The Innocence of Eden - Short Story by M Graeme

The Innocence of Eden

Michael Graeme

The Coming of Eve

The night ripples. It is a stone's throw, a splash in the black pond, close by the haze of Andromeda. It is rings spreading, a warping wave upon which the stars ride as petals cast upon water, sweeping through Cassiopeia,... Polaris,... the Bear,... and down to the mountains at the edge of the Great Plain.

It is the slow blink of an eye, an easy lung of air.

Then it is gone.

"She is coming," says Yellow Moon.

And as I watch, I see white fingers stroke the sky, a spreading of streaking stars, bright pulsing and then gone like the ripples before, but for one, a point of fire flashing, fast falling from the night. We alone see it, Yellow Moon and I, a vain speck of humanity suspended in our ring of pale lamplight, amid the silence and the vastness of the plain.

I know what it is, for I am seventeen and I know everything. It is an Ironstone, what more educated men might call a meteor. I hear its low whistle growing louder,... stronger,... but, for all my worldliness, I am suddenly filled with an irrational fear.

"Will it hit us, Yellow Moon?"

My father does not reply. Instead, he presses his toothless gums together and squints into the night. Then I see a thread of flame strike sparks from the distant rim of Mount Ida. I hear a sound like thunder, then silence, then thunder again as the Ironstone tumbles across the plain. It raises dust, ghost-like, luminous, as it ploughs its improbable course towards us.

Then, with a sad sigh cut short, a fist sized rock lands dull and thudding at our feet. It is carbon-black, smoking, showering the air with grit which stings my face and rings like fairy bells against the lamp-glass. I screw up my eyes in horror and when I open them again there is a woman seated, gazing upon Yellow Moon. Her golden hair is spilling, shining, shimmering. And she is clothed only in the pale skin of and alarming innocence.

"What news, Yellow Moon?" she says, her voice soft, a mother's voice, a warm breath upon my cheek. "Does man still war?"

Yellow Moon nods slowly.

"Do black and white still harbour mistrust?" she asks him. "Is there still poverty at the gates of rich men? Tell me, are nations still divided?"

To all this, Yellow Moon nods. She shakes her head and looks down. Meanwhile, I catch a scent upon the air, an aromatic garden, rich and heady.

"But it is ten summers since last I came," she says. "And you tell me there is no change? Yellow Moon, the Tree of Knowledge bore your people a bitter fruit. Are you still content that it be so?"

"It is our destiny," he replies.

"If you would but come and eat of our tree," she tells him. "Its fruit is so much sweeter,..."

Yellow Moon closes his eyes. "Since I was a boy, you have asked me this," he whispers, his words trailing away as if struggling against himself. "But I cannot,..."

"I offer peace,... freedom," she says. "I would take away the hatred of your world and replace it with love."

"I have not the wisdom to foresee the consequences," he replies.

"It is your wisdom that blinds you." she sighs. "Hear me, Yellow Moon. I shall return in ten summers to ask again. Ten summers and then no more,..."

Yellow Moon shakes his head. "I have few summers left to me, now," he tells her.

"Then walk with me tonight and your thirst shall be ended. Your world shall be content."

But Yellow Moon does not listen. "I have brought my son," he says.

She looks at me for the first time and smiles a broad, all seeing smile. I sense my thoughts are laid bare and I squirm with embarrassment and shame.

"He is my son," says Yellow Moon. "Take him. Teach him, as you have taught me and in ten summers, he shall decide."

She rises now. She reaches down to stroke my father's face and there is a sadness about her as she takes my hand. "Come little one," she says. "I am Eve. Walk with me."

I look back anxiously. "Father?"

"She will not harm you," he tells me. "Heed her well. But do not eat from the tree."

Now, I am not so young that I do not understand what she has offered my father. But is she also to offer me the salvation of our world? A return to innocence? And my father commands me to refuse?... I take a deep breath and then we step out of the light.

Another Eden

A river sweeps cool and murmuring through the valley. I lie face down upon a flat rock, my cheek pressed against its warmth, watching as blue bodied damselflies dart among the reeds. I am naked, the sun raising a tingle from my skin as Eve swims smoothly before me. There are women seated along the bank, nymph like, chattering, their legs swinging, trailing silver lines upon the water. Others flit through a black lace of sunlit forest. They wear flowers in their hair and their laughter rises in quiet harmony with the song of birds,...

A woman lounges beside me, our thighs brushing intimately while her hands lazily stroke my back. She is dark skinned, black haired and her body pleases me but I feel no lust and I am strangely unashamed to have her look upon my own nakedness.

Eve stretches beside us and looks on with benign satisfaction. "Does this please you, little one?" she asks and as she speaks, I feel a dancing of light upon water and I taste the essence of a divine comfort,... "Your world could be like this, too," she tells me.

Now she is leading me over cool grass to a bend in the river where shallow water hisses upon shingle, where children run and splash and whoop, while softly rounded men look on.

"In all things there must be balance," she is saying. "In darkness and in light,... in masculine and feminine. Do you recall from your sacred texts the tales of Eden? They tell of Man created from dust and Woman as flesh from his flesh?..."

