Chapter 12

"And She Knew Him..."

Second Expanded 2026 Edition

To really know a man you have to be around him a lot. In this respect plural marriage presented me with two handicaps.

Firstly, I was Stan's junior by over 20 years and that meant there was a lot of catching up to do in terms of experience, wisdom, and life in general, a not as impossible task as I at first had thought because to be in some else's aura or spirit is to very much walk with them in their thoughts and feelings too.

Secondly, time was my enemy for I had to share this lovely man with six other equally deserving wives, and there is no doubt that those of us who were more outwardly going stood at an advantage, being less reserved in approaching him. But as I have already mentioned, this Stan resolved by encouraging the stronger to, of their own initiative, give way (he would never push us away) to the more introvert, and encouraged the weaker to be a little more courageous. Most of the problem lay in the sharing of intimacy, and in a variety of ways.

Stan stood somewhere mid-way between us seven when it came to these things. Occasionally he would like to be alone - particularly on the Sabbath - but for the most part he was always glad to have our company, no matter when. Visiting rights extended in two directions - either he would visit us in our apartments or we would visit him in his room. The fixed times routine had been abandoned completely by the time I arrived though he went out of his way to make an exception for a new wife while she settled in, which meant that it was largely up to us to take the initiative in visiting him at nights. To make this and other needs more practical, Stan had wired a complex intercom system around the house with four master controls in the kitchen, living room, nursery and his own room. This could be set either as an ordinary communication system or as a baby alarm. Thus a wife could leave small sleeping children in her apartment with the baby alarm system on and be free to be in one of the four aforementioned rooms without having to worry about them. Alternatively, if she shared an apartment with another sister-wife, commonly that sister-wife would have the 'baby watch'. Thyey say that "necessity is the mother of invention" and the mothers had little problem working out a variety of solutions between themselves.

Five of us liked to shower with Stan and he in his turn enjoyed our company. On not a few occasions more than one of us would turn up. I remember coming into his shower (wives didn't have to knock) to find Sarah-Jane with him. My instinct was to turn on my heels in accute embarrassment but Stan called me back.

"Didn't you ever shower with your class mates at school?" as I pretended not to still be embarassed. "Don't worry, there's no sin in being innocent and natural."

Sarah-Jane smiled and reassured me that I was not intruding and so it was that all three of us showered together. Such encounters frequently occurred though on a couple of occasions it got impractical when three of us turned up and he had to turn some of us away. In actual fact these showering incidents had the desirable effect of not only lowering inhibitions and so helping some of us to overcome shyness but demystified that Edenic state and made us feel more at ease. After a few visits we thought nothing of it and we might just as well have been in the kitchen cooking food together or relaxing together in the living room.

But Suszana and Anna would have nothing to do with the "showering thing" as they called it which the rest of us felt was their loss in so many ways because it was usually in the showers that Stan would share some of his night experiences with the Lord. Kasia was the chattiest in this respect and whenever she and Stan were together there was always a long discussion in progress!

The only thing I didn't like about showering with Stan was when he rinsed shampoo out of his hair it would rinse out straight onto me. That comes with being taller than most of the rest of us! And another disadvantage to us shorties was the way we would get splashed in the face all the time by water bouncing off his body! Sarah-Jane, being almost Stan's height, seemed to be the only one immune to all these practical irritations and often teased us, pretending not to see us come in the shower and saying: "Oh, sorry honey, I didn't see you down there!" We were unamused.

As with all novelties, at first everybody wanted to come so as not to be left out, which Stan did not enjoy. We tried to sort that one out by agreeing privately amongst ourselves who should go on what day but that was impractical as those with children never knew when their little ones might demand their attention. Stan was always up at 6.30 a.m. so usually the small ones were still asleep - the ones who lost out were usually those who didn't like to get up early, namely, Kryztina and Kasia. Besides. We couldn't hear the baby intercom in the shower.

Unless very ill or back late from a trip the night before, everyone was expected to be up by 7.00 a.m. Breakfast was not at first at a fixed time with everyone free to take that when they wanted to, but as the family grew Stan wanted everyone together. So breakfast started at 7.30 and ended at 8.30 a.m. with the day's activities starting at a comfortable 9 a.m. So long as we we done by 8.30 a.m, to go give the kitchen shift time to wash up, we could come and go between those time when we wanted to. With no commuting to do, since we all worked at home, this made our daily program very pleasant and stress-free. Since we wanted to be with Stan, most of us (but not Kasia who nearly always overslept) turned up at 7.30 a.m.

