Ishmael nodded. “Whenever a Taker couple talk about how wonderful it would be to have a big family, they’re reenacting this scene beside the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. They’re saying to themselves, ‘Of course it’s our right to apportion life on this planet as we please. Why stop at four kids or six? We can have fifteen if we like. All we have to do is plow under another few hundred acres of rain forest—and who cares if a dozen other species disappear as a result?’ ”
16
There was still something that didn’t quite fit together, but I couldn’t figure out how to articulate it.
Ishmael told me to take my time.
After I’d sweated over it for a few minutes, he said, “Don’t expect to be able to work it all out in terms of our present knowledge of the world. The Semites at this time were completely isolated on the Arabian peninsula, cut off in all directions either by the sea or by the people of Cain. For all they knew, they and their brothers to the north were literally the whole race of man, the only people on earth. Certainly that’s the way they saw the story. They couldn’t possibly have known that it was only in that little corner of the world that Adam had eaten at the gods’ tree, couldn’t possibly have known that the Fertile Crescent was only one of many places where agriculture had begun, couldn’t possibly have known that there were still people all over the world living the way Adam had lived before the Fall.”
“True,” I said. “I was trying to make it fit with all the information we have, and that obviously won’t work.”
17
“I think it’s safe to say that the story of Adam’s Fall is by far the best–known story in the world.”
“At least in the West,” I said.
“Oh, it’s well known in the East as well, having been carried into every corner of the world by Christian missionaries. It has a powerful attraction for Takers everywhere.”
“Yes.”
“Why is that so?”
“I guess because it purports to explain what went wrong here.”
“What
“Adam, the first man, ate the fruit of the forbidden tree.”
“And what is that understood to mean?”
“Frankly, I don’t know. I’ve never heard an explanation that made any sense.”
“And the knowledge of good and evil?”
“Again, I’ve never heard an explanation that made any sense. I think the way most people understand it, the gods wanted to test Adam’s obedience by forbidding him something, and it didn’t much matter what it was. And that’s what the Fall essentially was—an act of disobedience.”
“Nothing really to do with the knowledge of good and evil.”
“No. But then I suppose there are people who think that the knowledge of good and evil is just a symbol of… I don’t know exactly what. They think of the Fall as a fall from innocence.”
“Innocence in this context presumably being a synonym for blissful ignorance.”
“Yes… It’s something like this: Man was innocent until he discovered the difference between good and evil. When he was no longer innocent of that knowledge, he became a fallen creature.”
“I’m afraid that means nothing at all to me.”
“To me either, actually.”
“All the same, if you read it from another point of view, the story does explain exactly what went wrong here, doesn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“But the people of your culture have never been able to understand the explanation, because they’ve always assumed that it was formulated by people just like them—people who took it for granted that the world was made for man and man was made to conquer and rule it, people for whom the sweetest knowledge in the world is the knowledge of good and evil, people who consider tilling the soil the only noble and human way to live. Reading the story as if it had been authored by someone with their own point of view, they didn’t stand a chance of understanding it.”
“That’s right.”
“But when it’s read another way, the explanation makes perfectly good sense: Man can never have the wisdom the gods use to rule the world, and if he tries to preempt that wisdom, the result won’t be enlightenment, it will be death.”
“Yes,” I said, “I have no doubt about that—that’s what the story means. Adam wasn’t the progenitor of our race, he was the progenitor of our culture.”
“This is why he’s always been a figure of such importance to you. Even though the story itself made no real sense to you, you could identify with Adam as its protagonist. From the beginning, you recognized him as one of your own.”
TEN
1
An uncle arrived in town unannounced and expected to be entertained. I thought it would be a day; it turned out to be two and a half. I found myself beaming these thoughts at him: “Isn’t it getting to be time for you to move on? Aren’t you homesick by now? Wouldn’t you rather explore the city on your own? Doesn’t it ever occur to you that I might have other things to do?” He was not receptive.
A few minutes before I left to take him to the airport, I got a call and an ultimatum from a client: No more excuses, not one word—do the work now, or send back the advance. I said I’d do the work now. I took my visiting relative to the airport, came back, and sat down at the word processor. It wasn’t that big a chore, I told myself— pointless to make a trip downtown just to tell Ishmael I wasn’t going to be there for another day or two.
But in the water of my bones and bowels there was a tremor of apprehension.
I pray about teeth—doesn’t everyone? I don’t have time to floss. You know. Hang in there, I tell them; I’ll get around to you before it’s too late. But during the second night a molar that was way, way in the back gave up the ghost. The next morning I found a dentist who agreed to take it out and give it a decent burial. In the chair, while he gave me shot after shot and fiddled with his equipment and checked my blood pressure, I found myself thinking, “Look, I don’t have time for this—just yank it out and let me go.” But he turned out to be right. Oh my, what roots that tooth had—and it seemed to be a lot closer to my spine than my lips. At one point I asked him if it wouldn’t be easier to go in from the back.
When it was over, another side of his personality emerged. He became a Tooth Policeman, and I had been well and truly pulled over to the curb. He scolded me, made me feel small, irresponsible, and immature. I nodded and promised and nodded and promised, thinking,
