Mister God, This is Anna

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because I know it all!’

‘What do you know?’

‘I know to love Mister God and to love people and cats and dogs and spiders and flowers and trees’, and the catalogue went on, ‘– with all of me.’

Carol grinned at me and Stan made a face and I hurriedly put a cigarette in my mouth and indulged in a bout of coughing. There’s nothing much you can do in the face of that kind of accusation, for that’s what it amounted to. (‘Out of the mouths of babes …’) Anna had bypassed all the non-essentials and distilled centuries of learning into one sentence – ‘And God said love me, love them, and love it, and don’t forget to love yourself.’

The whole business of adults going to church filled Anna with suspicion. The idea of collective worship went against her sense of private conversations with Mister God. As for going to church to meet Mister God, that was preposterous. After all, if Mister God wasn’t everywhere, he wasn’t anywhere. For her, church-going and ‘Mister God’ talks had no necessary connection. For her the whole thing was transparently simple. You went to church to get the message when you were very little. Once you had got it, you went out and did something about it. Keeping on going to church was because you hadn’t got the message, or didn’t understand it, or it was ‘just for swank’.

After the evening meal I always read to Anna, books on all manner of subjects from poetry to astronomy. After a year of reading, she ended up with three favourite books. The first was a large picture-book with nothing in it but photographs of snowflakes and frost patterns. The second book was Cruden’s Complete Concordance, and the third, of all the strange books to choose, was Manning’s Geometry of Four Dimensions. Each of these books had a catalytic effect on Anna. She devoured them utterly, and out of their digestion she produced her own philosophy.

One of her pleasures was my reading to her that part of the concordance given over to the meaning of proper names. Each name was read in strict alphabetical order and the meaning given. After each name had been tasted and thought over she made her decision as to its rightness. Most times she shook her head sadly and disappointedly; it wasn’t good enough. Sometimes it was just right; the name, the person, the meaning, all fitted perfectly for her and, with a burst of excitement, she would bounce up and down on my lap and say, ‘Put it down, put it down.’ This meant writing the name in large block capitals on a slip of paper, which she would stare at with complete concentration for a minute or two and then place in one of her many boxes. A moment to compose herself, and, ‘Next one, please.’ So we would go on. Some names took all of fifteen minutes or more to decide one way or the other. The decision was made in complete silence. On the occasions when I moved to a more comfortable position, or started to speak, I was reprimanded with a tilt of the head, a full-blooded stare and a small finger placed gently but firmly on my lips. I learned to wait patiently. It took us about four months to work through the section on proper names, moments of high excitement and moments of low disappointment, none of which I understood at that time. Later I was let into the secret.

Since our first meeting God had been given the title Mister God; the Holy Spirit, for some reason only known to her, was given the name Vrach. I rarely heard her use the name Jesus. Whenever she referred to Jesus it was as Mister God’s boy. One evening we were working our way through the J’s and came eventually to Jesus. I had hardly got the name out before I was stopped by a ‘No!’, a wagging finger and ‘Next one, please.’ Who was I to argue? I pressed on. The next name on the list was JETHER. I had to pronounce this three times, and then turning to me she said, ‘Read what it says.’ So I read:

‘JETHER meaning he that excels or remains, or that examines, searches, or a line or string.’

The effect of this was electric, catastrophic. With a blur of movement she had slipped off my lap, twisted about to face me and stood crouched with hands clenched, the whole of her being shaking with excitement. For one horrifying moment I thought she was ill or having a fit, but that wasn’t the explanation. Whatever the explanation was it went deeper than anything I could understand. She was filled with joy. She kept saying, ‘It’s true. I know it. It’s true. It’s true. I know it.’ With that she fled out into the yard. I made to go out after her but Mum put out a hand and held me back, saying, ‘Leave her alone, she’s happy. She’s got the “eye”.’ Half an hour passed before she returned. Without a word she climbed on to my lap, gave me one of her special grins and said, ‘Please write the name big for me tonight,’ and then went to sleep. She didn’t even wake up when I put her to bed. It was months before the word epilepsy faded from my thoughts.

