I Am God

by Giacomo Sartori

  I therefore surrender to my own infinite wisdom, and put down the (metaphorical) high-power precision rifle. The red bicycle will not be run over, at least not on account of any special intervention of mine. If a tractor trailer involved in an ordinary accident were to crush it, that would be another kettle of fish. Meanwhile the old fishmonger’s will once again be transformed into a temple of sex and host the nth profane sexual congress. I can do nothing about it.§ Take it up with the Last Judgment.

  § I want to be sure this point is crystal clear: although I ultimately pull the strings of all that takes place in the cosmos and on tiny planet Earth, there are many details that I leave to so-called chance to arrange as it sees fit and proper. Amen.

  ‌A Stroll Around the Cosmos

  For a change of scene I went out once again (metaphor!) for a stroll among the galaxies. I didn’t want to know another thing about the big girl in heat and what she was up to or not. I am God, not a peeping Tom, or some kamikaze friar raring to detox the little planet from its poisonous techno-consumer drug habit, its allergy to transcendence in any shape or form, and its obsession with sexual gratification. She can copulate with whomever she wants, that godless creature with her far-apart bird eyes. Let her be tortured in bondage gear or sodomized by a rhinoceros, it’s all the same to me. I’m going to calm down now, I thought, but in fact I was getting even more upset.

  However, once I’d put a couple billion light years between me and the Earth (and its inescapable familiarity with evil) I began to feel better. The way a person befuddled by stress abandons the chaos of a metropolis and slips into a peaceable forest (I’m trying to draw a parallel here that can speak to everyone) I was able to rest my eyes and ears and empty my brain of every last thought. It did me good, as getting down from a train benefits the passenger—and wormholes through space-time are not so different from a railroad train—it did me good to idle through that awesome gallery of gargantuan abstract paintings, or perhaps I should say surrealist. Full of innumerable chromatic nuances, but as always violet and emerald green, watery ocher tints shading into pearl gray: my favorite colors as far back as the Creation. Among colors I include infrareds, which bring a pleasant warmth to the skin (those that have skin), and X rays, so energizing, like intravenous caffeine, a soft drug. And then there are radio waves and their odd, enigmatic cacophony, like contemporary electronic music played at the bottom of a cave heard by an ear plastered to an aperture at the mouth. When I refer to colors, it’s merely a figure of speech.

  Dillydallying without any precise destination, I came upon a blue star. Blue, like Daphne’s eyes, I found myself thinking. It was magnificent, a precious stone set in the cosmos. Splendid in a way that was also heart-wrenching, that made one apprehensive, perhaps because blue stars are such ephemeral things: four or five million years and they’re gone. Contemplating them, it’s impossible not to think of this tragic fact. As I’m sure you’re aware, a god’s not compatible with a cell phone, or I would have snapped a photo.

  I then passed near one of those elderly stars on which humans have slapped a name that might better suit a discotheque out in the sticks. Supernova. The light coming off that colossal explosion was so blinding I almost regretted not having my sunglasses (truth is, I never wear them, so New Age). Even an amateur stargazer knows that these old boilers host deadly fission explosions compared to which the nuclear weapons that humans are so afraid of are harmless firecrackers.

  It was quite hot, although I don’t suffer from the heat, and I don’t sweat either. The stellar storm was so devastating it would have ripped out my hair, if I had hair. Immateriality does have some advantages. The chemical scents—roasted manganese, and especially sulfuric acid, with underlying notes of methylcyanoacetylene—were nice, admittedly, but truly very strong.

  It does make you think: that immense ball of light brighter than hundreds of millions of their Suns, apparently the quintessence of life, was actually in its death throes. A blazing and utterly splendid demise, but still a last hurrah. Why things appeared this way to me, why it made me so uneasy to think of death, I couldn’t say. Maybe all this expressing myself in the human mode had contaminated me? It distressed me (and I’m the first to be amazed here) to think that Daphne would very soon be deceased.

