Apocalypse Next Tuesday

by Safier, David; Parnfors, Hilary;

  a voice suddenly said. It was impressive, frightening and wonderful all at once. But the main thing was that it was coming out of the bloody thorn bush!

  I checked the surroundings for loudspeakers and the like.

  WE NEED TO TALK.

  There were no loudspeakers. It really was the bush speaking.

  ‘Are you who I fear you might be…?’ I asked the burning thorn bush, thus speaking to a plant for the first time in my life.

  YES, I AM.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  ‘Scotty to bridge.’

  ‘What is it?’ asked Kirk.

  ‘I quit!’

  YOU ARE KEEPING MY SON FROM COMPLETING HIS TASK.

  I didn’t know what to reply, or how to speak to God at all for that matter. Instinctively I wanted to ask God for forgiveness, but my voice…

  ‘Ch… r…’… failed me completely.

  ANSWER.

  ‘Ch… r…’

  YOU DO NOT NEED TO BE AFRAID OF ME.

  Not afraid, what a comedian!

  DO YOU WANT A DIFFERENT SETTING FOR OUR CONVERSATION?

  ‘Ch… r…’ I replied, attempting something of a nod.

  YOU ARE REACTING LIKE MOSES DID…

  the thorn bush said, sounding amused, something you certainly couldn’t tell from the way it looked.

  A moment later, the path around me had disappeared, and I was standing in an English country house, like the ones you see in Jane Austen films such as Sense and Sensibility. The furniture was from the nineteenth century; there was a delightful smell of black tea and finest orchids in the air, and I was even wearing one of the beige-coloured old English dresses with a corset, which was fortunately not tightly laced, but rather covered my squidgy tummy like a sheet of silk. Through the window, you could see a garden with a lawn. Only English gardeners were able to cut grass quite as precisely as this. Of course I knew that I was no longer in our world. God had simply chosen a setting that I’d always found particularly beautiful in films, and tended to revisit when I was daydreaming. Maybe God had created all of this just for me. Or maybe it was all just part of my own imagination. It actually didn’t really matter, as long as he did not reappear to me as a burning thorn bush.

  I knocked on a wooden table, which certainly felt damn real. I went through a glass door onto the patio, sat down on an old-fashioned, but extremely comfortable lounger, enjoyed the warmth of the sun on my face and listened to the birds singing. This wonderful late summer’s evening at the country house was like balm for my confused soul. The only thing that still seemed a bit creepy was the fact that God knew I’d always wanted to mosey around in a nineteenth-century English country house. Theoretically it was clear to me of course that God knew all our secrets – otherwise he wouldn’t have been known as the Omniscient, but rather as the Semi-omniscient – but when I realised this in practice, that he even knew about little things like my fondness for Jane Austen, I was a little ashamed, not least when I recalled that I had once, during my desperate single days, fantasised about an erotic encounter with Mister Darcy.

  But you simply couldn’t spend too much time feeling guilty or worried in a wonderful garden like this. When I was finally sitting relaxing in the evening sunshine, a voice behind me said: ‘How are you feeling?’

  A woman of my age came out onto the patio from the house. She looked like Emma Thompson, and she was wearing a stunning, resplendent white dress that flowed down to the ground beautifully. She smiled more sweetly than I’d ever seen anyone smile before.

  ‘I’m feeling much better,’ I replied.

  ‘That’s wonderful,’ Emma said.

  ‘Yes, it is,’ I reiterated.

  ‘Would you care for some Darjeeling?’

  I actually preferred coffee, latte in particular, but since it didn’t really fit into the country house milieu, I answered, ‘Yes, I’d love some.’

  Emma Thompson took the pot of tea from a three-legged side table that I hadn’t seen before now – perhaps it had only just appeared? – and poured the tea into an exquisite white porcelain cup with a red flower pattern. I had a sip, and it tasted surprisingly like latte. In fact, the best latte that I’d ever had.

