Infinity in the Palm of Her Hand: A Novel of Adam and Eve (13 page)

I
T HAD BEEN A LONG TIME SINCE ADAM HAD LAID
poles across the entrance to the cave to keep animals from getting in and attacking them. It could happen any day, however. There were more of them now in the cave. They stored food; they cooked it. The scent of their lives floated far away. When food became scarce and the cold returned, they would be in danger. It was time to leave and look for a new refuge. There were lots of places in the rocky formations around them, but they needed to find one with a wide entrance, one they could dig a trench in front of. That would make them inaccessible. Only they would be able to get in by walking across the tree trunks they would pull inside at night. Not a new idea, Eve said. That was how Elokim had prevented them from returning to Paradise. The abyss. They would do the same.

Aklia and Eve found a cave that suited their purpose. It was wide, with a high ceiling and an opening in the upper part where the smoke of the fire could escape.

Cain found stout limbs whose tips could be used to dig the earth, and Adam marked the size of the hole they would dig.

Cain and Luluwa were strong. Side by side, they dug in unison, giving the work their full attention. Aklia and Abel tried to imitate them. Aklia had to quit. Abel did not give up. He wanted Luluwa to see that he was as strong as Cain, thought Eve, observing them. What did Elokim have in mind by making one of her daughters so much more beautiful than the other? Why did beauty have such power? She could see them, both Abel and Adam, follow Luluwa's movements, pause on the dimples high on her hips, her long legs, her arms, her breasts. It was impossible, even for her, not to admire the limber body, straightening and bending over to dislodge the scoops of dirt. Adam was conscious that Eve was resting beneath a nearby tree. He would look at his daughter out of the corner of his eye, and then quickly look away, ashamed of what he was thinking. Abel had no villainy in mind, but he could not hide his fascination. Eve watched as Cain suddenly stopped, took Luluwa's arm, and pushed her so she was in front of him. From where she sat, Eve could see her son confront his brother, threateningly. She saw Abel, surprised, look at his father. Adam told Luluwa to take a rest beside Eve. “I'm not tired,” she said. “Doesn't matter,” said Adam. “Go sit with your mother.”

Luluwa sat down beside Aklia, who was weaving a mat from vines. Solitary Luluwa. From the time Luluwa was very young, Eve had been aware that the air was lighter around her, like a wrap that isolated her from the others. She had been a beautiful little girl, but as she grew older beauty closed around her,
setting her apart, just as the precipice had separated them from the Garden.

There was nothing in nature, nothing in insects, landscapes, plants, to evoke the bedazzlement of the heart that Luluwa stirred without doing anything more than exist. She is more beautiful than you, Adam had admitted to Eve, telling her that he had never thought any other creature could come close to her in beauty. Eve, until very recently, had thought that Luluwa, like Abel, was gifted with an absolute and noble innocence incapable of imagining the complexities that tormented the others. It was easy to take as arrogance Abel's ingenuous belief in the innate good of the world, his inalterable happiness, his surprise when faced with what the others considered incomprehensible, questionable, even perverse.

In the Garden, the Serpent had told Eve that Elokim did not want to give them knowledge because he did not want them to lose their docility; he wanted them to be like the cat and the dog. That was Abel, a handsome, sweet, docile creature—simple as a child.

But Luluwa was not like him, however much Eve wanted them to think of her in that way. Luluwa was conscious of the power of her radiance. Exercising it was part of her being, of what made her feel she was different. Eve was not sure, however, that Luluwa was entirely aware of the effect she had on her brothers, and even on Adam.

Aklia covered herself with a tunic she had woven from straw and grasses. Luluwa wore a very small skin tied around her waist.

“You need to cover yourself, Luluwa,” her mother said.
“You are not a girl any longer. You disturb your brothers, and even your father.”

“It isn't my fault that I am how I am,” she said.

“I know that.”

“How is it that I look at them and I'm not disturbed? They need to worry about themselves.”

Eve fell silent. Luluwa did not often speak. When she did, it was categorical.

“Luluwa is right,” said Aklia. “Why do they get disturbed and we don't?”

“You would like for Cain to be disturbed by you, isn't that true, Aklia?” said Luluwa.

“Is that true, Aklia?” her mother asked.

“I have always felt closer to Cain,” said Aklia. “He is less perfect than Abel. I am less perfect than Luluwa.”

“But Cain is my twin,” said Luluwa. “He is mine and I am his.”

“Abel never even looks at me,” said Aklia. “Cain brings me fruits and nuts.”

“Abel looks only at himself. He doesn't need us. He doesn't need anyone,” said Luluwa.

“He is very good,” said Eve. “He is happy.”

“He never has doubts,” said Luluwa. “He never questions what he does. He and his animals understand each other perfectly.”

They were silent. The three watched the men, who were still digging.

