Glass (23 page)

60
DW
: I was quite the belle in my day, but I'm happy to say there's only one man in my life. Well, two, if you count The Father. Note the capitals.

61
Hosea 9:14 – ‘Give them, O LORD: what wilt thou give? give them a miscarrying womb and dry breasts.'

62
Matthew 15:11–20.

63
DW
: It does, however, crop up in Leviticus 19:11. It is at such a moment that a thinking person might come to think that the fabric of society itself must fray and tear unless we are ultimately answerable for our private actions. How can we hold any belief in absolutes, without a God to justify them? Humanism may be a noble house, but it is destined to subside in the sands of its foundations.

64
DW
: Fire is incredibly useful in the Bible, and turns up in all sorts of places: it is a warning; a punishment; a means of purification; fire is God Himself. Just as glass reigns over this volume, one might almost call the Bible
Fire.

65
DW
: Spinoza was one of the first to write all his philosophy using logic (or ‘geometric reasoning'), so one couldn't disagree with his conclusions unless one disagreed with his starting point. He was persecuted for preaching tolerance, and was killed by the dust from his day job grinding lenses to help others see clearly.

66
DW
: It is no surprise that the biblical injunction to love thy neighbour takes priority over brotherly love. The kind of love expressed by most biblical siblings hardly acts as an exemplar.

67
DW
: Bailiffs aren't generally allowed to take your clothing, bedding, work vehicle or anything belonging to your child, so the best thing to do if you're going bankrupt is to buy a nice car and expensive jewellery for your child.

68
DW
: The London Bridge Tower, as it was called during its planning, was dismissed by Prince Charles as ‘an enormous salt cellar' and outright condemned by English Heritage as a ‘shard of glass through the heart of historic London'. Unfortunately for them, that turned out to be a very arresting image, and the Mace group co-opted the name long before its completion.

69
DW
: This was true at the time, of course. You, dear reader, know that the stadium still stands, proud and empty.

70
DW
: Genesis 11: 4–9 gives us a troubling insight into God's possible motivations. Though the conventional reading of this passage interprets man's tower-building as an act of hubris, we see in the text that God destroys the tower for the same reason that he confounds our language: a united mankind is capable of achieving anything it can imagine. He seems almost to feel threatened by our collective potential.

‘And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth. And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men builded. And the Lord said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do. Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech. So the Lord scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city. Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the Lord did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the Lord scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth.'

71
DW
: Of course, Günter had, by now, read
Murder in the Metro,
but as far as we know he never saw how it fitted in.

72
DW
: This is the particular monument whose name is Monument, dedicated to those who suffered in the Great Fire of London. From 1681 to 1830, the plaque blamed the incident on Catholics, claiming that ‘On the third day, when it had now altogether vanquished all human counsel and resource, at the bidding, as we may well believe, of heaven, the fatal fire stayed its course and everywhere died out. But Popish frenzy, which wrought such horrors, is not yet quenched.' I suppose they felt they may as well put the tragedy to good use.

73
‘There's a window cleaner's cradle swinging wildly.' Call to London Fire Brigade (‘Shard Worker Struck on 72
^nd
Floor',
BBC Magazine,
2 July 2012).

Afterword

On the day that he died, I drove as fast as I could towards London, not knowing how he had been injured, with 1 Corinthians 13 running through my mind: ‘For we know in part, and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away. When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.'

Dean Angela Winterbottom, Salisbury, 14 September 2012

Acknowledgements

Firstly, I would like to thank anyone who has contributed to Wikipedia. It is the best answer we can give to profiteering, nay-saying, ignorance, Ludditism and the cult of the individual. You are Spartacus; you are Fuenteovejuna.

I must thank Jonny Pegg, literary agent and gentleman, who was Günter's first champion, and who negotiated a publishing deal from the maternity ward of his first child.

At Serpent's Tail, I'd like to thank those who worked to turn this from a Word doc into an actual book – particularly Nick Sheerin and my editor Hannah Westland who, I think we can all agree, did a fine job. It has been a pleasure to work with you.

Thanks to everyone at Conville & Walsh, for our years of conversations about books and what makes them tick; to the staff at the Ritzy in Brixton for allowing me to nurse small coffees for the hundreds of hours it took to write a novel; to Anthony Rowland, Bethan Williams, Cal Flyn, Cathy Thomas, David Wolf, Emad Akhtar, Hollie Tu, Jess Hammett, Luke Savva, Tom Campion and Tom Meltzer, who at different times have generously counselled me on writing when we should have been having fun. To Rebecca Meyer: one day I hope to justify your high esteem.

Lastly, thanks to my family. I am so happy that you are alive and functional. I'm doing all this to impress you.