Rebecca Goldstein - 36 Arguments for the Existence of God

“I just sometimes wish you wouldn’t take the risks you do.”

“Well, this is one you’re going to love! This one is unbelievable! I’ve started my own non-profit! It’s called the Immortality Foundation! We’re going to conquer aging! It’s ironic. I retire so that I can devote myself to wiping out old age! You have no idea how close to our goal we really are! Anybody who can just hold on long enough is going to make it. We don’t have to accept aging! Think of it! We don’t have to accept decline and decay and diminution! Aging is simply barbaric. It’s like bubonic plague.”

“You don’t literally mean immortality, do you?”

Roz breaks out into her peals of laughter.

“You think I’m going off the deep end, right? You think I’m going to end up like the Klap, Yahweh rest his bogus soul!”

“‘Rest his soul’! My God, Roz! Is he dead? My God! I hadn’t heard anything!”

“Calm down, Cass, calm down! You’re going to kill us both! No, I haven’t heard he’d died! I just assumed it!”

“Don’t do that to me!”

“I’m sorry, Cass! I should have thought before I spoke!”

“That’ll be the day,” Cass mutters. He’s seriously rattled, his hands gripping hard on the steering wheel to stop their trembling.

“The Klap” refers to Jonas Elijah Klapper. This was how Roz had invariably referred to the man who had been Cass’s idol.

“I’m sorry,” she repeats. “My God, I didn’t know he still has that kind of hold on you. I’m really sorry.”

“It’s okay, Roz. I’m okay. And who knows, maybe Klapper has died.”

“I honestly had taken it for granted. I haven’t heard a word about him in years. So I just naturally assumed he was dead. What else could have shut him up for this long?”

“It’s true that it’s been decades since he’s published anything.”

“It’s like he disappeared off the face of the earth. That guy was always publishing. He’d excuse himself to go the bathroom and come out holding his latest. It’s like he shat magnum opi-is that the plural?”

“Opera.”

“Really?”

“The plural of ‘opus’ is ‘opera.’”

“I love the way you know these things. How do you know these things?”

“Klapper.”

“Which brings me back to the question: how could he have deprived the world for so long of his erudition? That is, if he’s still alive.”

“But surely there would have been an obituary in the Times . He was too important in his day for his passing to go unremarked.”

“Well, I could easily have missed it. I spend a lot of time in places that don’t have the New York Times home delivery.”

“Even your hunter-gatherers will know when Jonas Elijah Klapper dies.”

“If you think that, then you’re still delusional. I know he loomed larger than life itself for you and his other hierophants, but that was collective lunacy.”

“Granted. But he was still a monumental figure. He’ll get a major obituary in the Times.”

“There was nothing monumental about him besides his ego.”

“That’s not true. His memory was phenomenal.”

“Okay, the guy had memorized a lot of stuff. I think that’s what convinced you he was a genius.”

“Well, it certainly convinced him.”

“I once called him Gertrude Stein in drag, on account of his major project being to convince everyone else of his genius. It wounded you deeply.”

“You were always wounding me deeply when it came to Jonas Elijah Klapper.”

“Just so long as I never wounded you about anything important. What about that magnum opus he was working on? The magnum opus to top all magnum opera? Did it ever appear?”

“No.”

“On messianism, right? That was supposed to be his latest thunder -klap, right?”

“The Messianic Ideal in the Course of World History: 1750 B.C.E. to 1988 C.E.”

“He makes an earth-shattering discovery, so big he can’t even share it with his elected ones, and then he just shuts up about it? I think the only rational conclusion is that he’s dead.”

“Maybe he discovered his discovery wasn’t so great, after all.”

“Oh, come on, Cass. You know he wasn’t capable of self-criticism. The only proof that any one of his thoughts ever required was that he- had thought it. So you never tried to get in touch with him over all these years?”

“Lord, no.”

“You were cosmically furious.”

“Was I? I don’t remember that. I just remember being cosmically confused.”

“You’ve never been great about getting in touch with your anger. You were furious, all right, more on account of the others, especially Gideon Raven. You in touch with him?”

“Now and then. Who would have guessed what he’d make of himself after that disaster?”

“He’s certainly been productive, producing his pearls. I hope he’s happy as a clam.”

“Oyster.”

“What?”

“If he’s producing pearls, he’s an oyster, not a clam.”

“Are oysters happy?”

“Probably less happy than clams.”

“Who don’t have to produce any pearls for The New Yorker on deadline. Gideon’s always publishing there.”

“He’s one of the main horses in their stable.”

“He never got his doctorate, did he?”

“Not after putting in thirteen years with Klapper. He wasn’t going to start all over again.”

“It’s impressive, the niche he’s made for himself. What would you call him?”

“An intellectual-at-large. Klapper’s leaving him in the lurch was the best thing that could have happened to him, as it turned out.”

“Best thing that could have happened to you, too, as it turned out.”

“It was hard to see that at the time. Of course, he did offer to take me with him. I was the chosen one.”

“You had sense enough not to go.”

“I couldn’t very well do that to Gideon. He should have been the one. And, anyway, by that time I was pretty disillusioned.”

“‘Disillusioned’ doesn’t begin to capture it. You were devastated, desolated, devoured by the dentures of despair.”

“Not as devastated, desolated, and devoured as Gideon.”

“And then Lizzie left him, on top of it all. What a colossal mess that guru-with-the-kuru of yours created.”

“Kuru?”

“The human equivalent of mad-cow disease. You get it from eating the brains of your dead ancestors.”

He laughs, shaking his head at her deadly aim. “I’ve got to say, you’re the one who sounds furious.”

“I was back then, the whole time we were together.”

“Really? It’s amazing we had all the fun that we did.”

“Just think of the fun we could have now, with the Klap no longer in your life. Oh yeah. Now there’s Lu cin da.”

“You know, I don’t think I ever really held Klapper responsible. He was in the grip of something inexorable.”

“No excuse. Some mental diseases are moral diseases, too. You can be insane and a mean, selfish bastard simultaneously.”

“I know you think so.”

“He was obscene.”

“I thought it was against the anthropologist code of ethics to call anything obscene.”

“Even among the Onuma”-these were her Amazonian people- “who don’t even have the concept of privacy, what with the guys running around with just a string holding up their foreskins and the women wearing just these little ruffly waistbands that don’t hide a thing , nobody would ever publicly masturbate the way Klapper did.”

“I assume you’re speaking metaphorically? That’s metaphorical masturbation?”

“With that tumescent ego standing in for the prize.” She looks at Cass’s face and laughs. “Okay, I’ll stop. Let me just say that I’m proud that I was never taken in by him. I never could believe how he took you in.”