Infinity in the Palm of Her Hand: A Novel of Adam and Eve Read Online Free PDF Page A

The man thought that she had never before looked at him like that. She implored him to eat it. He did not want to think. She was his flesh and his bones. It was not in him to leave her alone. He did not want to be left alone.
    He bit into the fruit. He felt the sweet juice moisten his tongue, the soft flesh catch in his teeth. He closed his eyes and was struck dumb by the pleasure of the sensation.
    He turned to look at her. Her back was to him. The arching curve of her waist lifted her handsomely round buttocks. He wondered whether if he bit them, they would taste as sweet as the fig. He reached out to feel that perfect roundness, amazed that he had never before noticed the exquisite softness of her skin. He pulled his hand back but the sensation lingered on his fingers, so strong and clear that it made him shiver. Eve turned, and he reached out again and touched the curve of her breast. The woman stared at him, long and hard. Her eyes were opened wide.
    They heard the thudding hooves of the animals. They saw the herd of elephants milling about, the buffalo, the tigers, the lions. The air was filled with endless guttural sounds, howls, incomprehensible laments.
    Adam looked at Eve. He experienced his first confusion.
    Eve was staring at him. She wanted him to stop looking at her as if now that he had bitten the fruit he was thinking of biting her, eating her. She put her hands over her breasts.
    â€œStop looking at me,” she said. “Don’t look at me like that.”
    â€œI can’t help it,” he said. “My eyes do not obey my will.”
    â€œI will cover myself,” she said, tearing leaves from the fig tree.
    â€œI as well,” he said, aware that, like him, she was not able to take her eyes from his legs, his hands, as if they were new to her.
    Eve looked for the creature of the Tree of Knowledge. Shedid not see her anywhere. She began to call her, until she saw her overhead, near the top of the tree.
    â€œWhat are you doing there?”
    â€œI’m hiding.”
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œSoon you will know. Soon you will know everything you have wanted to know.”

CHAPTER 5
    T HE MAN WAS WALKING WITH LONG STRIDES. EVE hurried along behind him. He said that they should hide and wait for whatever was going to happen. He was frightened. She, on the other hand, was waiting for knowledge to be manifest. She tried to convince him that they should go look instead for the Other and tell him what they had done, ask him to tell them what more they had to do. How would they know Good and Evil? Was merely having eaten the fruit enough for them to tell one from the other? And if they did not recognize them? Look, I have only done my part, she argued. Now Elokim will have to do his, teach them all that they could be. But Adam did not want to listen to her. He had followed her to eat the fruit, he told her. Now she had to follow him. As they walked on, branches snapped and birds flew up from the trees. The earth smelled like rain. The Garden was still vibrant and unharmed. Light from the trees shed gold among the vines and trunks and foliage. No sound came from the animals. The man was barely speaking. Eve looked at his back. From his waist hungthe fig leaves he had tied together with a vine. Eating the fruit had awakened a strange hunger in her. Hunger for sweet juices, for running her lips over Adam’s skin. Her senses were keenly aware of the air, the leaves, and she wanted to touch everything with her hands. Adam said nothing, but she watched how he was examining the details of the path and stopping to sniff the air. He had looked at her as if he needed to brush against her, know her with the awareness of a newly discovered body.
    Adam did not want to tell the woman what he was feeling. He hadn’t as yet found a way to explain it to himself. Ever since he’d bitten into the fruit, nothing he did had coherence. His bizarre vitality was a wall between him and tranquillity. He was