Shopping in Lublin was by rotation twice a week, sister-wives going out in pairs leaving all but their tinest children in the nursery with other supervising sister-wives. The convenience and freedom to put children into others' care was one of the blessings of plural marriage that was appreciated most of all, for it meant that the mothers could not only get regular breaks but also be free to pursue a career without having to leave the upbringing of their children to strangers with values distinctly different from our own, which was the fate of children left to the state nursery system. It also meant that for the older children they were exposed to child care - boys and girls alike - developing not only a sense of parental responsibility but training them for marriage and parenthood in a way that children in the state system could never enjoy.

Kryztina and Kasia had pioneered a system of child care in the early days, inspired in part by a Swedish mother of nine (a non-Christian, as it turns out) and by Stan's own philosophy mingled with their own ideas. As a result of this, children were encouraged to be involved in adult activities from an early age such as cleaning, cooking, gardening and a variety of other activities. The result was much to everyone's liking, not because of the shared work load, but because it developped within them a keen sense of responsibility and community awareness. The communists would have envied us had they survived in Poland for the one quality their authoritarian system lacked was motivation!

Lunch (or 'luncheon' as the more formal Étoile later insisted on calling it...she was the only one who did and was teased for doing so) was usually at 12 p.m. followed by 15 minutes of Bible study adapted to the small children's level, and then a mandatory period of half an hour's rest on our beds from 12.45 p.m. to 1.15 p.m. during which time there was to be absolute silence in the house. Stan called it our "Golden Half-Hour". Everyone either read books, meditated, or slept. The phones were turned off and nothing was allowed to disturb the peace save babies requiring attention or emergencies. Latterly he set up a collective nursery system for those who wanted to cooperate by taking shifts. During this time Stan would either retire to his room to be alone or rotate visits with his wives, lying quietly with one or two them if they were twins. He usually slept but sometimes he cuddled with us if that was our preference. Twins commonly spent the time together too so Sarah-Jane and I typically lay side-by-side reading, sleeping or cuddling if Stan wasn't with one of us.

Supper (or 'dinner' as some sticklers for correct English usage insisted on calling it) was at 6 p.m. At 7 p.m. the whole family would gather in the living room for a short Bible reading and evening prayers for the children followed by games and other family activities until 8 p.m. After this the smallest children would go to bed and Stan would either conference online with ministers in different time zones when needed or spend time with the teenagers. In the winter and during bad weather, we would watch movies with them, play snooker, table tennis, chess, Scrabble and other indoor activities. Many of us loved needlework. Come summer we were outside most of the time playing ringo polskie (throwing a rubber ring over a net to land in the opposing zone), serso (a ring-throwing and catching game where players use a small stick to catch a flying hoop), kubb (where teams toss wooden blocks to knock over wooden king and soldier targets), badminton, basketball (Kryztina's forte), football (Kasia's passion), French boules (a favourite of Stan's), croquet or some other game. Latterly when we established a commnity with other families, a tennis court and small swinmming pool were also added.

After the children had been sent to bed, the adults gathered for an hour's intense Bible study and prayer and at 10 p.m. we usually went to bed. "Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise," Stan would often remind us. As some of the wives like Kryztina and Kasia were keen outdoor types, cycling tours, swimming trips to a local lake, canoeing and biology field trips to the Tatra mountains were also popular. Finally, in winter, skiing (Kasia's favourite sport) and skating on a frozen lake or river were much enjoyed as an early afternoon activity. And as the family grew, more stimulating leisure activities were added. The less sporty types like Isabel either made puzzles or had various crafting hobbies. Stan and some of the boys were talented model-makers and keen philatelists. Music was another passion of ours which I will speak more of another time. In our second community home Stan even built a small observatory for the budding astronomers and would often be found with his eye glued to the telescope. I could go on. One of his daughters was a keen rock-collector and went on to become a geologist.

Getting to know Stan as a person was, of course, one of my principal objectives. As a wife deeply in love, I wished for nothing but complete union with him in everything, as did the others. It proved not to be as easy to do as I had at first thought, not because he was closed, but because he was both a deep and a complex human being.

He was not, as I have said, an "ordinary" Pole, or even a true "Pole", for that matter, given his mixed blood and his unique way of being. He could be both intense to a point that one felt overwhelmed by the shere power of his psyche, as well as relaxed by the ease at which he approached people and made them feel his equal. There was no air of superiority about him in the least and he was as friendly with a stranger as he was with one of his teenage children or one of his wives.

But this did not mean he was an open book. His communion with God was perhaps the most mystifying of all because it was uniquely personal, and whilst it was always his desire that we should all share in that, we knew that unless we did our part as diligent disciples this could never just be a matter of desire or will. Spiritual anointings, especially when Christ appeared to all of us one day many years hence, catapulted us to new heights of unity and spiritual intimacy. I'll talk more of that later too.

