The Last Testament: A Memoir (39 page)

⁴
(Not a great blimp gas, though.)

⁵
Favorite number: 667, just to one-up the devil.

⁶
Favorite war: the War of Spanish Succession. A great, great war in every respect.

⁷
Favorite monument: the Colossus of Rhodes.

⁸
That thing scared me a little.

⁹
It was a massive depiction of the Greek sun god Helios, in truth nothing but an overgrown idol; yet there was something in its mien and bearing that gaveth unto me the willies.

¹⁰
I tried to ignore it; I tried to pretend it did not vex me; but whenever business took me to Rhodes I felt its icy leer.

¹¹
After 56 years I could take it no longer; so I sent an earthquake to knock it down.

¹²
I felt better after that.

¹³
Favorite monarch: Queen Victoria. Stature, majesty, and wisdom. And lo, could she fellate a penis!

¹⁴
Favorite pizza topping: mushrooms.

¹⁵
Favorite chemical compound: water.

¹⁶
(True story about water: for a while I thought about switching it up and turning it all into HO
₂
, which is a far more attractive-looking molecule.

¹⁷
But as it happens, HO
₂
is the hydroperoxyl radical responsible for the destruction of ozone in the atmosphere; so for now the plan is on hold.

¹⁸
Still, one of these days I might try it.

¹⁹
If I do, let me know what happens.)

²⁰
Favorite language: to paraphrase Nabokov, my heart speaks Hebrew, my ear speaks Latin, and my head speaks angry Elizabethan English amped with reverb.

²¹
Favorite planet: OGLE2-TR-L9 b.

²²
Favorite planet in thy solar system: Saturn.

²³
Favorite terrestrial planet in thy solar system: tie: Mercury and Mars.

CHAPTER 3

¹
F
avorite book (ancient):
The Odyssey.
Those gods got to do so many awesome things—and they never even existed! Ah, myth is wasted on the mythic.

2 Favorite book (medieval):
The Da Vinci Code.

³
I am referring, of course, to the
original
book of that name, written in 1502 by Leonardo da Vinci.

⁴
It was the original self-help book, wherein the great master sought to aid readers by sharing with them the simple five-step “code” by which he lived, and that had made him so successful.

⁵
It is long out of print now, and not a single copy has survived . . . or so scholars think.

⁶
(Word to the wise: point an X-ray spectrofluorometer at the right-hand side of the table in
The Last Supper.
)

⁷
Favorite book (modern):
Gravity’s Rainbow
by Thomas Pynchon.

⁸
Lo, I just finished reading it a year ago, and I think I’m starting to get it.

⁹
Favorite director: Alfred Hitchcock. His movies always keep me in suspense, which is not easy.

¹⁰
Favorite painting:
The Creation of Adam.

¹¹
Second-favorite painting:
Campbell’s Soup Cans,
by Andy Warhol. So much soup!

¹²
Favorite artist: Jackson Pollock, because I am in on the dirty little secret of his success: he was not an abstract expressionist.

¹³
Jackson Pollock was trying to paint landscapes the whole time.

¹⁴
He was a terrible, terrible painter.

¹⁵
Favorite music: these days I listen to goodly quantities of nondenominational middle-of-the-road pop; but I like all kinds of “good vibrations” in any frequency, from radio waves to gamma rays.

¹⁶
Favorite band: the Beatles. End of discussion.

¹⁷
Favorite rapper: Young Jeezy; for if my son was in hip-hop, that would be his name.

¹⁸
Favorite folk music: none; the folk music of all nations and peoples throughout all time is equally unlistenable.

¹⁹
Favorite hymn: “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.”

²⁰
Yea. Yea, I am.

KORANICLES

SURA 1

¹
H
ow shall I reveal to thee the history of my dealings with the prophet Muhammad; and of the revelation to him of the holy book, the Koran; and of the founding of my third great religion, Islam.

²
So. . . Islam.

³
Islam, Islam, Islam.

⁴
Didst thou know it hath over one-and-a-half billion adherents?

⁵
Verily; it hath.

⁶
And didst thou know it is divided into two main branches: the Sunni and the Shi’a?

⁷
[Pause; thumb-twiddleth.]

⁸
I must tell thee in all candor, that I have felt great apprehension concerning the writing of this section.

⁹
I am Allah, the Wise, the All-Powerful; yet these days even
I
get a little nervous talking about Islam.

¹⁰
Lo: sometimes I shall be up in heaven, and looking down on earth I shall in passing remark upon a particularly beautiful mosque, or worthy imam;

¹¹
Whereupon the Hebrew patriarchs and Christian martyrs gathered around me begin to gaze at each other uncomfortably;

¹²
At which point the righteous Muslims nearby picketh up on the vibe;

¹³
Until someone, usually the apostle James, will pretend to cough, and in so doing say “Al-Qaeda!”

¹⁴
And a Muslim will thunder, “Why didst thou say al-Qaeda?”; and James will say no, he said “Ore-Ida!”, as in the brand of frozen potatoes; which in context maketh absolutely no sense;

¹⁵
And the mood grows angrier, until I am forced to restore order by calling in the Heavenly Choir to soothe everyone’s spirits with their unique blend of nondenominational middle-of-the-road pop.

¹⁶
So let me begin by telling thee what thou wilt
not
find here in
Koranicles
, or, indeed, anywhere else in this book.

¹⁷
Thou shalt not find any “Satanic verses” anywhere in this book.

¹⁸
Thou shalt not find any anti-Muslim propaganda anywhere in this book.

¹⁹
Thou shalt not find any pork products anywhere in this book.

²⁰
And above all,
thou shalt not find any Danish cartoons of the prophet Muhammad anywhere in this book.

²¹
I cannot stress this point enough.

²²
Indeed, thou wilt not find any visual representations of Muhammad in this book, period.

²³
No cartoons; no paintings; no drawings, etchings, lithographs, photographs, daguerreotypes, clip art, shadow puppets; nothing.

²⁴
The closest thou wilt come is on the twelfth page of the center insert; but that is purely by way of verbal merriment, not visual heresy.

²⁵
Having said all this, I must nonetheless now fulfill a promise I made unto the publishing house issuing forth these pages:

²⁶
“I, God, do hereby indemnify Simon & Schuster from any and all outrage, fatwa, or all-out jihad that may result from the contents of the portions of this book pertaining to Islam.

²⁷
And I further indemnify them from any anger on the part of members of
any
religion with regard to
any
of the contents of this book.

²⁸
I am Jehovah; I am God the Father; I am Allah; and I am solely responsible for the eternal truths contained in these pages.”

²⁹
(And though thou art free to pursue the earthly remedy of suing me for libel, I would
really
like to see one of you try to serve me that subpoena.)

SURA 2

¹
I
n any case, there is relatively little to say about Islam; for its holy book contains almost no new narrative, and its origins are far easier to recount than those of my other two faiths.

²
By the beginning of the 7th century, Christianity was fully ascendant; yet in that religion, much of the praise and glory and majesty is offered to Jesus.

³
I had come to feel like I stood in my son’s shadow; as if I were now second-best in my own universe;

⁴
And thou knowest me: I am one jealous divinity.

⁵
Now, let me state this as plainly as I can: I begrudge my son
absolutely none
of his success.

⁶
That boy hath earned every Pietà and windshield bobble-head he ever got.

⁷
So rather than hijacking Jesus’s religion, I decided to found a new one: one in which there would be no doubt who the boss was, and not befall upon me the same dilemma that 70 generations later would befall Tony Danza.