Giacomo Sartori - I Am God

Instead I listen in on what she’s thinking while she rides that big ugly bike of hers, check on what’s in her digestive system, how each of her hairs is coming along, whether the pores of her skin are dilating and contracting properly. I flip through her past the way you page through the photo album of a family member you are particularly fond of, going back a couple of generations—even a dozen while I’m at it. I study the workings of her genes (genes being not nearly as boring and conservative as geneticists think) and the cordial ententes that link them to the amino acid sequences of every protein in every cell. Not that I neglect my normal divine duties: I surveil, I resolve, I save, I punish, I overlook, I admonish, I judge, I unleash, I even avenge (that happens sometimes, my son, or presumed offspring, notwithstanding). However, it’s her above all whom I scan.

I myself am astonished at what’s happening to me. I look at myself in the mirror (metaphorical mirror, ça va sans dire ) and I see that I’m the same, I’m what I’ve always been. I’m still absolutely perfect, absolutely no doubt about that: I remain infallible, omniscient, omnipotent, omniwhatever. And yet, and yet… I’m unable to transcend this damn Daphne (that’s her name), sympathetic or not; I follow the evolving situation attentively (I almost said greedily ), not missing a single minute of it.

But the randy paleoclimatologist, despite those health problems of his, [27] The stomachache that suddenly intervened during the meal with the iguana turned out to be rather serious; he vomited all night, thrashing around in pain. In the morning he was even worse and they hospitalized him for a couple of days to do tests. Alas, the health of a human being is always hanging by a thread, the tiniest factor can put everything out of whack. is playing a tight defense. His latest thing is to send her text messages, and, one excuse after another, he’s constantly tapping away. His comments, meant to be witty and captivating, are in fact merely stupid, but she reads them all right through, sometimes even laughing to herself. You don’t have to be a god to see how that devious electronic tomfoolery might well be the final offensive in his campaign to take his coveted target. The cleft between her legs, that is.

His companion, meanwhile, seems to be forcing herself to do exactly the opposite of what common sense would dictate. Having sussed out the danger, anyone else in her situation would go out of her way to keep her rival as distant as possible, put her partner under lock and key and threaten him with all manner of retribution. Instead, she’s constantly calling the tall biker to suggest they do this or that. She’s wild about those crazy rides on the priapic twin-cylinder. I won’t say I’d be pleased if she took an electric knife and removed her boyfriend’s filthy big tongue—excessive violence has never appealed to me, whatever’s been said about that—but still, she could at least give him an ultimatum or threaten to throw him out of the house. Instead, she’s as obliging as a little lamb.

On her birthday Ms. Einstein gets to her lab at 2 a.m. For several hours she focuses all her concentration on a new prototype of the bacteria-powered battery, a model that encompasses everything learned so far. Sucking on slivers of candied ginger, she adds nutrients and the agreed-upon inocula, sets the temperature and the pressure, and programs the survey of electrical conductivity and other factors at established intervals. She likes the rapt silence of nighttime, likes to feel the energy of dawn’s first glimmers on her, when the birds begin to stir on the blighted grounds around the Institute. She doesn’t yet know what will come out of this, but the back of her neck and the lining of her lungs tell her it will be very interesting. Those are points whose sensations she trusts.

When she’s finished taking samples of genetic material she returns all the equipment to its place and hides the battery, which unfortunately is quite a bit more voluminous than the earlier one. In the meantime the laboratory is filling up, and the young pretender with the phosphorescent pimples sits down in front of the atomic absorption spectrometer, aiming his pleading looks her way, something she can’t bear. At a certain point the lab director also shows up but she doesn’t notice him, so taken is she with the article she’s writing, not to mention the South African rap music blasting through her earbuds. The boss coughs politely, shifting a foot to one side as if to crush a harmful insect. That Catholic vibrato is familiar to her and she raises her eyes from his elegant shoes to his well-rested face, his phony indifference masking memories of their intimacy, so out of place. He smiles, showing all his teeth.

While she’s removing the earbuds he’s describing a job he wants her to do, his short stout hands (mole’s paws, she thinks) making wide circles in the air to accompany his words, which repeatedly contradict what he’s just said, even as his traffic-cop gestures struggle to make them come together in a single ordered flow. She doesn’t understand a thing, it being materially impossible to understand. She’d be amazed if she did. Patting his firm cheek (smooth as a baby’s butt, she thinks), he concludes by saying that in fact it isn’t urgent. He then smiles intently at her with his baby eyes, as if he’s very pleased with her reply (she hasn’t said a thing). The 15,000-rpm centrifuge where their two–zero took place is just a few yards away, but their eyes don’t stray toward the spot where that kinetic frenzy occurred.

The reason he’s so affable is that the hiring committee for the job she’d applied for had met the previous day. And he, president of the committee, wielding his usual flutter of jokey remarks had got everyone to agree they hire the one who looks like the TV showgirl. So it’s she, so clever at dispensing smiles and glimpses into her cleavage, who’ll be hired, while the beanpole will be out on the street. There’s not enough extra in next year’s budget to keep her on as an adjunct. The boss doesn’t regret what he’s done, no. There will be many fewer articles published, but his life will also be considerably less stressful. His rather severe German wife is now also working for the courts, where so many divorce cases come up. As a good Catholic, though, he feels ever so slightly uneasy, which is why he’s come by to interrupt her. [28] Despite their reputation as irreprehensible, Italian Catholics are capable of the most nefarious behavior, even toward friends and closest relatives. Afterward, though, they suffer strange abdominal upsets not unlike digestive problems, and try to make up for it with hypocritical smiles and witty remarks while they prepare to clear their criminal records by visiting the confessional booth.

At lunchtime Daphne heads off on the bike to inseminate a dozen Friesians. She’s slightly late and has to pass up the usual couple of bignè alla crema from the pasticceria right on the main road, the ones she particularly likes. The cowshed, in a town not very distant from the city, is quite large and bordered on three sides by abandoned industrial shells. They already know her here and they trust her, so she’s left alone. As she introduces an arm into the anus of the first Friesian she’s thinking that the wee zoologist isn’t entirely wrong: it would be better not to eat animals. But these are dairy cows, not beef cattle. [29] With that incoherence so typical of human thought (an intrinsic cerebral opportunism ?) she’s not counting the fact that dairy cows, when their milk days are up, are also sliced and ground. And never mind about the male veal calves. Still, her friend would be horrified if she saw the assembly line conditions here. For the first time she feels uncomfortable.