Snake preview.

An excerpt from the new novel A Portable Egypt. Santa, a dressmaker and a visionary, has a habit of working late in her shop and invoking otherworldly visitors for help in understanding her preoccupations. This time, as her friend Miranda (Mim) goes away for the weekend with her new lover Bob Morgenzahl (referred to once in this chapter by his Hebrew name, Aryeh ben Mordecai), she muses on the risks of their love, and turns to the supernatural figure most likely to help.

The novel will appear soon from XLibris (www.xlibris.com).

That I should hear if we should kiss

A contrapuntal serpent hiss.

--W. B. Yeats

Fig leaves. The first clothing, filched along with the fruit (the rabbis said) from the twigs of the forbidden tree. Sarita was working on satin in green and dark gold. The dyes were subtle, coppery, spreading into each other in cloudy fields with blurred uncertain boundaries. The garments would be simple: kimonos, evening wraps, bias-cut dresses, so that the eye could follow the colors without distraction. Some she would use for the linings of capes and coats; imagine a staid suit-jacket whose inner unseen face recalled lost Eden. Women sitting in law offices and boardrooms all day, caressed in secret by those colors.

There was no way to impart to the garments the tomcat smell of fig tree--and no doubt that was just as well--but she gave the cloth a faint veining of dark red as the next best thing. The sexuality of trees and of people overlapped in some curious ways, nearly always through smell: the fishy scent of maybloom, which made it preeminently the tree of fertility in old England; the frowst of chestnut, which had always made her think of ripe corn till a friend said it was like semen (and she disgraced herself by saying so to an aunt who hated the smell); the redolence of plane-tree leaves, like a woman's heat grown cool upon one's fingers. But sight too -- the sinewy upthrust of old beech trees, the intimate entanglements of birch and hemlock roots, the grooved folds of ash bark, the blatant tropical plants. Could smell be translated into sight? How strictly her work was determined by the narrowing of the senses: of the five she could use only two, sight and touch, with occasionally a faint rustle for the ears.

Sarita's profane humor did not extend to making the cloth into aprons; the wrong kind of person would buy them, the guffawing hopped-up tourist who would just as soon buy a shirt that said I GOT SCROD AT WAYNE'S WHARF. But when she found she had a long coil of satin left over from a circular lining, she did back it with muslin and roll it up, and stuff it with mung beans, and give it a high crested head and a forked tongue of wire wrapped with dark red embroidery floss. Too late she remembered the Gothic representations of the snake with a woman's torso and long golden hair; from such a snake she might have got straight answers. But as she worked--as usual, after hours, long after Mim and Bob had left the shop on their expedition -- she was gratified to observe the quiet hiss that twisted its way across the room to her. Saurus, sussurus, sibilance: a chance to question.

"Eve was working too, wasn't she?" she said, not looking up. "She was presumably a gardener. Was she learning the uses of herbs?"

The hiss broke, as with laughter. "A curious thought! What labour should she do, mother of all, before her motherhood?"

"Adam named the beasts; perhaps she named the plants. They were put in the garden to keep it."

"A little pruning, twining wayward vines, gathering myrrh-drops. Nothing to confound her. Love was her work. Once differentiate -- rib pried from rib -- the Adam longed to join, and all Eve's garden blossomed toward that end. Their task, as trees' to flower, was to embrace, by high command assigned: nor turn'd, I ween, Adam from his fair spouse, nor Eve the rites mysterious of connubial love refus'd--but there I quote. My noblest chronicler, having suppli'd such words to tell the tale, surpass'd all other tellers. Since that time -- my debt to him being great -- I speak blank verse. But what would you, Eve's daughter, know of me?"

"What I asked. It can't be that Milton was right, that Eve was a vapid beauty hanging on Adam's every pompous word." Oops, pentameter was hard to resist; she had better be careful. In this interview it was necessary to keep one's wits. "After all, the mind seeks its own labor, as the body does; there's intellectual fruition too. Wasn't she in search of that?"

"She was when she accepted fruit of me. But there is doubt -- some readers have discern'd--whether her fruit could fall before she did. Opinions vary, but (you will observe) the pair did not conceive their firstborn son till after they left Eden.

"Oh, you mean--" She tore herself out of its rhythm. "You mean the stasis of paradise. Where everything is perfect, nothing is necessary: no art, no invention, no skills. And no need to reproduce, because there's no death."

The serpent's eyes -- opal buttons -- glowed with an inward pleasure. Apparently it found Santa an apt pupil. "But on that point some differ. Death, 'tis said, might have been chosen freely--time and means--had man not disobey'd (though mortal still). Just so conception -- had not your mother Eve so pliant prov'd to my fork'd reasoning -- might have been chosen, subject to the will; and then had fruitfulness not been disgrace, nor accident made parents of the young, nor Adam's children, wild, o'ergrown the world."

