Our Lady of Babylon

by John Rechy

  She was eager to resume where we had left off yesterday:

  “Now I know, Lady, that you learned from Adam what you told me yesterday, in your brilliant and necessarily orgasmic description, about how God created Himself. But how did Adam know such details, since he was not created yet? Did God confide in him?”

  “Oh, surely you’re testing me?” I had gained new authority.

  She shook her head, but waited for my answer.

  “When Adam was born, he, being the first man, would of course inherit some of God’s memories.”

  “But of course!” Madame immediately grasped the logic. “A sort of collective unconscious,” she addressed Ermenegildo, who seemed not at all baffled. “It’s quite clear.”

  “I shall explain it just as clearly during interviews to come.”

  And with that exchange, so simply spoken with no drama other than its own, I accepted that Madame Bernice and I were embarked on the journey of redemption she had clarified for me — and that during interviews — I welcomed this, too — I would speak my truths with the full authority that only absolute knowledgeability can provide.

  I demurred on another cup of tea, an offering made much too hastily for me not to interpret it as a risky test on the new brew. “Later I shall be delighted to have another cup,” I tried to assuage Madame’s look of concern as I continued my narration from last night:

  “The restless Spirit that had created Himself prowled infinite space, verifying His authority. And so —”

  “— He created Adam!” Madame anticipated. “After Heaven and Heaven’s angels and the Garden were in place?” At the last, she had turned her statement into a question as if she had located a contradiction.

  She had not. “Of course they were in place. Keep in mind, Madame, that time had not yet assumed the demarcations we assign to it. Events I shall describe later were all occurring simultaneously in Heaven.”

  “I would never have thought otherwise,” Madame was fully satisfied. “Oh, Lady, how beautiful was Eden?” For a woman of sophistication, Madame is capable of pure exuberance.

  “Beyond belief,” I told her. “God did have extravagant powers and so —”

  There were flowers shaped like stars, some that burst open only to reveal more petals, blossoms of every color and hue — yes, and the flower so glorious it did not need the decoration of leaves. As if the air itself had been sprinkled with silver dew, everything glimmered in the first garden.

  I was back in the dream — the memory of Eden. It had all returned to me last night when I deliberately summoned it, discovering details that had blurred during the time when I confused memories with dreams. Now I could tell it all to Madame.

  “The sky was of the purest azure.”

  Under it, Adam woke.

  He stood, resplendent.

  Watching closely, God delighted in the spectacle of Adam’s naked body, stretching.

  Adam felt joy sweep his every limb, every sinew — and then he was overwhelmed by a wave of loss. How was loss possible when everything was new, just born? Still, it was there, a sadness. No, a yearning. Where? He attempted to find its origin. He touched an arm, the other. He raised his head, felt it carefully from his neck up. Was this longing in his mind? Yes. No. Something was there, a fragment of what he felt, but not all. He touched his chest, his ribs. He detected a steady beating. It was there! There! — a longing in his heart.

  To assert that, his hand moved away, down along his stomach, to his legs, between them, cupping the warmth there; and that augmented — he thrilled to this — the longing he had located in his heart.

  Within shadows He had not yet created, God frowned. He had not intended to imbue Adam with such yearning. With shock, He realized that when He had thrust Himself out of the void, spurts of His own craving to exist had whirled into space. One drop, suspended until now, had fallen on the grass of the new garden, exactly where Adam had just assumed his form.

  God’s eyes glowered.

  Adam’s hand had returned to his heart. Yes, it was there that his yearning lodged.

  It’s in his ribs! God was certain. Reckless with anxiety, He plucked out the rib He determined was the offending one.

  Out of that opening, Adam’s longing was released and —

  “—my body sprang to life on a bed of orchids!” I spoke the cherished words to Madame Bernice.

  “That was when you and Adam first —”

  “— discovered love and desire, yes.”

  When we wakened in Eden the second day, my Adam and I made love again. Then we wandered to a vine glistening with blue buds, out of which Adam formed a necklace and looped it between my breasts. We roamed to a brook and discovered our reflections. Adam knelt and dipped his fingers into the coolness. In the moisture he had just discovered, we soaked leaves from a tree nearby, and we bathed each other, lingering.

