SEVERAL MONTHS AGO I walked into a bookshop determined not to buy a book and saw, among the remainders, a small volume called The Lost Books of Eden. It beckoned to me like the serpent poised at the Tree of Knowledge. I considered the price. I considered my purse. I said to myself, “Opening that book could be dangerous to my economy,” and I went out. Instead of leaving the scene of temptation, I walked around the block. When the bookshop came into view, I remembered the parable: the kingdom of heaven is like unto a man seeking goodly pearls who, when he had found one pearl of great price, went and sold all that he had and bought it. Also, wisdom is better than rubies, knowledge is better than gold, etc. Nothing makes us more vulnerable to temptation than ignorance. I had to know what was in that book.
Alas! When I looked for the book, it was gone. The clerk was sorry. The Lost Books of Eden had just been sold. Since that time I have speculated on what it might have contained. I have nearly reconstructed the lost books of Eden in my head. My reconstruction goes light on doctrine and heavy on losses. I see myself as an insurance salesman. Adam and Eve have found their way to my office. They draw up two vinyl-covered chairs and tell me their tragedy. They have lost everything through an act of God.
“Can you be more specific?” I say, shuffling through my papers for the right forms. “Exactly what did you lose?”
“Eternal life,” says Adam.
“The roses I’d just planted in the western bower,” says Eve.
“My free time,” says Adam.
“My animals,” says Eve. “Even the hummingbirds were eating out of my hand.”
“Poetry,” says Adam.
“Poetry,” says Eve.
“Poetry?” I exclaim. “Well, that’s the first thing you’ve mentioned that can be replaced. There’s plenty of poetry outside of Eden.”
“But it’s not the same here as it was there,” says Adam. “Poetry was invented in Eden. There was a well in the garden. Any time you put your ear to it, you heard a poem. Anytime you drank from it, you spoke poems. Poetry was so easy. No waiting, no revising, no dry spells.”
“Where does the Bible tell how God invented poetry?” I ask.
“God didn’t invent it,” says Adam. “I did.”
“I did too,” says Eve. “Remember me?”
“Where does it say so in the Bible?” I demand.
“In the books that were lost,” says Adam. “The lost books of Eden. You don’t believe me?”
“I don’t know what to believe,” I answer.
“Look, pretend you’re in Eden,” says Eve. “God has just spent six days inventing the animals and the birds and the plants, and He’s exhausted. He hasn’t invented poems; there are some things only humans can make. Unless you want to call the sun and the moon and the birds and the beasts God’s poems. Unless you want to call Adam His first reader. The one who’s entertained and instructed.”
“When God made me in His own image, He made me a creator too,” says Adam. “And let me tell you, this creation business interested me a good deal. Especially after God let me name everything. The plants weren’t too hard, except there were so many of them. I’d look at a plant and say the first sound that came into my head. And that sound would write itself in letters of gold on the air. Sycamore. Turnip. Gingko. Parsley. Later, in the cool of the evening, God stopped by to see how things were going.
“‘Did you name them all? You didn’t forget any of my weeds?’
“‘Not a one,’ I told him.
“‘Nice work, Adam,’ said God. ‘Now I want you to name the animals.’
“One by one, the animals filed by me and waited to see what I would call them. A low beast with pointed ears and long whiskers came by, softly, softly. I said the first sound that came into my head.
“‘Cat.’
“And the name wrote itself on the air in letters of gold: C-A-T.
“‘That’s what you think,’ said the cat. ‘That’s what you call me. But it’s not what I call myself.’
“‘What do you call yourself?’ I asked.
“‘I am he who counteracts the powers of darkness with my electrical skin and glaring eyes,’ announced the cat.
“The cat’s name for himself also appeared on the air in letters of gold.
“‘To me you’re a cat,’ I tell him. ‘Next!’
“Another small beast hopped up. A beast with long ears and a brief tail. And again I said the first sound that came into my head.
“‘Hare.’
“The name hung in the air for a moment before it floated down to the grass. Nice, short, easy to say.
“‘That’s my first name,’ said the little beast, ‘but not my last.’
“‘What is your last name?’
“‘Which one?’ asked the hare. ‘There’s jumper and racer, there’s hug-the-ground and frisky legs, there’s long lugs, grass-biter, dew-hammer, race-the-wind, jig-foot—’
“‘Wait!’ I exclaimed.
“‘There’s creep-along, sitter-still, shake-the-heart, fern-sitter, hedge-squatter—’
“The names were writing themselves in the air like crazy.
