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The Confessions of Adam

By David J. Marsh

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The Opening Pages of


The Confessions of Adam

With Oren of Susa


A Novel


David J. Marsh


Bold Vision Books
2019

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For He Himself knows our frame; He is mindful that we are but dust. David, psalmist, c. 990 BC


The pain I feel now is the happiness I had before. That's the deal. C.S. Lewis

***

Oren of Susa: Scribe's Preface

My signet ring cracks against the boy's skull. The sound echoes from the leafy, towering hardwoods on the far riverbank. The boy cries out but quickly hushes himself, burying his face in the crook of his arm. The other boys lift their heads and peer out of the corners of their eyes as they wade deeper into the tallest reeds. They want to look but don't risk a stare.
"To the bells!"
I grab the wrist of the whimpering child and pull him from the river's edge up onto the bank and over to the basket of bells. His stringy brown hair is stuck to his forehead in a sweaty paste. He wipes his nose on his sleeve, his face slick with tears.
"Put them on like the others," I say, releasing my grip.
The boy's arm drops to his side. Amat, an older student and this year's assistant, steps over to where the boy and I stand. I let him take over and return to my spot in the shade.
Three seasons back a failure just like this cost one boy his life. He did not see the water snake and his bells were in the basket, rather than strapped to him where they could jingle to startle and repel. Like this boy, he had been anxious to wade into the cool water in the heat of the afternoon. He died, collapsed in knee-deep water, his face submerged, his small fist wrapped around the last reed he had grasped.
Amat gently helps the sniffling boy tie his soaked smock up in a knot at his back and wraps a strand of bells just above each of the child's elbows and knees. This done, he pats the boy's head – no doubt a knot has risen from my reprimand – and ushers the child to the river's edge, watching over him as he eases into the water and wades back in among the other boys.
I watch Amat do this and I don't stop him or think anything of it. I was once a scribe's assistant. I know that the foolish boy's father lines the purse of the assistant for doling out such coddling.

From my perch in the shade I watch. The boys' heads bob up and down in silence as they bend and rummage in the muck with their stubby fingers, their bells tinkling. One is standing and dancing about. He needs to urinate. He will wait until we're done.
The sunlight of evening sparkles on the River Shapur as the new class of boys, each in their sixth year of life, searches for reeds among the thick grasses. Just upstream, horses' hooves clap against the worn timbers of the bridge into and out of Susa. Ox carts pass flatwagons. Yoke chains sound as the drivers holler to their teams or lob greetings to one another. The afternoon markets have closed and the farmers are returning home under a cloudless sky, their cartage empty but for firewood and fresh meat. I delight in the sounds and sights of this place. Since birth they have filled my ears and my eyes.
This is my forty-seventh season as scribe. Forty-seven springs I have stood in this spot and listened to these bells. They come to me as walking babies - dull and stupid boys, lacking discipline. They leave me far greater men than their fathers will ever be.
They learn at the most respected tablet house in the valley, or the entire river land for that matter. By their thirteenth year those who have not fled out of weakness will be full scribes. They will be in far off villages, apprenticed in the laws or with market-keepers. They will take with them their share of my reputation. They will benefit from what I offer for the rest of their lives. They have not the slightest idea. I give them all that I have and in return I receive only stares and gold coins that I must lean close to count due to my failing eyesight.
Pulling reeds is where they start. Each lesson – from pointing the reed and cutting the clay to spacing with care each jot and tittle – is built on this one, on the ability to do this simple task as instructed. Every step is a test. Every action has a purpose.
So far, a mound of reeds, the girth of a muskmelon, lies in the grass by the basket. I estimate there to be thirty or thirty-two stalks, though the muddy fresh-torn roots make my inspection difficult. Each stalk must measure the thickness of the thumb of the boy who harvested it. But directions are not always followed. About half of these reeds will be too thin and flimsy or too thick and woody and will be left to dry and throw in the fire.
Amat comes over and stands beside me. He is a head taller and thin. His hair in its youthful ebony contrasts with my scalp of short, grey scrub.
"There must be at least two times this number to afford each boy a styli and a spare for the first week's copying," I reminded him.
"Yes, Master Oren. I will see to it."
Amat steps atop a boulder that sits at the edge of the river's current.
"Work faster," he calls. "Encourage the boy next to you. You don't want to be walking back to the village and to your homes in the dark, do you? Better an aching back now."
The threat of darkness visibly quickens each boy's pace. They are young, their fears simple and deep.
I think ahead to tomorrow, the instruction in cutting the reeds, the trimming of the straws to a point. Amat will sharpen the knives this evening. I've seen blood trickling down a boy's arm a thousand times, the knife slipping into one small thumb after another. But even so, it nearly makes my stomach spill.