  I had dismissed as only a perception of last night the presence of a twisted tree. But after we made love again and fell asleep in each other’s arms, I awoke. The pure light of the day confirmed existence of the tree. To its branches had been added clusters of succulent fruit. Seeing it, I felt a coolness that made me press against him. When I heard him sighing in my arms, I detected another sound, a distant summoning murmuring within the quietude of night.

  “Eve, Eve!”

  I looked at Adam, to determine his reaction to the Voice. He had not heard it. I stood. Adam woke briefly, extending his hand up to me, hugging my hips, urging me to make love again. I longed to, yes, to be within each other again, yes, but I eased away. I had to discover the purpose of the summoning Voice. I leaned over to kiss my beloved, then slipped away, following the Voice to the new tree.

  I stood in awe before it. It had grown even fuller, laden with glorious berries, tinted red, sweet red, and purple, all glazed by nectar that glistened silver under — what? — the moon. The branches of the tree — would there have been room for even one more berry? — created a dark shadow even at night.

  The luscious berries aroused a longing I hadn’t yet experienced. Yes, I was hungry. I marveled at the beneficence of this bounty that would feed us so sweetly. Why else would that tree have been planted there, to grow constantly fuller? Gratefully, I reached out for a gathering of the fruit.

  “This is the tree of knowledge,” came a Voice out of the darkness. “Its fruit is succulent and it would allay your hunger.” The hidden Voice was excited in a terrible way. “But you’re forbidden to eat of it.”

  “Why?”

  “It is My will.”

  I did not marvel at the Voice that had spoken so peremptorily. Everything was being experienced for the first time. I did not yet understand that I had reason to fear.

  The Voice continued: “This is the tree whose fruit contains knowledge of good and evil. If you eat from it, you’ll die.”

  Good? Evil? Die? I was baffled by the words’ illogic. How could I understand them since I hadn’t tasted of the tree that would have given me knowledge to comprehend what the Voice was saying?

  “The succulent berries entice you, don’t they, Eve?” the Voice taunted.

  “Yes.” I would share their sweetness, a present, with my Adam. “But you forbade it. Why tempt me with it?”

  “To test your woman’s spirit!” the Voice asserted. “And Adam’s love for you. If you eat, shall Adam reprove you? His loyalty is to Me.” The Voice was harshly confident. “Find out how much he loves you, Eve. Test his devotion to you. What are you, really, to him? A passing desire? A momentary need? — once met, now over. Do you dare defy Me to prove your love — and his?”

  I plucked the lushest cluster of red berries. I brought them to my mouth. “I will eat the fruit!”

  “You disobey!”

  “Your odd admonition?”

  “You said that to God, Lady?” Madame seemed not truly surprised.

  “I did, Madame. It was an odd admonition.”

  I bit into the berries. The lush nectar filled my mouth with a gl
orious sweetness.

  Adam stood beside me, roused by my voice. I saw him now even more clearly, more beautiful than ever. I loved him even more, desired him even more. The Garden, which I realized only now had been too still — beautiful, yes, but with an imposed beauty, not its own — breathed, as if released from a binding spell. Every flower, every leaf assumed individual life, growing, freed.

  “Adam!” The Voice was exultant. “Eve has disobeyed my command. She is doomed! If you eat of the fruit she ate, you will be doomed, too!”

  Doom? I understood the word now, and I shuddered.

  Adam reached for the rich cluster still in my hand. I pulled it away. “No!” I shouted. “It will doom you”

  “You tasted it.”

  “But you must not,” I pled.

  Adam embraced me.

  “Adam” — the Voice was soft — “you have not disobeyed. You shall never disobey.” The Voice grew more certain, firm. “Only she. Renounce her! I will banish her, and you will retain this perfect garden, I will make another woman for you, an obedient one, who shall never disobey us.”

