I Am God

by Giacomo Sartori

  They’ll meet by chance and discover they’re made for each other. Ka-pow! Love at first sight. It will be the just conclusion of this business, the only outcome that’s suited to my status. But first I have to take care of all the side issues. One thing at a time. There’s no big hurry for this boyfriend, right?

  The hunky Vittorio has already been dispatched to the land of kangaroos and descendants of British pickpockets. I arranged for his eye to fall on an ad for a job at an Australian university; they were looking for a research professor with just his profile. On a lark—the salary was unbelievable—he sent off an application, never dropping his usual ironic nonchalance. The reply came right back: he was just the person they were looking for. Due to unforeseen circumstances a certain project had been seriously delayed and so they were in a hurry.

  After he’d read over the compensation clause of the contract five or six times, not a whiff of his dopaminic ardor for Daphne persisted. The fickleness of men never fails to amaze me. He didn’t even go over to wish her farewell in person, the miserable cad; he just sent a shower of faux-comical text messages. I was tempted to mete out some small, suitable punishment, but instead I helped him with his preparations, and I even put his elbow right—in two days it was working like new—to facilitate his departure. And thus he and his irresistible smile did really take off, and on the airplane he made friends with a Tyrolean damsel wearing a push-up bra and a Pentecost-purple headset. Sorry, but from now on, this diary will feature one character less, and you’ll have to make do with the ones who are left.

  ‌The Registered Letter with Many Stamps

  The Minotaur picks up the phone and slowly dials three digits. Police, thinks Daphne, who isn’t at all surprised he’s made the stupid choice. While he waits he’s drumming his Picassian fingers on the desk as he readies himself to explain the situation. He’s still waiting. Then suddenly he puts the phone down, as if seized by a raptus. Okay, I’m not going to pursue this, but don’t you ever set foot in here again, he shouts, waving his arms as if she’s an annoying animal to be chased away. Out! he screams. And don’t think you’ll ever work as an inseminator again, he yells at her back as she grabs the door handle, as if the thought had just occurred to him. Not even in Basilicata!

  When the secretary with the heels and the Byzantine-Egyptian prostitute makeup sees her appear, she trains her triumphant eyes on her, she too playing the defender of the Catholic faith. When in fact for the past two years and two months—if we want to dot our I’s and cross our T’s—she’s been indulging in adulterous afternoon sex on the presidential armchair. That’s a fact that the beanpole would never suss out even in normal conditions, however, and certainly not today.

  Back on the street without knowing how and why she got there, she feels like she’s drunk. She’s crying without knowing she’s crying. I must admit that I, too, am somewhat upset. Of course I knew about the security cameras that recorded her stealing the crucifixes, I knew that’s why she’d been called in, and I even knew he’d put the phone down without talking to the law. But it’s one thing to know what’s going to happen, another to witness it happening, as it were, in first person. Feelings can confuse you. I was almost expecting the police to answer the phone and send over a patrol. And right now I almost have a lump in my throat watching her weep like that. Omnipotence: it also means having a lump in your throat without having a throat.

  As she parks her bike in front of the old fishmonger’s, she thinks that at least she has a place to live, and that’s something. Recession or no recession, she’ll find a way to make a little money. It was never going to last, that insemination gig; what happened was bound to happen. In short, she tells herself some baseless encouraging lies, the way humans do to boost their spirits.

  Poking out of the mailbox is a registered letter plastered with many stamps; it seems the Indian signed for it in her absence (and here I’m putting myself in her shoes; this is merely a hypothesis). She opens it thinking it must be some receipt for tax purposes, and finds that the owner of the fishmonger’s has written to say her lease will not be extended. The place is going to be renovated and she must vacate in two months. She has to read the words three or four times before they penetrate her brain, and it dawns on her that this is an eviction notice. Now she begins to cry again. She sobs sitting on the toilet, and the blind cat on her knees wonders what heaven those salty drops come from and what that metrical braying’s supposed to mean.

