Now if there’s an animal I personally have never liked it’s the snake.[22] Sometimes I even think I was mistaken to create them, although once there were moles and mice you needed some type of hungry creature to complete the trophic cycle, and of course snakes being things that slither on the ground, they can be spotted by large birds from above and snatched up in turn. If I’d given them legs, at the first sign of danger they’d have legged it out of there and goodbye carbon cycle closure. If I’d stuck fins on them they’d have jumped in the water, and the birds of prey would have gone home empty-stomached. This is the way it had to be, long flexible salamis with no appendages to facilitate escape and no ears to prick up in response to danger.
The little zoologist asks the big girl if she’d like to touch the viper (he’s a Vipera ammodytes, aka a horned viper) and without waiting for an answer, she grabs the animal by the neck and picks him up firmly. The beast hangs from her hand like a length of rope and allows himself to be petted like a cat. From time to time, his mouth springs open, but he doesn’t seem angry. You know you’re not allowed in the bathroom, ’cause of the mice, the little one warns the viper as if she were talking to a naughty kid.
The male hottie (I fished this tasteless term from Ms. E.’s left cerebral cortex) is telling her that their bathroom is actually an intensive care unit for animals in difficulty. When people in town find a bat with a broken wing or a lame duck, what do they do? They call the city cops, who in turn tell them to consult the Science Museum. Nine times out of ten, the strays that go to the museum end up at their house to be spoon-fed, bandaged and splinted, given their medicines. Badgers hit by cars, baby eagles stunned by high-tension power lines, owls hit with hunters’ BBs, foxes vomiting up pesticides, cats fallen from balconies, ducks with bronchitis, insomniac marmots, depressed hedgehogs, et cetera—all have passed through their bathroom. Once the patients are well they’re conducted back to their habitat. The iguana, however, is different; he’s not going anywhere.
Still holding the viper as if he were a necktie and stroking him, the diminutive zoologist replies that sooner or later the iguana will find a home with someone who loves her. The zoophobic seducer raises two fingers, which seems to mean two years. Each new potential adopter that comes along is ruthlessly rejected—too little iguanaesque fellow feeling. The big lizard continues to scarf down pounds of organic carrots and will probably grow up to be a brontosaurus. Don Giovanni’s aiming to sound jovial, but his voice betrays how exasperated he is, or would like to sound.
Would you like to have a look? asks the wee herpetophile. Rather than engage in polemics with her boyfriend, she smiles, her gum-colored gums showing broadly, and addresses Ms. E., who flushes red, the unexpected invitation catching her off-balance. The doe-eyed one now puts the viper on the floor, tapping him on the neck the way you might give your dog a pat. She reassures the cockatoo, who’s thrashing his head from side to side like a mad rock star.
The iguana occupies the apartment’s lone bedroom, now converted to an iguana pad complete with an infrared lamp to warm the beast. Poised on the highest branch of the leafless tree wedged between floor and ceiling, the thing seems to be asleep; she doesn’t move a millimeter, although she stares at them with her prehistoric iguana eyes. Can I touch her? the tall one wants to know. The short one says just avoid any brusque movements, you don’t know each other yet. She strokes the reptile’s back the way she does with her cows, feeling their warmth. The iguana, however, is barely room temperature. The way the beast gazes at her protector, the way the latter in turn plays with the spiky mane behind the reptile’s head, it’s pretty clear they’re involved. It’s the cockatoo who’s not over the moon; he’s plastered himself to his servant’s head (that’s how he sees her), the feathers on his neck standing straight up.
