbol recaptured for her a part of her past she had wanted to save from oblivion. Because following Abel’s death, her whole being was open and unprotected, Eve recapitulated her uncommon existence without falseness or invention. She recognized that despite having been ripped from Paradise, she and Adam had brought much more than memories from it. It kept following them, circling and floating over their lives. They had never lost it. They would not lose it as long as its indelible traces were left drawn inside them.
The Serpent appeared one more time.
Before going back to Adam, Eve took Aklia to know the sea. In only a few days, her daughter’s hair had again covered her cheeks. The skin of her hands and her long, delicate feet had hardened, turning a dark tone. She seemed determined to let the night inhabit her. She walked holding Eve’s hand, docile and awkward, bereft of words. At times along the way, she dropped Eve’s hand and ran on her own, putting part of her weight on her arms. She was dazzled by the sea. Happy, she leaped about over the sand and covered her eyes with her arm to shield them from its splendor. Eve let
her play, and threw shells for her to pick up.
Eve sat down on the rock on which she’d dreamed she had seen a woman clothed in feathers, whose face had turned into her own. She heard the voice of the Serpent before seeing her.
“Look at little Aklia. The past and the future are running with her along the beach.”
“What do you mean?”
“She has returned to innocence, Eve, an innocence preceding the Garden, the antecedent to the Garden. History has jumped from you to her now, and a long, slow time is about to begin.”
“I don’t know if I believe you. Why Aklia? Why not Cain and Luluwa? Why not Adam and me?”
“We have all fulfilled our designs, Eve. Just as you have drawn the codes of your past on the walls of the cave, Elokim has drawn on us the symbols with which humanity will come to know itself.”
“And Aklia?”
“Aklia is Elokim’s reality. We are his dreams.”
“You said that in the beginning was the end.”
“The end for Aklia’s descendants will be to reach the beginning. To recognize it as the persistent memory of what they thought they would find in making and destroying their own history.”
“They will return to the Garden? And then what? Will they wonder what there is beyond it? Will they be bored?”
“Perhaps not. They will not suffer the blindness of innocence, the desire to know. They will not need to taste the forbidden fruit to know Good and Evil. They will have it in them. They will know that the only real Paradise will be the one in which they possess freedom and knowledge.”
“Do you think they will ever be truly free? Do you think that Elokim will allow them that?”
“Existence is a game to Elokim. If your species finds harmony, Elokim will move on. I believe that secretly he wants to be granted the gift of forgetfulness so he can be freed from the solitude of his power. With that he will be able to go on to construct other universes.”
“Will you go with him?”
“I will if your species succeeds in understanding the signs. I will go if it happens that he and I do not end up as victims of our own creations.”
Eve looked at the Serpent with sadness. As she watched, the skin of scales became covered with white feathers, and the flat face grew finer. Within a few seconds the soft, brilliant plumage covered the Serpent completely. Again, as in her old dream, Eve saw her face reflected in that of the creature, instants before the Serpent dissolved forever.
Eve called to Aklia. She took her hand and began the walk back to the cave. They left the scent of the sea behind. They crossed gentle hills. They spent the night embraced beneath a ledge of rocks. At dawn they descended to the thick vegetation in which Eve had been lost long ago. The gold of autumn illuminated the foliage of the oaks. Eve held Alika’s hand tight. Restless, Aklia looked toward the treetops. She made little leaps. She scratched her head.
Eve saw the troop of large, graceful monkeys swinging through the branches. Her eyes grew moist. How much I have lost! she thought.
Aklia released Eve’s hand. Before she let her go, Eve bent down and hugged Aklia to her heart. “Remember me, Aklia,” she said. “Remember everything you have lived. Someday you will speak again. Go now. Run, daughter, run and recover Paradise!”
Eve walked on alone. A light drizzle began to fall over the world. And then came the rain.
Managua–La Finca–Santa Monica
2007
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
AS I WROTE in the introduction to this novel, I owe the discovery of Adam and Eve’s lost story to a find I made in a library. The library belonged to Lou Castaldi, my father-in-law, an extraordinary human being who should have lived forever but who died two years ago, at age ninety-six. I want to believe his spirit is still hovering around us, and that somehow he will read these words. I want to thank him, not only for whatever made him own the books that fired up my imagination but for being an inspiration. Like Eve, he would have chosen knowledge over eternity. His curiosity and vitality brimmed over and were a joy to behold. I am grateful to life for allowing me to know him and be close to him.