Two of the boys who have been rewarded for their diligence trim the stalks to the length of a forearm, and wrap the bottoms of the reeds in thick bolts of felt, making bundles of muddy roots. They lay these in the bottom of the basket and the strands of bells are piled in on top by each boy in single file. Finally, the two boys lift, each on an end of the basket, and turn to lead our procession back toward the village.
The bridge is quiet now, so we climb up to the road to cross the river. The sky's two great lights have taken their places, one coloring the horizon as it leaves and the other hanging in crisp white at our backs. The shuffle of the boys' feet, the rattle of the basket, and an occasional whisper are the only sounds – save the call of a pair of crows. I look down the long, straight road as we walk. Smoke rises from the first evening fires and the watchman's torches have begun to flicker in the cooling dusk. It is then, as we clear the bridge, that I see him.
A messenger.
I know him by his withered leg. He comes toward us at something between a hobble and a limp. He lurches to one side in such a way that it seems he might tip over. He is one of the public stable of messengers for hire. The boys break into a noisy chatter as he nears. I remain at the back of the class. As we meet him it amuses me to watch him dodging his way between the boys, each looking up at him, their faces in a stew of expectation and qualm. I call a halt just as he gets to me. The boys fall silent and we all stop moving at once.
"A strange–," the messenger pauses, waiting, wheezing, finally catching his breath, "–a stranger at tab–tablet house."
Arms draped over his walking rod, his tongue flaps and clicks in his dry hole of a mouth. He has two yellow, browning teeth. One hangs in the corner and the other pushes up from the center like an old stump.
"Go on," I say, stirring the air with my hand, anxious to be done with him. "Did you not get a name from this visitor?"
The boys gather around as if at a fight, sizing up their wager.
"It is a man," says the messenger.
"Can you describe this man?"
"He is alone – old. A throng follows along behind him as he walks. Everyone stares at him."
The messenger pauses again, apparently empty of details. I am not empty of questions.
"Do you recognize this visitor?"
"No. He is common enough, but he is like a camel, all knees and limbs."
"Then he is not that common."
"No. I must say. Not that common."
"So he's waiting at the tablet house now?"
"Yes. But he will come back within the next two days if you are not at the tablet house in a short time."
"Fine. Anything else?"
"If I may, I–"
"Yes?"
The messenger stands in front of me, his eyes fixed on my purse.
These are an odd company of men, milling about in the market, without skill, most of them with some manner of warped or missing body part. Such jobs of message carrying feed them well enough. Custom would be to toss him the coins to buy two duck eggs or enough wheat to fill his palms when cupped together. And I might follow the custom but I have a higher calling. The boys are watching. They need prompted to work hard and avoid a wasted life. So I give the messenger nothing – I make no move to grasp my bulging purse. As he stares my resolve is set. Such broken apes as this are better off dead. Alms only prolong their dreary state.
"If he remains when you return tell him that I will see him mid-day tomorrow."
"Yes, and I will. As you have said." The messenger would do anything I ask, holding ever tighter to his hope for some payment.
If the visitor chooses to never return so much the better. It is happening more and more. People have been stopping at the tablet house every day, sometimes two and three times a day. They ask me if I might like to buy a cow or a pig or goat. When I say no they say, "I could bring milk or bacon to you once a week?" Others ask if I would like furniture built or new glass in my windows. Perhaps my roof needs repaired? Some of them ask if I can spare a few coins to aid local orphans – or if I'd like to purchase one as a servant.
Another visitor is not welcome, nor is he news. I only offer to see him because I am as curious as anyone else – a table maker doesn't have a crowd following him.
The ring of boys turns into a crescent as the messenger gives up on my purse, bows, and dips to one side, turning and easing down the river bank. He plunges his face into the water and sucks madly, his jowls and chin dripping as he surfaces. A bit of scum hangs from his chin. Pulling himself back up to the road, he makes his way ahead of us again, toward the village.
I look at the basket of reeds the boys are carrying and I think of this poor half-cripple's mind – bundles of muddy roots, bundles of muddy roots.
Dusk is fully upon us. "Mind your pace boys, lift your feet."

