Sometime before 8A.M. on a day in May 2003, a shaven lean man watched the workmen shuffle about from the circular railing above the central staircase at the Museum of Art History in Vienna. Some floors below, the marble lion guarding the imperial Habsburg crown roared up at the shadow trailing off the rails, vanishing down the deserted gallery. A muted siren rang out in the distance. One of the workmen turned away from his sausage roll.
A man came slowly down the stairs toward them, humming. The workman’s eyes traced their way down his thin neck to the unlit cigarette he rolled between his fingers. “Alarm test.” he smiled. The workman nodded. Silence enveloped the museum again and the munching resumed.
The lean man disappeared through the doorway, soft cloth bag tucked under his arm. The lion roared at the frozen statue of Theseus behind him; no one heard. In the bag was a miniature gold sculpture, hand hammered by a murderer to keep salt and pepper for a king, gone now forever – or at least for a few days. That is a story I do not intend to tell.
But since you are here in the Museum of Art History in Vienna, why don’t we take a walk around. There is a painting I want you to see – probably worth far less than the hammered gold salt dish, but far more interesting. Look, it’s not one painting but done on two wooden panels, hinged together – something called a diptych (a three-panelled version is a triptych).
Now that you have seen that, we can close our eyes and travel back to where we presently are, and you will observe this object I am holding. It arrived one day clad in a clear plastic box that has long been lost. The story I do intend to tell you begins on that day – which was not that many days before this one.
Having unwrapped this red thing that was given me, I turned it on its head and twirled it
around. Apart from the numbers printed across its flat bottom, it was in all appearances a sort of inedible apple. One with a glossy top and a matte body,
cracked open across the brim to reveal a cinnamon spice scented lump of wax within.
A heady whiff of the stuff set the cogs whirling. In fact, that diptych we looked at together in Vienna came vividly to mind. Across modern history- and by that we seem to be, unwillingly referring to European history, paintings such as this one have introduced a series of misplaced affirmations- an Adam and Eve of distinctly non-Semitic appearance, for one. That, however can, I feel, be overlooked simply because the images we form in our heads as we read or hear stories are shaped by our previous experiences of the world. However, as we glance over from alopecic Adam to the strategically placed blue flower (that wasn’t really required – Eve’s hair is so long here, she could have worn it as a dress), we almost miss the Apple Inc. logo in Eve’s right hand.
For centuries – or at least as long as I’ve been around, the forbidden fruit picked from the tree in the centre of the garden has been portrayed as this thing I hold in my hand today – a red (presumably crunchy) apple. Was it picked from the tree of good and evil or the tree of life? Did Adam pick it, or Eve? These are valid questions, and I’m certain you will find the answers to them someday, but not on this page, and not now.
Details of the picking and eating aside, the consequences of that day is the stuff of a Sunday school child’s daydreams – Adam and eve being robed in freshly killed skins and being cast out of the garden, on bruised knees at the edge of a barren wasteland as they try to crawl back into Eden – to find the gate barred, a fiery angel beating them back with a flaming sword.
To be fair, it most likely was not an apple that they stole – but centuries of artwork have taken their toll, and in the minds of most who consider the story, it’s not an orange or a cherry or a durian that comes to mind, but this malumine (malus is the Latin word for apple (and evil)) thing in my hand as the thing for which this precursory man and woman gave up paradise.
In case you aren’t familiar with the later chapters of the story (see the book of Genesis for details), let me selectively summarise it for you - the offspring of those deftly covered loins grew to group of people who dabbled in all sorts of devious behaviour leading God to open the skies to a rain so terrible it submerged the entire planet. But not all was lost. Out of the swirling depths burst a wooden vessel to brave the churning seas and when God let the sun appear again, the boat spilled onto land the surviving people and animals. Never again, He vowed, would His rage be so unleashed.
And so, for eons to come, a regular stream of unblemished domestic creatures wound up sliced in two and set ablaze – a part payment, if you will, of the wages of sin. But the sinful nature that entered mankind through our friends at the garden remained in humankind -encoded in our genes, so to speak. In the course of time, those that escaped the storm slipped from dubious to degenerate lives, and our creator’s heart burned with fury once more. The heavenly armies pounding out an angelic war-cry – poised to descend upon the earth. But, remembering His promise, swords were sheathed, ranks broken, and the way prepared for a sacrifice to end all sacrifices.
Try to remember that painting we looked at. Mankind fell into sin because of one man (and no doubt, the woman beside him), and on the opposing panel - sadness embodied as a recently expired young man surrounded by what seems to be his family and friends. The maiden in green throws up her hands in despair upon seeing his parted cracked lips parted and rigid bruised limbs. The man’s mother cleans the blood caked on his body, weeping as she sees in the empty shell the bright boy he once was. The lamb lies slain - God saved
Abraham’s son from the knife his father held at his throat, to bring His own son to this pierced and broken fate. From His torn flesh leaks out the sins of the world - mine, yours and of all that are to come- that we should no longer carry them as we have since that day in the garden.
I turn back to this red iron fruit in my hand and open it , knowing that within it I shall find three things
1. The lovely scent of spices, that rose to the sky as a turtledove lay in pieces upon the altar...the same as was smeared lovingly upon the Son of God by the wrinkled hands of his mother as He lay still on a stone one Friday evening long ago.
2. A candle and wick that shall burn, as did the pillar that rose to the clouds guiding the faithful through the desert... the same that consumed the fresh cut lamb upon the stone.
3. The air that feeds the flames, without which the candle has no hope of ever burning.
I have lived all the days of our lives till this one, and my feet have travelled far to this spot upon which I now stand.
Yet just as it did all those years ago, in a long forgotten garden in a tea party between a man, a woman and a snake , this fruit tempts my heart, but not for the knowledge of good or evil, not for life , but for those three things that remain when all else are gone. Faith, Hope, and Love.
The gift I received was not the apple, but these things that I found inside.
And so I sit back with my wife. Raindrops patter at the window, as we watch the flames dance.
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