Free Ark Baby by Liz Jensen Page A

nothing?’
    It just didn’t make sense.
    ‘He made it out of the void, Tobias. “
For the earth was waste and void
–” ’
    ‘ “
And darkness was upon on the face of the deep
,” ’ I finished. I was mesmerised by the beauty of it.
    Like him – like all of us – I believed the words of the Bible implicitly, just as I believed Herman’s
Crustacea.
Neither book had ever given me any cause for doubt. God was as real to me as my tapeworm, Mildred. Both were invisible, but housed within. Both made their presence felt in a hundred small ways.
    ‘ “
And the spirit of God moved upon the waters. And God said let there be light,
” ’ intoned the Parson. I loved his big voice. It boomed with righteousness.
    ‘ “
And there was light
,” ’ I replied.
    When you live near the sea, all this is obvious. As I discovered later, it’s in towns and cities that your soul is caught unawares.
    ‘And,’ continued the Parson, but in his other voice, his less appealing, thinner, somewhat nagging voice, ‘returning to your dogfish detritus, not to mention your crab collection and your cuttlefish and your sea-beetle and your dead cormorant, which your mother spied on Wednesday in your chest of drawers and threw out, Tobias, because it was smelling foul, what else did God do on the fourth day? He created the great sea-monsters, Tobias, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kinds, and every winged fowl after its kind – and what did God see, Tobias? What did he then see, son?’
    ‘He saw that it was good, Father,’ I replied, picking at a sea-urchin spine that had lodged painfully beneath my thumbnail.
    ‘Precisely. Which is more than can be said of your smashed limpets, and also your lobster shell, which I found lurking in the vestry, when tracking down the source of a vile odour. I saw then, and smelt, that it was
not
good. Not good at all. No more carcasses in our house, son, or in God’s.’
    ‘No, Father. I promise.’
    ‘Good boy.’
    ‘Father.’
    ‘Yes?’
    ‘What is this?’ I thrust my stone at him. There were many such stones on the beach, and I had never understood them. This was a wonderful specimen, its dark whorl with radial stripes reminiscent of a shell.
    ‘That,’ said Parson Phelps, stopping in his tracks, ‘is one of God’s jokes.’
    ‘God makes jokes?’ I questioned, aghast.
    ‘Yes. Some big, and some small. On scientists.’ My Father hated scientists. They were responsible, he often claimed in his sermons, for much of the world’s confusion. They were a scourge, and ranked as low in his estimation as rude children and fallen women. ‘Your stone is called a fossil,’ he continued, ‘and God planted them in the earth to muddle a certain breed of scientist known as a geologist. He knew exactly what He was doing.’
    ‘A geologist? What is he?’
    ‘A man who dares to question the truth of Genesis,’ my father replied. ‘These fossils are red herrings, planted by God, to trick geologists into believing they are right. And thereby wasting their time on a grand scale.’ He laughed, sharing God’s joke. ‘Do not forget, son, that he is a
jealous
God!’
    My father seemed to find this most mightily amusing, and chuckled at God’s holy sense of humour, but I was merely confused. I believed passionately in the Lord, but His fossil joke and other holy eccentricities led me to question Hisdivine purpose on more than one occasion. Another question vexed me, too.
    ‘Father.’
    ‘Yes, son?’
    ‘Who made God?’
    Well? Is that such a foolish question? What
were
his origins?
    My father had the answer, though. ‘God is self-made,’ he said finally. ‘Like a self-made man. But God.’
    ‘I see, Father,’ I said. But I lied, for I did not, and it remains to me a puzzle.
    After I dun the SPLITS for Him
, the woman wrote,
Trapp claps his hands, cals me to His tabel to drink WINE.
    He was hansom enuf. Big MUSTARSH, with wax tips,