God in a Basement Flat
Meredith huddled in her shawl. A cool wind rose from the shallows; reeds tottered. Chimes hanging from the porch offered five notes of a coherent melody. She crooned to herself, stealing the music and adding words. I was reminded of a fairytale, the way her syllables soothed. I shrugged. “Then I must go to Eden…”
Not a notion to relish. Once the most sublime garden in the Cosmos, Eden had fallen into neglect. Picnickers are mostly responsible for the litter that has accumulated over millennia. But I personally blame D.H. Lawrence. He was a poor choice of gardener. The work is beyond him; he grumbles into his beard as he hoes and rakes. It was a long journey, a bumpy ride. Honour for Genji, my bicycle. The chance to burst a tyre in the divine service comes to few velocipedes.
Meredith indicated her desire to retire indoors. Her house is pure ranch, complete with wooden veranda and paraffin lamps. But it rests on stilts above the waters. We stood, once more shoulder to shoulder, and I saw in her form a silky strength pulped from the flesh of a myriad young boys. As I waited for her to make the first move, she asked: “If Heaven is overcrowded, why do we meet so few people?”
“We are privileged guests,” I told her, “living in one of the last wilderness areas. We must be appreciative.”
In truth, her tone depressed me. My mission seemed little more than a token gesture. Shortly after I died and climbed the cumulus ladder, my knowledge of cosmology underwent a radical shift. I discovered there was not a single Earth but a multitude of them, each one slightly different, arranged in neat parallel dimensions for the apparent purpose of playing out the total sum of all possibilities.
Now I was going back to my own, to close the border, but there were innumerable others, on rival Earths. Shutting off the exit from just one would barely scar the surface of the problem.
Meredith was blaspheming. “Why does he live in a hotel? You don’t really believe that sea air nonsense?”
I suggested he craved simplicity. This did not satisfy her; she had studied too much in the hermetic tradition of philosophy. Though God was omnipotent, he could not do everything. For example, he could not impede his own progress or attenuate his own power. Such actions are born of impotency. God’s doings sprang from strength, never from weakness. She learnt this from Anselm, the very lips. “It looks bad,” she explained. “A deity in bed and breakfast accommodation!”
These ontological twists bruised my skull more than shochu (__sake__ is a fairly weak drink) and I shook them free. I told her I had chosen to serve God whatever the metaphysical basis of his decisions. Even if he was turning senile, I would continue to obey. A mad Creator is no less useful to me than a sane one. Defeat can be noble as victory. I believe this still, I am merely more cautious.
For a minute, we mocked the sunset. Meredith, who sometimes thinks in quotes to please me, said: “All the world’s a stage, and here is the safety curtain.” The sky was a wall of flaming cloud. The truth of the marsh, cancerous with small islands, was anonymity. Wavelets lapped like prams. A beacon on the far shore winked its attentions. Flattered and offended by the familiarity, she pursed lips. She turned toward me and my smirking bicycle. Mechanisms are her suitors, gear ratios court her favours, seeking to impress and penetrate.
As I watched the beacon, the absurd thought branded itself into my consciousness. There was no lighthouse on that stretch of marsh. It was my pagoda, burning in fits and starts. Someone was detonating barrels of gunpowder in the vicinity! Tempered by centuries of damp, the pagoda was resisting to the very end. I stood and stumbled on the rim of the porch, nearly falling into the marsh. I cannot slit veins here, but I can silt them up. Would this suffice as a substitute demise?
“Arsonists?” Meredith was incredulous.
Tying my headband to Genji’s handlebars, I took leave of my friend with a slight bow. I skirted the ordure, oily as sweat, sword bouncing in basket. When I reached my home, there was nothing left but the glazed roof, floating on the marsh like a monstrous lotus. The wood and paper fluttered as ash, greasing the waters further. On the causeway, shards of my Celestial Horn formed a sparkling message: JUST A REMINDER, SIGNED GOD. I noticed two shadows in a punt, poling their way back to smugness: the Archangel Gabriel and a lackey. They wiped soot from their haloes. God’s dirty work leaves indelible stains.
