Staring at the Sun

by Julian Barnes

  Jean was remembering her visit to Heaven. To the Temple of Heaven in Beijing, as they called it. At least they hadn’t renamed Heaven as well. A dry June morning with the dust blowing straight in from the Gobi desert. A woman was bicycling to work with her baby. The baby’s head was swathed in gauze to protect it from the dust. The baby looked like a tiny beekeeper.

  At the Temple of Heaven the dust had swirled in playful circles round the courtyard. She had seen the back of an old Chinaman. A blue cap, a wrinkled neck, a wrinkled tunic. The tortoise neck stretching out sideways to the great curve of the echo wall. The old Chinaman was listening to a conversation he could not possibly understand. Perhaps the words sounded beautiful to him, the voices transcendental. But Jean had put her ear to the wall and understood: something rude about a dead Chinese leader, then some amatory prattle. Nothing more than that. That was all there was to hear.

  Jean knew, of course, what Gregory was doing. He was rattling the pennies in his pocket. He was screaming at the sky. All this panic he thought he was concealing so well from her: it was just a grown-up way of doing what she and Uncle Leslie had done nearly a century ago beyond the smelly beeches at the dogleg fourteenth. Putting your head back and roaring at the empty heavens, knowing that however much noise you made, nobody up there would hear you. And then you flopped down on your back, exhausted, self-conscious and a little pleased: even if no one was listening, you had somehow made your point. That was what Gregory was doing. He was making his point. She just hoped that when he flopped down he wouldn’t hurt himself in the fall.

  Playfully, Gregory began to quiz GPC about suicide. Cautiously, too: you never knew if there wasn’t an automatic operator interrupt when input veered onto certain matters. Who knows, a carton of happy-pills might drop into his lap from a secret dispenser, or a holiday-camp voucher might turn up in the next morning’s post.

  The dangerous charm of GPC was that everything in the world could be called up; if you didn’t look out, a couple of sessions might turn you from a serious enquirer into a mere gape-mouthed browser. Gregory found himself swiftly diverted into the arcana of suicide. He dallied, for instance, with the famous copycat suicide of Mr. Budgell, who had left a performance of Addison’s Cato and flung himself into the Thames, leaving behind the following defence of his action:

  What Cato did, and Addison approved,

  Cannot be wrong.

  Gregory called up a summary of the play and felt sorry for Mr. Budgell. Cato had killed himself as a protest against dictatorship and as a rebuke to his fellow countrymen. Poor Mr. Budgell: nobody had felt in the least rebuked by his departure.

  Slightly more convincing was the example of Robeck, the Swedish professor who wrote a long tract exhorting readers to suicide, then put to sea in an open boat to practise what he preached. Gregory tried to discover from GPC how many copies Robeck’s work had sold and how many suicides it had provoked but there were no statistics available. Instead, he moved on, browsing among Japanese pantheists who loaded their pockets with stones and plunged into the sea before admiring relatives; transported slaves from West Africa who killed themselves in the belief that they might revive in their native land; and Australian aborigines who thought that when a black died his soul was reborn as white, and therefore used self-slaughter to effect a speedy change in pigmentation. “Black fellow tumble down, jump up white fellow,” they had once explained.

  In the eighteenth century the French had thought of England as the home of suicide: the novelist Prévost ascribed the English passion for this way of death to the prevalence of coal fires, the consumption of half-cooked beef and an excessive indulgence in sex. Mme de Staël was surprised by the popularity of self-slaughter, given the degree of personal liberty and the general docility towards religion. Some, like Montesquieu, had blamed the climate for this national impulse, but Mme de Staël thought otherwise: she detected, under the notorious reserve of the British, an ardent, impetuous nature which fretted at any wanton infliction of disappointment or boredom.

