Adam & Eve (23 page)

“Why do you think that, dear daughter?”

“Because she will change our lives. I had a dream about it.”

Pierre frowned. “Dreams do not always come true.”

“I remember my mother’s charm. Put six pomegranate seeds under your pillow, and whatever you dream will come true. In six hours, six days, six weeks—maybe six years.”

“Because Persephone ate six pomegranate seeds, she was confined to the underworld for six months of the year.”

“I know that story,” Arielle replied. She smiled at her father, lowered her face, and made her eyes turn six shades darker. “The Greek story has nothing to do with our Arabic charm.”

“I think your mother made it up. I never heard of such augury. You didn’t like pomegranate juice. You would never drink it.”

She continued to shift her gaze from the floor to his eyes, like a little seductress. “Still, Lucy Bergmann will change our lives.”

Change nothing
had become their unspoken credo. It had been their bulwark against cataclysm and horror. Arielle had been only six when they had fled Egypt for France. Only six—as he had been when his own mother died against the wall near Cairo—when Arielle’s mother, his beloved wife, Violette, had been blown up by a car bomb. The bomb had been meant for him, the author of
Muhammad, the Man.
Even now he wagged his head back and forth a bit, as though to shake out the memory, the impossible, endless recapitulation of loss.

Although every instinct had shouted at him to take his little girl and flee to France, he had refused to be exiled entirely by terror. He had gone back to Egypt every year, at least for a week or two. He knew he was probably watched by some wing of the dictator’s government, but he didn’t care. Until the discovery of the Genesis codex, he had nothing to hide and no inclination to be politically active. He visited his Sufi stepfather and Violette’s family. For serenity,
he needed to see the images of ancient Egypt. When Arielle reached the age of twenty-one, she, too, had insisted on returning to Egypt periodically, and she had embraced her mother’s Muslim faith.

Though his professional focus had become the cave art of southern France, northern Spain, and Italy, Pierre Saad had also continued to study the stone carvings of ancient Egypt, with a special emphasis on how depictions of Hathor and Isis had evolved. The goddesses and gods of the Nile had rewarded him for returning more faithfully to the land than the floods, now that they were contained by the high dam at Aswan. The gods had saved a special discovery for him alone to make.

In the hills around Nag Hammadi, in the year 2019, he had stubbed his toe on what he first took to be a smooth stone. Later he would tell his daughter that it was simply because he knew the story of the peasant boy’s discovery of the so-called Gnostic Gospels, in 1945, that he had looked down. The curve of the stone raising itself slightly above the sandy soil was too perfect, too smooth, to be natural. Glancing around and seeing no one, he unearthed an alabaster jar, not a human-size one like the 1945 discovery, but one much smaller.

This one was only the size of a human stomach. Weighing perhaps seven pounds, it was squat and almost oval in shape, with a lid that fit so closely one could hardly see that it was a lid. The thick lid had no handle, but a slot chiseled down into the top; at the bottom of the slot a recess on one side accommodated the tucking under of fingertips. Yes, a person inserted straight fingers into the lid, then curled their tips into the recess. The slot was just the size for three of his fingertips, but probably when hands were smaller it had served as a grip for four ancient fingers. He tried to pull up the lid, there on the spot, though all his professionalism said
No,
not to do that. The alabaster casket was wiser than he. It would not open.

Nervously he glanced around, saw only three donkeys, and put the oval box in his knapsack. He took time to walk slowly, to eat leisurely at a tavern before going to his room. There he tried again with all his might to lift the lid. To no avail. A housekeeper came in with a broom and swept the floor; he saw her eye the alabaster oval.

To steady his nerves he took a single long and deep breath; involuntarily, he smiled at the recalcitrant vessel, as snug as an ostrich egg. Its vague, tannish mottling mingled with its creamy tones. Even when the maid left, he continued to sit. He would regard it as an object of fascination, not vexation. Then it occurred to him to see if the top would
slide
off the base. Yes, a lateral motion, not the preemptive arrogance of entry from above. He must
set aside
the lid. Perhaps it would slide in only one direction, from right to left. When he pushed the lid with his thumbs, he heard a slight grating, as though minute particles of sand had worked their way into the fine space where the lid fit the base. Of course there was a reluctance of stone to slide over stone. Perhaps originally—how many thousands of years ago, in different hands, in a different world—there had been oil to facilitate the motion.

