God Game

by Andrew M. Greeley

  Well, we’ll stop it there. As I said before, their passion was wanton, violent, abandoned, the fusing of two tempestuous firestorms. They were not harsh or cruel to each other. It might have been easier to watch if they were. Rather they were both generous and gentle, more concerned about the other than the self, skilled with each other without effort or practice and hence even more majestic in their combined explosion. It was not the pretty sex of film lovers but the awesome, frightening convulsion of two wildly galloping but elegant animals. Watching them was not like viewing an X-rated tape but rather like participating in a powerful liturgy. I wondered why there was not the music of pipe organ, trumpets, and drums in the background.

  Then I realized that I was violating their privacy. I had no right to watch their terrifying liturgy. I was not, perhaps, being prurient, but I was still acting like a voyeur.

  I pushed the SUSPEND function key. My two lovers, soaring up the mountain of ecstasy, were left to themselves.

  Does God draw the curtain on human lovers, I wondered as I stared at the empty screen, weary, drained, exhausted as though I had flown across the ocean in a continuous thunderstorm.

  And someone, Nathan, damn him, had cast me in the role of heaven.

  I sat there in my gray “secondary work station” (decorator’s term) chair and trembled as though I had just escaped from a near-fatal auto accident. I didn’t want to be God for anyone, much less for these two attractive, passionate, thoroughly mixed-up human beings.

  It wasn’t fair to them, and it wasn’t fair to me.

  But I was hooked. So I peeked.

  I reactivated the game. Two spent human bodies were heaped on one another, linked, blended, meshed, intertwined, limbs deployed at random crooked angles in a pattern which had the wild beauty of desert rocks washed by a sudden rainstorm. Just as their passion had been scary, so now their contentment and peace revealed what a wildly dangerous creature the human animal is.

  Well, they’ll all live happily ever after, I told myself as I reached for the END GAME key.

  I hesitated. Was this a short story or a novella or a full-length novel? Was it really over? Ought not I now withdraw from the game and leave my creatures to the rest of their lives?

  What would have happened to them if I had left them alone?

  I’ll never know, will I? Like any God I couldn’t leave my creatures alone. I was curious about them, I had fallen in love with them. I told myself that they needed me. I wondered whether they would have children, whether they could bring their two countries together in peace, how much they would fight, what the wondrous Ranora would think now that our joint plot had come true.

  No one ever wants to give up one’s creatures.

  So I pushed the SUSPEND GAME key, left all the electronic components “on,” and stumbled to my bed and a sleep of exhausted oblivion.

  After skiing the next morning I raced up the stairs. I hesitated for a moment and then, like the proverbial cat, succumbed to curiosity and pushed the RENEW GAME function key.

  We were back in the houseboat and the young lovers were awake, only they were not so young, and fighting again.

  You see what I mean about the time problem; the game was now moving more slowly than real time. Last night I had covered a day of their time, but their night had gone more slowly than mine. Later Nathan would assure me that the game had its own self-corrective time sequence mechanism built into its compiler. It sounded suspicious to me, but I didn’t know enough about the programming to deny it. I suspect that the game somehow knew enough to slow down or speed up so that it was ready for me when I joined it. Narrative timing is what an author would call it.

  Anyway, though they were physically glowing and complacent, my hero and heroine were shouting at each other again. Lenrau, without a stitch on him, was striding around the room and delivering himself of a battle oration. A quilt held at her jaw, B’Mella lolled on the couch, half angry and half bemused. She followed his movements with fascinated eyes, more interested, it seemed, in the man’s body than his words. Small wonder. Reenergized by sex, Lenrau had lost his hangdog manner and had become a very attractive male—solid, compact, fair skinned, with curly blond hair, a boyish face, not a Michelangelo David perhaps, but not a bad male model either.

  She didn’t need me to help her say the right thing. “You are a very impressive naked orator, mighty Lord Lenrau.”

  “I am demanding justice for my people and you think of lust.” He whipped around and, hands on bare hips, glared at her furiously.

