Fall of Man

All the world is the flesh of the apple that sways just out of reach, framed by my kitchen window. Our atmosphere is its thin green skin, stretched taut over a ripened interior, shielding us from the solar juggernaut that falls from the sky and dissolves into the ocean, over and over again.

Apples are bountiful on this coast, as are starfruit, banana, coconuts, and the false-apple, which looks and tastes just like the real apple, but causes sudden paralysis, vomiting, and death. We are permitted to harvest most edible fruits without restraint due to their exceptional abundance. The only ones that are off-limits are the Hanging Apples of the Pool of Being, through which we must pass to fully Become. The Hanging Apples dangle above the Pool, nourished through tree roots by its sacred waters, and are thus expressly forbidden to harvest and eat.

Legend has it that the High Elder passed by the Pool in deep prayer; as his eyes ventured out over the turquoise depths, a Hanging Apple fell from its tree, splashed into the Pool, and floated—floated, can you believe that?—on the surface. The Elders convened and agonized for weeks over the significance of the event—should they fish the no-longer-Hanging Apple from the Pool? Then what? Plant its seeds? Consensus eventually emerged to divide the Apple and devour it ceremoniously—it was sliced most impressively into twenty-eight pieces to accommodate all twenty-eight Elders—and it is said they achieved a great level of enlightenment from its divine flesh. Enlightenment is the burden of the extraordinary, but even common villagers like me will pass into the Pool in a state of simple existence and emerge in a state of Being.

Staring at the swaying curves of the ordinary-but-also-hanging apple outside my kitchen window, I was reminded suddenly and starkly of Marashka. I jerked my head down in embarrassment, though I was alone in the room. In five tidal cycles, I would pass through the Pool and Become. In my Becoming, the thoughts in my mind would silence the vagaries of my body and I would approach Marashka, put my fingers over her shoulders, and say: Marashka, you are the most beautiful fruit of the earth. And I would be certain in my actions like the Elders of our village, who execute even their bowel movements with assured purpose.

For now, though, nothing makes even the smallest amount of sense to me. Even the ocean tides that are my most constant reality. The twenty-eight Elders of our village inform us that a gigantic, celestial bear hibernates in the stars, and the power of her slumbering breath, incomprehensible on our human timescale, is responsible for the ebb and flow of the ocean. I try to understand the Celestial Bear when I listen to the waves crashing at night. Sometimes one must beat wildly, ceaselessly, at the great gates of comprehension before they squeak open but an inch. To assuage the devil of my infinite ignorance, I constructed a system of sticks to record the high and low levels of the tide and found that they repeat themselves with small variance from day to day, in accordance with the cycle of rainy and dry seasons. My eyes told me that the tides run in many small cycles with the sun on their longer cycle with the seasons. So, the Celestial Bear respires with preternatural annual fidelity.

I was shocked when I discovered this because it surely meant that I was not becoming but repeating the same cycle of my life, over and over and over.

Marashka assured me this could not be so. Look, she said, grabbing my hands. Your hands have gotten much bigger. And your voice, she continued, her fingers moving to my throat, it has gotten much deeper. And your...erm...well, you are a lot taller!

The day of my Becoming dawned. The world was still, its bigness impressed upon me in the echoes of birdsong up the coast. The blue ocean issued forth faithfully from the edge of the horizon, as if from a dream. In that moment I felt desperately microscopic, and wondered if that is what it feels like to Be.

There were four other boys in the dry riverbed where the Elders chanted prayers over us in a deep, knowing chorus. As instructed, we undressed, removing smocks until the sand was a carpet of olive and beige. Then the Elders nudged us forth into a line and I fell to the rear, where I could view the procession as we wound through the jungle under the portentous shadow of early evening. We emerged into a natural amphitheater of rock thrown long ago from volcanoes, ringed by banana palms and overflowing with my people.

As is custom, the villagers had painted their faces black; until we passed into the Pool and Became, we could not be permitted to recognize the people around us.

We were made to walk parallel to the throng of silent, faceless villagers to the rim of the Pool of Being. Bennai was first in line and so led by the High Elder into the shallows of the Pool. Nothing and no one stirred, save the Hanging Apples, which oscillated in a breeze that did not exist. The High Elder murmured words into Bennai’s ears; he nodded, closed his eyes, and knelt up to his stomach in the Pool. Hunched over, nose an inch from the water, his naked backside bulged. Then the High Elder pressed Bennai’s head under the water, and the other twenty-seven Elders of the village began to beat their staffs in unison on the black stones. His body disappeared into the Pool, held down by the High Elder’s wise hands. We watched silently. A minute passed, and little bubbles escaped from the area around Bennai’s head. Still the High Elder held the boy under. The Elders beat their staffs faster, louder. The water began to roil now with the force of Bennai’s panic. Two minutes had passed. Still the staffs beat louder, faster, a cataclysmic heartbeat, and still the High Elder kept Bennai under. His thrashing grew weaker, the desperate bubbles fewer, and at three minutes, the surface of the water settled. The Elders ceased their beating in unison, the final strike reverberating in the amphitheater and settling in the minds of the villagers like dust. The High Elder gently pulled Bennai from the water, turned his face to the sky, and clapped him once on the chest.