Santa stared. "But that's what we're trying to do now: make conception subject to the will. My friend Mim--who must even now be doing something to avoid conception -- is in love with a man who prescribes birth control and does abortions. Someone tried to kill him for it last year. Why is it wrong to limit birth on purpose, if in Eden it would have happened by nature?"

The stone eyes flickered. "I said not would, but might: I deal, my child, in doubt, not certainty. Certitudes are the care of heav'n, and thence I was cast out. Say that Eve nam'd the plants: how would she learn the properties of Savin, or of Rue? Of Aloes, Tansie, Parslie, Pennyroy'l? Or Jesuit bark, whence Quinine is distill'd, that calms a fever or rids out the womb?" It looked at her sidelong, shifting its satin coils. "Did Ergot grow on Rye in paradise? And was it nature, or a blessed art -- though cursed, outside Eden -- if Eve learn'd, her courses late, to taste of such a plant, and sinless bring them on?" It was smiling now, swaying to the beat of its own words. "How many months did she dwell barren in lost paradise? Did her dominion over beast and fowl extend to water-dwellers of the womb?"

"It does now," said Santa slowly. "In practice if not in everyone's theory. And in Eden...one hardly dares put anything past God."

"Whose name she prais'd," the serpent added meaningly. "Till I with subtle speech did wean her from that crazy salad's bite with sweeter taste beguiling. Then forlorn, impoverish'd of her garden, mute of praise, with Adam her companion forth she stray'd, to his subjection sentenc'd and to pains. Desire unhappie, desolate desire, drove them to couple; sorrow multipli'd, and she conceiv'd their firstborn son, call'd Cain."

It seemed to feel for Eve; Sarita found herself moved. "Do you regret your part in her fall?"

"My chronicler's compassion," it said modestly. "Not my own."

She should have guessed it; the spell was a little broken. "So," she said, briskly trying to conceal her emotions, "you're casting the fruit of knowledge as fertility drug -- at least by default: the thing that interrupted the infertility drugs. Is that something to lament or celebrate? Is fertility curse or cure? Is this another versions of felix culpa?"

At those words the serpent sat up, as if a password had been given; its hypnotic swaying ceased, and it actually frolicked on the cutting table, rumpling the muslins and knocking an expensive pair of scissors to the floor. When it spoke again it almost giggled:

Tohu va-vohu! Mil-
tonic/Newtonian
apple of Eden, good
lost, evil got:

poison or medicine?
Homeopathically,
what is the curative
dose of daat?

Sarita jumped. "Your blank verse has fallen off considerably since the seventeenth century. Milton, thou should'st be living at this hour." She tried to untangle the meaning of the rhyme. "It's very clever, but you've only restated the question, you know; it isn't an answer."

It shot her a sly look.

Eva to Ave, the
search for the antidote --
malus to bonus and
life from the dead --

surfeit of sanctity
cannibalistically
changed (hocus-pocus!) from
apple to bread.

"Oh, that answer," she sighed. "Well, it's a novel use for it, if you mean what I think you mean; no one else has proposed the Host as a form of birth control. It must work as well as rhythm. I shouldn't have asked; I suppose you're locked into Pauline theology, and it's not fair to ask you to function outside it. I was hoping -- you know, one reads all this new writing about the alliance between women and snakes, not as the original sinners but as the givers of wisdom. I hoped--" She was overcome by a sense of embarrassment, degradation, futility. This supercilious creature could not help her with its theological games. What was she doing, she who in profound loneliness had lain with an angel? "I hoped," she said, forcing the words out -- when you became connected to other people you had to do these things -- "we might hit upon some form of protection for Mim and her lover."

The serpent considered. Its eyes were unreadable, and she was not sure they were pleased. Perhaps it did not want an alliance with women. Perhaps the protestors were already its allies, and it did not want a conflict of loyalties. Or perhaps it simply could not think of a strategy. At last, as if buying time, it darted its tongue at her and offered:

Venus's penises!
Aryeh ben Mordecai
with his Miranda now
revels and plays;

but when confronted by
innocent fetuses
gynecologically
numbers their days.

"Oh, don't be frivolous," she snapped. "Can't you stop spouting these jingles? These people are in real danger. You know the kind of zealots that are at large. Are they yours or God's? Can you do anything about them?"

The serpent shuddered all over. It retreated to the farthest corner of the cutting table, where it coiled itself decorously and tried to recover its hauteur. It looked ruffled; its crest was in disarray. "What powers of desecration or despite you have employ'd upon me I know not, to cause me such unseemlie lapse of speech," it said. "The which has not occurr'd since Hell began, and Pandaemonium rear'd its mightie gates and thrill'd to martial music."