  ‌I’ll Be Mute as a Fish

  I wish I could tell her that she can relax. Job, housing, love, leisure time: I’m going to put it all right. I’ll come up with an apartment that’s not very expensive to rent but nice, with a proper, God-given (pardon my word play) bed. And if all goes well (it will!) she’ll be able to pursue that research of hers she’s so thrilled about. No worries, Daphne, I’ll take care of everything, I’d like to tell her. I’m here—you know, God, I’d like to whisper in her ear, tenderly but reassuringly.

  But instead I remain mute as a fish, true to my habitual divine reserve. No matter what happens, no matter how bad the mess she’s in. It pains me to see her like this, but I can’t let myself be taken hostage by sentiment or act out of impulse. There’s a time for everything. This evening I’ll limit myself to sending her a proper restorative sleep to enjoy in her dry aquarium. Sleep is important when things go badly, otherwise the nerves (I won’t go into the technical details) become exhausted. I’m also supervising her dreams personally; to cheer her up, some charming Zeffirellian romantic nonsense in pastel colors with Florentine embellishments—and a few baroque Greenaway strokes here and there. Not exactly her style, but it should do the trick.

  Of course, atheist that she is, when she sees that her problems have been resolved, she’ll think things worked out all by themselves. She’ll say she was super lucky, after all that bad shit (her terminology) that befell her. I don’t mind. To love means to be concerned with the welfare of the beloved person above all, not with one’s own (and this tale is taking me where it wants to go).

  ‌Supermarket Checkout Clerk

  She told herself that standing in front of the supermarket register wouldn’t be especially tiring. But in fact, she realized right away that time in that consumer prison was mired in a stomach-turning swamp of baked ham, laundry detergent, pecorino cheese and aftershave. Time had stopped. Her colleagues told her that she’d get used to it, but she’s convinced she’ll die before that moment comes. Every day is an unending torture. She’s so wiped out in the evening that her head feels like it’s made of many tiny pieces badly glued together, pieces that themselves are tagged for sale. And the final blow is that to get home now, she has to take the subway first and then a bus. One morning she’d left the house and found that her beautiful twin-cylinder was gone. Well, there was a piece of the lock, which they’d managed to force. The chain, they made off with.

  The first days she glanced at the shoppers’ bodies and faces. It’s incredible how much you can determine about a human being from a lightning glance, she would think, back then when she was still enjoying developing theories, translating this thing into mathematical and IT terms. But then she realized that classifying faces and clothing was just one more effort on top of the effort of having to smile. It was better just to keep her head down and restrict her movements to what was necessary to push the products by and take the cash or card. Now she behaves like the others, she spares herself.

  After just a couple of weeks, the clientele now rolls by one after the other like silhouettes of refugees, clots of stress made of flesh and odors, but mostly of a great deal of anxiety, of angst. Nearly all are in a foul humor, or a hurry,* and she doesn’t need to look at them to know that, she can feel it in her sternum. At peak hours the queue in front of her register grows longer. Supermarkets aren’t happy places; people leave their happiness outside in hopes they’ll find it later in the things they’ve put in their cart, each with its penitentiary barcode.

  * If there’s any chu
rch that reveals how badly off human beings are, now that they’ve rid themselves of Me, it’s the supermarket; I can’t disagree with her.

  If she knew this was just a temporary situation, she’d be taking it better, poor thing. But the unemployment rate has been worsening, and in her deterministic mind that means she’ll be tied to that shitty register (her words) for eternity. I’ve stopped sending her signals of hope; numbskull that she is, she doesn’t pick up on them. I arranged for her to meet a fortune-teller in the subway who predicted she would resume her research on bacteria-fueled energy. She thought the woman had simply guessed her job by chance. I made sure she saw a horoscope announcing splendid times to come for Sagittarians of the Third Decade. She laughed bitterly, that big mouth of hers spreading even wider. She won’t believe it until she can reach out a hand and touch it, the materialist.

  As you can imagine, I could find her another job if I really wanted to, never mind the recession. But this is the path I’ve chosen. Many novices think a god reasons like a traffic cop, but with all due respect for traffic cops, a god’s actions are lofty and very complex. Above all, a god has to keep in mind the welfare of millions and millions of believers, billions of believers, foreseeing their infinite interactions and giving priority to those who deserve it, the faithful of the faithful, as is only right. If it was just a question of looking after one person, a monad untouched by gravity, floating in some sterile no-man’s-land, anyone could do it.

