“Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made.” The Bible.

Synopsis of the narrative:

In the Garden of Eden, it is the day after God notified Adam and Eve that in punishment they would have to leave forever in the next few days.

(A garden on a sunny day. Eve enters, busy gardening. Different kinds of animals all about, grazing, playing. Adam enters hurriedly, pushing a wheelbarrow containing garden implements, garden gloves. He pauses to look around. He engages in removing the implements and the gloves from the barrow to the ground. EVE pauses to look at ADAM. They engage in garden chores. Gorilla enters; stands still and looks at them. Adam sees the Gorilla.)

ADAM: Eve? One of your learners? (Eve sees the Gorilla.)

EVE: Yes! In my sign language class! (EVE and the GORILLA communicate in sign.) Good to see you.

GORILLA: I came to see if I could help with the yard work.

EVE: Of course you can. Thank you for offering. There was a heavy wind last night. We are clearing away all the fallen branches, from here to there. Just pile them up. Put on the gloves if you wish.

GORILLA: Thanks. No gloves.

(GORILLA goes about moving fallen branches. ADAM and EVE resume chores.)

ADAM: That’s kind of it.

EVE: More than just kind. I would say unusually high intelligence in an animal.

ADAM: If it can learn sign, speaking cannot be ruled out, would you say?

EVE: Yes. It did not occur to me. Sad.

ADAM: Why sad?

EVE: Adam, we are leaving. There’s no telling what will be allowed and not allowed us out there.

ADAM: You’re right. I forgot. God has expelled us.

EVE: Yes.

ADAM: Yesterday?

EVE: Yes.

ADAM: You feel a change?

EVE: Not yet. Pulling stubborn crab grass and trimming dead branches are still as sweaty.

ADAM: (Softly.) Eve, let’s be thankful God’s curse of “thorns and thistles” has not yet kicked in. After all, we are guilty ‘as charged.’

EVE: I suppose. (She flings a quick guilty glance to the sky, and mumbles softly through her teeth.) Sorry.

ADAM: It just occurred to me. Our notice of eviction is not all bad news.

EVE: I am way ahead of you. We can scrap our plans to ask God for some yard help. Right? (They laugh, a little.)

ADAM: Totally right! Forever! By the way, has God told us what to do in preparation to vacate? I don’t remember.

EVE: I remember some mention of Angels coming to show us which way to leave.

ADAM: That will be the first time we find out that Eden has limits, and preferred exits.

EVE: Limits made after yesterday, I’m sure. Do we need Angels to point a direction? (She looks to the sky and raises her voice to God.) Is there a special direction to leave?

ADAM: (Concerned.) Eve?

EVE: It’s a fair query, Adam. In all the while we have been tending this garden, do you know of a best way to leave it?

ADAM: I think you and I should not wait for help from Angels. Let’s leave right now. If we leave right now we don’t have to finish up here.

EVE: About leaving without waiting for an Angel escort, I totally agree with you. But not this minute.

ADAM: Why not?

EVE: Because we have a visitor.

ADAM: A visitor? Who?

EVE: (Expecting Adam’s negative reaction.) Serpie, that serpent. (Adam is stunned speechless.) Now, now, Adam. It’s nothing. It sent a message to me by a bird. I think the serpent wants to apologize for getting us into trouble with God. I sent word back by that bird that we would welcome such a visit. That bird has been flying about here. That’s a sign Serpie is here, waiting for us to show we are ready to accept it. (EVE notices the GORILLA standing nearby.) Gorilla?

GORILLA: (Signs EVE.) I have cleared all the branches.

EVE: (Signs.) Good. Thank you. That’s all for now. Drop by any time. We need all the extra help.

GORILLA: (Signs EVE and ADAM.) Thank you for the opportunity to help.

ADAM: (Signs GORILLA.) You are most welcome. (GORILLA exits.)

EVE: Adam, are you going to stay to meet the serpent?

ADAM: Eve, it’s too soon for me. I accept that our offence against God is entirely our fault, but it is going to take some time for me to be able to be comfortable in the company of Serpie-that-serpent.

EVE: For the most part, I feel the same as you, Adam. The only reason I agreed to meet with the serpent is because it says it has something very important to tell us. Something that has nothing to do with its role in making God angry with us. It is totally repentant and says it did ask God to take it all out on it, and to spare us. But God insists on punishing all three of us. Don’t you want to hear what the important information is that the serpent wants to tell us?

ADAM: I want to hear it, Eve, but from you later on. Sorry.

(He exits, pushing the wheelbarrow, and mumbling angrily to himself through his teeth, “Serpie-that-serpent!” EVE continues with her garden work. SERPIE enters, hesitantly, at a place different from ADAM’s exit.)

SERPIE: (Softly. Shyly.) Hello.

EVE: (Surprised.) Hello.

SERPIE: You won’t recognize me.