Stan would often be far away in his communion with Yahweh, relating to Him in a way that was for me, at least, sometimes frightening because they both then seemed so distant. Only as our love deepened and as we yielded more and more to Christ, did we find the deepest communion of all which was the supreme goal of all we did. But it took time and effort.

It's a bit like swimming in the sea. Personally, I always like to be able to feel the sand beneath my feet so when, as a youth, my swimming companions would head out for deep water, I would be afraid and remained where I was. There was, as it were, a spiritual pool of water that Stan loved to bathe in, which had no bottom at all because it was a part of the infinite. There one was at the same time both completely vunerable as well as completely safe. To get there meant letting go of every fear and carnal crutch, a place he likened to the Shekinah, or the manifest presence of Yahweh.

He did not like casual, vain or repetitive prayer and preferred silent meditation to superfluous wordy exercises. To pray, for him, was to be able to involve your whole soul, mind, heart, and body. To this end he had been inspired to create some spiritual dances, which we all joined in at special times, in the room on the top floor above the apartments which was called simply "the temple". It occupied the entire upper floor and was practically bare except for a beautiful carpet and some paintings of beautiful scenes on the white walls. It was in this room that we not only danced but met with other members of the Church to take marriage vows and enter into Priesthood covenants. For us, it was sacred, space, like the Temple of old, though more as an adjunct to the temple which in the New Coevant of Christ is our bodies. Many of us would come here to meditate and pray in the evening or very early in the morning.

When Stan did pray, it was intense, deep, and very personal, and one felt that someone else was in the room, an invisible Guest with whom he would converse much as he conversed with us. Sometimes he would pause to listen and often he would hear the voice of the Ruach haQodesh or Holy Spirit speaking. He hated prayer for prayer's sake, or pretending to communicate with God when one was only talking to oneself. At such times he preferred to be silent. He could pray at the most unexpected times, whenever the Lord deeply moved him, and that included during love-making. It's hard to explain that but he made me realise that our Heavenly Father wanted to be involved in everything we did ... if we would let Him. Quite out of the blue he would be founded praising God or just talking to Him such that at first I thought he was talking to one of us. This he did quite naturally when at home but was more circumspect in public - he would pray silently too.

At times he would arise from prayer as though on fire like Moses. Though his face didn't shine like that prophet's did, there was an undoubted Presence that was electric. Once during such an experience I reached out to touch his hand and got an electric shock. No kidding! And I was not the only one. There was a time, Isabel told me, that the presence of the Spirit in him was so strong that lightbulbs would start popping. That, I learned, was why at one we had no lightbulbs in our chapel, only candles. One friend of his in the US was glad to be rid of him because of all the dud lightbulbs around his house! But this, mercifully, belonged the past. His superstitious friends had accused him of being demonised by occult powers and so he had approached the Lord to have this phenomenon put to rest. Still, I didn't like the electric shocks, though they were mercifully rare.

Stan explained to us that latent within man is great psychic power which has been sealed since the Fall. This power is what Satan and his demons lust after and try to release and feed on through occult exercises like yoga, perverse sex, or through more violent satanic rituals such as torture and murder. He taught us that this power had been tapped by many in the charismatic movement, which they had mistaken for the the Holy Spirit, and deceived millions in the process:

"The Holy Spirit does not operate on this level, at least not yet. The gifts of God's Spirit - the Ruach Elohim - are externally bequeathed - they come from heaven to us, and not from within. You may recall that the evangelist Timothy obtained his gift prophetically through the laying-on of hands - it was not something he "naturally" possessed. The presence of certain kinds of gift may, from time to time, release this psychic energy, but it is not the power of the Holy Spirit itself. All the supernatural displays you see amongst the gurus, witches, mediums, shamans, and the like, are all the result of releasing this energy by magic, which thing Yahweh has forbidden, because demons use it to delude their naïve followers into believing that they and their master Satan are the ones who are bequeathing this energy. The truth is, Satan has no "natural" energy of his own - it's all stolen. He's like the petrol thieves in Warsaw in the early days after communism fell who went around siphoning gasolene out of people's cars and then selling it back to the gullible at cut-down prices. In the occult, Satan steals your psychic energy by encouraging you to channel, do yoga exercises, and the like. He gives you a perverted form back in return and with it some special experiences of well-being, harmony, maybe some healing, levitation, clairvoyance, or some other ability, and then guzzles the rest himself, and laughs all the way as he takes you more and more into spiritual bondage.