Amat has pulled the cot out of the closet and is napping in the quiet of the lecture room. The boys are all at home or at their parents' shops eating, thinking about anything but the letters. These first weeks with a new class always make me feel like a wet-nurse – so little is about the letters. All is about keeping their attention, tending to their little spirits. Soon I'll make one or two of the boys an example – pulled to the front of the class, their smocks lifted and their bare backsides blistered with a strip of leather. The weeks will then become much easier.
Hanging overhead, the midday sun feels close. Even though I know the heat will have driven many to the twin river to bathe, I walk through the crowded market toward the River Dez. The water's edge comes into sight and it is more than I thought. Half the population of Susa has decided to go for a bath. Piles of filthy clothing dot the riverbank at the end of the street – hats, linen tunics and overshirts lay in loose bundles next to sandals, their straps flung in the dirt. Any reeds that once grew here have been long since stomped out. The water churns with children screaming and laughing, kicking and splashing in litters of a dozen or more from one bank to the other. Their mothers stand close together, breasts sagging, gossiping in huddles at the edges of the action. A few fathers keep watch – standing like towers here and there – arms folded over their hairy chests, water up to their pale buttocks. The current appears nearly stopped as it piles up against the teeming mass of sweaty flesh.
I will enter upstream of this mayhem, for downstream the water is thick and cloudy, half sewage. The crowd bustles around me as I slowly make my way. Some of them look at me and nod, most ignore me altogether, their arms full of clothing and food or small children. A trio of dogs lap at the edge of the water – lifting their heads and shuffling this way or that to avoid the steps of bathers. The nearest dog starts to cut into my path. I kick it out of my way, causing it to stumble and tip on its side in the mud. The beast is no dirtier for the wear. Further up the riverbank I find my spot under a nearly dead cedar. I drop my slippers and drape my smock over a bare limb; the bark worn away from my use.
I descend the bank until the water rises to my ankles. The sun on my back feels as if it could bake me like clay. Everyone's naked body, once it has reached the age of mine, has ugly shapes, bulges and flab in one place or another. Always skin and bones loosely cobbled together, starting with a head and usually ending with feet. I am a daytime bather. The young bathe at night, when there are fires on the riverbank and barrels of drink. Under the light of the stars, there are no bulges or flab, only muscles and curves. Toward dawn they lay on the bank in pairs, threes, fours, a few moments spent entwined together before sunrise.
I remember such nights. How I found my way from one girl to another, the light of the bonfire casting its shadow. And I remember finding her. How we enjoyed our youth night after night - she and I - off away from the others. But this joy is long faded. The scab of losing her is thick, like dried sap over a split branch in late autumn. And the memory of the touch of her warm soft skin only reminds me that my loins have turned to flab.
I step toward the center of the river and pause – the water suddenly cool as it meets my underbody. I lie back and float downstream, my arms and legs working with the current. I feel the water against the top of my head.
Voices echo from across the water. The sun sparkles in the current and my mind wanders to my annual sabbatical. With some direction, which I've already begun to give, Amat could take the class this harvest while I slip away for a couple of months before the heart of the winter. Or I could turn the house over to him for much longer and avoid altogether this new class of boys – the stench of their sweaty bodies in the heat of the afternoon. I could simply walk away and return when I saw fit.
Wading against the current I step back up the riverbank and under the cedar. Chilled a bit there in the shade I relieve myself against a milkweed that has grown up along the trunk. My thoughts turn to food. I step back into my slippers and wrap myself in my smock.
On my way back to the tablet house I stop at a fruit vendor for yogurt and nuts, as well as a pomegranate – Amat's daily request. I am too good to him.
Some time away. Perhaps I could travel, maybe to the sea. The poetry I worked on last year is an unruly mess. I can hardly call it poetry. It is meant to be an epic verse about my life as a scribe. But like an afternoon with the boys it is lifeless and overly familiar. I cannot decide which is the greater bore – to read what I have written so far or to write some more.
Goods in hand, I continue toward the tablet house. The chalky dust is already layering itself on my feet, and the sun has quickly dried my scalp. I am nearly within sight of the house when Amat walks up to me, anxious for my attention.
"Master Oren, the visitor has returned." His voice carries a girlish brightness, a chirp that grates on my ear over the din of the busy market. My lack of response spurs him on. "The visitor, the one the messenger told us about last evening."
"Yes, Amat. I remember. Are any of the boys back for the afternoon session?"
"No. Not yet. I have let the visitor in to sit in the lecture room. There is a small crowd in the street. It is just as the messenger said.” Amat folds his hands tight at his chin as he speaks.
"Amat, what is it?"
He steps close, "I think it may be him."
"Whom?"
"I think it may be the Created One."
I squint into the hot sun and look up, straight into Amat's wide eyes. The boy's imagination is making a fool of him.
"What makes you think such a thing?"
"The noise in the crowd. I overheard several of the old women say it." Amat stands to my side and takes my elbow as if to lead me on to the house. "Besides, he is old and very tall. He is impossible to ignore. And his features, they suggest having lived much."
