How He Fell
Man is in fact at once I and Thou; he can put himself in the place of another,for this reason, that to him his species, his essential nature, and not merely his individuality, is an object of thought.
—Ludwig Feuerbach
As the sun counterpoised the heart of darkness, as it nearly always did, and as the midwinter winds endeavored to chase all those unafraid of whatever hides behind shadows back into the safety of quadruple demarcation, Ava reflected on her day.
She knew that things could be worse; she knew she had a lot to be grateful for. She was happy for the help of all the others at camp, and she was happy that she was able to participate in realizing herself and the others around, who in turn realized her. She felt herself blessed to have the opportunity to spend the several hours before sunset working on a new hairdo. She sat by the river, under the increasingly orange roof, and looked into her reflection.
It really wasn’t her fault that she was born ugly. As is known, some are luckier than others. She was blessed too! She lay awake at night without want of nourishment or shelter, and, again, she was able to provide for herself in spite of her disability. Moreover, she had a partner: a nice man who could warm her on bleak and early nights like these—no woman in the longhouse would sleep alone, and for this she too was grateful.
Well… it wasn’t as if she earned her man (who, not incidentally, wasn’t regarded as the handsomest man in the camp. He was quite strong, though, and was respected as one of the more competent builders and hunters); sure, she liked spending time with him, conversing and working with him, but none, after a certain age, could go without in their bed while the winter winds chilled. It wasn’t as if there was some rule written down long ago which read, “Must each man pick of his woman, and let them snuggle together for to stave off moonlit trembling!” But, when you only know, say, sixty people your entire life, and with these must you converse, resolve differences, and generally spend all time around, it becomes almost rule that you’d like one of them enough to spend your life with
(Not in the contemporary sense. For, like it or not, you’d be spending your life with everyone that you knew: the sixty or so aforementioned. Rather, it would be someone with whom to coordinate, to complain, to make into a confidant (something that everyone needs; not everything can be revealed, after all)).
All this to say—it’s not that she was fortunate, but she hardly knew want.
The needs met, though, couldn’t fill inside her an aching and a resentment. She had stolen away those last few daylit hours on this particular evening in effort to see not herself in the river’s reflection, but Lilith.
Lilith was known as the most beautiful woman in camp (not an expansive contest, mind you). Indeed, the introduction of what we now know as outside or differential genes almost never occurred (There were stories and awarenesses of aliens within the consciousness of camp, but none were seen in the lifetimes of any still extant), so the variations in beauty we today take for granted were much more muted in the limited camp populace. Lilith, sharing a similar face with all other women in camp, was distinguished by a miraculous slight curl in her hair.
Ava’s hair fell at her sides as the sad petal makes its grave on the dirt at the feet of its former glory. Lilith’s hair curled round in subtlety as the petal lifted by a breeze dances a languid and sultry step ‘bout the air before coming to rest at feet as a far-off reminder of wistful beauty. Ava was deeply envious of the extra split-second attentions directed at Lilith. She desired the considerations, the discretely prolonged eye contact. She felt cheated and often thought to herself something like:
“Why should I have been born only to see novelty in another? Why should she be the arbiter of beauty to everyone at camp? I have spent my whole life in pursuit, in coveting of something that someone else has, and she has it without ever having desired it!”
In a similar vain she mentally groaned at the riverbank as she took the leftover meat fat from the week’s hunt and applied it to her hair (she had brought a small vase of grease she melted by keeping close to the evening fire). Her hair, slick with lipid, would then be wound around a large branch and held there until it again congealed into solid form. It partly worked, for her hair did look as if it had been wound around a stick and held in place by solidified lard (she smelled the part, too). She absolutely failed, though, in her attempt to bring down the form Lilith had been so effortlessly endowed with; whatever it was, it could not be made manifest by application of plant and animal parts.
