Personae (23 page)

6 On nothing else would he say no. On this he never actually said no. But Mass would start and it was his absence Selena and her mother would sit next to.

7 The tragedy of all this of course is that he would’ve only had to say yes once provided it was the last time she asked.

*     *     *

CREATION is often a nebulous process not susceptible to easy categorization at the end of which a prototypical single creator emerges. It is therefore not now being argued that he was the inventor or originator of the Cuban Sandwich. Only that he was one of the first to recognize the brilliance of that item and that he perfected it into its Platonic ideal thereby achieving perhaps Foremost Popularizer status, at least in the New York area. And the first time he did that perfecting was as he waited with increasing nerves for the return of Marybeth.

2 But first here’s the promised more on why Nicole Grunderson’s sudden empathic revelation made her feel “[a]s if a global surveillance of her had suddenly ceased.”
Id
.

3 Take as example the moments when a loose group of people will coalesce to sing the mind-numbing Happy Birthday song with you as subject and object. Or those initially charged moments when you first hear your voice addressing a group of people. These are generally unpleasant moments, the extent of the unpleasantness determined by certain personality factors etcetera, but nonetheless universal ones. The discomfort stems from the weight of the eyeballs on you but there’s something odd about this fact. If everyone, to themselves, is the center of their universe then why not thrill at the external world’s admittedly brief recognition of that fact? The only conclusion to be logically drawn is that it’s no fun being closely observed, that is, actually
being
the universal center. And this assertion seems supported by those (the wildly famous for example) who exist in something like the happy birthday situation an extraordinary amount of their time. Let’s say they don’t seem so well-adjusted and leave it at that.

4 Back to Nicole. If like her you take no steps to combat this adolescent self-absorption but instead foster it through your every deed and thought this belief of yours will psychotically extend until on some deep invisible level you begin to believe that
others
attach a similar level of importance to your every move, in other words that you are being watched like the public speaker and we’ve already established how fun that is. So now you’re this constantly anxious person infinitely concerned with the impressions you’re making which makes you highly unimpressive and you pick up on that so try harder with predictably bad results and those results only compound all the foregoing in a way that’s just the height of unhealthy.

5 Now you see why Nicole’s pathetically low-level insight (the world is full of other people and their trajectories are, objectively speaking, at least as important as hers) and more importantly her actions in response, served as a freeing agent formed in the realization that all eyes were not on her after all; most people’s eyes are on what they need to see that moment. She could relax.

6 Nor is this to say that Nicole changed instantly and dramatically from that moment forward. This is real life not fiction. Just pointing out that it happened.

7 He looked kind of like a forlorn figure. Standing in expectation, ready to press a specially-crafted sandwich but only if a particular customer would walk in. She wasn’t coming and he felt more than foolish standing there mentally retracing his earlier steps in an attempt to determine whether he had betrayed his situation to those around him. As is often the case it wasn’t until he mentally let go of the rope that the door sounded and in walked Marybeth wearing a perfect dress displaying a flower print and comprised of what he could tell, even just visually, was the softest material on earth.

“So sorry,” she said. “Trying to get away all day but I work for a colossally mean woman.”

“It’s okay, I forgot you said you were coming back today.”

But because the words you speak can either bridge distance or create it he quickly added:

“I don’t know why I just said that, I’ve been counting the minutes to this.”

“Me too!”

They smiled.

*     *     *

NOW a dark nullity in somewhat human form moves slowly, it does not walk, towards immobile him. But the great fear he feels as a result does not compel orderly movement. Instead it inspires such a frenetic extremity of such that the only visible result is a kind of catatonia. The Figure at first appears as if drawn out of carbonized smoke but as it nears the drawing hardens into cognizable human features until what confronts him at last is an over-nine-foot-tall corrosive yet inexplicably attractive being.

He is looking for his gun… or even the knife… but can’t really move… and doesn’t see either weapon… anyway he doesn’t really think they would help… and this thought is supported by the dismissive look on the face of the Figure… who calmly selects a nearby rock and doesn’t so much sit on it as descend onto it.