The marketplace crowd is too heavy. Amat releases my elbow and takes the lead, splitting the crowd as I come along behind him. In among the market stalls and craftsmen's workshops, the tablet house comes into view. Its long arched grass roof is set atop its plain rectangular frame. The front door is set in oak beams, as are the windows, all of which face the street. Amat turns to me. "Look at them!" Indeed, a small crowd has gathered at the door and is slowly growing. "They were following him. Word is spreading."
As I approach, the nearest ones look at me as if I am hosting one of their gods. I hate their attention – their hushed pushing in around me, their foul hot breath and jostling stares repulse and unnerve me. Their broad expectant grins and filthy teeth – I am not one of them.
"Go home! Haven't you anything better to do?"
They only stare more, as if I am not Oren, the same plain-faced literate they've seen padding along these dirt streets their entire lives.
"Maybe you'll learn to mark your name if you stay long enough!"
None of them say a word. I stand behind Amat as he grasps the latch to open the door. He looks back at me as if to ask if I am ready. I urge him on and he enters ahead of me. He steps in and looks around the room twice and then a third time. The house is empty. The door still hanging open, one of the crowd steps in. "He has gone to get food and is coming back soon!" I turn and grab the man, pushing him back outside. He stumbles into the murmuring mass. Knocking several of them aside he loses his balance and falls forward. I close the door, locking it.
I put our food on the desk, remove my slippers, and rinse my feet in the foot bath. Amat steps to the window.
"The people are excited," he says.
I sit at my desk to eat. "They lead drab lives, Amat. They are not excited, they are longing – like blind men for some bit of light."
The yogurt tastes of honey and cloves. I toss a few almonds into it and watch Amat fetch a knife for his pomegranate from the cutting block in the corner and return to the window, his back in a studied hunch. I can hear the buzzing of the crowd rising and falling, rising again, waiting for the visitor to return. These people need a purpose. My purpose is to enjoy my midday meal. I walk to the door and jerk it open. It looks like some have left to look for him, but many have stayed behind. Surprised and startled, they jump away and scatter into the street. But as soon as I close the door and lock it again they return like flies.
In disgust I sit back down and pour a few extra almonds out onto my desk. I settle back and eat.
Amat looks over at me. "Listen, Master. They have grown quiet."
He is right. It is as if the crowd has left. Only a couple of muffled voices carry through the wall on the thick afternoon air. I know I have only a short while before the boys begin to return for the second session. I sit back, put my feet up on the lecture desk, and begin to relax. In the quiet a drowse comes over me.
Three knocks sound against the door. I sit back up slowly and move the yogurt from my lap to the desk. Amat looks toward the entry way and then over at me.
"Go ahead," I say.
Amat steps around and down the short hall to attend the door as I slipper my feet and stand at my desk smoothing my smock for business.
A flash of sunlight, noise, and hot air fills the entry way.
"Come in please, sir," I hear Amat say.
There is shuffling of feet and the door shuts.
A moment of silence, then Amat again, "one moment please."
Amat steps from around the corner and hands me a small remnant of lambskin – a traveling note. Few visitors have traveling notes. I haven't seen one in years. It is a very old practice.
I look down at the note pinched between my forefinger and thumb. I am surprised to see that it is not made of words nor is it signed by any ruler or overseer. On it is a drawing of a tree. Etched and lightly brushed, the tree looks as if you could lift it off the skin. I can see nests, pockets of grass nestled in nooks and branches, tiny beaks and heads pop up and down as the skin shifts under my gaze. Ripe fruit clusters, dangling stems burdened by the weight. Each leaf is shaded such that it seems to flutter in a sunny evening breeze.
Below this, in a flowing, curling scrawl appear the only words: Adam of Eden.
I turn back toward Amat and motion for him to bring the visitor in.
I look down again at the note and think of the myths. The Created One. Man of Men. The Beginner. He goes by many names. Only the very oldest in the village claim to have ever seen the man, though everyone has an opinion of him. The tales I have heard are that he is not living in this region, that he is living near the sea to the north. This is only talk. If this is him – if there is any possibility that it is – I sense a split in my boredom, something other than the whimper of little boys learning to cut a stylus.
Amat has led the visitor into the lecture room and they are standing on the other side of my desk. I look past the top edge of the note and up at the visitor.
He comes into focus before me.
His cloak, made of a fine textured cloth, is pulled tight around his stooped, towering frame. No hair is on the top of his head, but what is left – at the sides and just above his ears – is thick and has grown long and dark grey over his shoulders. He has no beard, but long eyebrows hang over clear light-brown eyes. His face, like the rest of him is long, lean, and full of expression. I have met many men, but this one takes a generous control of the room, lending it the humility of experience, an experience hard-fought.
I can hear the occasional bump against the outside wall. There are faces pushed up against the rough, cloudy glass of the window. Amat has pulled another chair up near my lecture desk. "Please," I say to the visitor, extending my arm toward it.
He sits, his long legs crossed at the knees, his bare calves below his cloak hanging side-by-side like two great candles. I look toward the sounds at the window and back at him. I am surprised to find him looking only at me.
"Are they always so interested in seeing you?" I ask.
His face creases in a smile. "Only when I choose to be seen."
I look at this man sitting before me and I look at the note he has given me lying on the desk between us.
"Who are you?" I ask.
