The Adventures of God in His Search for the Black Girl Page 13
‘Naturally’, the humble Christian said, ‘I weigh things in a much more serious scale than a literary one: a moral scale. And Genesis wins.’
‘You have unconventional morals,’ said Voltaire. ‘To my mind, Treasure Island is plainly an innocent book, since it doesn’t try to deceive anyone into taking it for fact, whereas Genesis is guilty of fraud.’
‘Can’t you see’, the humble Christian squeaked angrily, ‘that you’re just shewing how ungrateful you are. God, in his loving-kindness, took into account the intellectual level men had reached at the time, and in Genesis he gave them spiritual truth in terms they could understand.’
‘You made objections when I compared Genesis to a book for children,’ God complained. ‘Still, it’s good of you to acquit me of intent to deceive. I’m afraid, however, that you can’t let me off totally. By your theory I’m guilty of continuing to thrust the fairy tale of Genesis on you long after you could have understood the scientific truth. You were capable of understanding an evolutionary theory at least by the first century B.C., when Lucretius wrote a sketch of one. But I wantonly kept you in the dark till A.D. 1859.’
‘If’, the historian said to God in a helpful though drowsy voice, ‘you should require any further assistance with dates, apply to me. Don’t hesitate to ask, even if I should appear to have nodded off.’
The humble Christian gave a brief glance of pity at the historian, whose head had indeed lapsed sideways and whose shoulders were hunched, and then turned back to confront God, to whom he exclaimed scornfully:
‘Lucretius!’
‘A great poet,’ God murmured.
‘Perhaps, if you judge by merely poetic standards. But devoid of spiritual insight and profundity. Why, he was an atheist – and not even a consistent one. His tract on atheism begins with an invocation to the goddess Venus.’
‘The rigorous suppression of the feminine in me’, God said, giving a shake to his long, rather nightdressy robe, ‘is one of the aspects of the Judaeo-Christian tyranny that I find most irksome. You puritan, philistine Christians destroyed the culture of antiquity, suppressed Lucretius’s great poem, lost command of the Latin Lucretius wrote, for which you substituted the jingles and jog-trots of church Latin, and eventually got yourselves into such a dark age of pious illiteracy that a Christian polemicist, in the course of delivering a sermon against the pagan divinities, could actually suppose that Venus was male. Lucretius must have shaken in his tomb with fury. To say nothing of what Sappho did in hers when her devotion to Venus was inadvertently rendered heterosexual. I suppose the ignorant Christian assumed (a) that Venus, since it ends in -us, must be a second-declension noun like dominus4 and (b) that any important deity, albeit pagan, must be male.’
‘No doubt’, the humble Christian said saccharinely, ‘the poor man knew no better. You shouldn’t get so angry with him. I’m sure he was a good, humble man, doing his best.’
‘He was arrogant enough to make assumptions both ungrammatical and sex-prejudiced. In fact he reminds me distinctly of you.’
‘Of me?’ the humble Christian demanded in fury.
‘How contemptuously you spoke of “the pagan goddess Venus”. The world is cluttered with bits of mythology purporting to represent the divine, and you claim you can pick out the one that’s correct and, on the strength of its authority, dismiss all the others.’
‘That’s just where you’re wrong’, the humble Christian answered warmly, ‘and out-of-date. Modern practice isn’t a bit like that. We hear very little these days of “the heathen in his blindness”, and we scarcely send out missionaries at all. I don’t in the least “dismiss” other religions. Everyone must find his own way to God. I respect the divine in all its forms.’
‘Look,’ God said, becoming a thin, unbending human figure with the curly-horned head of a ram.
‘So what?’ asked the humble Christian.
(‘The hieroglyph reads,’ Voltaire whispered to Gibbon, ‘“God is a supporter of Derby County Football Club” – a revelation I find as hard to believe as any other.’)
The ram-headed figure changed into a mummified pygmy.
‘Ptah!’ said the humble Christian. ‘I don’t think that’s particularly funny.’
‘You weren’t meant to,’ God said, changing back into the form his interlocutors had become used to (that of a respectable, tallish, rather Roman-Senatorial man with a white beard).
