Eve (34 page)

The fog lifted, and emerging from underneath its white rim were two of the finest ibexes we had ever seen. They were completely heedless of our presence. One of them gave a sharp whistling sound.

“Look,” Adam cried. “It can’t be.” There had been few in the Garden.

But there they were. The two males lowered their whiskery chins and tilted their long curved horns and crashed together, each trying to topple the other. This was a remarkable feat, to scrabble and stand solid on such precipitous terrain.

I pointed to the rocks above, as the milky fog lifted higher and higher. “There are more.” Several females watched, aloof. Their tan bodies blended into the rock behind them, and they stamped their front feet impatiently.

“We could catch one,” said Adam, his voice trembling.

Of course, had I known what Adam was contemplating, I would have discouraged him straightaway, but I thought he was simply admiring their breadth and strength.

Then, with sudden realization, I understood his response to mean that he was hungry and he was going to kill one of them if he could. I hastened to dissuade him. After all, Adam was not an ibex’s equal match. It would
simply rise up on its strong hind legs and pummel him to death. I shuddered to think of it.

“No,” said Adam, as if to read my mind. “Not to kill them. To
milk
them.”

I looked at him in astonishment, then bewilderment. We had seen animal young suckle at their mother’s nipples, but was it possible that we, too, could latch on to a teat and suck?

“Are they with child?” I asked. The udders only seemed full to bursting when they were great with child and expected to deliver.

“There is only one way to find out,” said Adam. He placed one foot upon a boulder, rested his elbow on his thigh, and looked at me expectantly. His bravado was impressive, but still, I did not think we should attempt such a thing. After all, we had water; we had food.

I was flummoxed.
How did he expect to tame so nimble an animal?
“I do not see how you will do it,” I said.

Adam hefted himself up on the boulder in the direction of the female ibexes. He held out his hand. “Careful,” he said.

I let him pull me up. We stood now upon a narrow crumbling ledge. Any movement sent a cascade of rocks and pebbles crashing down the mountainside. I sucked in my breath.

“I shall go up and around the one with the white spot on its chest,” said Adam. “You will approach her from this angle, here.”

I nodded. I wanted to say,
This will not work. They will protect one another. Have you forgotten the bear acted alone—and look how that turned out.

Adam continued on a ways, then crept like a spider up the sheer face of a rock, grasping the ledges with his fingertips and toes.

I watched and cringed.
Should he fall, what would I do? I
could not think about it. I planted my feet upward on rock and dirt, testing my foothold first to see if it would come away, and when it didn’t, I placed my foot squarely and firmly to lift myself up. A painstaking process on such a steep incline.

Adam continued upward. At one point I heard a scatter of pebbles, then an uneven thud as a rock bounded down the hill. Tree branches
cracked; tiny animals skittered through the brush; birds flew up in injured song.

I looked for Adam, but he was not there. I had not heard him cry, nor had I seen him reach the top of the rock. “Adam,” I called, frightened in my aloneness.

There was no answer.

“Adam.”

“Up here,” he said. He was laughing and pointing out a group of scampering kids play-fighting among the rocks. “I only wish I were as surefooted.”

I straightened, leaning my weight into the mountain. “What are you suggesting?”

Adam turned his attention to the female. “We must get her down and tie her legs together. Then we shall suck from her teats.”

“What about the rams?”

“Look at them. They are otherwise engaged,” said Adam.

I glanced down at the butting rams but did not come to the same conclusion. If Elohim wanted us dead, well, we might just help Him along. I wanted to help Adam, though, and we needed greater nourishment than what we were eating, so I decided, yes, I would do what Adam had said.

The female ibexes were unusually tame and seemed unconcerned at our advances. This surprised me. I knew them to be considerably fast and nimble, yet they did not move as we approached. Maybe they were just as curious about us as we were about them.

Adam drew closer to the ibex he had chosen, then he moved quickly to grasp her horns in his hands. When she planted her front feet and struggled to pull away from him, he offered her a fistful of grasses that he had plucked from the mountainside. She sniffed at them with disdain and shook her head savagely. Adam dropped the grasses and gripped her horns tighter, straining not to lose her. This she certainly did not like. When Adam wouldn’t release her, she backed away from him, trying to lift up on her hind legs.

Adam yelled something indecipherable then, and with one loud feral grunt he had her on her side, her legs skittering in the air. “Grab the front legs.”

I fairly stumbled up the slope.

How could I do what Adam requested? The poor frightened animal was now pawing at the air, her hooves flailing wildly and erratically, in an attempt to gain even footing. Had I followed Adam’s suggestion, I would be battered beyond all sensibilities.

He saw my hesitation. “The back legs, then. Do something, quick. I can’t hold her like this forever.”

The back legs were easier. They had no ground to push upon and were not kicking as ferociously. I grabbed one, then the other, and as I did so, the ibex raised her head to stare at me. It was a mournful, accusatory stare that made me want to weep.
What were we doing? How had we sunk so low as to misuse an animal in such a way?

“Now what?” I said.

“A vine might work,” said Adam.

I was becoming irritated at Adam’s irrationality. He had not discussed the course of action with me, and
had
he, I would have been better prepared and torn a section of vine
before
I took hold of the ibex’s legs. I sighed audibly.

“This is for you too, you know,” he said. “I’m doing this for you.”

“And where, exactly, do you expect me to find this vine?” Truly, we stood on a rocky incline spotted with only small plants favoring stony ground—spiny yellow broom, shrubby rock roses, and three-lobed sage.

Adam glanced around. “You shall have to weight her down with rocks to hold her.”

“I will not hurt her,” I said.

“It would be better to kill her,” mused Adam.

