The Adventures of God in His Search for the Black Girl (21 page)

‘In “advanced” societies’, God replied, ‘vivisection
is
an everyday occurrence. In Britain there are 100,000 experiments on living animals a week. In the United States, experiments on living animals are
such
an everyday occurrence that nobody bothers to keep precise records, but the figure is certainly even higher, probably a million or so a week.’

‘Well, in that case’, the humble Christian said, ‘your parable is obviously much less inventive and imaginative than the ones in the New Testament.’

‘You don’t think I made it up?’ God asked.

‘Didn’t you?’

‘No,’ God said. ‘The experiment was devised and carried out by two scientists in the United States, after they had watched film of the riots at the Democratic Party Convention in Chicago in 1968. I read an account of it in the
Sunday
Times
(London) of 31 December 1972.’

‘Really!’ the humble Christian exclaimed to God, giving a further shrug and, thereby, a further bounce to the historian’s head. ‘You had the nerve to call the New Testament parables
muddled, and now it turns out you can’t tell fact from fiction yourself.’

‘I don’t think
I
’m muddled on that point,’ God replied in a considering tone. ‘Surely the truth is that lots of people are muddled on that point in relation to me?’

‘Exactly!’ the humble Christian said, as though pouncing. ‘And you try to muddle them further. Don’t think I’ve forgotten how you tried to trap me into saying that the hero of the
gospels
never had an historical existence. Here!’

The humble Christian looked sideways at the historian’s head on his shoulder and gave it this time a deliberate and violent jog.

‘Wake up and make a useful contribution to the discussion. Speaking as an historian, you can confirm that Jesus had an historical existence, can’t you?’

The historian sat up straight on the bench, opened his eyes and after a moment asked:

‘Do you mean Jesus
of
Nazareth
? You amateurs always forget that there have been many persons of that name, some of whom unquestionably had historical existences.’

‘I mean’, the humble Christian said impatiently, ‘the only one who matters.’ A slight muscular tremor, whose vibrato was audible in his voice, betrayed that the humble Christian felt frustrated by the fact that the historian, in waking up, had
removed
all pretext for the Christian to jog him again.

‘That field of study’, the historian pronounced, ‘is highly specialised. Many of the best authorities consider that he had, and many of them consider that he hadn’t.’

The historian’s head began to lapse sideways again, this time away from his companion on the bench. When the side of his cheek touched the marble seat, he suddenly caught up his legs and curled them onto the bench, with the result that he was lying on his side, the soles of his feet flat against the humble Christian’s thigh, to which he gave a kick before he settled back into sleep.

‘I get no support,’ the humble Christian said, sliding along the bench out of range. ‘There isn’t a drop of simple faith or loyalty left in the world.’ He looked directly at God and breathed a sigh. ‘I can do no more.’

‘In that case,’ God said, ‘I’ll be on my way.’

‘I suppose this Black Girl you’re so set on finding is some
type of pagan idol?’ the humble Christian surmised. ‘Well, I’ve tried to reason with you, but you’re not amenable to reason.
I
can’t be expected to save you from your mistakes. Go, and leave me in peace.’

‘I take that to be the Christian version’, God said, ‘of the eastern farewell “Go in peace”.’

As he spoke these words, God sketched a quick salaam to the humble Christian, walked briskly past the marble bench and set off down a broad track where the grass was smooth and sweet-smelling and illuminated by the sunshine into the colours of malachite.

‘You never miss a chance to slander Christianity!’
complained
the humble Christian’s voice after him. ‘Everybody knows it’s Christianity that’s the religion of peace! Jesus came to bring peace to earth!’

The broad track God was pursuing became a broad avenue, bordered on each side by a spiky line of oleanders.

Their leaves, bleached and brittle under the sun, made a faint tinfoilish rubbing sound as they were interpenetrated by bees.

In the refuge of the avenue, God paused long enough to reply over his shoulder:

‘I thought you believed he said “Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword.”’
23

Then, pleased with his reply, God resumed his advance, his steps slightly sprung on the handsome, bouncy grass.

He scanned to left and right, as he went, into the interstices between the narrow oleander leaves, looking for a glimpse of Voltaire.

‘That’s a
metaphor
!’ called the humble Christian’s voice, distant but distinct as it pursued God down the avenue, its tone of disparagement and indignation still perceptible. ‘Jesus is the prince of peace!’