"As Christians, psychic power may occasionally be released through us viâ the Ruach haQodesh (Holy Spirit) when it is needed for healing, walking on water, etc., but usually these supernatural miracles are the result entirely of the Ruach. We are certainly not supposed to go looking for this psychic energy. It will be used in a spectacular way later on during the Tribulation, perhaps, and certainly during the Millennium. But more of that another time..."

Stan could effortlessly discourse on so many different subjects which for us were new and exciting discoveries. He always had our rapt attention when talking about such things. There were few non-Christians who dared to debate him, because he would trap them in their own illogical thinking and expose their deceptive techniques.

We, his wives, soon picked these things up too, which is probably why we had so few friends in the world. For the most part, people wanted to spin illusion, play games of deception, manipulate, and create fantasy worlds to justify their own sinning, which we would have nothing to do with. Whenever we would meet someone who appeared charming and delightful, Kryztina would remind us of her favourite scripture when it came to finding those who would be true disciples of the Lord: "What you have heard from me through many witnesses, this commit to reliable men who will be able to teach others as well" (2 Tim.2:2).

Finding reliable people - that was the difficulty. We had all known those who had outwardly appeared to be wonderful Christians but who had deserted when the going got tough. We learned how to spot them by getting them to teach the truths we knew. If they couldn't communicate them, we knew they didn't understand them.

Notwithstanding the LaHayes' book which I had devoured, I could not have prepared for Stan when it came for our full-marriage. He had the great advantage, as I supposed, of being a matured lover with a lot of experience behind him whereas I had none. He was gentle, skilled, and wonderful. He believed his wives should always be well-bedded and sexually satisfied.

The first night was uncomfortable, as he had forewarned me, but it was also in a way the most satisfying for once I had been penetrated I knew that my body belonged to him forever, and his to me. He was gentle and patient with my clumsiness and I was content in the beginning simply to let him teach me. Sarah-Jane had already prepped me in so many things for which I was eternally grateful. With the fire of passion awakened and fully expressed, I felt as though I had at last become a complete woman. And the more I was together with him, the more I wanted him.

For a week I was in utter and complete bliss, we retired early and I learned what it was to eat of one of Eden's most delicious fruits. His eyes were always upon mine, gazing deep into my soul as we made love, his embrace tight and protecting. This calm and often reserved man became transformed in his nuptual garden as he revealed to me an ocean of deep, steady fire within himself. I began to know him as I had not known him before.

After the week's honeymoon was over and he was reunited with his other six wives I began to crave him. My passion ignited, I just wanted to be in his arms always, and in the most intimate ways possible. The others were gracious to me, knowing what it was I was going through, so he saw me rather more often than the others for the first few weeks. I once came into his room whilst Kasia was with him and felt like an intruder..

"Don't go," pled Kasia, "come and be with us."

"Oh I couldn't, really," I cried feeling even more foolish. "You two carry on. I'm so sorry for barging in - it was selfish of me!

But Kasia, who was by nature inclusive, would have none of that. "Come and lie on my other side and let us talk about good things," suggested Stan.

I slipped out of my robe and sheepishly climbed into bed with them, very embarrassed, ashamed that I had interrupetd their love-making, but neither seemed to mind. Their mastery of the flesh amazed me, how they could simply stop, and find time for someone lonely as I was then. We all three lay together, Stan in the middle, cuddling and sometimes kissing as we often did when we were together around the house, whilst he shared some thoughts. I looked across at Kasia who smiled and stroked my hair, to indicate that she loved me and was glad to have me there. As Stan talked, I began to relax, and forgot what it was I had come for. Stan and Kasia, still coupled, got into a spiritual discussion and I listened fascinated for they were always talking about the Lord. Always, just like David and Joshua said we should be (Psalm 119:97, Joshua 1:8). I felt ashamed again that all I was thinking about were my passions. Stan looked at me and said:

"Hélène, my darling, our desire is to find the innocence of Eden once again, where harmony prevailed everywhere. The torch of passion has been lit in you and shown you its delights. But Eden is full of all kinds of trees with every sort of delightsome fruit to eat. Here we move from tree to tree with the ease of small children moving from one toy to another. Here one can partake of any tree and relax knowing that we do all in the purity of Christ."

I don't know how many hours we two laid next to him for we all eventually dozed off until Kasia was awakened by the Alexei's voice on the baby alarm, and she was gone, leaving Stan to me. I buried my head into his bosom, imagining that I was lying in a field of dew-covered grass early on a summer's morning. Stan breathed steadily, and half awake detected my presence, and wrapped his arm around me more tightly, and drifted off again. I lay snug and warm until I too was taken into sleep's deep mystery and was no longer there either.

