Giacomo Sartori - I Am God

I have to admit, though, at times they’re entertaining. Not that a god needs amusement, God forbid, but these clowns are so full of themselves, they’re such hucksters, so reliably unpredictable, immoral, and nuts that anyone observing them is soon transfixed. They’re devious, like television: you end up glued to the screen even if you’re not interested, even when you know it’s just an indiscriminate ploy to grab your attention. Lucky for them they have no competition. There’s not a single form of organic matter in the entire universe that even faintly matches their sly industriousness, ubiquitous meddling, clumsy-but-cunning illogic, their skill at getting something out of every new situation.

The following day the giantessa with the sideways braidlets wakes in a good humor. As dawn breaks under the raised awning, she waves good morning to the Indian across the street, who’s now busy converting his bedroom into a shop. Outside, mounting her twin-cylinder, she takes off. At the Cattle Breeders Federation she selects, from the vials nested in liquid nitrogen, doses of the semen of a German bull that’s all the rage that season. Then she’s off for another Alpine valley not far from the city but not wrongly considered quite backward.

The owner of the dairy farm is a typical denizen of this valley of pre-digital cavemen, and with a cigarette clenched between his teeth, his muttering is hard to understand. She removes her helmet and he can’t believe his eyes: not only is her hair purple, she’s not a man. An artificial inseminator who’s female, wears a ring in one nostril and a black leather jacket with studs is quite a novelty. Paralyzed, he hovers next to her throughout the entire operation, eyes bulging at her every move, ready to let out a scream. As she always does in these situations, she pretends not to notice. From time to time she has to cope with one of these lobotomized farmers. She doesn’t treat the matter lightly, though; she knows she must perform better than the best male around if she wants to be judged his equal. She can feel the yokel’s tribal gaze burning into her hands and skin. If he had the nerve he’d confess his doubts, the way you complain to a trusted friend. She’s had that happen too.

Our tall sorceress doesn’t wonder why she’s so cool about this oaf literally breathing down her neck, she doesn’t ask herself why she’s feeling euphoric. She’s distracting herself using a tried and true human technique, thinking about the night before. Not about Prince Charming’s ravishing good looks, but about his girlfriend. That medieval peasant outfit she had on was lovely, and she looked good in it, she has a natural elegance. The giantessa doesn’t usually go for the thrift-shop look, it reminds her of old photos of her mother. But this sticks in her mind. You don’t have to be a mind reader, though, to know that pretty soon, she and the fellow with the hieratic hairstyle—drawn together by their mutual Darwinian fundamentalism—will gang up and eliminate her rival. Not that they’ll necessarily be an item for long, mind you.

Humans, rather than simply mate and be done with it like other animals, make a huge drama of so-called love. They suffer and sigh, they get all sentimental, become inebriated in a sea of noble aspirations, make crazy promises. We’re not yet at that stage here, however, for right now our young microbiologist is merely lost in contemplation of moonmilk and the risks of climate change. In any case, she’s a novice; up to now, her love stories (I adhere to the formulation) have been limited to a single copulative contact, sometimes two or three and very rarely four or five. These trial sessions tend to establish that the male in question isn’t her type. The scores say it all: two–zero, one–zero, three–zero. Forever zero, home game or away. Undiscouraged, she fishes out, more often now online, still another individual with XY chromosomes, but things won’t go well there either: one–zero, three–zero, two–zero. And no particular empathy.

It’s been like this since she was fourteen, when in order to have sex she had to sneak out of her fundamentalist boarding school like a cat in heat. Even to her the thing is starting to seem a bit peculiar, but she’s not disheartened, she’s an optimist, a real Sagittarius (in case you were wondering whether I have anything against the zodiac—I don’t). People who know her consider her a free spirit, but freedom has little to do with it: she’s looking for the right person, and so far she hasn’t nailed it. But she’s convinced that sooner or later she’ll succeed; it’s like those scientific breakthroughs that take years to mature but then turn out to be genuine revolutions.

The Alpine Brown’s rectum is narrower and shorter than that of larger breeds, and she has to squeeze her fist tight when she approaches the stretch next to the cervix. The vagina, too, is smaller and shorter. She likes Alpine Browns because they remind her of undemanding people, people who don’t put on airs, but also because their contained dimensions are heaven-sent ( sic ) for her hands and arm. While she’s more at ease in the job than usual, there are annoying gasps and sighs coming from the nearby hominid, whose shoulders seem to be held up by an invisible coat hanger. It’s obvious her moves don’t convince him; he thinks she’s too limp-wristed, too indecisive. She wouldn’t mind telling him that an arm in the ass is an arm in the ass; cows are God’s creatures too.

The dairyman huffs and puffs, he moves his legs up and down like a bear tied to a stake, he wishes she would hurry up. She’s watched men do this, she’d like to say—they just want to get their right arm to the uterus and plunge the syringe as fast as possible. It’s that same haste you find during sex with them, and the reason she doesn’t get to orgasm. She’s not wasting time, just avoiding brusque movements, getting the animal to relax. She doesn’t force them. [13] Human beings are adept at finding ways to soothe their consciences, and especially the human beings of that down-at-the-heel boot known as Italy. Italian thieves believe they are the most honest of criminals, the assassins fancy themselves highly altruistic; everyone has a system to balance his or her personal accounts. We’ll see whether that same indulgence is applied in the court of Last Judgment.

Removing the dark blue overalls (same color as her eyes), the tall one is thinking that maybe the farmers in some of these tribal areas would benefit from genetic improvement along with their cows. Yes, it would surely be best to begin with them. This fellow could be enhanced with a genotype that promoted an intelligent gaze, good posture and a clear voice (not this grunting like a walrus with a cigarette stuck in the corner of its mouth). Certainly, a physical specimen more in tune with the times.

The bespectacled geneticist, all bones and pointy asymmetric angles above and maybe a little too plump below, is convinced that science can explain everything. How the universe was formed, where it’s going from here, the meaning of everything that happens. In her mind, there is just one true explanation, one single transcendent entity, and that is the Theory of Evolution. She believes that one day very soon science will reveal how life itself came forth. Peering into her test tubes with those far-apart bird eyes, she dreams she sees the first spark of the reenactment. You’d think it was some heirloom recipe: one good solid or gaseous ingredient, a defined sequence of chemical reactions, and poof, there you have it, a living being.

She’s not the only one, heaven knows. As time goes by human beings grow more and more inebriated by what they think is their unique talent: their so-called reason. They don’t see that whether it’s rational or irrational, cerebral activity is always faulty and misleading. Reasoning, by definition, gradually homes in on one particular aspect, revealing, in that foolish arbitrary focus, how fallacious and worthless it is. While the only truth is All, the whole, that is to say, God, the undersigned. And so-called reason is only an illusion—slightly less fickle perhaps but still utterly fanciful—of unreason, of the hardwired need human beings have to believe in something. But this they cannot know because they are unable to think about thought (human language makes it impossible to say that better).