Authors: José Saramago
Fifty
years and one day after this fortunate surgical intervention, which gave rise
to a new era in the aesthetics of
the human body under the
consensual motto that everything about it can always be improved, disaster
struck. With
a
crack of thunder, the lord appeared. He was dressed differently from usual, in
keeping perhaps with what would
become the new imperial fashion
in heaven, wearing a triple
crown on his head and wielding a
sceptre as if it were a
cudgel. I am the lord, he cried,
I am he. A mortal silence
fell over the garden of eden, not
a sound, not even the buzz
of a wasp, the barking of a dog,
the trilling of a bird, or the
trumpeting of an elephant.
Nothing, only the chattering of
a flock of starlings that had
congregated in a leafy olive tree,
there since the garden was first
created, and which suddenly
took flight as one, so many,
hundreds, if not thousands of
them, that they nearly obscured
the sky. Who has disobeyed
my orders, who has eaten of the
fruit of my tree, asked god,
fixing adam with a look that can
only be described as
coruscating,
a word which, though highly expressive, has
sadly fallen out of use. In
desperation, the poor man tried
in vain to swallow the tell-tale
piece of apple, but his voice
refused to come out, neither fore
nor aft. Answer, said the
angry voice of the lord, who was
brandishing his sceptre in
a most threatening manner.
Plucking up his courage, and
conscious of how wrong it was to
put the blame on someone
else, adam said, The woman you
gave to be with me, she
gave me the fruit of that tree
and I did eat. The lord turned
on the woman and asked, What is
this that you have done,
The serpent beguiled me and I did
eat, Liar, deceiver, there
are no serpents in paradise,
Lord, I did not say that there
were serpents in paradise, but I
did have a dream in which
a serpent appeared to me, saying,
So god has forbidden you
to eat the fruit of every tree in
the garden, and I said no,
that wasn't true, that the only
tree whose fruit we could not
eat was the one that grows in the
middle of paradise, for
we would die if we touched it,
Serpents can't speak, at most
they hiss, said the lord, The
serpent in my dream spoke,
And may one know what else the
serpent said, asked the
lord, trying to give the words a
mocking tone that ill accorded
with the celestial dignity of his
robes, The serpent said that
we wouldn't die, Oh, I see, the
lord's irony was becoming
more and more marked, it would
seem that this serpent
thinks he knows more than I do,
That is what I dreamed,
my lord, that you didn't want us
to eat of that fruit because
we would open our eyes and know
good and evil just as you
know them, lord, And what did you
do, you fallen, frivolous woman, when you woke from this delightful dream, I
went straight
to the tree, ate the fruit and brought some
back for adam, who also ate, It
got stuck just here, said,
adam, touching his throat, Right,
said the lord, if that's the
way you want it, that's the way
it shall be, from now on you
can bid farewell to the good
life, you, eve, will not only suffer
all the discomforts of pregnancy,
morning sickness included,
you will give birth in pain, and
yet you will still feel desire
for your husband, and he shall
rule over you, Poor me, said
eve, what a bad beginning, and
what a sad fate will be mine,
You should have thought of that
before, and as for you,
adam, the ground is cursed
because of you, and in sorrow
will you eat of it all of your
days, it will bring forth only
thorns and thistles, and you will
have to eat the herbs of
the fields, only by the sweat of
your brow will you manage
to grow enough to eat, until you
return to the ground out
of which you came, wretched adam,
for dust you are and
to dust you will return. That
said, the lord plucked out of
the air a couple of animal skins
to cover the nakedness
of adam and eve, who exchanged
knowing winks, for they
had known they were naked from
the very first day and had
made the most of it too. Then the
lord said, In knowing
good and evil, man has become
like a god, and if you were
to eat of the fruit of the tree
of life you would gain eternal
life, whatever next, two gods in
one universe, that is why I
am expelling you and your wife
from the garden of eden,
at whose gate I will place an
angel armed with a flaming
sword, who will let no one enter,
now go, leave, I never want
to see you again. Bearing on
their backs the stinking animal
hides, staggering along on
unsteady legs, adam and eve
resembled two orang-utans who had
stood upright for the
first time. Outside of the garden
of eden, the earth was arid
and inhospitable, the lord was
not exaggerating when he
threatened adam with thorns and
thistles. As he had so
rightly said, the good life was
over.