I awoke early, at 5.20 a.m, and took advantage of my sleeping husband to looked all over him for an hour before he also awakened. I wanted to memorise every curve of his body with my eyes and hands. His little groans of pleasure as I touched him sensually made me feel special and though I I know I should have let him sleep, I could not in the end stop from kissing him and waking him up completely.

"Hello, my summer butterfly," he said with a song in his voice, "you're looking radiant this morning!" I smiled that wide innocent smile of one hopelessly in love and stared helplessly at his face, lost in my own dreamy happiness. He drew me close and filled me with his fire as we made love. Kasia popped into the room without knocking to collect her things, and told me not to stop on her account! It didn't bother her in the least that we were making love, let alone that it was 'her night'. She even paused to soak up the sight of our love-making, remarked that we looked beautiful together, and when I looked back at her in surprise she was smiling approvingly with that free-and-easy Kasia grin. You have no idea what a relief I felt and how that broke any barriers that remained between us. Other wives would have been embarrassed and made a hasty retreat but not Kasia or indeed Sarah-Jane who were the closest to the natural state of Eden than any of the others were at that time. Both were keen "sun-bunnies", as we North Americans call those women who are habitual sun-bathers, and in the summer would find a private spot on a sunny summer's day and strip down for an hour or two. Stan hated it, expressing his disapproval, both because he thought it was vain and unhealthy (risking sun cancer) but because he likes his wives to be the way God made them. Sarah-Jane obediently stopped the practice but Kasia in her stubbornness did not. It was such acts of rebellion that caused the very family disunity that Stan hated so much but for reasons he never explained he never forced the matter which I considered to be a mistake, perhaps because Kasia was such a model in other areas.

That brief moment of our mutal acceptance of the naturalness of that encounter when Stan was with Kasia when I barged in deepened the freedom we felt in our relationship. This was the proof that we enjoyed both a single, collective marriage (the imagery of the singular Bride of Christ) as well as our many individual marriages to Stan that were converging. To me it was strong evidence that the mystery of echad unity that Stan so often talked about was attainable, even with all all the cuktural handicaps that we in the West had inherited from Catholicism and Protestantism, but which we were still far from completely realising, mostly because of the way Western society had evolved over the centuries, losing the simplicity of the ancients. This was not, Stan had told us, something that could easily be recaptured and would take at least a generation to be fixed, and should not therefore be forced or hurried in our generation, as we could only be expected to handle so much at a time. So what happened that night was proof positive to me of the possibility of that complete oneness Jesus prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane that His disciples would find (John 17:21) of which plural marriage was the model spiritually. Only our relationship with Stan was physically intimate too. We were both one and many. What Eko and Sri had told us about polygamy in their West Papuan community began to make sense too because in that culture everyone slept in a honai, a large communal family room.

"Like other bedouin of the desert in the Middle East," Stan had explained to us to prepare us for such moments, "Abraham and Jacob and their families each lived in a large single tent divided by wool curtains into separate living and sleeping areas for different wives and children so there was a little more privacy than Eko and Sri enjoyed until they reorganised living conditions after we had instructed them. The tents were wide and made of dark goat hair. And though the less wealthy families had no such curtains dividing wives' areas, Abraham's almost certainly did though it's not clear that Sarah and Hagar slept in the same tent as Scripture seems to suggest that Sarah had her own private one (Genesis 24:67), perhaps because Hagar was a concubine, though at other times Scripture gives the impression there was only one family tent (Genesis 18:9-10). We'ere told that when Isaac married Rebekah that he took her to "the tent of his mother Sarah" (Genesis 24:67).

"In our Abrahamic tradition, there was both a communal tent as well as wives having their own separate tents to sleep in, but there's no way that can be proved yet.

But given that Jacob married his four wives while abroad with in Haran of Mesopotamia, it's quite likely that they all lived in one tent like everyone else did in those days, both the wealthy and the poor. The wives would have had their own designated areas, separated by a curtain or not, we can't be sure, because curtain dividers were a later development by all accounts. This arrangement was practical for a variety of reasons, not least because wives shared cooking and camp chores daily, and child-raising was regarded as a collective affair. So if a wife went off to a well to collect water, which might be far off, the others would take care of her small children.

"Most people aren't aware," he continued, "but the idea of a 'bedroom' separate from the main living space in European homes evolved gradually between the 16th and 19th centuries. During the mediaeval era, entire households cooked, ate, slept, and made love in the same communal space..."

"What, with the children around??" I gasped in horror.

