Humans, Beasts, and Ghosts

by Zhongshu Qian

  This God was evolved, all right. He could not have been further from a Neanderthal, lacking any trace of the superstition or awe of a savage discovering the universe for the first time. His was the haughtiness and self-confidence of civilized man. Savage man, believing in the omnipresent existence of divinities, submits to and grovels before them.7 God, discovering only his own greatness, believed that since he could control all things he need not rely on anyone else. The world would extend to meet his gaze and the ground would come up to meet his feet. In fear, the horizon retreated before him. Everything fed his arrogance and nurtured his vanity. Then, suddenly, he felt the need for a companion. What a dreadful bore it would be to continue living in this vast world alone. A companion would enliven things.8 Coming to this realization, God pondered what his criteria for this companion would be. His conclusion may not have been as clear as what follows, but the gist was more or less the same.

  First, this companion should understand him. This understanding, however, should be akin to that of a critic vis-à-vis a creative genius: appreciation without ability. The companion’s knowledge should not enable him to copy or compete with him. At most, it should lead him to offer due praise and tickle him with sweet talk, because—

  Second, this companion’s purpose was to flatter his vanity. He should praise him tirelessly and indiscriminately, like a member of a rich man’s entourage, a bought politician, or a newspaper editor on the take. But he wouldn’t bribe this companion, whose praises would emerge willingly from the gratitude and happiness at the bottom of his heart; thus—

  Third, this companion should be as loyal and honest to him as . . . as what exactly? This naive and tentative God had no clue. Even we who are familiar with the ways of the world and have seen all sorts of relationships—between fathers and sons, elder and younger brothers, men and women, masters and servants, superiors and subordinates, leaders and their idolizers—can’t suggest an apt comparison.

  Some people are unable to sleep if a thought crosses their mind right before bed. Others drift off into slumber as a result of indulging in wild thoughts during their waking hours. God might well have evolved from this latter category of person, because these thoughts slipped him into a dream. The obedient world followed him into dreamland. In his dream he still saw barren mountains and wild rivers, and in the water he saw his own reflection. Inspired, he dug a ball of mud out of one of the more fertile sides of the jagged mountains. Following the image in the water, he shaped it into a figure and blew on it. The clay figure began to move and prostrated itself at his feet, crying: “Oh, true, omniscient, and omnipotent Lord! I will forever sing your praises.” The surprise and joy that God felt at this moment is indescribable. If you or I were a young girl and heard the doll in our hands suddenly call out “Mommy!” or a female college student who saw the Hollywood star in our wall poster suddenly make eyes at us and intone in a baritone voice, “Little sister, I love you!” we might be able to surmise or imagine a minuscule fraction of what he felt. Unfortunately, we’re not.

  At this moment, all sacred religious texts’ records of man being molded from mud were finally validated as fact rather than mere prophecy. God didn’t realize that he was dreaming or that the dream was toying with him. He didn’t know that this ball of mud, if you analyzed it, would prove to be but the stuff of dreams.9 He thought that he had truly found someone to keep him entertained. From now on, he imagined, flattery would reach his heart without having to come from his own mouth. The best praise he could receive was that which he wanted to speak but instead heard, since it would be as thoughtful and apropos as self-flattery but come from someone else’s mouth. Each one of us has an ideal, and we may all have dreamed someone up to make it come true. To fabricate such a person when awake, however, is not quite so simple. All we can do is take as raw materials the people already available to us and rework and adapt them, but the finished product will never be quite what we had hoped.

