Eve: In the Beginning (2 page)

We both slow at the same time. It’s still a good distance — a safe distance. The tree of knowledge stands by itself, as if it’s somehow cast off by the other trees that grow close together, protecting each other.

Something hitches in my chest, matching the lonely feeling I sense from the tree, though I am not alone. Adam has always been with me, but I understand what it is to feel apart.

As far as I know, I am the only woman on the earth, and although my Adam is the only earthly man, our heavenly visitors are male as well. More questions.

The tree of knowledge shimmers in the sun, perhaps acknowledging our approach. Its branches of dark leaves and its pale, swollen fruit remind me of arms and hands and seem to beckon us, but I know we won’t get too close.

We start walking again, and I feel the reluctant pressure in Adam’s grip. Birds scatter as we near, flying to other trees not far from us. A few of the birds flitter back toward the tree of knowledge, and I wonder at their feasting.

Do they acquire knowledge as they peck at the fruit, or is the warning for only humans?

For in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.

My heart pounds as we walk closer to the tree. The breeze captures the scent of the tree’s fruit and steers it our way. The sweetness is powerful, stronger than that of other trees. Adam doesn’t seem to be swayed by the scent. He releases me and lowers himself to the ground. I know this is as far as he’ll go; the finality in his eyes says it all.

I hesitate. Should I sit by Adam and ask him my questions? Or should I walk toward the tree to get a better look at the oval fruit that’s the same shape as my palm? I wonder what it would feel like to touch the tree’s bark — not the fruit, of course — but the rich bark.

Today I choose to sit by Adam, if only to show him my gratitude for his leniency.

His arm goes around my shoulder as I lean against him. He smells like the grass and the dark earth. My Adam. My loving Adam who has chosen to live with me forever.

And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep.

Genesis 1:2

“You will be my wife,” Adam told me when I’d first awakened on the day my spirit gave life to my body. “We’re in the Garden of Eden, created by Elohim.” He had stared at me with those gold-green eyes, and my chest had expanded with what I soon understood to be love.

“What is a wife?” I asked.

“What a woman is called when she is joined together as a help meet to a man.”

I had looked into his eyes then and seen gentleness, kindness.

“I will be your husband,” he said.

I remember that I didn’t want him to stop talking in that deep voice of his. “I am yours, and you are mine?” I whispered, touching his face. He smiled then, and I had my first taste of what my life was to be in Eden.

In those early days after Elohim joined Adam and me as husband and wife, I watched Adam closely, and he watched me. We never left each other’s side, each of us fascinated with the other — walking, talking, eating, sleeping. Each moment was a marvel.

We spent many moments — days — exploring the garden, hand in hand.

“Are there any other men or women outside the garden?” I asked one day, and that was when the first shadow crossed Adam’s face.

I open my eyes to gentle tapping on my shoulder.

“Eve? The sun is setting.”

Adam is stretched out in the grass, his gaze on me. We had fallen asleep, watching the tree of knowledge. Violet shadows have gathered, deepening the greens and browns of the grove and darkening the earth beneath. The western sky is nearly indigo, framing the final streaks of orange.

I reluctantly stand, the scent of grass lingering on my skin. “Can we come again tomorrow?”

He sighs and threads his fingers through his hair. “I don’t think we should be spending much time by that tree. It’s forbidden, and being close to it can’t be what Elohim wants for us.”

He is right, of course, but there are other things that are right as well. Something expands in my mind, then flees just before I can comprehend it. Something about another commandment Elohim gave us. Adam turns away from the setting sun, and I glance once again at the tree.

It has changed in the twilight. The once-welcoming arm-like branches seem dark and cold. The dense leaves mask the fruit, no longer offering sweet appeal, its fragrance still and heavy. Just as I turn to follow Adam, something moves near the trunk. The shape is too large to be a deer. I pause, staring through the dimness, but the shape is gone as quickly as it appeared.

Perhaps it’s a reflection of the trunk in the fading light — or it’s nothing at all.

“Adam, look,” I say. “Behind the tree.”

But he is already looking as if he too had seen it. He squints in the dimming light. I can feel his nervousness as my heart trips. Anything to do with the tree of knowledge makes him wary.

“Something was there,” I whisper.

He stares for a long moment, and just when I think he might venture closer to inspect the surroundings, he shakes his head. “There’s nothing.” His gaze — stern — meets mine. “I don’t like being close to the tree at nightfall.”

As if we might wander closer and accidentally eat the fruit in our sleep?
I don’t say it. I have pushed him enough for the day.

“Let’s go,” he says, and I nod.

