Unsong

by Scott Alexander

  A couple of people snorted.

  “But Uriel,” said Eli Foss, “has always said he’s just trying to follow God’s plan, as he understands it.”

  “The Pope says the same thing,” said Bill Dodd. “That doesn’t mean he’s met the guy.”

  “Someone must have created the world!” protested Ally Hu. “And all the angels, and the Names, and the kabbalah!”

  “I’m not saying there’s not a Creator force,” said Bill Dodd. “I’m just saying it shouldn’t be thought of as a person.”

  “Thomas Aquinas,” said Zoe Farr, “tells us that God is not a person, not at all, not even close, but can sometimes be compared to one, since a person is the most intelligent entity we have to compare it to. It’s like how they used to say the brain was a telephone switchboard. It’s much more than that, but if all you have as a metaphor is a telephone switchboard, it’s better than nothing.”

  “But if God can’t even figure out,” said Bill Dodd, “that if you want perfect good you should avoid having evil, well, whatever it is He is, it’s got to be kind of dumb.”

  “Oh, oh,” said Pirindiel, and there was worry in his eyes. “You shouldn’t say that. That’s blasphemy.”

  “Be nice, Bill,” said Ana, “there are angels here.”

  “I feel like we’re forgetting something pretty important,” said Erica. “I hate to go all dualist here, but we know there’s a Hell. We know there’s a Devil. I’m not saying that God and the Devil are exactly equally powerful, but maybe it’s not quite so one-sided that God can just steamroll over Thamiel without a second thought? Maybe there’s some kind of strategic balance thing going on?”

  Ana looked shocked. Pirindiel looked horrified. But it was Eli Foss who spoke first. “Erica,” he said. “God is one. That’s the whole point. You can’t just go around saying there are two separate beings with similar levels of godlike power. That’s like saying there are two gods. It’s serious, serious blasphemy.”

  “Well,” said Erica, “maybe if God didn’t want people saying the Devil’s just as powerful as He is, He should stop making the world full of evil just as much as good. Maybe if He didn’t want us saying He’s too weak to save everyone who’s sick, or suffering, or in Hell, He should get off His cosmic ass and save them.”

  When Ana spoke now, it was very serious. “Moreover the LORD answered Job, and said, Shall he that contendeth with the Almighty instruct him? he that reproveth God, let him answer it. Wilt thou also disannul my judgment? wilt thou condemn me, that thou mayest be righteous?”

  “Huh!” I exclaimed. Everyone looked at me.

  “That verse from the Rubaiyat. The one Nixon used in the 70s. It goes, um…

  O thou, who burns with tears for those who burn

  In Hell, whose fires will find thee in thy turn

  Hope not the Lord thy God to mercy teach

  For who art thou to teach, or He to learn?

  …that’s from Job. It’s got to be. Khayyam must have read Job.”

  “Well,” said Zoe, “it’s certainly got the right amount of condescension.”

  “What are we talking about?” asked Pirindiel.

  “Hast thou an arm like God?” Ana recited. “Or canst thou thunder with a voice like Him?”

  “Okay,” said Bill Dodd. “We get the idea.”

  “Deck thyself now with majesty and excellency; and array thyself with glory and beauty!”

  “Is somebody saying there are two gods?” asked Pirindiel. “Because God is one.”

  “Cast abroad the rage of thy wrath: and behold every one that is proud, and abase him!”

  “Okay,” said Ally Hu. “That’s enough.” She grabbed the Book of Job from Ana’s hands. Ana grabbed it back. A tug of war.

  “Dessert’s ready!” said Erica.

  “God is One and His Name is One,” insisted Pirindiel. “This is very important.”

  “It’s devil’s food cake!” Erica said, bringing the plate to the table.

  “No!” Pirindiel shouted at Erica and her cake, and in a flash he was on his feet, sword of fire materializing in his hands, rushing towards her.

  Ally pulled the book away from Ana.

  “This is not how we do theodicy in this house!” I shouted at Ally and Ana.

  “HELP!” shouted Ana. “IMMIGRANTS ARE STEALING MY JOB!”