“‘You’re hare to me,’ I said.
“The animals took their names politely but they kept their own, and they let me know that those were their real names. At the end of the day, names sparkled in heaps on the grass; the garden was littered with them. I gathered them up and threw them in the well under the Tree of Knowledge. But they didn’t sink out of sight. They stuck together, they made new names, they told each other secrets. I could see that Creation was no simple matter.
“So one day I said to God,
“‘Show me how You made some of this stuff. That snake, for example.’
“‘No,’ says God. ‘Trade secret. I don’t give away my trade secrets.’
“‘How about one little secret? A blade of grass, for example. Or that cat sitting in the grass.’
“God considered the cat. He considered it all at once, eternally, from its alpha to its omega.
“‘It’s a funny thing,’ said God, ‘but I don’t thrill to it anymore. Except when you do, Adam. What good is creation if nobody enjoys it?’
“‘I enjoy it.’
“‘Tell me about it,’ said God.
“I thought hard. What could I tell God about the grass? I sat at the well and poked around for that word to see what happened to it.
“‘Grass!’ I called hopefully.
“To my surprise, the word grass swam right up like a fish and stayed there, shimmering. I took a big drink from the well. And that evening when God came by to see how things were, I opened my mouth and the well-words rolled out. Words about the grass.
A child said What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands.
How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is any more than he.
I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful green stuff woven.
Or I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord,
A scented gift and remembrancer designedly dropt,
Bearing the owner’s name someway in the corners, that we
may see and remark, and say Whose?
“‘Nice,’ says God. ‘That’s awfully nice.’
“‘You mean the grass?’ I said.
“‘No, the questions. They make me forget I know all the answers. Can you make them work on something else?’
“And God went away. The next evening I looked around the garden and spied a tyger lounging under the Tree of Knowledge. I looked into the well. There, lazing on the surface of the water, gleamed my questions about the grass. I stirred them back down and I leaned close to the water.
“‘Tyger,’ I said.
“The word TYGER swam right up, and I took a drink from the well. And that evening God came by to see how I was doing.
“‘I’ve got some questions for you, God. Questions about the tyger.’
“‘Let’s hear them,’ says God.
“So I opened my mouth and the well-words rolled out. Words about the tyger.
Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
in the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
could frame thy fearful symmetry?
In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare seize the fire?
And what shoulder, and what art,
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand? and what dread feet?
What the hammer? what the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? What dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?
When the stars threw down their spears,
And water’d heaven with their tears,
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?
Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
in the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye,
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?
“‘I like it,’ says God.
“The tyger liked it too. Said the questions made him seem mysterious and important. For a while everything in the garden wanted me to say questions about it. I made questions about the lion and the rose and the wren and the snake and the lamb; I made questions for all of them. It was ‘Little lamb who made thee’ and ‘Little rose who made thee,’ and all the creatures in the garden were happy. And every time I said my questions to God, He nodded.
“‘Nice,’ He’d say.
“But I could see that God was getting bored. After all, didn’t He make everything? Didn’t He know it all from the beginning? So I decided to try something new. I’d let God ask the questions. I’d think of something and give Him a couple of clues, and I’d wrap it in images like a gift in a box. And when God guessed what I was thinking of, the box would open.
“For my first gift, I’d start with the well itself.
“The next evening when God came by to see how I was doing, I said,
As round as an apple,
As deep as a cup,
And all God’s horses
Cannot pull it up.
“‘What are you talking about?’ said God.
“‘This well,’ I said.
“‘Say it again,’ said God.
“I said it again.
“‘Nice,’ said God, and He looked all pleased. ‘The way you made me see it. The way you made it part apple and part cup. The way you made it important. What do you call this thing?’
“I said the first name that came into my head.
“‘Riddle.’
“For days I went around creation riddling this and riddling that. Leaves, flowers, birds, a stone, an egg. I even riddled an egg.
In marble walls as white as milk,
lined with a skin as soft as silk
within a fountain crystal clear
a golden apple doth appear.
No doors are there to this stronghold
Yet thieves break and steal the gold.
“I could see the hen was pleased, but God was getting a trifle bored. Enough riddles already, I thought. I’ll try something else. God liked the way I made the well part apple and part cup, and He liked the way I made the egg part marble and silk, part gold and milk, and part crystal. What was the point of making Him say, ‘It’s an egg’ or ‘It’s a well’? I could just give Him the part He liked: the part where I linked the egg and the well with other things.
