I defy you to find where in Holy Writ it says he was satisfied.
Adam wished the return of his softer half. He wished to be whole again as he was in the beginning. Alas. The earth also wished him back. The sea wished to swallow the land again, and deep night groaned against the light.
Such is the lesson — listen carefully to it — of this remarkable creation.
Now there was in heaven, as you know, an angel, prince among them, the Prince of Darkness. And he felt his wife drawn painfully from him, out of his holy body, fully half of himself, and given a place of dazzling splendor. How he hated it, and suffered his loss loudly.
Then at the end of the sixth day, after God had created man and driven his beauty from him like a specter; when at the end of the sixth day man's beauty was driven from him as the day had been driven from sleeping night and the sky looped over the slumberous sea and life drawn from the nodding earth, God ordered the whole Host of Heaven to kneel to this wondrous pair, so to signify their admiration of them.
But the Prince of Darkness said, lamenting: my Lord, You made the sun and moon to rule the halves of my former kingdom, and You grew plants to supervise the earth, and then You gave the animals these. Now finally You have made this frail potter's figure, man, to multiply and feed and fatten on the beasts.
But God ordered the whole Host of Heaven to kneel to the images of Himself He had created, so to signify their admiration of them.
But the Prince of Darkness, grieving, said: my Lord, You did not mean the moon to play havoc with the daytime, or the sun to rise for the pale canary or set for the remorseless cat. Therefore it is not fitting that we, immortal lordships, should play the camel to man, who has no proper power or dominion over us.
But God ordered the whole Host of Heaven to kneel, nevertheless, and to indicate thereby their admiration for the Lord, Himself, who had created man, this marvel among even the marvelous.
But the proud Prince of Darkness refused.
It was at the close of the sixth day then that Satan, for disobedience and a broken heart, was dismissed with his companions from the loyal Host of Heaven, and like a burning streak of vapor fell by the sun's face into his element.
Hush… hush… What's next? Like a waterstrider, Furber rode a thin film of sense.
Later God made Eden with its rivers and put Adam and Eve to paradise there, though some say He made Eden earlier, before Eve, as it appears in the Bible. The tree of life grew in the garden, and also the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. It was this latter tree of which God forbade Adam and Eve to eat, but they ate of it all the same, as we know to our sorrow. The finer half fell first — the last and best of all creation — so now she brings forth her children in pain and labor, and serves the poorer portion as her punishment.
God created always by division, taking the lesser part, transforming it into its opposite, and raising it above the rest. So should we change our worst into our best.
Furber snapped his fingers. There was a good one. That was the kind of thing they liked. Should he say it again? But he was losing the thread.
There is everywhere in nature a partiality for the earlier condition, and an instinctive urge to return to it. To succumb to this urge is to succumb to the wish of the Prince of Darkness, whose aim is to defeat, if possible, the purposes of Cod's creation. We do on occasion forget, fo course, the clay we're made of. We do sometimes deny our animal nature and our origin in the earth. But the heroic life is like the thievery and punishment of Prometheus, both painful and lonely, and we do not pursue it long. For the most part men look upon their humanity as a burden, and call the knowledge of what they are a simple consequence of sin. Men, like all things, resist their essence, and seek the sweet oblivion of the animal — a rest from themselves that's but an easy counterfeit of death… Yet when Adam disobeyed, he lit this sun in our heads. Now, like the slowest worm, we sense; but like the mightiest god, we know.
Lovely lights and swooping swallows, carpeting the distance…
So we do not belong. We're here. Like the hunchback is here in his hump, the crow in his caw. Oh god, we're here. Yet we do not belong.
The eye of the animal opens. Think. He sees. What a strange thing seeing is to exist in this world. His eye opens — the ferret's eye, the tiger's eye, opens — and there are in that moment and for the first time… images… Imagine we open the eye of a man. Thought lies on the other side of that thin lid. He sees without blinking. Blind, he still sees-the pitiful creature. Of course. He's the wondrous watchman, isn't he? Watching… watching like a weasel in the weeds—
What's skittering?
It's this sun in my head. They are naked and exposed, I said. N-n-nay-kidd.
Where — let's see — yes. Who is honest in the dark?
Prometheus? Empedocles? Holy Jesus. He bent his head and saw print running down the pages. Text. He had a text. Who was still here? Space. Embroidered with light. The print was flowing.
Text. He had a text. Text to keep talking.
Inward — in a word — inwardly — in his innards — large guards, were they? — sourly — shards of heart — of pottery — of clay piercing people — in hollowware — in terror of spirit — to fall so inwardly…
"And the voice said, Cry. And he said, What shall I cry? All flesh is grass, and all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field:
"The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: but the word of our God shall stand for ever."
… but fall down inwardly…
You then, the scripture says, are the people. You are the grass. You are the flesh, the grass.
Do you imagine that the grass, by growing, can become the cow?
Was there snickering?… was there tittering? snickering? Who was out there? Embroidered space.
This life—
This life passes like a day in fertile country all too soon.
Touch the book. Touch the book. His fingers skidded on the pages.
Pews were tipping empty.
We've slid to hell! the boards have broken! Are those the dancing ladies? Behold him with his eyes transported to his buttocks. Better there he may perceive the concourse of the anus.
And the fiend… He will appear with apple-rosy cheeks and friendly tousled hair… with candid eyes and openended speech.
Lead us out of this place, oh Lord, that we may have reason to praise your mercy.
Those who remain…
Let us pray.
6
It began to snow as Chamlay and Furber reached the house. The flakes fell slowly out of a close sky, clinging to the tips of the high grass and breaking gently on their faces. It was the middle of the morning but the hushing snow and gray light gave to everything a quality of evening. A daughter let them in. Each hesitated to precede so they squeezed through awkwardly, bumping together. Amos was at the breast and the room was full of the sounds of his feeding. He's out with Arthur, she said, attending to her son, her face expressionless, her voice as cold and aimless as the snow. Furber's gaze fled over the room to hide finally in the bottom of his hat. He saw beyond that the cracked and splintered fir board floor, the wood grain nearly gone under a grime of years that turned the whole floor gray. Chamlay stared brazenly about, Motionless and tense, the brown-eyed daughters, their faces pale and drawn, sat leaning forward in ladder chairs set close together against the wall, touching the lower rungs with feet as tentative as birds', and holding hands. A patched and faded yellow comfort draped over a cradle in the corner. Above hung a landscape containing a river. A table whose top was heavily scarred and carved stood unevenly by the front window, a long bench beside it. Furber took out his watch and looked at the photograph fastened to its lid — a picture of himself and two distant cousins, girls of ten, whose names he'd long ago forgotten. Furber appeared strangely white and plump beside them, and held a smile to his mouth which he had always found beguiling. Now he inspected his cousins again. Only then did the dresses on Omensetter's daughters seem homemade and thin, tight and short on them, too frequently and too furiously washed. Furber sighed and snapped the watch shut. He'd never been a plump one. There was a white ironstone teapot on the table with a wooden spoon beside it and a trail of crumbs. The girls gazed at something out the window but gave no sign they saw. They seemed about to issue into flight. A dented and badly tarnished copper pan sat on the hearth. It was likely English, he thought, and of considerable age. From time to time wood settled, sending sparks up the chimney. At last he turned from the dark stones and put his watch away, smiling at the girls. Another picture hung from string and nearing it he made out St. Francis feeding squirrels. Very nice, Chamlay was saying circling briskly, very nice indeed.