Very carefully, he held the stone casket on the horizontal.

As the lid grated to one side, he saw a hollow space containing small, flat sheets of papyrus. The brown lettering was unlike Hebrew, more primitive in shape. The letter forms had the laborious rigidity of ancient Phoenician letters, like little clubs or angular ladles. Meaning, a phrase, emerged.

…
not a story of one creator….
Pierre’s hands began to shake. These little pages, so fragile, perhaps a dozen of them, like a stack of thin, dry crackers. His eyes raced along the marks, searched for another phrase.

… In the beginning…
Very carefully he looked at new pages. When his effort yielded no understanding, he went back to the first page. Was that the word for “friend”? Did the phrase mean “my friend who writes”? Single words suggested
rivers, sun, moon, sheep, donkeys, birds.
But what did these names mean? The animals seemed to rise from the page into the air. His eyes flew back to the phrase
In the beginning God…,
and a great chill swept Pierre’s body. It was the idea of Genesis:
In the beginning God created…
But what was the reference to “friend who writes”? And had he not seen the phrase or something like it farther on in the text? Yes. Another version:
In the beginning, there was something and there was nothing….

Now heat flooded Pierre’s body and brain. The words appeared to contradict, at least to amend or to approach from another angle, the Genesis story, the grand opening verses. Again, Pierre made his shaking hands move care-fully
while his eyes searched and found
dust
and then
clay.
The yolk inside the alabaster egg was a vision of creation. And perhaps it provided a context of a writer or writers attempting to articulate the vision.

His hands trembling, Pierre replaced the loose pages back into the cavity that had held them, then slid the covering stone back into place. He leaned forward and kissed the alabaster as he had seen Orthodox priests kiss the Holy Bible. He picked up the protective casket and cradled it against his bosom.

He must find a way to disguise it and take it to a safe place. He closed his eyes and began to memorize what he had deciphered.
In the beginning, there was something and there was nothing…. Birds, donkeys, clay, friend, dust…

“Genesis,” he whispered.

Had he been watched? Surely the author of
Muhammad, the Man
was regarded with some suspicion. Was he being watched now as he stared at his treasure egg of mottled alabaster?

As casually as possible he glanced at the corners of the room. It was not an expensive room, but it was one he had returned to for six years. For the last five years Arielle had often rented the room next to it, and there was a connecting door so that one need not pass into the hall before entering the other room. It had been cozy having his daughter close at hand while preserving his own privacy. Again, he glanced around, trying to detect if some tiny camera eye were watching him. Perhaps so. Perhaps not. Or an ear tuned to his whisper?

He sat back down and deliberately picked up the alabaster egg, glanced at it, set it down again, and pushed it away with a casual gesture as though he counted it of no special importance. Having been careless, now he must try to cover up his rapture. Was he a fool to think this writing referenced creation? He picked up a common catalog from the Coptic Museum and leafed through it as though the egg held no more interest for him. Perhaps only now was he under surveillance. Perhaps they had not seen him place his lips on the stone. Pushing back his chair, he put his feet up on the hotel desk in the rude manner of a Western male, letting the sole of his sandal almost touch the alabaster box. He chewed absentmindedly on the fingernail of his index finger as though he were so bored that he welcomed any distraction.

Finally he got up restlessly and rapped with his knuckles on Arielle’s door.
“Want to go out?” he had called to the closed door. “I’m bored out of my mind. I want to shop.”

Arielle opened the door. “Shop, Papa?”

“Let’s buy some alabaster—vases and boxes—to take back to our friends. The French love that sort of stuff. Maybe some goblets?”

“The goblets are usually onyx,” she answered. She was looking at him carefully.

“Get a large bag,” he said. “I’ll take my knapsack.”

Her gaze went over his shoulder to the box on the table.