Stan laughed. "Sex was regarded as a natural part of life. Most people farmed in those days so children grew up seeing animals copulating and thought nothing of it. The separation started with the nobility and really didn't touch the middle classes until the Industrial Revolution. The 'open-space' arrangement continued for both middle class and rural communities in Western Europe well into the 18th century. Here in Poland and elsewhere in Eastern Europe, this arrangement continued well into the 19th century because of the greater poverty. Both in Russia and Slavic countries, we lived in traditional log huts consisting of a single main heated room where the whole family cooked, ate, socialised, slept...and made children."

The wives who weren't shocked giggled. Suszana, the most 'conservative' of us all, was ashen-faced. She hates such discussion because they upset her aristocratic sensibilities.

"Yes, the Russians called these 'smoke-huts' or chernaya izba'. Later," Stan continued, "as in the Levant, Eastern Slavs erected curtains, partitions for specialised sleeping spots, or they slept together in the freezing winter in an integrated zone on top of the large masonry stone platform called a polti under which was the large brick or clay oven, or next to it if it was a small family. One supposes love-making largely ended in the winter and resumed in the warmer spring months when the family spread out in the room again. My parents remember such open-space huts in eastern Poland, in Volhynia (what we call Volyń,) what's mostly now in the Ukraine, well into the 20th century! It was only in the post-war communist collectivisation and modernisation era of the late 1940's and 1950's that peasant homes got their own private sleeping spaces."

Needless to say I had no idea, and neither had most of the others, as we have always taken bedrooms for granted. Even Kasia, who was born and raised in Russia, had no idea.

But back to the night I intruded - or so I thought - on Stan and Kasia. I knew Stan usually got up at 6.30 a.m. but did not want him to go. His alarm went off, and my face told a story of disappointment and grief.

"How can I keep him a little longer?" I thought selfishly to myself, and then hit on the idea of starting a Kasia-type discussion which always got him going.

"Stan," I asked sheepishly but with an intent academic look on my face, "what was the tree that Adam and Eve ate in the Garden of Eden? What kind of knowledge did it represent?"

Stan paused, wondering I suspect what I was up to, but fully believing that my question was sincere - and it was...mostly!

Stan gave a soft laugh. "Well now, my love, you do pick hard questions, don't you? I hope you're not going to be another Isabel?"

"What do you mean?" I panicked, wondering if he was on to my little scheme.

"Isabel always comes with tricky questions, and in that respect she's my Queen of Shebah, tickling Solomon's philosophical mind."

I snuggled up to Stan again whilst looking him in the eyes, satisfied that I had already achieved my naughty aim.

He continued: "What do you think that tree is, Hélène?"

I was mildly annoyed. I hadn't wanted to work, just relax in his arms, feel his touch, and drink more of him up. But now I'd have to turn off some physical senses and get the grey matter going.

"Uh, I don't know," I lied, "what do you think?"

Stan by now had sensed something was up. You could not easily fool him. His spirit was like an antenna or a satellite dish, picking up the slightest changes in mood. He could tell when something wasn't quite right. The muscles around his eyes tensed and I sensed he knew I was up to something.

"Come on, Hélène, what's going on," he said seriously, not willing to let me get away with it.

I felt stupid. I knew he would start probing me until he was satisfied that he knew what was going on, so I spared myself the interrogation.

"I just want to be longer with you, Stan, that's all."

He smiled and gave me a big wet kiss on the mouth. "Thanks for being honest, Hélène. Honesty means everything to me. Let's go and shower and I'll answer your question...that is, if you're still interested."

I was. And now I was going to get a Kasia Institute lecture. Gee!

He turned the shower on, waited for it to warm up, and we hopped in. "If you want me to talk, my love, you're going to have to soap me so I can concentrate", and gave me a big wink. I liked that idea very much. "But just be sure you concentrate, OK?"

"OK!" I gave a wicked smile and started soaping him as slowly as I possibly could.

"And don't forget the hot water tank isn't infinitely big and that there are dozens of other bodies that need washing down before breakfast!"

I grinned.

"I'm going to let you solve this one, Hélène. All the clues are in the Book of Genesis. I hope you remember the story in detail so we don't have do go looking for a water-proof Bible mid-way."

"Come on, Stan, " I teased, "we'll run out of hot water if you don't get on!"

I squealed as he pinched my bottom, and had to go searching for the soap which had slipped out of my hand onto the floor in the steam-filled room. He tickled me as I went down and I squealed again.

"What's going on in there?" came the half serious voice of Anna.

"Oh, nothing," laughted Stan, "I'm just trying to catch a mouse that got in here."

I giggled uncontrollably as the soap flew out of my hand again.