EVE: I don’t. Who are you?

SERPIE: (With a soft shy half girlie-giggle.) Serpie. (Eve looks at her, puzzled.)

EVE: Your name is Serpie?

SERPIE: Yes.

EVE: There is a serpent with that name, too.

SERPIE: Eve, I am that serpent.

(EVE stands still, almost in shock.)

That’s the important information I want to tell you and your husband, Adam. It happened to me after God cursed the three of us yesterday. I want to tell you now, Eve.

(EVE shakes herself out of her almost-shock state.)

EVE: Put on those gloves and take up an implement. Tell me as we work. (SERPIE does that. They talk as they work.) So, you are the third person God has made?

SERPIE: God did not make me, Eve.

(EVE stops working, and looks in surprise at SERPIE.)

Well, not as a person like this like you. God made me just another animal. The serpent you and Adam met at that fruit tree a few days ago.

EVE: Whoa, Serpie, slow down! You are telling me that God made you a serpent, and here you are a person whom God did not make?

SERPIE: Yes.

(Both stop working, and look at each other a few seconds in silence.)

EVE: (Softly, and somewhat bewildered.) If not God, Serpie, who?

SERPIE: (Softly.) Me. Me, Eve.
The magical powers to create I am unlocking in me is in all of us. It’s in you and your husband, too, Eve. We have it from God himself. Eve, didn’t God make us from some of himself?

EVE: Yes. Everybody knows that. God himself used to go around proudly trumpeting it. He did it by somewhat erotically handling us and breathing into us.

SERPIE: There you go, then. That bit of God in every one of us, erotically and other, gives us the magic to make things out of nothing, just as God did. Although I have been unsuccessfully trying to get near enough to God to merely touch him or his clothing, every time I catch a glimpse of him from afar, I feel that word he breathed that created me still firing me up as if that first moment were happening again for the first time. Every time.

EVE: Serpie, that is so wonderful! How did you go about cultivating the power of God in you to create?

SERPIE: That reminds me. That Gorilla you taught sign language to, is my friend. We became friends when we discovered by sheer chance that both of us could sign.

EVE: How wonderful, Serpie! Where did you learn?

SERPIE: Long story. I’ll tell it to you sometime. I think that story is just another version of the magic of God in us.

EVE: I taught myself. And then I taught Adam. Back to how you went about cultivating the power of God in you to create, Serpie?

SERPIE: I did not have a clue where to start. When I discussed it with Gorilla, my friend, it suggested I start where it always starts when it has a problem. That is, eat.

EVE: Eat?

SERPIE: Uh-huh.

EVE: Anything special?

SERPIE: Not at the beginning. At the beginning I ate everything.

(Two animals playfully gamboling about, harmlessly crash into Eve. SERPIE picks up a leafy branch and playfully shoos the animals away.)

EVE: (Recovering.) I’m all right. Happens a lot. So? Did eating help?

SERPIE: It must have. God made every fruit edible. I have been going about eating fruit and concentrating on the nearest animal. For a while there I was putting on weight without anything happening. And then I looked in the mirror one day, and I saw you.

EVE: Me? Why me?

SERPIE: Because I am in awe of the outward shape of your bodies, you and Adam. Mind you, I had never concentrated on either of you when I was eating and focusing the magic of God in me. My Gorilla friend says its because the link with God’s magic is most powerful in you and Adam. To magically make the rest of us, God merely spoke his word; but with the two of you, he spoke and handled and breathed into you.

EVE: (Somewhat facetiously.) Tell me about it. I still feel erotic vibes when he is near.

SERPIE: Gorilla says just as animals are accidentally struck by lightning in a storm if they are in water; in my case my envy of your shape is the water in me and the magic of God in me is the lightning.

(Both are silent a few seconds, looking at each other in mutual awe.)

EVE: (Slowly and nearly in tears.) Is your human shape permanent, Serpie?

SERPIE: No. But that’s because I haven’t yet pinpointed just what is it that I eat that brings about the magical change.

EVE: Just a matter of time, then?

SERPIE: Gorilla and I are hoping. Even at this very moment Gorilla is collecting everything edible. Both of us are going to have a feast of magical adventure. You and Adam are invited. After this effect in me, I cannot even imagine the effects it might have in you and Adam.

EVE: Turn us into Gods?

(The thought stuns them into seconds of rigid posture, before both burst into laughter.)

EVE: Serpie, while I am honoured to accept the invitation, you are aware that we have a few days only to have that feast?

SERPIE: A few days only? Why?

EVE: Serpie! So you have forgotten that all of us have been evicted from Eden, although God has not yet fixed our last day here.

SERPIE: (Shocked.) Oh, dear! You’re right! I forgot. I had better run off and find Gorilla. I’ll keep in touch by bird. (SERPIE exits. EVE continues working. ANGEL-1, unarmed, enters.)

