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

know whether or not the terrible things she remembered had happened opened her eyes. She saw nothing. She opened them as wide as she could, and still could not see. She thought about crows. The color of their wings inundated everything. She held out her hands to touch the dense darkness. She sat straight up. Her fingers closed onblack, blind air. Her eyes were no longer useful. She touched her face to be sure she was awake. She fumbled with her hands, with rising panic.
    â€œAdam. Adam! Adam! ” she shouted. She felt him move, wake, groan. Then a long silence and a yell. “Where are you, Eve? Where are you?”
    â€œCan’t you see me?”
    â€œNo. I don’t see anything. Everything is black.”
    â€œI think we’re dead,” she moaned. “What else could this be?”
    She groped around her until she touched him. He felt her cold fingers. He could not understand that she had disappeared. He could not see her. A croaking sound escaped his throat.
    â€œI don’t like death, Eve. Get me out of this.”
    Within them, as in the first time of Paradise, they heard the voice. It sounded both ironic and gentle.
    â€œIt is night,” the voice said. “I made it so you would rest, for now you will have to work to survive. At night you will sleep. You will have no volition. That way you will be able to enter your consciousness. Simultaneously know it and forget it.”
    Eve perceived that communication with the voice was open for her. She was not afraid.
    â€œYou are cruel,” she said.
    â€œYou disobeyed.”
    â€œDon’t tell me that you didn’t plan this. You did not conceive us to be eternal. You knew as well as I that this would happen.”
    â€œOf course. But that was my challenge. Not to intervene. To allow you your freedom.”
    â€œAnd to punish us.”
    â€œIt is too early to make that judgment. I admit that I always knew what would happen. But it had to be this way.”
    â€œGive us back the light.”
    â€œGo later with Adam to the cave entrance. The light will be there, waiting for you. Day after day. From now on you will exist in time.”
    â€œAt least we’re not dead,” Eve sighed when the voice stilled.
    At dawn, Adam watched as the shadows lifted and dispersed like mist. Eve was sleeping. Was she perhaps looking inside her consciousness? Where was it one went when sleeping? Did she understand what to him was incomprehensible? He didn’t like to see her asleep, or to sleep himself. He didn’t like it when his eyes closed and his mind no longer belonged to him. And yet, in the darkness of the cave it had been a relief to abandon himself to that strange immobility, to listen to the cry of his body to lie quietly and cease to feel pain and nostalgia, fear and uncertainty. Suddenly his anxiety returned. Had Elokim carried out his promise to bring back the light?
    He walked to the cave entrance, and what he saw frightened him so badly he could not contain a cry. The whitish sky of the previous day was now blazing from end to end; even the clouds were on fire. He called Eve. She came quickly, moving unsteadily, as if she had only recently learned to walk. She looked at the red sky. She stepped past him and went outside, holding out her arms to the warm air. On the sky she saw the red circle of the sun rising from the horizon.
    â€œThe sky is in flames, but the fire will not reach the Earth,” she said.
    Adam went to her. His eyes were filled with tears.
    Eve nestled against his chest. He, who was taller, rested his head on hers and broke into sobs. What would they do? he asked. How could they exist so far from the Garden now that their bodies ached and they were thirsty? What have we done, Eve? What have we done? What use is knowledge to us in the midst of this desolation? Look at the vastness around us. What will we do? Where will we go?
    Eve did not know what to answer. Nothing was as she had imagined. She