  “I was not alive at the battle of the Broken Tree and neither were you,” she said mildly, perhaps wanting to be angry, but not up to it yet physiologically. “We must forget the past.”

  “I will not forget the innocent blood of my people. You will not seduce me into such oblivion, you man-hungry whore.”

  Well, at least, he hadn’t said “foul-smelling.” Still, as you can imagine, that set her off. They traded charges of brutality, injustice, murder (all for crimes at least a generation in the past), and of sexual perversity and exploitation in the last couple of hours. Sunlight was streaming through the tiny window by now, illuminating the tangled disarray of the sheets on their couch and the lines of hard hatred on their handsome faces. Somehow, they had managed to change positions in the course of their argument, and also to exchange rhetoric.

  Draped in the quilt, she was striding about the room, screeching at the top of her voice, and he was slumped on the side of the couch, dejected and beaten, all the joy of sexual triumph drained from him, a pathetic sad sack once again.

  “I am leaving this den of degeneracy,” she announced. “Your plot has failed and you will pay in battle for what you have done to me this night.” She jerked the coverlet around her body and opened the door.

  I figured my experiment of letting them go their own way had lasted long enough.

  BE NICE TO DUKE, I ordered after her function key.

  She stopped in the open doorway, illumined by the harsh glare of the sunlight, breathing heavily, her naked shoulders heaving up and down. “You are a foul degenerate pig.”

  “You don’t sound as though you mean that,” he sighed as from a great distance, a man departing for another planet. “Try it again, a little more hatred.”

  I repeated my instruction. She didn’t budge an inch. But she didn’t leave either. Her poor exhausted body sagged, weary now not from a night of romping but from a fierce struggle against grace.

  STOP RESISTING GRACE. I told her.

  I DO NOT KNOW GRACE, the damn fool PC responded righteously.

  GOD’S SAVING AND DIRECTING LOVE, I told it with full theological accuracy.

  WHY DIDN’T YOU SAY SO?

  EXECUTE, I told it furiously.

  EXECUTING, EXECUTING, it snarled back at me.

  “You are not without,” she forced the words out grudgingly like a confession of terrible guilt, “certain more than adequate skills as a lover. I said that last night, of course, many times. It does bear repeating, however.”

  The bitch still wouldn’t turn to face him.

  “I would not have believed,” he said with pained sadness, “that love with any woman could have been so sweet.”

  But he was Harry Hangdog, king of the wimps again. Ranora, witch child, where are you when we need you?

  She slumped as though he had put his sword through her back. “I do not want to lose you, ’Rau.” She turned slowly, shyly to face him. “I will not lose you.”

  He glanced up, trying to come back from his far planet. “I don’t want to lose you either, magic ’Ella.” He sighed. “I will die without you.”

  That’s right, fellow, you got it. Appeal to their maternal instincts and they’ll give in every time.

  “I doubt that,” she grinned and tossed aside her quilt with the dramatic gesture of which she was a master, “but if our people want peace from the bridge of our bodies, that is good. If they don’t, I still want you.”

  I doubt that there i
s a man in the world, her world or our world, who could resist that ploy, especially carried out in the luminosity of the early morning sunlight. Certainly not our ’Rau.

  “You argue persuasively.” He smiled as he walked towards her. “Very persuasively.”

  She stiffened, suddenly frightened again. Oh, damn, don’t blow it now.

  DO NOT RESIST THE LORD OUR GOD, I ordered her.

  She sagged against the wall, thin shoulder blades touching it, head on her chest, body touchingly fragile and yielding. “Don’t ever let me run away, my beloved,” she begged him.

  A plea which, considering what would happen later, was ironic indeed.

  He tilted her head upwards so he could look into her eyes. “We both fear that our peoples will not want this peace for which we have become a bridge. I tell you, ’Ella, they will rejoice in it.”

  She nodded, trying again to escape his fierce gaze and not succeeding. “They will both say that their ruler seduced the other, and thus both will claim victory.”

  He swept her into his arms, picked her up, and carried her back to the couch—an incredible move for Sammy Sad Sack. “And,” he laughed, “they’ll both be right.”

