[...] Q was a friend of mine who was also very well furnished in the breast department (the other woman, O, perhaps wins the prize – but I have no valid excuse to involve her breasts in this novel, at least not for the time being. Which is a shame, because they deserve a novel all to themselves). Although our friendship (my friendship with Q, that is) has been very long, our romance was fairly short, for many reasons, and fundamentally, I think, for one: because before making love she took off all her clothes except for an enormous crucifix, with Jesus on it and everything, which she left hanging around her neck; and a particularly tormented Jesus, too, all writhing and anguished-looking – for which you can’t blame him, of course, given the circumstances. If I suggested that it would all be much easier and more comfortable if she took off her crucifix as well, she’d say: ‘Isn’t He the God of love?’ – and that was that. You just try, sir – and for once, the female reader will forgive me the obligatory exclusion – you just try, sir, to maintain a good erection face to face with the image of the suffering Redeemer, however well appointed he might be between a pair of magnificent tits. Perhaps you – as a good atheist – could do it. But I could not. It was hard work, believe me. The girl was lovely, sweet, gentle, warm, fragrant – a real delight. I’d close my eyes and get lost in the moment and for a while I could forget everything, but then, crack, the crucifix would end up in my mouth, or in my eye, or give me a scratch on the cheek. Or I’d open my eyes – since you have to open them, of course, and open them wide – and there they’d all be, parading past: the Sacred History, Death and the Resurrection, Good Friday, Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday; the three denials of Peter, the Sermon on the Mount, the wedding at Canaan, the raising of Lazarus … and the Apocalypse. The image of the Redeemer, which demands, even if you’re not exactly a saint, a kind of supernatural respect that pushes you to examine your conscience and confess your sins, set against those erect nipples wet with saliva and … anyway: I generally managed to bring things to a satisfying conclusion, but afterwards my head, spine and kidneys were a mess. I don’t think these things should mix, despite the fact that ‘He’s the God of love’, which He certainly is, and despite the intimate, profound connection there is between religion and sex. Goodbye, Q. Sometimes I worry my luminous novel will turn into a similar mixture. I want to believe it won’t. I want to believe I’ve been able to balance the two poles of what is, I think, a unique phenomenon. I’m also afraid people will consider me a cynic, a liar or a heretic. I might be a heretic, but I have a theory in my defence (it’s very simple, too: if Christianity was imposed through blood and fire and money and the Inquisition and other things like that, and now here we are, brought up with no alternative and within the cage of dogma – and, worse, of popular superstition deriving from badly digested dogma – we surely have the right to make all the adjustments we need in order to carry on believing – and, at the same time, to be free). But whether I like it or not, I seem to be arriving – via some erect nipples – at my conversion. Or ‘conversion’, since this is something I’m not very clear about either. I don’t know what my exact relationship with the Church is nowadays – and I’m also writing this, partly, in an attempt to find out. Nor do I know what my relationship with the Church will be in the future: I’m in the dark, or the half-light. But did a conversion take place? Yes, it did. And was it luminous? It was.