He allows the question to sit between us, to rest for a moment. He points toward the door. "Who do they say that I am?"
There are many who imagine the Created One to be brain sick, grown old and mad, his tale told and retold for so long and for so much listening that he has surely deceived even himself. Some consider him to be the living link back to our very origins, the holder of secrets, a sage, a holy man. Then there are those who think him not a man at all but a being from the stars or the deep of the sea – some other thing that made a woman and then birthed man through her. Perhaps they all have a bit of the truth. For me, as I look into the night stars I only see that man is too small to know anything of the gods. But for the moment I'll pretend he is who and what his traveling note says he is.
"Surely you know. The masses – they understand so very little yet speak a lot. Where they lack knowledge they make it, they spin it down and excrete it then pass it around to each other like a shared bedpot. Those who have some sense say that you are simply–" I pause, "an old man. A curiosity."
"I suppose that could be said of either of us, yes?" he smiles but he doesn't wait for an answer. "But what do you think, Oren of Susa? Who do you say that I am?"
He leans forward in his chair and looks at me.
I feel like I am making a kind of decision, as if I am making some sort of start – forming a beginning with my answer. "I am willing to consider it, to consider that you are the first man."
"That is good. It is important to me, this willingness." He sits back. "Let me tell you a little of it, Oren. Let me tell you what I keep, what I hold onto."
As he begins to speak his eyes grow youthful. A light comes into them – like shadows running from the sun.
"I am an old man. More than nine-hundred and twenty-eight birth years have passed since my walking in Eden. This is true. I am alone as well. My wife, the woman Eve, I saw her one last time before my aide brought me a notice, written by her servitor. Eve had failed to wake several moons past and her burial had been held. I stared at the writing as if it were some riddle. But it wasn't. She was gone.”
"You and Eve were not together, you were not with her?" I ask.
"Eve had lived for a long time in a village far to the south. She lived in a home her grandchildren's great-grandchildren built for her. Many of them and their children cared for her in this walled off house within the village. It had stables, gardens, and fountains as well.
"Word had come before, last mid-summer that she was ill but it took me until the cold season to decide to go and see her. As preparations were made I shooed my servants away from my horse-cart. I chose to ready it for the journey myself. It was a private service, a way of owning the hard work of seeing her again.
“Two full days en route, we stopped only for individual necessity. My three drivers took turns, one with the reigns, one with a spear, and the other at rest. My movements around the country are always known. I think some of my house-servants augment their earnings by selling my plans to the many gawkers and those who imagine me to be something I'm not. Once I would have cared about these whisperings and would have worked to silence them. Instead I've come to you."
I wonder what that could mean, but I decide not to interrupt him.
"Upon reaching the village it was a spectacle, just as I knew it would be. The marketplace was lined with on-lookers, the alleyways clogged with people stopped and pointing as my small caravan proceeded to her house. I sat back, the curtain of my cabin pulled so that I had only a slit through which to look out at them. They all knew who I was. I did not have the same advantage. They were all strangers to me.
"I was led slowly up a turning stairway to her room by a lovely young man. I don't know who he was, and he didn't say his name or ask me mine. He was not rude, just cold, indifferent even, and in no way caught up in who I was. He left me in the hall while he went in and spoke below my hearing before permitting me to enter. He then lingered just out of sight, unwilling to show us any privacy."
Amat is making a record of the meeting. I am sure that as he watches the words he is making they are unlike anything he's ever imagined writing.
"I came around her bedside and we looked at each other for the first time in a hundred harvests.
'I insisted they write to you,' she said as my shadow fell across her bed.
'I am glad you did. You are well cared for.'
'They are good to me,' she said.
"The outline of her small frame, her thin legs under the linen sheet, was shocking to me. There was so little left of her. Her hair fell over her pillow like seaweed on a rocky beach. I knew that her morning bath had just finished, for the room smelled of bellflower oil and mint.
"As I stood at the side of her bed I had a memory...a memory from our last year together.
"I had returned from one of my many trips up the edge of the sea. I had been gone for nearly a full season. We had a large pot simmering over the fire and had just added a few seeds and some flakes of one herb or another. As the spices rolled in the broth we both leaned in to smell the steam. Our foreheads touched. Conversation fell silent and we stayed like this for a few brief moments. Frozen in this scene, the cookery a delightful mess, Seth lying on the floor with a kitten he had found; it seemed possible to reclaim ourselves, to become Adam and Eve again. I hesitated to alter the moment with speech but words came. 'It seems perfect to me,' I said. She pulled her head back. 'We need more water,' she said as she turned away without looking at me. I remained there over the pot, the steam forming a layer of dew on my chin.
"Slowly my mind returned to her room and her lying before me all these years later. 'Want some?' She lifted her arm and pointed to a table across the room, on which sat a bowl of fruit. When I turned back she was smiling, the skin of her face pulled from its sag, her eyes brightened but faded back again. I took her hand in mine and kissed it as I bowed and knelt at the side of her bed. I began to cry for the loss of what had once been and out of the regret that I had not held all that we had had more closely. I cried for her beauty and the intimacy we had once had and for a time and place that could never be captured again. I knelt with the deepest wish for even one more day together by the sea. Her hand was soft and cool. I could feel each bone as I pressed it. I saw in her face a failure to make sense of all that we had become. What she saw in my face couldn't have helped. I leaned down and kissed her cheek, which felt against my lips like the loose skin of a dried grape.