The sun was setting, so she sulked her way back to camp. It wasn’t far, but by the time she had returned, almost all were inside the longhouse preparing the nightly hearth and attending to small grooming rituals. Her Alan solely awaited her outside, and his face illuminated with smile but only seeing her unseemly and resentful silhouette in the distance. He called out to her:
“Dearest Ava! I’ve been here, just thinking about when you’d be home, my beauty. Come now, let’s get inside before the sun sets and- oh, my! What is that smell, and what have you done to your hair! How, how did you even get it like that? Has something horrible happened? Did the evening demon cast a spell on you? This is why you should have me accompany you! I know you like your alone time but-“
“Forget my stupid hair, Alan! I’m so tired of all this…”
“Of what?”
“This wretched camp and smelly longhouse. Haven’t you ever wanted something else? Different circumstances or a different life?”
“Well, sure, sometimes I wish it wouldn’t get so cold, and that our grain would reap and sow and mill itself, or even that the game would show up right here in camp, gladly awaiting slaughter! But, I’m still very happy to have you, to have this camp and all the hands we need to spend the night in relative warmth. We’ve never had to go hungry. I mean, sure, we’re still getting used to this whole farming thing, and sometimes the crop doesn’t go as well as we wanted, but there are always berries for foraging and deer to fill our bellies before the next try. I think we have a lot to be thankful for!”
“That’s not what I mean; don’t you ever get jealous of anybody else having what we don’t?”
“What does anyone else in camp possess that you and I lack?”
And in that moment, all evil hatched in Ava’s brain
“Have you ever considered that the Shaman gets her own loft in the longhouse? That’s not fair! I’d sure like some room to stretch out my limbs and roll over in the night.”
“Well, I guess so… but you do realize that she has skills nobody else has; how are we to communicate with the spirits if we didn’t have her? Plus, she’s, like, 180 years old. Her apprentice doesn’t get her own loft, and when she was an apprentice in younger age, she slept in a section the same size as everyone else’s!”
“So what? You do important work, too. You’re one of the strongest men in camp, without you we might not fix the longhouse so easily, nor hunt, nor tend the fields! I think you ought to be rewarded.”
“I am rewarded, with food and friends.”
“Just think of it… what if- what if we had our own house and our own field?”
“I don’t see why we should need it, given we already have anything we could ever need or want.”
“No. We could have that which cannot be held.”
But Alan did not understand because something new had opened inside of Ava. Alan knew of things, and even slightly of himself, but he knew not of the opened dam gates within his female companion’s mind.
Only Ava had ever gone to the river to look at her own reflection. When the others bathed, they saw reflections of their friends and one stranger who looked back at them. There was some dim recognition in their still primitive minds, something like “I suppose that must be me,” but without any attachment or judgement. Ava, who had attended Lilith as all the others, had slowly become aware that she was the only one in camp granted such gifts.
Ava first realized that she herself directed a special attention towards Lilith and not towards the others. She initially felt an ease when looking at what would later become the first object of envy. She began to sluggishly recognize that this same ease did not reach her heart when looking at Alan, or anyone else at camp. From this followed an experiment: she began to watch their eyes.
No one looked at Alan, or Miriam, or Richard, or Sarah in the same way as Lilith. Nor, indeed, did they look at Ava. What had once brought peace began to cause turmoil, and, being the first to recognize it, she lamented she had not been its recipient.
She went to the river for the first time alone, and locked eyes with that which looked back. She puzzled and thought for a bit, until it hit her at once: she had a face that was ugly; she had that quotidian hair. Sure, Miriam’s left eye rested a tad askance, and Alan stooped to one side, but it was a horror to realize that she, Ava, could be the object of negative judgements. No one had ever told her! (it wasn’t as if she had told the others of their own iniquities; sure, she had gotten angry with others and had quarreled with them over their actions, but these skirmishes had never reached either party making character or value judgements).
In short, Ava’s mind, the same faculty endowed to the others, could know berry from tree, deer from bear, river from sea, Alan from Miriam, Sarah from Lilith, helpful or unhelpful, even glimmers of good or bad, but until that point had never come to rest on that singular and epochal circumscription: I from them.
She dropped the conversation with Alan that night. He took the basin and rinsed her hair as best he could before they went to bed, but her mind was full of schemes. In that hour before bedtime, she invented fences, wages, class, and privacy: now how to make it happen?
