“Because you wouldn’t show that policeman your identification.”
“I don’t have any identification,” Buddwing said.
“Precisely.”
“But that doesn’t mean I’m Edward Voegler.”
“Then who are you?”
It always gets back to that, Buddwing thought wearily. It always gets back to the question for which there is only one answer.
“I don’t know,” he said.
“Ahhh.”
“Anyway, what the hell is it to you?”
“Let us simply say I’m an interested citizen.”
“Let us simply say goodbye,” Buddwing answered.
“Ah-ah,” the man said, hooking Buddwing’s arm. “No.”
“Look, mister,” Buddwing said warningly, “don’t fool around with me. I’m stretched pretty thin, and I’m just liable to—”
“No,” the man said, shaking his head. “I’m going to help you.”
“How?”
“How would you like to be helped?” the man asked.
“I’d like you to vanish,” Buddwing said.
“That wouldn’t help you.”
“I didn’t ask for you.”
“I know. I appeared of my own volition.”
“Well, disappear of your own volition.”
“No,” the man said, and he shook his head again.
Buddwing, watching him, thought, I suppose I’ll have to hit him. The thought wearied him. He wanted only to be left alone. He wanted only to wander the city nameless and homeless. Why wouldn’t they let him do that in peace?
“Mister,” he said, “you’re an old man. You’re a frail old man. I don’t want to have to break away from you by force, mister, but I’ll do it, I swear to God, unless you take your hand off my arm. Now, will you please do that, mister, and forget you ever saw me? Or do I have to hit you? I don’t want to hit you, mister, believe me, but I don’t want to be bothered by you, either.”
“I’m not bothering you,” the man said, but he did not remove his hand from Buddwing’s arm.
“Mister, I’m very tired...”
“Yes, I know that...”
“And I don’t know who I am...”
“You’re Edward Voegler...”
“And I don’t want to have to argue with you, and I especially don’t want to have to hit you. Now, please let go of my goddamn arm!”
“No,” the man said. “I want to help you.”
“Who the hell are you?” Buddwing asked.
“God,” the man answered.
They stood on the Greenwich Village sidewalk at five o’clock with the sun hovering in the sky behind the Women’s House of Detention. Around them and behind them and beyond them, in a realistic bas-relief, were the jewelry shops and leather shops, the faggot clothing stores, the bakeries and delicatessens and restaurants and art supply houses. The minuscule sounds of the city, compounded to a steady hum, filled the air with life, and the man puffed on his pipe and looked at Buddwing seriously and seriously told him he was God, and Buddwing wanted to believe him.
He wanted to believe him because he thought again, for the second time since he had awakened, that he was dead. If I’m dead, then she’s alive, he reasoned. What was it she had once said, how had she described Hell? They had been driving through the Holland Tunnel, and she said, “This is what Hell should be, you know. Just driving through a tunnel like this forever, without being allowed to change lanes, and with policemen standing on the ramparts waving you on, and with signs telling you to maintain a uniform speed, eternally.” If I am dead, then she is alive, he thought, and all these people walking in the street are dead, so why can’t this man be God, why the hell not? If he’s God, then everything that’s happened to me since I woke up this morning has only been a preliminary to this confrontation. My soul rose up out of that supine image on the bench, ectoplasmic and double-exposed, just like in the movies, and it’s been wandering in search and now here is God, puffing his pipe and waiting expectantly for me to kneel and kiss his ring, and he will know who I am.
“How do I know you’re God?” Buddwing asked, testing him hopefully.
“How do you know I’m not?” the man answered.
“Well, where are your credentials?”
“Where are yours?”
“You can’t just walk up to someone and expect him to believe you’re God.”
“What do you want me to do?” the old man said, and smiled. “Perform a miracle?”
“Yes,” Buddwing said.
“I don’t do miracles after five o’clock,” the old man said.
“What time is it now?”
The man looked at his watch. “Ten after five.”
“Just a little after closing time,” Buddwing said. “Stretch a company rule. Make that automobile over there fly up over the rooftops.”
“God never stretches company rules,” the man said.
“Superman could send that car up over the rooftops,” Buddwing said tauntingly.
“I am not Superman, I am God,” the man answered.
“You don’t look like God.”
“How do you know what God looks like?”
“He’s a kindly man with eyeglasses and white hair.”
“That’s my father,” the old man said seriously.
“I didn’t know God had a father.”
“Everybody has a father,” the man said.
“Not me.”
“Even you.”
“Anyway,” Buddwing said, “I don’t believe in God.”
“Do you believe in me?”
“Not if you’re God.”
“Well, I am God.”
“Then I don’t believe in you.”
“But you’re talking to me.”
“Yes, that’s true.”
“Well, who or what are you talking to, if not God?”
“I’m talking to an old nut who followed me from N.Y.U.”
“That is only a symptom of your condition.”
“What condition?”
“Your insanity. It is a well-known fact that crazy people think everyone else is crazy.”
“But you think I’m crazy,” Buddwing said.
“Of course.”
“Then you must be crazy.”
“God can’t be crazy,” the man said.
“You know all the answers, don’t you?”
“Most of them.”
“All right,” Buddwing said, “am I dead?”
“Of course not.”
“Are you dead?”
“God is immortal,” the man answered. “He never dies because he is all-powerful.”
“Then why don’t you do just a little miracle?”
“I don’t choose to,” the man said with dignity. “If you won’t accept me on faith, then you shouldn’t accept me at all.”
“Okay, I don’t,” Buddwing said.
“But you’ll be sorry,” the man added.
“Why?”
“Because I’ll yell at the top of my lungs that you’re Edward Voegler, and they’ll put you in a strait jacket and take you away.”
“That would be very petty of you,” Buddwing said. “If you’re really God—”
“God is very petty,” the old man said calmly.
“Yes, but not in such a petty way.”
“In any way he wants to be.”
“Why’d you let Beethoven die?” Buddwing asked suddenly.
“He was getting old,” the man answered, “and besides I never liked his music.”
“I wasn’t talking about that Beethoven,” Buddwing said. “There!” he added triumphantly. “You don’t even know who the hell I mean!”
“I know exactly who you mean.”
“Yeah, who do I mean?”
“You mean Beethoven.” The man paused. “He died because it was his time.”
“Who decided that?”
“I did.”
“Then you’re a murderer.”