Read The Trial Of The Man Who Said He Was God for Free Online Page B

had as much as I can take. It’s him, not me, who’s using insultin’ language about the Almighty. Who does he think he is? I’m tellin’ the bugger he’s just like me and you…
    His Honour warns the Witness that he’s within a whisker of being committed for contempt of court.
    Disappointed with the Judge, he appeals to the Jury.
    WITNESS: What’s more, ladies and gents, I remember this bloke rushin’ in - like he’s got all the devils in hell at his tail - and makin’ for one of my toilets, lockin’ himself in and comin’ out after five minutes and a flush. I bet you each a tenner what he did in there was what they all do. Was it the Almighty who - ?
    This time, Judge and Counsel together succeed in silencing the Witness. I have no questions to put him. He stands down, muttering.
    Defence: Gravity and Levity
    MYSELF: Members of the Jury, hostile though this Witness appears, he plays wonderfully into my hands. In spite of himself he prepares the way for striking new evidence in my favour, evidence which, but for him, I might so easily have missed.
    Let me explain:
    When I’m interested enough – and honest and observant enough – to look at myself for myself, I find I’m duplex. I come in two designs, two quite distinct models, Mark 1 and Mark 2/3. They are very different, more so than black and white. They stay apart, keeping their distance like poles of a magnet. They stand facing each other, as Nelson’s Column faces Whitehall. And they are opposites, as sweet is the opposite of bitter. Mark 1 is the real and central and divine Me, while Mark 2/3 is the apparent and peripheral and all-too-human me. Mark 1 is what I am, while Mark 2/3 is what I look like. Mark 1 is what I find myself to be here as the seeing Subject or First Person, while Mark 2/3 is what I find myself to be over there as the seen object, or second/third person. In short, it’s as impossible to exaggerate the contrast between these two models of me as it is to exaggerate their connection.
    Nowhere is this contrast more startling than in what the Witness calls his Convenience. His customers are of two sorts. All pee downwards, human fashion. All except one, who pees upwards, divine fashion. Every time –
    No, no, Your Honour: no need to ply your gravel. I assure you I’m not being irreverent or flippant, and certainly not needlessly scatological. Here are inescapable facts which support my case. Nor am I holding this court in contempt. (I can’t afford to, when I’m on trial for my life.) If I’m indulging in levity it’s because God Almighty does so with a vengeance and a tra-la-la, in both senses of the word levity. I can’t help it if people find His Self-revelation in the humble workplace of the Witness as disgusting as I find it entertaining, and charming, and immensely significant.
    The Prosecution’s God is a respectable character, stiff and solemn, a model of middle-class good manners and predictability, with no shocks up the divine sleeve. Well, my God isn’t a bit like that. Kings have their jesters, but the King of the World is His jester. He’s all surprises. He’s the Funny One, the Shocker! Downright vulgar He is! Take what happens in the Witness’s WCs... All right, Your Honour: no need to elaborate. Only let me point out that in all those locked cubicles underwear goes down and then up again. In all except one, where it goes up and then down again.
    COUNSEL, resolutely horror-struck: Your Honour, I really must butt in here to draw the Jury’s attention to the almost unbelievable goings-on in this lawcourt. This lawcourt! The Romans revered Cloacina, the goddess of the sewer. Going a whole lot better (better’s hardly the word), John a-Nokes reveres himself as at once the God of Heaven and the God of Public Lavatories, sparing us no lavatorial detail. Not only does he convict himself out of his own mouth, of the crime of blasphemy, but does so in the most repugnant fashion imaginable. One nicely calculated to