He was in a between state: pushed so far from the diameter of life, then lassoed back with the wisdom of his journey, he could finally Be, in the fullest sense of the word.

Bennai was lifeless for another moment and then his eyes sprung open. He vomited the internalized Pool and gasped at the white sunlight, the black villagers, the green Apples, the High Elder, his own wet and naked body. The assembly erupted in cheers, and a Lower Elder stepped into the shallows to offer Bennai his hand, as if to say: welcome, full being, for you have become one of us.

Calano, Viyete, and Kenok succeeded Bennai in the Pool of Being. Each time, the High Elder held them under until the surface of the Pool became still, and each time they awoke with gasps and new wide eyes. I became increasingly aware of my vulnerability, the sweat pooling around my most private parts and my hands shivering in anticipation.

Then the High Elder gestured that I should enter the Pool. I cast my gaze to find Manashka’s, but I saw only an expanse of inverse-stars. I tip-toed into the Pool and found the water to be completely neutral, no more or less the temperature of the blood crashing through my veins. The High Elder put his mouth very close to my ear and whispered: drink deeply from the pool. Then it was my head he pushed under the surface. At the very instant my lips kissed the water, a Hanging Apple fell from its branch and plunged into the Pool. Bubbles filled my nose and ears—all my senses were suffocated—but I forced my eyes open to watch the no-longer-Hanging Apple, which trembled at the surface of the Pool for an instant and then began to sink. It plummeted leisurely, falling like the sun into the horizon. I was aware of the pressure of the High Elder’s hands on the back of my head, and of a vague burning in my chest.

A truth suddenly became apparent to me, born equal parts of curiosity and necessity: I, man, must fall with the Apple. I began to swim downwards, feeling the pressure of the High Elder’s hands leave my head. The strain in my ears multiplied as the sunlight from the Pool's surface diffused to grey. I could see only the dark outline of the Apple, sinking deeper, deeper, deeper, into the Pool. I kicked harder, my body entombed now by a caking darkness that was thick as everything and formless as nothing. It seemed brighter even when I closed my eyes; a great Celestial Bear danced among the stars on the back of my eyelids. I dove with singular purpose and fading form, disembodied and sure of only one thing: the Apple. Gradually, the darkness around me slackened; I thought I had become disoriented and re-emerged at the surface, but I could see the shapely figure of the Apple again, and it was still falling, falling down. A growing aura illuminated the freckled green skin, made light the depths, and suddenly, the Apple landed gently on the bottom of the Pool. Grey, fibrous matter carpeted the bed. Mired in this matter like anonymous shipwrecks were the elongate cores of hundreds—no, thousands—of apples, gnawed into hourglasses as if by a human being. They peppered the bed as far as the aura could touch them, and the no-longer-Hanging Apple came to rest in the very center of this graveyard of its siblings.

Again, I felt compelled by a certainty beyond the ordinary bounds of my rationality. I reached through the water, which flowed like a matrix of memories through my fingertips, and grabbed the Apple. I brought it to my lips, pressed it to my waterlogged mouth, and bit into the ripe-to-bursting flesh that was all of the world, framed by my kitchen window. The sweetness slid down my throat and even though I was inverted, facing down to the bottom of the Pool, I felt it land in my stomach.

I was overcome instantly by the feeling of dying. Pain erupted in my chest, forked through my lungs, stomach, bowels; every nerve ending of my body screeched and then froze. I could not move, though I could feel my mind convulsing. Paralyzed, I began to float up, back into the darkness, my vision fading to non-vision, my being to non-being. In my last moments of consciousness, I thought: Apples don't sink...false-apple!

And then I was blinking open my eyes into a very white light, studded with pinpricks of black, the inverse of a night sky. A dull roar in my ears became the triumphant howls of a hundred voices, and I realized I was staring at the black-painted faces of the villagers. The High Elder clapped me on the chest and I gasped for breath, vomiting Pool water. My people were jumping up and down, jubilant, caterwauling. I blinked, and remembered everything: I’ve become!

...Become who, exactly?

A Lower Elder extended his hand down to the shallows, to take my own. I blinked around dizzily at the High Elder and the Hanging Apples behind him.

But I felt just as I had before entering the Pool. Panicked, I thought of the tidal cycles—they were as mystifying to me now as before! I thought of Marashka—I could think of nothing clever to say to her that I hadn’t thought of before! I felt half-drowned, not enlightened. Being felt just like existence. I looked up at the Lower Elder’s extended hand, and past that, into his wise eyes. I tried to tell him with mine: Nothing happened! It didn’t work!

He took my hands in his, drew me firmly out of the Pool, and cupping my shoulders, he looked me deep in my wild eyes...and he winked.