Was it true that only the men felt aroused? Luluwa and Aklia were still very young to know, but Eve had felt the vehemence of her body when Adam cradled her in the night. It
was when he was close, however, that he had this effect in her. Just looking at him wasn't enough. Yes, she believed that Adam was beautiful, and she admired the massiveness of his arms, the breadth of his chest, and the strength of his legs; but it was his eyes, the way he looked at her, that would turn day or night into the propitious moment to shelter one inside the other, and in the midst of the solitude of their banishment know the consolation of being together. It was clear that the men were definitely more impressionable. Beauty, simply by being beauty, called to their bodies. Watching them look at Luluwa, Eve saw that there was distance among them, and that they were possessed by an instinct that impelled them to quarrel over prey. How to understand that beauty disquieted them rather than instilling in them a desire to celebrate it? She would have to ask Adam, Eve thought. Abel surely would not know how to answer. Or Cain. Was it Luluwa's beauty, or could there be another reason? The sun? The moon? Where was all this going to end? What would happen when Adam told Cain that Luluwa was to be Abel's partner?

Eve had a dream about the Serpent. The Serpent appeared as she had been before she dragged herself along on the ground. She was standing beside the tree, her golden skin covered with scales, her face flat, soft feathers on her head.

“Did Elokim forgive you?” Eve asked.

“He forgives me in dreams.”

“What does he dream?”

“He dreams that he has regrets. He is afraid.”

“What will make us happy?”

“Restlessness. The search. Challenges.”

“You said that Elokim has left us alone to test whether we
will be capable of returning to the point of departure. Only then will we be happy.”

“Elokim's time is very slow.”

Eve woke up. She did not want to. She closed her eyes. “When? Tell me, when will we return?” she asked in the darkness. No one answered.

C
ONSTRUCTING THE TRENCH TOOK THEM TWO FULL
cycles of the moon. With the second new moon, Aklia and Luluwa bled. Eve embraced them. She calmed them.

“I don't know why it happens, but after the blood come children.”

She told each of them the story of their birth. Aklia and Luluwa then understood what the blind hole in the middle of their stomachs was. The navel. Neither Adam nor Eve had one. They asked how long before they had children; what was the man's role? Why did Abel and Cain look like Adam?

Eve smiled. They wanted to know everything.

It was early. The season of rains and cold was beginning. The men had gone out to look for tree trunks to make the footbridge for the trench. Eve stayed with the girls. She made a comfortable place for them on the bear skin. She stirred the fire. She thought about the words she would use to tell them what they wanted to know.

She had been inside Adam before they ate of the fruit of
the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, she said. Adam, instead, had never been inside her. Until they were no longer eternal, they had never felt that they needed each other. Death had forced them to seek a different kind of eternity by creating others who would keep their memories alive and be there after they were gone. Elokim had told them that dust they were and unto dust they would return. But he had also commanded them to be fruitful and multiply.

She did not know whether it would be the same for them, she continued. As for Adam and her, there came a day when she felt a profound desire to have Adam inside her. It was as if my skin could see and touch, she said. I wanted to see deep within him. I wanted to touch the air that lived within him, breathe it. I wanted to know his body and for him to know mine. I wanted another way to speak without words, that would be as clear as when the cat rubs against our legs to show his recognition. Your father felt the same way. We began by putting our lips, our tongues, together, because it is there that words have their source. We explored our saliva, our teeth, and soon we were possessed by an unknown language. It was a hot language, as if we had lighted a fire in our blood, but its words had no form. They resembled long moans, but nothing pained us. They were sighs, grunts? I don't know. Our hands filled with signs, with desires to draw unintelligible patterns on our bodies. My sex grew moist. I thought I was urinating, but it wasn't the same. Adam's penis, the thing that hangs between the legs of men, grew greatly in size. It was a hand pointed toward the center of my body. Finally we understood that that part of him had to be put into me so that we would once again be joined. It hurt when he found my moistness. I thought that he would
not fit, but he did, tightly. The sensation was at first strange. We began to move. I believe Adam thought that he might touch my heart. He thrust into me as if seeking my innermost self. We rocked back and forth, like the sea on the shore. Then I felt my womb reaching out for that long hand of his, wanting to squeeze it, and wrap itself around it. When I thought I could not bear the sensation any longer, something flashed between my legs. It rose through my belly to my breasts, my arms, my head. Everything in me trembled, like the earth when thunder shakes it. Adam says that for him it was a flood, a river impetuously pouring out into me. He trembled, too, said Eve, smiling. He yelled. I think I did the same. That was all. Then we fell asleep.

We did that same thing often, once we lived outside the Garden. It has been our consolation. We gained something as we lost the eternity of the Garden. We call it love. It was while making love that Adam became mixed with you two, and with Cain and Abel. I think that is why they look like him.