HUMAN LANGUAGE OVERWHELMS ME
At times I don’t feel like myself. I was, and continue to be God, I possess all the prerogatives and faculties of a monotheistic deity—and you can take that to the bank. Although how you take a statement of fact to the bank, as if it were an endorsed check or a jar of pennies, I couldn’t say. There are moments now when I fear that things are no longer right with me. I’m annoyed at the snakes (poor things, never did anybody any harm except to get mixed up in the notorious expulsion from Paradise—assuming the story wasn’t made up by some bard with a galloping imagination—I myself don’t remember anything of the kind). Instead of some more worthy occupation,[23] I’m here staring, like a fool scientist bewitched by the microbes at the other end of the microscope, at those three in an ugly kitchen on the multiethnic urban fringe of a tiny planet whirling around a starlet in a little galaxy fancifully named the Milky Way.
In theory it shouldn’t matter one blessed iota to me whether this merry-go-round of sexual partners (for that’s what this is all about) spins faster or slower, or whether all three of them throw themselves off a cliff or perish in a horrendous car crash. Instead I have a feeling I’ve waded into something new, something connected with those tawdry mood swings, or rather endocrine swings underlying the bipeds’[24] melodramatic yearnings, and the messes they make, their stubborn and incurable and tedious unhappiness, preparatory to the great collective suicide they’re approaching. I find this hard to believe, naturally.
I should stop writing. Stop writing, stop thinking. Things would improve instantly; I’d stop staring at the so-called Milky Way and return to contemplating the cosmos, which after all I’m so fond of. Millions of years would go by without me even noticing, as it used to be. I’d be in heaven once again, as they say.
It’s a titanic struggle wrestling with a language that wasn’t made for a god. Everything I say distorts my thoughts (that word!), leads me to utter further nonsense that I don’t mean to say and find repellent. My supreme visions and sublime notions emerge as profoundly petty, self-interested and vulgar, not to say dishonest—pronouncements in which I don’t recognize myself at all. I try to dodge every trap, every ruse, to pay more attention, and the result is even more alarming. Some god I am, if human language can overpower me. It’s a shattering experience in many ways. As if a god could be shattered!
If I find myself in this regrettable situation it’s because I’m a monotheistic deity. If I had some colleagues (or whatever), we would certainly have devised our own irreproachable language, billions and billions of words that zoom around in all directions like sparks rather than follow one another in slavish single file like dumb ants. A three-dimensional language with a syntax that even a hundred thousand years of superhuman effort by the most brilliant linguists wouldn’t be able to decrypt. An ethereal parlance, crystalline, utterly free of the sordidness, the ugliness, the pestilence that trails after every human action in a fateful train of electrons. A language that expresses peace and order and harmony. Not one that makes me feel like a deposed king in rags, rooting around in the garbage bins in search of some usable remains.
THE SINKING OF THE TITANIC
Back at the table the three youngsters are eating millet pudding with organic cactus pear garnish that short stuff has prepared, washing it down with the non-organic Turkish wine provided by the neo-punk researcher. It’s just delicious, this timbale with boar ragù, quips the tomcat. He seems to want to play the comedian to please their guest. This lamebrain is carnivorous, sighs the little one, as if she’s speaking of something truly gruesome. You’re the only one here who’s herbivorous, the rest of us are omnivores, Vittorio snaps back, looking for complicity in their new friend. She smiles at both, face frozen in a mask of discomfort, as one does when couples pick at each other in public.
22
The problem for me isn’t that they make me nervous, nor that they represent the bad guys in a certain religion we’re all familiar with. I’ve no intention, with these reflections that nobody’s ever going to read, of grinding my own axe here; I was doubtful about these reptiles for many millions of years before those Bible stories came along.
23
There’s a range of possibilities, from 1) watching from the presidential box while a star that has run out of gas gets badly crushed by gravity, 2) standing under a shower of X-rays from a white dwarf; to 3) surfing space-time on the back of a gigantic gravitational wave.
24
It should be said that in the beginning, they weren’t bipeds: most everyone’s seen the vignette with the ape on all fours, then crouching, then gradually standing upright until finally he’s wearing a necktie. Oh well, I doubt that many theologians would feel comfortable with Adam in the ape phase.