—¿Why do you seek to arm yourself?

He cannot speak.

—¿Do you think if it mattered I would be this still?

He hates this kind of logical interplay. Now he can but won’t.

—¿Well?

—I’ll let you worry about it in your next life as I stand over your empty corpse.

—¿That’s you perfectly isn’t it? Your way of always assuming oppositional combat. ¿Who says I’m not here to help? And don’t say you don’t need help.

—I don’t need help.

—I asked you not to say that.

Was that anger that flashed as the Figure spoke or just a generalized malice? Even sitting in calm it is a menacing sight arrayed before him. He notices for the first time that it wears an all-black suit, cut like no garment he’s ever before seen. No shirt beneath, only hairless astral-white skin. The facial hair is somehow constantly evolving into varying levels of prominence but always consistent with the straight black rivulets of hair that seem to escape the hat atop its head to cover the face below.

—As things stand now, you are going to fail.

—Swallow your predictions whole before they exit your mouth, they’re good for nothing.

—Of course you can afford to talk like that. You can
say
whatever you wish. But soon even this rain will stop and they begin to move again. You are at most only one person. You will then want my help only I may not appear, I’m fickle that way.

—If you feel the urge to be helpful, go help them. They, not I, are in need of it. Because you’re right that the rain is going to stop and when it does there is nothing on Heaven or Earth can save them from what they did, can save them from me.

—You say I should go help them then in the next breath that nothing on Heaven or Earth can. ¿So where do you think I’m from? ¿Who am I? Do you think.

—I know who you are and you can have at me when I’m done but not an instant before.

—¿At you?

—Yes. I don’t fear death, I don’t fear you, except insofar as it might prevent me from doing what I have to do.

—Interesting. ¿But of what relevance is that to me?

—¿Who are you? You’re not human.

—True.

—Death then as I say, or Satan. ¿Who?

—It’s complicated. Best way to say it is I differ depending on the observer.

—I don’t care. I don’t want your help and if you try to hinder me it will be you in need of help.

—¿I think if you think about it a bit you’ll see that you’ve always had my help in this area, no?

These words have their intended effect because he understands immediately what they mean and he does think about it and, although it pains him to admit it, there is some truth there.

The rain won’t stop. Will it ever stop? He thinks no. This heaven-sent water will merge with our seas to overrun all the terrestrial and flood us out of being. Already it seems as if everything solid is only temporarily so and will soon return to its natural liquid state. Also a jungle contains many animals and they are unfeelingly savage but generally hidden from view by the profluence of natural pulchritude that creates the illusion of safety. Now though that’s been inverted. Everywhere he looks he sees only the animalistic savagery. Worse, the nature itself has become animalistic with fur and claws replacing leaves and branches. He closes his eyes in attempted remedy.

When he opens them there still sits the Figure, still immense, still serenely malevolent, still staring at him as if, for the Figure, time simply failed to elapse. This discourages him and only with great effort does he manage to speak:

—¿Okay, since you know everything, when is this rain going to stop so I can get back to it?

—¿Back to what?

—You know.

—I want you to say it.

—The… hunt. ¿When?

—I don’t know everything. In fact I don’t know anything that isn’t instinctively known to everyone, problem is you forget. Think of me like a map but to the village you grew up in so already know intimately.

—¡The rain!

—I don’t know. I can’t explain rain any more than you.

—I can explain it. Clouds get too heavy with condensation. I want to know when it will stop.

—Oh I see. I thought you were interested in getting at the true center of things, their central truth, not in shallow schoolboy lessons.

—I’ll stay on the surface. Too much to do and like all men a limited allotment of time in which to do it.

—Less true than you think but either way know that until you regain strength and more importantly this rain ceases there’s nothing to be done. ¿Why not use this enforced idleness to engage me in precisely those
why
questions your precious science can’t answer?

The severe pain, the horrific ambient sights, the utter hopelessness of his position; he does just that.

