Eden River (4 page)

Adam had seen it and admired, and sometimes he stayed with the boys, and they would sit, all three, listening to the silence that closed in upon the day, watching the darkness gather and the colours fade from the sky: and in this hour of wonder, with the bright immediacy of day veiled from sight and
hearing, so that it stayed in the mind only like the memory of a loud tale they had heard together, in this quiet hour their tongues would be loosened and they would talk, softly, shadow to shadow, far into the night: three bodiless voices uttering, as it seemed, their common mind, telling of deeds and dreams, pursuing fancies, and propounding questions which succeeding centuries of men have echoed and elaborated but never answered. Was it I or one of the others that spoke? And who are these others, and who am I? Are there indeed three of us, or is there one only that speaks through us? If three, how can we share our thought? If one, how comes this division? And I—whence am I, and what, and why? I came from the body of our mother, and others have come after me. Is there then in Eve a garden like this garden, and did we run and play together, eating the fruit of that garden and sleeping in the shadow of its trees? And this Eden that contains us all—is it perhaps the womb of another Eve, from which, in time, we shall emerge, even as we emerged from the womb of our mother? And how came we in Eve's womb if not from the Eve of
her
garden?

If the minds of Cain and Abel could not frame such questions as these, these questions were nevertheless
implicit in the wondering perplexity, the sense of an environing mystery, that they experienced in moments of meditation. Such moments were not rare in a world upon which the curse of unremitting labour—work for to-day and care for to-morrow—had not fallen. There were other questions, specific enough, which they asked themselves and each other during these night sessions; and their voices, coming from no visible source, seemed other than their own, floating away for lack of habitation and taking colour from the darkness. Is Eve your mother too, Adam? No, said an answering voice, she is yours but not mine. She is yours, put in Cain quickly, and not ours any longer. We have no woman, Abel and I. Mine, yes, answered the voice of Adam, but not my mother. I was here when she came; we found each other here. Which of you, asked Abel, was here first? Adam was here first, said Adam, and Adam dreamed that he took a rib from his body and wrought upon it and made Eve. And Eve is the mother of all living, except me, Adam, that made her. Of all living? echoed Abel. How can that be? Of all living men, said Adam. Of all Adams except the first, and of all Eves. Of Cain and Abel, the new men, and of Zildah and Larian and Dove
and Filia and Hamaleda and Kirith and Lebbek, the new women. Those are not women like Eve, said Abel. But who, Adam, was
your
mother, persisted Cain, if Eve wasn't? But that was a question Adam could not answer: he remembered, though dimly, a time when he had been alone in Eden, but he could remember nothing earlier than that time. So he said: I was the first man. Before me there was neither man nor woman. There was a thought, and I was the thought. In the likeness of that thought I made man: male and female created I them.

Cain was dissatisfied with this answer, but Abel, after brooding for a while, opened his mouth and listened to the speech that issued from it: It may be, he said, that we were hidden, we and Adam and our mother, deep in earth's belly, as a word is hidden till we utter it, as morning is hidden in the night that gives it birth. In the beginning without beginning there was neither light nor darkness, earth nor sky. In the beginning was the seed. And the seed made division of itself, one part becoming sky and another part earth and a third part water. Sky blossomed into light, sun and moon and stars; the water quickened; earth became green and yielded fruit in her season. And the sky entered earth's belly and she grew big and was in labour
with Adam; and she brought forth Adam, the first man, made of earth and sky. And the sky entered again into that dark place, and light stirred again in earth's darkness, and came forth, and was called Eve, the companion of Adam. Of earth and sky were made both the man and the woman; but the light of Adam was the sun, and the light of Eve was the moon's light and the stars'. Adam is ruddy and strong: he searches the mountains with his glance and goes swiftly on his ways. But in Eve our mother is the savour of night; her mouth is secret; and her eyes are dark with the shining of love.

The voice of Abel ended on a sigh, as though he emerged from a trance; and for a while the three men sat silent in the shelter of their tree, and stared, unseen by each other, at the prickling stars of the night that enclosed them. Adam marvelled at the words of Eve's son, for these thoughts seemed to reach further than any thoughts of his own; and from that hour he watched Abel with a new interest and waited on his speech with expectation. It was seldom, however, that Abel talked in this fashion; in general his words were as apt to the immediate occasion as his hands were ready, and only Cain knew him as a searcher into the causes of things.

