Adam & Eve (34 page)

I
N THE MORNING
, he called me Eve. While we still lay flesh to flesh, he looked at me, his eyes coated with the sort of blear I had sometimes seen in patients, and said, “My Eve.”

I burst into tears. Had I not held him as dear as I had ever held any person—in my heart, with my body, as dear to me as my husband and only lover had been? Had we not
known
each other—Adam and I—in every biblical sense? The fragrance of lemons was still on my hands. From the sunlit grass came the mingled perfume, close to rotting, of the rinds of all the fruits we’d ravaged. The grass itself, dappled with leaf shadow and sunlight, had the odor of wheat. Adam was unresponsive to my weeping.

He got up and walked away a short distance. In full sun, turning his back to me—the sun stroking his back with its warm dry light—he knelt in a sandy depression edged with grass. On his knees, he thanked God for granting his prayer for his rightful wife.

In the dark that had been ours together, all of his masculine attention had shaped itself to me and to our desire. He had seemed to be the only man and the first man. I had gloried in his strength and passion. Had this kneeling child-man been that tender lover?

When I rose and walked to him, my body, too, gave thanks for the plea-sure
of the night and for the warmth of the morning sun. As he continued to kneel, I stood beside him and looked down at his dark eyelashes resting on his cheeks. At his beauty. While he prayed, I bent over him and smelled the odor of lemons in his black hair. When he stood up, I studied the two round bowls his knees had left in the fine, dry sand. He was gone from me. What we had shared had been real, and now it was over. He had become the confused soldier, ravaged by the acts of war. I was rested and restored, determined, but I could not stop sighing.

Adam asked where we were going.

“We’re going to walk along the road. To Baghdad. Carry the case for me, please.”

By tucking my blouse back into the waistband of my skirt and tying its drawstring securely, I devised a carrying pouch into which I dropped several oranges and apples, two pears, and a banana through the neck opening of my blouse. The fruit clustered around my waist and swayed against my bare skin when I moved. Pregnant with bounty, I felt mythologized, an earth mother—Ceres. Instead of a daughter, I had a large and innocent son whom I must try to protect. Perhaps he would come to me again, a stalwart man, all of a piece, strong and loving.

Beside the stream, we knelt to drink as much water as we could hold before we left the oasis. How foolish for us to have abandoned home empty-handed—no clay jugs, no sling satchels for carrying. Had I bought into the Genesis myth? Surely the biblical Adam and Eve had left Eden empty-handed.

At least as real people returning to the unmythologized world, we had clothes to protect our flesh from the sun and from the eyes of strangers. Under the bloused fabric, I could feel the round jostling of apples and oranges and the long curve of a banana, all held securely just above the tight drawstring of my skirt. I thought of Riley caught in the spire of a redwood tree and dangling from his parachute. The vision melted. The trees behind us turned to ash and sank down without a trace. I thought of the Twin Towers blazing and sinking in New York, though at that time, nearly twenty years ago, I had been a young wife in Iowa City.

Each time we crossed a river, the vegetation on the other side became more lush. With no way to test the potability of the flowing waters, we simply knelt, hoped for purity, cupped our hands, and drank before we waded across, but Adam was skittish and afraid. As we walked, he talked to God and prayed. I said nothing. Although I had become his guardian, the memory of his ardor and the shape of his body was fresh inside me.

As we walked down the road, Adam prayed for God to make him blind, and then he closed his eyes so that he would see nothing more of horror. Holding out his hand, he asked me to lead him, and I accommodated his fancy. Occasionally, I asked him to switch the French horn case to the other hand and changed also the hand I held.

For a while, we passed through what could surely be called a jungle or at least a subtropical forest with a canopy so dense the sky was obscured. Here the terrain grew flat again. Overhead I could hear an occasional airplane. Some were small planes and flew rather low. We were grateful for the coolness of the shade. Occasionally Adam stumbled in his blindness, but he easily regained his poise and followed happily, never releasing my hand. He hummed “Amazing Grace.”

