The Last Testament: A Memoir (13 page)

REDUXODUS

CHAPTER 1

¹
H
umanity, we need to talk.

²
At the beginning of Exodus—the second book of the Old Testament—the children of Israel are prospering in Egypt; yet within a few verses over two centuries have passed, and they have all become slaves.

³
Coming after the relatively detailed accounts of the patriarchs’ lives, this seems a conspicuous and enormous narrative gap; even by the lofty narrative-gap standards I repeatedly set and meet for myself in Genesis.

⁴
But I have promised to “telleth all” in this chronicle; and therefore I will now make known my whereabouts during this period.

⁵
I will make them known, but I fear the disclosure may prove most hurtful to thee; therefore I would inquire, humanity, if thou art sitting down; and if not, humanity, I would strongly recommend that thou findest a chair.

⁶
Here goeth:

⁷
I have been overseeing another universe.

⁸
[Awkward silence.]

⁹
Thou hast never encountered it; its location is unimportant; its name matters not.

¹⁰
Dost thou remember at the end of Genesis, in 50:10, when Joseph and the dignitaries of Pharaoh’s court observed a week of mourning for Jacob at the threshing floor of Atad?

¹¹
It was then.

¹²
That was the week I began overseeing the other universe.

¹³
Now, I swear to thee,
I did not seek out this relationship
; I was completely and totally satisfied with and fulfilled by thy universe; I was by no means looking for a side cosmos.

¹⁴
No, it approached me; or rather, the idea of it approached me, in my head; for as it happened this other universe did not yet exist; which was precisely why it was so unhappy.

¹⁵
But the
idea
of this universe soon made it clear, that it was desperately seeking to be actualized; and that it was looking for a God—
any
God—to make it happen; and that it was willing to do anything—
anything
—to see that it did.

¹⁶
And so, in a moment of weakness, I Banged it.

¹⁷
And then the whole thing kind of exploded from there; and that is how it all got started;

¹⁸
This thing with the other universe, I mean.

¹⁹
And I must further confess that I have visited it sporadically ever since, during my intermittent historical lacunae.

²⁰
But heed me: my relationship with this other universe is purely sacrificial.

²¹
For verily, as soon as its residents sense my presence, they hop straight onto the altar, and remove their firstling sheep, and their spotless black bullocks, and start slaughtering.

²²
They love to slaughter.

²³
That’s all they want to do for me.

²⁴
On one occasion, I even savored the sweet-scented smoke of their oxen’s burning kidney caul-fat seven times in a single night.

²⁵
Yea; they slaughter for me all night long; in manners dark and strange; manners with which you are unfamiliar;

²⁶
Unfamiliar, or, more likely, perhaps, uncomfortable.

²⁷
For let us be honest, humanity: we have not engaged in a mutually satisfactory mass animal sacrifice in a very long time.

²⁸
This is not by way of assigning blame; it is merely a statement of fact.

²⁹
Now, I know this news is hard to digest; but as I am my witness, my relationship with the other universe is no more than a dalliance.

³⁰
Truly, it is but a silly little macrocosm, and supremely shallow; literally so, for it lacks the dimension of depth.

³¹
It is
not
the universe I adore; it is
not
the universe I took nearly one whole week to create; and it is
not
the universe wherein hundreds of millions of people have died in my name.

³²
Nothing has changed between us.

³³
I am still the L
ORD
thy God, King of the Universe.

³⁴
That other one meaneth
nothing
to me.

CHAPTER 2

¹
A
ncient Egyptian slavery was very similar to the slavery of the American South: there were families torn apart; there was little food and woeful shelter; there was abuse and murder and cruelty and inhumanity of every description.

²
The only difference was in the music; for the worksongs of the African slaves were soulful a cappella dirges bespeaking sorrow, yearning, and freedom;

³
Whereas the worksongs sung by the Jewish slaves were catchy tunes accompanied by clarinet and accordion, telling of
schlemiels
, and
schmucks
, and all manner of
mishegas.

