Awakening the Naked Ape.
The serpent wonders: “Which came first, the chicken or the egg?”
And it doesn’t take long to answer itself: “Undoubtedly, a bird that was not yet a chicken came first, and it laid an egg that was.”
Normally, this kind of logical-evolutionary reasoning—circular, sharp, and deliciously useless—would have made it smile with satisfaction. It loved to think this way, for the sheer joy of thought. With no consequences, no dogmas, no audience. But that day, the thought left a bitter aftertaste. There was no one to share it with.
And then it saw him: Adam.
Sniffing flowers, oblivious to everything. With the curious gaze of a deer, the strong neck of an athlete, the dormant soul of a fish.
And beside him, Eve. Beautiful, yes, perfect even, but with eyes lost in the void, as if she had not yet awakened within her own body. As if she existed without knowing it.
That day, Lucifer—because yes, that serpent was once an angel—felt playful, inventive. At last it sensed a solution to its solitude. Perhaps, if it lit the right spark in them, they would no longer be sacred beasts but interlocutors. At last, someone to think with.
Eden was lush and dense, like a tropical forest at noon. It smelled of ripe fruit, wet earth, and broad leaves sweating under the sun. No paths, only roots tangled beneath the feet and branches whispering names yet to be invented. At its center, a cenote slept deep, like an ancient eye. And above the canopy, an immense sky, open, blue as a promise.
It knew that in the heart of that garden grew the most important tree of all: the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Not just a tree, but a symbol, a boundary. Its fruit bestowed what until then had been reserved for God alone: moral consciousness. To know what is right and what is wrong. To know that one knows. And that changed everything. Whoever ate from it ceased to be an animal ignorant of its own existence and became something new: a being who, in time, would be able to conquer the stars, name galaxies, unleash the atom’s energy, and shape matter at will. It was the first step toward divinity—and the price was the loss of innocence.
Lucifer moved in the shadows with the patience of one who has seen centuries and knows how to wait. It did not tempt out of cruelty. It provoked in order to awaken.
Yahweh, the serpent thought, was brilliant, flamboyant, narcissistic, sometimes psychopathic—yes, a genius craftsman, but unbearable in his grandiloquence. His voice filled everything, always speaking in the name of creation, always naming, ordering, commanding. And what was Eden if not an eternal stage where two creatures, Adam and Eve, played unknowingly inside a script they did not understand?
And the serpent… watched. Alone, lucid. It knew what would follow, and still, it could not help but want it. Not out of malice, but out of justice: what good is perfection if you cannot question it?
It was under the shadow of the great tree, whose roots smelled of damp earth and ancient lightning, that it decided to act.
“I do not speak to tempt you,” it whispered, coiling around a low branch. “I speak because you already know. You feel it. You noticed it last night, when Eve asked what a dream was. Or when Adam lingered before his reflection in the water longer than needed. Isn’t that so?”
Adam looked at the fruit. He was no longer a child. Doubt shone in his eyes.
“And why does He forbid it?” he asked.
“Because He fears you,” replied the ancient Angel. “If you eat, you will be like Him. Yahweh does not want company—only spectators.”
Eve lifted the fruit. Her fingers trembled slightly.
“You say we will know good and evil. What if we choose good?”
“Then you will be free,” the serpent answered. “Because no one can be good without having been able to be evil.”
There was a silence thick as honey. Then, the soft crack of fruit breaking in Eve’s teeth. Adam watched her, and he too ate.
Everything changed without changing. The wind was the same, but now it carried memory. The water tasted the same, but now it evoked. The leaves stayed green, but they were no longer eternal. And Adam, looking at Eve, saw her body. And saw his own. And blushed.
“We are…” Adam said, “…naked.”
“We are,” Eve repeated. She smiled, but her eyes grew moist.
And something else happened. They looked at each other with a new intensity. Where once there was innocence, now there was a spark. The other’s body was no longer landscape—it was secret, temptation, a door.
Desire burned, and with it, consciousness. They knew it was wrong, and perhaps—just perhaps—that was why it pleased them more. The fruit had awakened in them not only the hunger for knowledge, but the desire to give themselves.
They searched for each other with clumsy wonder, as if it were the first time, though they had brushed against one another before, bodies already familiar with shared sweat and touch. But now it was different: contact no longer sought a spasmodic release, but the revelation of small mysteries. Eve discovered the warmth in Adam’s shoulders; Adam drowned in the hidden scent at the nape of Eve’s neck. Between their bodies rose the unexpected laughter of a clumsy gesture, a smile blending with desire, adding tenderness to the fire that grew between them.
They found pleasure in giving pleasure, in a growing loop: mouths, skin, hands, spasms, heartbeat, and fire. The whole world shrank to the two of them, and in that mingling of breath and dampness, everything converged until, at last, it burst forth:
—In him, like a compressed summer storm, a nocturnal lightning tearing the dry sky with a roar and a blinding streak.
—In her, like a ripe pomegranate exploding in silence, overflowing with warm, fertile, unrepeatable pulp.
And then…
Then, the voice came. Not like thunder, but like an echo that wounded:
“Adam? Where are you?”
The man took Eve by the hand, and they ran into the bushes, covering themselves with leaves like guilty children who had just invented shame.
The serpent did not follow. It only looked at the sky, exhaled an ancient sigh, and slipped back into the thicket.
At last, the story began.
