The Book of Eve by Carlo Suares
First published in Maitreya 4, 1973
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| Eve: Gematria: 19 | ||
Hheva
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| 5 | 6 | 8 |
| Eve: Gematria: 19 | ||
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Eve: For goodness knows how long I have been told a tale that I do not understand, and of which I have no
recollection. I do not know any serpents which speak; serpents horrify me, I tread them under my heel; they
are repugnant to me. "A serpent", I am told, "spoke to a woman called Isha. It was your name at that time.
You were this woman. She answered the serpent. They spoke the same tongue." If it is true I do not recognise
myself in this woman. Did she and he understand one another? They must have spoken an animal language if so.
This animal woman could not be me.
Mahoyael: O Hheva, your words come from a region that is ill-defined. You do not know what you are. Thousands and thousands of centuries have gone by: the floods of thousands and thousands of centuries have not washed away enough slime and have sullied too much blood. The slime and the blood have deprived you of reason. Eve: Perhaps I would understand a language less exaggerated. We were speaking of this absurd, unread legend. In the twentieth century it is no longer possible ... Mahoyael: But it is real and so dangerous that it has been interpreted the wrong way round. Hasn't it been depicted enough! Eve: The original sin of disobedience is an odious, plague-some invention, a purulent, psychic abscess. To condemn women for centuries, in the name of this error of judgement, is a masculine abomination! Mahoyael: You're indignant? What have you done for the truth? Eve: Man has hidden it from me. Mahoyael: So that you shall not discover it? Eve: Man has made me stupid. He still shuts me up. Sometimes he concedes me a status approximate to his: sometimes he still forces me to conceal myself. Mahoyael: No one but yourself compels you. You go your own sweet way and are licentious enough to appear in public as nude as police regulations permit. O Hheva, your words come from an ill-defined region. Eve: Then define them precisely and plainly. I understand things but not concepts of things. Mahoyael: Nevertheless you have to understand the psyche's image-language, for you are Psyche. Listen to the story of the Serpent and Isha as if it were taking place today, in 1973. Do you know what to make of the eruption of sexuality, eroticism, pornography, obscenity? Are you aware that the thrid capital sin in past epochs is Lewdness? Do you know that sensualists and voluptuaries were sentenced in those times? They were found: "Wanton, Lustful, Libidinous, Lubricious, Whore-mongers!" What words! What meaning is there for you in chastity, in a heaven that deplores pleasure, in passive, solemn, self- abnegation? In the state of things to-day, tell me if you wish, in your heart of hearts, to be virgin-mother transported out of the world, or a prostitute turned bride? Eve: I know only one answer to your questions: I am beginning to be alive. Wife, concubine, prostitute, submissive to men's convenience, or a withered up virgin, swept along in some masculine mythology, I was existing but not living. My present-day girls? Some of them are shameless, it is true, nude for everyone to see and not even knowing why. And there are those who surrender themselves in public to what they have dreamed about so long. Mahoyael: Haven't you ever dreamed? Eve: No ... I don't know ... I don't remember ... (Mahoyael causes her consciousness to go down to the border between the animal and the human.) Isha: I am bored in this garden. Sometimes phantoms pass through me, the prey of a lion, a tiger, an eagle escaping in distraught flight; of deep holes, dense forests, caves; and little ones ... hungry little ones to be fed. The Serpent Nahhash: (He comes before her erect, triumphant, scintillating, provocative). Don't you dream of anything else? Isha: Who are you? He: You, what is your name? She: I heard a name, Isha, but don't know what it means. He: Bride of the Fire. She: I don't understand. He: Fire; don't you know what that is? She: I am frightened of it. He: Where did you see it? She: It burnt a tree in a flash when it fell from heaven with a dreadful noise admidst the rain. How would I be its bride? He: There is another fire which hides in the Earth, Isha. It is in the land. It is he who is your spouse. I am his son, deputed to marry you. (He coils himself around her, amorously). She: How naked you are. He: I could love you so wonderfully that you would die from it. I could ... I could ... On the brink of death Isha loses consciousness. Slowly and sadly she awakes. From the depth of her bruised body a new tremor rises everywhere in her and pervades her, penetrating the nerves, the plexus, the sacral, the lumbar, the cervical, between the ears, exciting the retina and transmitting new impressions of light to the optical nerves. She looks around her ... she sees ... And something unprededented occurs, something so new that it lacks a name, something that throws Isha into ecstacy: for the first time in the history of the world, consciousness is overwhelmed by the perception of Beauty! (III.6. The woman saw the that the tree was good for food, and that it ws pleasant to the eyes and a tree to be desired to make one wise ... Perfect notation, intelligence, supreme awakening, daughter of matter and feeling.) The serpent has disappeared. The man is present. Isha: Who are you? He: I heard a name, Adam. I do not know what it means. She: Breath from on High drowned in blood. I am Breath from Below, risen from the earth. I am living but have no existnece. I am coming for your Breath because it exists but is not living. He: I cannot do what I am prevented from doing. I am bound by an interdict. But I cannot prevent you from doing what you do. She: I am not bound by your interdict. It antedates me. He: To make a man there must be a woman. How could I be before you? She: We are the concept of mankind, Adam, in the disregarded knowledge of powers, two opposites of One enabling it to exist and live. In that case, without your interdict, how could you not but disappear in the nothingness? Eve (awakening): I was therefore telling you, Mahoyael, that in this half of the 20th century, some of my most stupid daughters are already aware of the blessings of the orgasm, which for so long was forbidden to them. In their shrewd sensuality they are becoming aware of their totality and dream of plucking the fruit of unpolluted sap, restored to its virginity, and of offering the fruit of life ... but you were telling me the story of Isha, and I am letting myself be carried away. Mahoyael: There is nothing more to tell, Hheva, as everything is alive at this very moment. Eve: The time has come |
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