Mum always said that she pitied the girl that I married, for she would have to put up with my three mistresses – Mathematics, Physics and Electrical Gadgetry. I would rather read and practise these subjects than eat or sleep. I never bought myself a wrist-watch or a fountain-pen, and very rarely did I buy new clothes, but I never went anywhere without a slide-rule. This device fascinated Anna and soon she had to have a slip-stick of her own. Having mastered the whole business of counting numbers, she was soon extracting roots with the aid of her slip-stick before she could add two numbers together. Users of slip-sticks soon fall into a stable method of using this device. It’s held in the left hand, leaving the right hand free to hold the pencil; the ‘cursor’ can be moved with the thumb and the sliding-scale tapped against the work-bench. One of my particular pleasures was seeing the copper-crowned diminutive child doing her ‘workings out’, as she called it – looking down from a height of six foot or more and saying, ‘How you doing, Tich?’, seeing her head screw round and upward and watching one delicious wiggle start from her toes, pass up her body, to be tossed off the top of her head in a foam of silky copper thread, with a grin of absolute joy.

Some evenings were given over to piano-playing. I play a fairly good honky-tonk piano, a bit of Mozart, a bit of Chopin, and a few pieces like ‘Anitra’s Dance’ just for good measure. On the top of the piano were several electronic devices. One device, the oscilloscope, held all the magic of a fairy wand for Anna. We’d sit in this room for hours on end playing single notes, watching the green spot on the ‘scope do its glowing dance. The whole exercise of relating sounds that one heard with the ears to the visual shape of those sounds actively seen on the little tube’s face was a source of never-ending delight.

What sounds we captured, Anna and I! A caterpillar chewing a leaf was like a hungry lion, a fly in a jam-jar sounded like an airship, a match being struck sounded like an explosion. All these sounds and a thousand more were amplified and made available, both in sound form and visible form. Anna had found a brand new world to explore. How much meaning it had for her I didn’t know, perhaps it was only an elaborate plaything for her, but her squeals of delight were enough for me.

It was only some time during the next summer that I began to realize that the concepts of frequency and wavelength were meaningful to her, that she did, in fact, know and understand what she was hearing and looking at. One summer afternoon all the kids were playing in the street when a large bumble-bee appeared on the scene.

One of the kids said, ‘How many times does it flap its wings in a minute?’

‘Must be millions,’ said another kid.

Anna dashed indoors humming a low-pitched hum. I was sitting on the doorstep. With a few quick prods at the piano she had identified the note, her hum and the drone of the bee. Coming to the door again, she said, ‘Can I have your slip-stick?’ In a moment or two she shouted out, ‘A bee flaps its wings such-and-such times a second.’ Nobody believed her, but she was only a few counts out.

Every sound that could be captured was captured. Meals began to be punctuated with such remarks as, ‘Do you know a mosquito flaps its wings so many times a second? or a fly so many times a second?’

All these games led inevitably to making music. Each separate note had by this time been examined minutely, and a sound depended on how many times it wiggled per second. Soon she was making little melodies to which I added the harmonies. Little pieces of music entitled ‘Mummy’, ‘Mr Jether’s Dance’, and ‘Laughter’ soon began to echo around the house. Anna had begun to compose. I suppose Anna only had one problem in her little life – the lack of hours per day. There was too much to do, too many exciting things to find out.

Another of Anna’s magic carpets was the microscope. It revealed a little world made big. A world of intricate shape and pattern, a world of creatures too small to see with the naked eye; even the very dirt itself was wonderful.

Before all this adventuring into these hidden worlds, Mister God had been Anna’s friend and companion, but now, well this was going a bit too far. If Mister God had done all this, he was something larger than Anna had bargained for. It needed a bit of thinking about. For the next few weeks activity slowed down; she still played with the other children in the street; she was still as sweet and exciting as ever, but she became more inward-looking, more inclined to sit alone, high in the tree in the yard, with only Bossy as her companion. Whichever way she looked there seemed to be more and more of everything.

