A SHORT STORY FOR EASTER

You may very well think this to be a tall tale from Ripley’s Believe It Or Not and I would sympathise with you wholeheartedly as, for myself, I still find it difficult, almost impossible, to believe, but there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of as Mister William Shakespeare said.
It was a dark and stormy night. Isn’t that the most famous opening line in fiction? I had just enough small change to pay for a coffee from the hotdog stand across the street (I could have done with a hotdog as well, with lashings of mustard, but my finances didn’t stretch to that) and had laid my cardboard down in the shelter of a deeply recessed shop doorway when he appeared, seemingly out of nowhere, because the street had been quite deserted a moment before and only the attendant stood at the hotdog stall, waiting for custom.
He eased himself down opposite me onto the cold concrete, obviously never having learnt, or so I thought, that a good sheet of cardboard and newspaper are excellent as insulation against the cold, and introduced himself quite politely.
‘Good evening,’ he said. ‘I am God.’
He could see my raised eyebrows over the rim of the polystyrene cup I was holding, warming my hands a little and the steam from the coffee warming my nostrils a lot. Oh, Lord! I thought. We’ve got a right one here.
‘Jesus!’ was what I said out loud.
‘No, that was two thousand and odd years ago,’ was his response. ‘After that little debacle I returned to being just me.’
I pondered this for a moment, took a sip of coffee, almost scalding my tongue, and held out the cup in his direction.
‘Playing the Good Samaritan are we?’ There was just the hint of a smile.
Was there also just the hint of a sneer accompanying that remark, that smile? Suit yourself, I thought and withdrew the offer.
‘So, God,’ I said, feeling just the faintest bit foolish at addressing a down and out as the Almighty but feeling I had best humour him, ‘what is it you’re doing sitting in a shop doorway on a dark and stormy night with another down and out and refusing, I may add, to accept his hospitality?’
‘Talking to him,’ he said.
‘That sounds logical,’ I pursed my lips and nodded in acquiescence.
‘Did you know Thomas Aquinas tried to prove my existence by means of logic?’
‘Did he now?’ I said this with amazement in my voice. ‘No, I never knew that.’
‘Failed dismally of course,’
‘Of course.’
There was silence for a while. Either he had, for the moment, given up the idea of being God or he was gazing into the middle distance seeking inspiration.
‘I take it …’ I felt I had to choose my words carefully here. I am a pacifist at heart, well a total coward if the truth were known, and I wouldn’t have liked it if this madman was to suddenly up and lunge at me. For all I knew he had a weapon secreted somewhere about his person, probably a flick-knife … ‘I take it you are flesh and blood.’
‘No. Like I said, that was two thousand and odd years ago.’
I resisted the temptation to stretch out my hand or give him a good kick to affirm the solidity or otherwise of his corporeal existence. I couldn’t see through him to the shop window behind so I presumed he was lying through his teeth. He was as corporeal as I am. Though how come, considering the lightness of the summery type garb he wore, he wasn’t shivering fit to bust or turning blue with the cold? How come his teeth weren’t chattering and his knees knocking together as his legs trembled? The weather was still chilly. I gave an involuntary shiver and reached in the pocket of my raggedy greatcoat for the hipflask size bottle of scotch I kept there, only for emergencies you understand. I unscrewed the cap and, even though he had refused my offer of coffee, I thought as a gentleman of the road he would accept a swig of the old brew but, to my astonishment, he declined with a shake of his head so I went ahead and took a good hard slug as he watched.
‘Do you think that was a good invention of mine?’ he asked.
‘What?’ I asked when I got my breath back.
‘Alcohol.’
‘We…ell … yes … and … no. It has its pros and cons if you get my meaning.’
‘In other words it was a mistake.’
‘No-o, I didn’t say that. Now don’t you start putting words in my mouth.’
