Excerpt from Kleinzeit
Sister stood holding the helmet, listening to the clink of money falling into it. I don’t know if this is right, she said to God.
What’s wrong with it, said God.
Is it, I don’t know, heathenish? said Sister.
You’ve got to move with the times, said God.
Are we talking about the same thing? said Sister.
One usually does, said God. I mean how much is there to talk about really. It’s pretty much all one thing, isn’t it.
I said is it heathenish, said Sister.
I know you did, said God, and I said you’ve got to move with the times.
Thank you very much, said Sister. It’s been a great help talking to you. I really mustn’t keep you from your work any longer.
I welcome interruptions really, said God. Creation isn’t the cut-and-dried thing people think it is. You don’t do it once and then it’s all done, like in that Haydn oratorio. It’s a day-in, day-out thing. You stop for the blink of an eye and it’s all come undone, all to do again. And goodness knows I’ve blinked from time to time. And of course there are bad days and good ones just like what goes in a world. Some days I don’t get a good idea for millennia. But you were saying.
I was saying Goodbye for now, said Sister.
Till soon, said God. It’s always a pleasure chatting to you. As people go you don’t talk badly. Mostly all I get from people is nonsense. For anything like reasonable conversation you have to go to stones or oceans.