“Kill her?” I said. “Whatever for?”

“Then we would have her milk
and
her meat.” When he saw my face, his impatience flared up. “I should think her meat would be excellent food.”

I looked at Adam and burst into tears. I still had hold of the hind legs. The other ibexes had fled and were now perched above us, like vultures, watching.

“We will only do what Elohim did to that lion,” Adam said. “There’s nothing to be afraid of.”

“I’m not afraid,” I said. “But I do not believe killing is our way.”

“Why not?” said Adam. “Elohim has given us every living thing to take care of and to use. I do not see where we’ve gone wrong.”

“To take
care
of,” I said.
“Not
to use.”

Adam snorted. “Will you help me or not?”

“It’s child—” I protested, looking upward at the frolicking kids, wondering which one was hers, which one had slipped, whole and alive, from her body. I looked back then at my husband, his body rippling with effort, and knew in that brief instant that I carried him inside me. I looked at his gaunt half-starved body and felt his terror and uncertainty. I remembered the Garden and knew that I would give this man what he wanted because of all he had given me—beauty, earth, sky, love, and life.

I released the ibex’s legs and lurched farther up the hillside to find a large heavy rock. I heard the scrabbling of a struggle below me. The ibex knew she contended with only one of us now. Breathless, I found what I was looking for and lifted it. My body strained underneath its weight, but I brought it back, dutifully, and stood over the ibex’s head.

“Now,” cried Adam.

I closed my eyes and dropped the rock. I dropped that rock upon the ibex’s head, and it bled and bled, but it did not lie still.

“Again!” cried Adam.

I scrambled down the hill to retrieve the rock, careful not to lose traction on the wash of pumice, and again I hoisted it to my waist to carry it back up the hill. Once more I stood over the ibex’s head and raised the rock above my head. I was trembling now. This time I used my full strength. The ibex’s head flopped, but its eyes were still knowing, and its legs fluttered. A gasp crossed my lips, and I stood, empty-handed, embarrassed, and ashamed.

“There now, you’ve done it. A fine job of it too,” said Adam.

The ibex’s eyes tensed and flashed, shivered in their sockets. Although there was no noise, no outcry from the ibex, it was as though the earth roared—cried out, rather—as the ibex’s life rolled away down the mountainside.

I stifled a sob that rose up in my throat.

Adam hastened around the ibex’s body and crouched near her full
udder. He held the ibex’s hind legs, still quivering, as he braced himself to suck. He grabbed hold of a teat with his mouth and began to fill his belly. He released after a bit and exclaimed, with a white milky rim about his lips, “It’s good. We shall have our fill.”

I shook my head. I was not prepared to take from this dying animal, its dense bones becoming one with the ground. It did not feel right to me— yet.

And this is when it happened. With a final sigh, the ibex kicked her right front leg, and Adam rose up yelping, crying out in pain, gripping his ear, his face contorted and ashen. “Hold it,” Adam yelled. “I told you to hold it.”

“She was dead,” I said.

Adam glared at me, his anger coiling and uncoiling, like a snake unsure of its victim. He grabbed a stone at his feet and began to strike at the ibex’s head over and over again, tearing its flesh into ribbons of meat.

“She’s dead,” I said. “She cannot hurt you.”

Adam released the stone and sank to the ground. He clasped his head in his hands and said, “I hear a ringing, an awful ringing in my head. It will not stop.”

I went to him then, leaving the ibex behind.

I held his head in my hands, tilted it so I could see better. The top of his left ear was gone, completely sliced off, and a gash ran from his temple to just behind his ear. Blood wept out of it and clotted. I studied it and said, “There is nothing to be done. We will wash it with water, when we come upon it. Right now we must skin this beast before other animals come to feed.”

Adam glared at me.

I reached for his hand, hoping for some resolution.

Finally he took my hand. “My voice, it rolls about inside my head,” he said. He grimaced and put his hand upon his forehead.

By now the fog had lifted completely, and below, a lush green valley emerged. We had come out of the snow several days previous, for we were descending into the first valley, and although we had lost sight of the stream, we had come upon bushes and bushes of blueberries, wondrous profusions of them, tucked into the crevices of rocky limestone. Picking
and eating them had been like answering a summons to life, to our living. Just to have food,
any
food, in our mouths was a delightful blessing.

We still had a few berries left. We ate ravenously that night, the ibex’s blood and berry stains tingeing our fingers and mouths, marking us as predators and foragers. We did not learn to cook and to season until much later, when we watched our flocks become ill on old, spoiled meat.

And that is how Adam came to be deaf in one ear.

He would not let me forget it.

It was the beginning of our undoing.

I tell you this. Cain is getting weary of Father’s suggestions.
In fact, the night before last Cain told Father, “You torture me.”

In the lamplight, Father’s face went blank. He didn’t understand what had gone wrong; he was only trying to help. “Cain,” he said weakly.

“No more,” said Cain. “Stick to your fruit trees. Stick to Mother’s garden.” Then, after noticing Father’s face hanging like stone, he softened his words. “This is upon my shoulders only. Don’t you see?”

Father nodded, but his mouth was clamped shut and his knuckles were white with insult.

“Father, do not be this way. I appreciate your help, I do, but it is I who have to win the praise of Elohim, not you,” said Cain.

Father looked up then, his face elegant and pale. “You do not know Elohim. You do not know the perfection He expects.” His words were hard and precise, as though scratched into stone. “Your little house, your little temple. You think this would please Elohim? He wants your allegiance and your love, not silly little things like houses.”

Cain looked at Father as though his words had been cut into Cain’s skin, and he turned his back to show Father he did not bleed, he
would
not bleed.