  By now her movements are automatic. She slides the products by the barcode reader in one continuous motion, but not too fast: she must look efficient but not exhaust herself before the eight hours are up. She knows the supervisor with the belly that makes him look pregnant is watching her from his elevated booth; he picked her out as snooty right away, reading the puzzled looks of a nearsighted mathematician as contempt. She can’t see him through the reflections on the glass, but he is staring at particular sections of her body with his lewd watery cow’s eyes. I can’t help it if all her bosses lust after her and bother her the way a satyr bothers a wood nymph; I merely report the situation. In theory, there are supposed to be persons of both sexes at the registers, but in fact the ones working there are all female and all have ample backsides and thighs. Those are the tastes of Cerberus the Expectant.

  ‌Man’s Existence

  I never really understood how tragic (wo)man’s existence is until I saw it up close. Humans are constantly at the mercy of all sorts of illnesses, accidents, and environmental catastrophes; from one minute to the next their situation can go from tolerable to utterly untenable. The only thing for certain is that they must die, usually in dreadful pain: not a very cheering certainty. In such conditions, it’s pointless for them to make plans for the future, but they keep on making them anyway, they never give up.

  Once I considered them awful whiners, chronic depressives, inveterate grudge-holders. Now I think I understand them, somewhat. It can’t be pleasant to be hungry, terribly hungry, and then when you do find something to eat, you get a stomachache because you ate too much. To be cold, terribly cold, and dream of being in a warm place, then a split second later find you’re dying of the heat and longing for it to be cool. To desire a partner and suffer atrocious heartache because the other’s keeping you at arm’s length, then to realize that you’re bored to death with that person and tempted to commit murder. To observe the relentless furrowing of your own skin, the deterioration of your vital organs, and know that your brain, too, is beginning to fail.

  Humans, incapable of being happy, spend their entire existence fantasizing they will be happy in the future. Five minutes later, half an hour later, that afternoon, next year, ten years hence, all the hitches and the problems will vanish, the desired state will materialize out of nothing and as if by magic everything will be easy, jolly. Unlike the other animals they are born premature, and no matter how hard they try they can never catch up; something about them always remains infantile, unfinished.* They try to make up for this by telling a million stories, twisting the facts, philosophizing, drowning in their own words. All vain efforts; unhappy they are, unhappy they remain.

  * They even project this shortcoming of theirs on yours truly; it’s just impossible to have a mature relationship with them.

  Maybe I should have inverted the life cycle, putting death at the beginning of their existence and birth at the end. It might be a relief to them to be done with the perishing—out with the tooth, out with the pain—and have the icing on the cake ahead of them: a peaceful, delightful childhood. Maybe that way their condition would seem more acceptable, and they’d be happier. The intolerable stages of maturity and senescence finished, they would slip into a pleasant unconsciousness, running around, playing and screaming like children. And then they’d re-enter their mothers’ wombs without suffering and without regret, the way you park a car in the garage at night, to enjoy life’s one period of genuine tranquility and fusion with the universe. Eight to nine months and they’d be back to the embryonic stage, then just a rowdy spermatozoon or an ovum, and then nothing.

  ‌The Carrots and the Hoe

  It’s only 6 p.m. and she’d give anything to be able to escape right now, or even just lock herself in the bathroom. What heaven it would be to sit on the toilet and smoke a cigarette; it’s forbidden, but she’s been doing it anyway. Today, between one shopper and another, she hasn’t even had time to take a deep breath. What’s worse, she thinks the stink of the supermarket, the gorgonzola and the hair spray and all that, must have permeated her bronchial tubes, her flesh, and her skin. Every time she looks at the clock next to the pregnant ogre’s booth, she finds only a minute has passed, or at the best, two. Time stands still in this quagmire she’s fallen into.

