Arnon Grunberg

Paradise

Wearing a diaphragm

More on atheism: Nabokov wrote – I believe it was in an afterword to Lolita – that one of the most improbable things on this world would be an atheist elected to be president of the US.
We all know more or less about the paradise of Christians and Muslims.
This famous poem by Philip Larkin might shed a light on the paradise of atheists:
“High windows

When I see a couple of kids And guess he's fucking her and she's Taking pills or wearing a diaphragm, I know this is paradise

Everyone old has dreamed of all their lives-- Bonds and gestures pushed to one side Like an outdated combine harvester, And everyone young going down the long slide

To happiness, endlessly. I wonder if Anyone looked at me, forty years back, And thought, That'll be the life; No God any more, or sweating in the dark

About hell and that, or having to hide What you think of the priest. He And his lot will all go down the long slide Like free bloody birds. And immediately

Rather than words comes the thought of high windows: The sun-comprehending glass, And beyond it, the deep blue air, that shows Nothing, and is nowhere, and is endless."