‘Hmn…’
He sat ruminating for a while. A couple of times he opened his mouth as if to say something but closed it again before anything other than a cloud of steam came out with his breath. This made me think again of his corporeal existence. A supernatural being like God would not necessarily have breath, least of all with steam in it, not like a flesh and blood animal such as we are. Eventually, as it turned out, he decided on a means of continuing the debate by saying,
‘You asked the reason for my being here. Well, I thought I’d mosey along and find out how … ’
Here he stopped and let off more steam before continuing with,
‘I tell you what, as one of my creations, why don’t you …? What’s your name by the way?
Aha! I thought. Gotcha! If you’re God and you know everything there is to know, you wouldn’t have to ask me that. You would be able to tell me.
‘John, isn’t it?’
Amazement on my eyebrow sat, as Shakespeare would have said. I took another slug of whisky.
‘How did you know that?’ I squeaked as if I had taken a lungful of helium.
‘Well, John, as you are fully aware, I have the reputation of knowing everything. I am after all, Alpha and Omega. Your name is John and when in three years four months and two days time at exactly eleven thirty of the p.m. you die in the gutter of cirrhosis of the liver and various other nasty ailments, all your own fault you understand, nothing to do with me, nothing whatsoever, you will be collected in a body bag and a label will be affixed to your big toe with John Doe written on it as you are carted off to the city morgue to be buried in an unmarked grave. Got the picture?’
I nodded, open-mouthed. To say I was speechless would be too obvious for words. I wondered he didn’t mention the seconds.
‘So, John, come to my assistance and tell me where I went wrong? Inform me of my various mistakes. Put me on the right track as it were.’
I have to confess at this point, in the words of any writer of consequence recording these details, I gulped quite hard. God expected me to criticise him and all his works? Come off it. A lightning bolt could zap down at any moment burning me to a crisp and sending shards of plate glass flying in all directions. I could even be decapitated. I decided on delaying tactics by changing the conversation.
‘Tell me,’ I said, ‘as a matter of interest, do angels have …?’ Here I stopped, wondering what I was getting into. Was this the kind of conversation to be having with God?
‘Ye-es?’ He smiled again, somewhat indulgently this time.
‘Do angels have …?
‘Well, come on, John. Spit it out, man. No need to be shy. After all I did invent it.’
‘Yes, well … ’
‘By your hesitation I must presume you consider it to be one of my mistakes. Now why would that be? Hmn? Elucidate.’
‘You’re putting words in my mouth again. I was only going to ask, do angels have sex?’
‘How did I know that would be the very first question you would ask? Why on earth, I mean why in heaven, would angels want to have sex?’
‘Fun?’
‘Fun? Fun! They spend their eternity worshipping, adoring me, and singing my praises, what more fun could they possibly ask for?’
‘None I suppose, if you put it that way.’
‘That’s the way I put it. And why would you suggest sex is one of my mistakes? Did you never enjoy having it?’
‘We … ell, yes … yes of course I did, when I was a young lusty lad full of life’s promise.’
‘And sperm.’
‘And what? Oh, yes … and that. And of course your injunction to go forth and multiply.’
He seemed to ponder on this for a while and then frowning mightily and in a slow drawl, said, ‘Yes … now that was definitely a mistake. Had I realised in the beginning while there was still dark upon the waters just how passionately you lot would embrace it and how potent my invention was I might have diluted it somewhat. As it is, and has always been, you’re worse than rabbits and only I know how bad they are. Breed breed breed as though this planet can support all the breeding you’re capable of despite the various little stratagems I’ve put in the way to try and slow you all down.’
‘Such as.’
‘STD’s? Imaginative diversions, deviations, aberrations and perversions? Various plagues and other diseases when considered necessary to reduce the population, but that was in bygone days before you cottoned on and increased your medical knowledge so undoing a great deal of my good work. Why did I bother? After all I gave you free will and if you want to overpopulate your planet so be it. No more will I stick my oar in as the saying goes. Fortunately I’ve never had to bother myself too much with wars, ethnic cleansing, that sort of thing, as you’re all too eager to have a go and you’re fairly good at that. But tell me, what went wrong with you personally? You and sex I mean.’