  When she’s finished she heads for the wee one’s house, although she’s a wreck and wouldn’t mind going straight home. But they said they’d meet. The one-bedroom/zoo is in turmoil; Aphra seems very pleased to see her but every few seconds her phone rings anew and she’s going on about banners, frontiers to cross, the van they’ll be traveling in and possible police roadblocks. The cockatoo and the other animals seem worried. Is she about to get into some kind of trouble again? When she was in prison before, the household had descended into chaos. As if replying to their concerns, she explains she’s taking off for a little town in eastern Europe where they plan to mow down a field of genetically modified corn and dump it in the town square. And then they’ll liberate 2,000 pigs from a giant pen where they’re given only genetically modified feed. She’s leaving early tomorrow morning.

  While she boils water to make tea, she speaks of Vittorio. Smiling as always, her big eyes slightly droopy, she tells Daphne that he’s had some awesome freakin’ luck (I merely report what she said); as things turned out he’s now doing exactly what he wanted to and making a shitload of money. She’s really happy for him, she says, her cheeks trembling. Really happy, she says again, rubbing her eyes. She begins to cry. Her face crumples up like a baby, and her sobs are accompanied by high-pitched throaty yelps. The phone rings again but she doesn’t answer. Maybe she doesn’t even hear it. Daphne wraps a long arm around her shoulder, she too quite teary. She’s crying, you understand, also and maybe primarily on her own behalf, as humans always do.

  Truth is, Aphra’s happy that Vittorio is ten thousand miles away, she tells Daphne when she’s calmed down a bit and is stroking the other’s back. Although she’s in the dumps right now. The cockatoo is back on her shoulder; he seems to want to be sure to hear what she’s saying. It was the last thing she’d expected,* she goes on, patting her long Bambi eyelashes dry. Then she cries some more, but smiling to show her impish teeth. The telephone rings again and this time she answers. Cocò, the prying white cockatoo, takes off and lands on the refrigerator, his high-strung head-wagging a signal the tragedy is over.

  * If I may, her reaction is just one more example of the utter inconsistency of human beings. They want something, and when they get it, they complain.


  What we could do is rent some land, the two of us, she pipes up. A house to live in and a nice piece of land to cultivate, she adds, patting the fox cub with the injured leg that’s climbed onto her lap. (Cocò is observing them suspiciously from atop the fridge.) Daphne freezes, her teacup at half-mast. She has always detested rural silence, broken only by the chickens clucking and the hum of the neighbor’s tractor, rows of crops as far as the eye can see. What a great idea, says her mouth, however. And now that she’s said it, she really does think she’d like to live out in the country with her friend, indeed it seems to be the only way to rid herself of the supermarket. She feels tremendously relieved, thinking of it.

  Aphra’s eyes caress her, bright with yearning. You’re so intelligent, she tells Daphne, it’s obvious you’ll invent a ton of new ways to irrigate the crops and to preserve them. When are you going to take me to meet your stepfather? she continues without waiting for any comment from the other. I really want to see that place of his and talk to him, she says, pressing her palms together. At this point her eyes are open wide, transfixed. Daphne promises to take her there, but she thinks privately that she never will; her friend would be terribly disappointed by that loser ex-friend of her mother and the pigsty he lives in, that junkyard. Anyway, he’d be struck dumb as he always is; it would just be embarrassing. She can’t figure out where the little one got that bee in her bonnet.

  Nor does the prospect of hoeing fields of carrots seem that appealing, she thinks as she heads toward the subway stop in the freezing rain. She and her friend are just hardwired to be incompatible, it seems: that little bombshell of energy and good humor has her own battles to fight, her vegan friends, her neo-rustic dreams. She’s into animism, and the animals she looks after and their souls—to her mind they have souls, something like powerful computers. She dreams of a world where everyone grows carrots and they hold public meetings to decide everything. Daphne, instead, beyond her blind, nymphomaniac cat, has nothing. No family, no orgasms, not even, ultimately, any principles to defend. She’s not even sure whether she’s for or against genetically modified organisms, she’s not sure of anything. She just knows she’s unhappy, and that the only thing she’s really good at is being unhappy.