  “Without Eve, it would not be a perfect garden,” Adam said. He kissed me. His lips forced mine to open, his tongue probed into my mouth, seeking pieces of the fruit I had eaten, drawing them into his own mouth, eating them. “If this dooms her, I will gladly share her doom.”

  God’s Voice lowered to a barely audible hiss and whispered in my ear for only me to hear:

  “Eve! Woman! — who let evil into the world. Eve! Mother of Mankind! For this, I will multiply your sorrows. In pain you will bring forth children — and be blamed forever.” His Voice howled but still whispered: “Eve will be blamed forever for all the pain and sadness that will follow.”

  “Oh, why such terrifying rage?” Madame Bernice questioned centuries later in her garden. Her long sigh sought to contain all her bafflement of the enormity of what I had remembered. “Lady, we must find that answer, finally — why, truly, was God so enraged at you?”

  I could only shake my head, and remember that —

  His curse resounded beyond the Garden, into Heaven — where a spirit of rebellion had erupted.

  Fascinated by the vastness of the universe, a bold band of angels led by Lucifer and Cassandra had soared in wild exhilaration through the infinity of space. Having tasted the delectable recklessness of freedom, they confronted God.

  “Lady, forgive the interruption; earlier you assigned Cassandra to Troy,” Madame reminded, “now here she is again in Heaven —”

  “She was Paris’s sister, yes, but, much earlier, Madame, she was an angel and Lucifer’s sister. Cassandra’s powers of what you might call foreseeing came in part from the fact that she could place herself in several worlds.” I spoke with an ease that surprised me. “Besides, surely, you, a mystic —”

  “I don’t question your memories — and certainly never Cassandra in anything,” Madame Bernice asserted, at the same time that she was clearly trying to convince herself that her new tea was a success, sipping it, tasting it on her tongue, waiting before taking another sip.

  In Heaven, there was war —

  “Lady, you will deal now with —?”

  “The War in Heaven? No, not yet. Later, yes, and fully. Here, I’m condensing certain matters necessary to illuminate the events in the Garden.”

  “A sound approach, Lady. Our rehearsals are proceeding splendidly, splendidly.” She consulted Ermenegildo. “Splendidly.”

  For an outrageous moment I thought that he had echoed her, but, of course, she herself had merely added even more emphasis to her enthusiasm.

  During a lull in the War in Heaven — was it possible that it was really over? — Cassandra stood on a hill and pointed out to Lucifer a beautiful creature in a glorious garden just created. The man had been shaped to look exactly like him, like Lucifer, his face, his perfect naked body —

  “Lucifer was naked, too, in Heaven, Lady?” Madame stirred her tea vigorously, although she takes it without sugar.

  “Of course, Madame. Angels would certainly not be attired. Neither Adam nor I had discovered clothes. So how could they —?”

  “An excellent point,” Madame muttered. With grave consternation, she discovered she had put sugar in her tea.

  I was not sure she was convinced. I said, “Beautiful nudity is like an unadorned gem.” I made a gesture toward her simple pendant, an emerald. “The lives I speak of, the women I’ve been, the men I’ve known — those who claim to have captured them in history, stories, art — in the very records we’ve set out to correct” — I gave each word necessary emphasis — “have insisted on clothing them, sometimes even in their baths! But when they’re naked, we see them, fully, as they were, as they lived; and that is how I shall portray them — as we were — because, remember, Madame, I was there.” Had I convinced her?

  She smoothed out the folds of her skirt, touching the gold brocade that wound through it like a vine. “This was woven by nuns in a silent convent in the interior,” she informed me.

  I allowed that to stand.

  “Still, while acknowledging what you say, Lady, it does seem to me that Cassandra might have worn —”

  “She wore a cape. Cassandra was always aware of her dramatic presence, and to augment that she wore a cape.”

  “But of course she would.” Madame Bernice beamed.

  In Heaven, Cassandra wrapped her cape about herself, leaving one shoulder exposed. The cape embraced her slender body and fell just above her feet. Why had God created Adam during this sudden hush in the War in Heaven? she wondered. To arouse jealousy in his favorite angel, Lucifer — who stood now beside her as the smoke of the terrible war diminished — and so to quell further resistance? Oh, and now there was a woman in the Garden. What did God intend for them? Sniffing at the clearing air, Cassandra detected . . . a bitter scent of destiny.

