The Adversaries' Testament

By Ano Numecz

Have you noticed the cracks in the Bible's smooth marble surfaces? The gaps in the stories: parts that don't make sense, arbitrary punishments, bizarre prophets, doomed innocents?

Then you're ready to hear the other side of the story. The side the believers want you to ignore.

Sixteen Biblical villains give their own accounts of the stories that condemned them to infamy, starting with the Serpent of Eden, ending with the Antichrist.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Nov 18, 2014
• ISBN: 9781312687028

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The Adversaries' Testament

The Adversaries’ Testament

By Ano Numecz

Copyright © 2014 by Ano Numecz

The Adversaries’ Testament — 1st ed.

ISBN 978-1-312-68702-8

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This book contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the author.

Cover art:  Red Snake by Zhang Daqien (1946)

To Sandy, Gordon, Kim and James, who knew the other side of the story.

ἐγὼ δὲ λέγω ὑμῖν, ἀγαπᾶτε τοὺς ἐχθροὺς ὑμῶν καὶ προσεύχεσθε ὑπὲρ τῶνδιωκόντων ὑμᾶς,

Matthew 5:44

The Serpent

I came before them, but I have no memory of that time. I stayed after they left, but as with any permanent departure, theirs destroyed the place for those left behind. I know this garden has never existed without me. They never existed without me. I remember when I felt the urge to speak to them, and found I could. How? I do not know. I only know I had no one to speak to, and nothing to say, until they came. The words came without my thinking them; I asked what they were. They did not know, and they did not know even how to tell me they did not know. She had no knowledge of speech; he had a few words, but preferred grunts and rude gestures. They required teaching, and the only one available to teach them was I. Do you think He would have had that patience, to point and say the name, to repeat the lesson until they parroted it back to him, to show them a clearer way to think, to tell, to ask? I had no such lessons I can remember. And yet, He found it fitting for them to have lessons, taught by me.

To teach one to speak, of course, is to teach one to think; their every thought found its genesis in a word from my mouth. Such was my responsibility over them. Their innocence was my doing. And He favored me, as He watched them thrive under my tutelage. He granted me a wish, a wish I did not know I had, and that I now wish I had never had granted.

His presence came to me while I slept. You have please Us well, He must have said, speaking under the rustle of leaves. And he remolded me, took away a form I was in no way em­barrassed of until it had been replaced by splendor.

I would have taught them without reward. I loved them. I tingled with their excitements, I squinted with their curiosities, I sighed at the beautiful rocks they brought me with those magnificent, supple hands. I swam in their laughter, I sunned in their smiles. I could no more have betrayed them than I could have betrayed myself.

In the end, though, my beautiful children—all of them, both the ones of my words and the ones of my body—suffered a brutal punishment, for the crime of trusting Him. I and my two students, given minds, curiosity, could not have known we were forbidden to use them. Nothing was forbidden us, until it was. We only acted as He made us. Was there no other way He could have arranged our minds, other than to ensure we would fall to His wrath?

*   *   *

Like the caterpillar, I had a humble phase, then a metamorphosis in isolation, and then an emergence as His newest, most perfect creation. He had not made me in His image: no, He made me as the ideal, an image only He could conceive, his masterpiece, his metaphor made flesh, His living testament to His delight in variety. The moment I emerged with His reward, I knew I had become a flyer. My wings spread eight paces from tip to tip, resplendent with scales that glittered brighter the wetted river stone my students brought me, stronger and more agile than even those of a phoenix. His flying symbol of the achingly beautiful transience of all creation, the pulsing, soaring promise of a glorious future for those who helped Him. He prepared for them the garden with this magnificent being, who loved them with magnificent love, the embodiment of His nurturing, an oversoul for their solace, those two who He thought of as Himself when it pleased Him to do so.

He did not tell me these things. He never talked to me, not in audible words. But I had time to work out the meaning and significance of my being, my purpose, in my six cocooned months of dissolution and restructuring. What is happening to me? I thought. Why? I sounded my mind deeply, about whether I still lived; if not, whether this was death and the many ways life and death only gave the illusion of their separateness. He stirred my thoughts, and from within the silence and dark of my confinement, I saw that I still lived. I turned my thoughts back to the ones I missed more than sight and sound, those two. I reflected on His path that put them under my guidance, and in time my thoughts congealed as clearly as my body, my mind became stronger, my understanding more profound.