⁴
Jewish slavery was an atrocity on an epic scale; and it infuriates me to see it
still
being exploited in certain sordid quarters of Cairo, wherein seedy men stand in front of ill-lit establishments and promise passersby that they may therein experience “bondage in Egypt.”

⁵
I even know of one such establishment that calls itself “Sexodus”; it is sorely due for an electrical fire.

⁶
Into this bitter world was Moses born, and thou wilt recall the circumstances of his birth: how Pharaoh had condemned all newborn Jewish boys to death; how his mother saved him by placing him in an ark of bulrushes in the Nile; how Pharaoh’s daughter then found him, and adopted him;

⁷
Launching the African-baby celebrity adoption trend that continues to the present day.

⁸
Moses was raised in Pharaoh’s house as an Egyptian; and was educated by over a dozen tutors who instructed him in the many distinctive customs of that remarkable people; principally their unique method of carrying themselves;

⁹
For they walked in a most curious fashion: bobbing their heads in the direction of their sojourn, while aligning their hands parallel to the ground, one palm downward, the other upward, and thrusting them simultaneously toward opposite points of the compass.

¹⁰
(If thou hast never seen it, it is hard to explain.)

¹¹
For many years Moses blended into courtly life, concealing his true heritage, going so far as to briefly change his name to Miles; for he complained that “Moses” could not sound more Jewish, and it was hard to argue with him on that one.

¹²
His real mother, who had been hired as his servant, often chastised him for his assimilation, even going so far as to call him the “Prince of De Nile,” a mirth which, even then, was 1,500 years old.

¹³
But all the while the truth of his identity smoldered inside him, building into a rage; which finally erupted one day, after Pharaoh sent him on an errand to purchase more embalming fluid.

¹⁴
(As it happened, Pharaoh already had two pyramids full of embalming fluid; but as he was fond of saying, “Thou canst never have too much embalming fluid.”)

¹⁵
And as Moses walked the streets of downtown Cheops that beautiful
akhet
day, lo, he beheld a taskmaster whipping a Hebrew slave; and, inflamed by the violence against his kinsman, he smote the taskmaster.

¹⁶
Thereupon he fled Pharaoh’s wrath and hid himself in the neighboring land of Midian, which he knew to be a welcoming place for fugitives from Egypt; Midian being Egypt’s Canada.

¹⁷
And it was here, exiled in the dry wasteland, tending his flocks, that I first came to him; in the famous form of a burning bush, which though ablaze remained unconsumed.

¹⁸
I chose this form knowing Moses would be drawn to it; for its appearance and scent identified it as a species of flora with which he had grown well acquainted in the Egyptian court, particularly on weekends;

¹⁹
And he would thus be sure to realize, that its bush-sized manifestation in the middle of an arid desert,
had
to be a sign from God.

²⁰
And the combustion of this bush—and more than that the inhalation of its pungent smoke—produced in him feelings of joy and wonder, alternating with paranoia; which was the intention.

²¹
For the mission I would soon be sending him on would be perilous and life-threatening; and I reckoned he would be more amenable after having partaken of three or four hits.

²²
So I was encouraged when, after introducing myself and asking him if he was willing to become the instrument whereby I would defeat Pharaoh, afflict Egypt, liberate the Jews, give them my law, and bring them to the land promised to their forefathers,

²³
His first response was, “Nice bush!”; whereupon he giggled for ten minutes.

²⁴
Yea, I know thou imaginest Moses as like unto Charlton Heston in
The Ten Commandments;
grave, and sober, and blessed with a rolling baritone deep enough to make the very Sphinx whimper in submission.

²⁵
And to be sure, Charlton Heston
is
all those things; he is practically godlike; only last week the two of us were strolling around heaven together, and all the angels passing by gawked, and rubbed their eyes, and started wondering if we had gone duotheistic all of a sudden.

²⁶
But there is another kind of charisma: wild, visceral, all-consuming; the kind that charges its bearer with an almost physical magnetism, and that acts upon his followers like unto a powerful intoxicant; the kind— perhaps the only kind—that can persuade them to unite in pursuit of a single vision, even one that runs counter to all reason and possibility.

²⁷
This
was Moses’s charisma.