  Without knowing it, God got a few lucky breaks by coming into being after mankind had gone extinct. In the past, when two nations went to war, for instance, Nation A would beseech him to punish Nation B, and Nation B would directly appeal to him to annihilate Nation A, leaving the brilliant and righteous God at a loss for what to do. Now he would never be faced with such a conundrum. If writers still existed, for example, his creation of man would surely have provoked a literary debate.10 Judged solely by his molding man out of mud, God was undoubtedly a naturalist working in the mode of realism, since he saw human nature as despicable and drew his material from below. At the same time, he was clearly playing the classicist, since “all creation is based on imitation.” Omnipotent though he might be, he still had to look at a reflection in the water in order to create man. Whether because classicist theory is inaccurate, because God’s handiwork is below par, or because he had an ugly visage, the man God made in his image was not much to look at. Perhaps, he thought, this was because the mud was too coarse or because it was his first try and his technique was not yet refined enough. Accordingly, he selected the finest mud—from the very same mound under which Lin Daiyu had buried flowers countless years ago11—carefully picked out the gravel, and mixed it with morning dew that had not yet dried in the shady recesses of the valley. Having scrutinized the strengths and weaknesses of his first human creation, his experienced fingers fashioned a new figure from the mud. He chose curves from the ripples of the river to invent a new figure. He selected a gorgeous redness from the delicate rosy light reflected in the morning clouds for its face. He plucked the color azure from the blue sky and concentrated it in its eyes. Finally, he harnessed the gentlest rippling breeze and funneled it into the mud figure in place of his own breath. The essence of wind is inflation and fluidity, and as this figure came alive the first thing it did was to stretch its lithe and supple waist and give a long yawn, setting an example for all the world’s lovelorn young ladies. This second figure was none other than woman—God’s improvement on the original. Man was merely God’s first try, while woman was his crowning achievement. This explains why appearance-conscious men always mimic women, and why women who push the envelope too far transform into vixens.12

  From then on, God had work to do. He did everything he could think of for this male-female pair. He created all sorts of tamed animals and birds, as well as fruits and vegetables for their use and enjoyment. Whenever he made something new, brimming with self-satisfaction he would announce to them, “I invented another new thing. Am I skillful or what?” prompting the duo to exclaim in unison, “God, the merciful redeemer!” Before long, the couple grew accustomed to seeing his miracles and tired of thanking him. Soon, they began to resent his intrusion into their intimacy. God came to realize that, little by little, the pair’s attitude toward him had cooled. Not only did their eulogies ring less loudly than before but their knees and backs no longer seemed to bend quite as briskly in supplication. This led to an unhappy realization. God had invented many things since creating humans, but this was the first time he had discovered something.

  His discovery was that when it comes to male-female relationships, “three” is an integral yet intolerable number. As the newcomer, you will of course regard yourself as an integral member of the trio, as will one of the other two people. The other, however, will find your presence intolerable, though less so than you find his or hers. Should you be the original member of the trio who has subsequently been relegated to third-wheel status, you will continue to regard yourself as an integral party even though the other two resent your presence. In that case, you may consider one member of the pair integral, while of course finding the other intolerable. Mathematicians teach us that a triangle cannot have two obtuse angles, but there is always one obtuse angle in any love triangle. God’s discovery was that this obtuse angle was not the thick-as-mud man but himself for having been such an indiscreet guardian. What an inhuman—no, ungodly—indignity!13 He hadn’t created woman to be man’s companion. He had simply created a plaything out o
f sheer boredom. The first mold was unsatisfactory, so he had created a second. Who could have thought that the two would have hit it off and cast him aside? He was flabbergasted that woman’s attitude toward the Lord Creator on High would be to “respect him, but keep him at a distance,”14 and that she would instead take up with a man who stank of mud. Consequently, God had another unhappy discovery, this time not mathematical but biological.

