Are you ready, says God, for your conscience to be weighed? I am not ready, I say. I still have no wish to die. God will be patient. But I will not become a Musselman. The thought of dying before my body dies is obscene. What is more, I have a secret which I doubt my fellow creatures possess - I have previous experience of miraculous salvation. I am not, as yet, completely bereft of hope. God understands this without being irritated. God will leave me with a little delicate thread of hope until it suits Him to take it away. It is part of His scientific method. It is the mark of our century that we have turned everything, including human anguish, into a science. We would joke sometimes about my impending death and what moment God would choose to blow away the last of my hope like a dandelion spore upon the breeze, delicately, perhaps without my even noticing.
God had me dress as a girl and attend Him when He received Sir Ranalf. The little man was breathless and made a weak joke concerning the heat. ‘I think the arrangements are in order at last. These people are quite impossible. He’s with me now. Shall I bring him in?’
You are very informal, Sir Ranalf, said God. Sir Ranalf became embarrassed. ‘I’m frightfully sorry. Those awful camels. I really never can get used to them.’ He had not looked at me at all, perhaps from nervousness but probably because he had not yet noticed my presence.
Have you met my wife? God asked. Sir Ranalf was nonplussed, peered, glanced away. ‘No, indeed, al-Habashiya, I had not. Congratulations, perhaps?’ He was told to kiss my hand.
God found this thoroughly amusing, especially since Sir Ranalf did not begin to recognise me. When God lost interest in the joke, He lost interest in me and I think forgot me. Sir Ranalf was allowed to bring in his visitor, a tall, heavily-veiled Bedawi who spoke in gruff Arabic until al-Habashiya, using his high-pitched feminine voice, disclosed a preference for French. Perhaps she had hoped to shame the nomad, whose French was excellent, if a little old-fashioned. There were greetings offered and various goods mentioned, none of interest to me. I was inclined to doze whenever the opportunity was granted. At one point I thought I heard a Russian name, but the accompanying associations were too painful. I turned them away. Mercifully, God eventually leaned sideways so that my head was caught between the pillows and His flesh. After that I heard very little, for I was forbidden to move.
I think God became impatient with them both and dismissed them. He complained. He was monstrously annoyed. Towards evening, before the sun began to drop, He made us all assemble in the tiled courtyard around the fountain. He ordered us to form a mound, climbing one on top of another until we were all groaning with discomfort save for those at the bottom who were still. Laboriously, frequently falling backwards, wheezing and blowing, God began to ascend this hill of miscellaneous limbs, of writhing muscles and organs until He could squat on top, lift His skirts and shit. Time was an enemy I rejected. I do not know how much went by.
One day we returned to the garden. God told me to play with the blind children. He remarked how docile they were. They had all been fitted with artificial eyes of different colours, chiefly blue, which gave the rest of their faces a doll-like quality, especially when they were rouged and mascaraed. All of course had the scarab brand. When God told me to kill one of them, whichever I liked, the choice was mine, I said I had no weapon. He told me to use my hands or my teeth. Pick the smallest, He said, it should be easy. But I could not. And that was God’s signal. I had been tried in His eyes. He was about to whisk away the last of my hope. If you like, He said, I will let you pluck out your own eyes. It has been done before. Or would you rather die? I will give you a day or two to choose.
Blind, I knew I would never escape Him. I cursed myself for my weakness, for the cowardly failure of nerve which had brought about this final assault on my spirit.
I remember that I did not blame God for reducing me to this. I blamed Esmé. I had remained behind in an attempt to save her. She had not even thanked me. I blamed Mucker Hever and Samuel Goldfish, Malcolm Quelch, Wolf Seaman and Sir Ranalf Steeton. I blamed Mrs Cornelius. I blamed the blind boy for not resisting as I tried to squeeze his throat. I blamed myself for a soft-hearted fool. And still I knew I would not choose death.
I begged for paper and to my surprise was granted it, together with a fountain-pen and ink. I was beyond God’s mercy but I hoped to entertain Him, to defer His decision so that I could have a little longer with my sight. I prepared a kind of prospectus. I described my inventions, my experience, my skills. I sang my own praises a little, going hard against the grain, but I was desperate. I told Him I could fly. I could show him the plans of my Desert Liner. I quoted poetry in half-a-dozen languages. I described my experiences in Kiev, Petrograd, and Paris, my meetings with film stars in America. My life with the Ku Klux Klan I did not discuss, being uncertain what sort of interpretation God would put on this episode. I wrote out jokes and summarised articles I had read in magazines. I described my childhood, my youthful adventures, my future. That, I thought, would at least convince Him of my sensibilities and might even open a fresh avenue of pleasure for Him. At last God told me to give Him what I had written. God had me stand before Him in His Temple while He read every page, nodding, smacking His lips, murmuring interest, expressing surprise, approval, disbelief and one by one screwing the pages up and tossing them into a brazier. Whenever one missed the brazier He would tell me to pick it up and throw it on the fire before returning to my place. When He had finished He told me to kneel before Him while He masturbated Himself over my face. When He was satisfied He congratulated me on the novelty of my narrative. It had, indeed, given Him pleasure, though of course it was only possible to experience such pleasure once. He produced a long metal rod with an oddly-shaped end and told me to take it to the brazier and push it into the hottest part. That is the instrument which will put out your eyes in the morning, He told me. If you wish to read or write until then, you may do so.