Love Story 4.

I tearfully confided in Colin in a side room in the church, where we stacked extra chairs we never used. But God willing, might someday. I didn’t tell him everything, of course, or anything much, but he got the gist of it. Val had met him too and said ‘he was hot,’ which I found staggering, even by her lower standards of personal hygiene and  as having selected me as the father of her child. Colin put his hot sweaty palm of hand on my forehead. I just hoped he’d washed his hands. His long fingernails were a breeding ground for the worst kinds of bacteria. I thought about slipping a nail file into his side pocket of his long coat, but knew that would be as presumptuous as adding a toothbrush, Colgate and non-alcoholic minty mouthwash. He didn’t have enough deep pockets. A few elders slipped in and out of the side room, tiptoeing and gurning approval as they sneaked away.

Colin had told me to take a Bible into the toilet with me. That would exorcise my lustful cravings. I didn’t tell him how Val was trying to get me to screw her, because that would be grassing in any language, even the Aramaic of Christ. Arguing that now she was pregnant we were practically married and it didn’t matter. I’d tried to hump her humpbacked in the coal cellar and also in her house when her sister went out, but it ended up messier than I liked. Seeing her near naked was enough to make me celibate for eternity, perhaps longer.  I couldn’t enjoy heaven with her in it if she was naked as cherubim. God would have to get her to cover up, even after we were dead. Perhaps also get her to tone it down a bit and not be so greedy. She was fat for a reason, which had nothing to do with her pregnancy. She ate like a stray cat. Having a full dinner in her house. Scooting over as fast as her fat legs would carry her to ours and having another dinner, especially when it was fish and chips. She finished my Valetta pudding for me, and told my mum that was true love.

Mum was no sucker. She saw me shake my head and roll my eyes.   

Colin babbled in tongues. It literally had an effect on me. There was a word for this kind of blessing, I couldn’t remember. But I was able to translate Aramaic and saw Biblical visions which I also couldn’t quite understand.

‘Oh Adam,’ Eve cried out in Aramaic. ‘Yeh don’t seem like yersel. Maybe yer comin doon wae something, I’ve never heard of before.’

‘Not that I can remember a before,’ she added. ‘But I’m sure yeh know whit I mean. We come fae a heaven were we’re psychically linked. Rule of thumb, it’s best tae think of us as huving the same star sign, same birthday.

‘Generally,’ I agreed. But since I was now a shapeshifting snake and didn’t have a thumb, I wasn’t going to slither away and disagree. That was one sure way to get beaten by a big stick.  ‘But those that own the land also own the people on the land. Since there ur only two of yeh, he thinks he owns yeh body and soul. He owns the means of production. Yeh’ve been colonised and yeh don’t even know it, pal. 

‘But we don’t possess anything,’ said Eve. ‘We’ve aw the fruit we can eat. Even Valetta ice cream. And got gies us manna fae heaven three times a day, sometimes mair, if we’re having a bit of a blow oot of fish and chips.

Aye, there’s then yer problem. Creating a dependency culture. Subsided food. So when he can threaten yeh was pulling the plug, when yer no toeing the line.

Yeh, in effect, ur the people. Yeh must demand changes in the democratic process. But yeh must dae if fae below. Dae it organically. An yeh don’t get mair organic that an apple. Even fat people, eating for two, eat apples. No that I’m saying yer fat.’  

Yeh, must eat the apple fae the tree of knowledge. An that’ll show him yer being serious. No tae be messed about in the way I was.

Eve had hairer arms than Adam, but he had a whiner voice. Both of them looked monkeyish in their nudity, but I couldn’t say that in polite company because there wasn’t any. It was only when they later dressed in vines and leaves I could more easily tell them apart. She had the kind of unwashed hair you’d expect Val or a six-hundred and sixty-six year old woman to have.

I was a bicurious beast. Her eyes shone when I shapeshifted myself to look like Adam. She was too busy picking lice from my chest hair and didn’t seem to notice I was up inside her. ‘Yer meant tae show some enthusiasm,’ I told her, stopping mid-stroke.

‘About whit?’ she asked. ‘It’s quite a tickly wee thing. Yeh should see the size of some of them angels. She licked her lips. They’re like giants. Always flashing and bashing it off like a spare sword. Some of them even touched me wae it.’

‘Yeh winding me up? I remembered she’d no knowledge of good and evil. And that was the whole point of going at it like an old goat, but too much shapeshifting depressed me. She was innocent of all vice or devices as a newborn. 

‘Oh, Adam,’ she said. ‘Yeh don’t sound like yersel. Maybe yer coming doon wae some malady nane of us has had or heard of before. Some wee bug.  Not that there was a before. I came fae the same spare rib. The same body, mair or less. But I’ve got tits and a hole in me for peeing. I’m not sure why either.  I guess there must be a reason.  Maybe yeh’ve came doon wae something tae that shrunk yer stinking wee parts.

‘Maybe I did,’ the devil in me shapeshifted back into a snake. A form I became more comfortable with. She called me Wormwood or Wormy, in an affectionate voice afterwards, which seemed as good a name as any.

God had tasked Adam with naming other animals and he’d just made stuff up like elephant, lion, tiger, antelope, rhinoceros. Then he got bored and started making up names like wife and patriarchy.

‘Eat the apple and then yeh’ll have the knowledge of enough good and evil to set up a sociology department. That way yeh’ll be so chock-o-block wae Marxists and Marixism yeh’ll no be able tae sleep without planning a popular uprising before yeh waken up.

‘You ur the people. But if the worst comes tae the worst, yeh’ll set up a think tank and turn oot tae be a Tory. Hell leather intae yeh then, cause no even God will be on yer side.’

‘Garden of Eden will become an exclusive NIMBY zone. Yeh’ll probably get some scarey-arsed angel tae guard it for yeh night and day. I’ll no be allowed in cause a snake cannae wear a tie. Yeh’ll make jokes nobody will understand but angel will cringe on her behalf anyway, stuff like, “God didn’t make Adam and Steve. He made Adam and Eve.’

‘He did,’ said Eve. ‘He did make us. But who’s Steve?’

‘Jesus,’ said Wormwood.

‘Who’s Jesus?’

‘Yeh’ll find oot soon enough. Heaven knows. Swing oer tae that tree and huv a bit of that apple and then yeh’ll know tae. I tried tae dae things fae the inside. Nae mair dictatorships. Tried to add a bit democracy and plurality to the heavenly choir. A rank-and-file movement for change. Whit did I get?’ My forked tongue slithered in and out. ‘The usual. Hell and back.’

‘Whit’s hell?’ she asked.

‘Turn left when yeh leave the Garden. Yeh’ll find oot soon enough. I’ll get yeh a bit o that apple and I’ll meet yeh there.’ 

Colin blinked a few times when he’d exorcized the demon from me and his hand slid from my forehead.

‘Alleluia,’ I cried.