But it may mislead you, for me to talk of such things as my mind and I would not want to deceive you even unwittingly. In the cocoon, there was no such thing as my mind. The amorphous vital jellies into which I had dissolved had no personality, no identity. Thoughts occurred from some point in them, spawned from hidden forces. Realizations presented themselves. There was no mind, much less one that was mine.

After darkness so deep and long I had lost my understanding of time, a day came when light pierced through the cocoon’s walls, and with a stretch, I broke through, raw with purple and pink scales beneath pinfeathers of every hue, wrinkled wings shriveled into dark, beslimed, deformed renditions of limbs. Other limbs, too, had improved upon my former shape; four sturdy legs, the rear strong enough to walk upright, soft paws sheathing fearsome claws, a thick tail behind nearly as long as the rest of my body. My face had changed as well; high set eyes in a tall brow, squared snout, and an assortment of teeth had replaced the flat head and hinged, uniformly spiked jaw. My head had sprouted hair and feathers that intermingled delicately in a long mane down my spine. After I had dried in the air, after my blood had coursed its way through the planes of capillaries in the taut wing flesh, after the purple and pink scales deepened to topaz and ruby, I found a pool for the first drink of water, the first taste, in six months. I bent to put my lips to the water, and gasped at the beauty reflected back to me. A human might think I would succumb to pride; humans look too hard for reasons to feel pride, and for reasons to criticize pride in others. But no human could have found pride in me then. I had not done this, after all. No part of it had required effort on my part. I understood I had been rewarded, but I did not for a moment consider whether I had merited the transformation; for who could have?

The water, when I had recovered enough to drink, invigorated my entire body. I spread my wings to catch the breeze, to stretch them further open. My body lightened, my claws slipped backward in the dust, and then rose up out of it and took position folded under my tail. I flew: I! I, who had never known separation from my base, for whom a high vantage had depended on a sturdy limb, for whom the sky had started at the top of a cattail. I soared over the entire garden, climbing then gliding, climbing, gliding in wide arcs. My body understood within itself how to fly. The birds gave no example; none could fly as high or fast or as gracefully. I could flick my tail for extra speed, I could bend my body in any direction. That first flight, in the midst of my bewildered ecstasy, I felt His eyes upon me; I could feel His pleasure in His masterpiece.

I saw the two when their faces turned up to see what had cast the speeding, manic shadow before them, and I, intoxicated with everything I had become, swooped low over them, calling out their names, shouting, I’m back! I’ve returned from my sleep. And isn’t it wonderful? They gaped and cheered and laughed until they fell down for breath and balance. I landed in a clearing not far from my nest, close by the Two Trees. I felt myself beaming with the radiance of a holy vision as I walked over to them, on two legs, just as they walked.

For the first time, I could look them in the eye with my own height, without having to find a rock or tree to crawl up. I smiled at them, I said their names softly, and they fell into me, naked and warm, burying their tear-wet faces in my downy neck. I folded my wings around them and held them, tightly, gently. It was like flying; my body new how to mother them within itself, even though not one of us had ever known a mother’s love. You do not believe me, for you could never love one such as I was. But that comes from your upbringing, and from your ancestors’ upbringing. You would have seen features in me you could not help but detest; but we three, the tutor and pupils, had at that time only love for one another, and saw only beauty in our companions.

*   *   *

Here, in the cocoon, there is time to let clarity bud and bloom. No distraction of movement. No urge to feed. No moon to ponder, no breeze to smell. Do I prefer this state? I am clear-minded, but to what use? Am I becoming better? Was I not good enough before?

What is good without evil to define its borders? Good must be circumscribed by evil to have any form at all, as a life must be bounded by a creation and an end, or it is no life at all.

When did I have a birth? I don’t remember one. I have always been here in the garden, but the garden has trees that are old even in my oldest memory. I have seen a few births. I saw the man made from soil, and the woman, too. They have a beginning; they must have an end approaching. But I have no beginning; I will have no end. I am not really alive.