  This discovery was that the universe had something called gravity. As a result of gravitational pull, all objects have a downward trajectory, including Newton’s apple. This is why lower-class people are so numerous and upper-class people are so rare. The same principle also explains why upper-class people are inclined to oppress the lower classes; why youth go bad at the drop of a hat; and why public morality continues to deteriorate. When God created woman, he plucked dew and copied the ripples of the river, inadvertently validating the old saying that “women have a watery nature.” Even less did he have in mind that other old phrase: “Water flows downward.”15 If the apple had fractured Newton’s skull or broken his nose, he would have discovered gravity just the same, but he undoubtedly would have considered either demonstration to be excessive. Similarly, even though God thoroughly understood the human heart and the natural world, he always felt uneasy because the female mind was unfathomable to him. He even felt that his own greatness was an obstacle and regretted that it prevented them from getting closer. Contrary to his hopes, creating this pair of man and woman had only exacerbated his loneliness because their intimacy magnified the solitude of rejection. Even more infuriating was how they would come and kiss up to him when they had some unfulfilled need. When the fruit had rotted and they wanted the trees to grow new ones, for instance, or when they were tired of eating domesticated animals and wanted wild game from the mountains, they would pester him with endearments until they duped him into acquiescing. No sooner would their wishes be fulfilled than they would for a long time relegate him to the back of their minds. God had turned into their mere servant, and this infuriated him.16 In the beginning, to make them love him, he had made them enjoy fresh fruit and wild game. In doing so, had he not lowered his own status to that of fruit and game? Given their ulterior motives, if he acceded to their every request, that would make him a stupid melon among fruits or a stool pigeon among wild game! Consequently, God decided that he would no longer grant their requests. But this pair had dubbed God “the Upright and Merciful,” and he was embarrassed to cause trouble for them over such a trifle. He would have to bide his time until they made their next unreasonable request, at which time he could refuse them flat out. The beauty of it was that God was immortal and could outlast them no matter how long they waited.

  One day, woman came alone to pay her respects to God. She sat by his feet, gazing up at him with eyes as limpid as two drops of water from the Mediterranean Sea, and exclaimed in a tender voice, “Oh, true Lord! No one is as thoughtful and capable as you. I really have no idea how to thank you!”

  God mustered all his power to withstand her eyes’ blitzkrieg and asked suspiciously, “What’s your request?”

  Woman laughed a cautious, ingratiating laugh that spread from the back of her shoulders down to her waist, accentuating the curves of her buxom figure. Her voice seemed to float up from the depths of her heart, each word rising and falling with her laughter: “You truly are the Omniscient Lord Creator! I can’t fool you about anything. I’m so afraid of you. Actually I don’t have any request. You’re too good to us. Everything’s perfect. It—it really isn’t much of a request at all.”

  “What do you mean by ‘it’? Spit it out,” God demanded impatiently, excited by the thought that his chance to vent had arrived.

  Deploying her entire reserve of charm, woman exclaimed with a twist of her figure: “Great Heavenly Father! You really are omnipotent. Merely an effortless lift of your hand fills us with wondrous admiration. I don’t actually want anything new, I just want to request . . .”—as she spoke she pressed her face against God’s unfeeling leg, pointing languidly toward man over in the valley—“I just want to request that you create another man like him. No, not exactly like him—with a slightly finer figure, and more handsome. Merciful Lord! You are most sympathetic and considerate!”17

  God jumped up, kicked woman off his foot, and demanded, “You want me to create another man? Why?”

  Woman rubbed the pit of her stomach with one hand and her cheek with the other. “You scared the heck out of me! Oh, mysterious God! Your power is so great! Your movements are so quick! Look, you hurt my face—but that doesn’t matter. You were asking my reason, right? My man needs a friend; he’s grown bored being with me all the time. If you make another man he won’t be stuck with me all day. Am I right or what?”

  “And you won’t be stuck with him all night either, am I right?” God’s angry voice resounded with a thunderclap in the blue sky. “Woman! How could you make such a brazen request? You covet and waste everything, even man. You have your fixed allotment, but you still demand luxury goods. Outrageous! Get out of here. I’ll let you off this time, but if you come asking for more than your fair share again I’ll punish you by taking away the man you already have. I’ll annihilate him.”