  ‘I think this is how you prefer your tea,’ Emma Thompson said with a smile. It was such a wonderful, friendly, even loving smile, so I couldn’t help but smile back.

  ‘Is this heaven?’ I asked.

  ‘No, I created this especially for you.’

  ‘It must be very convenient to be God,’ I said when I saw the beautiful garden.

  ‘Yes it is,’ Emma/God laughed.

  ‘Are you always a woman?’ I was not afraid to ask questions in this wonderful setting.

  ‘I could show you my true face, but I’d better not.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because you would go insane upon seeing it.’

  ‘That’s a good reason,’ I replied. Now I was starting to feel slightly afraid again. So I decided not to ask any more of the questions I’d always wanted answered. What was there before God created the universe? Did paradise really exist? What the heck was God thinking when he invented periods?

  And tumours?

  Instead I took another sip of the Darjeeling/latte and looked at the exceedingly carefully cut lawn.

  ‘I haven’t spoken to anyone like this in more than two thousand years,’ Emma/God explained.

  Whether or not I wanted it to, this certainly fed my ego. I looked up again and asked: ‘Did you invite Moses for tea back then as well?’

  ‘No, after all those years in the desert all he wanted to do was eat leavened bread again,’ Emma/God replied, taking a little sip of tea. Then she finally got to the point. ‘You are keeping my son from completing his task.’

  ‘Yes.’ I admitted. What was the point of denying it?

  ‘You love him.’

  ‘Yes.’ I couldn’t much deny that either.

  ‘In a way that you are not supposed to?’

  ‘Hmm…’ I mumbled evasively. Of course I knew that my feelings for Joshua were not normal, but they did feel genuine. Then how could they be wrong?

  ‘Please leave him alone,’ Emma/God asked gently, taking another sip of her tea.

  ‘No, I won’t do that,’ I blurted out.

  Emma/God put the cup down and looked at me mildly surprised. Though not as surprised as I was having dared to contradict God. That had probably never been good for anyone.

  ‘You don’t want to let go of him,’ she said.

  ‘No.’ It was too late now to eat my words now.

  ‘You doubt my divine plan?’ Emma/God was now no longer smiling.

  ‘Yes…’ I replied, my voice shaking. I’d really got myself into a big hole. So I may as well keep digging. I just couldn’t understand the need for the lake of fire or the Great Flood (as a little girl I had imagined three penguin friends – Pengy, Pongo and Manfred – waddling onto the Ark, only to hear Noah say that only two of them could come. Pengy and Pongo waddled up the ramp of the ship more quickly, and Manfred had to stay behind, disappointed by his friends for the rest of his life. (Although the rest of this little penguin’s life wasn’t all that long, as it had already started to rain).

  ‘You doubt my goodness?’ Emma/God demanded to know.

  ‘It’s just hard to see whether you are the benevolent or the punitive God,’ I answered bravely.

  ‘I am the benevolent God,’ he answered emphatically.

  I was not convinced. All I could think was: ‘Tell that to Manfred the penguin.’

  ‘But,’ Emma/God continued, ‘I am also the punitive God.’

  This divine logic was, like so many other divine logics, completely incomprehensible to me. And it was probably written all over my face.

  ‘You people are my children, and like children you grow and change perpetually,’ she explained. ‘You are no longer as you were in paradise. Or during the Great Flood. And like children you need to be brought up, and as you get older that needs to occ
ur in a different way.’

  ‘Oh I see…’ It was slowly becoming clear to me. Humanity was an innocent baby in the Garden of Eden with Adam and Eve, and then a wild pubescent teenager at the time of Sodom and Gomorrah. God had also been a loving parent, sometimes kind but also stern. ‘If you mess around like that again, there’ll be no TV.’

  And what was it Jesus said in this regard? The precise etiquette for the house of God was there for all to read in the Bible. God was a consistent mother (or father or whatever) with clear instructions.

  Thinking about it, she was actually quite a patient parent. At the end of the day she only really banged her fist on the table every couple of thousand years, and otherwise permitted plenty of freedoms to develop, make mistakes and correct them, only to go on and make some more mistakes. So, if you believed the words of these parenting experts, she was actually an archetypal mother.