Now a perfectly accurate transcription of the ensuing conversation would show that in the beginning he couched his every submission with a preamble like
my-wife-would-say
(omitted here) but that as the dialogue grew and deepened this affectation disappeared. The reason for this was not only the pursuit of brevity by a man who, after all, was speaking through significant suffering but also a result of that man’s special personality. For this man was reactive in nature. If surrounded by great believers, as normally he was, he tended toward doubt. If nihilistic rebellion suffused the air, he found faith. This was not an intentional process, just an observation about one of the two minds involved. He closed his eyes and began:

—¿
Why
it rains? ¿Do I look like a child?

—¿Forget rain, why a physical world at all, and why this one of all things? But that’s getting ahead of ourselves. ¿Why do you think the men you pursue were allowed to do what they did?

—¿
Allowed
? What a word to use. ¿Who was there to stop it? ¿A church full of soft people? If I’d been there they’d all be dead.

—Probably.

—Nobody
allowed
anything. They exercised superior strength and the inferior were left to choose between obeisance and extinction. Surely you’re familiar with the process by now.

—True but let’s go back further to the creation of this world. ¿Did it have to be one where people can do things like that?

—You say «creation of this world». ¿By who? You must be assuming some sentient force as Creator otherwise the question is meaningless. If the world arose, so to speak, out of nothing then, yes, it had to be this way. ¿What would prevent it? If there’s nothing beyond what we see or touch and Man has the ability to walk, hold metal, squeeze a trigger, then this is precisely the world we had to get. Therefore, just as the unbelievers suspect, the fact that we live in precisely such a world strongly suggests the absence we’re talking around.

—Only if a markedly different one is viable but let’s put that aside for the moment as I see great pain etched on your face. ¿Does that vision hold great intuitive appeal for you? ¿Everything arising out of nothing spurred on by something that did the same? ¿Or something, an energy for example, that always existed but is not itself at least an aspect of God? Because whatever you ultimately reduce to can become godlike and is certainly more difficult to argue out of existence than your bearded old man in a robe. I swear you people do my best work for me sometimes. ¿Is that what you think?

—No.

—So that leaves a decision-making entity that we’ll call God though I intend to demonstrate to you how little solace that should create. So I repeat. ¿Why this world?

—¿Which one do you prefer?

—Most would start with one where those men couldn’t do that.

—¿Couldn’t? ¿Physically? ¿Can they,
we
, do anything physical? ¿Are there no bodies in this world?

—They couldn’t choose to do it although physically capable.

—I’m all for it for them, as long as I can still choose. I’m no one’s machine.

—Okay so we need choice but He, I’m going to use imbecilic pronouns in the interests of speed, could interfere when things threaten to get too extreme.

—¡Yes!

—No. Understand that He never has and never will.

—¿Never has? That’ll be news to many.

—Ah that. Oh it’s a silly little book of course, telling us plenty about the time’s people and precious little of what hovers above them. ¿Man created in God’s image? That’s laughable. The creation imagery flows the other way I think. You apes would look at anything even mildly mysterious and cry God. Better yet all your venality and power-mongering would find its way into your gods or God, fine the singular form represented evolutionary progress from what came before, just as the Greek and Roman gods did to a lesser extent, but any concern I may have felt in this area dissipated immediately at first glimpse of the unrepentant jerk you’d chosen to worship. See even your most pious talk and behavior can’t fully mask the fact that it’s nakedly selfish aggression above all that you secretly wish to worship.

—That’s old news. May as well lampoon human science because it believes the sun orbits the earth. ¿You say Zeus and Yahweh hearten you? Can’t say I blame you, but curious that you don’t bring up Jesus Christ.

At this mention the immense Figure visibly recoils and for the first time its prey feels these might not be his last moments. Not sure what would be best he decides to continue:

—Because I don’t believe in anything, including him, but I love that son of a bitch almost despite myself.

The Figure rises to move closer and the man feels the futility of all that’s come before and, worse, how that realization can hollow a person out. The giant speaks through now-visible teeth:

—That’s man for you, impressed by the solution to a problem that didn’t need to exist in the first place. ¿Tell me Manuel, do you feel immortal?

