Chapter 11: Una's encounter

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They said that every encounter with God ran the risk of death. That was why so many even who called themselves religious shunned that encounter.

Are you orthodox? Are you orthodox? How can you be alone in the mud?

To most it seemed better to live in echoes of the encounter and to retell the old stories that concerned it, simply as stories. Good things to share with our children, they said. History, art, politics, anything but truth.

When a story ended it was like a curtain coming down on a play. Everyone stood up and went home. But an encounter was different from a story.

The people had curled themselves into a ball and hung immersed in the stream that burst the mud. A tadpole sewed through and pierced their sphere, and a demon looked down from a leaf overhead. Behind another leaf Una now hid. She was frightened of this world. Oh Darwinism is the land of God's abandonment. Now there was a membrane separating Una's realm from that land -- one quick movement would make it tear.

So she was smart enough to be afraid.

The creatures in the sphere made a village, a community. We are one, we are close. But some of them were tied and hung upside down. Others slithered along the bloodshot surface. They would nip each other and chew slowly. Sometimes a carapace would suddenly implode. Love was predation in Darwin's land. There was a pair of people each of whom was busy eating the other's haunch. They reached their extensors into each other's belly, pulling out pieces of meat.

It's all just natural, someone said, a budding ethicist, or a demon probably. It's just the way things are. Nothing beyond this. Accept it.

On the bank a group of peasants in yellow pajamas engaged in a tug of war but the thing being tugged was themselves and the flesh would be pulled back and forth until you couldn't recognize it. One of them grabbed her wrist to pull her into the healthful game.

She was now terrified enough to risk the encounter with God. The risk of instant death, that was why more people didn't do this. The kneading of your heart in God's hand, the potting that might kill you.

Conduct, sullen and inexpressive boy, held her other hand as if to encourage her -- or to keep her from running away.

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