  That last sentence worked. Her face flushing red, woman pursed her lips, got up, and departed. All the way back she mumbled to herself, “I make one joke and you get all high and mighty. To tell the truth, I could tell a long time ago you didn’t have it in you to create a better man than him!” Fortunately, these words escaped God’s ears. Having vented his frustrations, he was beside himself with joy. Afraid that woman would see his smile if she turned around, he hid his face behind a bank of storm clouds. He grinned broadly, and his magnetic white teeth flashed out from within the storm clouds. Just at that moment, woman turned around, but because she had never seen the drawing of the black man in the toothpaste logo,18 she mistakenly took it to be lightning. “Ha, ha!” From a distance, the pitch of God’s stifled, intermittent laughter sounded to her like thunder. She was both angered and frightened by God’s deployment of scare tactics and hurried back to where man was. Since God had just threatened her that he would deprive her of her only man, she reverted to her former affection toward him. She sat beside his head, woke him with kisses, and hugged him, imprinting a kiss mark on every word, leaving it stained with the moistness of her lips: “I have only you! I love only you! I could never live without you. I won’t let anyone take you away from me . . . if anyone tries, I’ll fight them tooth and nail!” Groggy from slumber, man awoke bewildered. Woman’s reaffirmations of resolve made him uneasy because he was suffering a guilty conscience about a dream he had just had. Woman, exhausted from running and worn out by nerves, sunk into a deep slumber. Stealthily, man got up and selected a couple leftover pieces of fatty meat as an offering to God.

  “Oh, most generous Master! Please condescend to accept this offering as a trifling token of my devotion. Everything we have was bestowed by you. Even this is yours—the only offering we can lay at your feet is our sincerity.” So spoke man.

  The happiness God had been feeling a moment ago intensified. “This is the first time the humans have made an offering,” he thought. “No doubt woman had man bring it on her behalf to ask forgiveness. If they see delight on my face they’re sure to think less of me.” As such, he responded with silence, his facial expression projecting a meaning that French and Spanish novelists convey with the following punctuation mark: “?”

  Man saw that God’s expression was not unfavorable and mustered his courage: “I have a small favor to ask you, Lord . . .”

  With a start, God suddenly realized that those two pieces of fatty meat were no different from woman’s beguiling laugh and coquettish eyes: a bribe to accompany a request. Had man, too, been created beautiful and charming, he could have saved himself two pieces of meat.19

  “. . . Please create another woman for me . . .”

  “Woman just asked me the same thing.” God c
ut him off.

  Once again, God was disappointed and angry, but muddleheaded man was surprised and delighted at God’s words. “What a clever devil woman is!” he thought. “How would she know what I was dreaming about? No wonder she hugged me and said all that stuff just now. She was willing to make sacrifices and petitioned God on my behalf, but at the same time she also couldn’t bear to have me snatched away by the newly created woman. Golly! She is so generous and thoughtful—how could I ever bear to abandon her?” As this was going through his mind, he lied to God, “That’s right. She’s been finding life a bit monotonous and hopes to have another female to keep her company.”

  “Wrong! She didn’t ask me to create another person of the same sex; she made a request of the same nature. Did you know that she asked me to create another man, one better looking than a blockhead like you?”

  Man’s disappointment was no less than God’s, and he hurriedly asked, “Lord! Did you say yes?”

  Warming to the delights of venting his temper, God boomed, “I regret that I didn’t. I really made no mistake in matching you two. A fine pair! Off with you! If you don’t watch your step, be careful that I don’t annihilate woman.” This threat didn’t seem sufficiently forceful, so God added, “. . . and I won’t give you any more meat to eat either!” Faced with this dual intimidation, man tremblingly begged for mercy and retreated, rebuffed. God sighed. How could his human creations have turned out to be such good-for-nothings? These two were so equally and symmetrically bad that they were like two lines of parallel prose or a couplet of regulated verse.20 God reflected on what a well-balanced pair they were and admired the exquisiteness of his own art.21

  Man and woman had each divulged a personal secret to God, and each had come away empty-handed. Man worried that God would reveal his request to woman, and woman was unaware that God had already revealed her request to man. Thus, without having planned it, both resented God and wanted to prevent him from spilling the beans to the other. Man declared, “We’ve already gotten enough stuff for our daily needs, so we don’t have to go asking God for anything.” Woman added, “He’s exhausted his capabilities, so we wouldn’t be able to get anything new out of him anyway. Just looking at his face makes me sick.” They agreed in unison, “Let’s keep our distance from him. Ignore him. Pretend he doesn’t exist.” And so, the divine and the human grew evermore estranged. Still unable to achieve his goal of bringing them closer to him, God thought of an ingenious oblique line of attack. Their life was too easy. If they were made to experience a little pain and suffering, they would learn that he was not to be trifled with and would “beseech Heaven when in dire straits.”22