(‘I confess’, Gibbon whispered to Voltaire, ‘to some relief. I have small taste for the bizarre decorative modes of an ante-classical era.’)
‘Then what was I meant to do?’ the humble Christian demanded of God.
‘I was hoping to see you respect the divine in all its forms. If you’d prefer, I could become a sex-maniacal swan with a taste for whatever bestiality may be called from the beast’s point of view.’
‘I might respect you in those forms’, the humble Christian said, ‘were I an ancient Egyptian or an ancient Greek.’
‘Or were you’, Voltaire said, ‘Leda. In which case we might witness the palpable paradox of a god serving a human.’
‘A schoolboyishly naughty comment’, commented the humble Christian to Voltaire, ‘that underlines the puerility of the whole argument. The point I was making was that those religions are obsolete.’
‘You seem to have admitted’, God said, ‘that the reality of a god depends on the extantness of his worshippers.’
‘I have not! You twitted me with evolution, but you seem incapable of taking an evolutionary view yourself. Primitive religions have been superseded by the higher religions.’
‘Naïve evolutionists’, the psychoanalyst said, ‘often speak as though the amoeba had been superseded by man.’
‘I was drawing only an analogy, not an exact parallel’, the humble Christian said airily, ‘between biological and spiritual evolution. Anyone can see that monotheism is more advanced, spiritually and psychologically, than polytheism.’
‘I’ve always’, God said, ‘found polytheism more flexible, imaginative and stimulating as well as a more plausible way of explaining how two people can feel seemingly god-given moral imperatives impelling them in opposite directions. I say nothing of the relief it would afford me, selfishly, to share my responsibilities with a pantheon. However, if you’re convinced that monotheism is superior, why are you trinitarian and not a Jew?’
‘The Christian revelation was added to the Jewish religion.’
‘So, after that, was the Islamic revelation, which doesn’t include the Trinity. If you’re so strict a monotheist, shouldn’t you be a Mohammedan?’
‘I stand by the original monotheism revealed to Moses’, the humble Christian replied, ‘rather than a later embroidery of the idea.’
‘But by your evolutionary theory of religions,’ God said, ‘monotheism according to Mohammed must, being later, be more advanced.’
‘In a matter so fundamental as monotheism’, the humble Christian said quickly, ‘it’s obvious that the earliest form must be the purest, as coming the more directly from God.’
‘Then you must’, God said, ‘take up the monotheist form of ancient Egyptian religion. The Pharaoh Akhenaten was a monotheist, and he came before Moses. Didn’t he, historian?’
‘Hhrm,’ the historian said without moving.
‘You’ve just shewn’, the humble Christian said triumphantly to God, ‘how thoroughly silly you are. How could I take up the religion of Akhenaten? It’s extinct.’
‘Then you do’, God said, ‘believe that a god is real only so long as he has worshippers extant?’
‘Grrr-ah!’ the humble Christian cried in exasperation, raising his arms as though to call the wrath of heaven onto God. ‘You won’t get anywhere by tying me up in arguments. I don’t profess to be an intellectual. I’m just a simple, humble believer, with a sense of reverence. As such, I know one great truth, which intellectuals, for all their cleverness, can’t see: the main thing about religion is not argument but prayer.’
‘Pitter-patter, pitter-patter,’ whispered the psychoanalyst. ‘And yet they won’t have it that Freud was right.’
‘I will,’ God whispered back consolingly. ‘One can scarcely overlook the Oedipal preoccupations of human beings when they call one interchangeably the Son of Man, the Father of all and the Holy Infant of Prague.’
‘Quia tuum est regnum, et potentia, et gloria,’ the humble Christian said.
Stirred by the rhythm, the historian snored.
‘In a way’, God remarked, allowing his voice to resume its normal volume since he perceived that this time the humble Christian would not be distracted from his prayers even by the voice of God, ‘I wish they had a genuine conviction of my existence. Then they might not be so bothered about keeping me going.’
‘You pointed out’, the psychoanalyst replied, ‘that they in fact believe you’ll last only so long as their belief in you does. They feel a great burden of responsibility towards you.’