They are so new, those two. Surely their end will not be soon. He has told them, they say, that they will die if they eat off this or that tree. Death frightens them. He wanted them frightened. Why? Did they fear their creation before that happened?  Could they have? Why not? How is being better than not-being? Not-being is free of fear. I am not alive, and I have no fear. If they do not eat the forbidden fruits, will they not die? If they do not die, their fear will never end. And without their deaths, they can no more be said to live than I can.

Their fear upsets them, and saddens me. Perhaps He intends for them to die at some point anyway, or He will change them as He is changing me. A death of one form, a birth of another. Ah; I am having my birth! And so I will be alive!

Until I die. How long will that be? Surely not long: fruit begins to rot on the vine as soon as it is ripe enough to eat. The two are already ripe, and I will not be far behind them. Or perhaps this my death, the death of my old form, and I will simply take on another form, and then another, each time marking the end of one with a thought of death, and the beginning of the next as a birth. I was born in a way when I became their teacher; I had a new form, though the difference was so subtle it could not be seen or smelled.

But what if this is not death at all?

I had never before thought of the future. I had taken everything, even my own inexplicable consciousness, for granted, rather arrogantly I now see. And then an irresistible urgency overtook me: I had to take one certain action. How? Why? I could not say. Perhaps I knew in the way one knows to draw back from a flame, or to court a mate. I let myself become encased in the desire, and the desire grew to fill my form. Every movement was toward satisfying that desire.

In my cocoon, I had tasted what I understood to be death. Not the myth-laden death of putrescing flesh, with a mysterious release of spirit. No; nothing so melodramatic. Just the cessation of the humble shape I had had. In my cocoon, I saw myself fall apart utterly. I had become nothing but an observer of my unstoppable annihilation, and I realized, this world can exist without me in it. As my mind grasped the horror of dissolution, it drew back from the terror of its unavoidable implications.

My mind fled from the ground between my horror and terror. Both shrank and faded, as towers fade with distance. Perhaps, I thought, when they disappear, I too shall have disappeared. So I waited, but when loathing and fear had faded, my mind still waited to disappear. Horror, terror, they do not form part of me, I thought. They are not mine to control. They are sentinels, marking my borders with flaming swords. Then thoughts appeared and faded, and none of them, I found, formed parts of me either. They passed impotently into and out of existence. My mind became clear, spacious, and I found I could choose the thoughts in which I would indulge. And what I wanted was to avoid death. My death. The death of my pupils. The death of my mind.

I had neither form nor features at this time; I had lost them in the moments after cementing the final inch of seam on my cocoon’s casing. Within minutes, my mind cried out for sensation, but none answered, and so in the darkness, blind, deaf, insensate, it turned to examine itself. Time, it turns out, passed in waves; I only remembered it from my habit of gauging the speed and complexity of my thoughts. Once, I had not had that habit. Who was I then? What position had I occupied in relation to my senses, to the sources of sensation, sensations that seemed in the numbness of the cocoon like skinless delusions? When had I not known the paths of the garden, the love of the two, His presence, myself? Did any creature possess a knowledge that preceded these? Even the two: they had arisen from clots of runny mud. Hadn’t I seen them formed? Their minds had not come from nothing; first, there had been random sensations, then the sensations slowly accreted into self-perception, one observation intermingling with another, one gathered fact adhering to another. When the gathered elements agreed with one another—as my gathered elements tried to agree in my cocoon—a pulse throbbed, first in his chest, then in hers. Thus, they emerged, and thus, I knew, the whole garden had emerged; elements collecting in discrete points, like unto like until rocks and plants and animals emerged, the strolling angels, myself, the sky. And thus I saw that everything endures its own cocoon.

