East of Eden

Mithraeum. Last meeting on the demand called by the Celestial Gardener. I tried to approach Arthur and Guilherme and talk to them before the meeting, but Andrés pulled me back to his side, "give'em some time now, Miss Grisam; you can get hurt if you try to approach them like this."

I sat beside master Danilo, Andrés and Renan. The two kids looked much better though their faces were still weary and lifeless what was absolutely no surprise after what they lived through. On the other side, Arthur and Guilherme cast real unfriendly, even carnivorous looks at me. They were simply mad at me. Adriano and Anderson sat halfway between us and "the boys from the other side".

It was not a long meeting for the standards of Taurinos' Ancient Society. Bruno was the Officiant for today's meeting. He opened the session and declared that the demand had been officially terminated by me. That the demand didn't require me to keep a garden in my house and that they understood my reasons not to accept the garden. But that it was a serious mistake of me to have turned down the gift. Said there were no second intentions in the gifts I was given. I was given the presents simply because it was my birthday.

"You have spoiled a serious attempt of communication between the Celestial Gardener and the community of Taurinos by turning down the garden", the Officiant declared, "normally in Taurinos it is a serious insult to turn down anyone's gift, let alone a gift like that. The Celestial Gardener doesn't understand urban people like you preferring to live in the middle of a dull grit landscape than to live surrounded by a wonder like that. But he does understand the house is yours and that you have the right to use your space as you please. The Celestial Gardener doesn't have the right to keep a garden in your house if you don't want him to. Only it makes our conversations harder, exactly when we were already making some progress with the community of Taurinos."

Arthur stared at me. It was a cold stare but one of a person who can't seem to conform to what happened however hard he tried. Guilherme's look was equally biting. If I looked attentively I'd see him pout sometimes.

"The Celestial Gardener now wants to make it clear to everyone here, especially Renan and Andrés that a new violation of the rules will be understood by him as a declaration of war", the Officiant went on, "and as such, it's not going to stop inside the Council. If there should be war, all the community will lose with it. And they will lose a lot. We hope that this story has been a lesson learned by the two and anyone who thinks of daring to do the same", and after a pause he concluded, "if there's no one willing to make a declaration that wasn't addressed before by the current Officiant, I declare this session closed."

At home, with Renan, Andrés and master Danilo. The two kids' skins are still marked by the mosquito stings they got during their sojourn in the Sanctuary. We were having coffee only to keep us busy doing something. Everyone's silence at the table came to bother me.

"You'll say I was wrong for turning down the garden, won't you?", I said it more in order to break the ice.

"I don't think you were wrong. If you didn't want the garden who'd force you to keep it?", stated Andrés, dead as a candle about to go out.

"Did you turn it down because of us?", Renan was curious.

"Because of you too", I replied, "one of the reasons was that I remembered you in the forest."

I relaxed the conversation a bit, remembering the moments with master Danilo and the apparitions of the Caipora, only to find out Renan was afraid of the haunt too. I, Andrés and master Danilo ended up laughing a handsome lot. There was not much else to do after this twenty-day hangover.

"Did you start smoking again, master Danilo?", inquired Andrés, wanting to know more about the cigarette ritual.

"Even if I wanted to, he took away my pack of Souza Paiol", and the countryman, his childhood friend, the police officer and I laughed another lot.

"And didn't he go to your house anymore?", I asked him making Renan astonished, "but did he go to your house too?"

"No longer, but he'll come back one day. Now that we have talked and smoked together in the forest he is calmer. The pack he took away is going to last for ages."

I remembered that both master Danilo and I had the experience of being cast out of paradisaical places like those by entities which lived there and governed the place. We were the two living to the east of Eden like in the Bible and on John Steinbeck's book. He didn't understand the reference to Steinbeck but understood the biblical thing perfectly.

With a weary voice, Andrés said there was a deep division between the urban and rural portions of the town. My attitude only made the chasm grow wider. I inquired him why start all that trouble, something I had longed to ask him since the beginning of this chaos. What made him take me to a place he knew I could never enter?

"I've told you, I only thought…"

"Don't lie to me, Andrés Silva Conselheiro. You know this is no excuse. Living proof is what has happened in town. Renan went in as a silly little kid. What about you? Why did you have to do it?"

Renan didn't like what he heard and was going to say something in his defense when master Danilo motioned to him to stop him from doing so. Andrés was embarrassed and uncomfortable with the question.

"What caused the so-called deep division?"

"It happened a long time ago, Miss Grisam. It was in the origins of the town when I was no longer a…", and he didn't go on, apparently afraid to remember his history.

"You were no longer a bull?", Renan cut him short.

"Renan, please!", Andrés glanced embarrassed at me and master Danilo as though Renan had pulled off his pants.

"Renan please what? Stop it, Andrés; everyone here knows you used to walk all on fours and browse the lawns away. See it didn't only happen to you, it happened to me, to your brother, Anderson, Bruno…", and the tiny police officer laughed.

"All right, Renan, all right, all right. So it was in the origins of the town. The Celestial Gardener knew what it was going to be right from the start and didn't want the bulls to return to town as people. I said no to his idea and the feud began. Renan came soon after. Then there came Adriano, Anderson, Arthur, Bruno and Guilherme, but the Celestial Gardener "got" the three latter. His principle had to incorporate them to be able to talk to us in human language."

"Was what you did motivated by an ancestral feud with the Celestial Gardener?"

"It was moronic of me."

"Course it was moronic of you, young man. Was what you did motivated by this feud?"

"It was, why."

Renan heard us in silence, probably remembering the times when he walked on all his fours and browsed the lawns away. Master Danilo was quiet too trying to join the puzzle pieces Andrés insisted on spreading all over. Andrés declared this had been his last provocation to the Celestial Gardener. He seemed to refer to the Celestial Gardener as a necessary evil, as desirable as the Big One.

Master Danilo affirmed that the boys' feud was like the eternal fight between nature and progress and that Andrés was more or less the symbol of this progress and urbanization of Taurinos; he was someone who wanted a life that could be different from the caves and other natural geographic features. Someone who didn't agree to live only from nature anymore but instead needed to modify nature and its aspects to create another society. What happened to be what Taurinos is nowadays. The feud between the Celestial Gardener and him happened because the Gardener came to see him as a traitor, but also because he forced the Gardener to take the same human shape Andrés had taken to "betray" him to make it understandable to him. Renan heard him with attention but uttered no word. Andrés didn't deny or correct a single word the countryman said.

"This is why Bruno didn't invite you and Renan to his birthday party. You had a feud together."

"We still do, Miss Grisam", corrected Andrés.

"This is why Andrés took you to the Sanctuary", added Renan.

"No longer! First and last time it happened, I swear!", the little plump kid seemed frightened behind his glasses when he recalled his days in the bush.

This gave me the dimension of the sufferance the two little urbanoids during their sojourn in the Sanctuary. The recollections of their natural past. The ancient fears of the dark, of the night, of the forest, its entities were revived there.

"You simply managed to avoid the town going back to the times the bulls used to attack people on the streets or worse in the beginning of everything. A war between the Celestial Gardener and Taurinos would sure lead the town back to those times."

This time it was master Danilo who heard Andrés without correcting a single word he said. I understood the depth of the trouble. I was happy we were all still standing in the long run.