‘They’re over-protective,’ God said. ‘We fictitious characters are tougher than they think.’
‘O Lord’, prayed the humble Christian, ‘who hast taught us that all our doings without charity are nothing worth; Send thy holy Ghost, and pour into our hearts …’
‘Not only’, said God, ‘are they, like most over-protective people, thoroughly hectoring; they are constantly informing me of things which in the first place, they inform me, I informed them of.’
‘They lead you’, Voltaire said, ‘as unscrupulous barristers lead witnesses.’
‘They certainly put words into my mouth.’
‘Vox dei, vox populi,’ said Gibbon.
Hearing a Latin cadence, ‘Et cum spiritu tuo,’ the humble Christian responded.
‘I really must’, God said, ‘devise a way out.’
‘O God who’, prayed the humble Christian (it chancing to be the 5th of May), ‘in order to crush the enemies of thy church and to restore divine worship, didst vouchsafe to elect blessed Pius to the supreme pontificate …’
‘And they affect to think’, God said, ‘that I need annual reminders of all my supposed doings. They’re like an officious secretary who considers herself a “treasure” because she keeps a pop-up card index that reminds her to remind the boss when his aunt’s birthday is coming along … Only, in my case’, God gloomily added, ‘it’s of my own birthday that they insist on giving me warning weeks in advance.’
‘Laudamus te. Benedicimus te. Adoramus te.’
‘I feel’, God said, ‘like an enormous balloon for whose nozzle they have lost the string. So they suppose they must hold me in being by continually breathing their prayers into me. Put away’, God added resignedly, ‘your box of pins, Monsieur Voltaire. I’ve been punctured often enough, and most neatly by you. What’s required is to puncture the relentless indefatigability my worshippers shew about patching me up.’
‘Yet were you’, Gibbon remarked to Voltaire, ‘to stick your pins into our praying friend, he would merely, with that recklessness of logic which has from its inception characterised his sect, claim that the courage (or the perverse pleasure) with which he endures pain bears objective witness to the reality of his god.’
‘Glorificamus te. Gratias agimus tibi propter magnam gloriam tuam.’
‘You must feel uncomfortably’, Voltaire said to God, ‘over-inflated.’
‘Almost the nastiest aspect of the nasty character they wish on me’, God agreed, ‘is my egotism. Night and day they appease my vanity with praises no less overblown than repetitive. And such a monster do they think me that they claim that, should they omit to praise me, I’ll punish them.’
‘Quoniam tu solus sanctus. Tu solus Dominus. Tu solus altissimus …’, the humble Christian went indefatigably on.
CHAPTER FOUR
The humble Christian was still praying when the psychoanalyst bade farewell to the others and went to keep an appointment with a patient.
(The theologian had left the group long before, without saying Goodbye and without looking back.)
‘I must be off, too,’ God said, ‘if I’m ever to find the Black Girl. But to leave during the prayers seems ruder for me.’
‘O Lord our heavenly father,’ the humble Christian was just beginning again.
‘Yet surely’, God said, rising resolutely to his feet, ‘if I tiptoe away, my absence will never be noticed.’
‘… high and mighty, King of kings, Lord of lords …’
‘There’s no denying’, God said, lingering a moment to listen, ‘that Archbishop Cranmer was a lovely writer of rhetoric. I do hope that, when all this literal belief is over, the Latin and Anglican liturgies will still be read as literature.’
‘… the only Ruler of princes …’
‘They could be given in concert performance,’ God suggested. ‘Only not, perhaps, quite as often as once a week.’
‘So desirable a state of affairs’, Gibbon remarked, ‘is unlikely to come about. The people lack a proper respect for literature.’
‘And lacking it,’ said Voltaire, ‘they have an exaggerated respect for the evil they suppose can be wrought by improper literature.’
‘I never’, Gibbon rejoined earnestly, ‘have been able to overcome my sense of injustice that the reproach of impropriety was brought against the concluding volumes of my own work.’