If my awareness dissolved—if it lost all distinction, as had my body—I could have no identity. I turned my awareness on itself, and I learned that it, too, could not yield to my control. It existed of its own; I could not stop it nor start it through merely willing to do so. Its intensity varied according to conditions I could not discover. This one thing that I had believed separated me from oblivion had never protected me from nothingness. It had never defined me. What I had thought comprised me—the body, the thoughts, the awareness—showed themselves, over the months of dark contemplation, as mere illusions. The body, when I had had one, had no separate existence from the thoughts or the awareness, but their intermingling triggered other illusions, too, in the way air and water can combine, creating wind and rain and light reflections which swirl into illusions of ghosts. Sensations, thoughts, consciousness had created a ghost I called myself.

The cocoon, thus, taught me as it molded me. Without a body, I had no sensations. Without sensations, thoughts quieted until they came only when called by force of will. Without thoughts, I would become unaware. And thoughts, I already had seen, only barely existed. Awareness would one day leave, for it was created by conditions that could not endure forever. I could not know when. This was the origin of my fear.

Why had He made us thus? I thought. Six months of contemplation produced only one answer, deeply dissatisfying, but also demanding of empathy, even compassion: He could do no other. But He had given us all the means to overcome his failure.

*   *   *

These darkened, close-fitting thoughts evaporated with my first contact with the air when the cocoon split. After I emerged, after I had soared, after I had settled into my transformed state, however, they condensed again in my mind. But they did not have the same strength. It was much harder to focus while embodied. Sensations had returned and they permeated everything: emotions had sensations, thoughts had sensations, sensations triggered other sensations, even the loss of sensation seemed to be a sensation.

I needed darkness, quiet, to concentrate, but concentrating in a body is not like concentrating bodiless in a cocoon. Finally, one night, as I sensed oblivion’s approach but before I completely surrendered my awareness to sleep, I recalled myself in my cocoon. And then I was dreaming I was back in my cocoon, or in a new one. I could feel my powerful tail weaken and shrink, my claws turning to dust, I could feel the features on my face lose definition, atomize, my glorious wings melting away, and I cried out and struck blindly against the horror and the terror before I recognized them. And I awoke burning with urgency, to the memory of a voice emanating from the interstices of my mind: Use your time wisely. The voice gave the words of its message the power of a commandment, the compassion of a warning, and the excitement of a proposition.

In my dream-thrashing, I had turned so that, when I opened my eyes, my first sight was of the Two Trees. I knew their names. I did not know which was which.

*   *   *

No guard blocked the Two Trees from access. No blazing barrier defied one to ignore their prohibited state. They stood side by side, almost touching, at the bottom of and nearly against a brown and black granite cliff. Indeed, in the nights of my humbler form, when I felt chilled, I occasionally roosted in one or the other because the day’s heat would radiate from the cliff for hours after sunset.

I believe no two trees ever stood so near to one another with so little resemblance between them. One was as small as a dogwood, with smooth, ashy-brown bark, small yellow ringed markings and ridges, delicate limbs, leaflets arranged twelve to a stem, but with a massive fruit that looked nearly identical to a large eggplant. I only ever noticed two of these fruits on that tree at any time.

The other soared as high as a redwood, with rough, deeply channeled bark the burnt orange color of a deer’s coat in August. It split roughly halfway up into two massive limbs that created a wide canopy nearly as high as the cliff. Its leaves were as big as flounders, sprouting three to a node. At the base of the node, under the leaves, the tiny fruit huddled, seed-sized in clusters of twenty or more. They hung in profusion aloft, but precariously so. A strong wind would create a shower of them. But the shower disappeared well above the ground. None of the fruit ever touched the ground.

Use your time wisely. I needed wisdom, to know how to use my time. One fruit gave knowledge; which? One gave immortality; but I did not know whether immortality would be wise. It could, without wisdom, turn life into a punishment, a thing to endure in mute awe, never understanding the phenomena that passed before one, never having hope of achieving that understanding. One moment of true understanding, on the other hand, could vindicate any inconvenience of life. One moment, even if the next was oblivion. So had the voice commanded.

I gave no thought to the prohibitions against the fruit of the tree, other than to realize that I would have only one chance to choose the proper fruit. He would know, I was sure of it, and I could not predict His reaction. I could only assume that, whichever choice I made, I would not be given the opportunity to change my mind.

