Forbidden Rebecca Evans

Rebecca Evans

On my second night in Weymouth in 1991, I arrived at The Sailors Return around six and scanned the room, waiting to meet the man of my dreams, Ray. I went to the loo, fixed my lips, re-lined my eyes, and repaired my mascara. My heavy sweater draped mid-thigh, covering leggings. My hair, tight with curls and tucked behind my ears, frizzed more than usual. I sat at the bar, nodded to the barmaid. “Cider please,” I said. “Half or full?” she wiped her hands on a tea towel tucked into the waist of her jeans. “Half.” I hadn’t tasted cider prior to my military assignment at RAF Upper Heyford. The method to process the brew has stood the test of time. The Vinetum Brittanicum, the Treatise of Cider, written in 1676, showcases how little has changed in 340 years. Bottled fermentation, considered vogue, had launched in the 1630’s.

Man has carried liquid in a variety of vessels; skins, gourds, pottery, metal, glass. Ten thousand years ago, we dug wells. Three thousand years ago the Chinese brewed tea. The Phoenicians from the Middle East invented bottles twenty-five hundred years ago. Then there’s the apple. Malus domestica. Spitter apples, best-suited for brewing cider, earned their name due to bitterness and initial instinct to spew them, then coat your tongue with something sweet, like honey or, perhaps, tar. Apples have been around since the launch of time. * Some believe Eve tempted Adam with an apple. Most Jews don’t read the text this way. Eve eats first. Adam consumes afterwards. No temptation required. The idea of temptation surrounding a forbidden fruit was derived from Christianity, St Augustine in particular, and has become the basis for a great amount of misogyny. Tempting. Plucking.

Biting. Falling. In the process, apples acquired a bad rap, blamed as the culprit, though the true forbidden fruit remains unnamed. Sages offer assumptions on the fruit’s identity based on clues throughout the Torah: Wheat: represents knowledge, originally meant to grow on a tree. Grapes: no other fruit brings as much misery as the grape, thanks to wine (I can attest). Noah planted grapes upon leaving the Ark, and in his drunkenness, things sour. One interpretation suggests that Ham, Noah’s son, had sexual relations with Noah’s wife, yes, Ham’s mother. Other commentary includes homosexual rape, castration, and curses for generations to follow. Grapes could easily result in destruction and should be consumed with caution, but consumed never-the-less as wine (or grape juice), holds significance in Jewish rituals, such as weddings and Seders. Fig: the majority of rabbinic lies with this fruit, applying midah k’neged midah. Measure for measure. Since it is believed to cause Adam and Eve’s act of disobedience, the fig leaves cover Adam and Eve’s nakedness, hiding their shame. The righting of wrongs. Etrog: this “tree was good to eat,” meaning even the wood tasted lovely, though I’ve not bitten into its bark. Etrog relates to the Aramaic word for desire, which could be akin to forbidden. No one knows if the Torah’s prohibition of a forbidden fruit included all these trees or only one. Perhaps the tale is more allegorical, representing fruit as the essence within us that grows from understanding the difference between good and evil. What is known is the possibility of error, an accidental translation of apple. The Latin word malum, meaning evil, associated with malum, which is another Latin word borrowed from the Greek and translates apple.

* I checked my watch, six thirty. Still no sign of Ray. A Brit sat beside me, striking a conversation. “You American?” “Why is that always the first question?” I asked. This was not the man I wanted to engage. Where the hell was Ray? “Sorry, Lass. What would you like me to say?”

“How about, ‘what are you doing still alive?’” He paused, looked at me, took a slow sip from his glass, raised it as if to toast me or maybe say “touché,” and promptly left. My impact on men in my day. “I’ll take another,” I told the barmaid. “Any food?” she asked and leaned on her elbow atop the

bar.

“No. I’m good.” I thought Ray could be it. THE one. My one. He wasn’t here. Something inside me knew he wouldn’t show, knew I’d never see him again and then I realized, of course, I’m too screwed up to keep a good man. Why would he bother? Or maybe he was married and had received a call from his wife, the one from his real life, the one back home, somewhere stateside, and he felt guilty about flirting with me and now couldn’t face me. I had journeyed to Weymouth to get away from the base, from military life, from the war, though only for the weekend. I thought I had traveled for some semblance of solace. Maybe I wanted to leave. For good. Only my unit would notice my absence, reporting me as AWOL. Since the war or conflict or what-ever-the-hell they wanted to label it—an impact of bombs and death and missiles and gases and p-tabs—had technically ended, I wouldn’t be counted as a deserter. That meant something.

I rubbed my wrist-scars, less noticeable over the years, as if they had permeated, became more of me. I traced them, routing up my arm. The longer one, a reminder from the time I had crashed through glass chasing my brother. The shorter slashes criss-crossing my forearm marked my feeble and frantic sawing with a razorblade. My second failed attempt. I began to cry. If Ray didn’t show, what was the point? Someone fresh, newly into me, now dismissing me. Dismissal. A far too familiar emotion.

* I spent eight years at Heyford, tossing my share of cider, and, if I’m honest, my feelings of abandonment had little to do with Ray or any other man. The internal conflict of continuous loss wears a person to their core. Those apples saved me from troubling mental territory, helped fog reality to at least push me through the night. That forbidden fruit washed my anguish, my 89

guilt of war-participation. Though whenever I swallow it down today, the spitting taste reminds me of those days when I longed to die, when I had little to live for, and like memory often does, it lures you back, with the drop of scent or the sting on the tip of your tongue, as if you are in real-time. As if you are exiting the Garden of Eden for all of time.

ORCHARD

If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.

CARL SAGAN