Apr 05 2007
The Curse
I was seeking shelter from the pooring rain at the bar of a restaurant about 60 km from my hometown Amsterdam. Sitting with me were a group of people one would rarely encounter in the center of Amsterdam; a farmer, some very old-fashioned desk clerks and a lady with red hair, who was obviously drunk.
The barkeeper dropped a bottle and cursed with such enthusiasm that the office clerks closed their eyes. The farmer mumbled something in a dialect I could not completely understand. I knew it was about The Lord Above and Sins In General.
Unlike me the lady obviously understood the farmer very well, because she replied almost instantly with a swollen tongue.
“Why should God be a man? I am convinced God is a woman.”
I was impatiently waiting for my drink. It was in the bottle the barkeeper just dropped. A discussion about God being male, female or neutered wouldn’t speed things up, so before any one could answer I moved towards the woman. All her wrinkles seemed to point downwards. In fact everything about her radiated dissatisfaction.
“I am sure God is a woman, my dear,” I said. The smile on my face was the kind of smile I normally reserve for my mother.
“See, what did I tell you?” she yelled at the rest of the visitors.
Luckily there was no response. The farmer looked outside and the clerks went on with their conversation about sports. My drink was going to take a long time, because the barkeeper had to descend into the cellar to find a new bottle, so I moved closer to the old woman.
“Do you want to know why I think God is a woman?” She just stared at her glass without expression, so I continued. “Because God evicted us from Paradise for the theft of one lousy apple and here we are today, thousands and thousands of years later.”
“Ah, not that again,” she said with her raspy voice. “Not that old story of blaming it all on Eve.”
“No,” I answered, “but if God would have been a man; he would have long forgiven us by now and you and I would not be sitting here in this dump waiting for the rain to clear.”
Without warning or hesitation she threw the contents of her drink in my face.
I did not mind. I was already soaking wet from all that rain and now the barkeeper spontaneously handed me the towel I had not dared to ask when I first came in.