Michael Sharkey

How do we know Eve and Adam were happy, deprived, as they were, of a childhood? Eve never knew, unlike Adam, a world that was free of the chatter of others.’ How did she cope? And how could she choose, if she’d wanted, to live by herself? What did the man eat that made him hear voices, while Eve was inventing frustration? Where could she go for a break from the sound of Himself, in his skin suit, like Tarzan, assuring the bush that he’d just given birth to a woman? Did she smile at the fool, or remind him that he was asleep when she turned up and found him? Where could she go to be shot of his need for a mother? (A pity she woke him.) Life for them both was a training film shown in real time, on the zen of zoo-keeping. When the encyclopedia seller arrived, who could blame her for buying? No exit pollster asked how she felt when she left at the end of the movie.

In the real world lovers part at morning with a kiss and look back longingly before they pass from sight. They go insouciant to work and smile at times; their life’s Vivaldi. Others bring what poetry they can into a life by counting days until employment comes again. They look at cherries in the fruit store and imagine biting in. They look so good. Children break from singing in the drill hall, burst outside to toss their frisbees in the park. A boy plays Satie on the piano; two Americans embrace as traffic whispers up the drive. They are embarking for the real world’s farthest shore. In the real world someone signs petitions every moment, tidies other people’s trash and greets another who is loved by someone else. This is how the real world copes with being economics, mathematics and ecology and botany and waiting for the bus. Costumed people earn their living slipping from the real world to persuade us to buy moon-cakes, supple skin and perfect hair. We smile to see them aping us. Gymnorhina tibicen swoops low and boasts her turf: the children run and shout out, ‘Magpie’ while the bird recalls the day in mimic song; order then restored, she dines alfresco on their scraps. And while we watch Magritte’s sky turn El Greco, roofs de Chirico beneath the plastic clouds, a plane is pasted on a sudden patch of blue.

A man began to eat his order of fish, and the ghost of the fish arose and spoke. Forgive me, it said, please hear me. I died in despair, which is, as you know, the worst of the deadly sins. As I slowly suffocated in the alien air, I gave up hope of salvation, and so died without the consolation of religion. In your compassion and mercy, have a Mass said for me, and pray for my soul. With that, the ghost of the fish vanished, and the man, congratulating himself on possessing the carcass of such a remorseful creature, tucked in.