I wouldn’t have met Lou had it not been for Charlie, his son, my husband, the father of our daughter Adriana and stepfather to Maryam, Camilo, and Melissa, my children. I have shared more than twenty years of my life with Charlie and we have sailed gales and calm seas, thanks to a love that has kept us mightily entertained, amused, and surprised at each other’s mutations. I thank him for tolerating my escapes into fantasy worlds inhabited by creatures whose voices and shapes populate my fiction. I thank him for keeping our lives forever varied and interesting, for cooking amazing meals, being a hands-on, steadfast father, and never trying to curtail my independence.
I want to thank some of the friends who offered me solace and solidarity while I wrote this book: Joan Peters, whose notes are always insightful and helpful; Margie Schroth, who made sure I was comfortable at the HF Bar Ranch in Wyoming, where I wrote the final chapters of this novel; to Maria Morrison, my wonderful friend, who is so generous with her encouragement and knows how to tell me the truth without depressing me; to Viviana Suaya and my sister Lavinia for their soulful support; to John Carlin, Ana Cristina Rossi, and my many friends in Nicaragua, for celebrating my choices and making me believe I had done something worthwhile.
I thank my kids for putting up with me. Each and every one of them is an inspiration for my life and my work. Each makes me proud. Bringing them into this world and raising them has made my life more meaningful, rich, and worthwhile.
I want to thank my translator extraordinaire, Margaret Sayers-Peden, “Petch,” for her patience, her good humor, her warmth, and understanding. Working with her was a joy and a learning experience.
I am incredibly lucky and blessed to have amazing editors: Elena Ramírez in Spain and René Alegría in the United States. Their support, advice, and enthusiasm for this book helped me give it my best effort. I thank my agent, Guillermo Schavelzon, for caring so much for my work and believing that yes, I can; to Bonnie Nadell, my U.S. agent, because even when she tells me what I don’t want to hear, she does it with grace and good humor.
About the Author
GIOCONDA BELLI’S poetry and fiction have been published all over the world. Her first novel, The Inhabited Woman, was an international bestseller; her collection of poems, Linea de fuego, won the esteemed Casa de las Americas Prize in 1978. She is the author of the award-winning The Country Under My Skin and The Scroll of Seduction. Infinity in the Palm of Her Hand won the prestigious 2008 Biblioteca Breve Prize. She lives in Santa Monica, California, and Managua, Nicaragua.
Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.
Also by Gioconda Belli
FICTION
The Scroll of Seduction
The Inhabited Woman
NONFICTION
The Country Under My Skin
POETRY
From Eve’s Rib
Credits
Jacket design by Jason Ramirez
Jacket painting: Eve, by Lucien Levy-Dhurmer © Erich Lessing/Art Resource, NY
Copyright
INFINITY IN THE PALM OF HER HAND. Copyright © 2009 by Itzy. Translation copyright © 2009 by Margaret Sayers Peden. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub © Edition SEPTEMBER 2009 ISBN: 9780061971358
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
About the Publisher
Australia
HarperCollins Publishers (Australia
) Pty. Ltd.
25 Ryde Road (PO Box 321)
Pymble, NSW 2073, Australia
http://www.harpercollinsebooks.com.au
Canada
HarperCollins Canada
2 Bloor Street East - 20th Floor
Toronto, ON, M4W 1A8, Canada
http://www.harpercollinsebooks.ca
New Zealand
HarperCollinsPublishers (New Zealand) Limited
P.O. Box 1
Auckland, New Zealand
http://www.harpercollinsebooks.co.nz
United Kingdom
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.
77-85 Fulham Palace Road
London, W6 8JB, UK
http://www.harpercollinsebooks.co.uk
United States
HarperCollins Publishers Inc.
10 East 53rd Street
New York, NY 10022
http://www.harpercollinsebooks.com
Infinity in the Palm of Her Hand: A Novel of Adam and Eve Page 16