The Adventures of God in His Search for the Black Girl (13 page)

‘And yet’, said God, ‘what comes to mind when one thinks of Voltaire would not be as it is without Candide. So there is a sense in which one can truly say “Candide made Voltaire”.’

‘Having demonstrated the importance of fictions’, Voltaire said graciously, ‘you must surely stop feeling apologetic about being one.’

‘I have of course’, the theologian said to God in a bristling voice, ‘recognised you as a devil making trial of my faith.
However
, accepting your own account of yourself, which I do purely for the sake of the argument, I must say I’m not a bit surprised that your fictitious status is a burden to you. To be swayed, to be positively and in detail caused, by the whim of an author
must be servitude indeed. In fact, you are an allegory of the dreadful state mankind would fall into were it to deny the divine gift of free will and succumb to the drear and hopeless doctrine of determinism.’

‘Some people do feel depressed’, the psychoanalyst said, ‘when they consider that their personalities are caused. They hate psychoanalysts for tracing some of the causes. But for my part I should be much more upset if I thought that bits of my personality were
not
caused and were therefore liable to behave at random. I should no longer see any proper sense in which I could call it
my
personality. I should be afraid of becoming a mere impersonal force, like a poltergeist.’

‘The intervention of the grace of God is not random
behaviour
,’ the theologian said sternly.

‘It would be, from the point of view of the coherency of my ego,’ the psychoanalyst replied.

‘Indeed, if God were to act through
me
,’ Voltaire said, ‘the action would be grossly out of character.’

‘What Christians call intervention by the grace of God’, said Gibbon, ‘appears to be much like what the ancients called possession.’

‘If I believed in it, I’d be scared out of my wit,’ said Voltaire.

‘Taken seriously’, God said, ‘I
am
rather a scary notion – which is one reason why I ought not to be imposed on children. Not for nothing is a third of me called a ghost.’

‘I assume’, Gibbon said, ‘that what I mean by “I” has been given the form which I recognise as ‘I” by the natural causes that have shaped it. I don’t therefore see how my “I” can feel depressed by being caused or can yearn to be free of causation or can voluntarily let itself be possessed by an alien “I” without wishing for its own dissolution.’

‘You forget’, the theologian said, ‘that the chain of natural causes also exists by virtue of God’s grace.’

‘Then you are a determinist too,’ Voltaire exclaimed. ‘Only you hold that God determines determinism.’

‘Now you forget’, the theologian said, ‘that he implants in you freedom to respond to his grace directly.’

‘By your acount of the matter,’ Voltaire replied, ‘God’s right arm encircles me and draws me onto the punch he is poised to deliver with his left. I am amazed that you can ascribe free
will to me or grace to God.’

‘By my “grace”’, God said in a gloomy voice, ‘religious people in fact mean my whim, since they insist that I am
uncaused
and unaccountable. And in practice my whim amounts to my sheer irrational wanton destructiveness. What, after all, does English legal jargon mean by “acts of God”? Large-scale meteorological disasters, usually with loss of life. Whenever my worshippers begin emphasising that I am a mystery, I know they are about to hold me responsible for a disaster so painful that even they are shocked. Let there be a chain of cause and effect that begins with the first proton and issues in a flowerpot falling off a balcony onto an innocent toddler, and the grieving parents resign themselves not to the moral neutrality of the universe but to “the will of God”.’

‘Poor God,’ Gibbon said with a serious sigh of sympathy.

‘I am the most hateful character in fiction,’ God declared. ‘And my creators, having created me thus, removed their names from the work and disavowed the responsibility. Indeed, they actually held
me
responsible for inspiring them.’

‘I venture to hope you will be more at your ease’, Gibbon said, ‘in the company of unbelievers. For we at least, since we do not believe you are to blame for earthquake and flood, do not believe we have reason to hate you.’

