Giacomo Sartori - I Am God

At this point he’s just about to lay his unsplinted arm on her shoulder; a silent countdown is underway. Minus three, minus two, minus one—but then, one millionth of a second before zero, she leaps to her feet, arching forward as elegantly as a dolphin leaving the water. Would he like a glass of rum? Classic , I think: she’ll give him a strong drink—not strictly necessary—and that will be the dynamite to bring down the last bastion of a city that in fact has already surrendered. Apollo accepts gladly, and, fluffing up his Giuseppe-Verdian locks with his good hand, rattles the two ice cubes in his rum to make the glass ring solemnly.

His swollen lower lip brushing the edge of the glass, he asks casually if she has anything to do that evening. She’s wearing an equally neutral face, to suggest that the idea of spending the evening together (to employ that figure of speech) is something that just came to her. But now she clears her throat and says very firmly that she’s waiting for her aunt and they have to discuss something that’s a bit of a nuisance. And unfortunately she’ll be here any minute , she says, looking at the time on her phone. He’s stunned, and wonders if he heard her right. To tell the truth, I’m not sure I understood her either.

The purple-pigtailed priestess is now standing in silence, the way you do when you’re waiting for someone to make up his/her mind to leave. She compresses those wide horizontal lips of hers, and begins to paw the floor like a hungry mare. So he gulps his rum and starts for the door, head down, a boxer with an out-of-commission arm who has taken a hail of blows. That confident smile of his is now just a vague memory. He really can’t make out where he went wrong; everything was flowing as smooth as oil from a jug and then suddenly he’d been expelled from the game. She squeezes his good arm affably, the way you send off the Jehovah’s Witnesses, and shuts the door smartly behind him.

My legs seem about to buckle under me, although a god doesn’t have legs and if he did, they would be very sturdy. What’s happening to me? I don’t know, only that nothing like this has ever happened before, which is why I’m so confused. It’s as if I’ve had a brief spell , one in which you lose consciousness for a few seconds.

At the same time I’m relieved, and can once again breathe normally (figure of speech). So relieved I’m close to tears (same). Daphne had not been preparing some demonic orgy, as I’d feared; she hadn’t dressed to facilitate coitus, the mat on the floor meant nothing. Or maybe it did, but then she hesitated, and her best side came forward and she resisted (in extremis, it is true) the terrible temptation. Sure, she’s a bit of a libertine, even for these pornographic times, but apart from a few episodes of undeniable intemperance, she’s not a loose woman, she never has been. One day, maybe not too long from now, she’ll even rethink her views about Me.

I ask myself, how did I get the picture so ass-backwards (ridiculous expression); what prevented me from seeing how things were going to turn out? What’s become of my proverbial foresight? Of course, anything can happen, but a god cannot allow himself to be so badly led astray by appearances. For a god, present and future are one and the same, they’re just two pages in the book before him. With hindsight it’s obvious my mind was clouded; sometimes one has to be frank about these things. But hey, let’s not focus on the negative. What matters is that it all ended well.

Lately I’m bedeviled by strange thoughts. I think I’d like to be a man. A real human being, not a god incarnated in a man; no matter how skillfully executed, a deity embodied in a human always retains something of the divine. I’d like to be a man who has just one idea at a time and not the faintest notion of why he’s on this earth, or what the point of his existence is. A canonical biped perennially unhappy about one thing, anxious about another, always hungry or thirsty or sleepy or hurting somewhere, who can flip in an instant from euphoria to darkest misery.

In these strange moments I imagine I’d like to know for certain that I would die, and that so would everyone else around me. Without knowing when and how, without being able to do anything about it. To be a man is certainly a miserable condition, really quite mediocre, and from a certain point of view, brutalizing, dehumanizing, but also very romantic, it seems to me. I don’t mean to be a man for eternity—that wouldn’t even be possible except by constantly changing bodies—but long enough to satisfy the urge. To try out among other things those elusive sexual stimuli that loom so large in their existence. To get drunk on wine, sampling all the best wines in existence at once, and all the beers, and a representative sample of spirits. To experience great happiness, and immediately after, tremendous sadness, and so forth.

Some quiet, frigid evenings, when I’m passing through a dark nebula’s silicate dust-cloud, I close my eyes and imagine I really am a man. No longer a god but a homo sapiens of the male gender who through a series of coincidences comes into contact with the thin-on-top and heavy-at-the-bottom girl. Obviously I won’t tell her who I really am; she wouldn’t believe me, she’s an atheist. I’ll also stay away from any subject that has anything to do with theology, and I’ll pretend to forget, or almost, the most important things, as the most erudite humans do, and I’ll have loads of prejudices and idiosyncrasies. I’ll pretend to speak just a handful of languages, badly, and as far as genetics goes I’ll listen to her as if I haven’t a clue what she’s talking about, not a clue, as her acquaintances do. On the other hand I mustn’t exaggerate in the opposite direction or I’ll be taken for an imbecile. I must also shine, fascinate her. A difficult balance for someone accustomed to excelling.

On reflection, perhaps the gravest danger is that she’ll think I’m a simpleton. That would really be something if she saw me as unattractive and I ended up in the same class as her colleague with the sunset-colored pimples. Once I wrangle my way in, her first impression will be all-important and all but impossible to alter—even for omnipotent me.

At this point, just to reassure myself, I flood a stretch of superhighway and bring down a commercial airplane. The cause of the crash could not be determined. However, the fears and uncertainties soon creep back.

Maybe confused is an exaggeration, but I find my reasoning disturbed, my thoughts quaking, wound up in corkscrews like those of a staggering drunk. I hope I’m mistaken, but I fear these are the egoistical charms known as feelings in which the bipeds have been indulging ever since I created them. I knew right away that something was amiss. I try to chase the things off but they just cling there, corroding my divine aplomb like sly woodworms. I had no idea that such a thing could happen.

Someone’s knocking on the door of the old fishmonger’s shop. Again. Has the handsome climatologist returned? Sprained his ankle walking his bike in that dreadful heat? Typical questions a scribbler likes to pose. But apart from a bad headache (too much excitement) on top of the stomachache and the broken elbow, everything’s fine with Apollo. Nor can that be an aunt rapping, no matter how testosteronic her biceps; this is the energetic, imperious hammering of an impatient (maybe even violent) hominid. Daphne, however, goes to open the door without concern, and does not seem at all surprised to find the mechanic who fixed her bike. The burly one with the prizefighter’s nose.