Jonathan Goldstein (45:51)
In the beginning, when Adam was first created, he spent whole days rubbing his face in the grass. He picked his ear until it bled, tried to fit his fist in his mouth and yanked out tufts of his own hair. At one point he tried to pinch his own eyes out in order to examine them. And God had to step in looking down At Adam, God must have felt a bit weird about the whole thing. It must have been something like eating at a cafeteria table all by yourself when a stranger suddenly sits down opposite you, you. But it's a stranger who you have created, and he is eating a macaroni salad that you have also created, and you have been sitting at the table all by yourself for over a hundred billion years, and yet still you have nothing to talk about. It was pitiful the way Adam looked up into the sky and squinted. Before he created Adam, God must have been lonely. Now he was still lonely, and so was Adam. Then came Eve. Since the Garden of Eden was the very first village, and since every village needs a mayor as well as a village idiot, it broke down in this Eve, mayor, Adam, village idiot. And that is the way it was from the very beginning. Sometimes when Adam would start to speak, Eve would get all hopeful that he was about to impart something important and smart. But he would only say stuff like, little things are really great because you could put them in your hand as well as in your mouth. Eve would ponder how one minute she was not there or anywhere, and now she was. Adam would ponder nothing. In her dreams, Eve danced in the tops of trees. Her beautiful thoughts flew out of her ears and lit up the sky like fireflies. And there were all kinds of people to talk to and hug. And then she would hear snoring. She would wake up and there would be Adam, his yokel face pressed right against hers, his dog food breath blowing right up her nostrils. Eve stared up at the sky. Adam draped his arm across her chest and brought his knee up onto her stomach. God, watching in heaven, feared for Adam's broken heart, as though the whole universe depended on it. Adam was close to the animals and spent all day talking to them. Except for God, Eve had no one. She would complain to the Lord any chance she got. Adam is a nimrod, she would say, and the Lord would remain silent. God was the best and all that, and she loved the hell out of him. But when it came to trash talk, he was of no use. Adam was constantly trying to impress her. Look what I have made, he said one bright morning, his hands cupped together. Eve looked into his hands. She pulled away and shrieked. Adam was holding giraffe feces. I've sculpted it, said Adam. It is for the Lord. He opened his hands wide to reveal to her a tiny little giraffe with a crooked neck. On some days, Adam galloped about, exploring. His hair was wiry, and when it got sweaty, it hung down in his eyes. Adam was cute this way. On one such day, he saw a snake. Adam made the snake's acquaintance by accidentally stepping on his back. Wow, that's smart, said the snake through gritted teeth. Their eyes locked, and in that very moment, the snake concluded that indeed Adam was a lummox and that as king of the earth, his reign would very soon end. There was a new sheriff in town, and it was he. It was no longer the story of Adam, but the story of the snake. He could tell all of this just by simply looking into his idiot eyes. I've seen you around with another one like you, he said to Adam. But instead of the dead, legless snake between the legs, she has chaos there. That's Eve, said Adam, all animated. I named her that myself. God made her from out of my rib. He showed the snake the scar on his side. The snake looked at Adam in silence. The idea of Adam, Adam the schlemiel, Adam the fool being God's favorite, was enough to give the snake a migraine. You aren't at all like I imagined, the snake said. I thought you'd be closer to the ground, more pliant, greener. I tried to explain to God that to make you balanced up on your hind legs was architecturally unsound. I don't know why I bother. Adam sat and listened wide eyed. Eve hadn't the patience to sit and chat like this. So when the snake suggested they get into the habit of meeting every once in a while to talk, Adam was very excited to do so. As they lazed on their backs, staring up at the sky, the snake would brag about how he was older than the whole world and that he used to pal around with God in the dark back before Creation. He said that in the darkness it was a truer, freer time, that in the darkness was the good old days. He told Adam that back in the very beginning he had all kinds of thoughts on how to make the Garden of Eden a better place, but that God was just too stubborn to listen to reason. Make the earth out of sugar, I told him. Instead of stingers, give bees lips they can kiss you with. Adam didn't always agree with the snake. In fact, a lot of what the snake said went straight over his head. But there was still something about him that made him get into a very particular mood. He made the world feel bigger. Sometimes, when Adam was with Eve, sitting there in icy silence, he would think to himself, I sure could go for a good dose of snake. You would think that after all the time they spent together, the snake would finally find it within himself to start liking Adam just a little bit. But instead he only grew to hate him more. He took to comforting himself with thoughts of Adam's wife, Eve. From what he heard from Adam, she was hot and smart. Often he would imagine running into her and the instant synergy they would have. Adam neglected to tell me how leggy you are, he would say, wrapping himself around her calf. The snake had no idea what he looked like. He was hairless, buck toothed, four inches tall, and he spoke with a lisp. Adam had the IQ of a coconut husk, but he was still human. The snake, in his arrogance, was unable to grasp this. And so he daydreamed. Sometimes I'd think you were watching me, the snake imagined saying to Eve. Because I felt like there were ribbons wrapped around me. Ribbons made of raw pork intestines. I would turn around to catch you sneaking a peek at me from behind a tree, but all I'd see were the hedgehogs which mocked me. Come, my dear. Let us eat from the Tree of Knowledge. On Eve's very first day, Adam had explained to her the rules of the garden, just the way God had explained them to him. He had lifted his head up and had made his back stiff. He had spoken the way a radio broadcaster from the 1940s would. Another kind of woman, someone softer than Eve, might have found this charming. He explained that except for the Tree of Knowledge, every tree in the garden was theirs to eat from. I am a fan of the pear, adam said. It is not unlike an apple whose head craves God. Tell me more about this Tree of Knowledge, said Eve. She enjoyed the sound of it. The Tree of Knowledge. It sounded very poetic. There's not much to tell, said Adam. If we eat from it, we will die. From then on, Eve talked about the Tree of Knowledge all the time. It was Tree of Knowledge this and Tree of Knowledge that. It's like it wasn't a tree at all, but a movie star. Sometimes she would just stand by the tree and stare at it. It was on such an occasion that she met the snake. When Eve first caught sight of him, she brought her hand to her mouth and gasped. She had seen some repulsive animals in her day. A booby that percolated her vomit to just beneath her tonsils, a dingo that instilled in her a sublime sense of nature's cruelty, and a death watch beetle that filled her with existential dread. But still, there was something about the snake that made her realize in a flash that the world was anywhere from 60 to 80% oilier than she would have ever imagined. Hi, said the snake, in the mood for some Fruit of Knowledge. It's fruity. We were told not to eat from that tree or else we would die, said Eve.