Abruptly the forest ended. Full of wonder, I stopped and saw we stood at the edge of a cleared runway. In the distance, in the sky, a small plane, a Cessna, lined itself up with the strip.

“Look,” I commanded.

Adam opened his eyes but said nothing.

The grinding buzz of the Cessna’s engine meant the plane was coming closer and lower, would surely land. “Someone in the plane might help us. The army might have sent someone to look for … for Riley, or you.” The idea seemed unlikely—surely they would have sent rescue to Eden, where Riley had ejected, but I wanted to jolt Adam with hope.

“Are we afraid?” he asked.

“We should see who it is before they see us. I’ll go. You stay here. Keep the black case safe. Will you do that for me? And stay here. Hidden?”

His eyes tried to read my face. He asked, “You won’t leave me behind?”

I leaned forward and kissed him fully on the lips. Why not? Why not? The man had entered my body. “I’ll come back. Stay here. Don’t follow me.”

As I hurried away from him, I looked back to smile and thought he looked pleased. Bemused, but pleased, as though my kiss might have awakened a memory. A sense of how we had been together might have wafted through his mind. He dropped to his knees, bowed his head, and pressed the palms of his hands together. I blew him a kiss, but he had already closed his eyes in prayer. Then I heard him softly singing a Western tune he must have learned in Idaho:

The airstrip, I realized, had been only lately cleared. Uprooted bushes and trees pushed along the sides of the runway still had green leaves on them. The tarmac was freshly laid. In fact I saw no sign that it had ever been used. No tire marks. An unwritten page, a pristine surface. Who would go to such expense to prepare a landing strip in the jungle? Surely it was not far to fly on to what was still called Baghdad?

And how had bulldozers and trucks gained access to the heart of this wilderness? There was no sign of an access road. I felt the frightened thumping of my heart. Why be afraid now? Construction was a sign of civilization. The bulldozers, the asphalt, the structural steel—all of it must have been transported here by helicopter. Perhaps by a fleet of helicopters.

The plane touched down too fast and made a dangerous, even reckless landing. As it bumped past my hiding spot beside the runway, I saw that people were seated inside the Cessna, one an elderly bearded man wearing a black hat. The plane taxied on toward the end of the runway but then turned and came back. Watching the propellers turning more and more slowly, I calculated they would stop almost exactly where I stood. Perhaps my orange clothing had given me away, though I stood behind the trunk of a palm and thick vegetation rose almost to my chin.

The airplane stopped, the engines were cut, and gradually the two propellers lost their momentum. A door cracked open, hinged down, and a flight of steps unfolded.

The first man to clatter down the steps wore a gray cowboy hat and blue
jeans, though he was approaching middle age. His face was worn, and his eyes darted about warily.

He was followed by the white-bearded man with the black hat I had seen through the porthole window of the Cessna. He was dressed in a black cassock cinched by a rope belt. Priest or rabbi, I thought, calm and curious.

The two men waited while the pilot took off his headphones. As he turned, I saw only the sleeve and shoulder of a distinctly European gray tweed jacket with black suede patches at the elbows. Through the narrow window of the cockpit, the pilot appeared to be straightening the knot of his tie. I had forgotten men did that. His gesture spoke of manners and civilization. As he appeared in the open door of the airplane, I was thinking no one but an Englishman would straighten his tie before greeting the jungle, and then I shrieked in recognition. “Gabriel!” I charged out of the clearing onto the asphalt.

His body jerked to attention, his face opened in joyful disbelief as he descended the stairs and ran toward me, a laptop computer case in one hand. The other arm flung open wide as a door. The asphalt surprised the soles of my bare feet, but I ran hard across the surface. The other two men drew back and turned their shoulders as though bracing against an assault. From my old friend of the proper British tweed, I had never received such a welcoming and joyful smile.

Could it be? Could it be? My arms were around his neck; he was saying, “Lucy, Lucy, Lucy,” and I inhaled the wool of his jacket. I could not restrain myself from sobbing. Here he was. He had come after me. A sane and capable man. An old friend, the essence of civilization. I was saved. How soothing the words he spoke, but I could not understand their meaning. His presence, his solid, well-clothed body. These were reality.