  Now don’t let yourself succumb to melancholy thoughts, I told myself: the dust spat out by that fearsome Roman candle will give birth to other stars, maybe even more beautiful, and those will bring forth others. Oh, and check out the cheerful happening involving that group of black dwarfs to my right—in front of the ravenous mouth of a black hole—pulsing, spinning, shrinking, extending their arms and shaking their hips like great dancers. One of them had psychedelic concentric halos, like a phosphorescent onion wearing fifty brightly colored windbreakers one on top of the other; another with huge owl eyes, great reflecting mandalas; a third like an hourglass full of neon tubes of all colors. It was like, correcting for proportion, being at the Carnival in Rio, or one of the Gay Prides.

  Just look at all the gorgeous galaxies I’ve created! I thundered, thrilled with what I saw and very proud to be God. I am God, I said, enjoying that feeling you get contemplating something you’ve made with your own hands, the satisfaction of a job well done, of time well spent. Of course the euphoria of a god has nothing in common with human pride; it’s steeped in perfection, it’s perfection itself. However, the immediate sensation was in some ways similar, and a whirl of great ideas spun through my head, a myriad of plans for the future.*

  * Before I began this diary, I’d never been aware of having highs and lows, or maybe I was simply always in the same gelid mood. Talking and thinking, one ends up getting confused.

  Wandering about, nowhere in particular, I came upon two spiral galaxies of about the same size, engaged in that step back they take after they’ve completed the courtesies of the first approach, a step that portends actual fusion. As often happens at this stage of the collision, they already had a tender brood of just-born stars between them, the little ones palpitating and bickering like chicks bursting with infant energy. Even the high-pitched crackling sounds they made from their nest, protected from the great stellar winds provoked by the embrace of the parents, sounded like the cries of famished infants. Later, one at a time, each would set out on its own solitary way, at times a fatal one even in the prime of life, but for now they were reveling in careless youth.

  That family portrait, so joyous and tender, touched me deeply. For the very first time I felt an indescribable turbulence inside, something like a father’s yearning, or perhaps a great-grandfather’s. But when I examined the feeling, there was in my languor (I can’t think of a more suitable word I could pick from the lexicon’s shallow little cauldron) a sort of nostalgia for something I’d have liked to have and didn’t have. I don’t know, someone to chat with once in a while, a friend to talk to in despondent moments. If not actually a family, children. They weren’t very divine emotions, banal as they were. But they were such sweet sensations that I couldn’t shrug them off.

  ‌The Amorous Liturgy

  Apollo’s knocking at the door of the old fishmonger’s as expected, and improvident Daphne is now about to open it. She’s wearing a tunic down to her feet that shows off her nipples through the fabric, the side seam split nearly to the hip. This intangible veil is meant to disappear from circulation quickly, but even if it doesn’t it won’t get in anyone’s way. Vittorio, drenched with sweat, had been a little bit low, but seeing how she’s got herself up, he now feels better immediately. He can surmise—and I know for certain—that the bushy mound of her pubis is right beneath the gown. He tells her he was in the neighborhood by chance (at that time of day?) and thought he’d drop by and say hello. He doesn’t mention that the afternoon began with a flat tire, and he then had to walk the bike all the way over in the muggy, burning afternoon heat while he ruminated on the various woes afflicting him lately. Those inexplicable stomachaches that he just can’t get rid of, and sometimes the
pain darts up his back and all the way down to his heels. It’s still preferable to being mutilated by a tractor trailer, but he doesn’t know about that or even suspect it. Gathering his courage, he advances, in high feline pelvic slouch, toward the amorphous sack filled with polystyrene chips that Daphne calls her sofa.

  The beanpole, planted on legs not very powerful yet plumpish, regards him the way you do a handsome actor, with a certain deference that would like to be chaste but is helpless to defend against his charms. He senses her admiring gaze on his high Risorgimental brow and, eyes trained on the floor, seems to want to apologize and tell her there’s nothing he can do about it, this is the lot he’s been assigned. His white shirt is now open to the sternum, framing his wide, flat chest like a stage curtain. On his feet, beach flip-flops point to the precariousness of the light clothing he’s wearing, insubstantial as leaves that might flutter away at the first hint of autumn breezes.

