You’d Better Come Quietly – Three Sketches, Some Outlines And Additional Notes

Man: It is impossible to hold a conversation with you.

Angel: Why?

Man: Why? Because I must do both the talking and the answering. You never answer.

Angel: That is not true. I do answer.

Man: I never hear you.

Angel: Do you expect me to make sounds?

Man: A little sound wouldn’t hurt.

Angel: But I am a pure spirit. I have no dimensions, no body, no mouth, nor hands, nor any instrument of noise. Do you want me to stop being an angel?

Man: You might accommodate yourself to me as a man. I have a body. I have ears.

Angel: Why should I stay outside your ears when I can go straight to your intellect? What good to knock at a door which one can pass through?

Man: It might let the occupant know that you have arrived.

Angel: In which case the arrival would not be an angel.

Man: But something very much more satisfactory. Something one could see and feel and hear, not simply guess at, as I am now doing with you.

Angel: You will simply have it that I must stop being an angel if I am to continue to exist. Is that not it?

Man: No, that’s not it. But why not materialize, assume some shape, and appear to me? It would make this conversation less nonsensical . . .

Angel: And likewise very much less angelical. An angel with a shape is a nonsense. Would you prefer to know me as I am not, rather than to know me as I am?

Man: But do I know you at all?

Angel: You seem to know me well enough to abuse me. I think maybe you do not like angels.

Man: I must confess I find them very tiresome.

Angel: You mean you find your own brain very tiresome, with all its convolutions, its water and its pulp. I cannot be tiresome who am lighter even than your own thoughts.

Man: Excuse me if I yawn (He yawns.) I am no longer interested. I shall employ my poor soggy brain in thinking about things I can feel and see.

Angel: And will you find in them any real satisfaction?

Man: A certain satisfaction. That kind at least which you are unable to give me.

Angel: Would you like me to go?

Man: Nobody said, “Would you like me to go?” I have just fancied that you said it. I simply supply you with words I think you might say if I were sure you were here.

Angel: But you are not sure?

Man: No.

Angel: You are not sure of what God has revealed? Has He not promised to give me charge over you “lest you dash your foot against a stone”?

Man: I am quite unaware of any influences you have upon my feet.

Angel: Just at present I am trying to keep you from dashing your head against a rock.

Man: What do you mean?

Angel: Would you not prefer the impact of a rock upon your head to the soft fusion of your spirit with mine? You have said as much.

Man: I did not really mean to say you are not here. I meant I do not know whether or not I am talking to you. God did not say that every time I fancy myself talking to you I really am doing so.

Angel: I should be a rather poor Guardian Angel if I paid no attention to you precisely at the time when you are paying attention to me, should I not?

Man: Really, I cannot be bothered with this subject any longer. It’s all too stupid. If you’re here, stay here. If you know what I am saying to you, you are welcome to know it. But certainly I have no way of knowing that you know it.

Angel: Isn’t that rather silly talk?

Man: Now you can’t tell me that anybody said, “Isn’t that rather silly talk?” Nobody said it. I just made it up in my own mind, and in writing it down I am supposing myself to have supposed what you might possibly have said if you were aware of what I am thinking.

Angel: You have to become very involved in order to get rid of me, don’t you? You have to take refuge in a muddled, complex sentence. Angels detest complexity.

Man: What do they like, then?

Angel: Simplicity.

Man: Well then, very simply: Am I thinking about you?

Angel: If not, what are you thinking of?

Man: A possible angel who may or may not be present to me.

Angel: But God has said there is a real angel where you suppose the possible one to be.

Man: But not that the real angel knows that I am thinking about him.

Angel: What do you think that I think you are thinking about?

Man: I do not know.

Angel: Oh, I see. So we may put it this way: I, who am always thinking about you, do not know when you are thinking about me.

Man: No, I admit that you know that I am thinking about you.

Angel: But you did not say that before. Or rather, you said it, and then retracted it.

Man: Well, now I admit it. But this is what I do not admit. I do not admit that we are holding a conversation.

Angel: Because I make no sounds in your ears?

Man: Don’t you see what I mean? I grant you that being an angel, you are not supposed to make sounds. But a soundless conversation from my side is quite impossible.

Angel: And so you can never hold a conversation with an angel unless he becomes a man?

Man: We are certainly not holding a conversation!

Angel: What are we holding?

Man: We are holding a monologue.

Angel: How can two persons hold a monologue?

Man: How can one person hold a conversation?

Angel: How can WE be ONE person?

Man: But is there a you?

Angel: You have already admitted that.

Man: But I have not admitted . . .

Angel: What have you not admitted?

Man: I have not admitted . . . just a minute and I shall tell you what I have not admitted . . . I have not admitted that the you to whom I am attributing the thoughts I am thinking you are thinking, are really thinking the thoughts I am thinking you are thinking.

Angel: Involved, again, I see! Worse than before!

Man: That last sentence of mine may be a bit involved, but it is unanswerable.

Angel: Naturally, I cannot answer it if you are unwilling to admit that the answer you suppose I am answering is really the answer you suppose I am answering. Now, how do you like me in an involved sentence? Let me hear you answer that?

Man: Who is the one who is talking to me when I suppose you are talking to me?

Angel: Whom do you think?

Man: Nobody.

Angel: Can nobody talk to somebody?

Man: But somebody can talk to himself. That’s what I am doing, I am talking to myself.

Angel: It took you a long time to find that out.

Man: It wouldn’t have, if you hadn’t interfered.

Angel: I interfered? That’s splendid!

Man: I mean unless I were fool enough to imagine that you were interfering.

Angel: Isn’t it marvelous what trouble this imaginary angel is causing you?

Man: Yes, it is.

Angel: It’s hard to see how a real angel could be more bothersome, isn’t it?

Man: Of course, I’m causing myself all the bother.

Angel: Are you both angel and man, to say that you can fight yourself this way?

Man: No. But I am supplying you a part and trying to imagine what you would say if you were saying anything.

Angel: Are you sure I am saying nothing?

Man: Well, for goodness’ sake, this is a make-believe story! You certainly are not writing the script for your own part, are you?

Angel: Naturally, I cannot write.

Man: Nor are you thinking it.

Angel: No?

Man: You can’t be thinking what I am thinking.

Angel: You don’t say?

Man: Well, you certainly are not my intellect.

Angel: Are you thinking your own intellect?

Man: No, but I am thinking thoughts with my own intellect.

Angel: About me.

Man: But you are not those thoughts!

Angel: I am the object of them.

Man: But you don’t cause them!

Angel: Every object causes the thought of it in some way. But let’s not go into that. Can you think of nothing in a thought?

Man: I can have a sort of a thought about nothing.

Angel: And am I that nothing?

Man: In the way I am thinking about you, you are.

Angel: Then why are you so exasperated at me if I am nothing?

Man: I am exasperated at my own idea of the nothing I conceive you to be.

Angel: But conceived as nothing, I am not the angel God sent to guide you.

Man: No, the angel God sent to guide me is real, but the angel with whom I am holding this conversation is an imaginary angel to whom I am attributing thoughts of my own.

Angel: But you began this conversation by wanting an imaginary angel to materialize and make sounds. That’s even worse than wanting a real angel to do so.

Man: I admit there were certain inconsistencies on my part in the beginning of this conversation.

Angel: And the imaginary angel cleared them up for you?

Man: I cleared them up for myself.

Angel: Really, you seem to be a better angel, when you play the part of an angel, than I am.

Man: I think that’s true.

Angel: My dear man! My dear philosopher!

Man: Now I know that you are not a real angel . . .

Angel: My dear child!

Man: Now I know that you are!