"It's no good," I said, "I just can't concentrate!"

"Forget the bar of soap, there's liquid soap on the wall," he said a little impatiently.

Stan didn't like to be kept waiting when he considered an important matter needed to be discussed. "Let's go back to Eden..."

"What now?" I asked, a giggly mood having taken me over completely. I got one of those girly fits and was hopeless.

"OK, just wash," said Stan, "and I'll tell you while I'm dressing."

I silently soaped him and then unexpectedly he did the same to me.

"I think you've missed out a bit," I said.

Stan laughed.

"In fact, I think you've forgotten nearly all of me."

You can't usually out-tease Stan as I soon discovered.

"Is that so?" he said. "That's intolerable" and began to soap me so fast that I went into another giggly fit, slipped on the floor, and just couldn't stop laughing.

"Hey you two," came the voice of Kasia from outside where Anna had been, "when am I going to get a soaping?"

I creased up again.

"Breakfast in 20 minutes".

After the shower I collapsed on the bed, exhausted from all the laughing. Stan gazed at me while he got dressed and I loved every moment of it.

"You heard Kasia! Only 15 minutes now!"

"But you haven't told me about the tree," I protested.

"Not true. I've told you all about it."

"Huh?" I sat up, baffled. "When?"

"Think about it," he said and was off.

Hurriedly putting on my nightie and slip I went after him, catching him as he opened his door.

"I'll tell you after breakfast, OK? Now you go and get ready or I'll get into trouble."

I arrived at the breakfast table just in time for the bell and grace. Kasia, Anna, and Sarah-Jane all looked at me, winked, and giggled.

"I hear you dropped the soap while climbing a tree this morning," teased Sarah-Jane.

"Oh no, you've got it completely wrong," said Anna as she put on a melodramatic pose. "Our Hélène has been out fishing but the fish got away."

They giggled again, and I blushed.

"Sorry," said Anna, "I didn't mean to embarrass you. But you'll discover that we've all got a wicked sense of humour here!"

Isabel was not amused.

"Correction," interjected Sarah-Jane, "nearly all of us," put off by Isabel's harsh look.

"Alright, ladies," intervened Stan, "the mud-wrestling isn't until 2 o'clock this afternoon. Let's get serious and give thanks for this lovely day."

I covered my mouth, trying not to laugh.

We settled down to breakfast and the day's activities started again. Stan resumed the conversation: "Suszana is going to Lublin to shop this morning, Hélène - would you like to swop with Anna and then I can talk to you because I've got some things to do in town too. Is that OK, Anna? You can take her spot on Thursday."

"That's fine," answered Anna. "But tell me all about it when you get back."

"Right, thank you. Here's your assignment, Hélène, to give a 10 minute talk in our Bible study this evening on the Tree of Knowledge. OK?"

I had to agree. "But only if I understand what you teach me," I quipped.

"Of course. When are we leaving. Suszana?"

"Half an hour," she replied, "if that suits you."

I sat next to Stan while we drove down to Lublin.

"You said that you had already told me about the Tree of Knowledge," I said, "but we never discussed it."

"True," replied Stan, "because we were enacting it."

I remembered Suszana in the back as she spoke: "Can you remember what Adam and Eve did after they ate the fruit, Hélène?" she asked.

"Sure, they hid themselves because they discovered that they were naked." I twigged.

"You mean," I gasped, "that they had sex???"

"Simple as that," Stan butted in. "But they had it before they were given permission to do so by Yahweh. They had sex before their time - out of season. They were betrothed but not fully married. Yahweh would have married them and blessed when the right time had come but instead they got the serpent to give his blessing instead. From that moment Satan obtained the legal right to be spiritually present anytime man engaged in illicit sex. That's why corrupting sex is high on Satan's agenda."

I was silent, astonished at the simplicity of it all. But then I wondered: "But if my memory serves me right, God blessed them right after the creation before they partook of the fruit."

Suszana had her Bible out. "You're thinking of Genesis 1:28 where it says: "God blessed them and said to them, 'Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it". You're right in the sense that God blessed them to fulfil a divine imperative to reproduce, just as our children are. But they aren't married yet. This was a general benediction, not a marriage service, Hélène."

"OK, I'll buy that," I replied. "But doesn't God say somewhere that He had already married them? What about the stuff about leaving home and being one flesh?"

"That," said Stan, " was a general blessing to mankind, since Adam and Eve had no father and mother to leave. There is no indication from the text that God ever married them before the Fall, only that He blessed them to be such at an unspecified time."

"But what has this got to do with wisdom?" I asked. "Eve was enticed by the fruit because it would make her wise, not because of some desire for sex?"