  “WAIT!” said Bill Dodd. “I just got it! The house is called Ithaca because it’s where theodicy happens. Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.”

  “It’s just dessert!” Erica screamed at the oncoming Pirindiel.

  “No!” Ana shouted. “That’s the whole point of Job! There are no just deserts!”

  I reached into my pocket, pulled out my scroll wheel, and activated the Thunderclap Name. A deafening boom filled the room. Everybody went silent.

  “Thanks, Aaron,” Erica said, defeated.

  “Everyone sit down!” I said. “Pirindiel, sword away! No more theodicy! Time for dessert!”

  IV.

  I remember the day I asked Ana on a date.

  It was my third week in Ithaca. I’d just finished moving my bed into my room with the help of one of the other group home residents, a tall Asian guy who didn’t like to talk very much. I was sweaty and thirsty, I’d gone into the common room to drink some Gatorade, and found Ana already there reading a book. We’d started talking, and somehow gotten onto the subject of the Shem haMephorash, the Explicit Name of God, the True Name, the Most Holy Name, which gave its wielder power over all Creation.

  “The Explicit Name is ‘Harold’,” I told her.

  “No,” she answered. “The Explicit Name is ‘Juan’.”

  “But,” I said, “in the Lord’s Prayer, we say ‘Our Father in Heaven, Harold be thy name.'”

  “But,” Ana objected, “in the Shema, we say ‘Hear O Israel – the Lord is Juan.'”

  “But,” I said, “all angels are angels of the Lord, and the song says ‘Hark, the Harold angels sing.”

  “But,” Ana objected, “the Aleinu ends ‘God is Juan, and His name is Juan.'”

  “But,” I said, “Christians say Jesus is God. And they give his name as Jesus H. Christ. What might the H stand for? Harold! ”

  “But,” Ana objected, “think about it. Who names their kids Jesus? Mexican people, that’s who! And what kind of names do Mexican people have? Names like Juan! Q period E period D period!”

  She actually said Q period E period D period. I felt a wave of affection crash over me and through me, stronger than any other I had ever known. Before my frontal lobes could push through a veto, I blurted out: “Ana, would you go on a date with me?”

  Ana’s face fell. “Aaron,” she said. “I’m asexual.”

  “So?” I said. “I asked you for a date, not for sex.”

  “Still.”

  “If we went on a date, we would be talking and enjoying each other’s company. That’s what we’re doing now. So what’s the problem?”

  “If not being on a date is exactly the same as being on a date, why do you want to go on a date? Why don’t we stay here, in the living room?”

  “Hey! That’s not fair!”

  “Human attraction never is.”

  “Well, it should be!”

  Ana rolled her eyes. “You realize you’re talking to the Augustine Distinguished Scholar in Theodicy? The girl who picketed in front of the World’s Fair back in 2012, waving a sign saying “NO IT ISN’T?” You’re preaching to the euphemism-ing choir.”

  I was briefly discombobulated, then regained my combobulation. “Look,” I said, “I really like you. I want you to like me back. Dates are like a universally recognized signal of this.”

  “What if I just told you outright that I liked you?”

  “I want it to be official!”

  “I could give you a certificate. I have an uncle who’s a notary public. We could make him sign.”

  I choked back a tear. “Ana, this is serious.”

  Her expression changed. “I’m serious to
o,” she said. “I like you. You’re funny and interesting and you know the mystical secrets of Juan. But everything around romance – the flowers, the silly looks, the candlelight dinners. I am not into these things. I’m happy to talk with you, to live with you, even to grab dinner with you if you’re hungry. But I don’t want to date.”

  “If you’re going to grab dinner, why not call it a date? It’s just a word.”

  She shut her book with great force. “Did you really say ‘just a word’? You call yourself a kabbalist! Words have power! Words are the only tools we have to connect the highest levels of our intellect to the mysteries of reality! Once we describe something with a word, things happen! It’s been given a life of its own! The angels are on notice, working their secret little works around it, starting reverberations that echo across the entire structure! Words are the vestment of divinity, the innermost garments of Juan!”