Their
first home was a low, narrow cave, well, it was more
of a cavity
than a cave, which they discovered in a rocky
outcrop to the north of the
garden of eden when they were
searching desperately for some
shelter. There, at last, they
could take refuge from the
brutal, burning sun that bore no
resemblance to the invariably
benign temperatures to which
they were accustomed and that had
remained constant day
and night and at any season of
the year. They abandoned
the heavy skins that were
suffocating them with their heat
and stench and returned to their
initial nakedness, although
to protect the more delicate
parts of the body, those that
are only partially shielded by
the thighs, they resorted to
using thinner skins with shorter
hair and invented what
would later come to be called a
skirt, identical in form for
women and for men. They went
hungry for the first few
days, with not even a crust of
bread to chew on. The garden
of eden was full of fruit,
indeed, that was all there was to
eat, and even those animals, who
should, given their nature
as carnivores, feed on red meat,
even they, by divine
command, had to submit to the
same melancholy, unsatisfactory diet. What we don't know is where those skins
came from that the lord had summoned up with a snap of his
fingers, like
a magician. They clearly came from animals,
and large ones too, but who had
killed and skinned them
and where, no one knows. By
chance, there was some water
nearby, but it was only a
somewhat muddy stream and was
nothing like the wide river that
had its source in the garden
of eden and then divided into
four, with one branch irrigating the region reputed to have an abundance of
gold and
with
the other flowing through the land of cush. And strange
though this
may seem to today's readers, the remaining two
branches were immediately
baptised with the names tigris
and euphrates. Faced by the
humble little stream laboriously
threading its way through the
thorns and thistles of the
desert, it seems likely that the
river had merely been an
optical illusion created by the
lord himself to make life in
the earthly paradise more
pleasant. Anything is possible. Yes,
anything is possible, even eve's
extraordinary idea of
going to ask the angel for
permission to enter the garden
of eden and pick some fruit to
keep them alive for a few
more days. Adam was as sceptical
as any man is regarding
the success of any enterprise
born of a woman's brain and
so he told her to go alone and to
prepare to be disappointed,
That angel over there, guarding
the gate with his flaming
sword, is not just any angel,
with no weight or authority,
he's one of the cherubim, so do
you really expect him to
disobey the lord's orders, he asked
very sensibly, That I don't
know nor will I until I try, And
if you fail, If I fail, I will
have lost only the steps I took
from there to here and the
words I said to him, she replied,
Yes, but we'll be in deep
trouble if the angel goes and
denounces us to the lord, What,
more trouble than we're in
already, with no way of earning
our living, with no food, no roof
over our heads and no
clothes worthy of the name, how
much more trouble could
we be in, the lord has already
punished us by expelling us
from the garden of eden, and I
can't imagine anything worse
than that, We have no way of
knowing what the lord can or
cannot do, In that case, we
should demand that he explain
himself, and the first thing he
should tell us is why he did
what he did and to what purpose,
You're mad, Better mad
than fainthearted, Don't you be
disrespectful to me,
shouted adam angrily, besides,
I'm not fainthearted and
I'm not afraid, Well, neither am
I, so that makes us even,
and there's nothing more to be
said, Fine, but don't you
forget that I'm the one who gives
the orders around here,
So the lord said, agreed eve with
the look of someone who
has uttered not a word. When the
sun had lost some of its
strength, she set off wearing her
skirt and with one of the
lighter skins draped over her
shoulders. She looked, you
might say, very proper, although
she could do nothing
about her bare breasts, which
bobbed about as she walked.
