The Rape of Eve

i.

In the garden lush with summer rain, she sees a serpent and is suddenly afraid. She does not know why. Surely, all here is good, as are the face of the waters and the earth, the greater and the lesser light of sky, the burgeoning fruit and turgid herb, as are she and her companion mate. 

Is she really but a single rib taken from his side? She wonders of her origin. He bears no scar, though she is small and frail, so like an unpaired rib that lacks the symmetry and order of the cage of twenty-four, she no more than one brittle bone stolen in the night while he slept, unaware until he woke to her, nubile in the blooming rose of dawn that lit her flesh, untouched.

And upon waking, he rejoiced by the brook in which they bathed, cupping his hands full of water and lifting it glistening to the sun, before he let the stream loose across her limbs again and again watching the light play along her curves, for already, he loved her as his own flesh and bone. She, his soul companion now. 

ii.

Still, during the long-shadowed hours, like this early morning hour, she feels herself as if a rib unpaired. She strolls the far reaches of the garden alone. No matter. She breathes in the delicate scent of apricot and lily. The day is good. Six nightingales sing amid long olive branches, their sweet and simple notes of praise rising into the fathomless blue. The loamy soil gives way beneath her soles, her toes stretching deep into the fertile warmth. 

And suddenly, the birds are still. Silence falls long as a shadow across a patch of wild strawberries, as she presses onward toward the stream, a sudden chill running the narrow length of her spine.

A ripple in the light, like some mirage, attracts her glance. This hour, before the sun has reached its peak, she senses a strange heat that scorches as it seems to blind. How alone she feels, the man not at her side to take her hand, to warn her not to walk this path. 

iii.

She has never seen a body writhe like his. The serpent, his skin sleek, unlike the man’s or any beast she knows, his scales positively gleaming in the light. He, a coiled dragon rising between the fig trees. And the length of his tongue. How it darts and flickers out toward her, as if he would taste of her flesh the way she, too, hungers now. She shivers as he breathes in her scent, fragrant like almonds and honey, and she cannot break her gaze from his. 

“Are you hungry?” he asks. He is solicitous. “Eat, for no one will mind. Eat whatever you like. No one will know.” 

She does hunger. So, her slender hand reaches out for grapes that fall ripe and succulent from a climbing vine, the fruit like dark jewels against her palm.

iv. 

“No, not those,” the serpent says, his coils rippling in the cool wind that shakes the myrtle tree. She starts, snatches back her hand. “Eat of the fruit at the center of the garden,” he whispers,  gentle again. “Eat of the thick tree, beyond the bush of peonies. That fruit will please you as none other can. And once you let your tongue slip round that fruit, once you have eaten all that you desire, the sweet nectar overflowing your lips, your belly full and taut, you will know all.”

The serpent’s voice is soothing now, somehow hypnotic. The sky begins to shift in color, turning to lilac then to smoke. As her womanly flesh is weak, so now is her will.

“Your fruit is more beautiful than that of any tree,” he says. She knows not of what he speaks.

She thinks of the man, his hair rough and wild like that of bear or lion—the serpent’s skin, shimmering in the light. Against her will, she is entranced. How could he know of her hunger roused, her unspoken longing?

v.

“Go ahead,” he says. “Taste and see. You will please your Creator so. You will be one with Him,  a true meeting of the minds when you wake to see as He sees, to know as He knows.”

She, innocent and tender as the wild field anemone. Why should she doubt sweet promises? She would never think to lie, herself, and so would not mistrust even the word of a serpent, he who inhabits the garden, as does any tame and gentle beast in harmony with her and with the man. This garden, their earthly paradise.

Still, she recalls the man’s warning not to touch the fruit of this one tree. An echo of the words returns as if on wind, the sky darkening, the clouds beginning to scud. The fruit of this one tree brings death. 

The tree, so thickly-leaved, virile as it seems, the serpent now coiled about the trunk, whispering to her from the branches, or is that the song of wind rustling through leaves? How her tongue has embraced the succulence of the fig, the pear, the pomegranate. She has tasted of the broad bean, the cucumber, the tender pea and sweet anise. She has eaten of the citron, lentil, and the mint. Of what could she die? 

She does not even know what the word death means—an abstract yet foreboding threat. Her mind fogs over, confused. Where is the man, now? She would ask if he were here.

vi.

And suddenly, the serpent is upon her, the fruit pressed hard against her lips, then deep into her tender throat. And the fruit is not sweet as he had promised. And she finds that once she has tasted of this fruit, a part of her is lost. She cannot again be innocent. A sharp and sudden pain sears her belly, and she bleeds as if the wound will never heal.

How can she face the man, now? Flushed as any ripe stone fruit fallen wild to the earth, she burns with sudden shame. The serpent now has disappeared as quickly as he had come, as if by some angelic miracle or false magician’s trick. 

Either way, the man will not want her now. How can she bear the cold silence of what now rises untold between them? So, she gives of the fruit to the man, as well, and he eats, and as the man begins to heave and labor for more, they both say that it is good.

Sri Lal is the author of a collection of Indian hymns in English translation, Atma Bodha (O Books, 2010). Her writings have appeared in Fiction International, the New York Quarterly, Epiphany, Daedalus, Bombay Review, Indian Quarterly, Chicago Quarterly Review, Bamboo Ridge and others. She teaches literature and creative writing in the English Department at CUNY’s Borough of Manhattan Community College. 

A Song for Sri