Proud of a conversation I had, in German, with the guy in the corner shop just now. He met me just inside the door, and rolled his eyes vehemently. “I was just about to close!” With a sigh he swung his swag of chains – yes, chains, that’s how you shut up a shop in Berlin – over the back of a chair and came round the counter to serve me. I stayed courteous and curious and soon he was telling me about his day. The Ordnungsamt, sort of a local city police, came in and made him change his display. He can sell ice cream by the cone tomorrow, and beef jerky and foiled sausages, but no beer and no ice creams already packaged. “No ice?” I said, misunderstanding the word. “Only if it’s not already wrapped,” he said gloomily. “But, ah – because of… God?” I wondered (Gotteswegens?) Yes, he said. He started showing me one by one the items on his crowded counter that would have to be stowed away at the end of every week so as not to offend the Lord. I said, You know, whoever God may be… don’t you wonder… whether maybe this is not quite what he meant? “Ihr koennt das kaufen, und das und das, aber nicht das.” Yes, he said, I’m not convinced that God minds what I sell, either.
I used to sing in a tiny madrigal ensemble which performed in an old cathedral and we would have to sit through the services as they droned on in what, to me, might as well have been Latin. Choristers brought puzzle books and read poetry. Every Sunday after the service everyone would be invited to partake of the blood of the camellia bush and the bread of the fields, sponge cake and tea bags served with plastic plates and (mega groan) polystyrene disposable cups. I was almost thrown out of the choir for suggesting that if there is a God, and if you believe God has made this whole earth for our dominion and we are somehow or other in charge…. wouldn’t God want you to wash up your cups and use them again? Isn’t God, by God’s very nature, fundamentally opposed to polystyrene? I mentioned this to the choir at large and to the choir master and also, a couple of times, to the minister and his wife. Oh, they said vaguely, the washing up…. Later the choir master visited me at home, to tell me two of the sopranos had made a deputation to request I be thrown out, as a troublemaker. Aren’t the manufacturers and purchasers of polystyrene the real troublemakers? I feel like Charlton Heston brooding over his precious gun, or Scarlett O’Hara clutching her handful of carrots. This is my land, it’s our land, so help me I’ll never give up. Because ‘not til the last tree is felled and the last river dried up’ will we realize, it seems, that you cannot eat God.