Aklia and Luluwa were thoughtful. They had listened attentively. I have explained the simple part, Eve thought, fearing the question that would follow. Who will we make love with? they asked. Will our children look like Cain or like Abel?

T
HEY HAD THOUGHT THEY WOULD NOT HAVE MUCH
to carry from the cave to the new refuge, but as they walked along the bank of the river, woman, man, boys, and girls looked like a line of marching ants.

Eve walked slowly, reluctantly. Not until she packed up the shells, the bones, the small and large objects about her, did she ask herself why it was she had agreed to leave that familiar place that held in every cranny the memory of her life. She had been amazed to find, in hiding places beneath the rocks or in the pockets in the walls, animals' teeth, eroded river rocks, the skeleton of a fish, a starfish, a plume from a Phoenix, her children's dried umbilical cords. To see all those things she had saved was to recognize the breadth and length of the time that had passed since Elokim had banished them from the Garden. She was overcome by the sadness of seeing herself as if from a distance, as if the person who had treasured all those things were only a memory. Images of her beginning filled her mind as she indicated to her children what should
go or be left behind: dried skins, painted vessels, arrows and flint rocks, the fat, fecund clay figures that she had modeled as a kind of mockery during the days she was left alone, feeling like a sea on the verge of drowning. She realized she did not want to go. She had the premonition that when only silence and her drawings on the walls were left, the Eve that she had been in that place would dissolve, like the Garden. She debated whether to halt the feverish activity, share with Adam the lugubrious sound the empty cave had set echoing in her breast. She held back because of the enthusiasm of the others. They were eager to test the new refuge, to cross the footbridge they had built.

Adam overtook her on the path. He was carrying hide pouches filled with lances, hooks, arrowheads. He had noticed her slow steps, her bowed head, her reluctance.

“We can go back to the old cave anytime we want.”

“But not to that time, Adam.”

“Why would you want to go back to that time?” he asked. “To that solitude, to that bewilderment?”

“I don't know,” she said. “It must be because we were younger there. It must be because the days seemed newer and we thought that we would be able to do more than devote ourselves to surviving. Sometimes I feel that surviving is the only thing we do.”

The way he saw it, that was the challenge, he said. To demonstrate that they could survive.

Survive for what, she asked. What was the sense in being different from the animals if surviving was all there was? If she had eaten the forbidden fruit, it was because she thought there was something more.

Maybe there was, and the object was to discover it, he said. She worried, she said, that they would never discover it. You are sad, said Adam. Sadness is like smoke. It clouds your vision.

They reached their refuge. Eve found that the busyness of the children was contagious. The result of their labors was good. They had tied slim tree trunks together with vines so the footbridge would not be too heavy and they could draw it back at nightfall. The trench was deep enough; the cave was roomy and had more light. The animals could wander outside, of course, but they could not get in.

It did not take long to get settled. Eve watched as each person claimed a place for belongings. It was interesting to see them define their space, arrange their treasures: the stones they had labored on and refined bit by bit, the slim poles with sharp tips for hunting, the instruments they used for cutting and skinning. Luluwa had gold beads she treasured, straw and grasses for making baskets. Aklia had bits of animal bone for hooks and even implements for combing the knots from sheep's wool. Abel, staffs and shepherd's canes to tend his flocks. Cain the tools to sow the seeds he collected.

The moon turned red the first night they spent in the new cave. Abel came in yelling. The sky is eating the moon, he said. They all ran out. High in the firmament they saw the full moon and a black mouth that was eating the edge. The mouth opened wider and wider; a mouth of smoke blocking out the splendor of the pale, defenseless sphere in the center of the sky. Inexplicable. A sign, Adam thought. Out of concern for Eve's anxieties, he had not carried out Elokim's mandate: Abel with Luluwa, Cain with Aklia. Now the Other was going
to eat the moon. The nights would be blacker. He looked at Eve. Even in the darkness he could make out her pale face.

What is that? What is happening? the children asked. Waves of pain gripped Eve's stomach. Abel was right. No matter what she thought, this time she could not go against Elokim's wishes or dismiss Adam's dreams when in hers she wholeheartedly believed she saw and talked to the Serpent. Impossible to foresee what punishments Elokim would impose if they disobeyed once again, if she was again the one who instigated the man's disobedience. And yet, for days a dark premonition of misfortune had been spreading through her body. The moon took on the color of almonds. Reddish and round, it seemed posed upon a luminous pedestal high in a sky whose scintillating surface suddenly resembled the sea.

“It's a cloud,” said Eve, to calm the twins. “It's as if it was cold and the moon wrapped itself in a cloud.”

Adam walked over to her. He pointed to the sky and looked deep and long into her eyes. She understood.

“Do it,” she said. “Speak with them.”

Shortly after, they watched as the moon emerged from behind the coppery veil. The whole moon. Unscathed.