  The lights are low in the former fishmonger’s, and a large, stubborn candle sends out sensuous smells and tremulous glimmers, never mind its ecclesiastical provenance. There’s a comfortable tatami mat on the floor that if need be will deftly support two twined bodies, and near it—by chance?—a packet of tissues. Every little detail has its place: the blind cat cuts across the room with the lightest of footsteps. When the gong sounds, she’ll disappear, she promises.

  The shameless girl lights a stick of incense that smells of tawdry sandalwood and oriental spices. If there’s one thing I can’t bear, it’s the fumes of burning Boswellia sacra resin. As she passes by, she taps the lamp clipped to the edge of the fish basin to dim the room’s lighting even further. Now, not letting herself be seen, she rolls her far-apart camel’s eyes about. In that neoclassical tunic she might be a high priestess checking that all is ready before she begins the ceremony. The victims chosen for the pyre are standing by the altar, the temple smells of balsam, spirals of smoke rise from the torches toward the sky, where the pagan gods are meant to reside.

  The sly fox takes out the book he brought on the connections between climatic catastrophe and social revolution. (But didn’t he just stop in by chance?) He thinks he might grab her and pull her close with his good arm, seeing that she’s kneeling by his side, pleased that he’s brought her a present, blushing a little, pressing her long thigh against his knee. But her sparkling smile seems to say she’d prefer to follow the normal path prescribed in the amorous liturgy, no shortcuts, so he hands her his offering, an oblation to placate Aphrodite. She nods and presses the bible of revolutions sparked by climate change against her very small breasts, as if the book were a gift from the Magi. Thank you, she murmurs, her throat already swollen with desire. He narrows his eyes lazily, the way a cat does when scratched on the side of the neck.

  At this point he’s just about to lay his unsplinted arm on her shoulder; a silent countdown is underway. Minus three, minus two, minus one—but then, one millionth of a second before zero, she leaps to her feet, arching forward as elegantly as a dolphin leaving the water. Would he like a glass of rum? Classic, I think: she’ll give him a strong drink—not strictly necessary—and that will be the dynamite to bring down the last bastion of a city that in fact has already surrendered. Apollo accepts gladly, and, fluffing up his Giuseppe-Verdian locks with his good hand, rattles the two ice cubes in his rum to make the glass ring solemnly.

  His swollen lower lip brushing the edge of the glass, he asks casually if she has anything to do that evening. She’s wearing an equally neutral face, to suggest that the idea of spending the evening together (to employ that figure of speech) is something that just came to her. But now she clears her throat and says very firmly that she’s waiting for her aunt and they have to discuss something that’s a bit of a nuisance. And unfortunately she’ll be here any minute, she says, looking at the time on her phone. He’s stunned, and wonders if he heard her right. To tell the truth, I’m not sure I understood her either.

  The purple-pigtailed priestess is now standing in silence, the way you do when you’re waiting for someone to make up his/her mind to leave. She compresses those wide horizontal lips of hers, and begins to paw the floor like a hungry mare. So he gulps his rum and starts for the door, head down, a boxer with an out-of-commission arm who has taken a hail of blows. That confident smile of his is now just a vague memory. He really can’t make out where he went wrong; everything was flowing as smooth as oil from a jug and then suddenly he’d been expelled from the game. She squeezes his good arm affably, the way you send off the Jehovah’s Witnesses, and shuts the door smartly behind him.

  My legs seem about to buckle under me, although a god doesn’t have legs and if he did, they would be very sturdy. What’s happening to me? I don’t know, only that nothing like this has ever happened before, which is why I’m so confused. It’s as if I’ve had a brief spell, one in which you lose consciousness for a few seconds.

