The Adventures of God in His Search for the Black Girl Read online

  ‘But doesn’t it occur to them’, Voltaire asked, ‘that, rather than drag in you or extra-sensory perception, there is a much more economical and likely explanation of the phenomena they record, namely that they have miscalculated how the laws of chance work?’

  ‘If they started with an open mind’, God agreed, ‘they would conclude that what is shewn by the results of their experiments is their obvious need to revise their formulation of chance. However, what they start from is the fixed premiss that they have got their mathematics right, because it is only on that premiss that they can detect my designing hand interfering in the fall of their dice, and that is what they are determined to do.’

  ‘Humans are such inveterate mammals,’ Voltaire com mented. ‘They are never happy until they have put a construction on the universe that makes it a mirror of their own infancy, with a parental hand always in the offing to protect or chastise.’

  ‘Even if you give them straight statistics’, God said, ‘they misinterpret them into something personal to them. Whenever there is an air crash, their newspapers offer the reassurance that a passenger has only a one in, say, 137 million chance of crashing. But that reassurance isn’t reassuring enough. They cannot bear the impersonality of mathematics. They feel insulted by the idea that chance is quite unaware of the fact that the one it might light on in the 137 million is the, to himself, all-important one, the centre from which he sees the universe. So their journalists re-write the statistical information quite unjustifiably, in a way that, without saying so, brings in me. They imply that the statistics are my guarantee that I will protect each human being through 137 million defiances of gravity and that I become liable to punish him for his contumely only on his 137-million-and-first take-off.’

  ‘They would rather’, Voltaire said, ‘accept a personalised vindictiveness than an impersonal chance of survival. It’s more flattering, and more parental. Even in my day, when bombardments were so much less heavy than they have since become, you could always recognise an old soldier by his conviction that he could be killed only by a cannon-ball that had his number on it.’

  ‘Exactly,’ said God: ‘his number. People are forever personalising numbers.’

  Their passage along the shore had now brought God and Voltaire to a point from which they saw, a few yards ahead of them, a man standing immobile at the edge, gazing, with a yearning expression, towards the middle of the lake.

  ‘Luckily’, Voltaire whispered to God, ‘everyone here is already dead. Otherwise I should fear he was contemplating suicide and that the responsibility of rescue might fall to us. And, perpetually clement though the climate here is, I really do not feel up to a dip.’

  As, however, the sound of Voltaire’s and God’s approach reached him, the watcher by the lake abandoned his watching and ran interceptingly towards them, demanding with excitement:

  ‘What news?’

  ‘I’d hoped’, Voltaire answered, ‘that in the Elysian Fields one would be immune to the disagreeable surprises which on earth are called news.’

  ‘What of the experiments?’ the watcher by the lake insisted. ‘You must have passed them on your way. Have they proved ESP yet?’

  ‘We passed them,’ Voltaire said, ‘but without enquiring into their results.’

  ‘Phzz,’ said the watcher, in a disappointed and rather angry sigh like the air quitting a balloon. ‘Then I still don’t know whether I am free to appreciate the beauty of the scenery or not.’

  ‘Really?’ Voltaire queried. ‘How can that be affected by the results of the experiments?’

  ‘You are intellectually obtuse and spiritually insensitive,’ the watcher replied. ‘Look!’ He pointed with a rhetorical gesture towards the lake. ‘What do you see there?’

  ‘Water,’ said God.

  ‘H2O,’ said Voltaire and added, in explanation: ‘my mind is of an analytical temper.’

  ‘Reductionist!’ enunciated the watcher in a spitting voice; and turning away from his interlocutors, he resumed his stance of gazing at the lake together with his expression of yearning.

  ‘I don’t see the force of your argument,’ Voltaire protested, addressing himself, since that was all that was offered, to the watcher’s profile. ‘The fact that it is H2O doesn’t make it any the less water. And the fact that it’s water doesn’t make it any the less a lake, and a beautiful one.’

  ‘But what’s the point?’ the watcher, continuing to watch, asked sulkily.

  ‘What point does it need? It’s there.’

  ‘Suppose that’s all there is to it?’

  ‘It seems plenty to me,’ Voltaire said.

  ‘But suppose it came to be there just through sheer blind chance?’

  ‘It still wouldn’t be any the less there,’ Voltaire replied, ‘or any different or any less valuable to you. Through what agency do you want it to be there?’

  ‘As the result of design, of course – God’s design,’ the watcher said.

  ‘What’s the point of design?’ Voltaire asked. ‘What’s the point of God?’

  ‘What a silly question,’ the watcher replied.

  ‘It seems to me it’s you who are the reductionist,’ Voltaire said. ‘You want to deny all importance to this lake in its own right and reduce it to a mere function in some design.’

  Leaving the watcher to his watching, Voltaire and God walked on.

  In a moment, however, they heard footsteps hastening after them.

  ‘I’m sure you can’t be as obtuse as you want me to think,’ the watcher called from behind. ‘You’re merely trying to pose as tough.’