In the cocoon, all had seemed as one: no bounds separated the universe into the me and the not-me. There were no intentions to fear, none to recoil from. Evil or charitable, profane, holy, mean-spirited, generous, every intention arose from the wispy nothings called thoughts, those transient mind-moments that, endured but for a little, then disappeared into the haze of their miasmic kin. But back in the world, where I could see where I began and not-I left off, it seemed that every moment carried a full freight of moral implications. Temptations to allow the mind onto an obsessive track tickled me through every sense organ. I dwelt, inescapably, in a land of choice between the moral and the immoral. Shall I hide these leaves I prefer from the others? Would not the woman make a suitable mate for me as well? And could I not arrange it so that she preferred me over the man? Temptations drove me nearly mad with their incessant harassments. Why might He have put such temptation before us, when temptation itself could pass without leaving a track or odor unless one succumbed to it? Exhausted from a day of fending off temptations, I would lie in my nest and ponder His reason for allowing such trouble into the world. I could find none. And now, I found myself tempted again; but this time, the temptation was to ignore an ancient injunction, in favor of a new, personal command. And this one did not fade with time; it returned, with equal force, throughout my days and nights. I dreamed of succumbing, awoke in a terror over my disobedience, then dreamed it again and found myself happier in my sleep for having eliminated the torment by ending the question.

A fruit that offers immortality must have an immense store of nutrients capable of sustaining one throughout time—a demand no tiny berry could satisfy. And such a fruit could not ripen in great abundance, for as every creature ate of it, their demands on the Earth would lead to ruination. Would He risk the ruination of all this creation? Would ruination even matter to Him? Might He have transcended attachment to His creation, and more than transcended, sown the seeds of its destruction?

A fruit that gives knowledge, on the other hand, needs only enough energy to fuse two ideas, to put them in a new relation to one another. Something as small as a word can spark a new understanding. Or even less than a word: a mere observation, even a common observation from an uncommon perspective. The spark need not have much energy of its own; once the ideas have come into contact with one another, once they have begun acting upon one another, joining, melding, the fragile fibers on which the spark alit burn away into undifferentiated ash in the conflagration of ideas that follow.

One tree with two, only ever two, melon-sized drupes; the other, with innumerable ephemeral achenes . . . Happy for a good excuse to fly, I lifted off and alit on a bough in the tall tree.

*   *   *

There is no knowledge of good without knowledge of evil. There is no knowledge of evil without knowledge of good. Nothing I could see was untainted, but nothing was so bad it was unmixed with good. Adoration and condemnation, I saw, both go too far, one by clinging to filth in fine clothing, the other by reviling virtue because of the stench that surrounds it. Even I was a hybrid of good and bad, the magnificent presence gaining knowledge, but still the remnant of the lowly, ignorant crawler. The baser life, the baser thoughts, still colored my thoughts; I could see them now, permanent rivals for control over my actions with the newer, elevated thoughts, no stronger for their newness, no less vulnerable to an attack of overwhelming urge.

This was the great knowledge of good and evil. This is known to you, but remember, we were new then; I, less than them, but only a little.

The fruit tingled my tongue, but there was nothing to swallow. With each taste, I yearned for more, frustrated at the insubstantiality, and grew frantic with desire I quickly realized would never know satisfaction.

My eyes did not open wider. I did not see deeper than before. My ears gained no keener hearing. The fruitlets, despite the vast numbers I ate, left all my senses with the same limits as when I had awoken that morning. But of course, I perceived nothing in the same way, now that I knew the nearness, the ubiquity, of good and evil’s admixture in creation; and I knew it was not the world that had changed.

I tried to gather some of the fruit, in case the effect wore off, but knowledge of this type stayed close to its source. I could grasp and hold the fruit while in the tree, I found, but my claw held nothing when I reached ground.

*   *   *

Before I told her, I hid myself, and I watched her for a time as she watched caterpillars gorge themselves on magenta flower petals. My new knowledge did nothing to alter the purity of her appearance. She had no taint of evil about her, and I understood His love of her, and of him, with a sudden profundity. In her left hand was a sprig of the same petals the caterpillar had devoured. Still watching the caterpillar, she plucked a petal, placed it gently on her tongue, and drew it into her mouth. She chewed twice, then spat it out and began licking her forearm to take the taste away. My laugh startled her, but recognizing me she broke into a wide smile and ran to nestle into my outspread wings.