‘Infidelity, jealousy, heartbreak, harrowing tears, sleepless nights, anxiety, neurosis, in some cases psychosis and finally impotence. It’s been a long long time.’
‘All good things come to an end or they wouldn’t be all good things.’
‘And it’s messy.’ He was not going to get the better of me. I was going to have the last of this little exchange.
‘Messy?’
‘Body fluids, bodily functions, stuff like that. Smelly and messy and painful, very painful, for the woman that is, giving birth. Very painful. Very messy.’
‘Yes, well I am supposed to have put the onus for that on the mother of you all when I kicked those two reprobates out of the Garden of Eden. They shouldn’t have started the ball, or balls, rolling in the first place.’ Here he gave a little chuckle.
‘You mean it really existed? The Garden of Eden?’
‘Of course it didn’t. It’s myth. Don’t you know what a myth is?’
‘A lady with a lisp?’
God frowned.
‘Only joking. Anyway I am totally relieved to hear from your very own lips that that story is definitely a myth otherwise we would all be descendent from an act of incest and that is not a thought worth thinking about.’
‘You’re dead to rights on that one, John boy, but myths can be jolly useful for pulling the wool over gullible people’s eyes. So tell me, what’s the alternative to copulation? The stork? The gooseberry bush? Any bright ideas?
‘Not really.’ I shrugged.
‘Well, I hate to admit this but I’m afraid I do tend to agree with you that sex was a humongous blunder on my part. Oh, not for the reasons you’ve come up with but because, rather than rejoice in the gift I have given them, it has caused all sorts of rather nasty people with the most horrendous personal problems, inhibitions and repressions to believe they have a reason, an excuse rather, to make life hell on earth for others, and all in my name naturally. But this is beginning to depress me. Let’s move on to another topic shall we?’
I really didn’t know what topic to move on to so, in the lacuna created by God’s depression, I took a half-smoked butt from my breast pocket and proceeded to light it with my last remaining match. He watched dolefully as I took a good lungful and exhaled with lips like a chimpanzee. A cigarette really goes well with a cup of coffee, especially that first drag.
‘To that aforementioned cirrhosis,’ he said, ‘add emphysema.’
I smiled. ‘It’s not the cough that carries you off it’s the coffin they carry you off in.’
He didn’t seem to find that amusing.
‘Well … ’ I mused, being philosophical and that, ‘we all have to go sometime to that bourn from which no traveller returns as Shakespeare had it, except that there was Hamlet on the battlements at Elsinore on a dark and stormy night … ’
‘Elsinore doesn’t have battlements.’
‘According to Willy it has and there he is, Hamlet, faced with his poor old dad who has returned against all the odds from that very same bourn to fill Hamlet in with his tale of woe. Still, even the greatest of playwrights can make the occasional booboo, can they not? And you did it didn’t you?’
‘I was never a playwright.’
‘No, I meant, you came back, after three days, and showed yourself to all and sundry, and there was old doubting Thomas wouldn’t believe it until he’d stuck a grubby finger in your side. Must’ve given him quite a turn.’
‘Of all the hare-brained schemes I ever dreamed up it was ridiculous that I even thought of it in the first place. This was the one that had absolutely no chance of working, not in a month of Sundays, or Saturdays, or Fridays. Hey, John! You could belong to all three religions and give yourself long weekends. And why not? In the end they’re all supposed to point in my direction. Chance would be a fine thing,’ he added, a tinge of bitterness in his voice. ‘Not only are they constantly at each other’s throats, they’re constantly at throats within their own lot. And again they keep on and on about it all being in my name. You see now, why I consider it a total failure.’
‘Not really.’
‘Meaning you don’t see or not a total failure?’
‘I don’t see.’