"I recall these words," I tell her.

"You were innocent then, as we are still, and in your garden was a tree, the Tree of Knowledge from which you were forbidden to eat. But you were tempted and you ate and your eyes were opened so that you saw you were naked. For this you were cast out and condemned to eat of the Tree all the days of your lives. Now you are a clever people, filled with all manner of knowledge... but so unhappy,... so unsatisfied." Her face is sad as if she feels all our centuries of pain. Then she brightens and raises her arms to indicate the wonders around us. "This is your Alter-Eden. Here it was Woman created from dust and Man as flesh from her flesh,..."

We have walked many hours into the forest and we are standing beneath a tree unlike any other. We are hand in hand, as children before it. The tree shimmers, dew slipping from its leaves, its fruit ripe and red, no more than a lazy arm's reach away.

"This is the Tree of Innocence," she tells me. "In this Eden, the wisdom you crave is born within us. We must eat of this tree to gain our innocence, so we may look upon each other's nakedness without shame, so we may not be cast out of the garden and into a world like yours,..."

I look up at the tree. I hear the song of the breeze. I feel myself connected to the paradise of which she speaks and I know if I eat but once, then all the sorrows of my world will be ended.

"You have offered this fruit to Yellow Moon,... and he would not eat?"

"Yes," she tells me.

And as she speaks, she plucks the fruit from the branch. She bites deep and, with a look of ecstasy, receives it's innocence. Then, slowly, she offers me the fruit. "Come,"she says.

"But why would Yellow Moon not eat?" I aske her. "He is the wisest of our people. There must be a reason. He spoke of consequences,..."

"Wisdom has blinded him," she says. "But you can eat in his place. COME!"

I feel the fruit between my fingers, soft, tempting. She is willing me with all her heart and half of me would eat if only to please her but Yellow Moon has forbidden it. "I cannot," I tell her and even as I form the words I am once more in the ring of light, my face pressed against the dust at my father's feet. I clutch in shame at my imagined nakedness but find instead my clothes tugging tight, mocking my cowardice.

The Wise World

In the morning, Yellow Moon and I drive back to town,... a hundred miles of red dust and heat shimmer. Bill-boards the size of long-haul trucks slide by, blasting the silence from our brains. They bear images of pouting women who promise us sex if we would only buy their brand of cigarettes and beer. They tease and tempt, but I have been touched by Eve and the sordidness of these pictures disgusts me now.

"Why must we not eat from the Tree, Father?"

"Because it is not our destiny to be as they are," he tells me.

"But she offered me a feminine centred world of great joy,... a return to the innocence of Eden. How can this not be our destiny?"

"Did she not also speak of balance in all things? Sometimes our world seems cruel. But as one man weeps in sorrow, another shall dance with joy. The cloud that casts the shadow does not extinguish the sun. You are young. Before the passing of ten summers you must have the wisdom to understand these things,... and to resist the temptation of Eve."

But his words mean nothing, his riddles of darkness and light. I see only the prime-time slaughter of innocence, only the darkness, the sorrow. Yellow Moon once likened the pursuit of wisdom to the turning of pebbles on a beach. Each pebble bears a question, the answer written on its underside. But the turning of each pebble reveals yet more pebbles beneath,... and beneath them, more still,... smaller, finer, deeper,...

I look into his eyes, now, and I feel a great sadness. For all his years he has found no measure of enlightenment. Perhaps then Eve is right and wisdom is not the answer. I sense also that I am losing him,... that after the passing of ten summers, it will indeed be me, alone, who must decide.

Now I am twenty one and looking back while I gaze through the rain flecked glass of my ancient college rooms. My quest for the wisdom Yellow Moon spoke of has brought me to this ancient European town where spires dream all around, self-satisfied and distant, while proud spirits float black-gowned across the lawns.

"Interesting," my master says.

He is a shabby, tweed Englishman whose mind probes the cosmos from the rim of his teacup. He considers my story carefully, though the existence of an Alter-Eden and whether he believes or thinks me insane is of no importance. It is the question alone which merits his deliberation.

"But would you change the way we are?" he asks. "Does Eve not speak of ending, rather than of satisfying man's hunger? And where would we be without our hunger?... Our spirit of enquiry?..."

"We would be content, surely?"

"Content? Perhaps, but only in the way a neutered tom is content," he counters. "We would be,... nothing,... Would you sacrifice our fire?"

"But to end all wars? All suffering? To unite nations? This must be our destiny."

"Only through wisdom shall we achieve these things."

I'm not sure I believe him. Nor am I sure he believes himself for this is just a game to him. I see him on Yellow Moon's beach turning the pebbles and tossing them over his shoulder carelessly. The answers are not important to him,... only the quality of the questions.

Now I am twenty five and teaching in a grey northern state while I dream of heat-quake and stars above the plains. Our knowledge is constructing vehicles that will take us to the stars and we know so much of God's design there is no part of our bodies that cannot be repaired and maintained in perfect order until ripe old age. This then is our destiny and when the sun shines, our world seems truly blessed but when it is bad, it is very bad,... it is a living hell.