She would daily speak with Alan about her vision of the future. She pleaded with him: wouldn’t he like his own house, his own room, his own land? But Alan still couldn’t understand, and he began to grow angry with her. What would be the point of such things? To his mind, it would only result in loneliness. How could one stand to dwell in a frame with no friends, with only one other? How could one even work the land, let alone enjoy its beauty, with no one to help?
But she pleaded further. They could compel the others. They could give them things they needed, should they only be kept from the house. If they had their own land, they could give the others some of the yield to do the reaping and sowing. Again, to Alan it made no sense: why should some get more than others, and who would choose to be subjected to such an order?
Then, a new bright idea entered her head, an even brighter one than any of the history she would call to action.
He was preparing for a hunt alongside the men; most of the women were in the fields. Ava approached:
“Ava! What are you doing here? Is everything okay?”
“Come with me, quickly!”
The men all looked at her with worry.
“What happened, are the women okay?” one called.
“You look flush, Ava! Have you seen something horrible?” another asked.
“What? No! Everything is fine. All the other women are still at work tilling and preparing for the sow—”
(The men immediately felt at ease and assumed she had come to join the few who were looking after the children, a job done by several men and women)
“—I’ve come to get Alan, I must take him to the river to speak with me at once!”
Then the men were thoroughly confused.
“Something must be wrong, Ava,” said Richard, the understood leader of the hunts, “we’re all here to help you; only tell us what we must do!”
Ava returned their bewilderment; in her frenzy she began to forget the very structure of her life—of her being.
“I already told you that nothing’s the matter! I simply must speak with Alan by the river, alone!
Richard: “Could it wait, then, dearest Ava? We need Alan for our hunt, without him it will be very difficult.”
“But you hunted just fine when Alan was sick only months ago!”
And the men knew they had, but they couldn’t quite understand why now they had resistance to Alan’s leaving. They would, indeed, be fine without him—but when Alan was sick, he couldn’t work, and Ava tended to him instead of working in the fields. In this time, they both ate their fill of the day’s labor. They didn’t have the words specifically, but they knew that Ava and Alan would eat of their hunt and eat of the reaped grain as they always did, as everyone would do. Now, though, with no excuse to be away from the production aside from a woman’s fancy, they began to wonder if the couple would deserve to eat as much as those who worked harder, who didn’t take time away for being unable to wait to speak with someone privately.
The men had been in similar positions to her; they too had moments where they felt as if whatever they needed to say to another could not wait. But waited they had and attended to the necessities first. This behavior was a novelty to all of them, and it bubbled a proto-bitterness alongside a disquiet they thoughtlessly felt as the contractions of the mother who would birth the new world.
Alan was disquieted too, put in this position with the same confusion as the other men, yet with the honor of being the one from whom there was expected a response. He thought for a moment: he felt no need to leave his hunting mates, and, indeed, he felt as if he was somehow betraying them. On the other hand, his woman seemed in great urgency, and given her strange behavior as of late, he felt as if he really should help her.
He agreed to go with her and briefly sent her away. He turned to his comrades: “Ava has been acting quite strange recently; I’m really worried about her. I deeply regret that I must leave you all. Please forgive me and lend me this day that I can tend to Ava, calm her down, and thereby increase all our happiness.”
This little statement granted the men peace, and they relinquished their friend amicably.
Alan returned to his woman: “Now what, Ava? What was so important it couldn’t wait until after the day was over? I hope you realize we’re letting everyone down!”
But she didn’t hear him: “You’ll understand once we reach the river.”
He lagged behind her, on his mind the meat that would eventually be in his stomach for which he had not worked. They walked wordlessly; she in front, defiant. Soon, the sound of rushing water reached their ears, and she stopped. She turned to him and asked if he thought she was beautiful; it was the first he had been asked such a question. He replied in the affirmative, and she laughed. She then asked if he thought Lilith was beautiful, and when he replied in the affirmative again, she got a crazed look in her eye.
Alan, not known for his intelligence, could tell something was wrong. He reminded her, unprompted, that he had children by several women in camp, as did all the men. He reminded her that she had children by several men at camp. He recounted stories they both could have recited by memory, as told by the Shaman when they were young.