"The act of marital intercourse is always known in the Bible as 'knowledge'. The modern translations obscure this by saying, for example, that 'Adam lay with his wife, and she became pregnant'. But you were brought up on the King James Bible, weren't you? Can you remember how it translates the act of intercourse?"

I remembered: "Sure, Stan. I can even quote it to you from memory: "And Adam knew Eve his wife; and she conceived, and bare Cain..." (Gen.4:1). I paused. "OK, I can buy that, but I also remember that Adam called Eve his 'wife' shortly after she'd been made from his side, and that was before the fall."

Suszana answered: "Yes, that's right, just as you were Stan's betrothed wife before you were married fully to him. The first reference is in Genesis 2:25, 'And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and they were not ashamed.' They were like our children who run around naked without the slightest concern. But they hadn't had sex. If they had, it's astonishing that Eve never got pregnant. She was certainly fertile. But Cain was the fruit of that illicit sex..."

"You mean, she got pregnant while in the Garden?"

"Yes," replied Stan. "That's why she gave birth to a killer. Genesis 4:1 is usually read to mean that Adam had sex with Eve after the fall, leading to Cain's conception."

"But why did she thank the Lord for the newly born child?" I couldn't make out what she was so pleased about if this was, in a way, a devilish conception.

"You have to remember that this was her first pregnancy, the first of the human race, in fact. Of course she would be excited and spontaneously grateful, for she also suffered the first labour pains. Her thankfulness could have been for many things that we aren't certain of, because her joy isn't explained. Some think she was grateful that the Lord kept His promise to her, and that he would grow to manhood. Others think she jumped to the unwarranted conclusion that Cain was the promised deliverer, the Messiah, who would reverse the effects of their terrible sin. But she was definitely wrong there. John tells us that Cain was the seed of the devil..."

"I've heard some say that Satan had sex with Eve," remarked Suszana, "and that was why he was so wicked, being Satan's literal seed."

"Yes, that's one theory," retorted Stan, "but it's false because it says quite clearly that Adam knew his wife, and she conceived, not Satan. The satanic seed was spiritual."

"Are you saying, then, then, that when men and women have unlawful sex, that Satan corrupts their offspring from the time of the womb?" I asked, half shocked.

"It pretty well looks that way, doesn't it?" said Stan soberly. "Unfortunatle the Bible says very little about him before he gets jealous of Abel and kills him. That's not to say that Cain didn't have a choice - we all have free agency, but that he was disadvantaged from birth."

These were indeed troubling thoughts. No wonder Stan was so very careful about sex and seemed to stand almost alone in condeming all sex outside marriage.

"Satan was swift into action," continued Stan. "He didn't wait around. What a bitter pill for Adam and Eve to swallow to watch their firstborn murder their second-born. Cain was a natural rebel. He knew which sacrifice was required but decided to do things his way and provoke the Lord. Abel, by contrast, was a true man of faith, and conceived during legal sex. He is the first listed amongst the heroes of faith (Heb.11). Yah'shua says he was righteous (Matt.23:35) and one of Yahweh's prophets (Mk.11:50-51)..."

"Maybe this is what angered Cain so much," suggested Suszana, "because he probably urged Cain to repent and believe Yahweh's Word - this only sent Cain into a blind rage."

"I agree," said Stan. "The Serpent was quickly striking at the Seed of Eve, corrupting her first son, and murdering her second one, so that the Messiah couldn't be born."

"Do you think that Abel was Yah'shua incarnated the first time round?" I asked.

Stan shook his head: "You are a deep thinker, but no, I don't think so. But I believe Satan thought he might be. Satan at least knew that he was in the line of the Messiah." He paused. "There's a funny twist to the Abel story which is very interesting. And that's Abel's name means "vapour" or "vanity"..."

"Are you sure, Stan?" asked Suszana.

"Yes. It means that which is transitory or temporary."

"So Adam and Eve knew all along, do you think?" I asked.

"That seems to be the case. But they had no idea of what was going to happen to Cain - his name means "acquisituon", by the way, a name spontaneously given by Eve in gratitude for the Lord keeping His promise. Maybe she wasn't supposed to know. Yet why tell her of Abel's fate? It is a mystery to be sure."

But Suszana understood as I was to learn later.

"OK, sweethearts, drop me off at Radzwiłł's Palace. I'll meet you back here at 12 o'clock. Will that do?"

"Fine," said Suszana, as Stan passed the moument and pulled the car up at Litewski Plaza. Suszana swopped seats and we were off to the main store.

"What do you think, Hélène?" Suszana asked me.

"I think I've got a lot to think about."