  But although it all made a bit more sense now, I wondered why she needed to make with the punitive threats. Of course, there were lots of people who did not follow selfish impulses, because they were afraid of being punished for them in the afterlife – in that sense it worked. But did it really have to be an eternal hell – wasn’t a TV ban enough?

  And there was another thing I didn’t understand. ‘Did it have to be the cross?’

  ‘Excuse me?’ Emma/God sounded surprised.

  ‘Crucifixion is an agonising way to die – would a sleeping potion not have been enough?’

  Now that I knew Joshua, his suffering moved me even more than it had just a few days ago in the church.

  ‘Does a loving father… a loving mother… do that?’ I asked accusingly.

  ‘It was not me. It was the people who nailed him to the cross,’ Emma/God corrected me gently.

  ‘But why did you allow it to happen?’ I was not letting go now.

  ‘Because I gave you people a free will.’

  So we’d got to the question of all questions, that I’d already asked myself aged fourteen when I had my first taste of heartache. Why did God give people a free will to do such incredibly stupid things with?

  ‘Because…’ Emma/God declared – it seemed that she had read my thoughts or at least guessed what I was thinking – ‘because I love you.’

  I looked into her eyes and she seemed to be telling the truth.

  ‘Or would you like to live without a free will, Marie?’

  This made me think of people in North Korea, Scientologists and other apathetic zombies without a will of their own.

  ‘No…’ I answered.

  ‘You see,’ Emma/God smiled benignly. She really did seem to love us. Perhaps she had created humanity because she missed not having someone to love. Yes, perhaps God had been living in a perfectly ordered universe that was not yet inhabited and was not all messed up. Like a couple living in a massive house with an as-yet empty nursery who long for a child so that the house might be filled with laughter, shouting and chewing gum squashed into the carpets. For a moment I felt sorry for God, who had once been alone in the universe and must have felt incredibly lonely.

  ‘You are the first person who’s ever shown me compassion,’ she said smiling sweetly. She took my hand – which felt very warm and human – and added, ‘The same compassion that you have for my son.’

  She seemed to be the first potential mother-in-law who liked me.

  ‘But…’ Emma/God continued, ‘…if you stay with him, my son will be unhappy.’

  ‘W… why?’ I asked, fearing the answer.

  ‘Because he will have to turn away from me,’ Emma/God explained, thoughtfully stirring her tea. The thought seemed to make her sad. This one person, whom she loved more than all the others. She certainly didn’t want to lose him.

  ‘And if he turns away from me…’ she began saying wistfully.

  ‘…it would endlessly hurt Joshua and tear his heart apart,’ I added, finishing this sad thought.

  ‘You are a wise human child,’ she said earnestly.

  ‘So you are commanding me to stay away from him?’

  ‘No, I’m not.’

  ‘No?’ I asked.

  ‘You have a free will. It’s your decision.’

  At that moment, the garden, the country house, the porcelain, all of it, just disappeared. But, above all, Emma Thompson had disappeared as well. I found myself standing in my own clothes by the lake in Malente, in front of the thorn bush, which was no longer burning and looked completely unscathed.

  I thought about the decision with which I was faced. If I were to stay with Joshua, it would crush him to go against God. If I left him, my silly, childish dream of loving Joshua would come to an end.

  So I had a choice between two pretty evil evils! Great thing, free will.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  I stood before the innocent-looking thorn bush, boiling with frustration and shouted: ‘This is all just not fair of you!’

  ‘Are you talking to some undergrowth, Marie?’ a surprised Joshua asked from behind me. I froze on the spot. As I didn’t turn around to face him, he walked around me, looked at my stunned face and asked: ‘I thought that you’d have been home by now?’

  What was I going to do now? Tell him about my tea for two with God? I decided to try to win some time by saying something trivial. ‘No, I’m not at home.’