There was nothing hidden between Abel and Cain; their thoughts were freely shared. Sometimes, after sunset, in their abundant leisure, they would tell over to each other the day's doings and the day's imaginings, a highly coloured story that made no distinction between fact and fancy, and a story which, resumed from time to time and often repeated, became as real to them, though in a different mode of reality, as the life of action itself. This duologue, being a form of play and therefore ceremonial, from the very first had something of the character of an antiphonal chant: the words were consciously savoured, the sentences fell with a measured cadence, and the voice that uttered them was a voice pitched somewhere between speaking and singing. At the end of such performances the boys would laugh together: not in self-derision but for pleasure of their achievement. Another favourite pastime was to enact, again and again, those events in their family history which had seized most tenaciously on their imaginations: Adam's dream of the creation of Eve; the first meeting of the two; their bodily union; the birth of Cain; the birth of Abel. Cain, in such miming, took always the part of Adam, even to the point of being Adam assisting at the birth of Cain; Abel,
willy nilly, was Eve; the action of the drama consisted of a series of conventionalized gestures accompanied by speeches which became, with repetition, stereotyped in the memory; and all these things, these songs and mimes mingling history and fantasy, were remembered in the generations that came after. But Eve our mother is not for us, said Cain, when the play was ended. And being men, he would add, we have no more need of her. Beneath his words, scarcely recognized by himself, lurked a sense of something lacking, something of which he was being cheated. He had a larger loneliness than Abel could ever fill with his brotherly and taken-for-granted companionship; hungers were waking in him that no amount of make-believe, no mere dream or project of love, could satisfy any longer, though these had engaged and sufficed him hitherto; dispossesed, he became gradually aware of a spirit within him that was hungry for appeasement, a pride clamouring for self-vindication. But desire, lacking definition, quivered helplessly beneath the surface of his mind. Like Adam before him, he wanted an Eve who did not as yet exist; or, if she existed, he was unaware of her.

With the imminent approach of manhood,
heralded by these mysterious urgencies, Cain's visits to his mother Eve and his friend Adam grew more and more infrequent, so that their memory at last grew dim in his mind; many an uncounted time, with scarce a thought of them, he saw the moon his calendar wax and wane. Abel was more gregarious by temperament than Cain; but for the most part he was content to imitate his brother, by sharing, and so alleviating, that brother's solitude.

Though loneliness was its very quality, Cain was not alone in his discontent; nor would he have been alone in it even had Abel not suffered, at times, from a similar unrest of spirit. For Eve's daughters, too, were awaking to a sense of unfulfil-ment. Zildah in particular, the eldest among them, would sometimes, unobserved, look darkly at their mother, as though saying to herself: Why must I always be dancing attendance on
her?
By Eve unobserved, but not by all her sisters. Dark-eyed Kirith was as quick in perception as she was quiet in manner and soft of speech, and she knew well enough the meaning of those glances, for she too had grown tired of waiting on Eve and her babes. Zildah had Adam's colouring; but Kirith her sister was dark as Eve; slim, small-breasted, secret in her ways. I know what you are thinking, said Kirith to Zildah: you are thinking that you will go to the River Camp and make friends with the strangers. Zildah was astonished indeed to hear her thoughts read so shrewdly. Who told you that? she asked.
But being of a candid nature she did not resent her sister's strange science. Would you like to come too, Kirith? Do come. And leave our sisters behind? asked Kirith. Larian is older than I, she added inconsequently; and Hamaleda will be unhappy to be left here with only Dove and Filia to play with. Have you forgotten Lebbek? said Zildah. Lebbek is only a little one, said Kirith; too little to be of much help to our mother. This hint was not lost on Zildah, who after a moment's silence answered that Eve would manage very well without such help. As she managed, Kirith, when you and I were babies: there was no one then to help her. Except Adam and the men-children, Kirith said. What do
you
know of the men-children? asked Zildah rather crossly. Eve has told me, said Kirith, that they were here before we came, you and I. I remember nothing of that, Zildah answered. Let's tell Larian, shall we, and ask her if she'll come with us to look for the strangers?