  At the same time I’m relieved, and can once again breathe normally (figure of speech). So relieved I’m close to tears (same). Daphne had not been preparing some demonic orgy, as I’d feared; she hadn’t dressed to facilitate coitus, the mat on the floor meant nothing. Or maybe it did, but then she hesitated, and her best side came forward and she resisted (in extremis, it is true) the terrible temptation. Sure, she’s a bit of a libertine, even for these pornographic times, but apart from a few episodes of undeniable intemperance, she’s not a loose woman, she never has been. One day, maybe not too long from now, she’ll even rethink her views about Me.

  I ask myself, how did I get the picture so ass-backwards (ridiculous expression); what prevented me from seeing how things were going to turn out? What’s become of my proverbial foresight? Of course, anything can happen, but a god cannot allow himself to be so badly led astray by appearances. For a god, present and future are one and the same, they’re just two pages in the book before him. With hindsight it’s obvious my mind was clouded; sometimes one has to be frank about these things. But hey, let’s not focus on the negative. What matters is that it all ended well.

  ‌Bedeviled by Strange Thoughts

  Lately I’m bedeviled by strange thoughts. I think I’d like to be a man. A real human being, not a god incarnated in a man; no matter how skillfully executed, a deity embodied in a human always retains something of the divine. I’d like to be a man who has just one idea at a time and not the faintest notion of why he’s on this earth, or what the point of his existence is. A canonical biped perennially unhappy about one thing, anxious about another, always hungry or thirsty or sleepy or hurting somewhere, who can flip in an instant from euphoria to darkest misery.

  In these strange moments I imagine I’d like to know for certain that I would die, and that so would everyone else around me. Without knowing when and how, without being able to do anything about it. To be a man is certainly a miserable condition, really quite mediocre, and from a certain point of view, brutalizing, dehumanizing, but also very romantic, it seems to me. I don’t mean to be a man for eternity—that wouldn’t even be possible except by constantly changing bodies—but long enough to satisfy the urge. To try out among other things those elusive sexual stimuli that loom so large in their existence. To get drunk on wine, sampling all the best wines in existence at once, and all the beers, and a representative sample of spirits. To experience great happiness, and immediately after, tremendous sadness, and so forth.

  Some quiet, frigid evenings, when I’m passing through a dark nebula’s silicate dust-cloud, I close my eyes and imagine I really am a man. No longer a god but a homo sapiens of the male gender who through a series of coincidences comes into contact with the thin-on-top and heavy-at-the-bottom girl. Obviously I won’t tell her who I really am; she wouldn’t believe me, she’s an atheist. I’ll also stay away from any subject that has anything to do with theology, and I’ll pretend to forget, or almost, the most important things, as the most erudite humans do, and I’ll have loads of prejudices and idiosyncrasies. I’ll pretend to speak just a handful of langua
ges, badly, and as far as genetics goes I’ll listen to her as if I haven’t a clue what she’s talking about, not a clue, as her acquaintances do. On the other hand I mustn’t exaggerate in the opposite direction or I’ll be taken for an imbecile. I must also shine, fascinate her. A difficult balance for someone accustomed to excelling.

  On reflection, perhaps the gravest danger is that she’ll think I’m a simpleton. That would really be something if she saw me as unattractive and I ended up in the same class as her colleague with the sunset-colored pimples. Once I wrangle my way in, her first impression will be all-important and all but impossible to alter—even for omnipotent me.

  At this point, just to reassure myself, I flood a stretch of superhighway and bring down a commercial airplane. The cause of the crash could not be determined. However, the fears and uncertainties soon creep back.

  Maybe confused is an exaggeration, but I find my reasoning disturbed, my thoughts quaking, wound up in corkscrews like those of a staggering drunk. I hope I’m mistaken, but I fear these are the egoistical charms known as feelings in which the bipeds have been indulging ever since I created them. I knew right away that something was amiss. I try to chase the things off but they just cling there, corroding my divine aplomb like sly woodworms. I had no idea that such a thing could happen.