Things were different in antiquity, in the time of the ancient Greeks and Romans; they had so many gods they had to give them names to tell them apart and they had allocated each their own portfolio to stop them from stepping on each other’s toes. Native Americans in the Westerns call their god Manitou, even though Štefan claims that the Algonquian Indians, such as the Menominee, have no notion of God in our sense of the word and that they use the name Manitou to refer to the mysterious, impersonal magic force that rules all Nature.
We have only one God, albeit a tripartite one – the Trinity is jointly and inseparably composed of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. However, these are not names, just terms denoting their familial relations. Jesus Christ, too, is just the Son’s worldly, civilian name, one he used during his temporary stay among people on earth. We imagine the Holy Spirit as a carrier pigeon flying around the world and consecrating everything it alights on but it doesn’t have a proper name either, just a title.
Our God doesn’t need a name because he is the One and Only, the unique One; in fact, he might be the only truly unique … what? Creature? Being?
‘Do you think we are beings?’ I asked Štefan. ‘Would you refer to yourself by this term?’
As a man of science, Štefan is not keen on vague debates that lack a solid factual foundation.
‘Provided we use the term simply to refer to a living being’, he said, ‘why not? But if you have some unique individual features in mind, I wouldn’t be so sure.’
‘I know I’m not unique’, I said, ‘but I treat myself as if I were. I do it to boost my confidence. I have nothing against “creature”, I’m sure that’s the correct term, but I feel more dignified as a “being”.’
‘The only thing unique about people is that they are all much of a muchness’, Štefan said. ‘Otherwise no research or study, no human science would be possible. We would have to study each individual separately and any conclusions would apply only to this one person.’
Being a scientist, he has no choice but to see things this way. But I think he takes everything too literally.
‘Entire fields of science would collapse’, he said. ‘Psychology. Psychiatry. Mind you, these are not exact sciences. But take medicine in general. Where would we be if everyone suffered from their own, unique illness? And what about pedagogy? It would be impossible to apply any general rules, there would be no unified curricula and teaching methods, every pupil would have to have their own teacher. And the list could go on and on, ad infinitum.’
He was clearly warming to the subject, getting quite fired up.
‘If people were truly unique’, he said, ‘everyone would have their own unique language and we wouldn’t be able to communicate at all.’
And that would be it for the language of the Menominee, I thought, including bilabial consonants. So there’s the rub for him, even though he wouldn’t say so out loud. But I didn’t want to stir things up any more.
‘So, if you insist on being so precise’, I said, ‘on being such a stickler for exact terms, please tell me how you would define God. Who would you say He was? A creature? A being? Or something else?’
That gave him food for thought. ‘An entity’, he said in the end.
That sounded good and scientific, although to me it didn’t sound particularly precise either. But God is such a useful term exactly because everyone can imagine it to mean whatever they want it to.
5.b
I thought it was a good idea, albeit a slightly sentimental one; Štefan might have gone as far as to call it kitschy but I didn’t tell him what I was planning to do.
I hadn’t taken my wife out for a long time so I invited her for lunch. It was just an excuse. She had been eating very little lately, she had no appetite and also seemed to have lost interest in cooking. She used to be a good cook, inventive, never one to follow recipes blindly. But nowadays she would often ask when we ate: ‘Something seems to be missing, don’t you think?’ On one occasion it was fried onions, on another it was marjoram; sometimes she simply forgot to put any salt in the soup.
The lunch was an excuse but I didn’t tell her that. I wanted it to be a surprise. She seemed strangely disconcerted or confused by my invitation; she took ages deciding what to wear, until eventually I had to point out that this was not some big social event, just an ordinary lunch for two.
I took her to Café Krym; this was part of my plan. After lunch, as we emerged into the sunshine, I motioned with my head towards the little park opposite. ‘How about we go and sit down for a while?’
Nowadays there is little that is romantic about Šafárikovo Square: buses to Petržalka keep pulling out of the bus stop with loud creaks and groans, trams jangle and grind their teeth on the bend in front of the university, and a continuous stream of cars flows past both sides of the park. But she raised no objections and crossed the road obediently.
‘Do you know where we are?’ I asked when we sat down. ‘Do you recognise this bench?’
She looked down at the bench, at the slats sticking out from under her skirt, then at me. She shook her head with a shy, hesitant smile.
‘Go on, have a guess’, I said. Some homeless people were camped around a bench a little further down; a woman with long dirty hair huddled amid a heap of plastic bags and two men with cigarettes and a green plastic bottle hovered above her.
‘I really don’t know’, she said. ‘We’re in the park in Šafárikovo Square, aren’t we?’
‘That’s right’, I replied. ‘And we’re sitting in the exact same place, on the same bench as in that photo I showed you the other day. Ring any bells?’
To be honest, I wasn’t sure if the bench really was in the exact same place and not a few metres further away; it was unlikely that it was the same bench after all those years, but that didn’t matter. It might have been a childish and sentimental idea to try and rekindle the past but it was quite understandable coming from someone who had more past than future – after all, who would be happy to settle for such impoverishment? I foolishly continued to badger her, and it wasn’t until much later that I realised how futile my attempts were.
‘What did you think when I sat down beside you out of the blue?’ I asked. ‘If I remember rightly, it was just before the exams and I pretended I wanted to borrow your lecture notes.’
Lines appeared on her brow; eventually she shook her head again, with the same embarrassed smile – the way a bride might smile when she carves the wedding cake and drops a piece on the table.
‘Oh, that was a long time ago, you see’, she said. ‘Who knows what I thought then? I probably thought you wanted to borrow my notes’.
We both laughed, as if she had said something amusing. For a moment it almost seemed as if she were flirting with me in a girlish way, as in the old days. That she had agreed to play along.
‘And, all in all’, I asked, ‘what did you think of me then? What did you think I was like?’
She gave another laugh and shrugged her shoulders. ‘Well, I hardly knew you then’, she said. ‘There were so many boys in our year, they’re all a blur now.’
‘But you must have thought something, surely’, I said.
‘Hm …’ She had to stop and think. ‘Well, you weren’t bad looking’, she said, smiling at me, ‘you still aren’t, lots of girls fancied you, I supose. But I think the best looking one was this tall, dark-haired fellow, he was doing classics I think, I forget his name. I’m sure you remember him.’
She leaned back on the bench and stretched out her