BEAUTY CONTEST
A new job is opening up in her lab, and Ms. Einstein has made the many photocopies and done the never-ending paperwork to apply for it. Not that she expects to get it, and anyway she’s otherwise preoccupied with various mind-bending algorithms. Still, something in her knows she’s far better qualified than the others, and she allows herself to think that if she does get it, she won’t have the dreadful worry every year that she might be tossed out like old Kleenex. She might count for something, maybe she’ll even be able to work openly on her microbe-battery. If she gets it.
But she’s not going to get it. I could have told her it was pointless to waste her time filling out all those forms and collecting those notarized statements to confirm she has blood-colored blood and fingernails at the end of her fingers. You didn’t need divine insight to figure it out, logic would suffice: the job will go to the new PhD (female) in the lab, who’s only been around for a few months but has already earned the protection of the lab director. She hasn’t gone to bed with him; rather, her winning move has been to plant a glimmer of hope while not having sex with him.[19] It’s also true that she resembles a hot young showgirl seen on TV, a fact that has given her a distinct edge in the grueling job selection process—while Ms. Einstein brings to mind a horse that’s grown weary of grazing the same pastures.
But all these goings-on behind the scenes are invisible to her, taken as she is by her clandestine research. She’s getting excellent, convincing results now, and many distinguished international scientists have shown interest—that fact alone would disqualify her in the eyes of her roving-eyed boss, if he knew. She’s on her way to becoming a sort of Joan of Arc, agog in mystical adoration of Science, ready to wade into battle with her superiors and put herself in danger. She seems to have forgotten all about Casanova and his nighttime kiss. Or rather, every once in a while she does think of him, the way a TV viewer will summon up a few faded memories of a show that didn’t leave much of an impression. But you know and I know that little by little she’ll soon decide she is attracted to him, then in love, then truly in love for the first time. (To use the accepted rhetorical formula, although it seems to have no correlative in human physiology.)
He, meanwhile, thinks about her day and night. This time it’s not just a genital thing, it’s more than that, he’s certain. The more he thinks about her, the more inebriated he becomes, the more she seems desirable. By conventional standards she’s not beautiful, but in fact, she is, he thinks. His catastrophic take on climate change has grown less aggressive, more joyful, even slightly ardent. Despite that multiple fracture of the elbow. Unfortunately, the first time they set his bone, the gods of the operating theater were fooling around, and the lad had quite a bit of pain afterward. Human beings are so delicate physically, there’s not much you can do about it.
Not that their wandering hands affect me one way or another, although I can’t avoid knowing everything they get up to. If they want to marry, have fourteen children, commit joint suicide: it’s all the same to me. There are billions of other humans I have to keep an eye on, billions and billions of every type of animal, billions and billions and billions of fascinating stars. Not to mention numerous wars, ruthless terrorist acts, famines and other natural catastrophes whether connected or not to climate change, malaria and cholera hot spots, refugee odysseys, and so forth. It astonishes me that such an intelligent person—so far as intelligence goes, she’s smart, no doubt about that—simply does not realize that young Casanova will quickly grow tired of her after he’s gotten what he wants, he’ll begin paging through his cell phone address book again. And she will be royally screwed, to put it crudely. No job and no boyfriend either.
Casanova meanwhile thinks it’s time to split from short stuff. The more he thinks about it, the more he finds her ecological fetishes and her dreams of playing the medieval peasant intolerable. But it’s a delicate situation; he’ll have to move carefully. If he does everything properly, he thinks, she won’t cause him problems.
Truth is, she’s already smelled a rat, because when it comes to this type of thing, the antennae of a human being can out-sense those of a cricket. She saw the games he was playing to stay close to the tall one on the night of the toads, she noticed his testosteronic turmoil when he reappeared, she concluded he’d probably kissed the other, just as he’d kissed her a couple of years ago, as he’s kissed many others even while they were together, swearing when found out, never again. She ought to be jealous, maybe she is even a little jealous, but much, much less than she had expected. She has to admit she’s the first to be surprised.
MY IMMENSE ESTHETIC SENSE
If you think God has no esthetic sense, you couldn’t be more mistaken. Nope, if there’s someone who appreciates beautiful things and will do anything to preserve and promote them, that’s me.[20] You know, if I didn’t have this passion for nice things I would have put my energy into function, not form: trees of shapeless gelatin broth, made of a revolting goo like industrial waste. Neon lights that suddenly flick off, instead of sunsets. Bundles of rusty tubes instead of waterfalls; hideous traps baited with smelly hormones to attract insects instead of flowers. Pardon me if this sounds like vanity, but I think I can say I’ve made a ton of wonders.
Not one tiresome philosopher (there have been many) has ever maintained that the earth is repulsive and nature dreadful, not one scowling naturalist ever argued that the animal or vegetable kingdom needs to be redone. No twisted poet ever hailed the ocean, or his beloved, as nauseating. All the great men (I might as well say, all the great ants, or all the great lice) have insisted upon the unbelievable perfection and magnificence of creation, turning out shelf upon shelf of verse and orotund metaphors. I count it this a great success, considering how fussy the humans are.
Frankly, it all stunned me, too. I created and created, unable to stop, and what blew me away, even more than the enormous quantity of species and their crazy variety of shapes and sizes, was the splendor of every single component. Sleek panthers, enchanting palms, hieratic giraffes, proud plovers, gorgeous orchids, the softest, greenest moss, shiny ladybugs, adorable daisies. Was it really me who created all this magnificence from nothing? It’s all very well being God, but it’s one thing to turn out cheesy stuff even if it’s perfectly technically sound; it’s another to produce pieces that belong in the best art galleries.
Here, it would be nice to be able to calmly view every single element, as people do in a science museum. Keep in mind, though, that it’s one thing to come across a lion when you’ve seen busloads of them on television, another to encounter one at close range when you still know nothing of lions. Will it bite? Lay an egg? Hibernate? Of course if I were to think about it I would know the answer, because I know everything, but in the frenzy of creation, I’m no longer sure. When you’re creating, there are no cigarette breaks, no union hours. You have to keep turning it out.
Contemporary so-called artists display washing machine parts, driftwood, bodies that have been run through, scrap iron, stones, photographs of genital organs and aged corpses, polystyrene chips, medicine bottles, naked women, even just their own excrement, and the public pretends to be mildly interested. In this age of screens and globalized idiocy, nobody seems to know how to hold a brush. I like paintings where the harmony reminds us that the universe has order, and behind that order, Me. Now if the Architect were someone else (crazy idea) I’d step right up and recognize his/her merits—this isn’t vanity. They mesmerize me, the electrons whirling like tireless dervishes around the nuclei of certain minuscule atoms. They send me into raptures, the transparent molecules of water, the perky, stubborn X–rays, the warrens of neat tree trunk cells, the vortices of white hot magma in the heart of the planet. I adore making myself very, very small to zoom around among the quarks as if they were great, majestic weather balloons.
19
It’s a solution that works for everyone, for in fact even he doesn’t want an affair. Or rather he wouldn’t mind the pluses but he wants to avoid the minuses, the danger, first of all, that he’ll be found out by his German spouse, who heads a fierce volunteer association protecting battered wives.
20
Primitive man knew this: they used to make me touching likenesses and nice votive objects. They thought I was a fat lady with abundant thighs and Fellinian breasts and couldn’t be persuaded otherwise, although they worshiped me as best they could. When they got a bit closer to the mark, they began to turn out altars carved in the rock, temples, churches, cathedrals, statues in all kinds of materials, frescoes, paintings with sumptuous virgins and bearded saints, rosaries, ostensoria. It’s always a pleasure to receive nice presents.