  I just sat there and took it. I didn’t say anything, because I was on the verge of tears, and if I spoke she would have noticed, and then I would have looked dumb, and she would have lost respect for me, or something, look, it sounds stupid when I write it down, but give me a break. I sat there silently, did not disturb Juan’s innermost garments with my speech.

  Ana realized something was wrong. “Uh,” she said “if it helps, I am totally okay with you writing me flowery love poetry.”

  “It helps a little,” I said.

  “And…hmm…tell you what. Erica’s in the kitchen making curry. If you can eat one of the habanero peppers whole, without drinking water for a whole minute, I’ll give you a kiss.”

  “Really?” I asked, and leapt to my feet, because I was a moron.

  V.

  And I remember the day Ana and I got married.

  It was towards the end of my first month at Ithaca. I’d just been let go from my job at Cash For Gold, and I was working on my application for Countenance. Erica was making curry, and because she was a terrible person who enjoyed making me miserable, she asked if I wanted another whole habanero. I winced and clutched my throat just thinking about it, then very politely told her no, in a way that might possibly have referenced Dante and the many terrors of the damned. She laughed.

  “I’ll be honest,” she said. “Nobody else has ever had the guts to eat one of those. What were you THINKING?”

  “I wanted to impress Ana,” I said.

  I looked towards Ana, who was sitting at the table, scanning for offense. None was found. “I have a crush on her, and it was getting awkward, so she tricked me into eating a chili pepper to disengage myself from the situation.” Then, feeling guilty about my elision, I told her the whole story.

  Erica looked delighted. “You’re in love with my cousin!” she announced to no one in particular.

  “She’s not interested,” I said glumly.

  Erica took this information in, chewed it over for a moment. Then: “Wait! I’ve got it! You should get married.”

  I rolled my eyes. “She won’t even – ”

  “Wait,” said Ana. “Yes! Erica, you’re brilliant!”

  Confusion ensued.

  “You won’t go on a date with me, but you will marry me? How does that even…”

  Ana was gone, a dash up the stairs. A few seconds later, she returned with a notebook.

  “Okay,” she said. “So a while ago I was thinking – Aaron, you’ll like this – you know how there have been later additions to the Bible, like the end of Mark 16 or the part in John 7-8? And kabbalists have mostly ignored those, first of all out of totally unjustified prejudice against the New Testament, and second of all because, well, if they were added in by later readers they can’t metaphorically represent the secret structure of the universe? But I thought – what if the later additions to the Bible metaphorically represent later additions to the secret structure of the universe? So I ran a couple of them through Rubenstein’s Sieve and normalized the results, divided the whole thing by “aleph-tet-nun” as the most appropriate Boston Triplet, and sure enough I got five subfactors, one of which gets the right Maharaj Rank for a potential Name. After like a week of trying I was able to free it from a relatively weak klipah…”

  “You discovered a Name?” I asked. Not more than a dozen kabbalists alive had discovered Names the old fashioned way, the proper way, by genius alone.

  “It was total luck!” she insisted. “And nobody else was crazy enough to look in the additions.”

  “Well?” I asked, buzzing with excitement. “What does it do?”

  “Unclear,” said Ana.

  “It marries people,” said Erica.

  “Sort of,” said Ana.

  “Sacred kabbalistic marriage of minds,” said Erica.

  “SCABMOM for short,” said Ana. “But I haven’t gotten it to work quite right yet.”

  She described the moment of discovery. Tasting the new Name, pregnant with possibilities. The feel of the Name itself entering her brain, unlocking secret wisdom. A ritual. Certain words.

  She’d grabbed Erica from the kitchen over her protests and dragged her into her bedroom, where she had arranged four candles in an approximate square. Around the perimeter of the square, she’d sprinkled colored sand in the shape of Hebrew letters; ten colors, twenty two letters per side.

  “Love of God, we just had those carpets cleaned!” Erica objected. “I hope for your sake you’re able to get all of that out with the vacuum.”

  “Shhhh,” said Ana. “Repeat after me, but change the names. I, Ana Thurmond,”

  “…I, Erica Lowry,”

  “In full knowledge of the consequences, call upon the symbols and angels of the world…”

  “Wait, what are the consequences?”

