Adam & Eve by Sena Jeter Naslund Page B

even her pious husband.
    In temperament the boys seemed quite different. Esau shared his father’s interest in scriptures and memorized them with great exactness; he could recite the entirety of the book of Genesis by the time he was eight, and Exodus and Psalms, though he found the meaning of poetry more slippery than prose, by age ten. In this way, he earned his father’s special protection. Jacob’s interests were more scientific: he observed the world with focused curiosity, and when he had classified the plants and bugs of the neighborhood, he lifted hiseyes to the heavens and learned about the stars of the constellations over West Jerusalem and to identify the planets. He liked math.
    Jacob had one other passion discovered quite by accident: he overheard a portion of an Easter service held by touring Methodists with an American singing “Jerusalem, the Golden.” Never had Jacob heard such stirring music and beautiful tones. And this was his place, his home, celebrated in the song. The man’s voice itself was like a golden trumpet. The melody soared, yet it had a martial beat to it that made the boy want to march, then soar. Like a fanfare in the middle of the piece—
do, sol, me, do
—the music spanned a rapid octave; the notes climbed like quick feet mounting the golden steps to heaven.
    “Listen, listen!” he commanded, wanting Esau to join his rapture.
    “It’s the wrong religion,” Esau sensibly answered.
    But Jacob knew he must have this music and more like it in his life.
    As soon as he found his courage, Jacob told his father, “I would like to be the man who sounds the shofar at Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.” As preparation for his lungs, Jacob proposed he take up the trumpet. Soon he realized his mistake: the trumpet was too brazen; the mellow French horn was just right. And he liked stuffing his fist into the bell to modify the pitch or to act as a mute. It was as though he himself had entered into the life of the music, as if he had joined with the instrument, from his lips on the mouthpiece to his hand inside the metal bell. He had become an instrument of the instrument and of its Glory.
    Both boys, then, had their spiritual side. Esau said he wanted to become a settler and help reclaim the land for God’s chosen people. Jacob said that God’s kingdom was not of this world, and he had no interest in claiming a patch of dirt. He thought of orchestras and French horns playing Handel’s
Water Music
and of von Karajan’s Beethoven when he thought of where he wanted to be.
    When the boys were thirteen, on the first day of school, they entered the public bus with special excitement. At Jacob’s insistence, they had hatched an exciting plan: a new variation on an old theme. Jacob had insisted that they sign up to study different languages: Greek and Hindi. But actually they wouldboth study both languages, by swapping places every day. They whispered and giggled like girls, and then the bus blew up.
    Jacob was spared, but Esau was decapitated and his body almost entirely destroyed. What Jacob saw when he opened his eyes in the wreckage was their two school satchels leaning together as though in conspiracy. The blue and yellow bags were covered with dust, but he knew their contents—their lunches, their wallets, their books and new blank notebooks—were safe inside. His brother was gone. Jacob reached out for one of the bags, opened it, and saw the Greek grammar that belonged to Esau. With all his heart, he grabbed the satchel to his body and let no one take it from him.
    Beside his hospital bed, the orderly opened the satchel, saw the wallet and the identification card, and gently spoke to the boy, calling him Esau. Jacob felt his own eyes narrow, and in that moment he became Esau.
    When his parents came to his bed, his mother put her fingers in his hair, but she had no point of comparison; the amount of dust in his hair was distracting, and the dust made his hair feel thicker, too. No, Jacob