“I murmured “egg” over the well, and up swam the word. There in the depths of the well twinkled my questions about the tyger and the lamb and the lion and the rose and the snake, and they were tangled up with my riddles about the well and the egg and the stone and the leaves and the birds; you could hardly tell where one started and the other left off. The word ‘egg’ had got so mixed up with other words that I hardly recognized it. It looked as if a dream had rocked it for seven nights running.
“Nevertheless, I took a long cool drink.
“That evening when God found me in the garden, I said,
“‘You remember the riddle about the egg.’
“‘Which one?’ asked God. ‘Weren’t there several?’
“‘The one where it turned into marble walls as white as milk.’
“‘Oh, yes,’ said God. ‘That was nice.’
“‘Well, I’ve got another egg for you. But you don’t have to find it. You just have to believe it.’
“‘I’m listening,’ said God.
“So I opened my mouth and the well-words rolled out.
In this kingdom
the sun never sets;
under the pale oval
of the sky
there seems no way in
or out,
and though there is a sea here
there is no tide.
For the egg itself
is a moon
glowing faintly
in the galaxy of the barn,
safe but for the spoon’s
ominous thunder,
the first delicate crack
of lightning.1
“‘You just told me the egg is a moon and I believed you,’ said God. ‘I, Who made the egg and Who made the moon. It’s a lie. It’s like the lies angels tell.’
“‘What other lies are there?’ I asked.
“‘Never mind,’ said God. ‘What do you call it?’
“I said the first name that came into my head.
“‘Metaphor.’
“And for a long while I was happy. But man cannot live by metaphor alone, or questions, or riddles, or even the names of things. And one evening when God stopped by the garden to see how things were going, I said,
“‘God, I’m depressed. I have this wonderful life in the lovely garden and I’m depressed.’
“God looked at me for a long time. He looked right through me.
“‘You have a well-stocked mind,’ He said. ‘But your heart is empty. You need a helpmate.’
“‘Sounds good to me,’ I said. ‘When will it arrive?’
“‘Making you a helpmate isn’t as simple as making a worm or a wren,’ said God. ‘Adam, I’m going to give you the first general anesthesia.’
“And God caused me to fall into a deep sleep. And when my body was asleep, my spirit climbed out and flew straight to the well, and jumped in, and came back with all this stuff that the well had made down in the depths. Emerald winds. Tiger lilies. So now I knew how God made things. God wasn’t the only one who could dream. God wasn’t the only one who could invent. But He was the only one who could bring it all back.
“In the first fragile moments between waking and sleeping, I thought I had brought something back, perhaps a little corner of the emerald wind, speaking in wild green syllables. What I heard on waking was neither bird nor bell nor angel, and it sounded like nothing else in Eden.
I will give my love an apple without any core,
I will give my love a house without any door,
I will give my love a palace wherein he may be
and he may unlock it without any key.
“‘What’s that marvelous sound?’ I exclaimed.
“‘That’s singing,’ said God.
“How can I say what the singing was like? It was not like words rising from the well into my mouth. It was as if the well itself were singing. And hearing that sound for the first time in my life, I was—for the first time in my life—lonely. The singing changed course, the way a river does, but it did not end.
O, western wind, when wilt thou blow
that the small rain down may rain?
Christ, that my love were in my arms
and I in his bed again!
“I sprang up, wide awake now. And God took my hand and said,
“‘Adam, meet Eve. This is your helpmate.’
“She sang lullay, lullay, and the birds and beasts tucked their heads under their wings and slept, and she sang Hallelujah! and everything woke up full of praise. Nobody had ever made those words before. She sang, and the words answered with rhythms of their own. One was like a heartbeat, another like a dance step. As I recognized the different rhythms, I knew that without realizing it, I’d been hearing them since the day I was born. I tried to name them, so I could ask for the ones I liked best. Iamb. Anapest. Trochee. I’d say to Eve, ‘Sing me something in anapests.’
“‘You mean something that sounds like a stone skipping?’
“Sometimes in the middle of her song she’d throw in lullay, lullay or hey nonny nonny or fiddle dee dee. And I’d look all over creation for a nonny or a dee, and finally I’d have to ask her, ‘What’s a fiddle? What’s a dee? What’s a nonny?’ And she’d laugh and say,
“‘I don’t know. It’s what the well sings to itself early in the morning. Ask the well.’