"Oren, as I stood to leave, I saw her. I saw what she was and what I was, the first man and the first woman. I saw us and I saw that I now have the language. I can use the words of today to describe what I once saw, the life long past. I now have the words that I need in order to tell the story."
"Your story?" I ask.
"Ours," he says, "I hope it will be ours."
Amat fetches a wine sack. I stand and pour. I hold a goblet out to Adam. He takes it, looks into it and drinks.
"I need to tell it all, not just this part. I need to have it put in words. It is the story of the Maker, of she, and I – The Maker and the made ones.”
I sip my wine. This is a bold claim.
"Why me?" I ask. "Why not do it yourself if you have found the language?"
"I have come to you, Oren of Susa. You live it. You see all that man has become. Boys shouldn't grow up to be men who suffer physical distortions and become beggars turned messenger. Orphans shouldn't be orphans, let alone sold in the marketplace like goats. Young men and women engaged in riverside orgies by firelight?"
How would he know of me and her? Surely he is speaking generally – of the masses. These things of which he speaks – they are not unique.
"I was there when all of this was invented, Oren. It is my fault. I own all of this. What man has become is a reflection of who we were. Who I was. I should have done more to protect her. I held it in my hand, this mankind, but I did not care for it. I did not keep, I did not tend. I fell short of the glory for which I was made. And with me fell all this." He holds his arms wide as if to take in the tablet house, Susa, and all that lies beyond.
"And now I am who I am and I have come to you because you can conceive of this and you can help me tell the story. You can help me crack the hull off of it. Pull it clear of the scrub and brush of my memory.
"You are skilled," he says. "Is this not the most respected, the most recognized tablet house in the valley of Susa? You are the teacher of every scribe in employ here and beyond. I am the first man. Together we can tell the story."
I sit silently as he adds to his case.
"Neither you nor I are encumbered with the concerns of family. We are free to do as we wish."
He has inquired about me, and has learned a bit. Indeed, this last point is painful for me to hear but is mostly accurate.
I think back to the last time I provided my pen to a man for the purpose of personal writing. It was a boorish, small job. Iashi, the Prince of Uramin, had found me thanks to his now dead father – for whom I had done some court scribbling. Iashi was a young pup, barely off his milkmother's knee and lacking every experience. He wanted to dictate to me his wisdom, the entirety of which he stated to me in less than one afternoon, his rump in his prince's chair, like some self-proclaimed oracle.
As I listen to this man, however, I am taken by the size of the story, the weight of it. Whoever he is, he has come to me when I am ready to take a chance. The sabbatical, the poetry – no, what he is offering is a project of another nature altogether. He has convinced me that he is one who carries a story on his back. True or not, he is asking me to relieve him of it. This is more than writing. His tone and the effort he has made to seek me out – this man holds within him the potential for lasting work.
And if he is who he says he is...I dare to think of it. His story and my pen – I could trade on his words for the rest of my life. I would be more than a scribe. If this man is who he says he is I would become like one of the prophets – I would be admitted into the circle of honored holy men – I would be known as Adam's Seer, the one unto whom he chose to divulge the story. And I will have done with it what it deserves.
Adam looks into his drink. "I will come back tomorrow. I will come back the next day. I want it written. I want to tell what happened, make clear the truth of it. Because I know. I know what it was to be in that place and face Him, the Maker. What it was to stand next to Him. I am Adam of Eden."
I am not ready to be pulled into his tale just yet. I will not wait until after the story is told to add weight to my purse. "And what of the payment?" I ask.
"When we are done," he says, "let's discuss it then."
Surely this man knows that no one accepts a job without guarantee. "No," I reply, “now.”
"When we are done. When we are done you can have whatever you ask."
I am stopped short by this – an open payment? I am to set my price at whatever I wish?
I stare at him. I think of all he is offering, how his story – even what he's told me so far – so outshines my own poor tale, the slop I've started to write. The boys are trickling in, chattering, taking their seats all around us, and reminding me yet again that I need some time away. The offer of sabbatical – handsomely paid, even – lies here before me.
"Then for now, room and board while I work," I say. "And the equal of two seasons master scribe payment."
"Whatever you ask. I'll welcome you to my home by the sea for the task."
I should have asked for three seasons, for payment seems to be of no concern to him. I'll be sure to get it at the end.
I look once more at the traveling note resting on my lecture desk. I look up at him sitting there, his wine-purpled lips and grey hair, his eyes peering out at me from under those brows.
"All right," I say. "I will work with you. We will write your story. You will tell it and I will write. You can use my pen, but I'll not promise my silence."
He smiles and folds his hands in his lap. "I woke in the middle of the land of Eden, under a tree. Ripe fruit clustered, dangling stems burdened by the weight. Each leaf fluttered in the sunny evening breeze. Shall we start there?"