  I left them to their privacy and went to the kitchen to make breakfast.

  All’s well that ends well, I told myself dubiously.

  12

  A Happy Ending for Everyone?

  When I returned, teapot in hand, and reactivated the game, the Duke and the Duchess were preparing to leave their love nest and return to the world. The sun was now high in their purple sky and judging by the open window in the houseboat their hot weather had begun, a more cheery setting for announcing a marriage, but somehow that stark sunlight seemed almost as ominous as the black-gray sky which had preceded it.

  Nothing as minor as weather, however, seemed to be on the minds of Lenrau and B’Mella. He was helping her into her tunic, fastening the back, arranging it on her shoulders neatly, as if he were a servant girl. She was accepting his intimate ministrations with a submissive gratitude that managed to combine blushing bride and satisfied sex kitten, roles I would not have believed her capable of performing.

  Then he helped her do up her hair, with fingers that could only be described as both possessive and reverent.

  “You’re very kind to me,” she murmured.

  “Perhaps I’m only trying to delay facing our people.”

  “They will support us,” she said confidently, touching his arm with respect. As long as we stand together…”

  “I know.” He kissed her lightly. “Come, we must go forth.”

  “I love you,” she said simply, taking his arm in her own. “I knew I would.”

  It was a bit much for Lenrau’s sense of irony, but he only smiled wryly as he led her out into the sunlight. “May we always love each other as much as we do now.”

  “May it please the Lord Our God.”

  It was not the combined peoples that waited for them outside the hut, but Ranora, knees pulled up under her determined little chin, peppermint-candy gown pulled down to her ankles. When they emerged, she leaped to her feet, did a quick little dance of celebration, and embraced them both enthusiastically, an astonished B’Mella first.

  “I know, I know, I know,” she clapped her hands with delight, “I know!”

  She pulled out her little pipe, blew a chirpy dance tune on it, and cavorted around the blushing lovers like an intoxicated elf.

  “You must not wish me to be with child so soon, little Ranora,” pleaded B’Mella without much conviction.

  The imp girl hooted, grabbed one of them with each hand, and under the blazing sun led them in a dance which was as wild as the most raucous Irish reel but far more elegant. Fertility dance? Nothing like getting down to business.

  Then they sank on the grass, panting, sweating, and laughing. The ilel jumped up, dashed into the woods, and bounded back with a huge flagon of dark red liquid and three skinny foot-high goblets. With elaborate ceremony she poured a drink for each of them. “First,” she announced with sudden solemnity, “to the Lord Our God!”

  They rose, composed themselves reverently, faced in my direction, bowed deeply, poured a little bit of the liquid on the ground, and then drained their goblets with a single swallow, followed by much laughter. Both Lenrau and B’Mella were well on their way to being tuned by the time the crowds of their people began to drift into the clearing, with the solemn slowness of a congregation filing into 11:15 Mass on a hot summer day.

  The ilel took charge of the wedding preparations; no one was brave enough to question her right to do so, save for poor bemused Kaila, who would occasionally whisper a word of restraint into her manic little ear, a warning which would be met with hysterical giggles.

  She appointed herself B’Mella’s keeper and gave that poor woman no rest. They spent a whole day trying on wedding gowns. The Duchess, who for all her imperiousness seemed to be a woman of simple tastes, was willing to settle for a comparatively understated dress in red and gold. The ilel shook her head and waved a negative finger. The dressmaker brought out gown after gown to the same reaction. After a time, the Duchess, with remarkable good humor, expressed no opinions, but obediently modeled the dresses for her protector/tormenter and waited for her reaction.

  Finally, a shimmering purple gown with deep silver trim earned thoughtful silence from Ranora. She bounded around the Duchess, considering the dress from every angle. Then she pulled the sleeves off B’Mella’s shoulders, revealing lots of throat, arm, and chest, clapped her hands, and pointed her tiny finger in approval.

  “It is too revealing.” B’Mella protected her breasts with her hands.

