Sitting in his warm Paris mansion, Charles stretched out his legs and dipped the tip of his quill pen in the inkwell. Next to his left hand there lay an early version of the sacred texts as translated into the French by the Lemaistre brothers.
The account of Genesis played out in his mind with vivid images, which for the most part strayed from the ancient and brief original narrative. Instead of seeing the devil behind the snake, he saw a wolf…a huge lone wolf.
But he wasn’t alone. There on the mountains surrounding Eden his pack awaited…
Once upon a time…a splendid garden,
Hills and hollows, streams and waterfalls,
Flowers and more flowers, the aromas and the colors!
Large groves, a clearing here and a lake there,
Beasts walking and climbing, birds and frogs singing,
Butterflies and fireflies illuminating their paths,
And a girl, a girl who just arrived.
Upon the meadow walked a naked young woman.
As a helpmeet was she brought, said the Holy Beings.
To all of humankind she provided miraculous help.
Man called her Eve and found joy by her side,
but man did not fully comprehend the Holy Beings.
Unquestionable obedience, that was his most precious gift,
but the girl in the forest she conversed with a strange being,
both a wolf and a snake, but also “a brother.”
So that she would open her eyes, he handed her some fruit,
And even so, in the midst of lies, there was something she understood…
Charles stopped writing, but that story, he kept on seeing it in his mind:
She bit into the forbidden fruit… She felt changes in her body, changes in her mind… Her eyes could see things, things she was unable to see before… She placed some more fruit inside a basket and went to see her partner. Nearby, behind the dense foliage, the wolf watched attentively.
This story of Adam and Eve is rather well known.
Man did also eat, and the wolf did howl.
The Holy Beings then returned, found them hiding.
They quickly realized that it was the forbidden fruit
That had wrought in them all those sudden changes.
The voice of God was heard in every corner of the forest. It was still but intense, sweet but penetrating:
“What hast thou done, Adam?” and he discovered his simplemindedness.
“What hast thou done, Eve?” and she saw her wisdom.
“What hast thou done, Lucifer?” and he discovered his malice.
The last was the first to be expelled from the garden,
And after hatefully howling, the Dead Prince walked away.
They handed skin robes to the wedded, fallen couple,
And lovingly, sweetly They explained the punishment.
But before Eve and Adam left the garden and headed into the wild mountains, one of the Holy Beings pointed to the other and said, “This is my Beloved Son; hear ye him.”
He spoke of a lamb that would die at their hands,
On an altar of rocks, on a place that would be holy.
He approached Eve, gave her a new gift.
Extending His hand, the Son gave her a cloak,
Red as blood, crimson as brokenness.
“Now that thou goeth into the world, thou wilt dwell in the dominion of the Wolf and his pack, but this mantle shall protect thee, thee and thy posterity, from him, for it is the symbol of a covenant that I have made with my Father and your Father, with my God and your God.”
And with the passing of days they built that place
Where they offered unto God a perfect sacrifice.
And a messenger appeared, a divine messenger,
Who asked Adam whether he knew what he was doing.
“I know not, save the Lord commanded me.”
The angel pointed to the lamb and the spilled blood and then pointed to the cloak that covered the woman. As if he were the Son, the angel spoke in the first person:
“I am the Lamb, which taketh away the sin of the world. That is my blood that shalt be spilt for my people. That cloak is my cloak, in which I shall be clothed in the final days. The Wolf seeketh after the blood of the Lamb, but as long as the Lamb be among you, the Wolf cannot prevail against you.”
First Mother Eve was entranced,
huddled in the folds of the sacred coat,
Nestled from head to toe
In a dear robe of silky vermilion.
Charles woke up all of a sudden, stirred by the noise of the inkwell that had spilled… The quill pen had drafted but an illegible scribble…
What had just happened? At what point did he drift from matters eternal to slumber? He remembered a wolf…and a small, young woman, all dressed in red…
“Oh, what a shame, to not be able to remember any of it…” he complained to himself. “I will start again, from the beginning.”
He cleaned up the ink blot. Then he picked out a blank sheet of paper and, with the quill’s sharp strokes, wrote a new title:
“Le Petit Chaperon rouge”
Translated by Gabriel González.
Maximiliano Martínez was born in the city of Bahía Blanca, province of Buenos Aires, Argentina, to a Latter-day Saint family. At the age of eight, he began writing his personal journal and at fourteen he began to write poetry and a few brief short stories. At the age of sixteen, he began karate lessons, and shortly thereafter, his study of the Japanese language. At age twenty he served a mission in Córdoba, Argentina. In the Church, he has served as a Sunday School teacher and president, a high councilor, a bishop’s counselor, a seminary teacher, a temple worker, and currently as a ward secretary.