***

About the Author

David J. Marsh
Dave came to belief as a child and grew up steeped in biblical narratives. His mother was a writer and his father was a pastor and a student of both theology and biblical languages. Growing up, Dave often asked his father to read aloud the scriptures in their original Hebrew and Greek. While Dave could not understand them, the music of these languages in their original tongue fascinated him. His late father’s library of commentaries now lines a wall in his home.

In his debut novel, The Confessions of Adam, a re-telling of the universal and dramatic narrative that opens the book of Genesis, he has crafted a richly imagined story of creation and its aftermath - drawing on a lifetime of familiarity with the text as well as more recent study.

David J. Marsh holds a BS in Communications from Grace College and an MFA in Creative Writing (Fiction) from Butler University, Indianapolis. Dave’s work has been recognized by or appeared in Utmost, Booth Online, NoiseMedium, and Fixional.
Dave is founder of the Westside Writers’ Workshop and twice monthly he records what he’s learning about the craft of fiction on his blog “Revel and Rant” at www.davidjmarsh.com. Dave and his wife Cyndi reside in Danville, Indiana.

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The Confessions of Adam by David J. Marsh
Summer, 2019

Agent: Jöelle Delbourgo www.delbourgo.com
Publisher: Karen Porter www.boldvisionbooks.com

Epigraph from The Psalms
New American Standard Bible. La Habra, CA: Foundation Publications, for the Lockman Foundation, 1971. Print.

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