When God Was a Rabbit: A Novel

by Sarah Winman

“Just know,” he said, tapping his nose, making out he had a sixth sense even though the other five had proven many times to be shaky and unreliable.

“He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how,” I said solemnly. “That’s Nietzsche,”

and although it was keeping the cold at bay, I felt it was simply because the cold stopped as it approached me and burst into laughter, rather than by any practical means.

“Do I believe in an old man in the clouds with a white beard judging us mortals with a moral code from one to ten? Good Lord no, my sweet Elly, I do not!

“Well, you wait on,” she said. “You’ll have that bloody thing clogging up your knickers for years.”

The lights were of every shape, size, and color, and in the darkness turned a make-believe world into one of incandescent reality.

But he broke a piece off and held it to her mouth and she ate hungrily, for it was the memory she was tasting again and the memory tasted good.

I thought this is how it would be if the sun died; the gentle shutting down of an organ, sleepy, no longer working. No explosion at the end of life, just this slow disintegration into darkness, where life as we know it never wakes up because nothing reminds us that we have to.

This is what we are connected to. What we are all connected to. When the lights go out, so do we.

“I simply like having erections. I haven’t been doing much with them, but I find them a comfort. Rather like a good book. It’s the anticipation, really. I don’t even have to get to the end.”

The witness of my soul, my shadow in childhood, when dreams were small and attainable for all. When sweets were a penny and god was a rabbit.

I realized that maybe the need to be remembered is stronger than the need to remember.