He told her of the creation of the world, of the animals and people. He told her of the man in the sky, who first taught the people to make a garden. He told her how previous generations painstakingly cleared the trees to make the fields, and how it was someone’s job to this day to ensure the forest never had hold of that plane again. He lapsed into facts of life so banal she began to close her eyes: how they all shared everything, how they all had to work for mutual benefit. She was didacted to about the children, how her mother and father had cared for her, and how all the people of camp had taken time with her, so the burden was spread evenly. Her ears had been thoroughly filled by the splashing of the water by the end of the lecture, when Alan was reminding her of the time when she was unwell and unable to work, and how she was still guaranteed food and clothes, and how they two had done the same for other members of the camp when they were sick. He knew not why he prattled like this to her, pointing special attention to things that they both knew, that everyone knew. For some unknown reason, he felt as if all was sure to whisk away, carried off by the river.
When he finished, she didn’t open her eyes. He called her name several times. She finally opened them and smiled. She took his hand, his expression stupefied, and led him to the river. He wanted to dig in his heels, but he couldn’t. He was so afraid by what he saw in her newly opened eyes that he was paralyzed—well, not paralyzed—perhaps bewitched—he knew this word, and he knew it made you do things you didn’t want to do, as now his feet were moving against his will, tromping towards the end of the world.
When they reached the river, she turned to him, her back peering down upon a still pocket of water along the bank. She told him to look within, and he did.
“Do you know what that is?” she asked.
“Y-yes, it’s me,” he said, and adjusted his body to again face her.
“Are you so cowardly you can’t even hold your own gaze?”
—he was and knew not why; he looked all around: at the unencumbered trees surrounding the bank, at the silt which swallowed an eighth of his covered feet. He listened to the verses of birds full of noontide—and again the rushing water, its never ceasing song for itself. She turned to look at his reflection, and when he, following, merely put his eyes upon the opposite bank, she seized his head and pushed it forcibly down to recognize its own immanence. He gave a cry of fear or maybe pain which was ignored.
“Look!” she screamed, but he didn’t; he had shut up his eyes.
“You know what I see?” she remarked mockingly, “I see that one of your eyebrows is bushier than the other. I see the scars from acne which still pock your face. I see the wrinkles in your forehead, nature’s retribution for your overreaching strain—I bet you thought it would never reach you. And, I see what I have always seen—your hunched posture can’t hide your asymmetry—your right leg is shorter than your left. You kilter towards one side, and everyone sees it.”
He opened his eyes and saw for the first time himself. He fell to his knees and began to weep. She released his head and stood by with a slight smirk and eyes that laughed more heartily than her larynx ever could. She kneeled next to him:
“Now you know what everyone in camp knows: you are ugly. I suppose it was out of decency they never told you. Only I had the courage to make you face yourself—and I still love you.”
He heard these words as if afar, for all he could feel was the actual physical sensation of his brain inverting itself. It turned round in his mind and screamed for surplus of pain. It felt itself unfolding and refolding. When it had finally finished, it was bigger than before.
He stood, and she followed. Her hand again grasped the back of his head, more gently now, and she looked him in his eyes. He averted his gaze back to the water to regard himself again. She removed her hand, and they stood in silence for a while. Before speaking, he left the water to look yon, whence they came. He became chilled and felt the resentment of envy: his first desire was for Richard’s uncratered skin. Then, he finally turned back to his woman:
“Let’s get to work.”
There was a commensurate uproar at camp. It was inconceivable, and none would participate. It was demanded that the couple return to work at once, which they did. In secret, though, they began to steal away resources and hide them in a covet which had been dug near the river. They would, on the daily, take an extra piece of treated meat, some berries, and a slight portion of the previous year’s unmilled harvest. The vitals refused to spoil smothered and held by winter’s embrace.
This went on for some months. All at camp were slightly suspicious, but fear kept them from investigation or confrontation. Soon came February and the knowledge that the window of opportunity was constricting. They called a secret meeting in the night of the most impressionable at camp. Promised revelation and easier ways of means, those told snuck out while the others were sleeping and met the couple a slight way out from camp in the moonless dark. The motivating factor was the curiosity, and at that point most had in their minds a reluctance or fear coupled with a desire to finally know what was wrong with their friends. There were twelve of them, including Alan and Ava.