“Oh, when she laughed! The stars in their spheres started humming, the morning stars sang together. What were riddles and metaphors to her? She could never remember the names of the iambs and anapests. But let her draw a song around the simplest thing in the world, and I would be filled with joy. And long after I’d forgotten the tune, long after I’d forgotten the words, I could still hear the rhythm of the words, the hum they make when they dance and sing in the well. Who can explain singing? It is a bell weeping and it is a procession of butterflies chanting and it is the tender tread of an elephant walking in its sleep. And whenever I heard Eve singing, I said to myself, ‘Though I have the secret names of the angels, if I have not music, I have nothing.’ Whenever I made metaphors, I tried to please the ear of God as well as His eye.”
Adam stopped talking. It was very quiet in my office. Even the janitor had gone home. I cleared my throat and shuffled my papers and tried to remember why I’d ended up in the insurance business. The reasons eluded me, and I resolved to start looking for another job tomorrow. Eve blew her nose and wiped her eyes.
“Everyone liked my singing,” said Eve, “except the serpent. He’d come by in the morning and listen to me, though. There was one song he always asked for, a song I’d sing when I was off tending the roses in the western bower. I sang it so Adam would know where to find me.
It is late last night the dog was speaking of you;
the snipe was speaking of you in her deep marsh.
It is you are the lonely bird through the woods;
and that you may be without a mate until you find me.
“One evening when I sang that song for the serpent, he said,
“‘It’s nice. But something is missing. You sing everything in the same key.’
“‘Key?’
“‘Key,’ said the serpent. ‘Key is what locks the tune to itself and locks it into your heart. You are singing in the key of C major.’
“‘What other key is there?’ I asked.
“‘Why, there are more keys for tunes than roses on that bush. When you’ve found all the major keys, you haven’t even started to discover the noble sorrows of the minor keys. Let me sing your song in one of the minor keys and you’ll see what you’re missing.
When I go by myself to the Well of Loneliness,
I sit down and I go through my trouble;
when I see the world and do not see my boy,
he that has an amber shade in his hair.
My heart is as black as the blackness of the sloe,
or as the black coal that is on the smith’s forge;
or as the sole of a shoe left in white halls;
it was you put that darkness over my life.
You have taken the east from me; you have taken the west from me;
you have taken what is before me and what is behind me;
you have taken the moon, you have taken the sun from me;
and my fear is great that you have taken God from me!
“Well, I shivered all over when I heard how the serpent’s singing changed things. It was just as if somebody had opened a door in the garden and showed us what we were going to do tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow, just as if we could know what only God knew, that our little garden was called out of a sea of darkness, and it could be called back to that darkness. I’d never thought much about the Void, though God had told us a little about how it was before the garden came, when darkness covered the face of the deep.
“‘Wise serpent, wily serpent,’ I whispered, ‘what is the secret of your singing?’
“‘Loss,’ hissed the serpent. ‘Change. Sorrow. You and Adam live forever in Eden. When he’s gone, you don’t miss him. You just misplace him.’
“‘And where can I get loss, change, and sorrow?’ I begged.
“‘From the Tree of Knowledge,’ replied the serpent.
“‘God said if we eat of that tree we shall surely die,’ I said.
“The serpent laughed his flat little breathy laugh.
“‘Did God tell you what death means?’ he asked.
“‘He said something about falling asleep forever,’ I said. ‘To tell you the truth, I didn’t pay very much attention.’
“‘Believe me, you won’t fall asleep,’ the serpent assured me. ‘I know. I’ve eaten from the tree myself. You will be more alive than ever. You will savor every moment. And you will sing the song that makes your bones shiver and your spirit ache with longing.’
“‘But will we fall asleep forever after the song is sung?’ I asked.
“‘Eve,’ said the serpent, ‘you will turn into the greatest gift the tree can offer. Your life will have a beginning and an end. Your life will be a story in the mouths of millions.’
“‘Story,’ I repeated. It wasn’t a word I knew. ‘Did you find that word in the well?’
“‘I put it there myself,’ replied the serpent.
“‘And what does a story look like?’ I asked.
“‘Like me,’ said the serpent. ‘I am the very shape of a story. Story is the thread on which all the other words are strung. It pulls them along, it gives them a purpose in life.’
“‘Is it as good as singing? Is it as good as metaphor?’ I asked.