A: Hello.

EVE: Hello.

A: You are the female human, and so you must be Eve.

EVE: Yes. You are human, too.

A: Just for now. I am an Angel, made by God from fire within his self. God suggested I appear to you and Adam as a human. I wanted to appear as an animal.

EVE: Why not as your Angel self? You would be my first Angel.

A: This is my first appearance to a human. I did not know how to go about it. I did not want to either frighten or offend. That’s why my choice was animal. My research showed that God had made the animals inferior to humans.

EVE: You’ve been sent here by God?

A: Not this time. We’ve been notified that we will be sent, eventually. I wanted to reconnoiter a little, unofficially, for myself.

EVE: So, you do know we have already been evicted.

A: Yes. Sorry about that.

EVE: Have you done this duty before?

A: No. This is my first time. My partner has served countless times all over the infinite universe in salvage and damage control. My partner is in charge.

EVE: Countless times?

A: Yes. Sadly, God does not seem to particularly care about being a success at his creation stints. A privilege of being almighty, I suppose.

EVE: Do you know of any successes?

A: Not yet. But I am new to this.

EVE: All right. Pleased to have met you, Angel. I have to get on with my chores. If you have any questions, just ask.

A: I will. Thank you.

(EVE exits. The Angel walks about, showing unusual interest in ordinary nature. An animal saunters in. They react to each other warily. When another animal approaches, the Angel retreats and exits hastily. The stage darkens into night. A small section downstage-right remains dimly lit. SERPIE and GORILLA enter furtively. They talk conspiratorially about what they see in the direction of the auditorium.)

GORILLA: Before I forget. I followed your suggestion.

SERPIE: What suggestion?

GORILLA: To not let the humans know you taught me to speak.

SERPIE: Oh, that suggestion. Good. I have found that when humans think we are merely dumb animals, they say and do things while we are around that they otherwise would not dare. Now, look out there, my friend, and tell me what you see.

(Gorilla peers around into the darkness.)

GORILLA: Darkness. Just darkness.

SERPIE: No palatial building lit up in celebratory style?

GORILLA: (Intending to be harmlessly sarcastic to its friend.) Really? Is the magic of your human form affecting your eyesight?

SERPIE: I think I am near to discovering just what it is I am eating that is the magic of my transformation into this humanoid form.

GORILLA: And, of course, you will be sharing that information with me, your best of friends?

SERPIE: Of course, my very best of friends. With you, everything I will share-and-share-alike. Within the next few days I am sure I will be able to deliberately direct my magical transformations. In the meantime, I think this human form is giving me night vision to see a building up there, palatially lit up.

GORILLA: It must be your magic, then, because all I see is dark jungle.

SERPIE: Good. That’s what I wanted to confirm. Only I can see it. Let’s leave. I will return tomorrow night by myself.

GORILLA: Why not tomorrow day? I will come with you.

SERPIE: I have tried daytime. There’s nothing there.

GORILLA: What’s special about the building?

SERPIE: Apart from being non-existent to animals? Last night was the first time I got up enough courage to go close enough to touch a wall under a window. I heard sounds of an angry discussion among many persons.

GORILLA: Persons? Like Eve and Adam?

SERPIE: Sounded human like them. I did not see the persons. The angry shouting frightened me so, I was about to run away and never return, but when I heard in the fury mention more than once of the trees of Knowledge and Life, curiosity got the better of me. Now, I am determined to return to find out if this human form can gain me entry inside.

GORILLA: Why not we go there now, and both of us touch that building? See what happens?

SERPIE: A great idea! Let’s go for it!

(They exit. The light turns to day. The place is somewhere outdoors in Eden. Enter Angel 1 and Angel 2. They are armed with brilliantly shining long swords. They engage in a few ceremonial routines of spectacular combat swordplay. Animals all around bound about frightened; colliding. Eventually, the Angels pause to rest, and to converse.)

ANGEL-2: At the beginning God has determined only two stations. Pick the one you prefer.

ANGEL-1: Who is the enemy?

ANGEL-2: Anybody and anything that dares. We dare not ask God to specify. As far as I can determine, we will have to keep humans and animals out of Eden after they have been ordered to vacate forever.

ANGEL-1: What harm can they inflict?

ANGEL-2: I do not know. I do not care. I recommend you use me as your sole role model in this matter.

ANGEL-1: If some of them ask, is there a place to where I can direct them?

ANGEL-2: I am not sure. But by the research I have done, I am recommending a place that way, named the land of Nod.

ANGEL-1: Nod? I have never heard of it.

ANGEL-2: Me, too. Never heard of it, but it’s being talked about in market places as probably the next failed Eden experiment by God.

ANGEL-1: Jeez! Is he ever going to stop experimenting with mortal living things?

(They exit, engaging in a ceremonial routine of spectacular combat swordplay.