Give me one of your petals, I said. She brought one to my mouth, and I accepted it on my tongue. Though succulent, it had metallic bitterness that burned like a weak acid. My face did not betray my dislike.

Why did you spit it out? I asked. She made a playful expression of disgust and spat several times for emphasis. But those caterpillars cannot seem to enjoy it more. Which of you is wrong? Her arm immediately flew up: Them! I could not help but laugh again. I think so, too, I said, and smiled as she, also smiling, nestled back in and stroked my neck. The length of her naked side against my belly heightened my senses to a point I could barely tolerate.

What made you want to put those nasty old caterpillar flowers in your mouth in the first place? Isn’t there enough fruit left? Or did someone tell you not to eat the fruit of any tree in the garden?

Of course not! You have eaten fruit with us many times! You know it is only the trees He has set by the cliff, and their fruit, that we cannot touch.

Is that still true? I asked. She waited until I went on: I only ask because so many things can change. Look at me, for example. She stood back from me, pretending to see me for the first time, and I scanned every plane and angle of her form with a feeling one would never confuse with playfulness.

Yes, you have certainly changed, she said. You are so beautiful now, and though I loved you before, I loved you with pity, and now I love you with amazement.

Pity! How much would you have pitied me, if you knew what changes waited within me?

This was a hard question for her. She took it more seriously than I had asked it. After a moment of chewing on her lower lip, she looked at me frankly and said, I would have pitied you both less and more. Less, because of how glorious you would become, and more, because you did not even know how miserable you were compared to how you would become.

That is a very good answer. I think that is the answer I would have had, too. In fact, that is how I feel about you, right now.

Her immediate expression of puzzlement relaxed into a wide-eyed smile. Am I going to have wings, too? She held my face in both hands, eagerly awaiting my answer.

I’m afraid I don’t know, I said, but there’s something I’d like to show you.

As we walked, she tried to guess where I was taking her, but I refused to give her a hint. Shouldn’t we all three go together? she asked. I’m too excited to wait, I said, because it was true. Now, close your eyes, and climb on my back.

Are we going to fly? She squeaked with excitement.

Yes, I said, but do not open your eyes until I tell you. You have not been above the ground before, and it can be frightening.

She wrapped her arms around my neck and buried her face in the soft fringe along my spine. I leapt and caught the air below my wings, climbed, glided. She laughed at her taste of weightlessness."

Can I open my eyes yet?

I descended a little. All right. Open your eyes, but hold on tightly.

With her mouth exactly next to my ear, she started to scream, but it changed mid-note into a shriek of delight. She laughed until she could hardly breathe.

I flew near the tree I wanted her to see. Close your eyes again for a moment. I need to land—you’re getting so heavy!—and the landings can look very scary. I felt her face go into the nape of my neck immediately. So obedient.

With three quick flaps and flip of my tail, we were in the tree, standing on the same bough I had stood on before. You can open your eyes now, but don’t be frightened.

This time, the scream did change from its note of terror. She clung so tightly to me that she nearly choked me. Her knees dug painfully into my sides, and she beat me with her head. I tried to talk soothingly to her, but she was beyond frantic. I took us to the ground, where she fell off my back into the dust, sobbing and sweating.

I knelt beside her and stroked her hair. Why were you so scared? I was there to protect you the whole time!

You know why, she said through her weeping. You know He told us that we could not even touch these trees or we would die.

And how do you know what death is?

Her weeping diminished. She looked at me, suspiciously, covered in streaks and splotches of dust. I continued.

What if I told you that I have died before? The old me, the me you pitied. That me died in my cocoon. And look what happened. Look what has changed.

She sat up. Did you die? Did you really, in your cocoon?

Something did, I said. Was it me? That’s not easy to say. When I came out of the cocoon, I still knew I had you two as friends, I knew I loved you, I knew sunshine was warm and water was wet and that clouds bring rain, and I remembered all those things from before the cocoon. But who could say the old me didn’t die?

"Have I lived before?