But my heart still races as I slip my hand into Adam’s. The shadow was not like that of a beast but more like that of a human. A man or a woman, I’m not sure. What if, I wonder — what if we are
not
alone in the garden? Curiosity creeps into my breast, curiosity about more than Elohim’s warnings. I don’t tell Adam about these new thoughts because I, like Adam, don’t want anything in the garden to change what is between Adam and me.

And if there is another human in the garden, things will definitely change.

I cling to Adam as we make our way up the slope. If he notices my tighter grip, he says nothing. The moon is a sliver tonight, making travel difficult, and I stumble twice. By the time we reach our sleeping alcove, I’m perspiring, and my breath is heavy. Tonight, for once, I don’t want to talk.

And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night.

Genesis 1:5

Adam waited until Eve’s breathing evened before he quietly sat up. He studied her in the near-darkness, assuring himself that she was truly asleep. She looked peaceful as she slept, her hair curling around her shoulders and along her neck, her eyelashes and lips still ... as if she weren’t capable of construing all the probing questions she asked when awake.

He moved a strand of hair that rested against her cheek. Her skin was smooth and warm beneath his touch, but she didn’t stir. Her incessant questions must have truly worn her out today.

Normally, Adam would smile to himself and brush off her persistence. But not tonight. Though he’d told Eve he hadn’t seen anything under the tree of knowledge of good and evil, he’d
felt
something — a presence? He wasn’t sure.

Unease formed in his stomach. He wanted to gather Eve in his arms, promise that he could always protect her, and purge the heaviness that seeped through him.

Instead he closed his hands into fists. He didn’t want to disturb his wife. She might have more questions, and he didn’t know if he could continue to deny what he’d felt back at the tree of knowledge. And he couldn’t give her the answers she wanted.

He gave up on sleeping — again. He reluctantly left Eve’s side, and their sleeping alcove, and perched on a nearby boulder that overlooked a tangle of flowering bushes. The scent of the blooms floated around him, and he breathed in deeply, wishing he could regain the peace of the previous afternoon — before Eve asked to visit the tree.

Eve hadn’t been with him in the very beginning. She had been created after he was, and although he’d told her all of Elohim’s instructions, Adam felt she should have heard them firsthand.

Yet she had seen and heard Elohim nearly as much as he had now. So why did she persist with questions and ideas when they both knew Elohim provided everything for them here in the garden? They needed nothing more, wanted for nothing. At least Adam wanted for nothing, for the most part.

It was complicated. No,
Eve
was complicated — more than he could have ever imagined. When Elohim had told Adam that he’d be given a wife, Adam hadn’t known exactly what to expect.

But when he first saw Eve and those clear blue-green eyes of hers, he couldn’t imagine a time before she came into his life. What had he done before she was created? Who had he been before he had a wife? Things seemed to hold significance only when Eve was with him.

And that’s why when Eve felt restless, something he couldn’t describe churned deep inside him.

It was as if she was saying to him, “This is not enough.
You
are not enough.”

Adam let out a frustrated sigh and rubbed his arms. The air held a slight chill, not so cold so as to send him back to Eve’s side but sufficient to make him miss her.

He climbed off the rock and walked the perimeter of the small settlement that he and Eve had organized. There wasn’t too much of a difference between their place of habitat and the rest of the garden, except for the paths they had formed. They’d also created areas where they’d grouped rocks and arranged canopies of branches to create places to sit during the mists. Their sleeping alcove provided plenty of shelter from mist or sun, and they needed to refresh the bed of leaves only every few days.

As Adam moved along the paths, he listened for any unusual sounds, but, as always, the night sounds were familiar: the rustling of leaves, the low call of an owl. He circled the alcove where Eve lay, knowing that if he joined her, he’d probably wake her in his restlessness. It was better for only one of them to be tired the next morning. He fully realized he could sleep during the morning, yet he didn’t want to leave his wife unattended — not even for a short time.

It wasn’t that he didn’t trust her or that he feared that she wouldn’t tell him every thought or action, but he couldn’t stand the thought of being without her. The garden held only one danger — the tree of knowledge of good and evil — and it was that one thing he didn’t trust. He didn’t like that Eve wanted to visit it so often.

Especially now. Especially with what he thought he sensed earlier.

What did she gain by watching a tree? It grew like the others and produced fruit on a regular basis. Birds and small animals seemed to spend no more time there than at other trees, yet Eve remained fascinated.

Was it because of the unknown — death?

“We’ll never die,” Adam had told Eve on more than one occasion, “if we follow Elohim’s commandments.”