  Gregory was patriotically flattered that his fellow countrymen were credited with such extremes of audacity, though not convinced. He turned to the ancients. Pythagoras, Plato and Cicero had all approved suicide; Stoics and Epicureans confirmed its moral usefulness. Gregory called up a list of prominent Greeks and Romans who had killed themselves. Pythagoras starved himself to death because of taedium vitae. Menippus hanged himself because of financial losses. Lycambus hanged himself because of ridicule. Labianus walled himself up because his writings were condemned and burnt. Demonax starved himself to death when faced with “loss of influence consequent on old age.” Stilphon died of intoxication for unknown reasons (what was he doing on the list?). Seneca’s phlebotomy was to avoid being framed by Nero. Zeno hanged himself after fracturing a finger. And so on. Wives swallowed live coals because of domestic afflictions, and knifed themselves to death when their husbands were exiled.

  The ancients had sorted suicide out. Their philosophers allowed it in cases of personal dishonour, political or military failure and serious disease. But Gregory was healthy; he was unlikely to head an army or a government now; while honour was a word most people had to keep looking up in the dictionary. None of the ancient philosophers, he noted, maintained that suicide was good in itself. Only that strange Swede who paddled out to sea had claimed it was good in itself.

  He was about to key in a Store and sign off, when he thought of a final question. One he ought to have asked earlier. But how to put it?

  “Who runs you?”

  REPEAT.

  “Who runs you?”

  MODIFY.

  “How do you work?”

  GPC FIRST UNDERTAKEN 1998 AFTER DONOVAN COMMITTEE REPORT. INITIAL BANK EIGHTY-FOUR SERIES PROCESSORS INSTALLED …

  Interrupt. “Can you ask yourself questions?”

  CAN A BRAIN SPEAK TO ITSELF? YOUR RESPONSE PLEASE.

  Gregory paused for a moment. He wasn’t sure. He was also surprised by the computer’s sharp tone.

  “Yes.”

  ARE YOU SURE? SUGGEST RECONSIDER.

  “Yes.”

  ARE YOU SURE? SUGGEST RECONSIDER, GREGORY.

  Hey, that’s my name, he thought. Then, knowing the answer, he asked, “Who controls input?”

  SEE MANIFEST.

  As he thought: just being referred to the official handout.

  “Who controls output?”

  REPEAT.

  “Who controls output?”

  OUTPUT CONTROLLED BY INPUT.

  “Who is input?”

  INPUT IS USER.

  “Are there any output modifiers?”

  EXPLAIN.

  “Are there any break-in facilities between GPC central bank and user?”

  MODIFY.

  Oh, for Christ’s sake, thought Gregory. GPC had a way of treating you like a child or a foreigner. Modify. Explain. It was being moody and wilful. At least, that’s how it felt; though he knew this was only because he’d strayed from the correct input technique. Even so, it was irritating. If Lycambus hanged himself because of ridicule and Zeno because of a fractured finger, Gregory was surprised there hadn’t been any suicides caused by GPC frustration.

  “Are there any input facilities on this output channel?”

  YOU MEAN EMERGENCY BREAKDOWN INPUT? BE ASSURED, SINCE 2007 …

  Again, an Interrupt.

  “Are there any personnel input facilities on this output channel?”

  NOT REAL QUESTION.

  “Why not?”

  NOT REAL QUESTION.

  Grunting a little to himself, Gregory stored and signed off.

  Shortly afterwards, Operators 34 and 35 left the centre and walked homewards through the park under an airy evening sky. It was interesting work at GPC, but the users’ obsessions did sometimes get you down. Still, fresh air and a few admiring glances from men usually helped at the end of the day.

  “He’s a stayer, isn’t he?”

  “Yes. A stayer.”

&
nbsp; “Rather intelligent.”

  “A3.”

  “Not A2?” There was a hopeful note in the voice.

  “No, definitely not. Lower A3, I’d guess.”

  “Hmm. Do you think he’ll go for TAT?”

  “I was thinking about that earlier. He might.”

  “A3 don’t usually, though, do they? You told me it was usually top A2s and above or anything below C3.”

  “He’s a stayer. Stayers have been known to get there.”

  “Is he brave enough?”