‘Well let me give you the whole low-down, from the very beginning.’
‘Genesis?’
‘No, not Genesis. Forget all that. I should never have given those ancients carte blanche to write all that stuff. In the first place none of them had taken a creative writing course such as you can get nowadays at any good university. In the second place they were all human, warts and all, aches and pains, good opinions and bad, pride and prejudices, sense and nonsense, hang-ups and hang-downs but, whatever entered their heads it was, of course, written down as holy writ, altogether now, ta-ra! … in my name! And the things they said about me! How I am a jealous god, am angry, vindictive, vengeful, absolutely frightening in fact.’
‘Well you did come up with some rather strange, one might even say, macabre manifestations.’
‘For example.’
‘Sending Moses up the mountain to collect the commandments and keeping him there an inordinate length of time knowing full well that the minute his back was turned the hoi polloi down below would get up to mischief with the golden calf. Ever heard of the cat and the mice? I mean, what was the point of that?’
‘I was testing them.’
‘Seems to me in those days you did an awful lot of testing. What about Abraham being told to sacrifice his son? What was that all about? Testing again?’
He shrugged. ‘I stopped him from actually doing it, didn’t I? It was more of a practical joke really.’
‘A what?!’ I could hardly believe my ears. ‘If that’s the case all the things they said about you are true. Talk about a twisted sense of humour. And what about Job? Same thing? Jonah? Hmn?’
‘I did do some good things as well you know but we’re getting away from what I was going to tell you.’
‘Oh, fire away, but it’s getting awfully late and I’m beginning to grow sleepy. The rosy-fingered dawn …’ He cut me off sharpish.
‘All right already! I’ll be brief. Well, nobody ever seemed to take any notice of what I told them. For example, having put to the torch and laid waste the cities of the plain I then had to turn Lot’s missus into a pillar of salt for disobeying me and turning around for a look-see. I had expressly forbidden that.’
‘Why?’
‘Why?’
‘Yes, Why?’
‘Because I had, that’s why. Do I need a reason?’
‘I suppose not. Maybe you took as your precedent what happened previously
in an earlier religion, Orpheus’s girl, Eurydice was told not to look back and …’
‘Please! Please don’t bring up the Greek myths, or any other old pagan rubbish, but let’s stick to the matter in hand or we’ll be here all night.’
‘I hate to point this out to you but I am here all night.’
‘As I was saying, injunction by voice alone bellowing down from a mountain top being insufficient – you will notice it hasn’t happened for a very long time - I decided I would have to make a personal appearance and, in order to do that, it would be necessary for me to become as one of you disobedient lot and this is where some of the trouble started. You personally, with your obviously extensive knowledge of theology, will no doubt be aware that Lucifer, most beautiful of the archangels, bringer of light, darling boykin, was my firstborn and, in filial devotion, he offered to come down to earth and single-handed sort you all out but I had already decided I was going to do it myself. If you want something done well, do it yourself and, no, Shakespeare didn’t say that. At least I don’t think he did. What I didn’t tell Lucifer unfortunately was that I was going to do it in disguise as my second born, Joshua, me actually being Joshua if you get my meaning. Clear so far? Well, naturally Lucy, we called him that as a term of endearment you understand, it had no other connotation, was extremely disappointed. Disappointed? He stamped his beautiful foot and stormed off before I even had a chance to tell him, if that was the way he felt, to go to hell, and so the Bringer of Light became the Prince of Darkness.
‘Jealousy again.’
‘Right.’ He pointed a stiff index finger at me, thumb raised. ‘In the meantime I scouted around for a suitable couple to parent me as it were and settled on Joseph and Mary which was kosher as it was among my chosen people. – Chosen people? Little did I realise what I was letting them in for over the centuries, as though they hadn’t suffered enough, what with Pharaoh and all - but that is how I became Joshua bar Joseph. Jesus, as you are no doubt fully aware, is Greek but raising alleluias to Joshua doesn’t sound quite so noble, poetic and holy does it now? It was round about the time of the year that I was actually born.’