"It's the twentieth century," said Santa. "It's been rough on us all."

It snorted. "As you say. And I, of fallen hosts acknowledg'd lord, who made great wars, am to these straits reduc'd -- these derelict wombs and vex'd nativities." It eyed her impatiently. "You ask my aid, but for what due return? Your soul is in your work -- nor God's nor mine -- not free to sell. Do not so far presume, belated daughter of o'erweening Eve: who may with gods and men betimes prevail, but shall not with God's Satan, sterner made."

Santa took this in. "I see," she said; "you only take cash. Or rather, you'll extend credit -- you'll take a bequest -- but you don't work pro bono. Or pro malo, as I suppose you'd have to call it. All right; I'll find another way. I doubt you would want my soul anyway; God doesn't seem to. But what do you mean, God's Satan? That's a curious notion. Can it be that under all the stale Miltonic bombast you're still making bets with God? Are you seeing how far you can drive Bob Morgenzahl before he caves in, like you tried to with Job and Faust?"

"Speak not so lightly!" it said. "These are mysteries. Dare not to search God's purpose." It grew less bombastic; its tone was almost hushed. "He it is alone forms light and dark, makes good and ill--no evil in the city but is his -- and storm and wind, and Hell, fulfill his word." It stretched its head up, proud and cobralike; a quaver of emotion came into its voice. "I his left hand, his mightie arm outstretch'd, do without thanks what yet his right knows not; and will while this earth lives, till he my author look from high heav'n on me so long estrang'd and say, 'Well done, thou good and faithful serpent!'"

Sarita flung back her head and laughed. "Oh, that was worth the wait. I've always thought there was more to 'Evil be thou my good' than met the eye." But quickly she sobered. "I suppose that's my answer, isn't it? The zealots are yours and God's; they can't lose. And in another sense Mim and Bob are yours and God's too. It's a sort of dual sponsorship, or else no sponsorship at all; as if you're both just waiting, as if all heaven waits quite passively to see what poor mortal flesh will do next."

"The earth hath he bequeath'd to Adam's brood," said the serpent with a moping shrug of one coil. "And much luck may they have of it. For me, I will retire -- if you are answer'd now -- and think on him in contemplation calm whose mightie works sustain and taint the world." It flowed gracefully down a leg of the table and toward the anteroom, beginning to chant something inaudible to itself.

Sarita started up in alarm: what would it do if it got outside the shop? Could it open the door? Why hadn't she locked the deadbolt? It was in the anteroom before she was out of her chair; she seized her shears and ran after it. The doorknob had delayed it only briefly: its head was already through the door, and the chanting was louder. "Plague, inquisition, warfare, woe, pogrom," it was saying in tones of uncontainable worship, "bomb, gun, grenade, blind hatred, ignorance. Apartheid, empire, revolution, rape, Sonderbehandlung, gulag, torture, lies." It undulated in rhythm with its words.

Sarita sprang after it. The tip of its tail was just going through the door; she snipped it off, and the serpent went coiling down the hail, scattering beans from side to side behind it. It was shouting hysterically now: "A kinder, gentler nation! Right to life! Diet delight! You've come a long way, baby!" But when it got to the head of the stairs its strength failed; it lay limp, depleted, moving ineffectually on the grey linoleum. She caught up with it and knelt by its head, uncertain what to do. It raised its head with great effort: the opals were milky, their lights hidden, its voice was a hoarse gasp. In spite of herself she leaned closer to hear it. "Trust me," it said, and died.

"Oh, Lord," she said. Then, against a certain distaste, she took hold of the wrapped wire and yanked it from the mouth. With the shears she tore the length of the satin body, wadded it into a ball, and took it back to her trash. She brought a broom and swept up the three pounds of beans it had taken to stuff the creature. What could she do with the beans? They were probably contaminated with floor wax, or for all she knew with cockroach spray; they couldn't be eaten. A waste entirely. Tears sprang to her eyes. Perhaps if she washed them carefully -- but with what? -- her assistant Todd would take the beans for his compost; they could sprout there and be turned under, and surely whatever had spoiled them would be dispersed there and not do harm. She tipped the dustpan into a paper bag. And then she sat at the top of the stairs and wept, for her failure and for her loneliness; for the impossibility of protecting any friend against danger; for her first memory of Mim, magniloquent and so strangely fearful, and f or Mim's new courage. And because Mim had a lover, because she was giving the best of herself elsewhere, because anyone but Sarita herself should have the enjoyment of her body and of her mind.

Catherine Madsen is a contributing editor of CrossCurrents.