‘Only among unbelievers’, God replied gratefully, ‘can I be accepted for what I am, namely a fictitious character. My
misfortune
is that I am written about almost exclusively by
believers
. Not only do they believe they have reason to hate me; they believe that, in entertaining that belief, they are doing their duty towards me. No wonder my reputation is damaged almost beyond repair. It’s the greatest pity that religious art is left to artists who happen to be religious or who are willing to pose as such. What the theologian said about my servitude in my status of fictitious character fell on my ears with some irony. It seems to me that I am in a state of servitude so long as the artists who treat of me
refuse
to treat me as a fictitious character. An artist who is a believer will never exercise his imagination on me, never develop my character, never ask himself what I am truly like. He is too convinced that my character is a mystery and that it would be presumptuous of him to claim to know it. Religious art is circumscribed by the artists’ dread of being
irreverence. I wish I could persuade an irreligious artist to take up the subject.’

‘How conceited you are,’ the theologian said coldly. ‘Unless you in fact are God, whyever should an artist interest
himself
in you?’

‘It looks’, commented Voltaire, ‘as though those who love God are really only impressed by his power.’

‘Surely’, God said in a slightly pleading tone, ‘an irreligious artist, who didn’t believe in my power, could make me
interesting
in my own right? I don’t ask for a whitewash job. I wouldn’t mind being held responsible for
fictitious
earthquakes – though I suppose that would have to be in a sort of fairy tale. I wouldn’t even mind if I were treated, which I suppose my record might naturally suggest, as a criminal, provided I was
sympathetic
ally
treated: say, by Patricia Highsmith. Though now I think of it, what I would take to most readily is a romantic opera. I could well become something like the hero of
The
Queen
of
Spades.
He’s scarcely more
nice
than I am, and yet he engages the audience’s sympathy. Indeed, without self-flattery, I think I’m the ideal romantic-opera hero. It leaps to the eye. You have only to consider my moodiness, my sudden but inexorable anger and my frequent obstinate silences when addressed.’

‘How’, the theologian said contemptuously, ‘anyone could prefer to be the hero of a romantic opera when he could be the centre of a religion passes my understanding. Frankly, I would have expected you to think up some more genuinely tempting guise in which to tempt my faith. As it is, I have no difficulty in saying “Get thee behind me Satan”.’

And the theologian turned his back on God and his
interlocutors
, and took no further part in the discussion.

‘Why don’t you’, Voltaire asked God, ‘write a book
explaining
yourself?’

‘O’, said God, ‘I quite lack the literary skill. Such style as I have is so pompous. Besides, I’m unversed in developing a proper reasoned argument. All my experience has been of
laying
down the law. You wouldn’t’ (God looked slyly at Voltaire) ‘undertake the task for me?’

‘It’s true I’m in the habit,’ Voltaire said, ‘whenever I see an injustice, of coming to the support of the victim. But my recent doubts of the validity of addressing oneself, however splendidly,
only to the conscious and reasonable part of the mind lead me to hesitate….’

‘I doubt if
I
’d do any better,’ the psychoanalyst said. ‘No one could say psychoanalysis has shewn itself highly persuasive. Of course, if it’s untrue, that’s what you’d expect. The trouble is: that’s also what you’d expect if it’s true. Alone of man’s
discoveries
, psychoanalysis could, if it’s correct, disclose to man the truth about man. But the truth it purports to disclose to him is that he doesn’t want the truth disclosed.’

‘And therefore’, said Voltaire, ‘of all man’s discoveries,
psychoanalysis
is inevitably, if it’s correct, the one that man has devised the largest number of rationalisations for rejecting.’

‘Your opponents’, Gibbon said to the psychoanalyst, ‘accuse you on this point of intellectual double-dealing. They say you will not admit of any conditions in which you
could
be refuted – that, the more resistance you meet, the more you claim that that proves your point.’

‘I know,’ the psychoanalyst replied sadly. ‘I would like to avoid that reproach, but is it avoidable? What, after all,
would
refute the psychoanalytic contention that people reject the
disclosure
of material from the unconscious? Only a situation where our opponents unhesitatingly agreed with it. If they say we try to have the argument both ways, they should add that we are, by the same terms, doomed to lose it both ways. Any tendency towards universal agreement with us would tend to shew that we are wrong.’ He sighed and turned to God. ‘It’s a question of whether the paradox is in psychoanalysis or, as psychoanalysis maintains, in the psychology of man. But in any case, so long as psychoanalysis remains out of fashion, I think your rehabilitation will proceed better without my help.’