  ‘Tough?’ cried Voltaire, halting. ‘I promise you, no one has ever had a more acute sense of his own fragility.’ And at the thought he leaned a little more invalidishly on God’s arm.

  ‘Surely’, the watcher urged, ‘you feel a need for there to be more to the world than meets the eye? If this were all there is, wouldn’t you feel cheated, left suspended, as one does by one of those stories that turn out to have no point?’

  ‘No,’ said Voltaire, shaking his head. After a moment he added: ‘I should feel cheated if there was a point and it turned out to be inadequate to what had gone before.’

  And taking leave of the watcher, he and God resumed their stroll.

  Before they had gone much further they noticed that the surrounding terrain was no longer uneven. In unspoken accord, they turned away from the lake, which the watcher had perhaps rather put them off, and began to walk through the Fields again.

  ‘“One of those stories that turn out to have no point,”’ Voltaire presently muttered. ‘I don’t know that Candide has a point, exactly.’

  God made no answer.

  They covered some distance in silence. Then Voltaire observed:

  ‘Everything round here looks remarkably familiar.’

  ‘I was just thinking the same,’ said God.

  ‘I deduce’, Voltaire said, ‘that it must have been a circular lake. We appear to have returned to the place we set off from.’

  ‘Well,’ God said undauntedly, ‘since I’ve no idea where to go looking for the Black Girl, one direction is as good as another to me.’

  ‘Don’t be so sure,’ Voltaire replied, stopping suddenly short; and he pointed to a few paces in advance.

  There, directly on the route Voltaire and God were taking, were the historian, just as they had left him (sitting, that was to say, asleep on a marble bench), and, opposite him at a few yards’ distance, the humble Christian, still on his knees and still praying.

  ‘O God,’ said God in dismay.

  ‘Shh,’ Voltaire replied.

  Rising to tip-toe, and gesturing to God to do the same, Voltaire led the way stealthily through the strait between the two figures.

  Just as they appeared to have made a successful passage, the humble Christian called out loudly:

  ‘God!’

  ‘Perhaps it’s only a particularly imploring prayer,’ Voltaire whispered to God.

 
But the humble Christian was scrambling to his feet.

  ‘You go on,’ God whispered quickly to Voltaire. ‘I’ll join you as soon as I can. You might meanwhile be able to locate the Black Girl.’

  Voltaire hastened to obey and only just got clear before the humble Christian advanced on God, saying:

  ‘God! There’s something I forgot to say.’

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  ‘Really?’ God replied. ‘I should have thought by now you’ve said all the prayers that were ever composed.’

  ‘You shan’t get out of it by flippancy this time,’ the humble Christian said sternly. ‘You know quite well what I mean. What I mean is that I’ve now realised what I ought to have said at the point where you broke off our previous discussion by confusing me with arguments.’

  ‘O,’ God said.

  ‘It was on the subject’, the humble Christian pursued, ‘of how we know that God is love. Well, I’ve thought of the answer: the gospels.’

  ‘I can’t agree with you,’ God answered. ‘Such inspiration as there is in those confused narratives was, in my opinion, added by the translators. I should say that the New Testament was improved at each stage of its transposition from Greek to Latin, and, severally, to German and English. If you go back to the original, the Greek turns out to be rather weak and the general effect rather sentimental. And before you accuse me of prejudice, let me say that I can think offhand of at least two professional literary critics who share my opinion, Brigid Brophy and Matthew Arnold.’

  ‘Why will you’, the humble Christian asked with a petulant stamp, ‘reduce everything to a literary question? Literature has nothing to do with it. I’m speaking of the gospel story.’

  ‘But isn’t a story literary?’ God asked.

  ‘Not when it’s true.’

  ‘I doubt if you can be right,’ God said. ‘I am thinking of, for example, De Bello Gallico, which has a much better-authenticated claim to be a true story than the gospels. Yet without Caesar’s style would anybody now remember those obscure imperialist wars? But for his lapidary formulation of the fact, would anyone care that all Gaul was once divided into three parts? Suppose we had to do without all the literary stylists of ancient Rome. We should know, from the archaeological remains, of the power and extent of that empire. But do you suppose it would have so impressed itself on the imagination of the whole of western culture? Shew me the city that has earned the title of “the eternal city” on the strength of archaeology. The message archaeology demonstrates is that cities are ephemeral.’

  ‘What’, the humble Christian demanded, with a show of strained patience, ‘has all that to do with the subject under discussion?’

  ‘Nothing,’ God said disarmingly. ‘I am often carried away when I think of literature. I suppose it comes of being a fictitious character.’

  ‘You’re no more a fictitious character than I am,’ the humble Christian said crossly. ‘You just run away from your responsibilities – and also from detailed discussion. I am not prepared to talk about so trivial a matter as literature. My point lies not in the style of the gospel story but in its content.’

  ‘O yes?’ said God. ‘Which bits of it have you in mind? The bit where the deity resigns himself to the perpetuation of poverty? How does that shew that he is love? Or the long-drawn torture scene towards the end, thanks to which you can’t enter a picture gallery in the western world without confronting detailed and realistic (and often, I grant, very fine) depictions of torture, whereas depictions of the act of love are still considered too “obscene” to be put on public display? How does that establish that God is love?’