‘Of your work?’ God took up, pausing in surprise. ‘I can understand that such a charge is sometimes made against the work of fiction of which I am the unwilling hero. Not that anything ever comes of the charge in my case, because it’s made only by liberals, who don’t object to impropriety and don’t enjoy burning books anyway. But your work, Mr Gibbon—’
‘—merely and justifiably’, Gibbon continued, snatching (such was his indignation) the sentence out of God’s mouth, ‘rehearses the facts of history. So, indeed, I say in the second of the three defences I advance in my Memoirs.5 It is, by the bye, a defence that Voltaire could scarcely advance for his fantastical poem on the subject, ostensibly, of Joan of Arc.’
‘I might claim’, Voltaire replied, ‘that the first line alone of my poem contains more succinct autobiographical truth than the whole of your Memoirs.’ And placing his hand heroically on his chest, Voltaire recited:
‘Je ne suis né pour célébrer les saints’.6
‘Your delivery does not move me’, Gibbon said, ‘to change my former opinion of it. But I am delighted to hear you again reciting your own work.’
‘Please recite the whole poem,’ God requested, quickly resuming his seat.
‘Please don’t,’ the historian said, waking up for a moment. ‘I understand from the best authorities that it is historically inaccurate, scurrilous and a bore.’ He went back to sleep.
‘People usually find scurrilous books a bore’, Voltaire said, ‘after they’ve finished them.’
‘Which doesn’t prevent them’, Gibbon observed, ‘from suppressing scurrilous books on the grounds that other people, after finishing them, might be over-excited.’
‘It’s certainly remarkable’, Voltaire rejoined, ‘how many people frown on all sexual pleasures except the sexual pleasure they themselves take in suppressing other people’s. To cut the sex out of a fellow being’s reading-matter is, of course, an act of mentally castrating him. This is an excellent method of keeping down one’s rivals. Consequently, to censor the reading-matter of the masses is regularly regarded as one of the perks of office, and to censor the reading-matter of children as one of the rights one acquires on reaching adulthood. A Catholic priest, of course, regards himself as father, and therefore, censor, to all his parishioners. In England, censorship is an extension of legislation and, in keeping with democratic tradition, the individual citizen may take it on himself to incite the law to act. Indeed, my lifelong fascination with your countrymen, my dear Gibbon, has been enhanced since my death by the spectacle of their
taking to the practice of digging out, hunting down and suppressing sexy books on the scale of a national blood sport. Seldom has a nation so blatantly displayed its hatred of literature. English law leaves flesh-and-blood citizens free to perform almost any sexual act they can get a partner to consent to, but it prosecutes the identical sexual acts when they are performed by fictitious characters.’
‘Not all fictitious characters’, God remarked with regret, ‘are allowed the chance. My own creators – or, rather, if I may adapt a term of Freud’s, my secondary elaborators – pronounced7 me officially “without body, parts, or passions”. It severely limits my adventures. Indeed, suppressed though the poor girl still is in Great Britain, I often envy my fellow fictitious character Fanny Hill. Not only does she have a livelier time than I. She also has the comfort of knowing that, if she provokes her readers to anything, it will be to harmless and pleasurable activities like sexual intercourse or masturbation, whereas I, as well as being held responsible for deaths by earthquake and flood, can be said to have stirred up crusades, civil wars, ideological tyranny, inquisition, witch-burning, massacres …’
‘I fear’, Gibbon said with commiseration, ‘that, shewing as you do no lust but much bloodlust, you come into the literary category of rattling good yarns for the young. No doubt that’s why you’re often considered indispensable to education.’
‘Sometimes’, Voltaire added, ‘to the verge of exclusiveness.’ And turning to Gibbon, Voltaire pursued: ‘If, my dear Gibbon, you have kept a posthumous eye on the Parliament you once sat in, you will have noticed that, under the Education Act it passed in 1944, religious instruction is the only form of instruction that it specifically and positively obliges English schools to give.’
‘Parliament’s carelessness’, Gibbon replied, ‘about the general education of the citizens adds to the whimsy with which it legislates about obscene books. It chearfully entrusts to a magistrate or a jury the nice task of deciding when a book is so bad as to be devoid of literary merit, but it doesn’t trouble to enquire first whether magistrate or jury has ever read a good book.’