Conversations with the geezer atheist

Conversations with geezer atheist grow stranger and possibly more interesting since the cancer has gone to his brain and everything is a mystery, a riddle. What is the word that has a U in it, and possibly a C? Had to do with the lungs. Finally I realize, "tuberculosis": Yes, people died in the movies from this in the fifties. But it wasn't from the disease; it was from the shadow. He must have been thinking of that disease, because of the way he hacks violently while eating. Today I tell him I spoke to his sister and he asks if she is all right with him these days. You've been on good terms with her for years now, I remind him. He shakes his head, dubious. How is her relationship with her father? He's your father too. He's been dead for years. He nods. Does that mean you no longer have a relationship? Well, you no longer speak to him, or see him. And you stop praying to his God? Not necessarily. But your father didn't believe in God. We don't know why he wanted them to play Ave Maria at his funeral. He did? For the music, or for spite, or for some reason we cannot fathom. The thing that bothered me about my father…(long pause, loses track, comes back) he was ashamed of being a Jew. I comment on how this fits in with his admiration for Nietzsche who scorned Judaism and Christianity because it was so Jewish. They were the religion of slaves, in his view. I still don't know what you think about God. I believe in God. You know that. There are long silences as we sit at the table where people have been brought to await their dinner trays. Finally, he says, So if they clean part of it, then only the rest are slaves. And that is the part that God takes care of? That's an interesting idea, but I'm not sure what you mean.