  “The two beautiful creatures in the Garden are in danger,” she told her brother. She sniffed more deeply. “They, too, have defied him. Now God is plotting —” A gust of wind fanned dimming fires, and smoke clouded her vision. “We must help them.” She always tried to keep from sounding urgent. “Urgency excites fate,” she would say. “We have to uncover what God intends with them.”

  And the two angels glided into Eden.

  After God’s wrathful curse, the Garden had been stilled, tensely intact, as if it had been frozen by the night, which came suddenly with only one cold star. All the life I had detected in the flowers and the leaves of trees — after I had eaten of the berries — seemed to have drained away from them. All that could happen to them now was to die, and they were now waiting to die, I realized, now that I knew the meaning of the fatal word.

  In the blue light of the single star, Cassandra and Lucifer were dazzling in the Garden. She had delicate features, and she was pretty, yes, very pretty. Her eyes were beautiful, smiling strangely, sadly bemused. Her body was —

  “— wrapped in her spectacular cape,” Madame asserted.

  — wrapped in a filmy, spectacular cloak, which revealed that she was petite, with slender, lovely curves. The Angel Lucifer was as handsome — almost as handsome, I quickly revised — as my Adam, and his body was as imposing — almost as imposing. What at first had looked to me like wings on both the brother and his sister was instead a luminous aura that further lit the night and revealed that Lucifer resembled Adam enough to be his twin, except for their different coloring.

  Cassandra — oh, she clearly knew she was enormously grand despite her delicacy — slung her cloak from one shoulder to the other. She smiled a sad smile I would come to love, a smile I would often attempt to find words to describe.

  “I’m Cassandra, and this is my brother, Lucifer,” she introduced — she was courteous through the centuries. She took our hands, Adam’s and mine, and linked them with Lucifer’s, asserting our mutual allegiance, which we accepted easily.

  “God intended to separate you, Adam, and you resisted.” Lucifer said wh
at Cassandra had informed him of during their flight. “Now He’s plotting to move next against you. My sister will determine how.”

  Cassandra shook her head and explained, “My brother’s always direct.” Even within her light chastisement of him, it was clear how deeply she loved him.

  “Not excessively so, of course,” Madame inserted.

  “It would be impossible to separate us,” Adam told the angel. They studied each other, Adam and Lucifer, like reflections in a mirror. To emphasize his assertion, Adam drew me closer to him.

  “Impossible,” I echoed him.

  Lucifer reached for a flower, which opened like a star. “God is capable of extravagant beauty.” He held the flower up as an example. Then he laid it gently back on the verdure, adding: “And He’s capable of equal cruelty.”

  Cassandra touched my hair, lightly. “So very pretty,” she said. Her cloak slipped down from her shoulders, exposing one lovely breast. Adam gazed at it, astonished that what he had discovered to be so beautiful in me could have a reflection on another.

  Cassandra’s strange eyes located the new tree in Eden, its delectable fruit glinting in the moon.

  “Was that tree there, when you first sprang to life, my dear?” Cassandra touched the berries, which left a film of nectar on her fingertips. She breathed the scent of the nectar. “It is delicious.” She held it out to her brother to inhale.

  “No, that tree wasn’t there at first,” I answered.

  She seemed to be only announcing what she had already known: “He plotted His blame after you appeared.”

  In another garden, hers, Madame interjected: “We must keep that in mind, Lady. I’m sure Cassandra emphasized it.”

  “So He plotted His blame after you appeared,” Cassandra emphasized, adding even more emphasis by flinging her cloak high across her neck so that now she was covered from her shoulders to her feet.

  Lucifer gathered his wings sadly. That’s what I thought for a moment, that he had gathered his wings, but he had sighed and raised his broad shoulders, scattering about him the blue cast of night. “Is it too late to change His revenge on them?”