After that, it became a regular visitor. Jonathan never saw a shape, not even a shadow, never felt its touch again, nothing at all to give it the physical substance he felt in it. He found himself thinking of the locusts, how after they’d laid their eggs – after the sun had beat down for weeks and the ground was caked, cracked and brown – how the rain had come and how, on the morning after, a fine green haze had appeared over the whole landscape. He could almost smell the freshness inside himself. But the locusts had rehatched. Devastation followed. His mood shifted up and down during the day, even during the hour. His ability to memorize seemed to jam somewhere. Then he was sick one night and, leaning over the beautiful toilet basin, felt the words he had fought so hard to cram into his head vomit out of him into that captive pool of water to be flushed away and lost forever.

13

Atlas and I didn’t agree about what happened next. Oh, not the facts. It’s the heart of the matter, the truth, you might call it. But who can trust Atlas? Doctors spend so much time playing God themselves that they make lousy witnesses when it comes to the heart of things. Atlas wasn’t even a very good doctor; he told me himself that he had to pay $10,000 for his license to practice in Washington because he failed the exam. ‘I’m a yard bird,’ he said, back from his emergency call. ‘If it’s lying there, I’ll pick it up. If not, to hell with it.

‘People like dad, people with backgrounds like that, slavery, violence of one kind or another,’ he went on, ‘these people usually have minds as brute-like as their pasts. Usually they’re inarticulate, confused, slow to everything but blows. That’s what’s amazing about dad. How could anybody so enraged accept a God? or any other abstract concept?’ My attempts to explain away Jonathan’s conversion to Christianity annoyed Atlas. ‘Truth? Don’t give me that crap. He didn’t want truth. He wanted judgment: revenge. Just like you. What’d you major in philosophy for? A waste of time, if you ask me. You should have gone into law. You belong on the bench of the Inquisition—’

‘Let’s get back to Jonathan,’ I said, annoyed myself.

‘Okay. Okay. Now, look, his conversion embarrasses you. Why? One way or another it was almost inevitable. Slavery destroys the soul. It’s a narcotic: it does what narcotic addiction does, kills pride, subtlety, initiative—’

‘Yes, yes,’ I said, still annoyed.

‘So here’s a guy who never had anything that belonged to him, no home, no mother, father sold him – a piece of human shit – not even his own socks. Think of him there in that goddamned place, doilies and fish forks and roses on the crapper – Christ almighty, how does a slave go about learning to live on equal terms with people like that? What right has he even to attempt such a thing? The effrontery – Jesus, the arrogance of it. That’s what’s marvelous. Not the dull detail of a conversion. Anyhow, he wants to do this impossible thing – more than that, he’s going to do this impossible thing, and obviously he can’t do it all on his own. So he finds himself a God to help him. It’s as simple as that.’