—No. But I concede I have trouble effectively conceiving of my death.

—Granted, but I was pointing Time’s arrow the other way. ¿Do you feel you’ve always existed, meaning even before your birth?

—Of course not.

—Right.—becalmed, it sits back down—. So you may think a man or Man continues to exist after what appears on Earth to be death but no one thinks either existed
before
birth. Yet when it comes to God everyone rightly believes the same thing: immortality in all directions. Now talking about Time as it relates to God is always tricky since God somehow manages to exist outside of Time despite the fact that Time is itself an aspect of God, but that God once existed in the absence of man seems obvious. So man isn’t here solely because God created him. He’s here because prior to that God made a
decision
to create him. Let’s examine that decision. Make no mistake but that the desire to create stems from dissatisfaction. That means that God, to whom perfection is often ascribed almost tautologically, essentially felt loneliness. ¿Is there any other possible interpretation? Because there’s no logical system under which God
needed
man. He just wanted him. So he decided to create him. And he didn’t just make that decision in isolation either because here’s the critical part: he knew what the results of that decision would be. Soak that in a bit. He knew that a ten-year-old girl would be tortured and killed. ¿Which girl you say? ¡An infinite number! Every gruesome event, every indefensible act, known to him not as risk but as certainty yet forward he forged. Think about that. ¿Was it not a bad decision as soon as one girl was so treated, let alone the scores of dead? ¿Are we not talking about the height of selfishness here? I want company and I don’t care how much you have to suffer for it. ¿It’s the contingency of Life that offends isn’t it? ¿You say Life needs to be a certain way, fine, but Life itself didn’t
need
be
did it? Existence was externally imposed on you. ¿Why? ¿Because God was bored? Man wasn’t consulted. ¿Know why? Because in all things it’s God’s whims, not his will, that controls. You’re a toy, a plaything, allowed to perform for his amusement then discarded when tastes change.

—These actions you find so offensive, presumably because of your high moral standing, are acts of Man not of God. Existence made them possible, true, but that fact can’t be used to poison existence, which in itself is neither good nor bad but rather what we make of it. If cruelty leads to suffering the solution is to eliminate cruelty not to bemoan the existence that serves as backdrop. If you want to see the swift elimination of cruelty follow me when this rain stops because I’m going to violently remove from this world some of its most bounteous sources.

—¿At what cost to you?

—Don’t care. I’m past redemption. The dangerous man is not the one willing to mete out violence, it’s the one willing to absorb untold violence with no regard for his safety. I have no regard left for my soul either if staring at it contemplatively is going to allow that evil to flourish. I’m going to do what needs to be done and when all is past we’ll probably meet again. Then be careful I don’t try to remove
you
from our world.

—Humanity needs more than you.

—I’m not interested in humanity save for two examples of it and for the sake of those two I’ll unleash Hell itself then let out nary a scream as its flames consume me.

—¿For what? ¿Are you that fond of delay as concerns the inevitable? As I’ve tried to show you, their world will remain full of billions, each free to devise their own particular form of mayhem. Beyond that is the question of the physical world you and they inhabit. You say Man didn’t have to be created but once created he had to be free to create that mayhem. ¿That doesn’t mean it all had to play out in such a merciless lion’s den does it? The reason Yahweh’s such a jerk is that Man was struggling to explain some truly horrific physical phenomena like flooding that left their world looking like all land had capriciously disappeared. Now you have more sophisticated explanations for how events like earthquakes and tsunamis happen but you’re still no closer to understanding
why
they happen. ¿These things aren’t truly necessary are they? They’re critical only insofar as they give us insight into the mind of God and what a picture! He’s fond of painting himself as a father but a father, as you know, protects. ¡And if he somehow fails in protecting, as you did, he remedies! Instead God watches the lifeless bodies float and the waves of suffering ripple out without end.

—¿What are you saying? ¿A world without water? ¿Do I need to list water’s many transcendently beneficial qualities?