Joshua Ferris - To Rise Again at a Decent Hour

Then, lo and behold, who should appear before him, “moving upon a cloud of blood,” which was a little hard to visualize, but, you know, whatever, semantics — it’s God Himself, the First and Last. “Draw nigh hither,” says God, “and be not afraid.” But there’s little chance of that. Agag cowers upon the charnel cliff, wondering — in a twist on this type of story, in which the prophet always knows from the first gust of heavenly wind on his cheek just who’s talking — if it’s really God he’s seeing or, considering all the shit he’s been through, just a hallucination, the first documented case of PTSD. But there’s no doubting for long, as God seems really confident. “Ye shall know me as the Lord thy God,” He says, “who hath kept a dominion of silence unto this day.” That silence, He explains, was a practical one: He saw no profit in adding to the roster of all the other gods — the God of the Israelites, the God of the Egyptians, the God of the Philistines, etc. etc. — running around Canaan contributing to the bloodshed or, as He puts it, “commanding war among the factions, to vie for the firstfruits of every nation.” Why He doesn’t just wipe those gods clean from memory and usher in peace on earth is a question neither asked nor answered, but it’s made plain that He is, in fact, the one and only God, and He’s there to deliver Agag from the hand of strife. “Come now therefore,” He says, “and with thee shall I establish my covenant. For I shall make of thee a great nation. But thou must lead thy people away from these lords of war, and never make of them an enemy in my name. And if thou remember my covenant, thou shall not be consumed. But if thou makest of me a God, and worship me, and send for the psaltery and the tabret to prophesy of my intentions, and make war, then ye shall be consumed. For man knoweth me not.” There follows a lot of demurral from Agag — who am I to be a prophet, I’m slow of tongue, the people will laugh at me, etc. — but in time he picks himself up and descends the slopes of Mount Seir, the first Ulm.

“So you see,” he wrote. “An Ulm is someone who doubts God.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” I replied:

It’s not logical. How can you doubt a God who appears?

You’re not using the correct part of your brain, Paul — the atrophying part, the part that’s hungry.

But that’s just it, I AM using my brain, and will always use my brain, and so this looks just as dumb as any other religious bullshit.

Every religion brushes up against the illogical. The Buddhist discovers Nirvana only by realizing that the self does not exist, but it’s the self that must discover its nonexistence. The Hindu traverses the universe saying neti, neti— “not this, not this”—and when everything is negated, there stands God. The Jew believes that God made him in His image, but man is full of evil. The Christian believes that God was also a man of flesh and blood. The illogic tests faith — without it, there’s just party time.

I prefer party time.

I don’t think you do. Listen, Paul: the blessings of doubt have not excused us from the burdens of faith. We must suffer our contradictions as those who believe in God suffer theirs. With this difference: doubt is the most enlightened approach to God ever articulated to man. Monotheism is by comparison a pagan slaughter. It is the Ulms, Paul, not the Jews, who are the true Chosen People.

A few hours later, I wrote back:

You HAVE to doubt? I mean, it’s actual doubt, literal doubt?

Literal doubt.

The next few weeks went by in a blur. I couldn’t identify, for instance, when exactly the Wikipedia page on the Ulms first appeared. I don’t even remember what it said, except that some of it mimicked what “I” had written in my comment on the New York Times, including there being no Saint Paul of the Ulms to walk the footpaths of the Roman empire. The page was quickly nominated for deletion by trekkieandtwinkies, one of Wikipedia’s self-appointed editors, on the grounds of an insufficient something or other. At the time I believed it was possible to create a Wikipedia page for practically anything, like your newly formed metal band or your pet, not knowing that there were people out there like trekkieandtwinkies who policed all the new pages and did away with the bogus and/or frivolous ones. Every unmerited entry was dispatched into the dustbin of history in a day or two, as that first page on the Ulms was. Nor can I remember specifically when I first heard from Mikel Moore who worked at Starbucks, Joanna Skade of Microsoft, and Zander Chiliokis, all of whom were looking for more information on the Ulms. I remember the proliferation of comments and links, Twitter followers, new Facebook friends. I remember my repeated attempts to wring from my impostor why he was doing this to me, his continual evasions, and my growing rage. I remember a conversation with Kari Gutrich informing her of the others reaching out to me, and I remember the process of attempting to freeze the online accounts in my name, which required me to mail by post photocopies of my government-issued driver’s license along with a notarized affidavit testifying to my true identity — a frustratingly analog experiment. I also remember collecting a sample of what’s called whole saliva from Mr. Tomasino, whose salivary gland was failing; tending to a stoic little boy in camo shorts who split a tooth on a cherry pit; and referring a walk-in to Lenox Hill for an inhaled tooth. But what I remember most is Connie standing in the corridor with her iPad, looking pissed.

“What?”

“Can you come with me, please?”

We went into one of the unoccupied rooms, and she handed me the iPad. In addition to looking pissed, she looked good. She was wearing a turtleneck, not the convent kind Mrs. Convoy favored, but a light, summery one, with the turtleneck part like an inverse turtleneck, big and loose and tilted like a cocked tulip out of which her head peeked, and the fabric wasn’t fabric so much as a billion little stitches of sparkling thread all woven together, silver and pink and red. Her taut bottom was nestled inside a snug pair of old jeans.

“Read that,” she said, pointing.

I read the tweet in question.

“Know anything about that?”

“No,” I said.

“But you do know how offensive it is, right?”

“Yes,” I said.

She walked away. I read the tweet again. Written in my name, it said:

Enough about the 6 million! No more about the 6 million until OUR losses and OUR suffering and OUR history have finally been acknowledged

“I don’t know why you’ve chosen me,” I wrote.

But you have some real balls, fucker. Stop claiming to be Paul O’Rourke. All this religion crap? Hey, guess what! I DO NOT GIVE A SHIT. Stop talking about it in my name. If it’s really important to you, grow some balls and Twitter it up in your own fucking name. ABOVE ALL, STOP TALKING ABOUT THE JEWS IN MY NAME!! Stop talking about the Holocaust and the six million. People get real worked up about that, for good reason. Then they come and ask me to clarify, and I can’t clarify the first fucking thing. Nobody cares about your wretched history, especially when you compare it to the history of the Jews. What do you have against the Jews? Are you just another anti-Semitic Internet troll? You might also consider not giving history lessons over Twitter. Imagine Abraham Lincoln doing the Emancipation Proclamation via Twitter. Are you not a man? Do you not have loftier ambitions for the miracle of speech than the dispatch of a hundred and forty characters from an undisclosed location? A man is full of things you simply cannot tweet. I have dreams of one day overcoming my terrifying inhibitions and singing on the subway. Tweet that, you fuck.