During these few weeks Anna slowly took stock of all she knew, walking about gently touching things as if looking for some clue that she had missed. She didn’t talk much in this period. In reply to questions she answered as simply as she could, apologizing for her absence by the gentlest of smiles, saying without words, ‘I’m sorry about all this. I’ll be back as soon as I’ve sorted this little puzzle out.’ Finally the whole thing came to a head.

She turned to me. ‘Can I come to bed with you tonight?’ she asked.

I nodded.

‘Now,’ she replied.

She hopped off my lap, took my hand, and pulled me to the door. I went.

I haven’t told you Anna’s way of solving problems, have I? If Anna was confronted with a situation that didn’t come out easily, there was only one thing to do – take your clothes off. So there we were in bed, the street lamp lighting up the room, her head cupped in her hands, and both elbows firmly planted on my chest. I waited. She chose to remain like that for about ten minutes, getting her argument in its proper order, and then she launched forth.

‘Mister God made everything, didn’t he?’

There was no point in saying that I didn’t really know. I said ‘Yes.’

‘Even the dirt and the stars and the animals and the people and the trees and everything, and the pollywogs?’ The pollywogs were those little creatures that we had seen under the microscope.

I said, ‘Yes, he made everything.’

She nodded her agreement. ‘Does Mister God love us truly?’

‘Sure thing,’ I said. ‘Mister God loves everything.’

‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Well then, why does he let things get hurt and dead?’ Her voice sounded as if she felt she had betrayed a sacred trust, but the question had been thought and it had to be spoken.

‘I don’t know,’ I replied. ‘There’s a great many things about Mister God that we don’t know about.’

‘Well then,’ she continued, ‘if we don’t know many things about Mister God, how do we know he loves us?’

I could see that this was going to be one of those times, but thank goodness she didn’t expect an answer to her question for she hurried on: ‘Them pollywogs, I could love them till I bust, but they wouldn’t know, would they? I’m million times bigger than they are and Mister God is million times bigger than me, so how do I know what Mister God does?’

She was silent for a little while. Later I thought that at this moment she was taking her last look at babyhood. Then she went on:

‘Fynn, Mister God doesn’t love us.’ She hesitated. ‘He doesn’t really, you know, only people can love. I love Bossy, but Bossy don’t love me. I love the polly-wogs, but they don’t love me. I love you, Fynn, and you love me, don’t you?’

I tightened my arm about her.

‘You love me because you are people. I love Mister God truly, but he don’t love me.’

It sounded to me like a death-knell. ‘Damn and blast,’ I thought. ‘Why does this have to happen to people? Now she’s lost everything.’ But I was wrong. She had got both feet planted firmly on the next stepping-stone.

‘No,’ she went on, ‘no, he don’t love me, not like you do, it’s different, it’s millions of times bigger.’

I must have made some movement or noise for she levered herself upright and sat on her haunches and giggled. Then she launched herself at me and undid my little pang of hurt, cut out the useless spark of jealousy with the delicate sureness of a surgeon.

‘Fynn, you can love better than any people that ever was, and so can I, can’t I? But Mister God is different. You see, Fynn, people can only love outside and can only kiss outside, but Mister God can love you right inside, and Mister God can kiss you right inside, so it’s different. Mister God ain’t like us; we are a little bit like Mister God, but not much yet.’

It seemed to me to reduce itself to the fact that we were like God because of some similarities but God was not like us because of our difference. Her inner fires had refined her ideas, and like some alchemist she had turned lead into gold. Gone were all the human definitions of God, like Goodness, Mercy, Love and Justice, for these were merely props to describe the indescribable.

‘You see, Fynn, Mister God is different from us because he can finish things and we can’t. I can’t finish loving you because I shall be dead millions of years before I can finish, but Mister God can finish loving you, and so it’s not the same kind of love, is it? Even Mister Jether’s love is not the same as Mister God’s because he only came here to make us remember.’

The first salvo was enough for me; it all needed a bit of thinking about, but I wasn’t going to be spared the rest of her artillery.