  “Shhh! This is just a test! Now we’ve got to start over! I, Ana Thurmond,”

  “I, Erica Lowry,”

  “In full knowledge of the consequences, call upon the symbols and angels of the world…”

  “In…bah…full knowledge of the consequences, call upon the symbols and angels of the world…”

  “The higher and the lower spheres”

  “The higher and the lower spheres”

  “And the Master of them all”

  “And the Master of them all”

  “To join us at the root, as mountains to the Earth”

  “To join us at the root, as mountains to the Earth”

  “And rivers to the ocean”

  “And rivers to the ocean”

  “And stars to the firmament”

  “And stars to the firmament”

  “And so we invoke the Holy Name, IYAR-NA-AVANTE-SHOK-TEHAN-MI-LEVAN-ZA-NAONE-KHETH-ULAT”

  “And so we invoke the Holy Name, IYAR-NA-AVANTE…uh…SHOK-TEHAN…MI? Uh…LEVAN? SHA…no, wait…ZA…NAONE-KHETH-ULAT”

  (here the candles start to darken)

  “For God is One”

  “For God is One”

  “And His Name is One”

  “And His Name is One”

  “And we are One.”

  “And we are One.”

  “And it is done.”

  “And it is done.”

  Then all the letters of colored sand glowed red, then green, then white. And the candles laid round made a high-pitched sound and flared up in a burst of light. And Erica screams, and Ana seems to be gazing far away. And she briefly fits, but she gathers her wits just in time to hear her say “ANA LOOK THE LETTERS HAVE BURNED THEMSELVES INTO THE CARPET YOU ARE IN SO MUCH TROUBLE.”

  “How do you feel?” Ana asked.

  “ANGRY,” said Erica.

  “Other than that?” Ana asked.

  “NOTHING ELSE CAN GET THROUGH THE HOT FLAMES OF MY ANGER” Erica protested.

  “Huh. I don’t feel any different either.”

  “But,” Ana told me, “over the next couple of weeks, we would get these…intimations from each other. Like I would be on one side of the house, and I would feel like something was wrong, and I’d go find Erica, and she would have just burned herse
lf by accident. Or I’d be feeling really sad about something, and Erica would say ‘you look sad’, even though I wasn’t showing it at all.”

  “Great,” I said. “You’re like those people who say they have psychic powers on TV. Maybe one day the phone will ring and you’ll know who’s calling before you pick it up. Spooky.”

  “I don’t think we did it right,” said Ana. “We weren’t the right people. I could feel the inadequacies in the ritual. And I’ve been thinking – this is Biblical stuff, so maybe the marriage is supposed to be between a man and a woman.”

  “Or at least two people who aren’t cousins,” Erica suggested.

  “No!” said Ana. “The Bible is totally in favor of marrying cousins! Esau married his cousin! Jacob married both of his cousins!”

  “But,” I said, “your Name came from some sort of later addition, and was in the New Testament to boot. Maybe it’s a product of a more sophisticated age.”

  “Hmmmm,” said Ana. Then: “I’ll get the colored sand!”

  “YOU DO IT OUTSIDE THIS TIME,” Erica insisted.

  And so it was only about a half hour later, after numerous fits and starts due to the sand blowing away in the wind, that the two of us stood amidst the candles and spoke the holy Name IYAR-NA-AVANTE-SHOK-TEHAN-MI-LEVAN-ZA-NAONE-KHETH-ULAT.

  And Ana said: “And God is One.”

  And I answered: “And God is One”

  “And His Name is One.”

  “And His Name is One.”

  “And we are One.”

  “And we are One.”

  “And it is done.”

  “And it is done.”

  We stared into each other’s eyes for a moment after that. What we were looking for, I don’t know. Looking back, I think I secretly hoped that it would fill her with love for me. What she hoped, if anything, I don’t know. But we stared at each other for a while, and finally Ana said:

  “Wait. Think something at me.”

  And I thought: [Ruth and Bowhead]

  “Holy euphemism the first thing ever in history communicated telepathically and it’s one of your stupid Biblical whale puns, that wasn’t even a good one, I am so done with this.”

  And I thought: [Shamu Yisrael, HaShem elokeinu…]