It’s not that I’m neglecting the other seven billion humans, God knows, but as will happen when one’s preoccupied, I listen to them with one ear while trying to work out the problem at hand. I’ve never played any favorites, and honestly I’m not thrilled about starting at this venerable age. So I make an effort to do things properly, and safeguard my scrupulous, exemplary professionalism. If an old fellow is taking a long time to die, for example, I don’t deliver him on the spot, as I’d be tempted to do, I let his throes go on for as long as it takes.
As soon as I can, I turn my attention back to what interests me most now (in the heat of the moment, I was about to write the only thing). I watch her at work in the laboratory, her white smock open over that slightly coarse skin, a blonde’s skin; I watch her while she’s on the toilet defecating, the blind cat on her knees; while she sleeps. I love to watch her sleep: stretched out between the sheets without the serious, thick glasses, abandoned to sleep’s slightly damp and sensuous heat, her innocent sexuality smelling almost of bread, or yeast. She reminds me of one of those very long angels in certain Mannerist paintings, announcing some arrival or other, or floating on the ceiling of a church. When she’s sleeping I don’t fear her committing acts that offend me, and there’s no danger she’ll masturbate. She dreams, and I love following her optimist’s dreams, fresh as the water from a brook (Petrarchan?) with continual surprises and plot twists.
It’s when I watch her sleep that the craziest fantasies come to me. My friend (that’s how I think of her in private) could become a goddess, I think. I could raise her to divine standing; that’s something the immortals (fanciful figures beloved by the Greeks, thought to have eternal life) used to do all the time. She could become my consort. Common-law wife, concubine, whatever you like; freed, you understand, from having to expire—a fix that technically speaking is a snap. Instead of running around stealing crucifixes or stuffing herself with Sicilian cannoli, she’d be by my side, or trekking around the galaxies. She’d fit in fine: I can easily imagine her here, her and those pigtails. Instead of microbes, she’d study meteorite fragments, or some cosmic scientific enigma. There’s material enough to nourish her mathematical soul for eternity, and slowly her knowledge would surpass mine (as it were). At some point she might decide to set down a giant summary bible, a compendium that would be admired to the end of time. I would no longer be alone, we’d be a couple, a pair of gods.
The present ritual foresees that God has a son, a descendant, but no consort, or companion or whatever, but you know what, the monotheistic religions would simply have to get over it.* And I may be worrying too much; the doctrine regarding me has always been quite vague and approximate, so that married or not married wouldn’t change much. Besides, there would be no need to broadcast the news to the four winds, we could just carry on discreetly for the moment. Slowly humans would begin to sniff out the fact that I was no longer alone, and then they’d have to catch up, bring the sacred texts up to date, redo the iconography and all. Taking their time.
* One more proof humans are intrinsically selfish; I see no reason why they should spend their days coupling, or thinking about coupling, while I may not even take a legitimate wife.
Stop! I say to myself. You must cease thinking about that girl this instant! Whatever happens, you must forget her. And return to thinking about nothing, which in fact is the only way to think impartially about everything! I am God! I tell myself.