head the refracted light of the sun seemed suddenly everywhere.
The fruit was warm. It fit perfectly in my palm, its skin so taut that a tooth or nail might split it all the way round. I plucked it with a soft snick of the stem.
I turned to the adam with wonder. What did he see in me now? I had touched it. Was I now like God? Had I died the death? His breath quickened, and I felt his excitement like arousal, the possibility of the unthinkable like adrenaline. I was heady with the idea of this act more singular and exquisite than that which we had performed through the night.
The fruit seemed inordinately heavy, a growing weight, in my hand, nearly unbearable, and I knew I must lift it to my lips and eat or drop it to the ground forever.
Our eyes met as I raised it to my lips.
“Wake,” I whispered, so softly that I knew he heard it only in my thoughts. He might have stopped me.
He didn’t.
I ate.
I, who had come second, went first. I, who had followed in the steps of every living thing before me, walked ahead.
Perhaps my hand trembled as I held it out. Perhaps I already knew. Either way, I ate and then gave it to him.
He ate.
That is it.
We fell upon the tree like hungry locusts, never knowing when the serpent left.
We shared them between us, throwing one away before we finished it, plucking another if only to take a single bite, licking lips and fingers—our own and each other’s. I had wanted him earlier. I claimed him now. We fell together, the night renewed between us by day, twining in the sunlight the way we had in the darkness.
Having done, we lay in the shade of that tree, beneath the climbing sun, and slept the sleep of the dead.
7
So quiet.
I awoke thinking something lay over my ears. We were alone, the adam and I, upon the grass of the island. How queer the air had gotten here, so that sound came as though through water as I had heard it just that morning while floating down the river.
Too quiet.
The water—did it run? It did, but the sound of it was dull. Even the air through the grass seemed feeble, murmuring like an old man talking to himself.
I sat up. The adam, already awake, had a strange look on his face. For the first time since my creation, I could not discern his thoughts.
We had devoured each other. I had had him as I had eaten the fruit after the first bite: greedily, as though I would consume him, my body one great maw, knowing nothing but appetite.
He had used me the same.
It had never been that way with us before.
Too quiet.
Suddenly I realized: the symphony—that blended chorus of all living things that had been with me since the day of my creation—was gone, replaced by a dull drone.
It came then like a squall in a white-hot flush of silent fear and dread: We had done the thing we were not to do. And as though in proof, we had done a thing we had done many times before, in a way it was never meant to be.
The divine mark of God, the serpent had called the act of creation. But there was nothing of the One in the thing we had brought to existence.
Fruit pits and skins were strewn everywhere around us like bodies gored and flung away by the great horns of a beast. They were crawling with insects. An inordinate number of insects. There, then, was the source of that drone: the carnage of this feast had attracted a multitude of flies. They crept over the remains of the pits and the stems still attached to some of them, over torn skins, and one another. The fruit nearest me swarmed with a host of winged black bodies. I flicked it away in disgust. It rolled a little way and came to a stop, the flies upon it startled into an airborne mob before attacking it again more voraciously than before.
I hid my face against the adam’s shoulder, but he did not clasp me. He was trembling. So violently did he tremble that his head seemed to shake upon his neck, jerking back and forth, the blue eyes—no longer the blue I knew when I lay down—wide.
This was the most
The fruit was warm. It fit perfectly in my palm, its skin so taut that a tooth or nail might split it all the way round. I plucked it with a soft snick of the stem.
I turned to the adam with wonder. What did he see in me now? I had touched it. Was I now like God? Had I died the death? His breath quickened, and I felt his excitement like arousal, the possibility of the unthinkable like adrenaline. I was heady with the idea of this act more singular and exquisite than that which we had performed through the night.
The fruit seemed inordinately heavy, a growing weight, in my hand, nearly unbearable, and I knew I must lift it to my lips and eat or drop it to the ground forever.
Our eyes met as I raised it to my lips.
“Wake,” I whispered, so softly that I knew he heard it only in my thoughts. He might have stopped me.
He didn’t.
I ate.
I, who had come second, went first. I, who had followed in the steps of every living thing before me, walked ahead.
Perhaps my hand trembled as I held it out. Perhaps I already knew. Either way, I ate and then gave it to him.
He ate.
That is it.
We fell upon the tree like hungry locusts, never knowing when the serpent left.
We shared them between us, throwing one away before we finished it, plucking another if only to take a single bite, licking lips and fingers—our own and each other’s. I had wanted him earlier. I claimed him now. We fell together, the night renewed between us by day, twining in the sunlight the way we had in the darkness.
Having done, we lay in the shade of that tree, beneath the climbing sun, and slept the sleep of the dead.
7
So quiet.
I awoke thinking something lay over my ears. We were alone, the adam and I, upon the grass of the island. How queer the air had gotten here, so that sound came as though through water as I had heard it just that morning while floating down the river.
Too quiet.
The water—did it run? It did, but the sound of it was dull. Even the air through the grass seemed feeble, murmuring like an old man talking to himself.
I sat up. The adam, already awake, had a strange look on his face. For the first time since my creation, I could not discern his thoughts.
We had devoured each other. I had had him as I had eaten the fruit after the first bite: greedily, as though I would consume him, my body one great maw, knowing nothing but appetite.
He had used me the same.
It had never been that way with us before.
Too quiet.
Suddenly I realized: the symphony—that blended chorus of all living things that had been with me since the day of my creation—was gone, replaced by a dull drone.
It came then like a squall in a white-hot flush of silent fear and dread: We had done the thing we were not to do. And as though in proof, we had done a thing we had done many times before, in a way it was never meant to be.
The divine mark of God, the serpent had called the act of creation. But there was nothing of the One in the thing we had brought to existence.
Fruit pits and skins were strewn everywhere around us like bodies gored and flung away by the great horns of a beast. They were crawling with insects. An inordinate number of insects. There, then, was the source of that drone: the carnage of this feast had attracted a multitude of flies. They crept over the remains of the pits and the stems still attached to some of them, over torn skins, and one another. The fruit nearest me swarmed with a host of winged black bodies. I flicked it away in disgust. It rolled a little way and came to a stop, the flies upon it startled into an airborne mob before attacking it again more voraciously than before.
I hid my face against the adam’s shoulder, but he did not clasp me. He was trembling. So violently did he tremble that his head seemed to shake upon his neck, jerking back and forth, the blue eyes—no longer the blue I knew when I lay down—wide.
This was the most
Similar Books