‘Yes, the decorations go up months ahead these days.. The big sell is getting so I wonder they even bother to take them down.’
So what’s the first thing that happened to celebrate my birth?’
‘Three wise men come out of the east bearing wonderful gifts.’
‘No. Herod orders the slaughter of all those poor little innocents hoping I would be among them. Great start, wouldn’t you say? Anyway, Herod was too late and I grew up to fulfil my destiny, the purpose I had set myself. I gathered my disciples and I walked Judea and Galilee teaching, sometimes uplifting, sometimes gently reproving, sometimes letting off steam like that time in the temple … ’
‘Sometimes performing miracles.’
He looked at me as though I had said something extremely distasteful.
‘Miracles?’
‘Yes. You know, water into wine? That sort of thing.’
‘Cheap parlour tricks. Any competent magician can do it.’
‘Raising Lazarus from the dead.’
‘Lazarus wasn’t dead, he was suffering from narcolepsy.’
‘Oh.’
‘Anyway, to continue, it was hard work I can tell you, hell on the feet if nothing else, schlepping across burning deserts. It was bliss sometimes to wriggle one’s toes in the Sea of Galilee. I mistimed it though, didn’t I? I should have waited another two thousand and odd years. After all, what is time to me? If I had left it till now I could have had my own website and spread my word on the Internet. Would have saved a lot of agony. And what was all that agony in aid of? Did my sacrifice improve man’s behaviour? Did it hell?! If anything it’s worse than ever. Man is still greedy, vicious, cruel, unprincipled, unenlightened, avaricious, murderous, deceitful, a lying conniving thieving tripe hound.’
‘Okay! No more. I got the picture.’
‘And that, my friend, is why I say it was a failure, a complete fiasco. Do you not agree?’
There was now a look of infinite sadness on his face and I was on the point of stretching out my hand to touch and comfort him when his attention was drawn to something happening across the street.
‘Hello! What’s happening there?’
I turned to look and saw a gaggle of young girls in mini-skirts, high heels and low-cut angora type sweaters, five or six, I don’t remember exactly how many, around the hotdog stand. They had obviously ordered food because they spat their chewing gum out on the pavement and, hotdogs in hand, started eating, none too delicately I might add. I wondered if it reminded God of the loaves and fishes and had just decided not to mention it when things started to turn nasty. The hotdog man wanted payment. The girls obviously were not going to pay and it now became evident to me that they were every one as drunk as skunks. One of them hurled the remains of her hotdog in the young man’s face and that started the riot as, with much unseemly and unmaidenly cursing and shrieking, like Bacchantes or harpies they attacked the stall and the poor guy trying desperately to protect it. God got to his feet.’
‘Where are you going?’ I yelled in some alarm.
‘To intervene,’ he said.
‘No! You mustn’t do that. These days girls are even more feral than boys. They’ll kill you!’
‘No they won’t. I’ll reason with them.’
‘After what you’ve just been saying, you’ll try reasoning with them? Are you crazy?’
But he was already half way across the road. I took a swig of my whisky, polished it off in fact and hurriedly lay down, pulling my coat collar up well over my ears. I didn’t want to know any more. Like I said before I am basically a coward, so I closed my eyes and went to sleep. I think later I heard sirens wailing but I couldn’t be too sure about that.
When I opened my eyes again, it was early dawn. If there had been a cock around it would no doubt have crowed. I looked across the street. There was no sign that anything untoward had occurred, no sign of the hotdog stand, no girls, no God, nothing more than a bit of a mess in the road.
For some reason I kept on hearing a voice in my head, ‘This was my second coming,’ it said, ‘my second coming, my second coming.’
Well, if that’s the case, I thought, the world has missed it.
And, damn it, I forgot to ask him the sixty four thousand dollar question – did someone else write the works attributed to William Shakespeare?