“I have a piece I want to return,” he added.

“Cracked?” she asked.

“Yes. We can find some better stuff.”

At the Cairo airport that distant day in 2019, when they were beginning their journey back to France, every package was unwrapped from its newspapers, unsealed from its cellophane taping, opened, held up to the light, and examined by uniformed guards, finally by two sweating men in coats and ties. The father and daughter were respectful and patient; they chatted of this thing and that person whom they would soon see at home. Only someone who knew the pair very well would have noticed their eyelids were slightly lowered. Behind their gaiety, there was conspiracy. Days before they entered the Cairo airport with their packages, they had managed to visit Arielle’s aunt, Violette’s sister, to leave the treasure with her.

Recently Pierre had been visited separately by two grave men. Though he tried to shrug off their visits, he was glad that Arielle was still working at her studio in Paris.

The first visitor had been an Orthodox Jew, Rabbi Esau ben Ezra, from West Jerusalem. He appeared at Pierre’s office in the Dordogne with a proper letter of introduction from a mutual acquaintance. The rabbi started the conversation casually by noting Pierre had recently been in Egypt. He asked questions
about artifacts dating to the period of Moses and early textual versions of the Ten Commandments; then he pretended to let his mind wander as he spoke of texts dealing with Jacob and Esau, with Isaac and Ishmael, finally of Seth, the third offspring of Adam, brother to Cain and Abel.

“Of course it is not merely what the stories may have meant to those to whom they were originally told,” he said, “but what they have come to signify today. To us.”

Pierre replied, “I ask exactly those questions about cave paintings. Would you agree that they, too, are a sort of sacred text?”

His visitor spluttered a bit, then said decisively, “Not in the same way, of course. Cave art has only recently been discovered or at least recognized for its true antiquity in the last hundred fifty years or so. No culture has surrounded the animal paintings because they were unknown for many thousands of years. The sacred is a quality relevant to cultural context. The paintings have had no influence—”

“Perhaps an influence on artists?” Pierre asked. “Genetically, vaguely, if not directly?”

“The biblical stories are the thumbprint of our Creator,” the scholar answered. “They reveal His identity to us. Their veracity has sustained my people. Some of us, in Israel, take the responsibility of being guardians—”

“Of course,” Pierre said.

As he stood, his visitor adjusted the folds of his long black gown; he positioned his rope belt so that it became a level equator dividing the top half of his body from the bottom half.

“We have resources,” he said, “as well as a sacred right—”

“A right to—”

“To what God has always intended us to have. Even now, I could—”

“I think our interests are not really the same,” Pierre said. “Of course they overlap, but … but primarily I am considering now only the cave paintings, the underworld.”

“The underworld. Italy? Mafia? The Vatican—”

“Oh, no,” Pierre said. “The world we stand on. What is beneath our feet. Literally, I would go so far as to say. The prehistoric
human
thumbprint …”

They continued to shuffle the words between them till both grew weary of the game. Just before the visitor left, Pierre remarked, “It seems your true interest is in biblical stories of brothers. Do you have a brother?”

“I am my brother’s keeper,” the rabbi answered, then rose, bowed, and left.

The second visitor had been an American businessman, sincere and direct. “Thank you for seeing me,” the American began.

“Please,” Pierre said encouragingly.

“Thank you for speaking with me,” the man repeated. He settled himself in a chair across the table from the anthropologist. Pierre noted that the man’s face was worn and lined, as though he had once lived hard and fast. He wore snakeskin boots. “I won’t take too much of your time. I have an opportunity to offer you. I take it you’re a Muslim?”

Pierre made no reply. The two men let silence lie between them. Then the businessman began again.

“The Bible begins, ‘In the beginning God created Heaven and Earth.’ You ever run into any old papers might’ve had those kinds of words on ‘em? I got somebody willing to pay a cool million.”

“Who?”

“Ever hear tell of the Creation Museum?”

Pierre laughed. Then he asked, “Where is it?” but he was thinking of the alabaster egg. Somehow others knew of the words he had only tentatively deciphered. Perhaps there were other documents that referred to the existence of his codex.