Good to Be God by Tibor Fischer Page B

impulse to correct him by saying he only went to one other shop. Who knows, if he’d tried somewhere else he might have found it for a hundred and twenty dollars less, though I doubt it since the market does curb abuse.
    But you don’t know. You don’t know whether there is another shop with a better deal. You don’t know whether there’s another shop. Laziness always wins. Sooner or later. How much roaming and asking should you do?
    If you spent a week going to forty watch retailers and succeeded in saving a hundred dollars, or even a hundred and twenty, would it justify your effort? You don’t know. That’s what’s so frightening: you walk into one shop and they sell a watch for one price, and another shop sells that watch for another price.
    There is a conspiracy. It’s called the world.
    “Tyndale, it’s time for the Hierophant to hit the fan.”
    The Hierophant requires me to hold a rickety ladder for him, while he climbs up to fix one of the fans. The church doesn’t 82

    GOOD TO BE GOD
    have air conditioning (too expensive and troublesome), but five propeller-style fans (cheap but more troublesome). Holding the ladder while the Hierophant spouts some non-God-based profanity, I suffer a powerful attack of futility as I realize that I am holding a rickety ladder in a hut in a run-down part of Miami while a demented ex-Marine fumbles with a fan so old it should be gracing a museum.
    That’s my job: rickety-ladder-holder. For which I’m not paid.
    The despair grows so strong I can barely stand up.
    I attempt to amuse myself by imagining killing, but it doesn’t work. I’m too aware that imagining killing is a trait of the defeated, and that my romps of violence will never happen. Not only will I never beat Loader to death with a handy bit of metal, I probably won’t so much as tread on his toe. I’ll never get to see him luckless and broken. You just don’t get an opportunity for revenge. I think of all the people who’ve shat on me and I’ve just never once had a chance to settle up; they’ve never once walked in front of my car on a dark, rainy, witness-poor night.
    On the other hand, while I’ve never managed to get even with my malefactors, I’ve never been able to get even with my benefactors either. True, the latter category is dishearteningly small – family excepted – countable on the palms of my hands really. Bamford, for instance, who pulled me out of the shit, who saved me, all I could do was to say to him “thank you”. A sound isn’t much.
    We nothing along with no real power to touch those we want to. I’m here now in Miami, holding a rickety ladder with a persistent and embarrassing medical condition, my other years of no consequence.
    I arrived here with no baggage, nothing to help me or hinder me. Born again, the same start whether I had spent my previous 83

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    life giving stray kittens milk and running errands for the elderly, or microwaving puppies and strangling the old. Your moral bank account is a currency that can’t buy you anything.
    “What was Vietnam like?” I ask to make conversation.
    “Hot,” replies the Hierophant. I wait for more detail, but it’s not coming.
    “Did you get to the jungle?”
    “Yes.”
    I wait. After two more minutes of fan-fiddling, I try:
    “So what happened?”
    “My watchstrap rotted. Everything rots there. Your uniform.
    Your nutsack. Everything.”
    More silence follows. Finally, the fan jerks into motion.
    The Hierophant packs away his tools. “Do you want to know the most astonishing thing I saw while I was in ’Nam?”
    “Go on.”
    “There were lots of bars and whorehouses. Lots. But one bar had this sign outside saying “Giant midgets”. I never went in.
    But my question to you, Tyndale, is this: if they really were giant midgets, how could you tell?”
    Picking up the pen, I leave the Hierophant. In my car, I suddenly get pangs of hunger. I should be holy and not bother with food, but I’m so beaten I