The cry produced a slight echo, beneath which God thought he detected a small, dry stirring in one of the oleanders.

Halting, he peered between the leaves as though into a tapestry forest, in which, indeed, they might have been large, almost tacking, stitches.

He perceived a square inch, bright as a tropical bird, of
embroidered
waistcoat.

‘Monsieur Voltaire!’

‘Ah! At last!’ said Voltaire, stepping out onto the grassy track but bending a stem of oleander into accompanying him, as he held one of its buds between his thumb and first finger. ‘From the sound of it, I thought you still engaged in religious dispute. I was passing the time in considering how. one would go about pruning a plant like this.’

‘Haven’t you’, God asked disappointedly, ‘been looking for the Black Girl?’

Voltaire’s answer was cut off by a further cry from the humble Christian:

‘Prince of peace!’

‘Peace!’ the echo repeated down the avenue and in and out through the oleanders.

‘Prince of—’ the humble Christian’s voice began to reiterate. But it was itself cut off: by the deep thump, like a huge
drumbeat
, of a distant detonation.

The oleander stem was whipped out of Voltaire’s hold, and the grassy ground on which he and God were standing suffered a convulsion, as though a monster was undulating beneath it.

Though naturally startled, neither Voltaire nor God was frightened. They had become accustomed, over several
centuries
, to the fact that the religious dissensions of the Irish
sometimes
reached to the very floor of heaven.

Clinging to one another, they managed to maintain their balance until the convulsion lessened and stopped.

Glancing back up the avenue, God saw that, though the historian, whose profession probably precluded surprise at the event, was still asleep along the top of the marble bench, the humble Christian was now beneath it and on his knees again, though cramped into position more Muslim than Christian.

‘If only’, Voltaire remarked, offering God his arm and leading him down the avenue, whose formerly smooth surface was now hummocked as though by moles, ‘people would pay attention to psychoanalysis. They would learn the importance of proper names, which are highly significant both in primitive civilisations and, as dreams shew, to the unconscious; and at the same time they would learn not to dismiss puns, which are the very idiom of the language of the unconscious, as mere
non-significant bad jokes. Only an idiot could doubt that the inhabitants of that island are influenced by the fact that their country is called Ireland or land of wrath.’

‘Quite so,’ God replied. ‘What, however, about the Black Girl? Have you located her?’

‘Not exactly,’ Voltaire replied, handing God round the last of the hummocks and attaining smooth ground again.

‘How do you mean “not exactly”?’ God asked. ‘Surely you either have or haven’t?’

‘I believe’, said Voltaire, ‘that I’ve solved your problem.’

But before God could ask what he meant by that, they saw the psychoanalyst approaching them up the avenue.

An exchange of polite greetings followed, during which the psychoanalyst enquired amicably of God ‘Have you found the Black Girl?’ at the same time as God asked the psychoanalyst in a friendly tone ‘Have you cured your patient?’

Both politely disclaimed being the first to answer.

At last the psychoanalyst consented to lead with his reply, which was:

‘Not exactly.’

‘How,’ Voltaire asked, ‘do you mean?’

‘Perhaps we too unthinkingly took over, from medicine, the concept of cure,’ the psychoanalyst said. ‘Where the body is concerned, it is comparatively easy to work on the assumption that “ill health” means that something isn’t functioning
efficiently
. We, on the other hand, face the problem that it is often the maddest people who function with the most perfect
efficiency
from their own point of view. It is their acquaintance or society as a whole that experiences disruptions in its efficiency as a result of their condition. Yet neither can we equate “healthy” with “normal”. In human conduct, the only norm that isn’t merely someone’s private beau idéal is a statistical norm. And if we adopted that as our criterion of health, we should have to set out to “cure” people like you, Voltaire, of your abnormal and unhealthy cleverness.’

‘I’m glad you recognise your limitations,’ Voltaire said, ‘but sad if they include your not having done your patient any good whatever.’

‘Don’t be too modest on my behalf,’ the psychoanalyst replied. ‘My patient and I have both learnt a great deal from our
sessions
,
and I defy you to maintain that that isn’t good for us.’

‘That answer would scarcely satisfy your opponents,’
Voltaire
said. ‘I am of course emphatically not one of them. But I am sure they would leap in to demand whether what you learn is like what you might “learn” from listening to a string quartet or whether it can be formulated and then tested by
experiment
– whether, in fact, it is art or science.’