When the proposition was revealed, there were several audible gasps, and a deep fret fell over the congregation. One of the assembled exclaimed that it had been understood that the couple had put these infernal plans behind them. Another expressed disbelief at the success of the hoarding operation. None of the called seemed to comprehend the purpose of the separate abode. But they would.
They were told that, if they accepted, they were to lie to the others; they would claim they were forming a separate hunting party. The two women among the ten would be coming along to learn, and they would be blamed for the hunts’ continual failures. In reality, the party of ten would be meeting the couple each morning, collecting straw and mud and helping them build the house. They were promised each day a portion of the stash, and when they eventually returned from their falsified disgraced hunt, they would presumably be allowed to eat from the fruits of those who did the usual day’s labor. Alan and Ava would continue to work as they had in camp, after giving the workers their daily directives, and they would continue to steal from camp in order to maintain their collection.
The assembly knew not what to do. There was a sense that it was wrong, but there was also a nascent avarice. Ava and Alan had been found in surplus and were thus able to affect others to their will. With their wages on top of their own misappropriation of camp labor, the assembled, too, could slowly build a hoard and compel others in the same way.
They also reflected on the times when they found themselves in a secure but uncomfortable hunger that could not be satiated due to worries about having adequate amounts of food. It was a condition that all at camp endured and understood was for their overall security, but the opportunity to alleviate this one pain was the overdetermining factor. All present agreed; they were told their assignments. The proper lie was concocted and planned to be fibbed the following morning. They were then sent away to bed, and the couple, thus alone, embraced.
The house, set in a distant glade, was finished quickly and discovered soon thereafter—the tale of which will be enumerated below—but it mattered little. The initial ten and ten more who later joined would be excommunicated from camp (a process which had no precedent), but their banishment gave Ava and Alan more control.
A section of the fields would be forcibly annexed by the couple, with guards always present. A hovel was also built for the laborers to share, while the couple inhabited their own property alone. The big house, as it came to be known, (though smaller than where all had once resided communally) also had guards, paid better than the rest.
The laborers, now excluded from camp, had no choice but to live on less than they had had. The brief period of defraud had been intoxicating to them, and they basked awhile in their remised hunger before it returned stronger than before when they were discovered. The workers were thus weak, mentally and physically. They thought sometimes about breaking in and taking the stone box which held their sustenance—they themselves had made it—but fear won out, as it’s wont to do amidst discord, and they went to sleep every night.
Life at camp grew miserable. With fewer hands came less opportunity. Whoever retrieved firewood could not go with the hunt, and whoever took care of the children could not be in the fields. All would eventually emigrate to the couple’s demesne. They would live in the servant’s house, which was smaller than the longhouse.
It resulted from a particularly difficult night. The week’s hunts had been unsuccessful, and the store of grain found lacking, even for the reduced population, after the months of larceny. A panic started, and all in camp began to take portions of the common store for themselves. Some were hurt; one was killed. They hid in the woods for a time, living under lean-tos and boughs, eating of their meat until it ran out, or until they neared freezing. Many felt themselves foolish, holding onto grain they themselves could not mill. There was eventually a fight between a few who went to retrieve the grindstone, and it was broken. One by one, they came crawling to the couple, who promised them a wage and a measly hearth in the subsistent servants’ dwelling.
Thus, all the common fields became the property of Ava and Alan, who reclined inside while the others tended. Too did the forests and hunting grounds become theirs, and some had jobs to hunt and bring back the prize for the couple to apportion and disperse among the hungry thrall, treating the meat and caching it away in the stone box for themselves.
The new world was created. Time would pass. More quarters were built, and Alan and Ava’s children would come to inherit the estate, and every few generations a servant would devise a similar scheme to the initial and come away with their own manor. Thus, the people multiplied and began the thousands-year course of claiming their lay on the land.