To the other men, Gabriel said casually, “You can get back into the plane.” I understood that much from his utterances. To me, he looked down and smiled. “Let’s get out of the sun.” With his fingers lightly on my shoulder, he steered me across the tarmac toward the edge of the jungle, into the shade.

“Now let me look at you,” he said, placing both hands on my shoulders. “You’ve made yourself something quite different to wear,” he teased. “And
what’s this familiar cord?” He fingered the narrow black silk around my neck as he continued speaking. “Thom’s old flash drive worn like a millstone. I should have known. Didn’t you miss me a bit, Lucy, here in the wilderness?”

I laughed, tried to steady myself, and replied in a mirroring, somewhat British manner, “Gabriel, I simply can’t say how glad I am to see you. And very surprised. And thoroughly, completely, overwhelmingly grateful.”

His blue eyes sparkled with pleasure. He looked younger. There was nothing cynical in his face.

“Thank you,” I added. “Thank you very, very much.”

“I say, don’t I rate a kiss?”

I kissed him immediately and fully on the lips, and he kissed me back. A thoroughly satisfactory kiss for a daytime greeting. Appropriate. Reassuring. Nothing like Adam’s tender, lingering nighttime passion.

“I suppose I should do this more often,” he said, grinning. “But I
am
surprised—the way you just popped out of the greenery, orange as a pumpkin, onto the runway. To tell you the truth, I thought we’d have to hack through a bit of brush to get to you.”

“I saw the plane come in for a landing. A runway! In the middle of the jungle.”

“A bumpy one, to be sure. Don’t you have any luggage, my lady?”

“Luggage? How did you find me?” In my mind’s eye, I saw the French horn case, but how would Gabriel know of that? “You’ve come with a strange pair of fellow travelers,” I said with sudden caution. “Who in the world?”

“They are an odd duo, aren’t they? You can get acquainted as we fly back. A cowboy, American, of course. Actually he’s a broker. An ultra-Orthodox Jew of some sort.”

I felt sobriety rising up in my body like dark water in a quick-filling well. “They’re not scientists?”

“Nor is this Kansas,” he quipped. “Perpetuity. It’s a kind of club they work for.” He shifted the computer valise to his other hand.

“What do they have in common with you? A chartered plane? A runway materializing out of the jungle?”

“How did you get here?” he asked. His voice was full of sprightly affection.

“I think you must know,” I said soberly, with more wariness in my voice than I had intended to exhibit.

“You know, Lucy, I’ll tell you all about it on the plane. Where’s your bag?”

“The Cessna’s a five-seater, isn’t it?” I asked.

“Yes.” He eyed me curiously.

“I have a friend,” I said.

“Really?” Gabriel looked mildly shocked. “I hadn’t thought of that possibility. I don’t suppose you want to leave him behind, since you’ve mentioned him.”

All of my giddy joy seemed to solidify. I felt heavy as stone. Suddenly I remembered the baby crocodiles standing up in the corners of their pit, and a warning phrase came back to me.
Fundamentalists of every stripe
—hadn’t Pierre cautioned me about that? The cowboy would be the Christian stripe. I found I could not look at Gabriel as I slowly said, “He—my friend—has … the luggage.”

Not my friend, my lover, I thought.

“I’ve found you, Lucy,” Gabriel said. “That’s the important thing.” He reached toward my neck again and tenderly picked up Thom’s memory stick with his fingertips. “Whatever you’ve done here, whoever you’ve known—leave it all behind, Lucy. Come with me.”

“You’re not here for … the luggage?” I asked uncertainly.

“I want you, Lucy. Always have, always will. You’re right, my entourage, they’ve paid me—very well—to help recover certain texts that rightly belong in Egypt, but I came to find you.” He gave a slight tug on the flash drive. “Let me take this,” he urged. “Give up the past. Really and truly, my friend, you should let Thom go.”