  Joshua nodded. He could see that for himself.

  We remained silent for a while, and then the thought struck me that maybe God had also invited his son for tea to discuss these relationship problems. Whatever it was, she/he/it/whatever was probably more than capable of having two conversations at the same time. So I carefully asked: ‘And… have you spoken to God?

  ‘Yes, I have,’ Joshua replied, and my heart almost stood still with excitement. Perhaps he already knew that I was going to have to make a decision, and might therefore be making it for me? But then again, I probably didn’t want that after all, as I would surely not be able to stand it if Joshua ended it.

  ‘What… what did he say to you?’ I asked nervously.

  ‘Nothing,’ Jesus replied, sounding a little disappointed. It seemed that he had hoped for more too.

  ‘Nothing?’ I could hardly believe it.

  ‘God only speaks to people very rarely,’ Joshua explained.

  ‘Damn coward!’ I blurted out.

  ‘What?’ Jesus appeared mildly surprised about my criticism of God, who really did seem to be leaving it entirely up to my own free will to break Joshua’s heart.

  ‘Erm. I mean… not you,’ I hastily explained.

  Joshua looked around, but there was no one to be seen anywhere, not on the path, nor in the bushes, nor in the trees.

  ‘So whom do you mean then?’ Jesus asked sounding confused.

  ‘Erm… … the… … the… the tree!’ I stammered, as I didn’t want to tell him that I was shouting at God either, and especially not about what it was about.

  ‘The tree?’ Joshua was completely confused now.

  It was one of those conversations in which you want to press the rewind button.

  ‘The tree… is erm… a coward, because it doesn’t offer its fruits to God,’ I explained, a little relieved that I’d managed to save myself with this explanation that both sounded reasonably believable and biblical.

  ‘But that’s a fir tree…’ Joshua said looking puzzled, ‘it doesn’t bear fruit.’

  ‘Nevertheless!’ I insisted, for lack of better excuses.

  Perhaps I would have been even more affected by my idiotic ramblings had not my anger at God got the upper hand again. After all, it was he who had got me into this situation in the first place. One thing was sure, I would not be accepting another tea/latte from this woman.

  ‘Why do you look so angry all of a sudden?’ Joshua asked.

  If I were to tell him the truth now, I thought, he would probably become angry with his God as well, for the first time in his life. But if Joshua were to be angry with God, he would suffer and… and… and… Even just
the thought of seeing Joshua suffer made my anger disappear and turn to sorrow.

  ‘Marie, what is it…?’ Joshua was confused. No wonder really. I currently had greater mood swings than a woman going through the menopause.

  The question was: what would hurt Joshua more? Conflict with God? Or living without me? That wasn’t really a difficult question to answer. Joshua would never be able to live without God; being his son was the essence of his life, his destiny. He could certainly live without me – like all other men before him.

  As hard as it was – perhaps even for him – my free will had at that moment made the only decision possible. I had to be the woman to break up with Jesus.

  ‘I… I don’t think it’s a good idea if I stay with you,’ I said, trying to find the right words.

  Joshua looked confused.

  ‘You need to go your way and I need to go mine,’ I continued.

  ‘You don’t want to stay with me?’ Jesus asked in disbelief.

  ‘No.’

  Joshua just couldn’t understand what I was getting at. No wonder – he didn’t have as much experience of being dumped as I did.

  ‘We… are not compatible,’ I said honestly, yet still using one of the most popular break-up phrases.

  ‘Why not?’ Joshua asked. He was a little bit slow on the uptake.

  That just made him even more lovable. And this whole thing even harder for me.

  Should I use the age difference? I was in my mid-thirties. Bodily he was a little over thirty as well, but in actual fact he was more than 2,000 years old. Or should I claim that I wasn’t worthy of him? After all, he could turn water into wine. My special talent was having no special talent.

  ‘It’s… it’s not you… it’s me.’ I spared him the details and noticed that I used another classic break-up phrase. If I carried on like this I might even end up saying: ‘We can still be friends.’