“‘My dear little Eve, story is the river on which metaphor moves and has its being. But it can only live in the fullness of time. That’s why God, who lives outside of time, can’t tell stories. To Him the alpha and the omega, the once-upon-a-time and the happily-ever-after, are features on a single face. But you, Eve, shall tell stories. When you have eaten the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, you shall know the beginning of your life but not the end of it, only that it must end. You’ll tell stories whose endings will surprise you, though you are their teller and creator. The Tree of Knowledge will make you wonderfully ignorant.’
“‘And can I sing stories?’ I asked.
“‘Your most beautiful stories will be those you sing,’ the serpent assured me. ‘And when you sing them, broken lives and broken promises will become as lovely and whole as a tear of crystal.’
“‘Sing me a story,’ I begged the serpent. ‘Sing me a story made of such healing.’
“So the serpent sang,
There lived a wife at Usher’s Well,
And a wealthy wife was she;
She had three stout and stalwart sons,
And sent them o’er the sea.
They hadna been a week from her,
A week but barely ane,
When word came to the carline wife
That her three sons were gane.
They hadna been a week from her,
A week but barely three,
When word came to the carline wife
That her sons she’d never see.
“I wish the wind may never cease
Nor fashes in the flood,
Till my three sons come hame to me,
In earthly flesh and blood.”
It fell about the Martinmass,
When nights are lang and mirk,
The carline wife’s three sons came hame,
and their hats were o’ the birk.
It neither grew in syke nor ditch,
Nor yet in ony sheugh;
But at the gates o Paradise,
That birk grew fair enough.
“Blow up the fire, my maidens!
Bring water from the well!
For a’ my house shall feast this night,
Since my three sons are well.”
And she has made to them a bed,
She’s made it large and wide,
And she’s ta’en her mantle her about,
Sat down at the bed-side.
Up then crew the red, red cock,
And up and crew the gray;
The eldest to the youngest said,
“’Tis time we were away.”
The cock he hadna craw’d but once,
And clapp’d his wings at a’,
When the youngest to the eldest said,
“Brother, we must awa’.
“The cock doth craw, the day doth daw,
The channerin’ worm doth chide;
Gin we be mist out o’ our place,
A sair pain we maun bide.
“Fair ye weel, my mother dear!
Fareweel to barn and byre!
And fare ye weel, the bonny lass
That kindles my mother’s fire!”
“‘I don’t understand the story,’ I said, ‘but I believe it. What’s it about?’
“‘It’s about you,’ said the serpent. ‘The wife is you, the maids are you, the lassie by the fire is you. They’re all you. When you have eaten the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, little Eve, no story will be closed to you.’
“‘Give me knowledge,’ I pleaded.
“‘What God calls knowledge I call ignorance,’ said the serpent. ‘What God calls ignorance, I call story. Help yourself to an apple from the tree that stands in the center of the garden.’”
Silence again fell over the three of us. It would be getting dark outside the office, I thought. I don’t have a window; you don’t get a window till someone who has one quits or dies.
“So you ate the apple, Madam, and you gave a piece to your husband, and God put you both out of the garden with nothing but your fig leaves,” I said, trying to sum up the legalities of the case. “You wish to declare a total loss?”
“No,” said Adam, “because we didn’t lose everything. When the avenging angel took us to the East Gate, just before he opened it, he turned and said to me,
“‘You lost eternal life. How could you be so dumb?’
“‘Eternal life never seemed that great,’ I said humbly. ‘We’d never known anything else. What I really hate to lose is that well.’
“The angel looked surprised.
“‘Why, that’s the only thing you haven’t lost,’ he said. ‘God doesn’t want the well. What use is it to God? So He’s letting you take it with you.’
“‘Where is it?’ I asked.
“‘The well is inside you,’ replied the angel. ‘Much more convenient to carry it that way. Of course it’s not going to be as easy to find as it was in the garden, when you could just lean over and take a drink. Sometimes you’ll forget the words you’re looking for, or you’ll call and the wrong ones will answer. Sometimes they’ll be a long time coming. But everything the well gave you it will give you again. Or if not to you, to your children. Or your great-great-great-great-grandchildren. And since God created you in His image, you have His dream power. By the grace of dreams we may meet again, blown together by an emerald wind. And I hope you’ll remember me with metaphors and make a lovely web of words about me. I hope you’ll make some marvelous—what do you call it?’
“I said the first word that came into my head: ‘Poetry.’”
“The Egg” is from PM/AM: New and Selected Poems (Norton), by Linda Pastan.