  “Just right,” the child chanted. “It’s just right. We’ll take it, we’ll take it, we’ll take it!”

  I watched my heroine closely during the wedding preparations. For a woman whose self-possession bordered on arrogance, she was remarkably docile to the wishes of both the Duke and the ilel. From imperiousness she had changed easily to contented and almost passive acceptance. Her personality was flexible, permeable, adaptable. I forgot that earlier I’d used “unstable.”

  We seemed well on our way to a “they all lived happily ever after” ending. Proud of my brief stint at Godding I continued to watch intermittently through that day, out of curiosity, to learn more about their culture and social structure. After all, I told myself, I was a social scientist.

  I added that I was a novelist, too, and it was time to turn to the serious task of writing a real story. When I begin to look for a premise for a story (“suppose that…”), I often use the self-hypnotism which Erika taught me ten years ago and which started me on my way to storytelling (it has never produced anything as dumb as “suppose that a computer made you God in a cosmos down the street”). Erika claims that I am a “fabulous subject.” The old suggestible kid.

  Anyway I put the metronome tape on the stereo, thus making the whole house vibrate, relaxed in the gray chair by the corner windows, and stared at one of the supply of mandalas I keep handy. Sure enough, I drifted away into my own preconscious, aware of the world around me, quite capable of answering the damn telephone if it rings, but also wandering through the world of my right brain (or whatever).

  I looked up and a woman in white was sitting on the maroon chair at the other side of a small coffee table. It was not Wilkie Collins’s Woman in White, however, but G’Ranne. She had put aside her uniform and was wearing a white double-breasted suit with a light blue scarf at her neck, white shoes, and a white ribbon restraining her hair. I became conscious for the first time (admittedly in an altered state) of what I had only dimly perceived before: she was the most beautiful young woman I had ever known.

  “Good afternoon,” she said respectfully, in dress and manner an able and responsible young professional woman. “I hope I’m not disturbing you.”

  The disguise did not fool me. “I know who you are: Grace O’Malley the pirate. You belong in Morgan’s novel. What are you doing in m
y story?”

  “Do I look like a pirate?” Her teeth were perfectly even as she smiled, indeed everything about her was perfect. Ten, at least.

  “Grace O’Malley wouldn’t be a pirate if she were alive today. She’d be a lawyer or an accountant. I repeat, why are you in the wrong story?”

  “Perhaps,” she lifted her superb shoulders, “because I’ve always been in your preconscious. The perfect Celtic woman, like Nora Cronin or Ciara Kelly in your stories.”

  “How do you know about them?”

  “It’s your preconscious, not mine.”

  “I suppose you want me to change your role in the story too?”

  “No,” she said, her vast blue eyes wide with what I feared was admiration. “I trust you.”

  “Then,” I demanded irritably, “what do you want?”

  “I want to know,” faint trace of heart-wrenching tears, “why you don’t love me. You’re the only one I love and you don’t love me in return.”

  “Of course I do…” I knew I should end the trance interlude and get rid of this woman. She was too gorgeous to dismiss. And too sad.

  “You never visit me when I pray. You pay no attention to my thoughts. You give me instructions only when they’re not important. You are not pleased with my responsiveness. You don’t care about my love affair with Kaila … and it’s my first love affair. I love him because he’s so much like you. You know that…”

  “No,” I protested weakly, “he’s like John Larkin.”

  “John Larkin,” she waved a graceful hand, “is in Brazil, you know that. He’s staying at the beach house of Jorge Amado the novelist in Salvador Da Bahia. Kaila is you.”

  “No way.”

  “All my life, I have lived to serve and love you. Yet you are never pleased with me. What can I do to make you happy with me? Why don’t you listen to me when I pray?”

  It was a plea not a complaint, a plea from a rejected lover.

  Could I say that the image of her in lingerie was too breathtaking to risk? Better not.

  (Various folks in this story have asserted that I like older women and teenaged women. Now it is clear that I also have a weakness for women in their early twenties. Also in their late fifties, as far as that goes.)