Kirith turned away without answering, and it was Zildah alone whom Cain, in the evening of the next day, observed walking among the trees near his camp. With his back to the river he stood wondering and staring; with one hand he shaded
his eyes from the red sun. Behind him the broad water was placidly flowing (for the brothers had chosen to settle near the lake where Adam had first taught them to swim); before him, gradually ascending, stretched the green woods of Eden, a greenness that gave ground at intervals to chalk-white and russet-brown, and yielded at last to the golden peaks of the horizon. And when Cain saw Zildah walking among the trees, sunlight flowed in his veins, and he moved towards her as it were without thought or intention, a body luminous and imponderable. And he spoke to her, saying: What are you? She answered: I'm Zildah, a daughter of Eve, and you are the stranger that my mother bore. Zildah, he echoed stupidly, and his voice was like that of one in a dream. I have seen Zildah, but you're not the Zildah I have seen. Zildah was a child, he added almost accusingly. Nevertheless I'm Zildah, she answered, meeting his eyes boldly, and I'm a woman. In the profound silence that followed these words the sunlight that sang in his veins told him no less; and looking on her again he saw her transfigured by his desire, an unknown woman. He touched her with his hands, saying: Let us lie down together. At his touch she started back and ran a little way from him; but he, pursuing,
flung her on the grass and wooed her with many passionate words. And she received him and was glad in his love. Now I'm a woman indeed, she said; I am as good as Eve my mother. You are water in a thirsty land, answered Cain; you are the pasture of all delight. We will make songs for you, my brother and I, and you shall stay with us and be our Eve for ever. Your brother? she echoed questioningly. My brother Abel who made this camp with me. Where is he now? asked Zildah. He'll come back at nightfall, answered Cain. He's there or there or there, but he'll come back. It may be, said Zildah, that he has met Larian my sister. She was with me, but she lagged behind and I left her sleeping. I wanted Kirith to come too, but she's strange in her ways and wouldn't answer me. These new names meant nothing to Cain; and distracted by them his attention grew slack, whereupon Zildah, divining that he wearied of her chatter, drew away from him in silence and rose to her feet. Cain, raising himself on one elbow, put out a hand to stay her, but she was already a hand's length beyond reach and seemed not to notice his gesture. He looked up at her in question, and failing to catch an answering look—for she stood forgetful of him, stretching herself luxuriously—he let his glance
rest awhile on her golden body, rejoicing in its hue and savour, its lyrical curves, the careless noble pose of head and bosom, broad hip and gleaming flank.

As though conscious of his warm glance, Zildah turned and smiled down on him. Appeasement was in her smile, and a rich savour as of rain-replenished woods was in her mouth when she bent over him, touching his face with hers. He jumped up and would have seized her again, but she answered him lazily, adding: Show me the camp that you and your brother have made. Is it like Adam's camp where I've lived till now? You shall live there no longer, said Cain, with a note of fierceness in his voice. Come along then: I'll show you. Perhaps Abel is back by now, for the sun has gone down behind the mountains and the sky is filling with darkness. It may be he went across the river. It's there, in the forest beyond the river, that he goes to make his songs and put his dreams in order. He's full of strange thoughts, that brother. Kirith has strange thoughts too, said Zildah. I know nothing of Kirith, answered Cain; and Zildah, quick to humour him, cried: Tell me more of your brother Abel. Is he a man like you? He's a man, said Cain. He's quick and clever and has thoughts beyond my
thoughts. But I'm stronger than he, and older. The talk ran on Abel for some while, but when they reached the camp, to which Abel's inventiveness had added so many comforts and refinements, Cain fell silent, thinking of nothing but of whether the place would please her. She offered no remark beyond asking the purpose of this and that, but when his anxiety broke from him in a question—You'll stay with us here?—she answered admiringly: If Abel your brother is willing, I will stay. Cain said: I'm stronger than Abel. He'll do as I say.