  ‘You’re being wilfully perverse,’ the humble Christian said. ‘And though you’ve switched arts, you’re still considering the matter merely from an aesthetic point of view.’

  ‘Perhaps, then,’ God said, ‘you mean that dwelt-on fantasy about how people are to suffer in hell, in “the fire that never shall be quenched”?13 Or perhaps you have in mind the deity’s declared intention of bringing the day of judgment upon people unawares, so as to catch as many as possible in sinful activities and thus snare them into hell?14 I really don’t see how that shews him to consist of love.’

  ‘You’re not going to succeed in confusing me this time,’ the humble Christian replied. ‘You know perfectly well that what I mean is that the gospel shews us a purely loving life, entirely devoted to doing good.’

  ‘I don’t know that I’d give the description “doing good”’, God said, ‘to causing a fig-tree to wither up15 merely because it couldn’t provide you with a fig out of season.16 I think I’d sooner describe it as childish petulance.’

  ‘You know that’s not what I mean.’

  ‘Then what is? The miracle cures? Those, I would agree, probably are instances of doing good.’

  ‘No, no,’ the humble Christian said quickly, ‘I’m perfectly prepared to admit that those probably never took place – at least, not in the literal sense. As stories, they have, of course, great spiritual value.’

  ‘What a sceptic you are,’ God exclaimed. ‘I don’t find it at all hard to conceive that something took place. Of course, both the illness and the cure might have been to some extent illusory. The illness might have been hysterical, and the “cure” hypnotic. But within the limits of that reservation, there are plenty of quite well-attested cases where hypnotists, fakirs, faith-healers, herbalists, Christian Scientists, witch doctors and even, on occasion, doctors holding orthodox western medical degrees have managed to perform something in the way of a miracle cure. Indeed, miracle cures have been attributed to emperors of Rome – and were at least regularly expected of kings of England. I don’t see why you deny these not uncommon powers to the hero of the gospels. Unless you think he has no basis in historical fact at all?’

  ‘I don’t think any such thing,’ the humble Christian said. ‘You’re trying to tie me up again – a thing he never did. He spoke in simple everyday terms that people could understand. He didn’t muddle them with arguments. He taught through parables.’

  ‘In which’, God commented, ‘he often seems to have muddled himself.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ the humble Christian pronounced. ‘What could be more clear than the parable of the Good Samaritan? What, indeed, could be better proof of the idea I’m trying to get over to you, that God is love? You will remember that during our previous discussion I was able to assure you that your moral character had been exemplary all along, since, as early as the Old Testament, you gave the highly moral command “thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself”? Well, it is in the parable of the Good Samaritan that the New Testament inaugurates a new moral era, by making the message universal and shewing that everyone is our neighbour.’

  ‘I agree’, God said, ‘that Christians often speak as though that were the message of the story. But is it?’

  ‘Of course,’ the humble Christian said briskly. ‘And there couldn’t be a clearer or pithier way of putting it.’

  ‘Well,’ God said, ‘let’s see. You no doubt remember the occasion that prompted the parabolist to tell the story?’

  ‘Perfectly,’ the humble Christian replied. ‘Luke X, verse 25 onwards, if I mistake not. A certain lawyer – something of a barrack-room lawyer, evidently, as we should put it nowadays – asked him about the Mosaic Law, quoted the command from Leviticus about loving thy neighbour as thyself, and then asked: “And who is my neighbour?”’

  ‘And what was the answer?’ God asked.

  ‘The answer was the parable about a man who went on a journey and fell among thieves or got, as we should say nowadays, mugged. As he lay bleeding on the road, two stuck-up intellectuals passed and saw him but offered no help. It was the third passer-by, the humble Samaritan, who picked him up and took care of him.’

  ‘Yes,’ said God. ‘And what moral did the parabolist draw?’

  ‘He said: “Go, and do thou likewise,”’ the humble Christian promptly replied.

  ‘It’s true’, God said, ‘t
hat he added that, perhaps feeling he’d muffed the point and wanting to draw some generally charitable message from the story. But how did he answer the lawyer’s enquiry as to who this neighbour is whom we are all commanded to love?’

  ‘He said: “Which now of these three, thinkest thou, was neighbour unto him that fell among the thieves?”’

  ‘So the answer to “Who is the person I’m commanded to love?” is “The one who takes care of you,”’ God said. ‘I can’t see that as a great moral revolution or even as very cogent teaching of accepted morals. I should have thought it was a matter of common human gratitude. To say that you owe love to the person who tends your wounds rather than to those who ignore them seems scarcely worth saying. Your hero might have done better if he had employed arguments. In resorting to a parable, he seems to have lost his own thread.’

  ‘You’re quibbling,’ the humble Christian said scornfully. ‘And in any case, you can no doubt prove anything you care to, if you pick out bits of the gospel piecemeal.’