‘And I’, the psychoanalyst replied, ‘shouldn’t feel too
pressing
an obligation to answer them. If the categories in which they choose to think about reality are not adequate to my experience, then it’s for them to look to their categories. I shall just quietly pursue my practice of learning, without bothering too ardently about the label that should be put on what I learn. And now’ (the psychoanalyst turned to God) ‘tell me whether you’ve found the Black Girl – or, at the least, someone who will undertake to rehabilitate you.’

‘I don’t know,’ God said. ‘Monsieur Voltaire was just explaining to me—’

But there was a further interruption: a crash among the oleanders, from one of which, as the little group in the avenue turned to look towards it, half the figure of Edward Gibbon emerged.

‘My dear Mr Gibbon,’ God exclaimed solicitously as he hurried towards him and, holding the woody stems apart, helped him to free himself.

‘Thank you,’ Gibbon said, and joined the group. ‘Please to excuse my somewhat abstracted, if not indeed distracted, state.’

‘May we hope it signifies’, Voltaire asked, ‘that you have made up your mind to write another book?’

‘Not’, Gibbon replied, cursorily brushing some woody dust off his clothes, ‘exactly. I find myself intensely desirous of
writing
one, but I cannot fix on its theme.’

‘The cause of rehabilitating God’, Voltaire said, ‘may yet lay your talents under requisition – indeed, such as they are, all our talents. But first I must take God off on a brief expedition. Would you and’ (Voltaire addressed the psychoanalyst) ‘you wait for us here?’

‘It seems a pleasant enough place to wait in,’ the
psychoanalyst
acquiesced.

‘I do not suppose’, Gibbon said bleakly, ‘my mental fever
will be worse in one place than in another.’

‘We’ll be as quick as we can,’ Voltaire promised, and he led God away down the avenue.

‘Perhaps’, they heard the psychoanalyst suggest to Gibbon as they departed, ‘you’d care, while we wait, to talk to me about your aunt….’

‘Where are we going?’ God demanded.

‘To settle the problem of the Black Girl.’

‘How? In what way? Then you
do
know where she is?’

‘I must think out how to put it to you,’ Voltaire said.

Accordingly, God allowed a silence to supervene.

He and Voltaire marched side by side down the avenue, which took a turn and disclosed that it was leading them towards, in the distance, a formal garden.

Indeed, in keeping with such a destination, the oleanders at each side of the route were now interrupted from time to time by classical statues.

A butterfly erratically crossed from one line of statues and oleanders to the other.

Happy at the prospect, no matter how mysterious, of a
resolution
to his quest, God walked along alertly, giving his passing admiration to the statues, many of which were curious, and opening his senses to the warm, scented sunshine.

Voltaire walked head down.

‘There’s Lucian,’ God said, having caught sight of a lithe Grecian figure just before it vanished, silvery as a lizard, behind the plinth of a Pan. ‘Such pure, pellucid, simple, cogent Greek! I am convinced that the only reason Lucian is not regularly named among the greatest of Greek authors is that he had the misfortune to live some centuries after what the Victorians dubbed, in their arrogance, “the best period”. And of course those muscularly Christian classical scholars didn’t like him any the better for the fact that, living late enough to witness its
beginnings
, he was scathing about the Christian along with other religious faiths. Nowadays, when classical scholars have
abandoned
the prejudice against “post-classical” Greek, much in the
way that art-historians have become prepared to admit that some post-Renaissance paintings are great, one might expect Lucian to be restored to the esteem in which the 18th century held him and to be recognised as one of the finest exponents of Greek scepticism. But alas for justice! Just as he is due for
restoration
, the whole edifice of classical learning has collapsed. He can scarcely become a great name in a pantheon where all names are fading from view and at a time when one can scarcely count on the public to have heard even of Homer, except as a forename unaccountably popular in the United States. Perhaps it was for fear we would have forgotten who he is that Lucian vanished so quickly. Or perhaps – let us hope – he was merely pursuing some erotic liaison among the oleanders. I should have liked to shake him by the hand. He seems to me an author admirably sophisticated, admirably
literary
, yet admirably simple, and his dialogues of the dead are surely the most
imaginative
and stylish, as well as the most savage, anti-religious satires ever written.’