She couldn't help it, nor did she
even give it a thought,
after all, there was no one
around to be attracted by them,
and, at the time, breasts served
only for suckling and little
more. She was surprised at
herself, at how freely and fearlessly she had replied to her husband, without
having to
choose
her words, merely saying what, in her view, the case
merited. It
was as if there were another woman inside her,
quite independent of the lord and
of the husband he had
given her, a woman, in short, who
had decided to make full
use of the tongue and the
language that the lord had, in a
manner of speaking, stuck down
her throat. She crossed the
stream, enjoying the coolness of
the water that seemed to
spread through her veins and
simultaneously experiencing
something that might have been
happiness, well, something,
at least, that bore a close
resemblance to that word. Then
she felt a pang of hunger, this
was hardly the moment for
such positive thoughts. She waded
out of the stream and
picked a few sour berries which,
although they weren't
exactly nourishing, did for a
while, a very short while, assuage
the need to eat. The garden of
eden is very close now, you
can clearly see the tops of the
tallest trees. Eve is walking
more slowly than before and not
because she's feeling tired.
If adam were here, he would laugh
at her, Where's all your
bravery now, you're really
scared. Yes, she was scared, scared
of failing, scared that she
wouldn't find the right words to
persuade the guard, in fact, she
felt so discouraged that she
found herself muttering, It would
be much easier if I were
a man. There is the angel, and in
his right hand, the flaming
sword shines with a malevolent
light. Eve tried to cover her
breasts and then went over to
him. What do you want, asked
the angel, I'm hungry, said the
woman, There's nothing here
for you to eat, But I'm hungry,
she insisted, You and your
husband were driven out of the
garden of eden by the lord
and there is no appeal against
that sentence, go away, Would
you kill me if I tried to go in,
asked eve, That's why I was
placed here on guard, You didn't
answer my question, Those
are my orders, To kill me, Yes,
And would you obey that
order. The angel did not respond.
He merely moved his
arm, and the flaming sword in his
hand hissed like a serpent.
That was his reply. Eve took a
step nearer. Stop, said the
angel, You'll have to kill me, then,
because I won't stop, and
she took another step, you'll be
left guarding an orchard of
rotten fruit that no one will
want to eat, god's orchard, the
lord's orchard, she added. What
do you want, asked the
angel again, apparently unaware
that repeating the question would be interpreted as a sign of weakness, As I
said,
I'm
hungry, Well, I assumed you'd both be far away by now,
Where
would we go, asked eve, we're in the middle of a
strange desert with not a single
path or road, where we
haven't seen another living soul
all the time we've been
here, we sleep in a hole, we eat
grass, just as the lord promised, and we have diarrhoea, What's diarrhoea,
asked the
angel,
Another word for it is the runs, the vocabulary the
lord
taught us has a word for everything, having diarrhoea or the runs, if you
prefer that term, means that you
can't retain the shit you have
inside you, What does that
mean, Ah, that's the advantage of
being an angel, said eve,
and smiled. The angel liked that
smile. In heaven, people
smiled a lot too, but always
seraphically and with the
slightly embarrassed look of
someone apologising for
being so contented, if you could
call it contentment. Eve
had won the dialectic battle, now
she just had to win the
battle for food. The angel said,
All right, I'll bring you
some fruit, but don't tell
anyone, My lips are sealed,
although my husband will have to
know, Come back here
with him tomorrow, we need to
talk. Eve removed the skin
from around her shoulders and
said, Use this to carry the
fruit in. She was naked from the
waist up. The sword hissed
more loudly as if it had received
a sudden influx of energy,
the same energy that led the
angel to take a step forward,
the same that made him raise his
left hand and touch the
woman's breast. Nothing else
happened, nothing else could
happen, angels, as long as they
are angels, are forbidden any
carnal commerce, only fallen
angels were free to get together
with whoever they wanted or
whoever wanted them. Eve
smiled and placed her hand on the
angel's hand and pressed
it gently to her breast. Her body
was grimy, her nails were
as black as if she had been using
them to dig the earth, her
hair was like a tangled nest of
eels, but she was a woman,
the only one. The angel had gone
into the garden, where he
took his time picking the most
nutritious and luscious of
fruits, before returning laden
down with a goodly burden.
Here you are, he said, and eve
asked, What's your name, and
he replied, My name is azael,
Thank you for the fruit, azael,
Well, I could hardly let the
creatures whom the lord created
starve, The lord will be grateful
to you, but it's best you
don't tell him about this. The
angel either appeared not to
hear or really didn't hear,
occupied as he was in helping eve
put the bulging load on her back,
meanwhile saying, Come
back tomorrow with adam, there
are a few things you need
to know, We'll be here, she said.