‘If I were you’, the historian advised God in a loud, bon homous whisper, ‘I shouldn’t invite
Gibbon
to be your
biographer
. Confidentially, he lacks, in the profession,
standing.
However, since you’re in need, and since everyone else is
overawed
by the task, I’d be prepared to consider undertaking it myself. But you realise: it will be a major project. I’ll need several research assistants. And a grant. And I trust you can let me have access to your correspondence?’

‘I hope’, God said tactfully, ‘that eventually you will
all
kindly contribute to my rehabilitation. I shall also suggest myself
to Tchaikovsky and Pushkin as an operatic subject. I wonder if I couldn’t tempt Tchaikovsky with a scene about the Beloved Disciple. But an opera, too, will take a long time. For the moment, I’m so oppressed by the hateful character thrust on me, and I feel so confused about my identity, that I urgently want to get something started at once. As a matter of fact, I was on my way to try and arrange something when I was attracted to your discussion. If you’ll excuse me’ (God stood up) ‘I’ll resume my quest.’

‘Godspeed,’ Voltaire wished him. ‘Since God doesn’t after all exist, it has become necessary to re-invent him.’

They were all, variously, echoing Voltaire’s farewell and good wishes when God’s departure was interrupted by the humble Christian, who, evidently precipitated to his feet by sheer
outrage
, rushed at God, spluttering:

‘Stop! I won’t let you get away with it! You’ve been
unspeakably
unfair!’

‘Unfair?’ asked God, sounding a little hurt. ‘Whom to?’

‘Yourself. You kept breaking into my prayers maligning yourself.’

‘I’m afraid’, God said gently, ‘all that I said of myself was true. I appreciate your wish to think well of me. But when one looks into the matter, which I have had to do because of my personal interest in it, it turns out that the necessity of inventing me, which Voltaire mentioned, is the necessity of inventing a pretext for humans to behave badly. Whenever they want to do something they consider immoral, like committing genocide against seven neighbouring tribes or having more babies than they know the earth can support, they say I command it. Thus they spare their conscience at the expense of my character. A character who can issue such monstrous commands as I am said to have done will take some rehabilitating. So you’ll forgive me if I hurry off to see about it.’

‘I
shan’t
forgive you’, the humble Christian threatened God, ‘if you do anything of the kind. You’ve misunderstood the entire question. Sit down, and I’ll put you straight in a matter of minutes.’

‘Well, if you’re sure’, God said, tentatively obeying, ‘that it
won’t take long. I really would like to find the Black—’

‘It won’t take long,’ the humble Christian said firmly, ‘
because
it’s utterly simple. All that’s needed is a simple and humble approach. That will always get you further than the arguments of intellectuals. Now the truth is: you don’t need
rehabilitating
.’

‘Do you really think so?’ God said, leaning forward
attentively
and hopefully.

‘Your character is exemplary. It has been so from the start. Why, as early as
Leviticus,
you gave the command “thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself”. What could be more moral than that? Sometimes, it’s true, we misinterpreted your commands. Sometimes we even twisted your words. But that was our wicked fault.’

‘Or’, God said, ‘a failure of communication on my part.’

‘You
can’t
fail. You’re omnipotent.’

‘Well,’ said God, ‘if my followers had misinterpreted my command when they set about exterminating seven
neighbouring
tribes, why didn’t I exert my omnipotence to save the victims? Is that your concept of divine justice?’

‘
I
can’t
have
a concept of divine justice,’ the humble
Christian
said impatiently. ‘Divine justice is a mystery. Man is too puny to scrutinise God.’

‘It’s easy to make man look puny’, Voltaire said, ‘if you deny him the authorship of all his best ideas, including the idea of God.’

‘God is greater than man,’ the humble Christian affirmed. ‘That should be obvious. Certainly, it wasn’t man who created the world.’

‘No,’ said God, ‘what man created was the sublime idea of God creating the world. If that idea had emanated from a god of whom it was true, it would have been (if Gibbon will excuse me the seeming disparagement) merely history or autobiography. Coming from man, it was a tremendous artistic metaphor and also, though it had eventually to be discarded, a brilliant
scientific
hypothesis. Honestly, I am overwhelmed by awe when I contemplate the imagination of man.’