The day it was discovered passed as follows:
The house was nearly finished, only some thatches left in the roof and few odds to tighten up here and there. The previous days had seen Alan and Ava boost their recruitment: they had enough stored to provide and felt that time was running out. Those at camp had not even been provided with a story as to what the additional traitors were doing with their time away. It was three days that the new band had run off without notification; the hunts and other daily activities were oddly quiet. When all returned in the evening to the longhouse, there was hardly any speech; all felt something impending. They sat there by the fire quiet, in an unease which the wind could not answer.
It was the final evening before the uncovering. Richard sat mellowed by the hearth. He looked up and saw the couple whispering and smirking in their section. Around he saw his campmates, most with their heads down, only daring to steal a remark infrequently. He also registered those that had been missing the previous days. They were also not speaking, but, unlike the others, their heads slowly swiveled the confines of the longhouse or rested on the ceiling. He then endeavored that he would finally say something the following morning. It was certain: there was something deeply wrong. Why had he not said anything earlier? He supposed he was hoping someone else would—maybe Miriam, or even Lilith.
Lilith, for her part, was the only one in the longhouse asleep. Her chest rose and fell in peace, and the others seemed to not realize that she was there. Richard took another look around the whole longhouse; something would have to be done.
Had Richard, or anyone for that matter, said anything days earlier, the whole ordeal might have gone over differently. Had they found the house only half or quarter finished, it wouldn’t have been so imposing. Faced with a monstrosity still in gestation, they would have all felt power over it. To catch fetal evil is less harrowing than finding it born. Unfortunately, they found themselves face to face with baby mammon, now fully built into the world. They saw themselves so small in the process that their minds compelled to make the final leap; they could not but spiral.
The morning came, and the Benedictines again took their leave. Ava and Alan were still in camp, though, making pretenses as they had—Richard went to them to speak:
“Have you all noticed?”
They laughed, not sheepish: “Noticed what, how beautiful of a day it is? “
Indeed, the day was beautiful. The sun shone high in a sky absent cloud. The winds had begun their process of recession, and the temperature, still cold, had the fullness of spring on its breath.
“No. We are missing ten.”
“They’ve been trying to teach the women to hunt! We thought you knew.”
“No, not them. There are ten others missing without cause, and I am suspicious of the supposed learners as well. Am I to believe that it has been two months and they’ve failed to fell a single deer, even a rabbit? I understand that it is winter, but we’ve managed a kill just this week. No. I believe there’s something sinister afoot.”
He left to gather the people for an investigation. The couple, knowing what was coming, fled to their band as soon as he was gone. They called their guard and armed them with purloined hunting equipment. They themselves stood on the terrace, and fearlessly awaited what was coming.
They heard a rumble in the woods—footsteps and murmurs. They watched as all their former friends and lovers tromped into the glade. Almost the entire camp had come, even the children; the infants were tied in papooses on the backs of several men and women. Only the shaman lacked presence—they couldn’t find her in time.
The troupe looked all around as it marched, even after the house and the rivals were in full view. They kept this way until they were directly in front of the others, as if they initially couldn’t see them.
Once it was seen, though, eyes widened, and mouths went agape. There was a protracted silence. The wind came through the trees and tossed hair. The infants began to cry. One of them, no more than a few months, wailed and stretched his stubby fingers towards those keeping the terrace. Assembled there were his biological mother and father, and his caretaker, who had watched him for months in his parents’ absence, was the first to fall to knees.
Most of the rest followed. Soon there was wailing to match the infants.’ Teeth gnashed; the ground was punished. Amidst the bedlam, Richard, who was one of few still standing, stepped forward to speak in a voice loud enough to be heard in the cacophony, but that felt to him like a whisper:
“What have you all done?”
But there was no reply; the guards stood sentinel. Alan, though, dropped his head while Ava’s eyes flashed. Lilith, who thus far had been confused, saw it all at once and fell. She sobbed and squealed. Her yawp and its pain sounded through the air, and the others, even the infants, all fell silent to look at her. She rent her clothes, and she began to pull out her hair. Her face was red from the pain and tears, and she stopped periodically to pound what bushels she had already doffed into the ground with her fist.
Ava saw all this from the terrace, and she was unhappy.