The roads of this city are crumbling and there are alleyways where policemen dare not go. If I want to walk the streets I must carry mug-money for the packs of feral-children who would cut me if my pockets were empty,... children who might now be wrapped in innocence, if only I had eaten.

I have a woman. Her name is Running Deer. She is dark skinned, dark haired and a daughter of my people. She has come to me from emptiness, stepping from a crowd of lesser students. Unbidden and alone, she gives wise council to the man her secular friends mock as the fool who speaks of Eden.

"If our world is masculine," she says, "and Eve's is feminine, and she gives you the chance to make ours also feminine, where would be the balance? Surely this is what Yellow Moon spoke of. The balance would be lost, something would have to change."

"Like charges repel," I say. "Perhaps whatever portal joins our worlds would be lost. Whatever was done could not be undone. That is not too high a price to pay."

"Or perhaps, like matter and anti-matter, there would be annihilation," she warns, "Or perhaps,..."

"But I care nothing for the balance," I declare, for I am thinking of the night I sat with Yellow Moon, a boy of seventeen. Already it is eight years ago and I have eaten more from the Tree of Knowledge than many. Yet my hunger is greater than those who have eaten nothing and I would give anything to end the cycle for it leads me nowhere. But Running Deer is wise and I know I dismiss her fears at my peril.

The Return to Eden

Now I am twenty seven and I have returned to the plains. I carry my lantern deep into the night and sit cross legged upon the earth to consider my long journey these ten summers past. And when the night ripples and the Ironstone falls charred and smoking at my feet, I look this time upon Eve's naked beauty not with shame, but dread. Am I to spare the world its burdens this night? Or am I to condemn it to an eternal, if harmonious balance of darkness and light?

"What news, little one?" she says. "What news since last we spoke?"

"Yellow Moon is gone," I tell her.

She sighs for him. "And does mankind still war?"

"Yes. Our wars drift like storms across the plain. As one ends, another begins. We shall never be rid of them."

"And hatred? And mistrust among creeds? And poverty at the gates of rich men?"

"Yes, these things are the same,..."

She hangs her head, her features disappearing behind a golden curtain as her hair closes around her face. "Oh, little one," she moans. "You wish it always to be so? I can heal everything, EVERYTHING! If you would only eat of our tree."

I feel her palm sealing against mine as she rises, coaxing me towards the edge of the light. "Come. We must end this madness. NOW!"

"Wait. I need more time."

"There is no more time."

"Another ten summers,... just another ten,... I shall be older, wiser,..."

"Wisdom is not the answer. It will blind you. This is your last chance. I shall not come again..."

I am by the river, lounging naked on the flat rock, my face pressed against its warmth. Blue bodied damselflies hover inches from my nose while Eve swims before me, a fleshy dart slicing deep. Beside me sits a woman, dark skinned, black haired. I feel her hands upon my back, stroking lazily, absently,... I smile. It is a vision.

It is Running Deer.

Eve stretches beside us and looks on. "You see? Anything is possible here. You wish your world always to be so?"

But my vision is altered by my subconscious, by the soul of Running Deer which I have carried with me. She leans close, black hair brushing "Or would you wish this world always to be so?" she whispers,...

Eve is leading me through the forest. We come upon the Tree and stand beneath it - every bright, transparent leaf aglow. I hear the song of the breeze and I see the fruit swaying. She plucks it from the branch and places it in my palm. I feel it, ripe, soft, promising such sweetness. She strokes my face, my hair. She smiles, coaxing, tempting.

"Come, eat."

"But what of the balance?" I ask her.

She averts her eyes. "You are too wise already, little one," she says, then presses the fruit to my lips.

One bite! That's all it will take. But Running Deer steps from the forest to place a cautionary hand upon my shoulder.

"Wait!" she says. "In restoring the innocence of our world, Eve would clothe herself in shame. Thus the balance would be preserved. In gaining our innocence, she would sacrifice her own."

I look at Eve. "Can this be true?"

"We have so much," is all she says and then she turns away because already I think she knows my mind.

Running Deer sleeps.

As I lie with her in the cool of our apartment, I hear the sirens of police cars ploughing sluggish through vague and pliant shadows on the streets below. I hear the muffled garbage cries of a television, a cry of the wounded, the insane,... Yet a thousand miles from here, the sun is poised, ready to set in fat-balled splendour over the great plain. Then will come the night and the stars,... Orion,... Cassiopea,... The Bear.

If I close my eyes, I can see it all and feel myself once more connected to paradise. Yellow moon was right. It is our destiny always to seek wisdom and to accept the ever-shifting darkness and the light as its price. Running Deer stirs. Her eyes open and her fingers stroke my face.

"You did not eat of the Tree?" she asks. "No," I reply. "I did not eat,..."

And she will never come again.

__________________

One of my early forays into so called speculative fiction it was inspired by the old testament theme of the tree of knowledge. The bible is definitely worth a read, even if you're not religious and I've always been drawn by the book of Genesis. Whatever your views, the story of the tree of knowledge contains some valuable insights into the human condition.

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M_Graeme@yahoo.co.uk