9781250816214

and the Lord God my Father breathed life into my nostrils, and gave unto
me a living soul and all that. But in the beginning, I was so big. A giant!
Bet you think I’m a strapping fellow now, but you should have seen me
when the ocean was new. I still think that was the best me, but He won’t
give it back. But not just a giant, see? My first wife was born at the same
time, of the same dust. We were one flesh, fused together spine to spine. We
were never apart. We finished each other’s sentences. We loved as fierce as
sea storms. And we built this house! But we could never touch, and
obviously that was no good. You see how it could never have worked, don’t
you? I can’t be blamed for that first one. I begged Him to separate us so I
could look upon my wife and please myself upon her. He loved me, His
firstborn son, so He did. But she hated me for it. She liked it the old way.
She said I should have asked her consent. She wouldn’t let me touch her,
and she wouldn’t touch me, and that’s just an impossible situation, Soph,
you know it is. That’s no way to live in paradise! So I begged my Father
again to make me another. I was so lonely. The neighbors all had mates.
The lions and the fish and the minks and the bears and the bees and the
palfreys. Why should I be deprived? So my Father returned her to the dust.
I asked if I could keep her thigh bone to remember her by—she had such
pretty, powerful legs! And He said I could so long as I didn’t show anyone,
which I never did, you found it on your own, I can’t be blamed. I only took
my treasures out at night when you were asleep, I was very careful.”
“And the new one?” Sophia urges him on.
“Well … my Father thought I ought to learn a lesson about how much
effort it takes to make a living being out of clay and spit and nothingness, so
that I wouldn’t be so careless next time. You can’t imagine it, Sophie. He
built her right in front of me. Blood and sinew and bone and mucus and
clots and tissue and eyeballs and it was just so … wet and horrible. She
loved me and she sang so nice and she cleaned the house and cooked
everything just the way I like it but I couldn’t, I just couldn’t. I tried to
touch her and all I could feel was that wetness sloshing around inside her. It
was disgusting.”
“But it’s inside you too,” Sophia insists. He knows that, doesn’t he? He
must know that.
“But I never saw myself get … assembled. Like a thing. I’m not a thing,
not like them. Not like you. So I told my Father it was no use, give us a
thousand years and I could still never bear to be in a room with her. Start