grown-up already, poised eternally somewhere between the wanked-out end of adolescence and the onset of thirty-something melancholia.
The Son was the side of Himself He kept most oft’ occluded, as if He suspected it might cause trouble among the rank and file, as if He knew (He did know) that freedom was also the freedom to want more of His love than you had, to want to be loved as much as Someone Else was loved, for example. We glimpsed young Arthur, from time to time, practising His twinkly look of dolorous compassion. It was embarrassing.
We suffered quiet intimations. The rumour of creation. A mode different from the one we knew, a form of being so fundamentally strange to our own that many of us buckled and all but broke trying to get our heads around it.
Raphael let the cat out of the bag. Some Seraphs had been allowed to cotton on quicker than others. Raphael – that donkey – Raphael’s mind was an open book to me. ‘Is this coming to pass?’ I asked him.
‘Yes.’
‘What’s my part?’
‘Gabriel’s part is –’
‘What’s my part?’
‘Michael will be –’
‘What is my part, Raphael?’ Or words to that effect.
‘We’re to be messengers,’ Uriel said.
‘Messengers?’
‘To the New Ones.’
‘What New Ones?’
‘The Secondborn. The Mortals.’
Matter. Matter, apparently, was the high concept. It dizzied us to think of it. We couldn’t think of it. And what was all this gobbledygook about mortals?
Indulge my litotes: I didn’t like it.
Meanwhile Junior gave me that look every time our eyes met. It wasn’t the enmity that got to me. It was the condescension. A thousand times it was on the tip of my tongue (unforked in those days) to ask Him, What the fuck? Something always stopped me. His applehood in the eye of the Father. And now that we’re on the subject, let me settle this ‘God’s favourite’ thing once and for all. It was never me. The truth is . . . ah, the truth . . . the truth is God never really . . . He never really listened to me. For years, for years almost immediately after my birth I tried to . . . to put something special into the Gloria, something unique, a communique from me to Him, a signal that I was . . . that I wanted to . . . that I understood the way He . . . That . . .
Anyway the point is, fucking Michael (do please pardon my French) was always His favourite. Michael.
Some presences have their own gravity, their own radiation. So it was with Creation. No hard evidence, but slowly, one by one, each of us came to understand that it was there, somewhere, elsewhere. Elsewhere! Our minds fairly boggled. Was it possible to conceive of an elsewhere in a nowhere? (A ticklish question. In the angelic realm there’s no concept of place. It’s meaningless, actually, to talk about the angelic ‘realm’ at all.) Therefore we weren’t anywhere; we were nowhere. And yet, as Old Time passed . . .
‘I think it’s started,’ I said to Azazel.
‘What has?’
‘Creation.’
‘What’s that?’
‘It’s different from this. It’s to do with the Son. The Son and the Mortals.’
‘What are these Mortals?’
‘They’re not like us.’
‘Not like us?’
‘No.’
Quite a while passed between us in silence. Then Azazel looked at me. ‘That doesn’t sound too good, does it?’ he said.
‘We’re supposed to take His Will to them,’ Uriel insisted.
‘Why?’
‘They’re His children.’
‘We’re His children.’
‘They’re different. They’ve got something.’
‘What?’
‘Him inside them.’
‘Rubbish.’
‘It’s true. They’ve got a bit of Him inside them.’
‘So you’re saying they’re better than us?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Look – is it just me? Or does everyone else think this is a bit . . . much?’
It was a dismal time for us, that period when His Lordship turned away from us and absorbed Himself in making the Universe. The central heating went off. The stalwarts kept the Gloria going, but my heart (and I wasn’t by any means alone) just wasn’t in it. The Holy Spirit went among us checking morale, but a good third (the bad third) could barely summon a salute. Meanwhile Arthur was really beginning to get – as you so evocatively have it – on my tits. He developed a new gimmick. At first I found it merely bizarre. Then I found it strangely crude. Finally I found it downright insulting. (Merde alors, the labour of all this, this hunt for things you can work with. Keep in mind all of this pre-dates Matter or Form. Keep in mind all of this is being patched together out of hopelessly inadequate metaphors.) The new gimmick was this: He’d choose a moment when I was absorbed in reflection or deep in conversation. I couldn’t ignore Him. (Prostration in His presence was customary. Never explicitly requested – that would be vulgar – but fail to comply and see the rashes and nosebleeds that followed. It had become a chore for me.) Like a girl using her own innocence as a tool of seduction He’d reach up and part His robes, revealing a terrible chest cavity around a pulpy and thorn-crowned heart. Blood-droplets jewelled this ghastly organ, complemented, I saw, by playing-card diamond wounds in the hands and feet, and a nasty-looking gash just above the kidneys. I had no idea why I was being called to this obscene spectacle, nor what was expected of me – although I must say I had a bad feeling about it. I had, even then, a woeful intimation that it meant something . . .
In a way, God brought it all on Himself. (Of course He brought it all on Himself Luce, you moron.) If he hadn’t presented me with His actual absence things might have turned out differently; but there I was – there we were, the thinkers and speculators of the angelic host, managing quite well without Him. It felt. . . how can I put this? It felt like a holiday. Up until then I’d spent all that time (and this is still Old Time, remember), all my time, in fact, sailing around Heaven telling Him what a wonderful guy He was for allowing me the privilege of sailing around Heaven telling Him what a wonderful guy He was. I didn’t know why, but it suddenly seemed . . . well. . . pointless.
When I had this thought (there were whole flocks of these bright birds, now, whole experiments in jazz) even the Holy Spirit left me alone, and I existed for the first time in a state of brilliant, adamantine singularity. It was queasy and arousing. It was rugged and naive. It was daring and giddy. It was glorious and – since I assumed it was the way He felt the whole time – profane. Truth is, it was a huge rush. The crystallization of selfhood, the moment of realising that I was, indubitably, myself, separate from anyone or anything, rich with time and potent with the desire to spend it away from home, to squander it, to lavish it on my own deeds and desires, to set myself aside from God (aside theologians please note, not above), to wake up in the morning and think: Holy shit, it’s me! What shall I do today? A rush. The rush. Of all time. In my long, scabrous, violent and filthy history of moments I’d have to say that moment capped the lot. You can’t imagine it. That’s not a criticism. I just know you can’t imagine