  “Being a stayer is a sort of bravery, don’t you think?”

  “I suppose so. I think he’s nice.”

  “NOT REAL ANSWER.”

  “I know. I just thought, I wouldn’t mind going home with him.”

  “REPEAT.”

  “I wouldn’t mind going home with him.”

  “MODIFY.”

  There was a giggle and a blush, and then another giggle.

  “NOT REAL POSSIBILITY, AGAINST RULES.”

  “Do you think they’ll ever change the rules?”

  “NOT REAL POSSIBILITY, COME HOME WITH ME INSTEAD.”

  “NOT REAL POSSIBILITY, AGAINST RULES.”

  “POSSIBILITY BETWEEN EQUAL LEVELS.”

  “AGAINST MY RULES. MEMORY RETAIN AND SIGN OFF.”

  “Good night.”

  But perhaps he was mistaken in looking at the God question as a matter of crude choice. There is a God (therefore I must worship him) against There is no God (therefore I must expose his absence to the world). He was presuming a single answer to a single question. So limiting; and how did he know he had got the right question? Someone, somewhere, had said this: the problem is not what is the answer but what is the question.

  There must be more possibilities, thought Gregory. More possibilities.

  1. That God exists.

  2. That God does not exist.

  3. That God used to exist, but doesn’t anymore.

  4. That God does exist, but that he has abandoned us:

  (a) because we have been a severe disappointment to him;

  (b) because he’s a bastard who gets bored easily.

  5. That God exists, but that his nature and motivation are beyond our comprehension. After all, if he were within our comprehension, and answerable in our own moral terms, he’d clearly be a bastard. So if he exists, he must be outside our comprehension. But if he is outside our comprehension, it is he who has decided on our uncomprehendingness, our bafflement at the problem of evil, for example; it is he who has chosen to make it seem as if he is a bastard. Does this make him not just a bastard but also a psychopath? In either case, isn’t it up to him to make the running, get in touch, make the first approach?

  6. That God exists only as long as belief in him exists. Why not? There would be no point in God’s existing if nobody believed in him, so perhaps his existence comes and goes according to Man’s belief in him. He exists as a direct consequence of our need of him; and perhaps the extent of his power depends on the extent of our worship. Belief is like coal: as we burn it God’s power is generated.

  7. That God didn’t actually create Man and the Universe: he merely inherited them. He was quietly sheep-farming out in some celestial Australia when a panting cub reporter from a local newspaper tracked him down and explained that because of some genealogical jiggery-pokery (unconsummated marriage, a dollop of virgin birth and what-have-you) he had inherited possession of the earth and all that is contained therein. He could no more reject the inheritance than, say, lose the power to fly.

  8. That God did exist, doesn’t exist at the moment, but will exist again in the future. He is merely taking a divine sabbatical at the moment. This would explain a lot.

  9. That God hasn’t existed so far at all, but will exist in the future. He will arrive at some point to clear away our garbage, trim the grass in the public parks and gentrify the neighbourhood. God is an overworked maintenance man in a stained boiler suit with far too many planets to look after. We should consider paying more and having a regular maintenance contract instead of calling him out on an emergency basis as we do now.

  10. That God and Man are not the separate entities we tend to imagine, and the connection is much stronger than merely having an eternal soul—God’s bit, as it were—stuck inside a throwaway body. Perhaps the connection is like that of two children running a three-legged race.

  11. That Man is really God and God is really Man, but some ontological trick with mirrors prevents us from seeing things as they really are. If so, who set up the mirrors?

  12. That there are several Gods. This might explain a lot. (a) They might always be quarrelling, and so no one is minding the shop. (b) They might be paralysed by an excess of democracy, like the United Nations; each God has a veto, and so nothing gets past the Security Council. Small wonder that our planet is derelict. (c) This subdivision of responsibility has weakened their strength and weakened their concentration. They might be able to see what is going wrong and yet do nothing about it; perhaps the gods are benign but powerless, perhaps they can merely look on like eunuchs in a harem.

  13. That there is a God, and that he did create the world, but that it is only a first draft—a botch, in other words. Creating a world is a pretty complicated business, after all: should you expect even God to get it right first time? There are bound to be a few wrinkles—disease, mosquitoes, stuff like that—in any trial run. God created us and then moved off to some other end of the universe where the drainage is better and the gravity isn’t so tricky. He could have destroyed this botched first attempt, of course, screwed it up into a ball and finger-flicked it into outer space as a comet or something. It’s a sign of his magnanimity that he didn’t. Of course he made sure that it didn’t hang around forever—he fixed it so that after a while the earth would collapse into the sun and burn up—but he didn’t object to our having squatters’ rights in the meantime. Go on, have it for the eyeblink of a few millennia, God said, it isn’t any use to me. And perhaps he drops in on us occasionally, just to check that things haven’t got too bad. God is a juggler with a lot of spinning plates. We were his first plate, and we tend to get neglected. We wobble and flag a great deal on our pole; the audience worries for us; but always the divine forefinger gives our planet another twirl in time.

  14. That we are all fragments of a God who destroyed himself at the beginning of Time. Why did he do so? Perhaps he simply didn’t want to live: he was a Swedish God, a Robeck. This would account for a lot, maybe everything: the universe’s imperfections, our sense of cosmic loneliness, our longing to believe—even our suicidal impulses. If we are fragments of a self-slaughtering God, then it is natural, even holy, that we should want to kill ourselves. Some of those early Christian martyrs (whose haste to die makes them look like pushy arrivistes seeking an early place in heaven) might in fact have been no more than devoted suicides. One vivid heresy had even considered Christ a suicide, on the grounds that he told his life to depart and it did. Perhaps these heretics were right: Christ was only following the example of his Father.

  Gregory played with such possibilities until his brain was exhausted. He slept, and when he woke found the following story. God exists and has always existed; he is omnipotent and omniscient; Man has free will and is punished if he uses that free will for evil purposes; we cannot hope to understand, in this brief earthly existence, the manner in which God works; it suffices to recognize him, love him, let him radiate through our being, to obey and honour him. The old story, the first story: Gregory eased himself into it. A comfortable jacket, an armchair fitted to your shape by long use, the wooden handle of an old saw, a jazz tune with all its parts, a footprint in the sand which fits your shoe. That’s better, Gregory thought, that feels right; then laughed at himself uneasily.

  Who can tell what is brave? It was often said—especially by those who have never seen a battlefield—that in war the bravest were the least imaginative. Was this true; and if true, did this reduce their courage? I
f you are more brave because you can imagine mutilation and death in advance and put them to one side, then those who can imagine these things most vividly, who can summon up in advance the fear and pain, are the bravest. But those with this capacity—to see extinction before them in 3D—are usually called cowards. Are the bravest, then, only failed cowards, cowards without the guts to run away?

  Is it brave to believe in God, Gregory wondered. Well, at the low level, it might be brave because few people believe in him nowadays, and it is a kind of courage to remain steadfast in the face of apathy. At the high level, it is brave because you are elevating yourself to the status of God’s creation; you are proposing yourself as something higher than a clod of clay—which takes some daring. You are also, perhaps, offering yourself up to the possibility of final judgment: does your nerve still hold at the thought of that? When you say you believe in God, you are the child who raises his hand in class. You draw attention to yourself, and you receive a public decision: Right or Wrong. Imagine that moment. Imagine the fear.

  Is it braver not to believe in God? Again, at a low level, this demands a certain tactical courage. You are telling God he doesn’t exist: what if he does? Will you be able to handle the moment when he reveals himself to you? Imagine the shame. Imagine the loss of face. And at a higher level, you are declaring the certainty of your own nonexistence. I end. I do not go on. You are not even giving yourself a sporting chance in the matter. You are complacent in the face of extinction; you decline to contest its smug dominion over you. You stretch out on your deathbed confident that you have understood the question of life; you boldly declare for the void. Imagine that moment. Imagine the fear.